Polish-Jewish Relations during the Second World War

[walterkaschner]

David, in fairness, I believe that Michael Mills did indicate that the source on which he based his own interpretation (with which I disagree) was a footnote to "the essay :Lucien Wolf and the Making of Poland: Paris 1919”, by Eugene C Black, in the book “From Shtetl to Socialism : Studies from Polin” , edited by Antony Polonsky ( London ; Washington : Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1993)." He indicated that the footnote was note 33 on pp. 292-293, and quoted it in haec verba:

Sir Stuart Samuel had learned wisdom. At the Consistoire conference [at the headquarters of French Jewry], he had not opposed the Jewish Nationalists, but by this point he had shifted ‘to deprecate any Jewish political separatism in Poland’. Peace Conference Diary, 11 April [1919]. So had Headlam-Morley who, in uuter frustration, asked Wolf what Polish Jewish Nationalists actually wanted. When Wolf told him that Jewish extremists were as mad as Polish extremists and that there was nothing to choose between Dmowski and Ussishkin, Headlam-Morley said, ‘Well, they will all be murdered.’ Ibid, 14 April.

Regards, Kaschner

[michael mills]

Mr Kaschner,

Thanks for the material you posted.

I do not think that there is any conflict between that material and what Professor Stachura wrote.

The situation was that there were a series of incidents in which a small number of Jews was harmed, some being killed, and those incidents were greatly exaggerated by Jewish nationalist propagandists in order to whip up hostility against the new Polish state.

Subsequently, the more moderate Jews of Western Europe and the United States, eg Henry Morgenthau and Lucien Wolf, were able to hose down the commotion caused by the exaggerated reports and restore calm, which allowed agreements to be reached between the more moderate Poles and Jews.

Here again is what Stachura wrote about the above exaggerated reports (page 85):

These attitudes [of mutual antagonism between Poles and Jews] were strengthened, unfortunately, by several developments in the early postwar years. Poles resented reports that appeared in the international press about alleged pogroms, such as those reputed to have taken pplace in Lwow in November 1918 and Pinsk in April 1919. When it emerged from reliable sources, which included American officials in Warsaw and a team of investigators led by Henry Morgenthau (1891-1967), that virtually all these reports were exaggerated, distorted orsimply fabricated, Polish anger at the Jews responsible seemed to be justified.

Professor Stachura is saying that Jews were responsible for the exaggerated reports of anti-Jewish violence by Poles; I would presume he means Jewish nationalist propagandists. Given the circumstances, it seems to me that what he says is historically correct. Note that he calls the exacerbation of antagonism between Jews and Poles "unfortunate".

Here are some more excerpts from Stachura's collection of documents bearing on the claims of Polish anti-Jewish violence and their refutation by American officials. Emphases are mine.

Pages 91-94

Document 61

Hugh Gibson, the first American Minister to Poland, on the situation concerning the Jews, 1919:

We are getting telegrams every day from American about alleged massacres of Jews in Poland........If there were massacres it would be easier to handle for there would be something to report but it is hard to explain things that do not happen. There were some Jews killed early in April at Pinsk [where] the Jews form more than half of the population. They were outspokenly hostile to the Polish Government and laid themselves open to suspicion. One evening......the Jews held a meeting under very suspicious circumstances. After it had been raided a number of men were taken out and shot [by the Polish Army]. It was certainly summary justice such as is liekly to be meted out on all fronts......Jews all over the world have been excited about the matter ever since. I have never seen a matter concerning which so many versions were issued. I get a new one every day......There is no doubt that the Jews were killed; there is also no doubt that their behaviour was such as to invite trouble. It was in no sense a religious matter. However, official reports are powerless to quiet the propaganda artists and they are getting stronger and stronger every day. Now they are manufacturing massacres of Jews at all sorts of places and sending cables about the need for our saving the lives of all sorts of Jews who are very much surprised, when we ask about them, to know that they have been considered in danger. There is a bigpropaganda bureau at Kowno, not far from Wilno, now in German occupation, and its main function is to send out long reports of the kiling of Jews in Poland, regardless of fact. The Berlin papers carry these yarns and they get into the neutral papers and gradually into our own. Of course, it is to the advantage of the Germans to stir up as much dissension in Poland as possible, so as to keep the country weakened. There are other influences with similar interests, and altogether I can see that we are in for a long siege of Jewish atrocities.

Source: Hugh Gibson Papers (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution), Box 69, Gibson Diary, 29 May 1919)

Note the claim made by Gibson that propaganda about violence by Poles against Jews was being churned out by German sources. Quite an irony of history, given later events.

Document 62

Hugh Gibson, American Minister to Poland, on his meeting with Jewish leaders, 1919:

I find that most of these people are over-wrought and have reached that stage where they unconsciously want to believe every exaggerated yarn about excesses against the Jews. They take it as prejudice if you question any story, no matter whether they know where it comes from or not, so long as it makes out a case against the Poles and shows that the Jews are suffering......you can't help the patient by treating him for an ailment he does not suffer from. I can see that there will be a tremendous amount of patient-talking to be done among the Jews before they be willing to abandon the idea of curing all their ills by one blast at the Polish Government. They have got to make up their minds to work untiringly with the government and not against it.....

Source: Hugh Gibson Papers (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution)< Box 70, Gibson Diary, 27 June 1919

Document 63

Hugh Gibson, American Minister to Poland, on American Jews, 1920:

Practically ever since I have been here, we have had a steady stream of American Jews, either in official positions or with official backing and recommendation, coming in here to gather material for anti-Polish intrigue. Most of them have come ostensibly for purely relief work........There is hardly an instance of an American Jew coming into Poland on releif work or any of the other 'missions'.......who has not, after leaving the country, come out with attacks upon Poland.......

Therecord of American Jews abusing their passports and the privileges accorded them here is both shameful and embarassing to us, and I think the time has come when positive action should be taken by our government.....before the patience of the Polish Government is exhausted and they point out to us the unfriedliness of our action in permitting our people with official support to carry on a concerted effort to undermine this country and its government.....it is only the unbelievable patience of the Polish Government that has saved us from having several very unpleasant incidents here.

Source: Hugh Gibson Papers (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution), Box 43, letter of 14 February 1920)

Document 64

Hugh Gibson, American Minister to Poland, on the Jewish situation in Poland, 1922:

The American Jewish Committee is apparently at some pains to gather all possible reports, without regard to their accuracy, referring to the mistreatment of Jews.....In general, it can be said that for purposes of agitation, these Jewish leaders have a tendency to accept as proof positive any allegations any allegations made by a Jew against the Poles and to accept any newspaper report or anonymous statement, as long as it indicates that a Jew has been unfairly treated....they expect me to accept as evidence any unsupported story they bring about the mistreatment of Jews and resent any disposition I may show to examine the evidence and verify the facts. This is not said impetuously, but as the result of several years of daily dealings with these people.

I have carefully studied the Jewish Question in Poland....and am convinced that.......the organised Jews of this country are deliberately and openly anti-Polish. The Jewish press daily hurls abuse at the Polish Government and people and calls down on them every imaginable curse. The daily run of Jewish callers at the [American] Legation......are loud in their denunciations of Poland, its government and people, and frequently express annoyance if their sentiments do not elicit approval from American representatives....

It must be remembered that the Jews here do not demand equal but exceptional treatment. They demand exemption from military service, exemption from certain taxes, separate courts in which cases are to be tried by Jewish law, and separate schools at government expense controlled entirely by themselves at which all subjects will be taught in Hebrew or Yiddish. In order to obtain these demands they resort to any tactics which will place the Poles in an unfavourable position. There is not only no co-operation on their part to build up a Polish state, but they endeavour to frustrate the settlement of Polish problems by interference, threats and non-participation. It is clear, therefore, that when these Jewish demands are pressed and the intervention of the United States is called for, it is not to prevent cruelties and injustices to an oppressed minority, but to secure the aid of a large power for their selfish ends.......

Source: Hugh Gibson Papers (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution), Box 100, letter of 10 November 1922

On the other hand, Eugene Black, in the essay to which I have previously referred, takes a rather negative view of Gibson. He writes (pages 284-285):

Matters were not improved when the American Minister in Warsaw, Gibson, sent ill-informed reports claiming no such attacks had taken place. Gibson repeated every libel Dmowski had used through the years, 'all the legends of Jewish pro-Germanism, treachery, espionage, profiteering and bolshevism. He describes the whole Jewish proletariat - indeed all the Jews who are not Assimilants or Chassidim - as 'criminals. His later denials and feeble argument that his reports were garbled in transmission made Gibso appear doubly foolish and casr doubts on American diplomatic intelligence.

(The way the above passage is printed in the essay makes it difficult to tell whether Black is quoting a statement about Gibson by someone else, perhaps Wolf, or is expressing his own opinion.)

[David Thompson]

The unsourced opinion to which I referred is this statement referring to WWII, which is not covered in the reference to Morley's 1919 statement (or prophecy):

And it was really only the German conquest of Poland in 1939 which prevented the murder being carried out by the Poles themselves, and placed that task in German hands.

[henryk]

It doesn't contravene the civility rule, but whether the assertion is true is another matter entirely, and one which is open to informed debate here. For myself, I do not credit the assertion for lack of proof. It looks like an unsourced opinion to me.

David
I cannot agree that a statement inferring that Poland would have murdered millions of Jews is civil. There is no basis for such a horrendous opinion.
Poland did not murder Jews or put them into camps because they were Jews. Yes, from today’s standards their civil rights were abused. But that was true world wide. Here are two examples from Canada
http://www.gamblingmagazine.com/articles/39/39-22.htm

Grand Bend's Lioness Club sponsored the $20,000 cost of publication. If the book betrays a few problems - an imperfect index and occasional glitches - its spirit swings all the same.
"Meet Me at the Lakeview Casino" also has the honesty to cover the Bend's ugly side - an institutionalized anti-Semitism that goes right down to the dance-hall's sign, still visible in the late 1930s: "We Welcome Gentiles Only."
Material attributed to another writer details the court fight to strike down restrictive property "covenants," targetting Jews and blacks, in the Bend area. That battle was won in 1950.

http://www.cjc.ca/ptemplate.php?Story=468&action=itn

All Canadian universities discriminated against Jews in the 1930s and '40s to varying degrees, not just McGill or University of Toronto, most Canadian historians agree.

The system of quotas restricting the number of Jews to be admitted to each faculty was never officially stated, but it was understood.

"The quota system limiting the number of Jews who could be admitted was widely known to exist - widely said - but it is hard to find any concrete evidence on the subject now," Janice Rosen, director of the national archives of the Canadian Jewish Congress told The Gazette. "Universities didn't need to write down the policy, it was just understood. Ironically, English-language universities had more of a quota system in their faculties than did the French language universities."

[michael mills]

Walter Kaschner wrote:

It seems to me from the context that Headlam-Morley was in fact agreeing with Wolf that the Jewish extremists were as mad as the Polish extremists and there was nothing to choose between Dmowski and Ussishkin, and, in a fit of probably justified frustration, made the remark that they will all be murdered - Polish and Jewish extremists alike - by each other. Mr. Mill's reading, with all respect, is just too great a stretch for me to grasp.

I took the comment by Headlam-Morley to mean that all the Jews of Poland would be murdered.

I think my interpretation is supported by the context. Headlam-Morley was making an enquiry specifically about what Polish Jewish Nationalists wanted, and had received the reply from Wolf that they were as "mad" as the Polish extremists.

Headlam-Morley's following comment must refer to the Polish Jewish Nationalists, and probably to the Jewish population as a whole. He must have meant that the "madness" of the Polish Jewish Nationalists would lead to Jews being murdered.

Most probably what he had in mind is that the extreme demands of the Polish Jewish Nationalists, clashing with the aims of the Polish Nationalists, would lead to an ethnic conflict between Poles and Jews (similar to what we recently saw in the former Yugoslavia), and that given the relative sizes of the two populations, it would be the Jews who would have the worst of it.

What he envisaged was probably large-scale massacres by mobs of enraged Polish Nationalists, similar to the incidents of anti-Jewish violence that were being reported at the time, but on a much large scale.

Some contributors have expressed the opinion that it would have been impossible for Poles to have slaughtered the Jews living in their midst, to the extent that a Jewish popualtion no longer existed in Poland.

But in 1919, who would have thought it possible that such an outcome would have been brought about by Germany?

Any impartial observer in 1919 could not not possibly have come to the conclusion that anti-Semitism in Germany was greater, more virulent and violent than in Poland. If anything, the reverse. After all, during the First World War it was German forces that had protected the Jews of Russian Poland occupied in 1915, and prevented the outbreak of pogroms.

Furthermore, in 1919 when Posen Province was handed over to Poland under the Treaty of Versailles, almost every Jew living in that territory opted to retain German citizenship and leave to province to resettle in Germany proper, rather than remain and live under Polish rule.

It is blindingly obvious that in 1919, Jews believed that the danger to them came from Poles, not from Germans.

In September 1938, when Hitler told the Polish Ambassador in Berlin, Jozef Lipski, that Germany wanted to enter into an agreement with Poland, Romania and Hungary, for the purpose of solving the Jewish Problem in all four countries, Lipski replied that if Hitler succeeded in solving the Jewish Problem in Poland, the Poles would in gratitude build a monument to him in the most beuatiful part of Warsaw.

Lipski's reply shows what the attitude of the Polish political class was to the Jews of Poland, ie it wanted to get rid of them somehow.

Given that Hitler fulfilled his side of the bargain, perhaps those forum members who object to the view that Poles would eventually have removed the Jewish presence from their midst in the Germans had not done it for them, would do best to start a collection to fund the promised monument that still has not been built.

At the very least they could have the intestinal fortitude to admit that the elimination of the Jewish population of Poland by the German occupiers achieved an outcome (ie a Poland without Jews) that the bulk of the Polish people had desired for a long time, regardless of what they may have thought of the method employed.

[michael mills]

The following excerpt from the Stachura book illustrates the nature of the anti-Jewish sentiment promoted by the Catholic Church in Poland, and both its similarities to and differences from the anti-Semitism inculcated by National Socialist ideology in Germany.

Pages 97-98:

Document 68

From August Cardinal Hlond's pastoral letter of 29 February 1936:

The Jewish problem exists and will continue to exist as long as Jews remain Jews. This question varies in intensity from one country to another. It is especially difficult in our country and ought to be the subject of serious consideration.......

It is a fact that Jews strongly oppose the Catholic Church, that they are freethinkers and that they in the vanguard of atheism, bolshevism and revolutionary activity. It is a fact that they exert a pernicious influence on public morality and that their publishing hoses spread pornography. It is triue that Jews are swindlers and usurers, and that they deal in prostitution. It is true that, from a religious and ethical standpoint, Jewish youth is having a negative effect on Catholic youth in our schools. But let us be fair: not all Jews are like this. There are very many Jews who are believers, who are honest, just, merciful and philanthropic. There is a healthy, edifying sense of family in many Jewish households. We know Jews who are ethically outstanding, noble and honourable.

I warn against the moral stance, imported from abroad, that is fundamentally and ruthlessly anti-Semitic. It is contrary to Catholic ethics. One may love one's nation more, but one may not hate anyone. Not even Jews. It is proper to prefer your own kind when shopping and to avoid Jewish shops and Jewish stalls in the market-place. But it is forbidden to demolish a Jewish shop, damaging its goods, break windows or even throw things at Jewish homes. One should avoid the harmful moral influence of Jews, avoid their anti-Christian culture, and especially boycott the Jewish press and immoral Jewish publications. But it is forbidden to assault, beat up, maim or slander Jews. One should honour and love Jews as human beings and neighbours....When divine mercy enlightens a Jew to sincerely accept his and our Messiah, let us welcome him with Joy into our Chrisitan fold. Guard against those who incite anti-Jewish violence. They serve a reprehensible cause.....

Source: August Cardinal Hlond, Na Strazy Sumienia Narodu (Ramsey, NJ: Don Bosco, 1951), pp. 164-5

On the basis of the above, it is possible to compare and contrast the anti-Jewish teaching of Polish Catholicism and German National Socialism.

In the first place, both Polish Catholicism regarded the Jew as basically "bad".

Furthermore, both regarded the Jew's "badness" as expressed in similar ways, ie the Jew was a freethinker, and spread atheism, Bolshevism, revolutionary activity and pornography, had a pernicious influence on public morality, was a swindler and a usurer and dealt in prostitution. All these elements of Jewish "badness" enumerated by Cardinal Hlond can be found also in the writings and speeches of Hitler and other National Socialist ideologues.

However, a crucial difference was that Polish Catholicism regarded the source of the Jew's "badness" as lying in his religion, the fact that he was not a Christian, whereas German National Socialism saw it as lying in the Jew's race.

Accordingly, Polish Catholicism conceded the possibility that the "bad" Jew could become "good" by converting to Christianity and thereby ceasing to be a Jew, while German National Socialism precluded the possibility of the Jew's becoming "good", since his "badness" was due to his race.

Nevertheless, in the view of Polish Catholicism, as expressed by Cardianl Hlond, the Jew remained "bad" as long as he long as he remained a Jew. As Cardinal Hlond said, the Jewish problem exists as long as Jews remain Jews.

Accordingly, the attitude of Polish Catholicism toward the Jew who refused to become a Christian and insisted on remaining a Jew was exactly the same as the attitude of German National Socialism; he was "bad", and the implication was that he deserved some sort of punishment because of his "badness".

Since it was perfectly obvious to all observers that the vast majority of Jews would insist on remaining Jews and would not wash away their "badness" by becoming Christian, for all practical purposes the attitude of Polish Catholicism toward Jews was the same as that of German National Socialism.

The anti-Jewish attitude defined in Cardinal Hlond's pastoral letter may explain why Polish nuns saved so many Jewish children during the German occupation by hiding them in nunneries and in other ways; they were not so much saving the lives of Jews as preserving the lives of potential Christians. It is doubtful whether Polish Christians would have expended much energy in saving Jews who insisted on remaining Jews, and were impervious to conversion.

The attitude of Polish Catholicism to anti-Jewish violence is noteworthy. As expressed by Cardinal Hlond, it condemned and forbade all form of such violence, especially the sort of mob-violence that took the form of attacking Jewish shops, or beating Jews in the street.

On the other hand, it expressly permitted and encouraged the economic boycotting of Jews, and the avoidance of contact with Jews.

There had been an organised economic boycott of Jews since 1912, instituted by Dmowski's National Democratic Party. The avowed aim of the boycott was to drive as many Jews as possible out of Poland by making impossible for them to live there.

Accordingly, by endorsing the economic boycott, Polish Catholicism was supporting the aim of driving the Jewish population out of Poland and making Pland "free of Jews".

It cannot be argued that Cardianl Hlond's condemnation of anti-Jewish violence represented a fundamental difference between Polish Catholic attitudes to Jews and the German National Socialist attitude.''When Cardianl Hlond issued his pastoral letter, in early 1936, the National Socialist Government of Germany likewise did not permit street violence against Jews.

The German Goverment had introduced discriminatory legislation aimed at cutting Jews off from German society and the economy, making it hard for Jews to live in Germany, and thereby placing pressure on them to emigrate. But it did not allow violence against Jews, such as attacking their shops. Such violence was only resorted to in November 1938.

Furthermore, the amount of economic discrimination against Jews, for example by boycott, was until 1938 less in Germany than in Poland, where it was expressly endorsed by the Polish Catholic Church.

Accordingly, until 1938 the endorsement of economic boycott by Polish Catholicism represented in practice a more severe anti-Jewish attitude than the anti-Jewish measures taken by German National Socialism.

The Jewish view of the anti-Jewish economic boycott endorsed by Cardinal Hlond is givne in another document in Stachura's book.


Pages 26-27

Document 18

Louis Marshall, chairman of the American Jewish Committee, in a letter to President Woodrow Wilson, 7 November 1918:

......................................................................

The American Jewish Committee has long sympathised with the aspirations of the Polish people for independence and the right of self-government. It heartliy approves of the establishment of a [Polish] State.........Unfortunately, however, in 1912, there was inaugurated by the leaders of the Polish National Committee, and has ever since been carried out in that country, a policy looking to the practical destruction of the Jews of Poland through the medium of a most virulent economic boycott, which is still in full operation and has grown in intensity from year to year...........an intolerable condition [exists] and bodes unspeakable evil unless immediate remedial action is taken by those who are seeking the recognition of an independent Polish Stae to end this policy of extermination....

Source: Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, correspondence Louis Marshall - Ignacy J. Paderewski, 1918

Two things are clear:

1. The Jewish Establishment regarded the economic boycott of Polish Jewry as a measure designed to destroy the Jews of Poland;

2. Polish Catholicism, as expressed by Cardinal Hlond, expressly endorsed that economic boycott, although it condemned actual violence.

Accordingly, Polish Catholicism endorsed a policy aimed at eliminating the Jews of Poland as a presence in the country.

In that respect, the eliminationist aims of Polish Catholicism in relation to the Jews of Poland were exactly the same as the eliminationist aims of German National Socialism in regard to the Jews of Germany, despite the prohibition of violence.

It should be noted that at the beginning, German National Socialism also attempted to eliminate the Jewish presence in Germany by non-violent means, through discriminatory legislation and economic pressure. It was only when those measures failed that it resorted to mass violence culminating in physical extermination.

It is a moot point whether Polish Catholicism would eventually have endorsed some sort of State violence against the Jews of Poland (at least those that refused to convert), under different conditions.

[Davey Boy]

So what are you trying to say here Mills, that if war had not broken out in 1939 Poland would've set out to get rid of its Jewish population?

That's impossible.

It is possible that more "pogroms" would've occurred, increasing tensions between Jews and Poles, and possibly sparking a mass migration of Jews out of Poland. But extermination camps? Millions murdered? That sort of thing? Pffff...

[PAK]

It is possible that more pogroms would've occurred, increasing tensions between Jews and Poles, and possibly sparking a mass migration of Jews out of Poland. But extermination camps? Millions murdered? That sort of thing? Pffff...

I guess most germans did think that too. Anyways these are just assumptions, no one knows for sure, so ...

[michael mills]

Mr Kaschner,

On the question of Professor Stachura's claim that the Jewish Establishment tried to prevent the emergence of an independent Poland at the Paris Peace Conference, I have consulted an earlier book by him ("Poland Between the Wars, 1918-1939", London, Macmillan, 1998), in which he goes into that issue in more detail.

I will quote the relevant passage in extenso, so that you will be better able to judge whether Professor Stachura has made his case or not.

Pages 67-70; emphases by me:

Wartime developments in Poland itself had brought fresh perspectives and a greater impetus to bear on the connecting themes of Polish national identity and nationalism, particularly regarding the position of the Jews. Before and during the [First World] war, the overwhelming majority of them had been opposed to the idea of independence for Poland. No sooner had the conflict started than a so-called Committee for the East was created by German and Austrian Zionists, with the aim of persuading the Central Powers to make concessions to the Jews and reorganise Central Europe in a way that omitted any suggestion of an independent Polish state (note 45). More specifically, the Committee proposed a German-controlled multinational state across Central Europe (Mitteleuropakonzept) in which the Poles would be but one ethnic group among many others. Although the Germans rejected this plan and refused to recognise the Jews as a separate national minority, the Committee's activity outraged Polish opinion and strengthened the belief that the Jews constituted a formidable obstacle to the realisation of Poles' legitimate longing for independent nationhood. Furthermore, when the Germans expelled the Russians from Warsaw in September 1915, and subsequnetly from the rest of what had been Russian Poland, they pursued a policy of occupation which relied heavily on the willing assistance of many Jews, some of whom were later alleged to have been implicated in war-profiteering and other low-life activity (note 46). For many Poles, particularly those who sympathised with the Endecja, the Jews were thus confirmed as their implacable enemy (note 47).

This unfortunate perception was apparently vindicated by the conduct of a powerful, well-organised 'Jewish Lobby' at the Peace Conference in Paris, commencing in January 1919. In October 1918 the World Zionist Organisation, based in Copenhagen, had already issued a list of demands on Jewish rights, including the demand for Jewish national autonomy in Poland. The creation of the Committee of Jewish Delegations representing American, British and French Jewry followed in March 1919, in which personalities such as Lucien Wolf (1857-1930) and Leon Reich (1875-1929) made known in no uncertain terms their opposition to the establishment of an independent Poland, arguing essentially that the Poles were incorrigibly anti-Semitic and incapable, therefore, of treating the Jewish minority with fairness and respect (note 49). Dmowski, more than any other Pole, had attracted the hostility of Jewish opinion, notably during his visit to the United States in 1918, when he made little effort to conceal his anti-Semitism, despite the strenuous entreaties of Ignacy Paderewski (1860-1941), the wordl-famous Polish pianist, who was busy trying to court support for Poland in the highest echelons of the American government (note 50).

The growing anti-Polish campaign mounted by prominent Jews and Jewish organisations at the Peace Conference involved also, on the British side, Lewis Namier, born into a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family in Warsaw, who was employed by the Foreign Office to advise on Polish affairs (note 51). Namier was as passionately pro-Zionist as he was anti-Polish, and he foound strong support for his views from the British Prime Minister, David lloyd George, the eminent economist, John Maynard Keynes, and E H Carr, the well-known left-wing historian of Soviet Russia, who, as a government official, was Secretary of the Committee at the Peace Conference charge with considering provision for minorities in the post-war states in Eastern Europe. The Chairman of that Committee, the British diplomat Sir James Headlam-Morley, was openly sympathetic to the 'Jewish Lobby' (note 52). Furthermore, The Times became notorious for publishing articles by Israel Cohen, a Special Commissioner with the World Zionist Organisation, which amounted to polonophobic diatribes (note 53). Among other prominent British Jews and their supporters who actively sought to advance the Jewish interest in Poland by denigrating the Poles were the financier and businessman Sir Herbert Samuel and the Labour politician George Lansbury (note 54).

When it emerged that the Peace Conference was not to be prevented from applying the principle of national self-determination enunciated by President Wilson, and that an independent Polish state was to be created after all, the same 'Jewish Lobby' then tried to persuade the international statesmen in Paris to have the Jews in Poland recognised as a separate national minority enjoying extensive autonomy (note 55). Before that, a special Jewish Congress in Warsaw on 26-30 December 1918 had sought to construct a united forum around a Jewish National Council to assert Jewish demands in Poland (note 56). Although internecine Jewish dissension wrecked this enterprise, it was one more unmistakable indication that the Jews were determined to fight against the fledgling Polish state in order to protect what they regarded as their vital interests, and were quite prepared to mobilise world opinion behind their efforts. This explains why in late 1918 and early the following year sensational stories of pogroms against Jews in several Polish cities and towns, notably in Lwow (November 1918), Pinsk (April 1919) and Wilno (April 1919), were propagated in the international press, prompting the American government to despatch a high-level delegation under Henry Morgenthau, himself a Jew, to investigate (note 57). As it transpired, he was able to assure his government that the press reports were either grossly exaggerated or simply untrue (note 58 ). In all three cases, Jews had been killed, not simply for being Jewish, as had been claimed, but because they had been assisting the Ukrainian nationalists or the Bolsheviks in military activity against Polish forces (note 59).

What Jewish pressure politics did eventually manage to secure at the Peace Conference was the imposition on Poland, as an integral part of the settlement which established the Polish state, of the Minorities' Treaty, whose purpose was to provide the formal constitutional and political safeguards for Poland's ethnic minorities, but especially for the Jews. The Treaty further embittered Polish-Jewish relations in an already fraught atmosphere because, while itwas triumphantly hailed as 'a great victory for the Jewish cause' (note 60), it was regarded by the Poles as both a grievous insult to their long tradition of tolerance, and as an unwarranted encroachment on Poland's national sovereignty at a particularly sensitive time (note 61). In the event, the Poles had no option but to accept the Treaty, albeit with undisguised reluctance. Speaking in the Sejm on 31 JUly 1919, the Peasant Party (piast) leader, Wincenty Witos (1874-1945), denounced the Minorities' Treaty as a deliberate ploy by the Jews to disgrace the Polish people (note 62). Clearly, the situation which had arisen by spring 1919 was hardly conducive to the fostering of good Polish-Jewish relations in the new era of independence.

Notes:

45. Egmont Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg (Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1969), pp. 119-33; Frank Golczewski, Polnisch-Jüdische Beziehungen 1991-1922. Eine Studie zur Geschichte des Antisemitismu in Osteuropa (Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1981), pp. 121-80.

46. Wrobel in Bartoszewski and Polonsky (eds), Jews of Warsaw, p. 282.

47. Jerzy Holzer, 'Polish Political Parties and Antisemitism', Polin 8 (1994), p. 196.

48. Marcus, Social and Political History, pp. 296-7.

49. Eugene C Black, 'Lucien Wolf and the Making of Poland: Paris 1919', Polin, 2 (1987), pp. 5-36; Mark Levene, War, Jews and the New Europe. The Diplomacy of Lucien Wolf, 1914-1919 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992); Mark Levene, 'Britain, a British Jew, and Jewish relations with the New Poland: the Making of the Polish Minorities Treaty of 1919', Polin 8 (1994), pp. 14-41.

50. Wiktor Sukiennicki, East-Central Europe during World War I. From Foreign Domination to National Independence (East European Monographs, Boulder, Colorado, 1984), Vol 2, p. 895; George J Lerski, 'Dmowski, Paderewski and American Jews', Polin 2 (1987), p. 95.

51. Paul Latawski, 'The Dmowski-Namier Feud, 1915-1918', Polin 2 (1987), pp. 38 ff. Namier was born Bernstein vel Niemirowski, which in 1910 he changed to Bernstein-Naymier, and to Namier in 1913, when he became a British citizen (Polin 5, 1990, p. 304). Further details in Julia Namier, Louis Namier. A Biography (London, 1971).

52. Black, 'Lucien Wolf', p. 23; J Headlam-Morley, A Memoir of the Paris Peace Conference 1919 (London 1972).

53. 'The Times', 8 February 1919, article entitled, 'The Pogroms in Poland', provides but one example. Cohen's reports, which were widely circulated in the American press, seriously damaged Poland's reputation as noted in Piotr S Wandycz, The United States and Poland (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1980), pp. 160-5. See also Israel Cohen, 'My Mission to Poland, 1918-19', Jewish Social Studies, 3 (1951), No. 3, pp. 149-72, and his Travels in Jewry (London, 1952).

54. Levene, 'Britain, a British Jew', pp. 15-16, 30; Patrick B Finney, ' "An Evil for All Concerned": Great Britian and Minoroty Protection after 1919', Journal of Contemporary History, 30 (1995), No 3, pp. 533-51.

55. Interesting insights in Adrzej Kapiszewski (ed), Hugh Gibson and a Controversy over Polish-Jewish Relations after World War I. A Documentary History (Jagiellonian Uniiversity Press, Krakow, 1991). Gibson was the first American minister appointed to the new Polish Republic, in April 1919.

56. Harry M Rabinowicz, The Legacy of Polish Jewry. A History of Polish Jews in the Inter-war Years, 1919-1939 (Thomas Yoseloff, New York, 1965), p. 31.

57. Lewandowski, 'History and Myth', pp. 50-72; Jerzy Tomaszewski, 'Pinsk, Saturday 5 April 1919', Polin 1 (1986), pp. 227-51. Rabinowicz, Legacy of Polish Jewry, p 38, refers to 110 pogroms in November 1918 alone, but without supporting evidence.

58. Wandycz, United States and Poland, pp. 166ff; Norman Davies, 'Ethnic Civersity in Twentieth Century Poland', Polin 4 (1989), p 149.

59. Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star. The Polish-Soviet War, 1919-20 ( Macdonald, London, 1972), pp 47-8.

60. Levene, 'Britain, a British Jew', p. 35.

61. W F Reddaway, J H Penson, O Halecki, R Dyboski (eds), The Cambridge History of Poland. Volume 2: from Augustus II to Pilsudski (1697-1935) (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1951), pp 505ff; Richard M Watt, Bitter Glory. Poland and Its Fate, 1918 to 1919 (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1979), p 78.

62. David Engel, In the Shadow of Auschwitz. The Polish Government-in-Exile and the Jews, 1939-1942 (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1987), p 20.

[Davey Boy]

It is possible that more pogroms would've occurred, increasing tensions between Jews and Poles, and possibly sparking a mass migration of Jews out of Poland. But extermination camps? Millions murdered? That sort of thing? Pffff...

I guess most germans did think that too. Anyways these are just assumptions, no one knows for sure, so ...

You can't compare Poland to Germany.

The Germans were able to pull off the Holocaust because they were prepared for it, as a highly organised and militirised, carefully controlled state.

Poland could've never pulled off such a feat, even if many Poles in key positions were in favor of it...which is just not true, but anyway.

Some people might say that we're naturally too disorganised to plan such things as a nation...which may be true...hehe. But I don't think we need to look to ethnic cliches to see that the social and military structures were not in place in Poland to even come lose to what the Germans did.

Mills can argue all he likes about the tensions between Poles and Jews, and I have to say his material has been interesting in this case, but as always, he lets himself down terribly by trying to imply the ridiculous.

[Jan-Hendrik]

Dear Davey , it seems that you can not imagine how thin the cover of civilisation is ...

Look at the Balkan in the 90s !

Jan-Hendrik

[Davey Boy]

Dear Davey , it seems that you can not imagine how thin the cover of civilisation is ...

Look at the Balkan in the 90s !

Jan-Hendrik

Point taken...and I support your view, the cover of civillization is all too shallow..

However, what I'm saying is that in terms of practicallity, Poland could never have organised a Holocaust...Germany yes, but Poland no....some Germans may take that as a compliment...but only some, I hope...

[michael mills]

There is a number of things that are certainly true.

One is that the great majority of Poles, including the colonels who ran the country behind the scenes, wanted a "Jew-free" Poland.

Another is that anti-Jewish elements of the Polish political class, in particular Dmowski's National Democratic Party, had taken measures (unofficial but winked at by the government) aimed at driving the Jews out of Poland through economic pressure, for example the boycott of Jewish shops and businesses which had been in place since 1912 and which had impoverished and marginalised a huge part of the Jewish population.

A third is that official Polish Government policy encouraged the emigration of Jews (including to Madagascar, a possibility that was examined by an official Polish mission). In that respect, Polish Government policy did not differ from that of the National Socialist Government of Germany before the outbreak of war.

It needs to be borne in mind that physical extermination on a massive scale was only resorted to by the German Government when other means of eliminating the Jews from Europe -emigration, deportation - had failed. It is arguable that if Germany had defeated the Soviet Union in 1941 or 1942, then the fate of the Jews in its power, including those of Poland, would have been deportation across the Urals into a rump Russian state.

If that had eventuated, then the fate of the Jews would not have looked very different from what observers could see that the Polish Government was aspiring to do in the 1930s, even if without much success.

It is easy to envisage an alternative historical scenario in which a Polish Government might have joined Germany in eliminating the Jews living on its territory.

If at the end of 1938 the Polish Government had given to German demands to allow the reunification of Danzig with Germany and to provide an extra-territorial connection to East Prussia, then there would have been no German invasion of Poland, which which have become a subordinate ally of Germany in the same way as HUngary and Romania later became such.

In historical reality, Romania agreed under German pressure to hand back to Hungary a part of Transylvania, ie of the territory it had taken from Hungary in 1918. As compensation, it received a slice of Ukraine (Transnistria) when it joined Germany in the invasion of the Soviet Union.

The same thing could have happened with Poland if it had not foolishly decided to risk war with Germany in the mistaken belief that its allies Britain and France would immediately attack Germany in the West.

Poland could have agreed to restore the 1914 frontier with Germany, ie handing back West Prussia and Posnania, in return for a slice of Soviet territory after joining Germany in invading that country, eg it could have received Lithuania, Belorussia and part of Ukraine, in the same way that Romania received Transnistria.

In historical reality, Romania set out independently to solve its Jewish problem by deporting the entire Jewish population of Bessarabia, Bukovina and the Dorohoi province of Old Romania into its new territory of Transnistria. It also carried out, on its own initiative, vast massacres of the Jewish population of Transnistria, eg the massacre at Odessa. It also carried out a number of pogroms in Old Romania, eg at Iasi.

It is easy to envisage a situation in which a Poland that had become a subordinate ally of Germany and had joined it in an invasion of the Soviet Union (which had always been Hitler's intention for Poland) might have acted in the same way as Romania, that is, it could have deported the Jews from its own territory into a conquered Ukraine, and also carried out vast massacres on the conquered territory to create space.

It should also be noted that Hungary also took advantage of its participation in the invasion of the Soviet Union to dump some of its Jews into conquered Soviet territory in 1941, and later cooperated in the mass deportation of its Jews to Auschwitz.

So it is only an accident of history that Poland was conquered and occupied by Germany, with the result that there was no Polish Government to take an active part in the elimination of Jews from Polish territory, although there was certainly a lot of collaboration in that effort at lower levels, eg by the Polish police.

[kordts]

I appreciate your research and your willingness to share it with us. I have brought this topic up a coupla times and have got scathing denunciations, but never any reasoned replies, and only one Pole who wouldn't spout the "we were victims" party line.

Cheers, Jeff.

[Davey Boy]

It is easy to envisage an alternative historical scenario in which a Polish Government might have joined Germany in eliminating the Jews living on its territory.

Only for someone with a poor understanding of Poland.