The Pomeranian Crime Instytut PamI ęcI n arodowej Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu Warszawa 2018 II INSTITUTE OF NATIONAL REMEMBRANCE Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes Against the Polish Nation The Pomeranian Crime Warsaw 2018 [...] several tens of thousands of Poles fell victim to local exe- cutions carried out by the SS, the police, and Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz [...] The leading place in this regard was occu- pied by Pomerania, ahead of all other regions. Martin Broszat The world, not even Polish society and the Polish historiog- raphy of World War II, has never fully exposed on a greater than regional scale the specific character of German crimes in Pomerania in that first phase of the occupation. Stanisław Salmonowicz With the mass executions in Poland and the killing of the ill, the Nazi regime crossed the threshold of a systematic, racial- ly-motivated policy of extermination – nearly two years before the mass genocide of Jews started in 1941. Peter Longerich Western Borderlands Greeting of Polish troops in Bydgoszcz, 20 January As a result of World War I and the provisions of the 1920 (NAC) Treaty of Versailles, the Gdańsk Pomeranian region was returned to the reborn Second Polish Republic. After many years of Partitions, the Polish inhabitants of Pomerania recovered the independent country for which their fathers and grandfathers had fought for so long. The Pomeranian Voivodeship was es- tablished in August 1919. The actual incorpora- tion of Pomerania into Poland took place in Janu- ary-February 1920, when Polish troops entered Pomeranian cities, engendering general enthusiasm among Polish society. Many Poles took part in the reconstruction of state structures in the territory that had formed part of Prussia for over a century. Po- meranian Germans had to make a choice: should they stay in their “homeland” (Heimat) in the Pol- ish state or should they emigrate to Germany (Va- terland) and retain their German citizenship. The outflow of the German population and the Poloni- sation of Pomeranian cities began even before the incorporation of the Gdańsk Pomeranian region into Poland. In Bydgoszcz, at the beginning of 1920, Germans accounted for approx. 80% of the city’s population, a year later – approx. 25%, and in 1933 – only 8%. In 1919, Germans (383,000) accounted for approx. 39% of the population of the Pomera- nian Voivodeship. During the next two years, their number fell by nearly half. The outflow of the Ger- man population continued over the next years, and in the 1930s approx. 9–12% (approx. 112,000) of the inhabitants of the Pomeranian Voivodeship were German. Despite their small numbers, the German minority in Pomerania retained a strong econom- ic position. Statistically, one German had twice as much land as one Pole. For the Polish population, the year 1920 meant the rebirth of Polish statehood and the transformation of German Prussia into Pol- ish Pomerania; however, for the Germans, “the Ger- man East” had become “the Polish West”. 3 Cover of the German propaganda book Poland the Robber State of 1939 In cultural and national terms, the lost territories were still considered “German lands”. The German population had its privileged position and had be- come a minority, a foreign national group. Many Germans could not come to terms with that fact and thought of the situation as temporary. That at- titude was a derivative of the approach of the Ger- man state to the Second Polish Republic, according to which the Polish entity was a “seasonal state”. Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles, but it never accepted its provisions. In Gdańsk Pomerania in the 1920s, the Ger- man Association (Deutsche Vereinigung) was high- ly influential among the local Germans, and in the 1930s. – the Young German Party (Jungdeutsche Partei), which directly invoked Nazism. Its lead- ers from Pomerania and Greater Poland declared: “We, Germans in Poland, are all national socialists,” as early as in 1933. However, not all Pomeranian Germans supported National Socialism. Some of Greeting of German troops them remained loyal citizens of the Second Polish by Volksdeutsche. Grudziądz, Republic. September 1939 (AIPN) 4 However, they rarely expressed publicly their re- jection of the Nazi ideology for fear of being per- secuted and declared “traitors of the nation”. The government of the Second Polish Republic, in turn, pursued a policy of de-Germanisation and re-Polo- nisation of those lands throughout the interwar peri- od, seeking to weaken the German element. Particularly important was the German propa- ganda referring to the Pomeranian Voivodeship as the “Pomeranian corridor” separating the Weimar Republic, and then the Third Reich, from East Prus- sia. The German press and radio called the formation of the Polish state the greatest historical injustice. However, German propaganda depicting the Sec- ond Polish Republic as a “robber state” (Raubstaat) was quietened in the years 1934–1938. The Third Reich saw Poland as a potential “junior partner” in a joint attack on the Soviets. In 1938, when it turned out that this would be impossible, the idea of using the German minority in Poland to destroy the terri- torial integrity of the Polish state was explored again. Despite the international situation, most inhab- itants of Pomerania, both Polish and German, de- scribed the Polish-German relationships at the lo- cal level – especially in rural areas – before 1938 as proper. Poles and Germans tended to live not with each other, but alongside each other. At the same time, many Pomeranians perceived Germans as “their people”, feeling no stronger bonds towards people living in other regions of the Second Polish Republic, e.g. Galicia or Volhynia. Additionally, Ger- mans tried to convince the Kashubians that they were closer to Germanness than Polishness. After the annexation of Austria and the division of Czech- oslovakia, Gdańsk Pomeranians spoke increasing- ly of forthcoming annexation into the Third Reich. Everything that was Polish was being insulted and degraded. This provoked a response in the form of increasing Polish nationalism. In many towns and cities, the windows of German shops were smashed and Volksdeutsche were physically assaulted. 5 However, while the Polish nationalism was de- fensive in nature and aimed at preserving the terri- torial status quo (even by means of a defensive war, if necessary), the German nationalism, based on racism and anti-Polish and anti-Slavic stereotypes, called for an aggressive war. Only a relatively small part of the German minority in Poland was involved in diversionary actions against the Second Polish Republic. However, the expectation that Pomera- nia would be incorporated into the Third Reich was widespread among Pomeranian Germans. Even those who were against Nazism supported the an- nexation of the Western Borderlands. For Polish inhabitants of Pomerania, 1 Septem- ber 1939 was the onset of a historic disaster and a struggle for the preservation of their own state- hood. For the Germans, it was the day of liberation from Polish rule. Depolonisation (Entpolonisierung) The Third Reich did not want to repeat the “mis- takes” of Prussia’s 19th-century Germanisation policy. Bismarck’s policy had not led to the eradi- cation of the Polish nation. Hitler, deeming such ac- tions ineffective, added extermination to the list of methods for destroying Polish culture and language and for depriving Poles of their national identity. Al- ready during the war, a Polish Jew, Rafał Lemkin, coined the term genocide, derived from the Greek word genos – “race, people, tribe” and the Latin occidere - “to kill”. The term denationalisation was inadequate for describing the German occupation in Poland as it assumed that the Poles, as human beings, were to be kept alive, with the Germans’ na- tional living models imposed upon them. Before invading Poland, the German terror ap- paratus prepared lists of Polish surnames. These continued to be completed after the invasion, main- Albert Forster delivering an anti-Polish ly using information provided by the Volksdeutsche. speech. Gdańsk, August 1939 (NAC) 6 Adolf Hitler with Heinrich Himmler, 1940 (NAC) Whereas the future of central Poland was not certain in September and early October of 1939, the western territories of the Second Polish Re- public were considered indigenously German by the Germans and were doomed to annexation. The main objective of the German occupant was their “de-Polonisation” (Entpolonisierung). The principal method of de-Polonisation was genocide. Having entered Poland, the Wehrmacht committed crimes against Polish civilians. On 3 September, 26 locals were shot in Świekatowo (Świecie district). The next day, German soldiers executed 66 prisoners of war in Serock. On 8 September, 43 people were murdered in the village of Książki (Wąbrzeźno dis- trict). German soldiers were made to believe that every Pole, even women and children, is a poten- tial rebel. According to estimates, out of approx. 16,000 people shot dead in the whole of occupied Poland in September 1939, 11,000 were killed in Pomerania. 7 Gdynia inhabitants interned by the Germans, awaiting interrogation in the square at Świętojańska Street, September 1939 (AIPN) The central role in the extermina- by operational squads of the security tion of the Pomeranian population was police and the security service – Ein- played by Albert Forster, Gauleiter satzgruppen IV and V, whose task was (Head) of the Reichsgau Danzig-West to “pacify the territory occupied