The accusatory tone and broad conclusions of the final report of The Institute of National Memory (IPN) on Jedwabne are, in fact, contradicted by the detailed facts and evidence which are buried deep in the report.
It is evident that the people who wrote the report did not want to be absolute liars but at the same time they were anxious to please powerful special interests served by mendacious propaganda in need to make the Polish nation responsible for the atrocity committed in Jedwabne on July 10, 1941.
Thus somehow the grain of truth was preserved despite the need not to offend those who could harm the writers both politically and financially.
The basic truths preserved by the report are:
1. The atrocity did not represent a local spontaneous initiative.
2. The leadership and the inspiration was German and not Polish
3. Far from being the whole local Polish population only about 40 Poles were involved. (These were mostly local criminals or persons acting under severe duress.)
4. Not 1600 but about 300 Jewish victims perished
5. Logical conclusion: only complete exhumation of the two graves can determine the actual number of victims and the cause of death of each one of them (In forensic science partial exhumation is as valid as partial pregnancy)
The report's crucial omissions:
1. The facts about the German confiscation of the barn on the eve of the atrocity
2. No professional pyrotechnic evaluation was provided to explain the fierceness and magnitude of the fire which killed the larger of the two groups of victims.
The 8 liters of kerosene mentioned in the report could not have produced such an effect. (Instead of "kerosene" ambiguous word "naphta" was used by the Institute of National Memory in its English version of the report.
3. Negative and positive witnesses about German presence are assigned different levels of credibility in accordance with the predetermined bias of the authors.
4. The physical proofs of the presence of Germans at the barn was insisted upon.
5. No proof of Polish presence at the barn was produced or required.
6. There is no documentary evidence of the presence of anyone at the fire. There is no documentary evidence of what actually happened at the barn
J. T. Gross's triumphal statement claiming full support by the IPN report should have been immediately and publically refuted because the basic truth mentioned above make the basic tenets of his book Neighbors null and void.
Gross's trump card is the backing of powerful and influential groups who hope to gain by his misinterpretations, distortions and out of context presentation. Gross's bad luck is that the accusatory tone of the report and Gross's indictment of the Polish inhabitants of Jedwabne and with them of all the Polish society is contradicted by the basic facts buried in the IPN report.
Prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, Nasza Witryna, 2002-07-10
powrot
 AN ANSWER TO BRUMBERG'S SLANDER OF POLAND IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS
by Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
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The Council on Foreign Relations publishes Foreign Affairs Magazine in which it defines the acceptable range of policy alternatives for the government of the United States. The reasons for its dominant position is its continuity over decades and its membership of the most highly intellectual and experienced scholars and diplomats in the US. Since World War II the council selected every secretary of state, some of them not even previously known to the President of the United States.
It is significant that the September - October 2002 issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine includes a Poland-bashing article, "Poles and Jews," by Abraham Brumberg, in which he approvingly quotes J. T. Gross: "the criminal reflexes of Polish society directed against Jews were not incidental occurrences....". Here the two writers are parroting Hitler's remarks about the Jews being a congenitally criminal race.
The inclusion now of the slanderous anti-Polish article means that the policies of the United Statestowards Poland have not been influenced in a positive direction by the recent visit of Mr. Kwasniewski in Washington, and his very familiar and congenial discussions with President Bush, as shown on TV.
The racist attitude of Brumberg towards the Poles is similar to that of the Nazis towards the Jews during World War II.
"In Poles and Jews", as in his previous article "Murder Most Foul" Brumberg is trying to condemn
the Polish nation and its proud traditions of tolerance and struggle for independence. He is trying to present the Polish nation as a bunch of degenerates whose major purpose in life was to torment Jews.
This is similar to Nazi attempts to present all Jews as degenerates whose major purpose in life was to hurt the Aryan race. Blumberg's article is racist and it is filled with hate. Gross's pamphlet and Blumberg's article will inflame passions rather than encourage people to unite and commemorate in dignity the injustices and crimes of the past.
The Council on Foreign Relations determines the direction of American foreign policy and has more influence on the relations of the United States with all foreign countries than either the Congress or the
President. The purpose of publication now of such a contemptuous and slanderous attack on Poland indicates a determined support for the shakedown of Poland after Switzerland by the World Jewish Restitution Organization of the World Jewish Congress.
The World Jewish Restitution Organization collected huge sums from Germany and then obtained $1,250,000,000 from Swiss banks on the original claim valued at $32,000,000 by the Volker Commission. The huge size of the payment was partially a ransom paid by the Swiss banks under
the threat of a boycott of all Swiss banks' activity in New York.
More recently nearly one half of all the money from the German slave labor compensation fund was collected by Jewish organizations to the dismay of hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish survivors of German slave labor. Now, in order to continue functioning, the movement for property claims must find other people guilty of the Holocaust. Poland is next in line as a new NATO partner on the verge of admission into the European Union.
Prewar Jewish properties in Polish real estate will soon be worth many times more than they are worth now. The acquisition by the World Jewish Restitution Organization of this fabulous wealth will be possible when under the international pressure the Polish parliament or the president, by a presidential agreement, would authorize these international Jewish organizations to find and take over all pre-war Jewish properties in Poland.
In support of these claims the Zionist lobby has already used threats by members of the US Congress, Senator Hilary Clinton prominent among them.
Polish parliamentarians who wanted to place limits on the amount of compensation were accused by the World Jewish Congress of "anti-Americanism" - something that Poland can ill afford when it is so
greatly dependent on American goodwill. Ironically, Poland is the most pro-American member of NATO at the present time as implied by President Bush, when recently he introduced Mr. Kwasniewski, the President of Poland.
The wealth here under consideration represents some fifteen to twenty percent of the total Polish national wealth reaching more than one hundred billion dollars. This involves more units of property by far then there are surviving Jews living in Poland today.
If it is centrally administered by the World Jewish Restitution Organization, it would became the strongest financial and political entity in Poland, capable of putting the country on the road of becoming a vassal state of Israel and a territory ripe for re-colonization in case Jewish life in the Middle East becomes unbearable.
[Very similiar attempts were made by the German Committee for Freedom of the Russian Jews (Deutschen Komittee zur Befreiung der russischen Juden) and other Zionist organisations during and after World War I in an aim to create a state called Judepolonia insted of independent Poland. See other articles on our Web Sites Jews in Poland (excerpt) and Judeo - Polonia . K.J.]
Thus, Poland is on the verge of becoming a victim of a shakedown.
After Poland it will be the turn of the other former Soviet satellites such as Hungary and Slovakia, and then Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Latvia, when these former Soviet republics recover economically and some of them will be able to join NATO and the European Union.
The World Jewish Restitution Organization generate enormous amount of publicity which in fact becomes a powerful free advertizing campaign for its cause.
Thus, for example, it was known for years that in June 1941 the German government decided to make propaganda claims that its invasion of the USSR had been welcomed by the people who were earlier
terrorized by the Soviets. Thus, the mass murders of the communists and Jews were to be presented to the world as local acts of revenge.
In order for German propaganda to succeed, German government ordered the eradication of all traces of the presence of German personnel at the execution sites. Taking souvenir pictures was forbidden, and no daily reports of the activities of units of executioners were to be made.
This absence of German documentation relating to the execution sites permitted the recycling of Nazi propaganda blaming the local populations for German murders, but this time it was done by the
Zionists of the property claims movement and their supporters who work hard to make Polandappear to be guilty of the Holocaust.
A great uproar in the Polish media started when a fictional version of the events of July 10 in Jedwabne was promulgated by the supporters of the World Jewish Restitution Organization as a proof of Poland's
national guilt in the Holocaust. This preposterous notion was rebutted by authentic witnesses of the events in Jedwabne and in neighboring towns.
The net result of the recent "media battle of Jedwabne," to use the expression coined by Dr. Jozef Wieczynski in correspondence with me on that subject, was an enormous amount of free publicity for the Zionist property claims movement throughout the world (Dr. Wieczynski is a historian of Russia and Eastern Europe and chief editor of the fifty volume encyclopedia on Russian history).
It is obvious that this media battle will remain inconclusive until a complete and rigorous forensic
study is performed of the two mass graves containing the basic evidence of the number of victims and the cause of death of each. At the present time practically all the forensic evidence remains buried.
Under these circumstances the only remedy is to complete the forensic exhumation of the two graves and the surrounding area in order to properly document the murders at Jedwabne as indicated by Dr. Jan Moor-Jankowski, a forensic authority, and the only American member of the French Academy of Medicine.
Unfortunately in the present post-communist government of Poland, both, the president and the prime minister, found it expedient to follow the lead of the Zionists of the World Jewish Restitution Organization.
They were so eager to please the Zionists that they even used the "politics of apology and contrition" to blame the Polish people for such German crimes as that of Jedwabne where the locals played very secondary roles at most.
However, it should not be forgotten that the national memory of all the postwar satellite states preserved a recollection of the central role, and disproportional representation, of the Jewish minority in Stalin's security apparatus, which used bloody terror and mass murders to enforce the communization of their native lands. This historical fact was acknowledged in print by no less of an authority than the world's most prestigious Jewish newspaper, the New York Times.
The absurdity of the false version of J. T. Gross and Abraham Brumberg was dignified its publication in the September-October issue of Foreign Affairs, a bi-monthly which dissiminates to the world the wild, unsubstantiated, and tendentious allegations, and presents them as historical truth. This requires refutation with historical facts as they are presently known but perhaps not wanted.
It was on July 10, 1941 that German executioners collected Jews of Jedwabne in the town square and drove them by physical violence to the site of their murder. First they shot some 50 Jews and then burned alive, possibly as many as 250 others (not 1600 or 1800 as inaccurately reported in the American press on the basis of false information published by J. T. Gross who ignored Soviet and other sources, as well as German archives, in his book Neighbors).
The executioners of the Einsatztruppen enlisted the help of several ethnic Germans (the "Volksdeutche" known as traitors and spies), and a group of primitive and illiterate criminals, both local and from out of
town, as well as possibly a few "avengers."
The latter must have believed that they and their relatives had suffered murderous persecution by Soviet security officers and deportation to the Gulag because of the betrayal by some of the Jews living in Jedwabne. German executioners forced an additional number of Poles, at gunpoint, with blows of rifle butts, and with threats, to help bring Jewish victims to the town square (the marketplace) ostensibly to clean the pavement.
According to eyewitnesses still living today, uniformed Germans committed this wartime atrocity. They forced some 300 Jews to march in a mock-funeral procession while carrying a concrete head of Lenin that had been removed from a monument.
The Germans of the Einsatztruppen divided the marchers into two groups.
The first group consisted of some 50 Jews, men strong enough to put up a fight. The second group was formed from the approximately 250 remaining Jews, mostly old people, women, and children.
While the second group was held back, the first group was directed into a 62 by 23 foot wooden barn. The keys to the barn were confiscated a day earlier by uniformed Germans, who removed agricultural machinery from it and prepared it for the execution of the Jews next day. (The daughter of
the owner of the barn repeatedly testified about this fact, most recently on the CBS "60 minutes" on March 24, 2002.)
The 50 Jewish men were ordered to dig a large grave inside the barn, ostensibly for burying Lenin's concrete head. (J. T. Gross wants his readers to believe that the head of Lenin was buried in the Jewish cemetery.) As the diggers stood near the grave, the Germans shot them and then ordered several Poles to drag into the shallow grave the bodies of the Jews, some slain and some wounded but possibly still alive.
Lenin's concrete head was placed on top of the victims in the grave #1.
The German executioners then ordered the second, more defenseless, group into the barn, which moments later would be turned into a gigantic funeral pyre.
Stefan Boczkowski, Roman Chojnowski and five other eyewitnesses reported seeing the following: A small German military truck loaded with soldiers and gasoline canisters quickly pulled up to the barn crowded with Jews.
Some of the soldiers jumped down from the truck, and those soldiers staying in the truck handed them the canisters, whose contents they poured on all outer walls of the barn. The flames engulfed the barn at
once.
Pyrotechnic analysis indicates that the Germans used approximately 100 gallons (over 400 liters) of gasoline to soak some 1000 square ft. of walls of the barn in order to engulf all of it with fire, burn it, and in process suffocate the victims (by inhalation of the hot smoke). Later (reportedly the next day) the Germans ordered Poles at gunpoint to bury the partly burned bodies emanating a horrible odor. Remains of at most 250 victims were buried in the grave #2, located along the barn (the high content of water in human bodies requires temperature of some 800 degrees Centigrade for more than thirty minutes in order to obtain a complete cremation).
At that time there was no gasoline available to the local population of Jedwabne (only a small amount of hydrocarbons in form of kerosene for lamps was available to the rural population). Such a small amount of kerosene (as mentioned by J. T. Gross) with its flashpoint of about 50 degrees Centigrade could not produce a sudden fire to engulf the entire barn at once.
In the 2001 investigation by the Polish government, bodies of the victims of the July 10, 1941 massacre were found buried in the graves #1 and #2. Thorough search and drilling some 170 test cores in the vicinity found no other graves of the 1941 massacre of the Jews in Jedwabne.
However, at the request of an Orthodox Rabbi who objected, rigorous forensic studies and full exhumation of all victims and the determination by autopsy of causes of death of every one of them was
prematurely terminated. Thus, only an approximate number of victims could be estimated by the size of the two graves , which could be as low as one hundred sixty, ten percent of the wild figure cited by Gross and Brumberg. Unfortunately these unanswered questions inevitably discredit the veracity of the final report of the official investigation by the Polish government's agency, the Institute of National Memory (IPN).
Eventually the truth will become known even if this is very inconvenient to those presently enjoying influence. It is tragic, however, that in the meantime the false accusations initiated by Gross and disseminated by Brumberg and the Council for Foreign Relations will create much bitter strife between Polish patriots on the one hand and the Jewish restitution movement and its supporters on the other.
Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, a survivor of 64 months of Gestapo prisons and Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, is the author of Poland, an Illustrated History (Hippocrene Books, New York, 2000), Jews in Poland, a Documented History (Hippocrene Books, New York, 1993), Poland,
a Historical Atlas (Hippocrene Books, 1987).
Prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, , 2002-08-22
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Did Christian half murder the Jewish half of Jedwabne as J. T. Gross claims in "Neighbors"?
Prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
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Facts prove this to be a baseless slander.
According to eyewitnesses still alive today, uniformed Germans committed a wartime atrocity in Jedwabne, Poland; on July 10, 1941, they forced some 300 Jews to march in a mock-funeral procession while carrying a concrete head of Lenin that had been removed from a monument.
The Germans of the Einsatztrupen divided the marchers into two groups. The first group consisted of some 50 Jews, men strong enough to put up a fight. The second group was formed from the approximately 250 remaining Jews, mostly old people, women, and children.
While the second group was held back, the first group was directed into a 62.4 by 23 feet wooden barn. The keys to the barn were confiscated a day earlier by uniformed Germans, who removed from it
agricultural machinery and prepared it for the next day execution of the Jews. (The daughter of the owner of the barn repeatedly testified about this facts, most recently on the CBS "60 minutes" in April 2002.)
The 50 Jewish men were ordered to dig a large grave inside the barn, ostensibly for burying Lenin's concrete head. As the diggers stood near the grave, the Germans shot them and then ordered several Poles to drag into the shallow grave the bodies of the Jews, some slain and some wounded but possibly still alive. Lenin's concrete head was placed on top of the victims in the grave #1.
The German executioners then ordered the second, more defenseless, group into the barn, which moments later would be turned into a gigantic funeral pyre.
Stefan Boczkowski, Roman Chojnowski and five other eyewitnesses reported seeing the following: A small German military truck loaded with soldiers and gasoline canisters quickly pulled up to the barn crowded with Jews. Some of the soldiers jumped down from the truck, and those soldiers staying in the truck handed them the canisters, whose contents they poured on all outer walls of the barn. The flames engulfed the barn at once.
Pyrotechnic analysis indicates that the Germans used approximately 100 gallons (over 400 liters) of gasoline to soak some 1000 square ft. of walls of the barn in order to engulf all of it with fire, burn it and in process suffocate the victims (by inhalation of the hot smoke).
Later (reportedly the next day) the Germans ordered Poles at gunpoint to bury the partly burned and decomposing bodies of about 250 victims in grave #2 located just outside of the barn (the high
content of in human bodies requires temperature of some 800 degrees Centigrade for more than thirty minutes in order to obtain a complete cremation).
At that time there was no gasoline available to the local population of Jedwabne, to which only small amount of hydrocarbons in form of kerosene for kerosene lamps was then available. Such small amounts of kerosene with its flashpoint of about 50 degrees Centigrade could not produce the sudden barn engulfing fire.
To summarize, the German executioners collected Jews of Jedwabne in the town square and drove them by physical violence to the site of their murder. They shot some 50 Jews and burned alive 250 others (not 1600 or 1800 as inaccurately reported in the American press).
The executioners of the Einsatztrupen were helped by several ethnic Germans (the "Volksdeutche" known as traitors and spies), and a group of primitive and illiterate criminals, both local and from out of town, as well as possibly a few avengers, who believed that they and their relatives had suffered murderous persecution by Soviet security officers, and deportation to the Gulag, because of the betrayal by some of the Jews living in Jedwabne.
German executioners forced an additional number of Poles, at gunpoint, with blows of rifle butts, and with threats, to help bring Jewish victims to the town square (the marketplace) ostensibly to clean the pavement.
In the 2001 investigation by the Polish government bodies of the victims of the July 10, 1941 massacre were found buried in the graves #1 and #2. Thorough search and drilling some 170 test cores in the vicinity found no other graves of the 1941 massacre of the Jews in Jedwabne; however, at the request of a local rabbi rigorous forensic studies and full exhumation of all victims and the determination of the causes of death of every one of them was prematurely terminated.
Thus, only an approximate number of victims could be estimated by the size of the two graves.
Unfortunately these unanswered questions inevitably discredit the veracity of the final report of the official investigation by the Polish government.
"The evidence collected by the West Germans, including the positive identification of [Hauptsturmfuehrer Herman] Schaper by witnesses from Lomza, Tykocin, and Radzilow, suggested that it was indeed Schaper's men who carried out the killings in those locations. Investigators also suspected, based on the similarity of the methods used to destroy the Jewish communities of Radzilow, Tykocin, Rutki, Zambrow, Jedwabne, Piatnica, and Wizna between July and September 1941 that Schaper's men were the perpetrators... The method used to kill the Jews of Jedwabne was exactly the same that had been employed by the Gestapo [Einsatztrupen] to kill the Jews of Radzilow only three days
earlier." Alexander B. Rossino, historian at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. (Article to be printed in Polin, Volume 16, 2003.)
During the initial investigation of 1964, German investigator Opitz in Ludwigsburg, Germany, concluded that Hauptsturmfuerer Hermann Schaper's Einsatzkommando conducted mass execution of Jews in Jedwabne.
Nonetheless, Schaper gave conflicting answers to his interrogators.
First, he lied that in 1941 he had been a truck driver and he used false names. Later he claimed to have been an administrative officer, and another time a hunter of double agents, when the Gestapo was busy finding and killing communist commissars and Jews.
Court documents at Ludwigsburg archives show that the chief of the German civilian administration in the Nazi occupied Lomza district, Count van der Groeben testified that Schaper conducted executions of Jews in his district, which included the town of Jedwabne.
That notwithstanding, legal proceedings against Schaper were terminated Sept. 2, 1965 despite positive identification of the defendant by Jewish survivors of the execution in Radzilow and Tykocin.
In 1974 Schaper's case was reopened and in 1976 a German court in Giesen, Hessen, pronounced the then 68 year old Schaper guilty, together with four other members of the komando SS Zichenau- -Schroettersburg, of executions of Poles and Jews. Schaper was sentenced to a six-year prison, but was soon released for medical reasons. (Facts of Schaper's dossier are quoted from article by Thomas Urban, reporter of the Suddeutsche Zeitung; Polish text in Rzeczpospolita, Sept 1-2, 2001.)
To make any legal sense in 2002 the Polish Government should have demanded either extradition or deposition under oath of Schaper by a German court and not an interview which has no legal meaning and can not give legally binding information.
Prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, , 2002-08-31
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An Open Letter to the Institute of National Memory, Warsaw, Poland
Easter 2002, USA
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The crime at Jedwabne of July 10, 1941, was not investigated by means of modern forensic medicine, as the exhumation was interrupted at the very beginning.
The remains were examined and the list of the entire content of the two mass-graves was not made.
It is legally inadmissible in the countries of the rule of law such as the USA, France, Great Britain, Israel, and Poland to interrupt a forensic investigation of a crime for religious reasons and thus to exclude from detailed examination available pieces of evidence which are necessary to establish the cause of death of each victim and the exact number of murdered persons, as those buried in Jedwabne.
In Jedwabne there are two graves - in one on the inside of the barn are buried men, who could put up a desperate resistance and in the other grave, located along the barn, are buried mostly old people, women, and children, who perished in the fire.
The two graves indicate an organized method of killing by people who had a plan and used some 100
gallons of gasoline.It is a duty of the Institute of National Remembrance to complete the investigation of such important matter. It is necessary to learn the truth of the atrocities in Jedwabne using all aspects of the forensic medicine in order to prevent erroneous speculation.
For this reason the exhumation of the two graves in Jedwabne must be resumed and completed.
Teresa Berezowska, nauczyciel,
Wieslaw Binienda, profesor inzynierii
Piotr Chelkowski, profesor historii Bliskiego Wschodu
Jadwiga Checinska, inzynier
Stanislaw Checinski, Dr. Inz.
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, profesor historii
Janusz Chodkowski, inzynier
Kazimierz Cimoszko
Krzysztof Cios, profesor matematyki
Ryszard Ciskowski
Kamil Dziewanowski, profesor historii
Stanislaw Garstka, chirurg
Aleksander Gella, profesor socjologii
Lech A. Halko, Dipl. Arch.
Zbigniew Haszlakiewicz, inzynier architekt
Andrzej Hempel, inzynier
Zdzislaw Jurek, lekarz
Jan Moor-Jankowski, profesor medycyny sadowej
Dorota Kaminska, psycholog
Marek Kaminski, lekarz
Juliusz Kirejczyk, inzynier
Iwona Kirejczyk, nauczyciel
Andrzej Kumor, redaktor
Jan Komski artysta malarz
Zofia Korbonska
Zdzislaw Krynski, lekarz
Franciszek Lachowicz, profesor polonistyki
George Levosinski
Edmund Lewandowski
Jan M. Lorys, Dyrektor Museum Polskiego w Ameryce
Zofia Laszewska, lekarz
Anna Madura, lekarz
Andrzej Madura, inzynier
Wanda Malysa Pietrzyk
Anna Mazurkiewicz
Maria Michejda, MD. DMSC
Krzysztof Michejda, Ph. D. Biochemist
Oskar Michejda, dr. inzynier
Frank Milewski, radca finansowy
Irena Mirecka
Tadeusz Mirecki, informatyk
Stanislaw Mostwin
Ks. Pralat dr. Roman Nir
Ks. Kanonik Edward Orlowski
Janina Palmowska
Antoni Palmowski, inzynier
Jerzy Petryniak, lekarz biochemik
Donald Pietruk, konsultant
Teresa Pietruk, lekarz
Marta Podhorecka
Edward Podhorecki, podpulkownik dipl.
Magdalena Pogonowska, lekarz radiolog
Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, pisarz
Wladyslaw Poncet, radio-dziennikarz
Janusz Przemieniecki, profesor inzynierii
Wojciech Roszkowski, profesor historii
Wladyslaw Socha, profesor medycyny sadowej
Maria Szonert Binienda, radca prawny
Witold Sokolski, inzynier
Lech Jerzy Swierbutowicz, lekarz anastezjolog
Waclaw Szybalski, profesor onkologii
Andrzej Targowski, profesor informatyki
Ryszard Tyndorf, prawnik
Monika Wagner, profesor historii literatury i cywilizacji
Wienczyslaw Wagner, profesor prawa
Wojciech Wierzewski, Ph. D., redaktor
Tadeusz Witkowski, historyk literatury,
Aldona Wos, lekarz
Wanda Wos, hanlowiec
Zenon Wos, inzynier
Anna Poraj-Wybranowska, politolog
Zdzislaw Zakrzewski, inzynier
Miroslawa Zawadzka, inzynier
Andrzej Zawadzki, inzynier
Teodor Zawistowski, profesor socjologii
Jerzy Z. Zemajtis, dr. inzynier
Dr. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski and others, , 2002-03-29
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Mr. James Hoge, Jr., Editor September 14, 2002
Foreign Affairs
58 East 69th street
N. Y. C., NY 10021
Dear Mr. Hoge:
In your letter of September 9, 2002, to Mr. Moskal, you refer to me by name, therefore, please, allow me to answer some of your basic contentions.
You treat the massacre of Jedwabne of 1941 as a Polish national crime - a serious misrepresentation of the history of Poland. It is a tremendous disappointment to see the editor of a prestigious publication having taken such a dubious and unsupportable position.
It is a well-established historical fact that the Germans were in charge and controlled the commission of their atrocities at gun point. The Brumberg-Gross contention that the secondary roles in German crimes by people who were held at gun point, represent Polish national responsibility is absurd.
You apparently share with Abraham Brumberg his contention of Poland's "discredited heritage" (quoted in your letter).
Abraham Brumberg denigrates and belittles the fact that more Poles than members of any other nationality sacrificed their lives in saving Jews from the Nazis. About 100,000 Poles were executed by Germans for helping Jews. Ironically many thousands of Poles were imprisoned and sent to the Gulag
under the false accusation that they had collaborated with the Nazis. In reality their real crime was that they were a threat to Stalin's complete domination of the Polish state. The fact is that during the war
and its aftermath a greater number of Polish Christians were killed than Polish Jews. Polandapparently lost the great majority of her pre-war patriotic Jewish intelligentsia which would now be speaking up in
defense of Poland's good name.
I am unaware of any organized Jewish efforts to save Polish lives at the time when Jews were in disproportionally favored position within the Stalin's terror apparatus as members of Polish government. Poles, who know their history, are outraged by having the crimes of Nazi invaders attributed to them.
Until the site of the atrocity in Jedwabne is fully exhumed and thoroughly examined by forensic scientists, you are not justified in accepting a Brumberg-Gross version of events.
These authors as well as self serving opportunistic politicians in the Polish government and their supporters have their reasons for propagating their version of events, which is largely contradicted by reliable eyewitness accounts and lacking in scientific evidence.
The size and nature of the two graves at Jedwabne make impossible the assertions of J. T. Gross and Abraham Brumberg
The long term friendship of two peoples can not be based on Voltaire's notion that history is a lie agreed upon.
Sincerely,
Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, a survivor of 64 months of Gestapo prisons and Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin (number 28865), is the author of "Poland, an Illustrated History" (Hippocrene Books, New York, 2000),
Prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, , 2002-09-14
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THE TRUTH ABOUT JEDWABNE AND HEROIC DEEDS OF THE POLISH NATION IN THE 20TH CENTURY
Prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
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An Introduction to Those Who Risked Their Lives
The controversy
The memory of the massacre of Jedwabne of July 10, 1941 was revived in 2001 by a film and a book both entitled "Neighbors." The film was sponsored by George Soros through his Batory Foundation in Poland. It
was produced by Agnieszka Arnold while the book was written by J. T. Gross, a sociology professor at the New York University, an immigrant form Poland, now one of directors of the Batory Foundation.
An extraordinary coverage of the alleged massacre was staged in the Polish media. It exceeded anything Poland has ever experienced. The worldwide media campaign accused the local Poles of having committed the atrocity and accused the Polish nation of complicity in the Holocaust. The massacre of Jedwabne of 1941 as a Polish national crime - a serious misrepresentation of the history of Poland. It is a well-established historical fact that the Germans were in charge and controlled the commission of their atrocities at gun point. The contention that the secondary roles in German crimes by people who were held at gun point, represent Polish national responsibility is absurd. Thus, many Poles saw the media frenzy as a mixture of the Jewish cult of the Holocaust acting out as a cult of vengeance and associated with it Holocaust profiteering that dengrates and belittles the fact that more Poles than members of any other nationality sacrificed their lives in saving Jews from the Nazis.
To describe the massacre of Jedwabne of 1941 as a Polish national crime is a serious misrepresentation of the history of Poland. It is a tremendous disappointment to see the editors of prestigious publications such as the New York Times and later the Foreign Affairs having taken such a dubious and unsupportable position. It is a
well-established historical fact that the Germans were in charge and controlled the commission of their atrocities at gun point. The contention that the secondary roles in German crimes by people who were held at gun point, represent Polish national responsibility is absurd.
Unfortunately, the defamation campaign was also supported by post-communists led by president Kwasniewski and a prominent leftists daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. These post communists are former members of the communist elite who managed to stay in power.
In contradistinction to his disdain Kharkov, Ukraine at the graves of Polish leadership community members, killed by the Soviets in 1940, where he became so intoxicated that he could hardly walk, this time
president Kwasniewski was very solemn and wore a yarmulke at the graves of Jews who were killed by burning in a barn in 1941. Mr. Kwasniewski apologized in the in the name of those Poles who in their conscience
felt the need to apologize to the to the Jews for the horrible crime of sixty years ago. Naturally the world press carried news of the presidential apology as a proof of the Polish national guilt in the massacre. The politics of apology and contrition was soon characterized by anticommunists as a way to smear the Polish nation with a German crime in order to whitewash communist crimes on one hand and provide ammunition to Holocaust profiteers, on the other, as Poland was readied by them for a shakedown after Germany and Switherland.
Until the site of the atrocity in Jedwabne is fully exhumed and thoroughly examined by forensic scientists, no one is justified in accepting the version of events presented by Gross. This author as well as self serving opportunistic politicians in the Polish government and their supporters have their reasons for propagating their version of events, which is largely contradicted by reliable eyewitness accounts and lacking in scientific evidence. The size and nature of the two graves at Jedwabne make physically impossible such assertions as those of J. T. Gross.
Long before Gross's book "Neighbors," was published by Princeton University Press, 2001, the New York Times published an extensive interview with the author. The hardcover book itself was unusual. The text was much shorter than usual; the font and the margins were made larger to fill the space. The question arises why such an effort to make the book appear more important? What is the historic perspective of the Polish-Jewish controversy? Obviously the long term friendship of two peoples can not be based on Voltaire's notion that history is a lie agreed upon.
I am unaware of any organized Jewish efforts to save Polish lives at the time when Jews were in disproportionally favored position within the Stalin's terror apparatus as members of Polish government. Poles, who know their history, are outraged by having the crimes of Nazi invaders attributed to them.
The history tells us that Poland saved Jews from extinction in late medieval and early modern times as Jew had been expelled from virtually every other country in Europe; however, the Jews were not integrated in Poland. During the century of partitions the masses of formerly Polish Jews were interested to find accommodation with the partitioning powers, while Poles wanted to rebuild Poland. Despite the fact that in 1918 all Jewish organizations were against the rebirth of Poland, in1926 Poland gave full citizenship to some 700,000 Jewish refugees from USSR ,while at the same time Jewish refugees who escaped to France remained stateless until WWII. In 1938 some 20,000 to 30,000 Jews evicted from Germany were resettled in Poland by Polish authorities.
Unprecedented terror as a price of the heroism of the Polish nation.
The great heroic deeds of Poland of the 20th century benefitted the entire world. Such was the derailing of Lenin's world revolution based on the Moscow- Berlin axis in 1920 as well as ruining of Hitler's strategy for domination of the entire world in 1939. Poland's heroism lived on in the wartime combat of Polish soldiers, airmen, and seamen, as well as Europe's largest resistance movement and the very existence of the Polish underground state under enemy occupation.
In order to understand why during the Second World War Poland suffered the worst terror in Europe at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviets we have to remember how the Poles first derailed Lenin's attempt to stage communist world revolution in 1920 and then eighteen years later how they wracked Hitler's plans for the domination of the world.
Derailing of Lenin's world revolution
After World War I the Poles declared their independence on Nov. 11, 1918. To keep their independence, the Poles had to win borderland wars.
By far the most important was the Polish victory, led by Marshal Józef Pilsudski, over Lenin's Red Army in 1920. Lenin had attempted to overrun Poland and form a Moscow-Berlin alliance in order to stage a worldwide
communist revolution.
Germans resented their defeat in World War I; at the time there were six millions communists in Germany and millions more who were ready to accept a communist government in return for the re-annexation of western and northern Poland, once those lands would be occupied by the Soviets. The Polish victory deprived Lenin of a chance for a worldwide revolution. The Soviets then retaliated with terror and eventually murdered more Polish nationals than did the Germans, during the World War II, in 1939-1941. In the Spring of 1940 alone the NKVD
executed 21,857 members of Polish leadership community. About four-fifths of all victims were betrayed to the NKVD by local leftists mostly of Jewish background.
The doctrine of Lebensraum and world domination
Meanwhile the doctrine of Lebensraum was revived in Germany. The doctrine of Lebensraum or "German living space" was first stated in 1848 during the All-German Congress at Frankfurt, when an attempt was made to
unify Germany, fragmented for centuries into more than three hundred fifty independent principalities. The same year Pan-Slavic Congress at Prague bitterly reacted to the doctrine of Lebensraum as a new version of the 1000-year-old German "push to the east to conquer Slavic lands, known as the "Drang nach dem Slavischen Osten"or simply as the "Drang nach Osten." Soon along the doctrine of Lerbensraum appeared plans for German domination of the world.
"Mein Kampf" of 1924 as an early warning to Poland
Karl Haushofer, a mentor of Rudolf Hess, founded Zeitschrift für Geopolitik, with German domination of world affairs as his editorial mission. *When Hess was imprisoned in 1924, together with Hitler in Landsberg, (now Gorzów Wielkopolski in Poland), Haushofer visited Hess and Hitler in prison at least eight times. It was during the time when Hitler dictated to Hess his "Mein Kampf", in which the doctrine of the Lebensraum was included. (After both Hitler and Hess were released from prison, Hess became Hitler's private secretary and in 1933 was appointed the "Stellvertreter des Führers" or a deputy Führer.) Thus, since 1924 with the publication of Hitler's program the Poles were aware that these grandiose German plans could be realized only at the expense of Poland and other Slavic lands.
When Hitler became the chancellor, the essence of the policies of his government at all times was the implementation of the doctrine of Lebensraum. In order to accomplish German domination of the globe Hitler considered the defeat of Russia as fundamental for German control of the Eurasian Heartland and the eventual subjugation of the rest of the world, called the Rimland. Hitler following the teachings of Haushofer regarded the British Empire to be eventually dominated by Germany as an indispensable part of the world order. For this reason in 1940, when some 300,000 British soldiers were most vulnerable during their escape across the Channel, Hitler decided to let them go rather than killing most of them, which he could easily have done.
Hitler's urgency to start the war
Hitler, in an advanced stage of Parkinson's disease, was in a hurry to start an anti-Soviet crusade to build his "1,000 year Reich" from Riga to the Black Sea and control world's main oil resources for his "war of the engines." Hitler hoped that Poland, a physical barrier between Germany and the USSR, could be persuaded to join Germany and Japan in the conquest of the Soviet Union.
Hitler was seen by most of the Germans as a "man of destiny"and an "incarnation of Germany." He himself believed in this preposterous notion and repeatedly stated that he preferred to go to war in 1939 when he was fifty, rather than later, when he expected to be less vigorous at fifty five or sixty. He was bothered by trembling of his left hand and thought that his Parkinson's disease markedly shortened his life expectancy.
Warnings about the risks of a world war by several leaders of the German military-industrial complex only served to reinforce Hitler's belief in his role as the one and only leader in German history who, thanks to almost total public support, could lead Germany to start a global war for Lebensraum and world supremacy by the German race. Thus, Germany was about to bring a tragic end to the European phase of Jewish history, when the vast majority of all Jews lived in Europe.
Hitler's efforts to get Poland to join Germany and Japan in an attack on the USSR
Hitler admired the Poles for inflicting a crushing defeat in 1920 on Lenin's invasion of Poland and derailing Soviet attempt to advance westward, "over the corpse of white Poland, to worldwide communist revolution."
Hitler hoped to include some 3,500,000 Polish soldiers in his anti-Soviet crusade because his generals told him that Germany did not have enough men to win the Lebensraum and dominate the Eurasian Heartland. (A well known fact is that Germany was short 1,000,000 soldiers per year on the front lines from 1941 on.) Thus, Hitler, warned by his generals that Germany had insufficient military manpower for his grandiose schemes, strived in 1935-1939 to have on his side Poland with its potential 3,500,000 soldiers. The Berlin government felt that
combining German and Polish forces in Europe with Japanese forces in Asia would bring a decisive victory over the USSR and with it a German control over the world's main oil fields which were also essential to
secure Hitler's world domination.
Hitler's efforts to persuade Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact were recorded in detail by Józef Lipski in his book Diplomat in Berlin 1933-39 covering the period when the author served as Polish ambassador to Germany.
Already on Aug. 5, 1935 Hitler declared that good Polish-German relations are of primary importance. German proposals included: military cooperation, alliance against Russia, an air pact, etc. A year later on Aug. 31, 1936 German gold payments to Poland for transit through Pomerania between Germany and East Prussia was settled
and Hitler declared that it was as a financial and not political matter.
On Nov. 25, 1936 the Anti-Comintern Pact against the USSR was signed by Germany and Japan and on Aug. 13, 1937 the Germans met with the Japanese for consultations on their pressure onPoland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact and their analysis of Polish politics.
Japanese Gen. Sawada suggested a carrot and stick approach. On one hand the Nazis were to order ethnic Germans in Poland to cease anti-Polish hostilities and on the other they were to concentrate the German army on Poland's borders and occupy Klajpeda-Memel in Lithuania (the latter happened in March 1939). Meanwhile Herman Goering used his frequent "hunting trips" to Polandto persuade the Poles to join the Anti-Comintern Pact.
When on Nov. 6, 1937 Italy Joined the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact - the need for Poland's participation in the pact was stressed.
Three days later Poland's Foreign Minister Beck commented evasively on the participation of Poland in the Anti-Comintern Pact. However the next day on Nov. 10, 1937 German and Polish Ambassadors to the Quirinal discussed the pact in Musolini's residence. (At the same time Vaticanconsidered the USSR to be more dangerous to the Church than was Hitler's Germany.)
On Jan, 1938 Italy proposed a membership in the Anti-Comintern Pact to Poland, Spain, and Brasil.
Three weeks later on Feb. 4, 1938 German Minister von Ribbentrop intensified his campaign to get Poland into the Anti-Comintern Pact. Two months later, on March 31, 1938 German pressure was exerted on Poland to sign the Anti- Comintern Pact in a direct conference.
On Sept. 27, 1938 during the Czech crisis Germany asked again about Poland's attitude towards the pact. A month later, on Oct. 24, 1938 Germany offered a general settlement of Polish-German problems within the pact. Three months later, on Jan. 26, 1939 Ribbentrop was told in Warsaw that Poland will not join the Anti-Comintern Pact and Polish participation in German and Japanese attack on the USSR was out of question.
When on March 31, 1939 Poland, Gr. Britain and France exchanged common defense guarantees, Poland shaped the history of the world.
Poland did this by refusing to take part in a simultaneous attack on the USSR from the east and the west - such an attack that most likely would have destroyed the Soviet state. Hitler realized that Poland's refusal critically weakened his plans for the domination of the world and reacted with a fury verging on criminal insanity.
On Aug. 22, 1939 Hitler delivered a secret speech in which he stated that the complete destruction of Poland and especially its population was his primary target. Hitler talked about the conquest and colonization of Poland. He ordered his military commanders to use the utmost ferocity in merciless killing Polish men, women, and children.
Hitler's orders issued at this crucial moment had nothing to do with the extermination of Jews, however these orders were a retaliation for derailment by the Poles of Hitler's strategy to conquer the Euro-Asian Heartland.
German betrayal of Japan, German-Soviet pact
After Germany and Japan had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936, Japan attacked the USSR in 1938. Later, in Aug. 1939 in the middle of a bloody battle for control of the Trans-Siberian railroad the Japanese learned that Germany betrayed them by signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviets in order to partition Poland and get a common border with the USSR.
Soviet-Japanese battle on Aug 20 - 23, 1939 on the Khalka River in Mongolia was won by Marshal G. Zhukov who used new tactics of coordinated attacks of tanks, assault aircraft, and deception, which consisted of broadcasting of sounds of moving tanks by microphones far away from the location of the intended attack. Thus, when Japan expected German help against Russia, Germanywas signing a non-aggression pact with the Soviets.
On Aug 23, 1939 the Soviet-German pact on non-aggression set the stage for the outbreak of World War II.
The secret clauses on the partition of Poland opened the stage of the Hitler-Stalin partnership which resulted in obliteration of Poland and of mass murders and deportations of Polish citizens. The full content of the Soviet-German pact was immediately revealed to the government of the United States by Hans von Horwath, an employee of the German ministry of foreign affairs in Berlinand by agents in Moscow. The United States did not warn Poland about the secret content of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Japan felt betrayed by the new German partnership with the USSR. The Japanese lodged a sharp protest in Berlin against the German-Soviet pact.
The Soviets were quick to participate in the fourth partition of Poland and hoped for a long war of attrition on Germany's western front as Great Britain and France would declare war on Germany in fulfillment of their common defense treaty with Poland. The pact with Germany strengthened the Soviet position in negotiations for conclusion of the armistice with Japan on Sept. 15, 1939, two days before Soviet invasion of Poland.
The Japanese never forgave the Germans for the betrayal. Even after Germany declared war on the United States four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Japan did not renew its attacks on the USSR in 1941 which would have helped Germany to take Moscow and defeat the Soviet Union by pinning down the Siberian army (and keeping it from rescuing the Soviet capital).
Deciphering of Enigma and the plan to attack Poland
On July 25, 1939, Poland gave Great Britain and France each a copy of a linguistic deciphering electro-mechanical device for the German secret military code system Enigma, complete with specifications, perforated
cards, and updating procedures. Thanks to the Polish solution for breaking the Enigma, the British project Ultra was able to interpret German secret messages during the entire war of 1939-1945. The invasion of Normandy would not have been possible without it. In 1999, the American code expert David A. Hatch of the Center of Cryptic History, NSA, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland wrote that "the breaking of the Enigma by Poland was one of the cornerstones of Allied victory over Germany."
The Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Józef Beck, following the strategic advice of the late Marshal Pilsudski, held both the Germans and the Soviets at bay as long as it was possible. The Polish refusal by the end of January 1939 to join the Anti-Comintern Pact derailed Hitler's plans and caused him to lose his chance to join Japan in the attack on the USSR. Poland, Great Britain, and France exchanged common defense guarantees on March 31, 1939. Hitler signed Fall Weiss plan on April 11 and ordered the attack on Poland on September 1, 1939.
Fall 1939 - Winter 1941. The high tide of German conquests and the Soviet occupation
German aggression resulted in a complete destruction of the power basis for the control of the globe by Europeans which Germany began with the First World War. The Jewish population of 8,700,000 was trapped under the control of the Berlin government; at least sixty percent (or about 5,100,000) were exterminated by the Germans during World War II. The second world war was not fought to save the Jews. However, during first years of war the rate of German and Soviet murder of the Poles was much higher than that of the Jews.
On Sept. 21, 1939 Reinhad Heydreich, the head of German National Security Office (which united state and Nazi party police) ordered to concentrate Jews and isolate them from the Poles in newly created ghettos, each administered by a Jewish council called the Judenrat, which was "fully responsible... for precise and timely execution of all orders [given by German authorities]" Heydrich knew that military horror would lead Ghetto Jewish Police to horrible crimes. Jews were to wear bands displaying the Star of David. Jews 14 to 60 years old were to be used as a slave labor force working on starvation diet.
German plans for the starvation of ghetto inmates was sabotaged by illegal deliveries of about 250 tons of flour daily to the Warsaw Ghetto alone. Józef Dabrowski and others were shot by Germans for such deliveries. By then the daily food ration in Warsaw was 184 calories for a Jew, 669 for a Pole, and 2,613 for a German. Eighty percent of the food consumed by the Jews was smuggled into the ghettos by Poles.
Despite these facts, German propaganda, stating that the Poles rather than the Germans were the principal enemies of the Jews, was still effective in the ghetto. Neither the extensive smuggling of food into the ghetto by the Poles nor the illegal Polish trade convinced the Jews that Germans, not Poles, were their deadly enemies.
The Jewish Ghetto Police was to enforce German policies towards the Jews in each ghetto. Jewish Ghetto Police were to arrest non-Jews who made purchases in stores exclusively designated for the Jews or brought
merchandise or food with them. Arrested Polish gentiles were to be turned over to the Germans for execution. A number of such executions actually took place in Konin and other localities. Polish underground courts prosecuted traitors and criminals during the war. Crime was rampant inside and outside ghettos. It included extortions, robberies and murders.
During the Soviet invasion a very visible part of the Jewish and Byelorussian population received the Red Army with triumphal arches, flowers, and symbolic gifts of bread and salt, trying to ally themselves with the invaders. Before long, many were collaborating in NKVD arrests, deportations, and the killings of Polish cultural leaders, business people and their families. A Jewish lawyer from Lwów observed:"When there was a political meeting, parade, or any other happy occasion the visual impression was always the same ...the Jews [were most visible]."
A paradoxical situation developed. Jews started to see themselves as first class citizens, much above local Christians, while in fact the Soviets were in a short time abolishing all Jewish communal institutions and destroying the rich cultural Jewish heritage in eastern Poland. Jewish religious schools were closed, teaching of the Hebrew language forbidden, Zionist movement and youth organizations were declared illegal, Jewish political parties were liquidated, and members of the traditional Jewish leadership community were arrested.
The German-Soviet Population Exchange Commission received from Jewish refugees applications for permission to return to German-occupied Poland; soon the lists of the applicants were turned over to the NKVD and used for their deportation despite the fact that many Jewish refugees shouted "Long live Hitler."
The Soviets deprived the Jewish inhabitants of eastern Poland of their ethnic and cultural identity while they made the Jews feel superior to others in their access to government jobs, universities, professions,
etc.
However, anyone, whether Christian or Jew, who lived comfortably before the war, was automatically considered by the Soviets to be an enemy of the Soviet Union. Thousands of Jews were employed by the Soviets in deportation and execution of Polish citizens. Among the deportees 52 percent were Poles, 30 percent were Jews, and 18 percent were Ukrainians and Byelorussians.
Soviet order of June 24, 1941 to execute imprisoned counter-revolutionaries
German attack on the USSR stared on June 22, 1941. In the Polish area occupied by the Soviets there were about 40,000 Polish citizens imprisoned, mostly non-Jews. Two days later Laurenty Beria ordered the execution of the prisoners. Some 30,000 Polish citizens were murdered within two weeks. Soviet mass murders of Polish civilians played an important role when the government in Berlin learned about these executions and used them to brutalize the war. Massive pogroms of Jews and communists were soon ordered on the newly conquered land.
Berlin's order of June 29, 1941 to hide the German role in executions of Jews
Five days after Beria's order to conduct massive executions of Polish "counter-revolutionaries" in the NKVD prisons, the government in Berlin formulated its propaganda that the population terrorized by the Soviets started massive pogroms of Jews and communists. Therefore Reinhard Heydrich ordered his men to eradicate all traces of their presence at the executions staged by the Germans. The Nazis were able to radicalize the war and make it even more brutal as German soldiers saw masses of corpses and among the dead some German prisoners of war still in uniform. Thus, Soviet mass murders at the start of German-Soviet war put Germans into a killing frenzy. They shot to death one million civilians, mostly Jews, up till the end of 1941.
In reality all mass executions of Jews and communists were conducted according to German plans and under German control. The usual German scheme was to gather the local Jews and make them wash the bodies of the
victims of recent Soviet executions for identification by their relatives. Afterwards the Jews had to bury the corpses. Once the burials were over the Germans killed the Jews and proceeded to eradicated all traces of their presence at the execution sites.
Soviet collaborators, mostly Jews, fled with the NKVD, only to return at the end of the war to help in bloody pacification of Poland in the process of converting it into a Soviet satellite state.
As we all know, despite the crucial Polish contributions and sacrifices for the Allies' victory, Poland was betrayed by Roosevelt and Churchill first at Teheran and then at Yalta; it was handed over to become a Soviet satellite state, after a ruthless pacification by the communist terror apparatus.
Truth vs. propaganda about the tragedy of Jedwabne
One of the tragedies resulting from the brutalization of the war in the wake of mass murders ordered by Beria happened in Jedwabne, north east of Warsaw.
Sixty years later a "media battle of Jedwabne" resounded in Poland and elsewhere. Dr. M. J. Chodakiewicz, of the University of Virginia showed in his study that during the war more Christians than Jews were killed in the town of Jedwabne. In the discursive world of the media Holocaust profiteers feeding on fear and selective truth presented the tragedy of Jedwabne as a Polish national crime. Using systematic distortion of information taken out of the true context of war and terror, authors like Jan.T. Gross make the horrors of occupation virtually invisible. Polish Christians are shown as the vile and sadistic criminals whom the Nazis tried to restrain.
On July 10, 1941 German executioners collected Jews of Jedwabne in the town square and drove them by physical violence to the site of their murder. First they shot some 50 Jews and then burned alive 250 others
(not 1600 or 1800 as inaccurately reported in the American press on the basis of false information published by J. T. Gross who ignored Soviet and other sources as well as German archives in his book Neighbors , published in 2001). The number of victims will not be known until a full exhumation and detailed forensic studies will be performed at the site of the massacre - now we are left with preliminary estimates that range from 100 to 400 victims.
The executioners of the Einsatztrupen enlisted help of several ethnic Germans (the "Volksdeutche" known as traitors and spies), and a group of primitive and illiterate criminals, both local and from out of town, as well as possibly a few "avengers." The latter must have believed that they and their relatives had suffered murderous persecution by Soviet security officers and deportation to the Gulag because of the betrayal by some of the Jews living in Jedwabne. German executioners forced an additional number of Poles, at gunpoint, with blows of rifle butts, and with threats, to help bring Jewish victims to the town square (the marketplace) ostensibly to clean the pavement.
According to eyewitnesses still living today, uniformed Germans committed this wartime atrocity. They forced some 300 Jews to march in a mock- funeral procession while carrying a concrete head of Lenin that had been removed from a monument.
The Germans of the Einsatzgrupen divided the marchers into two groups. The first group consisted of some 50 Jews, men strong enough to put up a fight. The second group was formed from the approximately 250 remaining
Jews, mostly old people, women, and children.
While the second group was held back, the first group was directed into a 62.4 by 23 feet wooden barn. The keys to the barn were confiscated a day earlier by uniformed Germans, who removed agricultural machinery from it and prepared it for the execution of the Jews next day. (The daughter of the owner of the barn repeatedly testified about this facts, most recently on the CBS "60 minutes" on March 24, 2002.)
The 50 Jewish men were ordered to dig a large grave inside the barn, ostensibly for burying Lenin's concrete head. (J. T. Gross wants his readers to believe that the head of Lenin was buried in the Jewish
cemetery.) As the diggers stood near the grave, the Germans shot them and then ordered several Poles to drag into the shallow grave the bodies of the Jews, some slain and some wounded but possibly still alive. Lenin's concrete head was placed on top of the victims in the grave #1. The German executioners then ordered the second, more defenseless, group into the barn, which moments later would be turned into a gigantic funeral pyre.
Stefan Boczkowski, Roman Chojnowski and five other eyewitnesses reported seeing the following:
A small German military truck loaded with soldiers and gasoline canisters quickly pulled up to the barn crowded with Jews. Some of the soldiers jumped down from the truck, and those soldiers staying in the truck handed them the canisters, whose contents they poured on all outer walls of the barn. The flames engulfed the barn at once. Pyrotechnic analysis indicates that the Germans used approximately 100 gallons (over 400 liters) of gasoline to soak some 1000 square ft. of walls of the barn in order to engulf all of it with fire, burn it and
in process suffocate the victims (by inhalation of the hot smoke).
Later (reportedly the next day) the Germans ordered Poles at gunpoint to bury the partly burned bodies emanating a horrible odor. Remains of about 250 victims were buried in the grave #2 located along the barn (the high content of water in human bodies requires temperature of some 800 degrees Centigrade for more than thirty minutes in order to obtain a complete cremation).
At that time there was no gasoline available to the local population of Jedwabne (only a small amount of hydrocarbons in form of kerosene for lamps was available to the rural population). Such small amounts of kerosene (as mentioned by J. T. Gross) with its flashpoint of about 50 degrees Centigrade could not produce a sudden fire to engulf the entire barn at once.
In the 2001 investigation by the Polish government bodies of the victims of the July 10, 1941 massacre were found buried in the graves #1 and #2.
Thorough search and drilling some 170 test cores in the vicinity found no other graves of the 1941 massacre of the Jews in Jedwabne; however, at the request of an Orthodox Rabbi who objected, rigorous forensic studies and full exhumation of all victims and the determination by autopsy of causes of death of every one of them was prematurely terminated. Thus, only an approximate number of victims could be estimated by the size of the two graves. Unfortunately these unanswered questions inevitably discredit the veracity of the final report of the official investigation by the Polish government's agency, the Institute of National Memory (IPN).
The veracity of Gross's book and the film Neighbors is further compromised by a baseless, non-corroborated claim that a cut off head of a Jewish female was kicked around in Jedwabne. Jerzy Robert Nowak, the author of the book "100 Lies By Gross" (published in Poland) claims that after its publication he determined additional factual errors in Neighbors.
"The book of Prof. Gross can not be considered as a serious scholarly work: it is rather a tendentious propagandistic pamphlet. He jumps to farfetched conclusions before examining the existing evidence." wrote to the New York Times M. K. Dziewanowski, Professor of History, author of: History of Soviet Russia, 5th edition, Prentice Hall, 1996.
As Alexander B. Rossino, historian at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. writes in an article to be printed in Polin, Volume 16, 2003:
"The evidence collected by the West Germans, including the positive identification of [Hauptsturmfuehrer Herman] Schaper by witnesses from Łomza, Tykocin, and Radzilów, suggested that it was indeed Schaper's men who carried out the killings in those locations. Investigators also suspected, based on the similarity of the methods used to destroy the Jewish communities of Radzilów, Tykocin, Rutki, Zambrów, Jedwabne, Piatnica, and Wizna between July and September 1941 that Schaper's men were the perpetrators... The method used to kill the Jews of Jedwabne was exactly the same that had been employed by the Gestapo [Einsatsgrupen] to kill the Jews of Radzilow only three days earlier."
During the initial investigation of 1964, German investigator Opitz in Ludwigsburg, Germany, concluded that Hauptsturmfuerer Hermann Schaper's Einsatskommando conducted the mass execution of Jews in Jedwabne. Nonetheless, Schaper gave conflicting answers to his interrogators. First, he lied that in 1941 he had been a truck driver and he used false names. Later he claimed to have been an administrative officer, and another time a hunter of double agents, when the Gestapo was busy finding and killing communist commissars and Jews.
Court documents at Ludwigsburg archives show that the chief of the German civilian administration in the Nazi occupied Łomża district, Count van der Groeben testified that Schaper conducted mass executions of Jews in his district, which included the town of Jedwabne. That notwithstanding, legal proceedings against Schaper were terminated Sept. 2, 1965 despite positive identification of the defendant by Jewish survivors of the execution in Radzilow and Tykocin.
In 1974 Schaper's case was reopened and in 1976 a German court in Giesen, Hessen, pronounced the then 68 year old Schaper guilty, together with four other members of the kommando SS Zichenau-Schroettersburg, of executions of Poles and Jews. Schaper was sentenced to a six-year prison, but was soon released for medical reasons. (The facts of Schaper's dossier are quoted from article by Thomas Urban, reporter of the Suddeutsche Zeitung; Polish text in Rzeczpospolita, Sept 1-2, 2001.)
To make any legal sense in 2002 the Polish Government should have demanded either the extradition or deposition under oath of Schaper by a German court and not an interview which has no legal meaning and can not
give legally binding information. However, the Polish government's agency the Institute of National Memory (IPN) gave the press a report that "Hauptsturmfuehrer Hermann Schaper confirmed known facts."
This kind of behavior by the Institute of National Memory in Warsaw is unacceptable. The men of the Institute have apparently learned from their colleges in the United States and Western Europe to manipulate information; they omit inconvenient facts and make conclusions convenient for their career objectives. This is done regardless of objective reality in order to win the favor of those in position to further their economic and professional prospects. Perhaps they have seen the wisdom of Pontius Pilate, who solved the moral dilemma by simply saying "What is truth?" He knew better than to antagonize either the government or the Jews.
Attempts to stop the Final Solution
On Jan. 20, 1942 the Wannsee Conference in Berlin finalized the plans for the implementation of the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."
The Berlin government, in the wake of its defeat in the battle of Moscow, announced invitation for bids from German industry for equipment for an industrial process of extermination of eleven million European Jews. Terrorized Jewish personnel were to be used in the extermination process, with the nominal involvement of Germans. No Jewish "germ cell" was allowed to survive. Procedural guidelines were specified.
On Dec. 4, 1942 the headquarters of the Council of Assistance for the Jews was established in Warsaw with financial support of the Polish Government-in-Exile. It had code name "Zegota" and it was unique in occupied Europe. Zegota provided over 100,000 Jews with living quarters, "Aryan" documents, food, medical care, and financial aid. It donated money for weapons for Jewish resistance fighters. However most of the help for the Jewish victims of the brutal German policies was provided by private people who risked their lives helping Jewish victims.
On Dec. 10, 1942 Polish Government-in-Exile issued an urgent appeal to the Allies, primarily addressed to the governments of the United States and Great Britain, to stop German genocidal operation by bombing the access railways, gas chambers, and crematoria. It was the only such governmental initiative during the war.
Only a small fraction of the number of Poles who were killed by the Germans because they helped Jews and those who succeeded and actually were recognized by the Israeli Yad Vashem Institute - The Holocaust
Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, as "Righteous Among Nations" could be identified because of the destruction brought by the and following Soviet occupation.
Remembering the horrific events of the war Poles and Jews must understand in the full historical context the tragedies caused by the Nazis and by the Soviets. Now is the time for full reconciliation and coming together in our joint humanity.
Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
author of: Poland, an Illustrated History (Hippocrene Books, New York, 2000), Jews in Poland, The Rise of Jews as a Nation from Congressus Judaicus in Poland to the Knesset in Israel (Hippocrene Books, New York,
1993), Poland, a Historical Atlas (Hippocrene Books, 1987).
* Karl Haushofer was influenced by Alfred Kjellen, the Swedish creator of the term "geopolitics;" Frederick Ratzell's organismic theories of the growth of nations; and Sir Halford John Mackinder, who put forth the concept of strategic importance of the Euro-Asian heartland.
Prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, , 2002-12-25
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Jedwabne and Crimes in Kresy[1]
Prof. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Jewish collaborators
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In the previous Glos, I wrote about the barbaric obliteration of a Polish village and massacre of its all inhabitants (approximately 300 people) by a Soviet-mainly Jewish, partisans in April of 1944. It was a reprisal for their attempt at organizing the village self-defense against repeated forays into village. It was also to serve as a memento to other villages not to dare to oppose the forays. I quoted fragments from books published in USA, where their Jewish authors openly boasted participation in this slaughter. Hence, I challenged Mr. Leon Kieres, the President of the Institute of the National Remembrance, why under the Institute mandate, he did not open the case of the murder of Poles from the Koniuchy village, even though the culprits were known and some of them even dared to brag.
Today, on February 23, barely few days after my article was published, I am gratified to see that the Rzeczpospolita daily, has informed that the Institute of National Remembrance (Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation) launched an investigation of the murder of Poles from the Koniuchy village. It turned out that the Canadian Polish Congress sent a letter concerning this case last February. However, it is surprising that only Rzeczpospolita reported this fact whereas, Gazeta Wyborcza and Zycie, both, wider circulation dailies, not to mention the television, did not take any notice. It is also astonishing that considering the Jewish ethnic background of the culprits, the information only mentioned the Soviet partisans. Though until now, no Soviet partisan of other than Jewish ethnicity claimed his participation in the slaughter.
Rozenblat's exposure of the Jewish communists' transgressions
The Gross's falsehoods exonerating the Jewish transgressions in Kresy are refuted by Evgenij Rozenblat, an ethnic Jew, scientist from Brest Litovski, Belorussia. He is not only an expert in Jewish history of Kresy but also he comes from the history field, whereas the Gross's background is sociology.
In the paper "Jews in the system of inter-ethnic relations in the West regions of Belorussia, 1939-1941"[2], he wrote: 'In the first weeks of war, the Jews using the situation of a power vacuum created by the fleeing representatives of the Polish administration, yet before the entry of Red Army, with or without assent of the local populace, in practically all towns and cities of Western Belorussia where they were the majority of inhabitants, erupted in a frenzy of activities. Workers guards, militias, all sorts of soviet committees, these and more were popping up quickly, all being a part of the oppression apparatus in support of the oncoming Soviet regime. Organizations they set up were busied with weapons gathering, arresting members of the Polish army and administration, and so on. In the town of Pinsk, these vigilantes arrested the Minister of Justice, Mr. Michalowski, pointed out by a member of KPZB[3], Barbara Giller'
According to "Biographic Dictionary of Polish Workers' Activists"[4], after the war, Barbara Giller (Basza, Lei) was appointed to a chair in the Central School of the Ministry of Public Security (Internal Security) in Lodz. Informing on Minister Michalkowski ended tragically for him. Sentenced to a soviet prison he died in 1941, quite likely killed among so many others during the prison evacuations just before the German onslaught.
Rozenblat stressed also participation of bolshevik Jews in armed assaults on the Polish Army in September of 1939. As per his research on an anti-Polish attack in town of Skidel so widely publicized by the Soviet historiography, the Jews constituted the majority of the assailants. While describing the role of the pro-Soviet Jewish volunteers that patrolled towns, Rozenblat wrote: 'Armed formations [tr.of Jews] were not only to protect the Jewish population in potential ethnic conflicts but they constituted often a materialized threat specific to the Polish part of population. In some cases, they instigated actions against the representatives of the Polish government. The Workers' Guards of the town of Pinsk led by former member of KPZB, Jew-Benjamin Dodiuk, along with M. Zukowski-Zilberg, G. Shklarnik, Sh. Shklarnik, Vladimir Antonovich, Abram Gorbat, Judel Kot and other Jews, shot dead on the spot the Polish army officers and policemen caught in arms. In other cases, a motive for killing was simple greed.
Jews in towns, Belorussians out in the country, both in their respective home element rivaled in perpetrating evils against Poles.'
Jewish Activists Domination of Local Administration
Denial of mass participation of the Jews in the Soviet occupation administration constitutes particularly brazen prevarication Gross repeats in his "Ghastly Decade 1939-1948"[5]. He assures (op.cit., page 78): 'The Jews are very rarely listed in the local administrative bodies.', or (op. cit., page 77) 'the participation of Jews in the various pro-Soviet committees was negligible'. To prove the point, he quotes the lists of members for few committees e.g. in the villages of Zurawice or Chotiaczow giving the non-Jewish names of Jakub and Dimitri Maksimchuk, Danelo Hantiuk, Ivan Macioha, Vasyl Shostak, etc. This is a manipulation. An unsuspecting reader would not be aware that out in the country, the pro-Soviet committees were dominated by Belorussians and Ukrainians. In towns, the situation looked differently and Gross forgets to mention it. This is where the dominance of bolshevik Jews in the pro-Soviet revolutionary committees, militias, justice, prosecutor offices was prevalent. And these particular Jews caused a great deal of hardship to the local Polish townsfolk.
To demonstrate Grosss lies, who lists the committee members of Zurawica and Chotiaczow villages, I will list members in such towns as Stanislawow, Luck and Zamosc among so many others, after September 17[6], 1939.
I am to rely mostly on testimonials of Jewish authors. In "The lesser of two evils" on the situation of Jews under the Soviet occupation in 1939-1941, the Jewish historian Dov Levin wrote[7]:'In the first days of Red Army presence in Eastern Poland, parts of Rumania and in the Baltic states, Jews were very active during the organization of the new-Soviet, order. They were visible in the guard formations of militia and in the governing bodies called revolutionary or temporary committees. The presence of Jews in these organizations was marked in towns and cities (...). Circles of Soviet military administration widely and rightly shared the view that the Jewish minority was one of the most reliable groups at that stage (...). Jews were visible in all agencies of the civil administration during the time of consolidation of the Soviet regime before official annexation of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia in November 1939'.
According to published in Jerusalem book "Pinkas Hahehillot"[8] (Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities. Poland), after entry of Soviet army into Stanislawow, Jewish communists took over many posts in the city administration. A. Eckstein became the vice-mayor, Rozental took the position of the chief of militia with his deputy Kochman, Mendel Blumenstein became the prison governor with his deputy Shkulnik, and the lawyer Hausknecht became the city postmaster.
"Non Provincial Europe"[9]-collective works, cites that after the entry of the Soviet army into the city of Luck, a Jewish communist, Menachem Librich ascended to the presidency of the city council while a Jew from Kiev, Geshonovich became the first secretary of the communist party. Dov Levin, quoted earlier, gives examples illustrating importance of the bolshevik Jews in the Soviet administration in several towns of Kresy (op. cit., pages 43-44): 'Jewish communist, freed from a prison after the break out of the war and who arrived in the town of Chelm, then already under Soviet occupation (later to be ceded to Germans) wrote that the town was in the Jewish hands. The Mayor was a Jew. All city officials and militiamen with exception of very few Poles, were Jewish communists. In Zamosc, so many Jews entered the service in the local militia, that they were the majority of its rank and file (...). Jews managed the provincial city committee in Stryj (...). According to the Jewish sources, Jews constituted 70 percent of militia in some towns of Eastern Galicia'. And further (op. cit., pages 43-44): 'Leibel Klitnik was the chief commander of the Telechany town in Pinsk region, whereas his brother Ephraim was a deputy president of the city council. Jews took the mayor posts in such towns as Dabrowica, Ostrog, Luck (...)'.
Richard C. Lukas-an American historian, in "The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944"[10] wrote: 'One of the reports estimated that 75% of high level administration were Jews in cities of Lvov, Bialystok, and Luck under the Soviet occupation'.
Zbigniew Romaniuk of Bransk quoted an opinion of a local Jew, Alter Trus on Jewish domination in the local Soviet administration: 'In town, the most important were Welwl Puszanski, Benie Fajwel-Szustels, Rufcie Pytlak-old communists, joined later by Szepsel Preiser and Chaje Man'[11]. And further: 'The new bureaucratic apparatus treated all Poles as the potential enemies'.
Nachum Alpert-a Jew from Slonim, town in the Nowogrod voivodie, wrote[12] that: 'the leading role of this town administration was held by a Jew from Minsk, Matviej Kolotov.'. According to Alpert: '[tr. Kolotov] was a simpleton. He installed his office in the County Office and in private proudly paraded his descent from a simple wage family: "My father was a whip. And he could not be ignored. Entire World was in his hands.". Kolotov appointed a veteran communist Chaim Chomsky as the chief commander of the Workers' Guard, a unit he had organized.'
Jewish author, M. Amihai, while writing on the situation in the county city of Sambor in Lvov voivodie, stated[13]: 'Many Jews joined the city and government services. Russians trusted more Jews than Poles and Ukrainians and this is why important city positions were given to the Jews'.
Former soldier of the Home Army, Witold Andruszkiewicz reminisced in Glos Polski[14], that in his home town of Ejszyszki after entry of the Soviet army: 'Right from the beginning, Jews took most of the posts in the local administration and security apparatus'.
Wadiusz Kiesz, the hospital head doctor, recalled[15] that Jews monopolized the power in his home town of Boreml after September 17, 1939: 'In town, after Soviets had taken power, a town Communist Party Committee was formed, characterized by its monolithic Jewish ethnicity. Everything became directly dependent on its opinion-whom to deport to East, references issued, which category to slot a person into.'.
Karol Liszewski (prof. Ryszard Szawloski) wrote[16] that in Nadworna, where the Soviet forces arrived in September 22, 1939: 'entire town administration was taken by the local Jews.'
According to Wladyslaw Swirski, as per reports coming from the Polish Canadian immigrant circles, (Mark Paul-author of works on Polish-Jewish relations during 1939-1941), in Bogdanowka near Zborowa, a local communist party was led by a Jew, Basia Szapiro. Her brother-in-law, surname Lipszyc, was the Secretary of the city council. In the red militia, a big figure was a local horse trader, another Jew, Josz Pinkas.
" implacably omnipresent"
To make reader better understand the enormity of Gross's mendacity when he contradicts the fact of the Jews' dominance of the local Soviet administration in Kresy, I am to refer to the reports of other Jew witnesses.
For instance, Henryk Reiss, recalled[17] the first years of the Soviets in Lvov (1939-1941): 'then in Lvov to be a Jew helped in life. Soviets did not trust Poles. They did not trust Ukrainians who dreamed of free Ukraine, a Ukraine not part of the Soviet Union. This left only the Jews. Jews who welcomed Soviets with flowers like liberators. The Polish government in exile in London, appealed for non-cooperation with the Soviet occupant. Poles, at least at first, did not volunteered to work. They waited. Jews could not or did not want to wait. Positions came by easily, especially for a Jew (...). A ninety percent of the administration in our enterprise was the Jews. Similar situation existed in other enterprises and cooperatives in Lvov, be it industrial, manufacturing or commercial sector. This is not surprising that Poles who tried not to cooperate with Russians complying with the directive of the Polish Government regarded Jews as collaborators and Bolshevik agents.'
Quoted earlier the Jewish historian, Evgenij Rozenblat also wrote: 'a significant segment of Jewish population exploited the disappearance of the Polish intelligentsia and breakdown of the administrative and economical apparatus. It was then, when masses of Jewish intelligentsia along with more numerous half-wits, flooded thus created niche taking jobs in the new bureaucratic structures (...)'.
How significant was this advance of the Jewish masses, when Jewish: 'proletariat moved from shanty towns into downtown' is clearly demonstrated by the data provided by Rozenblat (op.cit.). In January 1941 in the Pinsk region, Jews constituted 25.3% of all employees advanced, whereas, the respective percent attained 49.5% in the district. In the Slonim region, the Jewish appointments reached 43% of all appointees, 43.5% was for Belorussians, and 10,4% for Poles. In some places, some professions were filled with by and large by the Jews. In the Pinsk district, for instance, Jews made up 64.7% of medical doctors and 49.2% of all accountants and planners. Rozenblat (op. cit.) states that favouring Jewish specialists led sometime to conflicts. In Baranowicze, non-Jewish doctors complained that doctors of other than Jewish ethnicity had been sent to different jobs or sent to work out in the field in other regions. At other time, an extreme incompetence of a Jew-new appointee led to serious conflicts. A Jew, appointed as a manager in the agricultural co-op of Komuna Paryska, within a month managed to unite the labour force against himself. Dissatisfaction was caused by his rudeness, open pocketing of goods and special treatment bestowed upon the local Jews. In the decision brief while firing him, the local regional party committee emphasized that, his behavior had brought about an eruption of ethnic hatred in this cooperative.
Rozenblat also indicated that: 'Numerous Jews occupied positions of power in NKVD, justice and prosecutor offices associating themselves, in minds of people, with the oppressions of the regime. The district prosecutor in the Dywin district of Brzesc[18] region was a Jew, M. M. Becker, district prosecutor in Pruzany was N. I. Liwszic (...), deputy chief of NKVD in Brzesc region was W. G. Kagan, the chief of the investigation department of the NKVD in Brzesc was S. M. Levin (...)'. Further he states that in 1940, 41.2% of all employed in courts and prosecutor offices in the Pinskdistrict were people of Jewish ethnicity. To this Rozenblat attributes the hard feelings shared by the local populace with regard to "Jewish unjust privileges". It was expressed in a tongue-in-cheek saying: "the Soviet power-a power by the Jews for the Jews'" or as in reference to the Soviet rule as "the Jewish rule"..
In his book "Golgotha of Archbishopric of Lvov during 2nd World War 1939-1945", the bishop of Wroclaw, Wincenty Urban wrote[19]: 'Administrative apparatus was merciless, unrelenting and pursuing every step of the way. Executioners of its directives were mainly low-lives and local Jews, especially these latter ones were implacably omnipresent, laced with arrogance and insolence. Their doing was a multitude of peoples' incriminations and accusations.'.
A great number of Jewish testimonials confirm opinions of a disproportionate number of Jewish collaborators of the Soviet administration in Kresy.
The "Studies of Jewish History in Poland" published by Jewish Historical Institute cites[20]contained in the Ringelblum Archive, an opinion of a Jewish female inhabitant of city of Grodno: 'The situation of Jews in the Polish territories occupied by the Soviets was exceptionally good. Graced with their inherent smartness and capabilities they were able to arrange their lives nicely (...). All influential Poles who before the war had occupied important posts in the society were deported by the Soviets into East and thus freed posts the Soviets filled mostly with Jews. All managerial jobs were given to them. For these reasons, the Polish population treated the Jews with enmity; it generated a hatred much more pronounced than it had been ever before the war.'.
An inhabitant of Vilnius, another Jewish female-also in the Ringelblum Archive, states: 'The Bolsheviks generally positively treated Jews, trusted them fully and were certain of their support. This is why all managerial and sensitive positions were filled with Jews, not Poles who often before had used to have them.'.
Distortion of the M. Gnatowskis conclusions
To prove that the Jews did not play important role in the administration of Jedwabne under the Soviet occupation, Gross quotes a fragmentary information on leading bureaucrats, non-Jews, based on the book by professor Michal Gnatowski "In Soviet irons. Study of aggression of 17 September 1939 and Soviet policy in the Lomza region during 1939-1941"[21]. At the same time, Gross neglects, as usual, to mention several pieces of evidence proving that the Jews, under the Soviet rule, were particularly privileged to the detriment of Poles. Prof. Gnatowski wrote (op. cit., p. 158), that Jews and Belorussians were the only ethnic groups, the Soviets could count on, especially on "Jewish proletariat" so numerous in little towns of the region. Furthermore, professor Gnatowski wrote (op.cit., p. 158): 'The chief of MO NKVD in Lomza during the meeting in Minsk on 20 September 1940 stated: "A routine emerged. Jews supported us and one can see them all the time. There is also an expectation that each manager of an institution or enterprise boasts not to have any Poles employed. Many of us were just afraid of Poles."'. He believed that it was a mistake. Other participants of the meeting disagreed. Contrary to him, one of RO NKVD chiefs emphasized that "all Poles were the counterrevolutionaries".
Treated as a second category people, subject to ethnic repressions, removed from work, and under constant pressure to deny their Polish ethnicity, Poles were very sensible to any favoritism showed to Jews. As professor Gnatowski continued: '(...) many people of the region were quoted in Russian documents referring to the partiality of treatment the Poles were subject to and favoritism the Jews enjoyed. On October 1940, in Rutki, Jan Gosk was overheard saying: "Now, we have the Jewish Empire. They are being chosen everywhere, whereas a Pole like a horse, pulls and they strike him with a whip. Bad times came upon the Poles." ' (op.cit., p. 159).
"How many are you there? One!"
Interpretations such as a denial of the mass Jewish collaboration with the Soviet occupant in Kresy, and when mentioned at all, presenting it as a negligible and involving unimportant portion of the Jews, Gross complements with myths of mass Jewish resistance against Soviets.
Furthermore, in "Ghastly decade" (op. cit., p. 82), he negates a widely known fact, stating that the "majority of Jews" rejected the Soviet order, and: 'for anti-Soviet views and actions Jews were penalized.'. He writes (op. cit., p. 81): 'Jews paid dearly for it'. He relies on statistics such as 30% of Jews were deported by Russians (52% of Poles), even though Jews were much less numerous than Poles; Gross says, this is a proof that: 'Soviets subjected Jews to more severe reprisals than Poles'.
It is a fabrication for several reasons. Firstly, when one writes about severe reprisals, Soviets murdered Poles by far more often than Jews during 1939-1941. Secondly, Poles were subject to reprisals for the political reasons- for being representatives of the old administration, members of the political-cultural elite, or for just simply being Poles. Jews were deported for main three reasons-for an escape from the regions under German occupation (Russians always feared them as potential German spies), for volunteering to immigrate to General Gubernia (under Germany, for not wanting to stay), and lastly for commercial speculation in which Jews played a dominant role. It is grotesque to present as a significant manifestation of Jewish resistance the fact that some Jews were not very enthusiastic about accepting the citizenship document from the Soviets. As per Gross (op. cit., p. 81): 'Second anti-regime demonstration about the same time was the mass Jews' volunteering for repatriation back to General Gubernia'. This type of action called by Gross "anti-regime demonstrations" had nothing to do with an act of resistance against Soviets, in the resistance in which Jews either did not participate or if at all, were present in trifle numbers. Based on reports of NKVD BSRR for Ponomarienko, the Belorussian Communist Party Secretary, dated July 27, 1940, on destruction of underground organizations comprising the 3,231 members, mainly young people, the Jews' presence in the movement was insignificant, at a ratio of one Jew to 363 Poles to be exact. Based on NKVD data, the exact proportion by ethnicity was: Poles-2,904, Belorussians-184, Jews-8, Lithuanians-37, others-98[22]. Considering these very few Jewish non-conformists the Gross's claim of huge Jewish resistance against Soviets leaves one dumbfounded. One more sarcastically could recall the exchange: 'How many are you there? One!'.
German historian on Gross's "absurdities"
Gross's claims sweeping under the carpet any facts related to the Jewish collaboration with the Soviet occupants were decisively dealt with by Bogdan Musial, an outstanding representative of younger generation of German historians. While interviewed for the Zycie daily, he said[23]: 'Some Jews of left leaning, especially youth, actually wanted to cooperate with Soviets. This is why Poles began to perceive Jews as traitors and Soviet allies. It was a general belief that the proscription lists of people to be deported to Siberia were prepared by the Jew communists. Which was partly true. Michael Mielnicki, son of Chaim Mielnicki (communist) of Wasilkow recalls[24] that they were receiving visits from the NKVD staff for whom, both Mielnickis worked on compiling the proscription lists of future Siberia deportees. In his memoirs, he still employs the lingo of Soviet occupants while referring to Poles using such terms like "traitors", "folksdojcz"[25], "fascists". Notwithstanding children and infants among them. In spite of the fact that so many Poles were deported with his and his fathers contribution, many years later, Michael Mielnicki still marvels that among Poles suddenly surfaced so many anti-Semites soon after the Germans had kicked out the Soviets'.
Contradicting those who refute as an anti-Semitic stereotype such statement as the Soviets invading Poland were greeted by a significant chunk of Jews, Musial asserts: 'There is no doubt [tr. as to the enthusiastic welcome]. This is confirmed by the Jewish historians. Take the work of Bencion Pinchuk entitled "Shtetl Jews under Soviet Rule. Eastern Poland and the Eve of the Holocaust". His main source comes from the reports of people who survived holocaust in the region. Pinchuk comes to conclusions that contradict Gross's, while relying upon more professional source base. Pinchuk writes about greeting Soviets and participation of Jews especially during the first phase of the Soviet regime installation. In towns, Jews, supporters of communism, played important role. They formed revolutionary committees, militias, etc. All this, Pinchuk bases not on Polish or on some anti-Semites' reports, but on Jewish reports that are recorded in Yad Vashem in Israel. Easy enough to verify. Gross quoted this work only once for its points are not conforming to his theses (...). This is why Gross avoids works of Pinchuk and so many others. Gross forgets to mention that the Jews responsible for the communist bloodbath (...) were first to flee the regions the Soviets were departing from.'.
In his article "Mythical Historiography", Musial while criticizing Gross's manipulations asserts: 'Gross's readiness to affirm testimonials of the holocaust survivors has its limits. He accepts only those reports that confirm his theses while ignores the rest. Accounts of Jewish witnesses collected in 1941-1942 of the situation under the Soviet occupation in Kresy are good examples. Many authors of these accounts are very critical of attitudes toward Poles on the part of the Jewish population. One of them describes the situation in Vilnius: 'Jewish communists made fun of patriotic feelings of Poles, informed on Poles who discussed "illegal subjects", pointed out to NKVD the Polish officers and former administration employees, volunteered to work in NKVD as well as participated in arresting." As Chaim Mielnicki did in Wasilkow. Gross consequently omits this kind of accounts for not being able to reconcile them with the thesis that during the Soviet occupation nothing happened that impacted negatively on Jewish-Polish relations, the relations already strained as they were.'.
Musial further concludes: 'for one who is well acquainted with the Jewish and other sources the Gross's theses seem to lead to abysmal absurdities.'. "Absurd" is a little understatement for what I perceive as an unprofessional and cynical manipulation of truth.
Jerzy Robert Nowak
P.S. In texts published in Glos, I focused on discussing lies of J.T. Gross. Those readers of Glos who would want to read on a variety of manipulations of this author, I am sending to the article cycle published in the Niedziela [tr. Sunday] weekly entitled "100 lies of J.T. Gross". There, I address the misrepresentations on early history of the Polish attitudes towards Jews, and more specifically the implication that beginning with the Chmielnicki's time (1648), the pattern of Jewish "Shoah" in Polish villages was set for the centuries to come. A pattern characterized by the spasms of violence stemming out of a "readiness to destroy everything that was foreign". In his statements, Gross attributes the Polish peasants the butcheries committed by the Cossacks and Ukrainians' under the command of Chmielnicki. There, I also treat the Gross's calumnies concerning the Catholicism in Poland, fabrications on the "black robe priesthood" spiritual inspiration to anti-Semitic cruelties, and lies concerning the Bishop of Lomza, Stanislaw Lukomski, as well as others.
[1] Kresy- Borderland, a byname for the far East of Poland
[2] Rozenblat, E. 2000. "Jewrei w sisteme meżnacjonalnych otnoszenii w zapadnych obłastiach Bełarusi, 1939-1941 g". Bełaruskiego histarycznego zbornika. 13.
[3] KPZB-Communist Party of Western Belorussia, delegalized party in the pre-war Poland
[4] J. Fronczak. "Słownika biograficznego działaczy polskiego ruchu robotniczego". V.2.
[5] J.T. Gross.1998. "Upiorna dekada 1939-1948". Krakow
[6] September 17, 1939 - the date when the Soviets invaded Poland without the war declaration.
Levin.D.,1995. "The Lesser of Two Evils: Eastern European Jewry Under Soviet Rule, 1939-1941". Philadelphia and Jerusalem, p. 43.
[8] 1980. "Pinkas Hahehillot. Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities. Poland, vol. II Eastern Galicia, Jerusalem". Jerusalem. V.2, p. 368
[9] 2000. "Europa nie prowincjonalna: przemiany na ziemiach wschodnich dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Białorus, Litwa, Łotwa, Ukraina, wschodnie pogranicze III Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej) w latach 1772-1999". Edited by Krzysztof Jasiewicz. Warsaw. Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN. Pp. 1105-6.
[10] Lukas, R.C. 1986. "The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944". (Polish edition, Kielce, 1995, p.164)
[11] Romaniuk, Z. 1995. "21 miesiecy wladzy sowieckiej w Bransku" [tr.21months of the Soviet rule]. In "Ziemia Branska" V. 6, p. 79.
[12] Alpert, N. 1990. "The Destruction of Slonim Jewry", New York, p. 10.
Amihai, M. 1962. "The Rohatyn Jewish Community. A Town that Perished", Tel Aviv, p. 44.
[14] Glos Polski, 1997. Toronto, a weekly, Issue of February 1.
[15] Kiesz, W. 1999. "Od Boremla do Chicago" [tr. From Boreml to Chicago]. Starachowice, p. 66.
[16] Liszewski, K. (R. Polish-Soviet War 1939]. Londyn, p. 56.
[17] "Z deszczu pod rynnę. Wspomnienia polskiego Żyda"[tr. From Worse to Worst. Memoirs of a Polish Jew]. , Warszawa, p. 41
[18] Brzesc - in Polish and Brest/-Litovsk/i in Belorussian.
[19] Urban, W. 1983. "Droga krzyżowa archidiecezji lwowskiej w latach II wojny światowej 1939-1945", Wrocław, Pp. 93-94.
[20] Żydowski Instytut Historyczny. 1995. "Studia z dziejów Żydów w Polsce". Warszawa, V. II, p. 65 in Archiwum Ringelbluma.
[21] Gnatowski, M. 1997. "W radzieckich okowach. Studium o agresji 17 września 1939 r. i radzieckiej polityce w regionie łomżyńskim w latach 1939-1941", Łomża, p. 296
[22] Chackiewicz, A. 1995. "Aresztowania i deportacje społeczeństwa zachodnich obwodów Białorusi (1939-1941)" in book "Społeczeństwo białoruskie, litewskie i polskie na ziemiach północno-wschodniej II Rzeczypospolitej w latach 1939-1941" [Arrests and Deportations of People of the West Regions of Belorussia (1939-1941)" in the book "The society of Belorussian, Lithuanian, and Polish in North-East of the 2 ndCommonwealth in 1939-1941"] Edited by M. Giżejewska and T. Strzembosz, Warszawa, p. 134
[23] Zycie daily. February 2nd, 2001. "Nie wolno sie bac [One mustn't be afraid]".
[24] Mielnicki, M. 2000. "Bialystok to Birkenau". Toronto.
[25] Folksdojcz (Polish from of German Folksdeutsch)-simplistically putting, a Pole who declared to be of German descent based on either gene heritage or his home location and to this effect formally signed a list of such.
Prof. Jerzy Robert Nowak, Tygodnik Glos, 2001-03-01
powrot |
Jedwabne and crimes in Kresy
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Manipulators of Today and Crimes of The Past
Stormy altercation around the anti-Polish import of the book "Neighbors"
Bogumil Lozinski and Alina Petrowa-Wasilewicz- authors of Catholic Information Agency
Kwasniewski again apologizes
It is symptomatic that even the post-communist circles, until now so vigorously in support of the Gross' anti-Polish generalizations (e.g. J.S. Mac in the weekly "Wprost "), show first signs of change of hearts and dissociation from the "researcher " -a crook from the other side of the Atlantic.
In "Trybuna " -an organ of the SLD
The Zycie daily, the issue of 3-4 March 2002, rather sarcastically commented, "Kwasniewski did not unveil the source of his knowledge on the 1941 events ". Rightly so, if one considers his incomplete Bachelor's degree in a non-historical science, a deficiency that should limit his certainty as to the main culprits of the Jedwabne murder. So, how come he dares to make a pronouncement, especially in an interview for an Israeli paper-Jedijot Achronot, before the final findings of the Polish investigation in this case. An opinion on the guilt of the defendants, prior to the completion of investigation and verdict, used to characterize the Stalinist's leaders. Do all traditions, inclusive of the Stalinist traditions, of his former communist party are so dear to him that even today with no hesitation he publicly endorses them?
Laymen’s attack on historians
It is ghastly how many there are dilettantes who with no understanding of history, attack findings of even the most renown professional historians. The recent attack on professor Strzembosz by the sicience-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem in Tygodnik Powszechny
I will in depth, address various delusions of father Czajkowski, which disrepute his cassock in the "The liars and dilettantes' parade" series published by the paper Glos. In a discussion panel, putting together father Czajkowski-a fanatic discoverer of Polish anti-Semitism, and J.T. Gross-an anti-Pole, betrayed what a "dialog, discussion" really meant to those "red and rosé" big bosses of the television. In short, it signified a choice for the panel of participants who compete one against the other in branding Poles for sins of the nation since the beginning of times. Father Czajkowski talked of a many centuries long anti-Semitism in Poland; he forgot to mention that it was Poland where majority of the World's Jews found shelter and according to the Great French Encyclopedia of 18th century, Poland was called "paradisus Judeorum" (the Jews'paradise), etc.
A particular type of complicity presented Bohdan Skaradzinski-a journalist of the left-Catholic political group "Wiez" [tr. Bond]. He wrote that the opponents of Gross: "defend themselves recalling the Jews' role during the Soviet occupation-adding often, "the first", 1939-1941, stressing the volunteer service in "organs" [tr. security, militia, etc.], alacrity in denouncing Poles and help rendered Russians during Siberian deportations of Poles. No one refutes it".
How come one can lie so insolently?!
It is the same paper Wiez, where Gross recently denied with obduracy these very same facts and Skardzinski must be well aware of this. I remind that it was Wiez of July 1999 during the discussion of the Gross' "Ghastly decade" when Helena Datnar stated an obvious deformation: "only unimportant fraction of the Jews cooperated with the Soviets". Furthermore, the same July's Wiez published a similar fictional account, this time authored by a not a trifle person-the current Vice President of the Warsaw University, professor Wlodzimierz Borodziej himself (also known for his support of Cichy's falsehoods against the Warsaw Resurrection). He declared that the numbers of the Jews helping the Soviets was in a proportion to their ethnic presence in Kresy. It is difficult to believe that professor Borodziej uttered this evident untruth out of a complete ignorance considering the findings of the Jewish historians, such as Ben-Cion Pinchuk, for instance, the author of acclaimed book
It is difficult to imagine how we, Poles, can cope with an anti-Polish mud-slinging attack damaging our reputation when at the same time in Poland, in the intellectual milieu, there is already present a strong lobby that minimizes the importance of such attacks or even negates their existence. Will such a historian like professor Borodziej dare ever to publicly denounce the anti-Polish lies? And, there are more and more of them and they become more and more impertinent. Just now, I have come across a text by a Jewish professor David Engel, an introduction to the American edition of "Neighbors" by Gross. The very first line of this text jumps at me with a cheek statement introducing the author-J.T. Gross: "leading figure among Poland's" new historians"". In this manner, the unsuspecting American readers are persuaded not only that a Jewish sociologist from USA who unabashedly slanders Poles, is a leading Polish historian but also that they should take his calumnies as an expression of Polish remorse and national self-incrimination.
Jewish Historical Institute Historian and his Subterfuge
Another example of an extreme partiality presented the Rzeczpospolita daily in its issue of 3-4 March 2001. In a discussion led by Maciej Lukasiewicz, on the matter of Jedwabne, it hosted Gross and Strzembosz, but somehow none of other historians who had criticized lies and distortions of J.T. Gross was invited. Neither P. Gontarczyk, T. Szarota, B. Musial or me was contacted. On the other hand, in the debate with Strzembosz, Gross was succored by dr. Andrzej Zbikowski of Jewish Historical Institute, historian renown for predicaments with his analyses and methodology. And no wonder, what was delivered confirmed his earlier "exploit" of January 4, 2001 also in Rzeczpospolita. Zbikowski most likely hoped that no one would remember his published 8 years earlier in a little quantity and in not so widely known periodical
Zbikowski, 1992, in Bulletin of Jewish Historical Institute (JHI):
Zbikowski, today (2001), Rzeczypospolita:
While comparing 1992 and 2001 statements, the methodological weakness of Zbikowski is quite obvious. Today, he admits that "mainly Germans" murdered Jews in Wizno, even though in 1992 based on one account, he attributed the murder exclusively to Poles. There is another curiosity concerning the metamorphosis of his views. In the text of 1992, he stated that main reasons for the anti-Jewish events in the summer of 1941 in Kresy resulted from the Jewish collaboration with the Soviet occupants in Kresy: "In short and very general way, one could state that a significant increase of tensions in the Jewish-Polish relations stemmed out from two phenomena: 1. general fervor of the Jewish population in welcoming the Soviet army invading the Poland's Eastern regions, in obvious way, not comprehended by Poles and construed as an evidence of high treason of the Polish state; 2. a great proportion of people of the Jewish descent in the Soviet state occupation apparatus and often use of this new found position in causing grief to the other ethnic groups (...). In testimonials from Wilno [tr. Vilnius], there are mentioned Lithuanian' transgressions against the Polish and Jewish population in September of 1939, and enthusiastic welcome of the Soviet army by the Jews in 1940 (e.g. building triumphal arches for the "liberators from the Lithuanian terror"); The Jews often teased and even denounced Poles, mainly former soldiers; others joined the Atheist Association [tr. actively anit-Christian]. A similar attitude the Jews showed towards the Lithuanians: a Jewish troupe reveled in the streets with a dummy of Antanas Smetona. The dominance of the Jewish trade- already state regulated, was strengthened, the corruption and nepotism flourished. It was not different in Grodno and Bialystok. Authors of some accounts wrote with regrets about their co-patriots who, "treated Poles with no respect and often humiliated them". It often happened that the open market stall sellers refused to sell their produce to Poles. An anonymous Jewish account from Bialystok stated that at the moment of the German-Soviet war breakout, "we were afraid of not only Germans but also of the revenge of Poles".
The Jewish-Polish and Jewish-Ukrainian relations in Lwow were rendered sullen as a result of the 1939-1941 years' experience. In the Ringelblum Archive, the source material on the subject is abundant and unanimous. The most interesting are the memoirs of Stanislaw Rozycki, accounts of Helena Kagan, Ludwik Klaczko, Hanna Lewkowicz, and a few other-anonymous, accounts. In all of them, the authors suggested that the Jewish population was concerned with the worsening of the relations with the Poles and Ukrainians. Klaczko noted: "The relation of other ethnics towards the Jews was always to a certain degree strained, which was caused by the Jewish run on the managerial posts". Mr. Klaczko also told: "The Polish population attitude was mostly unfavorable towards the Jews after the Bolsheviks' invasion, mainly because the Jews in great numbers occupied those posts which earlier had been occupied by Poles. In all offices there were many Jewish employees: warehouses, enterprises were also managed by the Jews". Rozycki with apprehension wrote that already in the spring of 1941, Ukrainians threatened a massacres of "Lachiv” [tr. Poles], the Jews, and "Moskals" [tr. Russians]".
It was no different out in the country. An inhabitant of Mir, quoted by Pinchuk, many years later recalled, "we were quite happy to see Poles in this kind of situation. Our yesteryear lieges were now humble and humiliated".
It is impossible to determine degree of the overrepresentation of the people of Jewish descent by the society sector without a thorough archival research. Nevertheless, the testimonials from these times suggest that other ethnic groups felt offended and threatened in their vital interests by this sudden advancement of the Jewish population. At the beginning of the war [tr. German-Soviet in June 1941], a social mechanisms, which allow to vent a hidden need for "revenge", "balance the account", and "pay back" for the real and imaginary faults, emerged (...)" (Zbikowski, 1992, pages 8, 10-11. I am quoting these fragments of A. Zbikowski with no footnotes as they do not elucidate the issue but only provide the information on the sources).
In the cited text, Zbikowski wrote on the causes of a string of particularly vicious anti-Jewish incidents among Ukrainians, saying, "This violence was supposedly justified by the Ukrainian public opinion after the corpses of imprisoned Ukrainians had been found in the Brygidki prison. Among victims there were also the participants of the "Ukrainian resurrection of July 24-26". Almost everybody, along with the German city command blamed the Jews for it". "The Jewish NKVD was helped by the Jewish informers (…). The ensuing waves of pogroms followed the exhumation of the discovered bodies, cleaning of the prison, and the internment of the NKVD victims (...)" (op. cit., page 15). At the same text, Zbikowski commenting on the Ukrainians informing Germans on the Jews who worked for the Soviets, wrote that: "There is a great deal of other material that confirms frequent interweaving of the personal and ideological motives, fomented by the ever growing attitude of common enmity towards the Jews" (op. cit., page 17).
It is astonishing to what extent the historian of the Jewish Historical Institute moved in his Rzeczpospolita text of January 4, 2001 away from his own findings of 1992. Though, he admitted: "the Jews' run on managerial positions, denouncing Poles, etc, impacted on flaring the animosity up" at the same time he hastens to stress that: "these were not the main reason of pogroms". Now, according to him, the main reason was a possibility to murder and rob unpunished. And, "a Polish mob" of freed by Germans inmates from the Soviet prisons took advantage of the opportunity. No wonder, Professor Strzembosz judged the Zbikowski's statements so shocking that they had to be addressed. He indicated in "Przemilczana kolaboracja" [tr. Hushed collaboration] (January 27-28, 2001) the tremendous magnitude of the Jewish collaboration with the Soviets that laden the Polish-Jewish relations of the day. One can only regret that Professor Strzembosz did not remind Zbikowski his own conclusions of 1992 when this historian of JHI had written more honestly on the subject so much evidently manipulated today. It seems that what Zbikowski presented in Rzeczpospolita in 2001, giving the information blatantly contradictory to his earlier texts of 1992 without explaining this change, is a breach of a basic scientific ethics. It might be interesting to see whether dr. Zbikowski would be willing to give an explanation to this effect in a public debate?
Distortion of the Karski's text
A flagrant example of tendentious and highly selective treatment of the referenced material Gross gave in a deformation of the Jan Karski's report conclusions of 1940. Famous courier, who at the end of 1939 had crossed the German-Russian demarcation border, sent his report to the Polish Government in exile in Angers (France). The Karski's report astounded by the extreme form of collaboration of the great part of the Jews with the Soviets in Kresy, and by specific examples of Jewish anti-Polish attacks. This testimonial was so much more valuable as it had been written by a man who later contributed valiantly to the propagation of the truth of Jews extermination. Moreover, Karski in no uncertain terms, could be categorized as disliking the Jews, quite to the contrary, in the last dozen years he has been an extreme philo-Semite. This probably makes the 1940's report, where he did not abstain from biting critic of the Jewish collaboration with Soviets and anti-Polish actions, so much more a powder keg like. This could explain perhaps, its late publishing, barely in 1989, in a low circulation historical bulletin "Dzieje Najnowsze" [tr. The Most Recent History]. The report so explicit in its message of February 1940, in its completeness, puts everyone, who tries to justify the Jewish attitudes in Kresy after 1939, ill at ease. It is not difficult then, to understand the manipulations the text is subject to in the Gross' book "Ghastly decade".
Gross devotes almost four pages of his 119 page book to a discussion of the Karski's report, focusing on fragments that for their anti-Jewish disposition of Poles were supposedly never publicized in the West. Gross, therefore, expresses his great annoyance-how come it was not discussed earlier?! However, in the same work, Gross wrote a long chapter denying the Jewish collaboration in Kresy with making no reference to the very same Karski's report in its parts relating to the Jewish collaboration. Isn't it a hypocritical cynicism? And, there is a great deal to quote.
Here are some of the most important statements of the Karski's report that Gross failed to take a note of:
"The Jews are here (in the region occupied by USSR) at home, they are not humiliated and oppressed, and because of their inherent smartness and ability to adapt to any new circumstances they obtained some political and economical privileges. They joined political groups, took the more important political-administrative posts, and play significant role in the trade unions, Universities, and of course in the commerce especially in anything to do with usury and in illegal trades (contraband, foreign currency speculation, liquor selling, shady deals and brokerages, and pimping). In these regions, their political and economical situation frequently is better than it was before the war (...). The Jewish attitude toward the Soviets is considered by the Polish society as a very positive. It is generally believed that the Jews committed high treason of Poland and Poles, and that they are basically communists, and that they went to the Bolsheviks with full colors. The fact is that in most towns, Jews greeted the Soviets with red roses, speeches, declarations, etc.
It is necessary to understand that it was not all black and white. Of course, the communist Jews were enthusiastic towards the Bolsheviks independently on the society class they belonged to. The Jewish proletariat, minor merchants, tradesmen, and all those whose situation currently improved and those who before were exposed to oppressions, humiliations, affronts, etc of Polish element-all these in a positive if not enthusiastic way acknowledged the new regime. It is difficult not to understand. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand when they inform on Poles, Polish nationalist students, Polish political activists, when they administer the Bolshevik militias or are members of the militia, or when notwithstanding the truth they lie about the social relations in yesterday's Poland. Unfortunately, it is necessary to state that such cases are more frequent than cases of loyalty to Poles or of sentiment to Poland.
The middle class however, the richer and better educated Jews-I think, (of course with many exceptions and discounting false pretenses) recalls rather with a certain sentiment Poland; they would welcome change of the current situation-the independence of Poland, with joy. Obviously, it is motivated to certain extent by expediency. They suffer difficulties-degradation of their social status, house confiscations; their stores, trade shops, and industrial plants are overtaken by the state (...). Here, the Jews basically created a situation in which Poles treat them as Bolsheviks' abettors; it should be admitted that they are waiting for the moment, when they will be able to take revenge on Jews. All Poles are indignant and disappointed with the Jews-majority, and they-especially of younger generation, are awaiting for a chance of a bloody retribution".
The Gross' impudent manipulation, his consciously passing over those fragments of the Karski's report that refuted his theses, vexed even Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska, a participant of the discussion on "Ghastly decade" in friendly to Gross "Wiez"-the weekly of July 1999. She stated firmly, "If one wants to overthrow the myth of general collaboration of the Jews with the Soviets, it is difficult to proceed convincingly while selectively treating the Karski’s account, for instance, quoting these fragments where he writes of anti-Semitic feelings in the Polish society and leaving out those fragments where he describes the Jews' aggressive behavior towards Poles under the Soviet occupation. It is counterproductive."
It is significant that another of Gross' supporters, Andrzej Zbikowski from Jewish Historical Institute, did not brave to include compromising Jews' fragments of Karski's report in his work "Polish Jews under the Soviet occupation 1939-1941". Referring to the Karski's report (pages 62-63), Zbikowski left out painful for the Jews statements about the Jews: "But worse, it is difficult to understand when they inform on Poles, Polish nationalist students, Polish political activists, when they administer the Bolshevik militias or are members of the militia, or when notwithstanding the truth they lie about the social relations in yesterday's Poland. Unfortunately, it is necessary to state that such cases are more frequent than cases of loyalty to Poles or of sentiment to Poland."
Falsehoods that Purge Jewish Collaboration
I have already quoted a couple of Gross' statements purging the image of the Jews' collaboration in Kresy. There are couple more that could be added. In "Ghastly decade" (page 80), Gross writes with gusto: "an image of Sovietization of the Western Ukraina and Western Beloroussia with help of Jews is untrue." Couple pages earlier (op. cit., page 76), Gross says that: "only little part of the Jewish society openly manifested" the pro-Soviet sentiments. And, how others more objective authors perceived it?
In "New York Review of Books", the renown British historian, Norman Davies, wrote: "Among collaborators who arrived to help the Soviet security forces during the deportation of innocent men, women, and children to their likely deaths in remote areas, was a disproportionately great number of Jews. The news about the circumstances accompanying the deportations contributed to worsening of the Polish-Jewish relations in other parts of occupied Poland (...). Among collaborators and informers as well as among the Soviet security personnel there was a shockingly high percentage of Jews at that time (...). From an emotional perspective, many Poles saw Jews as dancing on the grave of Poland".
It is worth to recall how the Jewish attitudes in Kresy after 17 September 1939 were perceived by so perceptive an observer of Polish affairs, as Frank Savery from the British Embassy, attached to the Polish Government in France. In his letter to the Foreign Office of April 25, 1940, Frank Savery said, "As far as the present attitude of Poles, and particularly those who are now abroad concerning the Jews and the Jewish question, we cannot forget that in September of last year, the Jewish population in the provinces occupied by the USSR, and more particularly in East Galicia, sided with Russian invaders, with the exception of rich Jews who had a lot to lose. According to the recent reports that passed through my hands, the Jews in these parts of Poland still constitute the main support of the Bolshevik regime".
A similar in tone was a statement of the War Office representative, Wilkinson in response to question tabled by D.N. Pritt-the MP of the Labor Party left, accusing the Polish military with anti-Semitism. Wilkinson stated: "Behavior of the Jews in Poland during the Russian attack must obviously have induced a feeling of animosity in the army circles which I consider justifiable." (op. cit., page 109).
Jan Robert Nowak
Kresy- Borderland, a byname for the far East of Poland.
Gross, J.T. 2001. "Neighbors".
Urzad Bezpiecznstwa- [tr.Security Agency] formerly known as Urzad Bezpieczenstwa Publicznego [tr.Agency of Public Security], an agency directly involved in pursuing of the former members of the Polish Resistance and anyone who could be considered as potential opposition (e.g. home returning discharged members of Polish Forces in the West) to the forcefully imposed communist regime. The Agency was responsible for suppression of political opposition. In first years after the war it was responsible for killing, deportation to Siberia, and incarceration of thousands of people.
Katolicka Agencja Informacyjna
Zycie daily of 3-4 march 2001.
Jedwabne lies in the Bishopric of Lomza.
SLD-a Socio-Liberal Democratic Party, a post communist party, party in power in 2002-4.
Kopec, J. 2001. "Holocaust w Jedwabne". Trybuna, issue of 23 Feb.
Gazeta Wyborcza (daily). Issue of 3-4 March 2001.
[tr. According to interests, each paper made different selection from Kwasniewski's interview. Gazeta Wyborcza seems to promote the anti-nationalistic, euro-socio-democratic ideas-ever so politically correct, whereas based on this comparison of the quote selection, Trybuna-paper close to the SLD party, stood by the Polish national interests.]
[tr. Notwithstanding that this undermines the credibility of these findings already prior to their obtaining]
Tygodnik Powszechny (daily). Issue of 11 Feb. 2001.
Kurczewski, J. 2001. Wprost (weekly).
Kropka nad i [tr."i"s point"] -discussion panel of TVN station, aired on 26 Feb. 2001.
Pinchuk, Ben-Cion. 1991."Shtetl Jews under Soviet Rule. Eastern Poland and the Eve of the Holocaust 1939-1946". London.
Davies, N. 1991. "Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939-1946". London
Zbikowski, A.1992. "Lokalne pogromy Żydów w czerwcu i lipcu 1941 roku na wschodnich rubieżach II Rzeczypospolitej" [tr. Local pogroms of the Jews in June and July of 1941 in the Eastern outer regions of 2nd Commonwealth], Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego. Nr 2-3
East Malopolska-part of the 2nd Commonwealth of Poland that extends mainly in today's West Ukraine and to a lesser extent in the Eastern Poland.
Antanas Smetona, 1874-1944, the Lithuanian statesman, journalist, and first (appointed) President of the Lithuanian Republic. Later, he took again this office, this time elected.
The Soviets turned St. Brigida monastery into a prison. 3500 corpses of Poles and Ukrainians were found. Imprisoned people had been massacred by NKVD, just before the Soviets retreated from the city. Similar monstrosities were committed in other 3 city prisons as well as in other numerous towns of the region. More at: http://www.maloca.com/katyn.htm
Żbikowski, A. 1995. "Żydzi polscy pod okupacjš sowieckš 1939-1941". In "Studia z dziejów Żydów w Polsce" [tr. Studies from History of Jews in Poland].Warszawa, V.2.
Davies, N. 1987. "Poles and Jews: An Exchange". New York Review of Books. V.34, nr 6. [tr.text translated from Polish translation].
Wasserstein, B.1999. "Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945". London New York, page 109.
Prof. Jerzy Robert Nowak, Tygodnik Glos, 2001-03-08
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Tuvia Bielski And His Partisans. Heroes Or Common Bandits?
Peter Duffy's humbug story of Tuvia Bielski.
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In July, 2003, HarperCollins published a book by Peter Duffy "The Bielski Brothers. The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews, and Built a Village in the Forest". Contrary to Mr. Duffy’s beliefs, expressed in the interview with Paula Zahn on CNN July 8, 2003, the story of Bielski brothers wasn't forgotten. And, they weren't too busy to promote their story. His is not the first reference that appeared on the subject. In 1993, Oxford University Press published "Defiance: the Bielski Partisans" by Nechama Tec. The account based on interviews of former partisans including Tuvia Bielski before his passing away in 1987. It includes photographs, an organizational directory of the Bielski partisan group, a biographical appendix, and a glossary of foreign terms. Ruth Yaffe Radin wrote "Escape to the forest: Based on a true story of the Holocaust", where Tuvia Bielski and his partisans are mentioned. There was also a documentary film written and produced by David Herman, Soma Productions in1993. And most of all, in 1947, Bielski himself wrote "Brigade in action" published in Israel.
In Poland the story of Bielski detachment "Jerusalem" and Zorin's "Pobieda" also hasn't been forgotten, but for the quite different reasons. Peter Duffy has never mentioned the massacre in the village of Naliboki, has he? Including it in his narrative would have made his account a completely different story. But let's start from the beginning.
The relations between the Polish underground, Polish population, and Soviet and Jewish partisans were complex to say the least. Understanding them is the key to the Bielski brothers' story.
Background
History of Poland of the last 300 years proves that in times of national crisis, Jews always sided with the stronger even if it meant a betrayal of their neighbours and hosts. There has never been a case of a mistaken identity. Jews stuck out living their lives unbothered independently and separately in their communities in Poland for centuries. When their significant numbers championed Poland oppressors' case turning against their co-citizens and hosts it always left a feeling of bitter resentment in the common folk memory.
The most recent history is of no exception.
Conditions throughout occupied Poland varied greatly. In some areas, especially in Eastern Poland, which the Soviet Union invaded in 1939, and subsequently formally annexed, the situation was particularly volatile. During the two year' occupation till the Soviet-German war outbreak in 1941, the Soviets carried out the ethnic cleansing of Poles considered as a potential threat to full annexation of these territories into Soviet Union. Hundred of thousands of Polish officials, officers, soldiers, policemen, teachers, churchmen, landowners, and civilians with their families were sent to Siberian concentration camps. Local Jews were those who actively helped Soviets to round them up. Many thousands of other Poles were murdered. And, local Jews who joined and led NKVD units affected these murders.
Under succeeding occupation, this time by Germans, Poles, had every right to be suspicious of Soviet motives and to expect the Soviets, at any time, to turn against them. In 1944-1950, large parts of Poland were the scenes of a massive and bloody guerrilla war of Russian and Communist against anti-Communist forces. For Poles, the WWII didn't finish in 1945.
The undivided loyalty of the Soviet partisans was to the Soviet Union, which had sized and annexed these territories from Poland in 1939 and intended to hold on to them. The Soviet partisans consisted mostly of former Soviet soldiers caught behind the lines of the German offensive in June 1941, soldiers that escaped from German POW camps and number of men who were parachuted in during the German occupation to lead, organize and reinforce the Soviet partisan units in the area. The field leadership was made up of NKVD officers and was subordinated to Stalin.
They treated the local population as pawns in the war against Germany and used brutal tactics, which aroused resentment and resulted in German reprisals against this population. Witness testimonies and German field reports from this period, attest to the widespread plundering and terrorisation of the population by Soviet partisans (Ereignismeldungen UdSSR and Meldungen aus den Besetzten Ostgebeiten, Institut of the National Memory [IPN] 1992).
Right from the beginning there was a political, ideological and territorial conflict between the two partisan forces - Polish and Soviet. From the outset, the Soviet partisans operating in North-Eastern Poland had as their task the undermining and destruction of the non-Communist Resistance. To accomplish this they resorted to passing onto the Germans lists of members of the Home Army and other forms of collaboration with the Gestapo, German gendarmerie and the local police.
There was also forced recruitment of the local population, mostly Byelorussians. Soviet partisans were joined by the Jews who escaped from various ghettos. According to David Melster:
The core of the first partisan detachment in the Belorussian forests consisted of escaped ghetto inmates and Red Army soldiers. Jews from the Minsk ghetto made up a significant portion of nine partisan detachments (the Kutuzov, Budenny, Frunze, Parkhomenko, Shchors, 25th Anniversary of the Belorussian Republic, No. 106 and No. 406) and the first battalion of the
208th independent partisan regiment. In the Lenin brigade (Baranovichi [Baranowicze] district) 202 of the 695 fighters and commanders were Jews, in Vpered 106 of 579, in Chkalow 239 of 1140 and in Novatory 48 of 126. Jews composed more than one-third of the partisans in the detachments that fought in the Lida partisan zone. In the Naliboki wood [sic] 3000 of the 20 000 partisans were Jews, many of them in position of command. Incomplete data record that some 150 Jews were commanders, chiefs of staff and commissars of partisan brigades and detachments. ("Byelorussia" in Walter Laqueur, ed. "The Holocaust Encyclopaedia", Yale University Press, 2001).
The fact that the Jews, with very few exceptions, ended up joining the Soviet partisans, who generally had the upper hand, and were treated as the enemy by most of the local Polish population, didn't make them too many friends. Once again Jews sided with Poland's enemies.
The only non-Soviet underground military organisation operating in this region was the Home Army (AK), which had to be ready for a fight with both, Germans and Soviets.
That there were Polish retaliations and Soviet counter retaliations was not surprising. Few of the Polish actions, however, were directed at Jews. For the most part, Jews died as members of the Soviet partisan forces. Yisrael Gutman, the director of the Centre of Holocaust Research at the Yad Vashen Institute, conceded:
One should not close one's eyes to the fact that Home Army units in the Wilno area were fighting against the Soviet partisans for the liberation of Poland. And that is why the Jews who found themselves on the opposing side perished at the hands of Home Army soldiers - as enemies of Poland, and not as Jews. (Israel Gutman, "Uczmy się żyć razem" [tr. Let's learn to live together], Znak, Kraków, June 2000)
Although no one can deny that Jews in hiding were in a difficult and indeed desperate situation, yet the simplistic and much distorted picture promoted by the Holocaust literature is far from the truth. This picture - of bloodthirsty Polish partisans and farmers, who were eager to collaborate with Germans against the heroic Soviet and Jewish partisans and whose only purpose for existence was to hunt the hiding Jews down is simply a blatant lie.
Historian, Teresa Prekerowa, who was awarded by Yad Vashem for her rescue activities within the framework of the organization called Zegota (The Polish Council for Aid to Jews, run by the Home Army) notes in her essay "Wojna i okupacja" [tr. War and occupation] that when the Jews first started to escape from the ghettos in north-eastern Poland at the end of 1941, they encountered only small groups of Soviet partisans. The Polish partisans formed later. Escapees, as more Jews, especially women joined them, established camps.
Initially, the local peasants, who were not overly rich themselves, were fairly generous in providing food, even though they didn't have much left after they met the burdensome quotas imposed by the Germans. However, as the numbers of Jews in the forest grew, and demands for contingents (forced contributions) by the Germans and the Soviet partisans were ever escalating, the attitude of the impoverished villagers, who were subjected to these onerous burdens, started to change.
Their first concern was to feed their own families. This had to take precedence before looking after the bands of Jewish escapees. It was also more important for them to meet quotas levied by the Germans on each Polish village. This was literally a matter of life and death for them and their families. Germans proved to treat such contingents most seriously, as they were quite capable of annihilating whole villages as a punishment for not fulfilling them. Little known in the western literature is the fact that the Germans erased from the face of Earth more than 400 Polish villages and towns.
What the villagers didn't know was that hiding in Naliboki Forest the "heroes" of Tuvia Bielski supported by other Soviet partisans were also capable of such acts.
The virtually exclusive preoccupation of the Jews hiding in forests was not partisan warfare, but scavenging for provisions. They dispatched an endless flow of armed groups into villages to rob the peasants of their food and meagre belongings. The nature and range of the so called "economic" operations, for which Jewish partisans were notorious and which became their principal activities have been described in many memoirs, and even by the Jews themselves. According to the widespread impression of the local population, Jews were indeed the most violent and rapacious of all the forest pillagers. They had the protection of Jews who had been accepted into the Soviet partisans and were engaged in similar raids, of "economic" operations or actions of massive proportions. Even their Soviet allies very often doubted their fighting abilities and regarded them as not much more than plunderers.
Many skirmishes took place, as the impoverished villagers increasingly opposed being systematically robbed of most of their possessions by partisans and forest dwellers. (Yitzhak Arad, "Ghetto in flames", p. 457). The close association of the Jewish groups with the Soviet partisans also marked them as pro Communist and anti-Polish in the eyes of the local population.
Yet, another reason the peasants hesitated any contacts with people from the forest was because of punitive measures taken by the Germans. Many villages were burned to the ground for their perceived support of the partisans. Their inhabitants were shot or rounded up for slave labour. An assassination or insignificant sabotage operations, like tearing up a railroad track that was promptly rebuilt, caused Germans to extract punishment on the local population. Such was the case near the town of Nowe Œwięciany, where some 1500 Poles were executed by the Germans and Lithuanian police in May 1942. Simply the price of 1500 Polish lives for three German lives-two soldiers and one officer, was far too high to pay. But, the Soviet and Jewish partisans could not care less. They risked nothing. It was not their or their co-patriots' lives, it was just local Poles.
This brings us back to the subject of Tuvia Bielski and his "heroes".
Narrative
One of the earliest and most heinous episodes was the "pacification" of Naliboki, county of Stołpce, Nowogródek province, a village located in the middle of Naliboki Forest (Puszcza Nalibocka), currently part of Belorussia.
The Polish and Belorussian villagers had formed a self-defence group to fend off Soviet and Jewish marauders that robbed them of the food and other possessions. The Holocaust memoirs branded those who attempted to protect their property as anti-Semites and Nazi collaborators.
Yet, they simply couldn't see any reason for supporting the Jewish bathhouses, lavish lifestyle and synagogues in the forest with the fruits of their labour. Certainly not at the price of starving themselves and their families. Józef Marchwiński, a Polish communist, married to a Jewish woman, for a while acted as Bielski's deputy, described the life of plenty and leisure led by Bielski's entourage and his "harem" of well dressed women, all whom the poor Jews branded as the "tsar's palace". Another communist wrote that Bielski had been eager to accept into the camp people who had had gold and other valuables, but less likely to take in the poor.
The dire condition of the people in the camps of Bielski and Zorin painted by some Jews are not quite true. In one of his reports, Bielski boasted that his unit had accumulated large quantities of provisions: 200 tonnes of potatoes, three tonnes of cabbage, five tonnes of beets, five tonnes of grain, three tonnes of meat and a tonne of sausages. (Boradyn, "Armia Krajowa na NowogródczyŸnie i WileńszczyŸnie [tr. Home Army in Nowogrodek and Vilnius regions] (1941-1945) p. 80)
In his memoir, a leading member of the Zorin’s group presented a similar picture. Once a week, they even sent food surplus to Moscow by a plane, which landed in a field inside the forest. (Wertheim, "Żydowska partyzantka na Białorusi” [tr. Jewish partisans in Belorussia], Zeszyty Historyczne no. 86, 1988).
The food surplus sent to Moscow must have been taken from the impoverished Polish and Belorussian peasants, as Jews had no fields of their own to tend in the forest.
In Soviet eyes, the main "crime" of the Naliboki villagers was that when in the spring of 1943 the commanders of the Soviet partisans stationed in Naliboki Forest tried to subordinate the village self-defence unit, the Poles refused.
The joint Soviet-Jewish assault on Naliboki occurred in small hours of May 8, 1943. One hundred and twenty eight (128) innocent civilians, including women and children, were butchered in a heinous pogrom that lasted almost three hours. This surprise attack on Naliboki was carried out by the Stalin Brigade, under the command of Major Rafail Vasilevich, with the participation of the Bielski's and Zorin's detachments, who reported to him at that time.
The Jewish factions who did most of the pillaging and murdering of entire families were the Bielski's "Jeruzalem" and Zorin's "Pobeda" units. Eyewitnesses confirmed later that the majority of the 128 people killed died at their hands. Nearly all of them were killed not in the skirmish, but in cold blood executions. Some members of the self defence group, surprised by the attack, fought back and killed a few of the attackers, but seeing their overwhelming numbers and better armaments they withdrew to the forest.
This was not the end of the Naliboki village misery. Four months later, in August 1943, as part of a massive anti-partisan operation known as "Operation Herman", some 60 000 German troops arrived and with the assistance of Lithuanian auxiliary forces, attached to the SS and Byelorussian police, rounded up the civilian population of dozens of villages in the area of the Naliboki Forest suspected of supporting the partisans. Some 20 000 villagers were deported to the Reich as the slave labour, many were killed, while their houses were burned. The village of Naliboki was consumed by fire.
In 'From Victims to Victors' (p. 125), Silverman writes:
After a few weeks of fighting, the blockade suddenly ended. The German army units had been transferred to Stalingrad. Before they left, they burned all the villages in and close to the forest. The farmers in each place were told to assemble for a meeting and while they were concentrated in one building the Germans set it on fire. Men, women and children in village after village, were burned alive. The Germans wanted to make sure that no one could, or would help the partisans and the Jews again. They tried to make sure that we were deprived of food and supplies.
It would appear that the poor peasants of Naliboki couldn't win. First, the Soviet-Jewish partisans murdered and robbed them, then the Germans burned their village for supporting the same partisans. They were between a rock and hard place indeed.
The Polish Institute of National Memory (The Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in ŁódŸ) is currently conducting an investigation into "heroic" deeds of Tuvia Bielski, Sholem Zorin and their partisans in Naliboki. This investigation was opened on March 20, 2001.
According to their report, issued on March 1, 2002, 24 witnesses have been questioned so far, most of them former inhabitants of Naliboki or nearby settlements who had been present there during the attack.
Their detailed testimonies about the course of events under investigation mention the names of some of the perpetrators, several of whom have been identified as former Jewish residents of Naliboki. The witnesses also mentioned the names of Soviet partisans.
The Naliboki atrocity was not an out of character event marking the Soviet-Jewish units.
Similar atrocity, being also investigated by Institute of National Memory, was committed in the village of Koniuchy, township of Bienakonie, county of Lida, Nowogrodek province, at the edge of the Rudniki Forest, where numerous Soviet partisan groups had their bases. Members of these groups frequently carried out raids against the nearby villages and settlements including Koniuchy.
The Rudniki Forest partisans were under the command of the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement in Moscow. The massacre at Koniuchy was committed by a group of around 100-120 partisans from various units, including a Jewish partisan unit of about 50 people strong.
The Jewish partisans in the Rudniki Forest, who had subordinated themselves to the Soviet partisan command, consisted of four divisions: "Death to Fascism" led by Jacob (Yaakov) Prenner; "Struggle" led by Avrasha Rasel; "To Victory" led by Shmuel Kaplinsky; and "Avenger" led by Abba Kovner.
There were fifty partisans in each division, and the four divisions together formed the so-called Jewish Brigade, of which Abba Kovner was the commander. (Rich Cohen, "The Avengers" New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).
Like in Naliboki and many other places in Poland, the purpose of those raids was to rob the local population of their property, mostly clothing, footwear, cattle and stores of flour. In the course of raids, violence was commonly used against the rightful owners. Again like in Naliboki, villagers driven to desperation formed a self-defence group to guard the village in order to prevent further robberies. The only "crime" committed by the inhabitants of Koniuchy was the fact that they had had enough of the daily, nightly robberies and assaults, and they wanted to organize a self-defence. The Bolsheviks from Rudniki Forest decided to annihilate the village in order to terrorize into submission the inhabitants of other settlements.
For this reason, on the night of 28/29 January 1944, a group of Soviet partisans from the RudnikiForest surrounded the village. In the early morning, they used incendiary bullets to set the buildings on fire. The escaping inhabitants - men, women and children, were shot down. Most of the village was destroyed.
In this case 17 witnesses were questioned. This group included former members of the Home Army units stationed in the Rudniki Forest and the relatives of the victims.
Some witnesses supplied the names or pseudonyms of Soviet partisans, locations of their units and their numerical strengths. They also confirmed that the largest group consisted of Jewish partisans. These partisan units were commonly called "Wisincza", from their base location between this village and the Kiernowo lake.
It appears from the depositions that some of the victims, especially the old and infirm, were burned to death in their homes. Those who tried to escape were fired at.
According to the Investigation Reports on Koniuchy and Naliboki, issued by the Institute of National Memory on March 1, 2002, in Koniuchy between 36 and 50 inhabitants, men, women, and children, were killed on the spot, many others were wounded. The survivors escaped to nearby villages.
But according to the perpetrators themselves, approximately 300 of Koniuchy's inhabitants were killed in this action. It would appear that this massacre of the defenceless people is quite often mentioned in various Jewish publications and presented as a glorious battle of the heroic Jewish and Soviet partisans against Nazis and so called Nazi collaborators, that is, unarmed farmers trying to defend their property. A very curious case of murderers who take pride in their crime. Let's look at few such testimonies:
The peasants ducked into houses. Partisans threw grenades onto roofs and the houses exploded into flame. Other houses were torched. Peasants ran from their front doors and raced down the streets. The partisans chased them, shooting men, women and children. Many peasants ran in the direction of the German garrison, which took them through a cemetery on the edge of town.
The partisan commander, anticipating this move, had stationed several men behind the gravestones. When these partisans opened fire, the peasants turned back, only to be met by the soldiers coming up from behind. Caught in a cross fire, hundreds of peasants were killed. (See Rich Cohen, "The Avengers", New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, 145)
Of course there was no German garrison in Koniuchy, only peasants from a self-defence group armed with a few rusty rifles. But this "German garrison" sounds good in the memoirs of Rich Cohen. At least it looks like there was a real battle, not just a massacre of unarmed civilians, women and children. The nearest German garrisons or police post was six kilometres away in Rakliszki.
The entire village [of Koniuchy] was laid in ashes and its inhabitants were killed - according to Zalman Wylozny who served in the "Death to Fascists" detachment.
(See Golota, "Losy Żydów ostrołęckich w czasie II wojny œwiatowej" [tr. Fate of Jews of Ostroleka during the II World War], Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, no. 187, 1998, 32. Also Kowalski, "A Secret Press in Nazi Europe", 333-34; also reproduced in Isaac Kowalski, "Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance 1939-1945", volume 4, Brooklyn, New York: Jewish Combatants Publishers House, 1991, 390-91.)
In "Destruction and Resistance", Chaim Lazar wrote:
The Brigade Headquarters decided to raze Koniuchy to the ground to set an example to others. One evening a hundred and twenty of the best partisans from all the camps, armed with the best weapons they had, set out in the direction of the village. There were about 50 Jews among them, headed by Yaakov Prenner. At midnight they came to the vicinity of the village and assumed their proper positions. The order was not to leave anyone alive. Even livestock was to be killed and all property was to be destroyed.
The signal was given just before dawn. Within minutes, the village was surrounded on three sides. On the fourth side was the river and the only bridge over it was in the hands of the partisans. With torches prepared in advance, the partisans burned down the houses, stables, and granaries, while opening heavy fire on the houses. Half-naked peasants jumped out of windows and sought escape. But everywhere fatal bullets awaited them. Many jumped into the river and swam towards the other side, but they too, met the same end. The mission was completed within a short while. Sixty households, numbering about 300 people, were destroyed, with no survivors. (See Chaim Lazar, Destruction and Resistance, New York: Shengold Publishers, 1985, 174-75)
The massacre of the population of Koniuchy, including women and children, has been described by Chaim Lazar as an outstanding "combat operation", of which he was genuinely proud.
So, how many villagers of Koniuchy did the partisans truly murder? Fifty, as stated in the Investigation Report of the Institute of National Memory, or a few hundred, as quoted in the memoirs of the perpetrators? Perhaps, it is a case of boasting "heroes", self-censure of IPN, or a mixture of both? I challenge any one to name all few hundred inhabitants of one's native village after 60 years.
In his CNN interview Mr. Duffy describes Bielski's partisans as aggressive fighters that at the end of the war, reported to the Soviets the 381 Nazi and Nazi allied fighters killed. Out of these 381 "Nazi and Nazi allied fighters" 128 were defenceless inhabitants of Naliboki. At least they were so-called confirmed kill. How many more innocent people did Bielski's partisans kill nobody really knows. It is not that hard to become "aggressive fighters" against unarmed men, women and children. Most likely Bielski's partisans were aggressive plunderers, not aggressive fighters. Probably many more peasants lost their lives trying to defend their property. Of course in Jewish testimonies, they all became "Nazi allied fighters" and anti-Semites. This sounded better. There was no glory in murdering defenceless civilians.
Christopher Janiewicz and K.M., Nasza Witryna, 2003-09-02
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