Jews in pre-war Poland

[4thskorpion]

So I am unclear which words I used "that radically changed their meaning after the WW2"?

At that time words like fascism, Nazism, Nazi saluting had no sinister meaning.

With respect this is simply contrary to the evidence.

The suggestion is that there was no sinister meaning at the time for Polish Jews behind the "Roman" or "Nazi" style salute of the lead marcher together with the background banner displayed at this SN march/demonstration which reads: "Narod Polski walczy z Żydami" or "The Polish nation fights the Jews!"

salut Polska.jpg (147.31 KiB) Viewed 838 times

No sinister meaning in "Nazism" at the time despite this cinderella stamp produced and circulated by Polish Jews in 1938 which is unambiguous in its message that Nazism was a sinister (and deadly) threat against the Jews - graphically portrayed by the four hands holding knives dripping with blood, the Nazi Swastika behind the bearded head of a Jew whose eyes are closed in death.

BOJKOTUJEMY_TOWARY_HITLEROWSKICH_NIEMIEC.jpg (151.47 KiB) Viewed 838 times

[wm]

The stamp is most likely post-Kristallnacht. That boycott was practically nonexistent earlier.

As to sinister meaning they believed the Jews were a bad influence, so they wrote they wanted to fight the Jews. Nothing unusual with that. Political parties generally wanted to fight someone.

It's interesting that it was fights the Jews, but the Comintern was to be crushed. It seems the Jews didn't need crushing.
In fact it was like that because anything more aggressive than fight was forbidden, it would result in arrests and confiscation of those banners.
The domonstration according to Głos Poranny:

pochod Stronnictwa Narodowego.jpg (34.89 KiB) Viewed 827 times

And really a 3400 strong demonstration (according to the local press, it wasn't 8000) during a public holiday in a half-a-million city was failure anyway. Especially that many of those people had to be "imported" from neighboring towns.

You are right some of those Poles on trial for the murder of the Jews claimed that they were "only following orders" to kill the Jewish men, women and children however other testimonies and subsequent convictions show that this was not a credible defence. As far as I am aware not one of the defendants said "If I had not followed the order to kill the Jews I would have been shot or punished so I had to murder them".

Summary execution for refusal to carry out orders during a military operation was something rather obvious. It was like that in any army at that time.

[4thskorpion]

The stamp is most likely post-Kristallnacht. That boycott was practically nonexistent earlier.

As to sinister meaning they believed the Jews were a bad influence, so they wrote they wanted to fight the Jews. Nothing unusual with that. Political parties generally wanted to fight someone.

I thought the point your were originally trying to get across was that "Nazi" or "Roman" style fascist salutes did not have any sinister meaning at the time (1930's) as it does today? But the fact the SN marchers proclaimed they wanted "Poland to fight the Jews" whilst giving the "Nazi" or "Roman" style fascist salute means this style of salute can certainly be characterised as having sinister meaning from a Polish-Jewish perspective at the time which I think you were arguing against?

The domonstration according to Głos Poranny:

pochod Stronnictwa Narodowego.jpg

And really a 3400 strong demonstration (according to the local press, it wasn't 8000) during a public holiday in a half-a-million city was failure anyway. Especially that many of those people had to be "imported" from neighboring towns.

The Głos Poranny snippet also cites one of the rally cries of the SN marchers:- "Precz z zydami!"- or "Down with the Jews!"

You are right some of those Poles on trial for the murder of the Jews claimed that they were "only following orders" to kill the Jewish men, women and children however other testimonies and subsequent convictions show that this was not a credible defence. As far as I am aware not one of the defendants said "If I had not followed the order to kill the Jews I would have been shot or punished so I had to murder them".

Summary execution for refusal to carry out orders during a military operation was something rather obvious. It was like that in any army at that time.

I would suggest the extracts below are closer to the truth of the matter rather than "following orders":-

“Barwy Białe” on their Way to Aid Fighting Warsaw. The Crimes of the Home Army against the Jews

"Several years later, the Court of Appeal in Kielce tried and sentenced a number of people for the crime in Siekierno: Władysław Kolasa, Edward Sternik, Jan Śledź, Jan Górski, Stanisław Stec, and Jan Kawecki .... The judgment reads:

According to their statements, the line of conduct of their commanders and their own criminal activities remained at odds with their feelings and ideas of humanitarianism, which they have not yet lost completely, but only as regards their own countrymen, while they had no inhibitions about murdering the Jews, whom they did not consider to be their kin.
[…].41"

[41] AIPN, GK, 217/45, p. 219.

It seems not all were ordered against their will:

" I learned about this only when “Grzegorz” summoned the officers and asked them, who would accept the task of eliminating the Jews staying in the forest. Then “Bojlrok” volunteered, and he chose men himself. Then “Bojlrok” with those men went to the clearing where the Jews were camped, led them 500 meters into the forest, and them told them to line up at the edge of the forest."

It seems those who chose not to look or participate were excused from the killing :-

"There were maybe 50 Jews, including four women. Cadet “Olsza” asked to be allowed to leave, for which he obtained consent. Besides, “Grzegorz” said himself that if someone couldn’t bear to look at it, he might go, and he also walked away with Stec. The designated soldiers fire at the Jews standing in line. These four arrested Jews who had been leading us were also told to join the group of Jews. Then the Jews were stripped of clothing and footwear; the bodies were laid in a pile and left there."

Those that did not want to volunteer to murder the Jews were not themselves summarily executed for refusing to carry out orders during a military operation they simply walked away from the murder scene.

But this is moving still further away from the topic of "Jews in pre-war Poland".

[wm]

I thought the point your were originally trying to get across was that "Nazi" or "Roman" style fascist salutes did not have any sinister meaning at the time (1930's) as it does today? But the fact the SN marchers proclaimed they wanted "Poland to fight the Jews" whilst giving the "Nazi" or "Roman" style fascist salute means this style of salute can certainly be characterised as having sinister meaning from a Polish-Jewish perspective at the time which I think you were arguing against?

Well, those people were doing nothing illegal, they got a permission for their demonstration, the banners were approved. At that time people loved saluting, marching, shirts of various colors and other paraphernalia - almost all parties were doing that. If someone saw that as threatening he shouldn't have been there. It was his own problem.

It should be add three days earlier, before and during a socialist demonstration (12000 people), and a separate Bund demonstration (4000), the police carried out preventive searches and mass arrests among the Endeks. It really can't be said the police wasn't doing it's job. Their operations were surprisingly professional even by today's standards. Especially that simultaneously they had to deal with hundreds of aggressive communists.

In some other city socialists attacked Endeks with stones and all that ended up in a gunfight. so it was't just the Endeks. Some people simply loved street fights.

The Głos Poranny snippet also cites one of the rally cries of the SN marchers:- "Precz z zydami!"- or "Down with the Jews!"

They also say there it was unlawful/unauthorized. All banners, all rally cries were subjected to preventive censorship.

[wm]

I would suggest the extracts below are closer to the truth of the matter rather than "following orders"

It should be mentioned they were told the Jews were taking part in a gestapo anti-partisan operation, so it wasn't just killing Jews for fun:

in 1944, my direct superior, “Zawisza,” summoned me and said that the Home Army troops had been concentrated in the Siekierno forest, that the Germans had been investigating that grouping, and therefore they had sent a unit of Jews to the forest, with the task to help the Germans to investigate the troops. He said that he had one member of the group who would take us to the forest and show us where they were, and that the group should be eliminated.

And those people were given an order:

I asked “Zawisza” to release me from that order but since “Zawisza” refused I had to obey his command.

I asked him to relieve me of that obligation, as I could not undertake it,explaining at the same time that I had come to the forest to fight in open combat against the Germans, not helpless people. “Zawisza” would not relieve me, however, and he ordered me to carry out his orders without objections.

I did not know exactly what we would be doing. […] We realized that they were Jews. I turned to “Grzegorz” asking if it was perhaps possible not to carry out that order, and “Grzegorz” told me that “Zawisza” gave a strict order.

Then “Bojlrok” volunteered, and he chose men himself.

That one of the sub-commanders was trying to make it easier for his people can't change that.

According to their statements, the line of conduct of their commanders and their own criminal activities remained at odds with their feelings and ideas of humanitarianism, which they have not yet lost completely, but only as regards their own countrymen, while they had no inhibitions about murdering the Jews, whom they did not consider to be their kin.

Looks like moralizing, if he believed that he should have hanged them all. For racially motivated murder the death penalty was mandatory.

[4thskorpion]

It would seem that the murderers were all trying to blame one another or say they were only "following orders" in a vain attempt to absolve themselves of any culpability or responsibility for their crimes. But the fact remains that several of those reported asked not to take part- and did not take part - with no adverse consequences to themselves. Based on that fact, I presume others could have asked not to take part in the murders but chose not to.

Wasn't it reported in Christopher Browning's book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" some German policemen also chose not to volunteer to follow orders to murder Jews without suffering punishment for doing so?

[wm]

Those people were policemen, not soldiers. Even for soldiers the rules were different depending if they were inside or outside the battle zone.

And it's customary to ask for volunteers first, and then give orders if there are no volunteers available, it's one of those relive-tension, cohesion-building tricks they teach in military schools.

Claiming I didn't do it, I followed orders, I protested are valid defenses. They had the right to verbally protest, but the order had to be carried out. Later they had every right to report their doubts to higher authorities.
As it happened they decided among themselves who was going to do it so in fact nobody disobeyed the order there. It would be much different if their commander was reported that some soldiers refused an order.
Even today the Article 90 of the UCMJ says:

Any person [...]willfully disobeys a lawful command of his superior commissioned officer; shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, and if the offense is committed at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct.”

An order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate. This inference does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.

They were given an order, and the reason - those people are working for the gestapo. So it wasn't a murder, spies could be summarily executed, the laws of war explicitly allowed that.

In those days lots of innocent people were killed for the flimsiest, but usually paranoid reasons, similarly during the September Campaign (for sending signals to enemy bombers with a mirror for example), or during the Warsaw Uprising.

And it should be add it wasn't proved that their commander pathologically hated the Jews. It's just a conjecture of the author of that paper.
If I'm not mistaken nobody said that during the trial, if fact some testified that a few of their colleagues were Jews, or were suspected of being Jews and nothing happened to them.

At any point of time a lawful Polish authority gave orders to kill the Jews becasue they were Jews. In fact according to the 1940 order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces Władysław Sikorski the slightest acts of anti-antisemitism were to be severely punished.

[4thskorpion]

In fact according to the 1940 order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces Władysław Sikorski the slightest acts of anti-antisemitism were to be severely punished.

Despite Sikorski's and Polish government-in-exile declarations of Jewish equality we find a newspaper report regarding the antisemitism against Jewish soldiers in the Polish Army based in Scotland:

The Times | April 12, 1944
SOLDIERS' PROTEST IN LONDON
The Press Association states:- It can now be disclosed that 100 Jewish soldiers left their Polish army unit in Scotland in January and set out for London to protest against anti-Jewish views in the Polish army. Twenty-two of them were arrested by Polish military police at a Scottish town, but the others reached London, where they denied that they were deserters or that they, were trying to escape military service. They saw representatives of the Polish Government and asked to be transferred to British army battle units. A spokesman for the men stated that the Polish Government had conceded most of their claims.

There is no followup report that anyone was "severely punished" for the acts of antisemitism in the Polish army that prompted the Jewish soldiers' protest mentioned in the news report.



From Simon Segal's 1942 book "The New Order in Poland" it would seem that Polish nationalist elements in London would not toe the line with Sikorski's Polish government in exile, we read or pages 174-175:

...more affirmation of the Polish solution to the "Jewish question" through mass emigration out of Poland - the interbellum Polish government mindset persisted!

[michael mills]

Jewish emigration during that period was negligible (usually much less than 1 per hundred), in fact more Jews arrived than left.

That is quite incorrect.

In the inter-war period there was a very large Jewish emigration from Poland, at least some hundreds of thousands.

A major destination of Jewish emigrants from Poland was France. Before the First World War, the Jewish population of France was under 100,000; by 1939 it had grown to over 300,000, mainly due to the immigration of Jews from Poland, most of whom remained aliens.

And there was certainly no immigration of Jews into Poland, apart from the return of refugees who had fled from the Austrian Province of Galicia when it was invaded by the Russian Army in 1914.

Large numbers of those refugees were living in camps in Hungary and Austria at the end of the war, and the government of the new Poland refused to let them return, despite the fact that they were native to territories that now belonged to Poland. It was not until 1923 that those Jewish refugees were allowed to return, after Britain and France had made it condition of their recognition of Poland's de jure possession of the former Austrian territory of East Galicia that Polish citizenship be granted to all Jews native to that territory. the number of those Jews was very large, since at that time some 500,000 Jews were granted Polish citizenship, including both refugees and Jews who had never left Galicia, but had been denied Polish citizenship.

It was as a result of the above process that the family of Herszel Grynszpan, which had been resident in Germany since before the First World War, gained the Polish citizenship that was revoked in 1938, leading to the deportation of the Grynszpan family from Germany, Herszel's murder of Ernst Vom Rath, and the "Reichskristallnacht" which followed.

In the early stages of the First World War, the Russian Imperial Government had deported large numbers of Jews as well as other non-Russians from its western provinces deep into the Russian interior. After the end of the Polish-Soviet War in 1921, deported Jews native to areas that were now incorporated in Poland were allowed to return to their homes, along with other deportees. It was that return that gave rise to the legend of a mass-migration of Jews from Soviet Russia into Poland.

[michael mills]

...more affirmation of the Polish solution to the "Jewish question" through mass emigration out of Poland - the interbellum Polish government mindset persisted!

You are forgetting that mass emigration of Jews from Poland was also the mindset of the Zionist Organisation.

In the 1930s, the Zionist Organisation collaborated with both Poland and Germany to promote Jewish emigration from those countries to Palestine, including illegal immigration into Palestine that was organised and funded by the German Gestapo.

[michael mills]

Additionally many of the Polish Jews were in fact Russian Jews, they migrated to Poland because it was a better place to live.

There was such an immigration, but it occurred before the First World War, when Congress Poland was part of the Russian Empire.

In that period, eg the last three decades before 1914, large numbers of Jews from the western provinces of Russia moved to Congress Poland to work in the textile industries that were developing there, particularly in Lodz and Bialystok.

Since those Jews came from territory that had been part of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, they were called "Litvaks" by the native Jews of Congress Poland.

As a result of that immigration, the Jewish population of Congress Poland increased enormously, until Jews comprised about 12-14% of the total population(which incidentally was a major factor in the development of strong anti-Jewish feelings among Poles).

[michael mills]

I have read with great interest the ongoing debate between wm and 4thskorpion about the issue of inter-ethnic conflict between Jews and Poles in inter-war Poland.

Generally I agree with 4thskorpion that there was strong anti-Jewish feeling among wide sectors of the Polish population, particularly among supporters of Endecja.

However, I think that 4thskorpion is failing to address the reasons why that anti-Jewish feeling existed.

By contrast, wm downplays the extent of anti-Jewish feeling among Poles, but nevertheless occasionally alludes to the reasons why it did exist.

[michael mills]

In 1939 the first convoy of twelve hundred fighters left Warsaw for Palestine to raise hell there. They were stopped at the border with Romania by British meddling, only 200 of them were able to eventually reach their destination.
The rest, and they leader returned to Warsaw. Their leader eventually ended-up in General Anders' Army. He was hell bent on fighting the Nazis, but others convinced him he would be more useful in Palestine - he was honorable released from the Anders Army with help of Polish officers sympathetic to the Zionist cause. He's name was Menachem Begin.

I believe Begin actually deserted, along with the great majority of the Jews in the Anders Army, once it reached Palestine.

His motive for joining the Anders Army was to get to Palestine, so he could join the clandestine Jewish armed force there. No doubt most of the Jews who joined the Anders Army had the same motivation, since most of them did desert in Palestine. I think it unlikely that they had any desire to fight for Poland.

It is possible that the desertion of Begin and other Jews was connived at by Anders and his officers, but if so it was primarily for the purpose of ridding themselves of a number of Jews whom they did not want in the army, and whom they had only accepted as a result of pressure from the Soviet authorities.

[GregSingh]

In the inter-war period there was a very large Jewish emigration from Poland, at least some hundreds of thousands.
A major destination of Jewish emigrants from Poland was France.

According to official statistical data from 1926 to 1938 up to 200 thousand Jews left Poland (13% of the all who left). That's very close to percentage of Jews in the total population, so there is nothing unusual here.
Main destination for Jews was Palestine followed by Argentina and US.
France was a major destination for Roman Catholics, not Jews.

[4thskorpion]

I believe Begin actually deserted, along with the great majority of the Jews in the Anders Army, once it reached Palestine.

General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, the second in command of the Army issued Begin with a "leave of absence without an expiration" which gave Begin official permission to stay in Palestine. In December 1942 he left Ander's Army and joined the Irgun.

Sources differ on how Begin left Anders' Army. Many indicate that he was discharged:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Begin