Chapter 1: The Polish Underground Organization Wolność i Niezawisłość and Anti-Jewish Pogroms, 1945–1946 Introduction In the two years following the German occupation of Poland, before the consoli- dation of Communist rule in 1947, between 400 and 2,000 Jewish Holocaust sur- vivors (depending on the estimate) encountered a form of violence that has long been a subject of historical debate� Several different explanations for this phenom- enon have been put forward� Some have linked it to the absence of law and order in post-war Poland, others to the involvement of some Polish Jews in installing the Communist regime, while yet others have seen it as a response to Jewish ef- forts to re-acquire property that was appropriated during the war by Germans and Poles�1 In this text, drawing on arguments advanced by Roberta Senechal de la Roche with regard to a 1908 race riot, or pogrom, in Springfield, Illinois,2 I at- tempt to examine the anthropological dimension of such events in more detail� In explaining the origins and nature of collective violence, scholars over the past few decades have moved away from traditional social strain theory,3 which posits objective threats as the reason for attacks, towards a more dynamic view in which the perception of threats by different individuals in changing social and historical contexts gives rise to violence� The affective turn in the humanities has also provided an impulse to reinterpret the traditional Aristotelian definition of fear, considered as “a painful or troubled feeling caused by the impression of an imminent evil that causes destruction or pain”�4 Today, most scholars of collective violence espouse a different reading of the phrase ‘that causes’ in the definition 1 See, for instance, David Engel, ‘Patterns of anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944–1946’, Yad Vashem Studies, vol� 26 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem 1998), 43–85, http://www�yadvashem� org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203128�pdf (accessed on 1/12/2017)� 2 Roberta Senechal de la Roche, In Lincoln’s Shadow: The 1908 Race Riot in Springfield, Illinois (Carbonale: Southern Illinois University Press 1990)� 3 Robert K� Merton, ‘Social structure and anomie’, American Sociological Review, vol� 3, no� 5, 1938, 672–682� 4 Aristotle, Rhetoric� Aristotle in 23 Volumes, vol� 22, trans� by J� H� Freese (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1926), 2�5�1� For a discussion, see Anthony Bale, Feeling 17 Joanna Tokarska-Bakir - 9783631789469 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 11:57:59AM via free access above� They have concluded that fear as a stimulus does not trigger an automatic reaction since it is always filtered through a historically changing system of deep- rooted cognitive habits which interpret signals in accordance with a cultural sys- tem of expectations�5 Because of this, the focus of research on collective violence has shifted from threat to threat perception, since the same thing can be inter- preted as threatening and non-threatening in different situations or cultures�6 While democratic society in theory accepts the upward mobility of minority groups, in traditional hierarchical society, based on the subjection of “deviants”, it is treated as a breach of the social contract� As we will see, this is precisely the type of situation we are dealing with in post-war Poland, where, for the first time, Jews assumed pivotal public positions� The Wolność i Niepodległość Archive This article analyses the deep-rooted cognitive habits among informers and re- porters belonging to the organization Wolność i Niezawisłość (WiN, Freedom and),7 as seen in documents from the WiN archive, preserved at the Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie (State Archive in Kraków), Poland, under reference no� ANKr 1214� It is estimated that WiN had between 20,000 and 30,000 members, making it the largest pro-independence organization in Poland after the Second World War� WiN was founded on 2 September 1945, at the initiative of underground commanders who refused to accept the decisions of the Yalta Conference which made Poland part of the Soviet sphere of influence� The founders of WiN did not intend it as a political organization� Its leader, Lt� Jan Rzepecki, was referred to as “President,” and the organization’s board was to be elected by members� Never- theless, those at the grassroots thought of themselves as soldiers and, particularly in central Poland, played an active part in the ongoing civil war� An important Persecuted: Christians, Jews and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages (London: Reak- tion Books 2010), 12� 5 W�M� Reddy, Navigation of Feeling. A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cam- bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2001)� 6 Bale, Feeling Persecuted, 9–29� 7 I will cite documents from this collection in brackets in the text, usually without con- tinuous pagination and omitting the titles of individual documents� The first number following the acronym “WiN” in brackets refers to the file number, the second number refers to the item’s shelfmark in the archive, and the third represents the scan number/s provided by the author� Tokarska-Bakir’s text and all WiN documents, unless otherwise stated are translated by Bartłomiej Sokół and Patrick Fox� 18 Joanna Tokarska-Bakir - 9783631789469 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 11:57:59AM via free access part of WiN’s activities was a publishing and propaganda campaign, seen as a prelude to the expected free elections guaranteed at Yalta� Many of the sources analysed here were produced within its framework� WiN, well known to scholars of Poland’s post-war history, has so far been described only in political terms�8 In this text, I will offer an anthropological perspective based on documents in its archive relating the organization’s attitude to Jewish Poles�9 Another criterion governing the choice of texts to be analyzed is a focus on the pogroms perpetrated in post-war Poland� Following the Second World War, Poland, like Ukraine, Slovakia and Hungary, witnessed numerous anti-Jewish pogroms, the first on 14 and 15 June 1945 in Rzeszów; the second on 11 August 1945 in Kraków; and the third and bloodiest, with forty-two victims, on 4 July 1946 in Kielce�10 Using Peter Brass’s terminology, the pogrom spark almost everywhere in Poland in 1945–1946 proved to be accusations of ritual murder� What remains to be investigated is the nature of the tinder11 that caught the spark� Although WiN was established in the autumn of 1945, the archives, as well as the Kielce pogrom, document the earlier pogroms in Rzeszów and Kraków 8 Mieczysław Huchla, Romuald Lazarowicz, Józefa Huchlowa and Zdzisław Wierzbicki (eds�), Zrzeszenie “Wolność i Niezawisłość w dokumentach”, vol� 1–6 (Wrocław: Insty- tut Pamięci Narodowej 1997–2000); Zbigniew Zblewski, Okręg Krakowski Zrzeszenia “Wolność i Niezawisłość” 1945–1948: Geneza, struktury, działalność (Kraków: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej 2005)� 9 Katrin Steffen, Jüdische Polonität: Ethnizität und Nation im Spiegel der polnischsprachi- gen jüdischen Presse 1918–1939 (Götingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2004)� 10 Anna Cichopek, Pogrom Żydów w Krakowie 11 sierpnia 1945 r. (Warszawa: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny 2000); Jan Tomasz Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz. An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House 2006); Krzysztof Kaczmarski, Pogrom, którego nie było. Rzeszów 11–12 czerwca 1945 r.: Fakty, hipotezy, dokumenty (Rzeszów: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej 2008); Łukasz Kamiński and Jan Żaryn (eds�), Wokół pogromu kieleckiego, vol� 1 (Kielce: Instytut Pamięci Naro- dowej 2006); Jan Żaryn, Leszek Bukowski and Andrzej Jankowski (eds�), Wokół po- gromu kieleckiego, vol� 2 (Kielce: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej 2008); Bożena Szaynok, Pogrom Żydów w Kielcach 4 lipca 1946 (Wrocław: Bellona 1992); Joanna Tokarska- Bakir, Pogrom Cries. Essays on Polish-Jewish History, 1939–1946, 2nd ed�, trans� from Polish by Blanka Zahorjanova et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2019)� 11 Paul R� Brass, “Introduction: discourses of ethnicity, communalism, and violence”, Paul R� Brass (ed�), Riots and Pogroms (New York: New York University 1996), 1–55 (8); Werner Bergmann, “Pogroms”, in Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan (eds�), International Handbook of Violence Research (Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer Academics 2003), vol� 1, 351–367� 19 Joanna Tokarska-Bakir - 9783631789469 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 11:57:59AM via free access and the ripple effect12 that followed the one in Kraków, including incidents in Tarnów (WiN, 7, c� 205, 3717), Radom (WiN 5, c� 41, 3557) and Rabka (WiN, 7, c� 205,3717)� The goal here, however, is not to determine the course of any of these incidents� The intention is rather to learn about the social views of the perpetrators, whose statements and reports make up the WiN collection13� What were they afraid of? What outraged them? How did they view the conventions governing relations between the dominant ethnic group and the Jewish minor- ity after the Holocaust? What customs did they believe to be threatened and by whom? What was the hierarchy of these norms? Who was supposed to defend them and who was perceived as the deviant against whom self-defence (pogrom) was organized, according to Senechal de la Roche’s theory of collective violence14? Classification of Fears The most important threats linked by WiN informers in 1945–1946 to the be- haviour of the Jews can be arranged according to the following six factors: A. fear of Communism, which, as is apparent in the widespread use of the term “Żydokomuna” (Judaeo-Communism), is believed by the authors of WiN re- ports to be collectively represented by Jewish Poles; B. fear of Jewish upward mobility: after positions unattainable in pre-war Poland became accessible to Jewish Poles in “Lublin Poland”15, something the domi- nant group experienced with humiliation and saw as a violation of the social contract providing for the subordination of the subordinated; C.