DOCSLIB.ORG

Warsaw Ghetto Police: the Jewish Order Service During the Nazi Occupation'

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Warsaw Ghetto Police: the Jewish Order Service During the Nazi Occupation' H-Poland Biskupska on Person, 'Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service during the Nazi Occupation' Review published on Friday, August 27, 2021 Katarzyna Person. Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service during the Nazi Occupation. Translated by Zygmunt Nowak-Soliński. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. Illustrations. xii + 232 pp. $15.99 (e-book), ISBN 978-1-5017-5408-1; $32.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-5017-5407-4. Reviewed by Jadwiga Biskupska (Sam Houston State University) Published on H-Poland (August, 2021) Commissioned by Anna Muller (University of Michigan - Dearborn) Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=56798 One of Hannah Arendt’s most controversial accusations in Eichmann in Jerusalem was on the role of Jewish police and officials in the prosecution of the Holocaust. “To a Jew,” Arendt insisted, “this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story.”[1] As the decades have unfolded since, we know considerably more about this “dark story,” the nature of its perpetration, and the complexity of the vast Jewish community that was persecuted and died across Nazi-controlled Europe. We also have, thanks to recent Polish Holocaust historiography, much more information than Arendt did about the nature of power and policing in Nazi-occupied Poland. A careful examination of the Ordnungsdienst—the Jewish or “yellow police” in the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto under Nazi control—is thus especially timely. Katarzyna Person’s Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service during the Nazi Occupation aims to clarify myths and rumors about the men of the Ordnungsdienst and their work between 1940 and 1942. (I shall refer to them as “policemen,” as Person does, though there is a conversation to be had on whether this is the right term.) Who were these men and what did they do? Person’s first and essential service is in answering this basic question. These two thousand-odd men and officers were Jewish inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto tasked with facilitating basic orders on behalf of Adam Czerniaków’s Judenrat and ultimately on behalf of the Nazi German occupation. Competition for posts was fierce and nobody was coerced into joining. Ordnungsdienst men did not police crime but directed traffic and human movement (including forming part of the guard at the gates), supervised sanitation, conscripted people for labor, and liaised with the Polish “blue police” (policja granatowa) and Nazi police services, putting them in regular interaction with aspects of “Aryan” Warsaw. The greater lethality and parallel corruption of native Polish and occupation German police forces are noted but are not Person’s focus. Ordnungsdienst duties, subordinate to Polish and German policemen, nevertheless gave them significant power over other ghetto inhabitants. How should we understand the Ordnungsdienst’s role in the Holocaust, and what myths about them need dispelling? After a too-brief introduction, Person works through a number of entrenched misconceptions. The most basic assertion with which we need to begin is that the terrible reputation of the ghetto policemen—which Arendt repeated but did not invent—was born in the ghetto itself in the experiences of the Jewish community and is not a retrospective condemnation by historians or Citation: H-Net Reviews. Biskupska on Person, 'Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service during the Nazi Occupation'. H- Poland. 08-27-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/9669/reviews/8149572/biskupska-person-warsaw-ghetto-police-jewish-order-service-during Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Poland survivors. Person does not attempt to defend the policemen but carefully contextualizes their behavior, turning them from a monolith into a hierarchy of often-vulnerable individuals. The first myth she takes up is that the Ordnungsdienst was staffed with converts to Christianity and not “real” Jews. This is not quite true. Józef Szeryński, one of the Ordnungsdienst’s leaders, was a convert, but he was unusual. Most policemen were educated, assimilated, Polish-speaking Jews in their thirties and forties, not Christian converts. The durability of the myth reveals Jewish religious and class complexity, discomfort with polonization across the Yiddish-speaking majority, and the desire to “other” policemen, managing their betrayal by placing them outside the community—a pattern of recrimination across Nazi-occupied Poland. The second myth was that the policemen were violent and corrupt. This was undoubtedly true. Person explains that rank-and-file policemen were unpaid, compensated only by the uniform that (mostly) protected them from roundups and by the opportunity to demand bribes. Armed with batons, policemen threatened, beat, and occasionally raped ghetto Jews in defiance of regulations, and escorted them to imprisonment, labor conscription, and execution. Related to this was the assumption that policemen got rich through bribes and looting, another myth. Person qualifies this considerably, noting a chasm between a narrow ghetto elite including police leadership who feasted ostentatiously and the rank and file who went hungry and lacked adequate shoes and clothing for their patrols: some policemen demanded bribes and kickbacks to feed themselves and their families. The main police victims were the ghetto’s poorest inhabitants, who had neither connections nor money to protect them from their own police, Poles, or Germans. They were disproportionately recruited for punishing labor, targeted with vicious “disease prevention” tortures, and died. And, of course, the final myth was the ghetto assumption that policemen were protected from persecution, including the final Grossaktion of summer 1942, the deportations to the gas chambers of Treblinka. It was the Ordnungsdienst’s assistance in these deportations that undergirds their murderous reputation, and their summer 1942 behavior is the subject of chapter 8, “Umschlagsplatz.” The reality was more complicated: policemen facilitated the 1942 deportations, saving family and friends and sending neighbors to Treblinka in their stead. But Person details a world in which policemen’s privileges were dangerous and fleeting. Those who assisted in the Treblinka deportations were often subjected to forced labor, execution, and the vengeance of the emerging ghetto underground in 1943. Their “visibility,” Person argues, ironically made them the people “most exposed to violence” in the ghetto, and few escaped unscathed or survived the Holocaust (p. 119). The most important chapter in the book, “Policemen’s Voices,” attempts to articulate the policemen’s own motivations. It reveals the architecture of Person’s source base, which mines Poland’s various municipal archives and Holocaust collections around the world, coupled with Gazeta Żydowska and a library of memoirs, to capture ghetto inhabitants’ perspectives. Rank-and-file ghetto policemen, however, left few written records. Person quotes one policeman (likely a man named Stanisław Gombiński) who chafed under the responsibilities of his job and the disrespect and condemnation of his fellow Jews, and his brief remarks must stand for his peers. Person’s text is sustained by the writing of Jews outside the Ordnungsdienst, who vilified them and noted the effects of their work on community solidarity and the lives of the poor. The result is a multifaceted and rich explanation of the Jewish community’s condemnation of the Ordnungsdienst that leaves room for the acknowledgment that ghetto policemen, like Poland’s Jewish community more broadly, had few if any better options in the face of the Holocaust. Citation: H-Net Reviews. Biskupska on Person, 'Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service during the Nazi Occupation'. H- Poland. 08-27-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/9669/reviews/8149572/biskupska-person-warsaw-ghetto-police-jewish-order-service-during Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-Poland Paired with a wealth of haunting photographs of the policemen at work in 1941, this short volume performs an essential service in expanding the English-language conversation on Jewish community life during the Holocaust and on the complexity of the perpetration landscape in Nazi-occupied Poland. Note [1]. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 117. Citation: Jadwiga Biskupska. Review of Person, Katarzyna, Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service during the Nazi Occupation. H-Poland, H-Net Reviews. August, 2021.URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56798 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Citation: H-Net Reviews. Biskupska on Person, 'Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service during the Nazi Occupation'. H- Poland. 08-27-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/9669/reviews/8149572/biskupska-person-warsaw-ghetto-police-jewish-order-service-during Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Generate PDF of This Page
    Institute of National Remembrance https://ipn.gov.pl/en/for-the-media/statements/4245,Statement-on-the-crimes-committed-by-the-Ger man-Reich-in-occupied-Poland-and-on-.html 2021-09-28, 09:34 12.06.2020 Statement on the crimes committed by the German Reich in occupied Poland and on the false information appearing in public Public dissemination of counter-factual information on the number of Jews killed by Polish people outside the ghettos between 1942–1945, alongside with false generalisations regarding the perpetrators of those crimes is an increasingly frequent phenomenon. A large proportion of such information is supported in a dishonest way by the authority of Simon Datner – one of the initiators of Holocaust studies. In a manner far from scientific scrupulousness, certain numeric data on Jews murdered outside the ghettos is attributed to his works, whereas in reality he never included such data in them. Furthermore, Datner – like any responsible researcher – understood perfectly well that the territory of the Polish lands, both within the ghettos organised by the Germans and outside those ghettos, was under German occupation and was subjected to the absolute terror of the German Reich. Therefore, Datner did not treat the areas under German occupation outside the ghettos as places where the Polish population could act freely. Quite the opposite – as someone who experienced this period personally, he understood the realities of German occupation perfectly well, and described them with due sensitivity. In the often-cited article “Nazi crimes against ghetto escapees”, S. Datner wrote: “In one of the studies, I estimated the number of surviving Jews, saved primarily thanks to the help of the Polish population, at around 100,000 people.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Threshold of the Holocaust: Anti-Jewish Riots and Pogroms In
    Geschichte - Erinnerung – Politik 11 11 Geschichte - Erinnerung – Politik 11 Tomasz Szarota Tomasz Szarota Tomasz Szarota Szarota Tomasz On the Threshold of the Holocaust In the early months of the German occu- volume describes various characters On the Threshold pation during WWII, many of Europe’s and their stories, revealing some striking major cities witnessed anti-Jewish riots, similarities and telling differences, while anti-Semitic incidents, and even pogroms raising tantalising questions. of the Holocaust carried out by the local population. Who took part in these excesses, and what was their attitude towards the Germans? The Author Anti-Jewish Riots and Pogroms Were they guided or spontaneous? What Tomasz Szarota is Professor at the Insti- part did the Germans play in these events tute of History of the Polish Academy in Occupied Europe and how did they manipulate them for of Sciences and serves on the Advisory their own benefit? Delving into the source Board of the Museum of the Second Warsaw – Paris – The Hague – material for Warsaw, Paris, The Hague, World War in Gda´nsk. His special interest Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Kaunas, this comprises WWII, Nazi-occupied Poland, Amsterdam – Antwerp – Kaunas study is the first to take a comparative the resistance movement, and life in look at these questions. Looking closely Warsaw and other European cities under at events many would like to forget, the the German occupation. On the the Threshold of Holocaust ISBN 978-3-631-64048-7 GEP 11_264048_Szarota_AK_A5HC PLE edition new.indd 1 31.08.15 10:52 Geschichte - Erinnerung – Politik 11 11 Geschichte - Erinnerung – Politik 11 Tomasz Szarota Tomasz Szarota Tomasz Szarota Szarota Tomasz On the Threshold of the Holocaust In the early months of the German occu- volume describes various characters On the Threshold pation during WWII, many of Europe’s and their stories, revealing some striking major cities witnessed anti-Jewish riots, similarities and telling differences, while anti-Semitic incidents, and even pogroms raising tantalising questions.
    [Show full text]
  • THE POLISH POLICE Collaboration in the Holocaust
    THE POLISH POLICE Collaboration in the Holocaust Jan Grabowski The Polish Police Collaboration in the Holocaust Jan Grabowski INA LEVINE ANNUAL LECTURE NOVEMBER 17, 2016 The assertions, opinions, and conclusions in this occasional paper are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. First printing, April 2017 Copyright © 2017 by Jan Grabowski THE INA LEVINE ANNUAL LECTURE, endowed by the William S. and Ina Levine Foundation of Phoenix, Arizona, enables the Center to bring a distinguished scholar to the Museum each year to conduct innovative research on the Holocaust and to disseminate this work to the American public. Wrong Memory Codes? The Polish “Blue” Police and Collaboration in the Holocaust In 2016, seventy-one years after the end of World War II, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs disseminated a long list of “wrong memory codes” (błędne kody pamięci), or expressions that “falsify the role of Poland during World War II” and that are to be reported to the nearest Polish diplomat for further action. Sadly—and not by chance—the list elaborated by the enterprising humanists at the Polish Foreign Ministry includes for the most part expressions linked to the Holocaust. On the long list of these “wrong memory codes,” which they aspire to expunge from historical narrative, one finds, among others: “Polish genocide,” “Polish war crimes,” “Polish mass murders,” “Polish internment camps,” “Polish work camps,” and—most important for the purposes of this text—“Polish participation in the Holocaust.” The issue of “wrong memory codes” will from time to time reappear in this study.
    [Show full text]
  • Constructions and Instrumentalization of the Past: a Comparative Study on Memory Management in the Region
    CBEES State of the Region Report 2020 Constructions and Instrumentalization of the Past A Comparative Study on Memory Management in the Region Published with support from the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies (Östersjstiftelsen) Constructions and Instrumentalization of the Past A Comparative Study on Memory Management in the Region December 2020 Publisher Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, CBEES, Sdertrn University © CBEES, Sdertrn University and the authors Editor Ninna Mrner Editorial Board Joakim Ekman, Florence Frhlig, David Gaunt, Tora Lane, Per Anders Rudling, Irina Sandomirskaja Layout Lena Fredriksson, Serpentin Media Proofreading Bridget Schaefer, Semantix Print Elanders Sverige AB ISBN 978-91-85139-12-5 4 Contents 7 Preface. A New Annual CBEES Publication, Ulla Manns and Joakim Ekman 9 Introduction. Constructions and Instrumentalization of the Past, David Gaunt and Tora Lane 15 Background. Eastern and Central Europe as a Region of Memory. Some Common Traits, Barbara Trnquist-Plewa ESSAYS 23 Victimhood and Building Identities on Past Suffering, Florence Frhlig 29 Image, Afterimage, Counter-Image: Communist Visuality without Communism, Irina Sandomirskaja 37 The Toxic Memory Politics in the Post-Soviet Caucasus, Thomas de Waal 45 The Flag Revolution. Understanding the Political Symbols of Belarus, Andrej Kotljarchuk 55 Institutes of Trauma Re-production in a Borderland: Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania, Per Anders Rudling COUNTRY BY COUNTRY 69 Germany. The Multi-Level Governance of Memory as a Policy Field, Jenny Wstenberg 80 Lithuania. Fractured and Contested Memory Regimes, Violeta Davoliūtė 87 Belarus. The Politics of Memory in Belarus: Narratives and Institutions, Aliaksei Lastouski 94 Ukraine. Memory Nodes Loaded with Potential to Mobilize People, Yuliya Yurchuk 106 Czech Republic.
    [Show full text]
  • Szymon Datner German Nazi Crimes Against Jews Who
    JEWISH HISTORICAL INSTITUTE BULLETIN NO. 75 (1970) SZYMON DATNER GERMAN NAZI CRIMES AGAINST JEWS WHO ESCAPED FROM THE GHETTOES “LEGAL” THREATS AND ORDINANCES REGARDING JEWS AND THE POLES WHO HELPED THEM Among other things, the “final solution of the Jewish question” required that Jews be prohibited from leaving the ghettoes they were living in—which typically were fenced off and under guard. The occupation authorities issued inhumane ordinances to that effect. In his ordinance of October 15, 1941, Hans Frank imposed draconian penalties on Jews who escaped from the ghettoes and on Poles who would help them escape or give them shelter: “§ 4b (1) Jews who leave their designated quarter without authorisation shall be punished by death. The same penalty shall apply to persons who knowingly shelter such Jews. (2) Those who instigate and aid and abet shall be punished with the same penalty as the perpetrator; acts attempted shall be punished as acts committed. A penalty of severe prison sentence or prison sentence may be imposed for minor offences. (3) Sentences shall be passed by special courts.” 1 In the reality of the General Government (GG), § 4b (3) was never applied to runaway Jews. They would be killed on capture or escorted to the nearest police, gendarmerie, Gestapo or Kripo station and, after being identified as Jews and tortured to give away those who helped or sheltered them, summarily executed. Many times the same fate befell Poles, too, particularly those living in remote settlements and woodlands. The cases of Poles who helped Jews, which were examined by special courts, raised doubts even among the judges of this infamous institution because the only penalty stipulated by law (death) was so draconian.
    [Show full text]
  • Poland and the Holocaust – Facts and Myths
    The Good Name Redoubt The Polish League Against Defamation Poland and the Holocaust – facts and myths Summary 1. Poland was the first and one of the major victims of World War II. 2. The extermination camps, in which several million people were murdered, were not Polish. These were German camps in Poland occupied by Nazi Germany. The term “Polish death camps” is contradictory to historical facts and grossly unfair to Poland as a victim of Nazi Germany. 3. The Poles were the first to alert European and American leaders about the Holocaust. 4. Poland never collaborated with Nazi Germany. The largest resistance movement in occupied Europe was created in Poland. Moreover, in occupied Europe, Poland was one of the few countries where the Germans introduced and exercised the death penalty for helping Jews. 5. Hundreds of thousands of Poles – at the risk of their own lives – helped Jews survive the war and the Holocaust. Poles make up the largest group among the Righteous Among the Nations, i.e. citizens of various countries who saved Jews during the Holocaust. 6. As was the case in other countries during the war, there were cases of disgraceful behaviour towards Jews in occupied Poland, but this was a small minority compared to the Polish society as a whole. At the same time, there were also instances of disgraceful behaviour by Jews in relation to other Jews and to Poles. 7. During the war, pogroms of the Jewish people were observed in various European cities and were often inspired by Nazi Germans. Along with the Jews, Polish people, notably the intelligentsia and the political, socio-economic and cultural elites, were murdered on a massive scale by the Nazis and by the Soviets.
    [Show full text]
  • Hitler's Green Army: the German Order Police and Their European Auxiliaries, 1933-1945 Volume II Eastern Europe and the Balkans by Antonio J
    Hitler's Green Army: The German Order Police and their European Auxiliaries, 1933-1945 Volume II Eastern Europe and the Balkans By Antonio J. Munoz Color Plates by Darko Pavlovic Above: the Band and Standard of the German Police in 1938. Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 Foreword 7 Introduction to the Balkans Section 9 Chapter 1 - 19 Poland 19 The Growth of the German Police 19 The SS and the Order Police Invade Poland 20 Notes on the Einsatzgruppen Officers 23 Additional SS and Police Units 30 The Mission Assigned to the SS and Police Forces in Poland 30 Chapter 2 - 43 Garrisoning Poland 43 German Order Police Battalions in Poland, 1939-1945 53 The German Kolonialpolizei 60 Auxiliary Police Forces in Poland 65 The Polish Blue Police 65 The Ethnic-German Selbstschutz and Sonderdienst in Poland 67 The Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft and Galician Police 67 The Jewish Order Police 69 Polish Guerrilla Forces and Regions 71 Collaboration of the Police in the Extermination of the Polish Jews 74 Garrisoning Poland: The 72nd Police Battalion - a Typical Occupation Unit 80 Garrisoning Poland: The Realities of the German Occupation 81 Chapter 3- 87 Complicity in the Atrocities by the German Order Police Forces in Poland 87 The Partisan War Escalates in Poland 97 The Polish Partisan Army 101 Jewish Bolshevism? 102 The Ukrainian Nationalist Guerrillas 103 The War Against the Polish Partisans in 1943 104 The War Against the Jews in 1943: The Warsaw Ghetto No Longer Exists! 109 Revolt in the Bialystok Ghetto Ill Revolt in the Sobibor Death Camp 112 TheLuftschutspolizei andFliegergruppez.b.V.
    [Show full text]
  • Sliwa on Person, 'Policjanci'
    H-Poland Sliwa on Person, 'Policjanci' Review published on Tuesday, June 18, 2019 Katarzyna Person. Policjanci. Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2018. 294 pp. $19.53 (paper), ISBN 978-83-65254-78-8. Reviewed by Joanna Sliwa (Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany - Claims Conference) Published on H-Poland (June, 2019) Commissioned by Anna Muller (University of Michigan - Dearborn) Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=54222 Katarzyna Person, a historian of modern East European Jewish history and the Holocaust affiliated with the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, embarked on a difficult mission to present a nuanced study of the Jewish Order Service, commonly known as the Jewish Police, in the Warsaw ghetto. Person has done a praiseworthy job in her meticulously researched book,Policjanci: Wizerunek Żydowskiej Służby Porządkowej w getcie warszawskim (Policemen: An Image of the Jewish Order Service in the Warsaw Ghetto). She challenges the single story of the Jewish Police in the Warsaw ghetto as sadistic oppressors, willing Nazi collaborators, or self-hating Jews. This view has dominated the imagination, memory, and often scholarship on the topic. Instead, Person pulls the reader in another direction. She writes, “The most important thing is to show the diverse attitudes of members of the ŻSP [Jewish Order Service] and their individual motivations; this applies to policemen in the Warsaw ghetto as well as in other ghettos.” She explains that these attitudes and motivations “resulted primarily from German policy to demoralize the Order Service, but also from wartime reality: the brutality of daily life in the ghetto and the shifting of boundaries of acceptable behaviors.
    [Show full text]
  • Jewish Genocide in Galicia
    Jewish Genocide in Galicia Jewish Genocide in Galicia 2nd Edition With Appendix: Vernichtungslager ‘Bełżec’ Robin O’Neil Published by © Copyright Robin O’Neil 2015 JEWISH GENOCIDE IN GALICIA All rights reserved. The right of Robin O’Nei to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publisher. Condition of sale This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. ISBN Frontispiece: The Rabka 4 + 1 - incorporating the original book cover of Rudolf Reder’s ‘Bełżec’, 1946. 2nd Edition Part 1 2016: The Rabka Four + 1. First published 2011 under the title ‘The Rabka Four’. Contents Academic Excellence In Murder......................................i Dedication....................................................................... ii Lives Remembered .........................................................iv Note on Language...........................................................vi The Hunting Grounds for the Rabka 4 + 1 (zbV) 1941-1944 .........................................................................x
    [Show full text]
  • Institute of National Remembrance
    Institute of National Remembrance https://ipn.gov.pl/en/news/4113,A-nation-of-murderers-or-some-victims-do-not-deserve-to-be-rememb ered.html 2021-10-02, 14:42 05.05.2020 A nation of murderers, or some victims do not deserve to be remembered. A review of Jan Grabowski's book "Na posterunku. Udział polskiej policji granatowej i kryminalnej w zagładzie Żydów" [At the post. The participation of the Polish Blue Police and Polish Criminal Police in the Extermination of Jews], Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec 2020. During a pandemic, issues such as historical publications become of secondary importance, giving way to other aspects of our social life. That is why the launch of Jan Grabowski's book Na posterunku. Udział polskiej policji granatowej i kryminalnej w zagładzie Żydów has gone by practically unnoticed. The author, who has been dealing with the subject of the Holocaust in Poland for years, is as well-known as he is controversial. His theses, concerning the conscious and voluntary participation of Poles in the Holocaust, presented in the book Judenjagd. Polowanie na Żydów 1942–1945. Studium dziejów pewnego powiatu (2011) and the collective work edited by him and Barbara Engelking Dalej jest noc. Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (2018) – have sparked off numerous disputes. The Blue Police in source materials This time the author has taken up the topic of the Polish Police in the General Government (the so-called Navy Blue Police, formally established by the Germans under the name Polnische Polizei im Generalgouvernement) and the Polish Criminal Police (Polnische Kriminalpolizei – the so-called Polish Kripo).
    [Show full text]
  • Generate PDF of This Page
    Institute of National Remembrance https://ipn.gov.pl/en/news/5317,The-IPN039s-letter-to-quotEl-Paisquot-regarding-the-misinformation-i n-its-story-.html 2021-09-25, 21:10 09.11.1970 The IPN's letter to "El Pais", regarding the misinformation in its story on the Holocaust of Jews In late June, the Internet website of the Spanish daily "El Pais" published “La policía polaca que facilitó la Shoah” [„Polish Police Force which Helped in the Shoah”], a story by Guillermo Altares, repeating the allegations made in a book devoted to the issue. The IPN contacted the "El Pais" writer, pointing to the errors and distortions in his piece, and insisting that events be presented in historical context and that presentation be based on reliable sources. Below is the full text of the Institute’s message. Dear Mr. Altares, Thank you for your interest in the history of Poland during World War II. In your story, you refer to the book by Professor Jan Grabowski, devoted to the force known as the Blue Police (and called Polnische Polizei by the Germans), which during the war operated in the Polish territories occupied by the Third Reich. However, you repeat many of his inaccuracies that grossly distort the facts. The Republic of Poland was one of the Allied states from the beginning until the end of the war. It fought against the Germans despite the fact that its whole territory was under occupation. When talking about the Blue Police, one should refrain from calling it "the Polish police force" because it was created by the Germans for their own needs.
    [Show full text]
  • The Holocaust to the General Public in a Comprehensible, Yet Historically Accurate Manner
    A Study Guide By Plater Robinson Published by The Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS "The universe exists on the merit of the righteous among the nations of the world, and they are privileged to see the Divine Presence." -- The Talmud THE GOOD SAMARITAN And who is my neighbor? And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him. And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. Which now of these three, thinking thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.
    [Show full text]