It is now evident that a history of Polish politics, economics and culture worked against the Jewish population. Understanding how the Poles could support Nazi racial policy comes from understanding the past, but turning personal beliefs into random acts of violence requires explanation. Upon first glance it is hard to distinguish whether the actions of the Polish people were of co-operation or collaboration. The two concepts are very distinct argue many historians and for the country of Poland during their occupation, the term collaboration is best suited. In studying Polish collaboration it is important to examine the things that do not make someone a collaborator, as people have a tendency to associate any co-operative behaviour with the Nazi’s as “collaborative.” Citizens throughout Europe benefited from the German genocide of the Jewish population, many Polish business owners for example saw increased profit as Jews were deported to the ghettos. This indirect advantage for Polish businessmen does not indicate their support for genocide or even efforts to aid the destruction of Jewish property, it merely shows the lack of resistance many poles exhibited during occupation. Blackmail was another feature many people confused with collaboration, as German officials used personal information of Polish citizens for their compliance in identifying Jewish authority. Although the information brought forward Polish citizens resulted in the murder of innocent Jewish people, the intention to destroy was not initially present. According to Janet T. Gross a prominent historian specializing in the Holocaust, a true collaborator is someone who is prepared to grant the occupier authority rather there simply providing support or information. Once identifying who qualifies as a collaborator the next step is to examine the form of government that existed in the occupied country prior to defeat. It is easiest and most rewarding for the occupier to find collaborators within the political establishment of a country, preferably one considered legitimate by the people. As previously stated the National Democratic Party of Poland prior to occupation received overwhelming public support, and even shared the same racial ideology as the Nazi’s against the Jewish population. In March 1939, the Germans entered Poland with the intention of creating a “token Polish state” which meant one with strong nationalist tendencies. The first step was to work with Polish officials in government to help identify those citizens who played a prominent role prior to occupation. The peasant leader Wincenty Wilos was one target of the Nazi occupiers, as he exuded a great deal of influence over minorities throughout Poland. Wilos was tried and executed by members of the SS, and was labeled a traitor to Poland, which in one act rid the occupiers and the National Democrats of a potential threat to nationalism. This incident proved that in the earliest days of occupation Germans sought out political collaborators, and once key disturbances were eliminated by the Nazi’s they cut off ties to their Polish informants. It is apparent as to why Germans sought after collaborators within the Polish government, but the real question is why Polish officials turned on members of their own community. It is profitable for any occupier to obtain some form of political legitimacy, but conversely the defeated government might want to minimize the consequences of defeat as the ultimate authority and from collaboration could function under conditions of limited sovereignty without losing the allegiance of its people. The Polish government was faced with a no win situation, a lack of collaboration would result in their removal or even destruction, yet collaborating with an occupying force would mean turning their back on the people they were elected to protect.
In their final attempt to maintain legitimacy the Polish government abandoned its citizens through collaboration with the Nazi party. Their efforts inevitably failed and once they gained the necessary information on significant Polish citizens the Nazi’s send the National Democratic government into exile. What occurred during the first few years of occupation under German and Soviet rule was perhaps one of the darkest times in Polish history. If immorality breeds bad behaviour then the actions taken by Polish citizens in collaboration with Jewish genocide only occurred after years of violence at the hands of German and Soviet soldiers. After losing their legitimate government and effective military to enemy forces the people of Poland became the subjects of intense discrimination and hated to the occupiers. Poland was the only country that was attacked at the same time by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Following this attack Poland was again partitioned in 1939 with fifty percent of the territory going to the Soviets and the remainder was to be divided among Germany and Lithuania. Historians often divide the German occupational system in Europe into seven categories. The most liberal occupational system was introduced in Denmark, where the German invasion of 1940 barely interrupted normal life. Denmark was controlled by a civilian administration of the German Foreign Office; the Danish king spent the entire war in his palace; and democratic elections were held in 1943. Life in occupied France was also comparatively not bad. In Holland and in Belgium, government administration was carried on by pre-war senior civil servants. Poland was on the opposite side of the spectrum of occupational systems: there was no other country in Europe where the Germans were so cruel and consistently hostile towards the local population. The Poles were ranked by the Nazi party and Soviet officials as the second lowest racial class in existence and experiences acts of deportation torture and even murder by the occupiers. Poland’s citizens were killed not only by the Nazi’s but in the Soviet occupied areas as well, and by 1940 over four million people of the Polish population were eliminated. Moreover, the population of Poland was divided on both sides of the occupation line and emphasis was placed on developing a rigid class structure. On the bottom of the Soviet/German constructed social ladder there were so called “enemies of the people” the equivalent of sub-humans for the most part these were Polish Jews. Both the Soviets and the Germans employed large scale propaganda campaigns in hopes of widening the gap between group conflict in society, aiming for the most part at Polish Jews and Polish Ukrainians. Some stereotypes and lies, invented by the Germans and the Soviets to aggravate inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts in Poland, are still believed today. During World War Two the Polish nation was decapitated, the promising intellectuals, the branches of government, and ethnic minorities were all targeted and destroyed by the enemy. This constant environment of dehumanization and chaos inevitably resulted in mass killings not only by Nazi officials but by ordinary Polish citizens. On both sides of the occupier’s line, the most savage and devastating attacks organized by the invaders was against the elite of Polish society. Both the Germans and the Soviets were determined to kill "the best and the brightest" and, to a large extent, they succeeded in doing this. The Germans destroyed many historical buildings, scientific and art collections, and libraries. Most museums, public and private art collections, archives, and scientific laboratories were pillaged. Many outstanding German professors and scholars were involved in the robbery of the cultural heritage of Poland. The German administration not only tried to deprive the Poles of politics, education and culture, they did their best to lower the intellectual and moral level of Polish society, to corrupt and demoralize it, and to promote hatred and collaboration.
A shocking example of a town in utter distress and the subject of Nazi propaganda was Jedwabne, located within the Soviet occupied portion of Poland. This situation illustrates perfectly how a people’s distinct history of anti-Semitism blended with a current state of total immorality can result in ordinary citizens committing horrendous acts of genocide. Since the novel Neighbors was published in 2001 by historian Jan Gross, a considerable amount of research has been put into the Jewish massacre of Jedwabne. Although it is by no means the only pogrom that occurred in Poland during the Second World War, it is the largest in terms of deaths and has the highest number of first hand accounts from the towns residents. The greatest contributor in terms of witness information is a Jedwabne resident named Szmul Wasersztain, a Polish Jew. These accounts found in Neighbors came about after the Lomza trials in May 1949 where local Poles were tried and convicted for the murders of over one thousand Jews. What is perhaps the most important aspect to remember when studying the Jedwabne massacre and other pogroms is that the Jewish accounts in their recollection have no reason or motive to attribute Poles to the crimes when really they were committed by Germans. Often with first hand reports in any situation some bias is to be expected, but in the case of Polish pogroms the data is too vast and detailed to have indicated anyone other than Polish citizens as the key perpetrators. Initially most reports came from the Polish perpetrators, which surprisingly did not contradict the information provided by the Jewish victims. Many times the Poles guilty of murder believed that their actions were not a crime, they were merely cleansing the state of its “local enemies.”
Since it’s founding in 1736 the town of Jedwabne Poland has had a substantially high Jewish population, which at times compromised almost sixty percent of the local residents. On the eve of the First World War the population of Jedwabne reached its all time peak at just over three thousand residents. Shortly after 1916 the population steadily decreased to fewer than seven hundred as a result of wartime devastation and deliberate Russian policy of resettlement of Jews. The earliest signs of blatant anti-Semitism came from the post war success of many Jewish craftsmen. They played a prominent role in the towns industry and as a result held a virtual monopoly over the areas economy. Any form of open confrontation during the interwar years, however, was avoided and the few situations that could have escalated were promptly diffused. Looking past the lack of violence during Jedwabne’s early years one must recognize the growing tension among citizens as nationalist sentiment slowly created divisions in the town. The Jews of Jedwabne were mindful of the latent hostility that occurred among the surrounding population this was to be expected as the area strongly supported the National Democratic Party. Specifically during the 1930’s Polish minorities were forced to live under a government that not only expressed its desire for nationalism but slowly aligned itself with Nazi racial policy. Yet even in this potentially disastrous situation no acts of violence against the Polish Jews occurred. The outbreak of the Russian-German war in June of 1941 along with the first massacre of Jews on July 10th, escalated the situation quickly in terms of violence. In the rural areas of Poland communities heavily relied on rumour for their source of communication so when neighbouring towns experienced pogroms the news spread like wild fire. It took less than two weeks for word to reach Jedwabne about adjacent towns slaughtering their Jewish population., but like many aspects of the war the Jews in town thought this “unthinkable.” In Jedwabne the first destructive acts started with the seizing of Jewish property defacing religious symbols, and expropriating the Jews goods. While this was going on little questioning arose from local Jews as for years they had been the focus of discrimination with the town, but never was the idea of murder thought possible. It was typical that when a wave of pogroms swept over an area that in addition to the locality there were outside perpetrators to provide towns with the spark they needed to start a fire of violent behaviour. The crowd mentality that existed during these pogroms was infested by outside member’s participation as it added an element of encouragement. On the day of the massacre the Jews of Jedwabne were ordered to assemble at the town square for alleged “cleaning duty”, which as previously stated they complied with due to a history of public humiliation. Early on the Jews sensed they were in danger, but they could do very little if they ran they would be caught, and if they hid they would be found. The entire Jewish population of Jedwabne watched as their neighbours, friends and colleagues came down upon them using clubs and stones as weapons. The town council exercised some supervision over the proceedings but for the most part they were uncontrollable, simultaneous acts in which people were free to improvise. Participation by local German officials was minimal although they seemed most useful by taking pictures of the event, which would later be used as evidence during the Lomza trials. Along with the individual acts of violence many organized forms of persecution existed, for example the engulfment of Jews into mass groups and subject to group murder. As the day wore on the perpetrators realized they could not kill the sixteen hundred Jews in one attempt using primitive tools. The final solution used by Jedwabne Poles, much like that of the Nazi party, was to burn the Jews together in the center of town. In the end few Jews escaped or were let free to tell their tale, and in that one day almost one thousand men, women and children were killed. The pogrom of Jedwabne has been studied and analyzed by historians for years as a window into Polish collaboration with Jewish genocide. A variety of theories have been offered as to what drove ordinary Polish citizens to commit brutal acts of violence against their own neighbour. Some historians allude to a “psychosis” that came over the Poles during the pogroms much like the Nazi’s, a sort of de-humanizing mechanism to excuse the murder of thousands of innocent civilians. Perhaps economic motives may have existed since active pogrom participants had first pick in the division of leftover Jewish property. Regardless of which motive appealed to the people of Jedwabne, it is most valuable to conclude that there is no monocausal explanation for their collaboration. This faint line of victim and perpetrator existed all across Europe during World War Two, as in the case of Poland. The Poles themselves were targets of the Nazi Party, yet throughout the country pogroms were committed exemplifying identical behaviour to that of Nazi racial policy. Jedwabne’s tragic ending now serves as a moral tale, how hate and prejudice encouraged as the norm will systematically result in collaboration and end in violence.
Before World War Two three million, three hundred thousand Jewish people lived in Poland, ten percent of the general population of thirty-three million, by the 1920's and '30's the majority of Polish Jews were living in varying degrees of poverty, the result of the overall poor economy of the newly independent Polish state. Hitler's army invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, the start of the Second World War, which initiated a series of drastic and brutal attacks on the population. In the first months of the war, tens of thousands of Polish intellectuals, including many teachers and religious leaders, were killed, along with many minorities and innocent Polish civilians throughout the country. In a country that was in the process of destruction and with a total lack of social stability one would never expect the act of collaboration to have occurred in aiding the occupying forces with Jewish genocide. Yet amidst this tense environment that lasted the better part of 6 years, violent pogroms erupted all over the Polish countryside resulting in the death of close to a million Jews. No precise explanation has ever been found regarding the collaboration undertaken by the Poles, only some theories as to how ordinary citizens could violently attack and kill members of their own community. A long and intense history of Polish anti-Semitism did not lead directly to the murders, but was an important factor in determining how the Poles selected their targets. The Poles also have a tradition of publicly humiliating Jews, and even de-humanizing their existence this would make eliminating them much easier than if there was a history of acceptance and tolerance. Many historians also recognize the value of clearly identifying who compromises a “collaborator” and what actions they undertake to obtain that label. If this is not taken into consideration it would be difficult to determine the extent to which we define Polish actions as collaborative. Lastly, it is of utter importance to study and analyze first hand accounts of Polish violence, as in the rural town of Jedwabne. Historical documents including witness testimony, photographs and physical evidence indicate the horrific violence experienced in many towns across Poland, which subsequently eliminated over one million local Jews. For several decades following World War Two, the subject of the treatment of the Poles towards the Jews during the Holocaust was cloaked in a conspiracy of silence. The current research that exists due to historians like Jan Gross have opened up a new realm of understanding into the atrocious environment that existed throughout Europe during World War Two. Any labels we initially seek to apply such as “good” versus “bad” must now be reconsidered, because much like events in Poland we do not always have a definitive answer.
Vinecour, Earl. “Polish Jews: The Final Chapter” New York: New York University
Press, 1977. p. 1.
Gross, Janet, T. “Polish Society Under German Occupation” New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1979. p. 5.
4 Ibid. 12.
Vinecour, Earl. “Polish Jews: The Final Chapter” New York: New York University Press, 1977. p. 26.
Wrobel, Piotr. “The Devil’s Playground: Poland in WW2” The Canadian Foundation for Polish Studies of the Polish Institute of Arts & Science. Toronto: Price Patterson Ltd, 2001.
Gross, Janet, T. “Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne
Poland” New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001. p. 5.
Hempel, Andrew. “Poland in World War II: An Illustrative History” New York: Hippocrene Books, 2000. p. 56.