VICTIMS’ POLITICS: JEWISH BEHAVIOR DURING THE HOLOCAUST by Evgeny Finkel A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Political Science) at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MADISON 2012 Date of final oral examination: 07/12/12 The dissertation is approved by the following members of the Final Oral Committee: Yoshiko M. Herrera, Associate Professor, Political Science Scott G. Gehlbach, Professor, Political Science Andrew Kydd, Associate Professor, Political Science Nadav G. Shelef, Assistant Professor, Political Science Scott Straus, Professor, International Studies © Copyright by Evgeny Finkel 2012 All Rights Reserved i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation could not have been written without the encouragement, support and help of many people to whom I am grateful and feel intellectually, personally, and emotionally indebted. Throughout the whole period of my graduate studies Yoshiko Herrera has been the advisor most comparativists can only dream of. Her endless enthusiasm for this project, razor- sharp comments, constant encouragement to think broadly, theoretically, and not to fear uncharted grounds were exactly what I needed. Nadav Shelef has been extremely generous with his time, support, advice, and encouragement since my first day in graduate school. I always knew that a couple of hours after I sent him a chapter, there would be a detailed, careful, thoughtful, constructive, and critical (when needed) reaction to it waiting in my inbox. This awareness has made the process of writing a dissertation much less frustrating then it could have been. In the future, if I am able to do for my students even a half of what Nadav has done for me, I will consider myself an excellent teacher and mentor. Scott Gehlbach has provided an endless supply of support and wisdom, especially on methodological issues and general strategies of dealing with the dissertation and the job market. Scott Straus has been a role model for me as a scholar of mass violence. Interactions with Scott and exposure to his work made me, a first year graduate student then interested in public administration and democratization, start thinking about violence, its causes and impacts. This dissertation could not have been conceived without his prior work on Rwanda and analytical approach to genocide and mass violence more generally. Finally, conversations with Andrew Kydd at the initial and final stages of the project were tremendously helpful in framing and improving the structure of the research, the mechanisms, and the hypotheses. Yoi, Nadav, Scott, Scott, and Andy—working with you on my dissertation has been a privilege. Thank you, thank you, thank you! ii I owe a special debt of gratitude to Yitzhak Brudny, my unofficial but most enthusiastic mentor since the time of my undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I cannot imagine myself having become a student of Eastern Europe or even going to the US to get my PhD without his constant advice and encouragement. The Order, Conflict, and Violence Program at Yale was an ideal place to spend the final year of my dissertation, and I thank Stathis Kalyvas for choosing me as one of the 2011-2 OCV fellows. His advice and “so what?” questions were also essential to refining the main arguments of the dissertation. The other members of the “OCV team”—Sarah Parkinson and Janet Lewis were ideal colleagues and friends. During my time at Yale Keith Darden, Jessica Trisco, Jason Lyall, Elisabeth Wood, Ana Arjona, Pieter van Houten, and Kati Schindler offered criticism, remarks, suggestions and ideas; equally important, they often simply helped me keep my sanity. Conversations with Tim Snyder always showed me what (and why) I could learn from historians, reminding me that there is a vast non-political science literature I should consult. My fellow PhD students in Madison were a constant source of support, help, and encouragement. Kyle Marquardt, Sanja Badanjak, Nick Barnes, Galina Belokurova, Melanie Getreuer, Marko Grdesic, Aliza Luft, Lauren McCarthy, Tricia Olsen, Jennifer Petersen, Emily Sellars, Steven Wilson, and others whom I have certainly forgotten to mention—thank you for your friendship, ideas, conversations, and numerous rounds of proofreading and language editing. Also in Madison, numerous thanks are due to Barry Burden, Kathryn Hendley, Deb McFarlane, and Jon Pevehouse. Many other colleagues in the US, Canada, Israel, and Europe generously provided ideas, comments, and suggestions. Dominique Arel, Charles King, Jeffrey Kopstein, Dan Miodownik, Jason Wittenberg, and Raz Segal helped to improve various parts of the project. Jeffrey Kopstein iii and Jason Wittenberg kindly shared part of their data on Jewish population in Poland. Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean provided me with access to the still-unpublished data from the USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, allowing me to construct the ghettos dataset. Chanan Cohen was instrumental in getting data from the Hebrew University Oral History Division Archive, and Leonid Rein helped with the Yad Vashem Archive data. Vadim Altskan was my archival angel in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, and Joanne Rudoff was of vital assistance when I worked in the Yale University Fortunoff Archive. This dissertation would not have been possible without the financial support of the Yale OCV fellowship; the UW-Madison Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies awards (Robert and Lynn Berman Scholarship, Charles and Gayle Mazursky Student Support Fund, and Robert and Beverly Natelson Family Award); the Political Science Department Summer Initiative; the Vilas Research Travel Grant, and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy Research Grant. Finally, I thank my family in the US and Israel. My parents, grandparents and sister were always there for me and helped whenever they could, including unpaid research assistance, even when they did not fully understand what I am working on and what this dissertation is about. And Julie—I still have no idea how she could handle someone who spends most his time writing, reading, and thinking about genocide. Words cannot express the depth of my gratitude, so I will simply say “thank you!” For everything. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES v LIST OF FIGURES vi ABSTRACT vii TRANSLITERATION ix 1 Introduction 1 2 Literature and Theory 21 3 Party Politics in Hell: Explaining Ghetto Uprisings during the Holocaust 54 4 Behind the Barbed Wire: Soviet, Germans, and Poles in the Minsk Ghetto 101 5 Three Lines in History Books: The Jews of Kraków under Nazi Rule 165 6 Under the Spell: The Jews of Białystok during the Soviet and the Nazi Rule 234 7 Conclusions 310 BIBLIOGRAPHY 322 APPENDICES Appendix A: Additional Model Specifications 350 Appendix B: List of Archives and Archival Collections 354 Appendix C: Typical Page from the 1928 Polish Elections Book 355 Appendix D: Typical Zionist Organization Congress Bulletin 356 v LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1.1: Main differences between Minsk, Kraków, and Białystok 12 3.1: Summary Statistics of Key Variables 74 3.2: Logit Analysis of Ghetto Uprisings: Ghetto and Demographic Explanations 79 3.3: Logit Analysis of Ghetto Uprisings: All Variables—Percentage Change in Odds 82 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 3.1: Distribution of Ghettos by State (1939 borders) 69 3.2: Duration of Ghettos Existence (in Months) 70 3.3: Duration of Ghettos Existence by State (1939 Borders) 71 3.4: Distribution of Ghettos by the Year of Establishment 72 3.5: Polish Ghettos by Year of Establishment 72 3.6: Distribution of Open and Closed Ghettos by State 73 3.7: Distribution of Ghetto Uprisings by State 75 3.8: Uprisings in Ghettos, Located in pre-WWII Poland 76 vii ABSTRACT The dissertation addresses the variation in the behavior of victims of genocides and mass killings: why do some resist, some try to escape, some cooperate with the perpetrators, and some simply do nothing? What explains different modes of victims’ individual and group behavior? The study answers these questions by focusing on Jewish behavior during the Holocaust. I argue that the behavior of the Holocaust victims was determined by pre-genocide political and social factors, first and foremost activism in political parties and organizations and the level of integration into the broader non-Jewish society. The first part of the dissertation explains the variation in patterns of collective Jewish resistance to the Nazis. Drawing on a unique dataset of more than 1,100 Jewish ghettos established by the Nazis and linking the data on ghettos with pre-war electoral returns from Polish national elections and elections for the Zionist Organization World Congress, I find that Jewish armed resistance was more likely to emerge in communities that exhibited high levels of political activism prior to the Holocaust. I also find that the vast majority of ghetto uprisings took place in Eastern Poland—a territory that was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939-41 and then by Germany in 1941-4. The second part of the dissertation examines how and why Holocaust victims chose their individual strategies of survival. I propose a new typology of victims’ behaviors, arguing that the choice of a particular survival strategy was linked to victims’ pre-Holocaust political and social experiences. I examine how Jews targeted by the Nazis chose their survival strategies. Focusing on the ghettos of Minsk (USSR until 1941, Nazi occupation 1941-4), Kraków (Poland until 1939, Nazi occupation 1939-45), and Białystok (Poland until 1939, Soviet occupation 1939-41, viii Nazi occupation 1941-4) I also show how distinctively local histories, legacies, and factors affected the patterns of collaboration, coping, evasion, and resistance in each city. ix TRANSLITERATION For Polish names and places in Poland I use the original Polish spelling. The only exception is places that have a standard internationally recognized spelling form. Thus, I use Warsaw instead of the original Polish Warszawa.