Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944–1946

Anti-Jewish Violence In Poland, 1944–1946 refers to a series of violent incidents that immediately followed the end of the Second World War in Poland, in which an estimated 1,500 to two thousand Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors returning to their homes were killed. [David S. Wyman, Charles H. Rosenzveig. [http://books.google.com/books?id=U6KVOsjpP0MC&pg=PA113&dq=poland+violence+jews+kielce+1946&sig=ACfU3U2Nx1Onozp6z1En4Y6Uthfk6wf_cg#PPA112,M1 The World Reacts to the Holocaust.] Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.] [Joanna B. Michlic. [http://books.google.com/books?id=UFVFmxjpqLgC&pg=PA211&lpg=PA211&dq=%22Patterns+Of+Anti-Jewish+Violence+In+Poland,[phone]%22&source=web&ots=qEsVVmz23y&sig=sgABNQTtTwgQTvvCbtmOAjOBRAw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result#PPA211,M1 The Holocaust and Its Aftermath as Perceived in Poland: Voices of Polish Intellectuals, 1945-1947.] In: David Bankier, ed. The Jews are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin After WW II. Berghahn Books, 2005.] The incidents ranged from individual abuse to a number of pogroms. The killings have been attributed to a combination of traditional prewar antisemitism, the targeting of Polish Jews as being responsible for the communist consolidation of power in postwar Poland, and a fear that returning survivors would reclaim their property. [Natalia Aleksiun. [http://books.google.com/books?id=uHJyoGiep2gC&pg=PA235&dq=the+1946+thousand+kielce&lr=&sig=ACfU3U3Tke1lvKWX6eZvt-CpRVaxXP_HQw#PPA248,M1 Jewish Responses to Antisemitism in Poland, 1944-1947.] In: Joshua D. Zimmerman, ed. Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath. Rutgers University Press, 2003.] [Daniel Blatamn. The Encounter between Jews and Poles in Lublin District after Liberation, 1944-1945. "East European Politics & Societies". 2006, Vol. 20, No. 4, 598-621.] [Manus I. Midlarsky. [http://books.google.com/books?id=-oJuL_gcFHMC&pg=PA268&dq=kielce+midlarsky&lr=&ei=chflSNXvJYqEywS7pclx&sig=ACfU3U1aPWAyXw_scIk39jJBCZPNp5wY5Q#PPA77,M1 The Killing Tr
] Cambridge University Press, 2005.] [Jan T. Gross. [http://books.google.com/books?id=POkxdm6DoAsC&pg=PA219&dq=as+the+kielce+pogrom+demonstrates&lr=&ei=xxzlSJLaOILgywTh87iEAQ&sig=ACfU3U2aqBRCWIfRoNquO5k-rWevpebkpg After Auschwitz. The reality and Meaning of Postwar antisemitism in Poland.] In: Jonathan Frankel, ed. Studies in Contemporary Jewry. Oxford University Press US, 2005.]

Background

Although already strained, the relations between Jews and Poles significantly worsened after the Second World War, as Nazi Germans who occupied most of Poland for most of the war encouraged and rewarded persecution of the Jews by local populace in countries they occupied (see Holocaust in Poland). Polish Jews returning home were confronted with fears of being physically assaulted, robbed and even murdered. [Bozena Szaynok. [http://books.google.com/books?id=rT6qx6hi8C4C&pg=PA273&dq=poland+violence+jews+kielce+1946&sig=ACfU3U1q-Kaxbw8H76orBIAGXaarPts3nA#PPA278,M1 The Role of Antisemitism in Postwar Polish-Jewish Relations.] In: Robert Blobaum, ed. Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland. Cornell University Press, 2005.] [Joanna B. Michlic. [http://books.google.com/books?id=t6h2pI7o_zQC&pg=PA216&dq=poland+violence+jews+kielce+1946&sig=ACfU3U0x3pxf9xD_X1Kl5ot4nTlTT_gGnw#PPA214,M1 Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present.] University of Nebraska Press, 2006.] Relations were further complicated by anti-semitic stereotypes which held Jews to be responsible for the imposition of communism in post-war Poland, accusations that also came from high Church officials. [Dariusz Libionka. [http://books.google.com/books?id=rT6qx6hi8C4C&pg=PA273&dq=poland+violence+jews+kielce+1946&sig=ACfU3U1q-Kaxbw8H76orBIAGXaarPts3nA#PPA263,M1 Antisemitism, Anti-Judaism, and the Polish Catholic Clergy during the Second World War, 1939-1945.] In: Robert Blobaum, ed. Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland. Cornell University Press, 2005.] The underground anti-government press published anti-Jewish articles that echoed Nazi themes about Jews, who were described as servile lackeys of a demonic communist power and were accused of being responsible for the political murder of opponents of the new regime. [Daniel Blatamn. The Encounter between Jews and Poles in Lublin District after Liberation, 1944-1945. "East European Politics & Societies". 2006, Vol. 20, No. 4, 598-621. Pages 601-602.]

Postwar antisemitism found its rationalization in the role that a minuscule but visible [Aleksander Smolar, "Jews as a Polish Problem," Daedalus 116:2 (1987), pp. 31-73.] proportion of surviving Polish Jews played in the Polish Communist party, feeding the anti-semitic myth of "żydokomuna".cite book | author =Aleksander Hertz | title =The Jews in Polish Culture | year =1988 | pages = 1| publisher =Northwestern University Press ]

In his essay "Jews as a Polish Problem," Aleksander Smolar writes

The Jews became very visible indeed, especially in the central nodes of power. Popular imagination multiplied their numbers, sensing the existence of Jews under newly adopted Polish names everywhere. For the man in the street, this "Jewish flood" was a shocking new phenomenon, more shocking than certain other more essential and more durable aspects of the new communist reality...To many Poles, it seemed as though the Jews had "won." How humiliating after years of wartime deprivation and heroism, sacrifice and hope, to find Jews — with all their stereotypical attributes — intact. [Aleksander Smolar, "Jews as a Polish Problem," Daedalus 116:2 (1987), pp. 31-73.]

A relatively high proportion of the communists who took power in postwar Poland were Jewish former members of the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) who returned to Poland from the Soviet Union, and, while constituting a tiny proportion of Polish Jewry, their representation in the communist party was considerably higher than their share in the general population. These stereotypes about Polish Jews accompanied the worst anti-semitic violence in Polish history took place against Jews attempting to return home after the war. [David S. Wyman, Charles H. Rosenzveig. [http://books.google.com/books?id=U6KVOsjpP0MC&pg=PA113&dq=poland+violence+jews+kielce+1946&sig=ACfU3U2Nx1Onozp6z1En4Y6Uthfk6wf_cg#PPA112,M1 The World Reacts to the Holocaust.] Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.] The Kraków pogrom was the first major antisemitic riot in the postwar Poland. Michlic, p. 347.] ru icon . Л.Б. Милякова "Политика польских коммунистов в еврейском вопросе (1944-1947 гг.)" ("The politics of the Polish communists on the Jewish question in 1944-1947") [http://www.rossia.org/dossier/balkans/pol-jews.html] ] Similar acts of anti-Jewish violence were later recorded in other towns of central Poland.cite book | author =István Deák | coauthors=Jan Tomasz Gross, Tony Judt | title =The politics of retribution in Europe : World War II and its aftermath | year =2000 | pages = 111 | publisher = Princeton University Press | location=Princeton, N.J | url= http://books.google.com/books?id=s82F2H0FEHQC&pg=PA111&lpg=PA111&ots=TzLGIZi_-H&sig=j6pqJCW76yOyez2H5XhhDBkDxCk | oclc=43840165 | isbn=0691009538 ] cite book | first = David | last = Engel | title = "Yad Vashem Studies" Vol. XXVI | year =1998 | chapter ="Patterns Of Anti-Jewish Violence In Poland, 1944-1946" | chapterurl = http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203128.pdf| publisher = Yad Vashem| location = Jerusalem | format = PDF | accessdate = 2007-04-01p. 32] The most notorious of them was Kielce pogrom of July 4, 1946.

Anti-Jewish violence data

Statistics from records

A statistical compendium of "Jewish deaths by violence for which specific record is extant, by month and province" was compiled by the Yad Vashem Shoah Resource Center's International School for Holocaust Studies. [David Engel. [http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203128.pdf Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1944–1946.] "Yad Vashem Studies", 26 (1998): 43–85.] The study used as a starting point a 1973 report by historian Lucjan Dobroszycki, who wrote that he had "analyzed records, reports, cables, protocols and press-cuttings of the period pertaining to anti-Jewish assaults and murders in 115 localities" in which approximately 300 Jewish deaths had been documented. [Lucjan Dobroszycki. "Restoring Jewish Life in Post-War Poland", "Soviet Jewish Affairs" 3 (1973), pp. 68-70. Cited in Engel 1998]

In the "Yad Vashem Studies" report, Holocaust scholar David Engel writes

" [Dobroszycki] did not report the results of that analysis except in the most general terms, nor did he indicate the specific sources from which he had compiled his list of cases. Nevertheless, a separate, systematic examination of the relevant files in the archive of the Polish Ministry of Public Administration, supplemented by reports prepared by the United States embassy in Warsaw and by Jewish sources in Poland, as well as by bulletins published by the Central Committee of Polish Jews and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, has lent credibility to Dobroszycki's claim: it has turned up more or less detailed descriptions of 130 incidents in 102 locations between September 1944 and September 1946, in which 327 Jews lost their lives." [David Engel. [http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203128.pdf Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1944–1946.] "Yad Vashem Studies", 26 (1998): 43–85.]

The data from the Yad Vashem study are reproduced in the table below.

Engel wrote that the compilation of cases is not exhaustive, suggesting that cases of anti-Jewish violence were selectively reported and recorded, and that there was no centralized, systematic effort record these caaes. He cites numerous incidental reports of killings of Jews that for which no official reporting has survived. [Engel, op. cit.]

Varying estimations

A number of historians, including Antony Polonsky and Jan T. Grosscite book | author =István Deák | coauthors=Jan Tomasz Gross, Tony Judt | title =The politics of retribution in Europe : World War II and its aftermath | year =2000 | pages = 106-107 | chapter = | publisher =Princeton University Press | location=Princeton, N.J | url=http://books.google.com/books?id=s82F2H0FEHQC&pg=PA106&sig=-d4IdHYrS-YpmClMx8NaajRKvKM | oclc=43840165 | isbn=0691009538 ] cite the figures of Dobroszycki's 1973 work, where he reported around 1500 Jews having been murdered during the postwar anti-Jewish violence in Poland. [See, e.g., Antony Polanski. [http://books.google.com/books?id=uceq22StcZUC&pg=RA1-PA4&ots=tNhU0FPY74&sig=9K6LsW8cJGrVf-JzlktI2tXhlDs My Brother's Keeper?] Routledge, 1989; Meyer Weinberg. [http://books.google.com/books?id=N1QbAAAAMAAJ&q=Lucjan+Dobroszycki+1500&pgis=1 Because They Were Jews: A History of Antisemitism.] Greenwood Press, 1986; Jan Tomasz Gross. [http://books.google.com/books?id=XKtOr4EXOWwC&pg=PA277&ots=4TW1BhLE77&sig=y9bn7EnjiArWzdBLYodAYazUhlI Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia.] Princeton University Press, 2002; Natalia Aleksiun. [http://books.google.com/books?id=4Iiw0KB31rgC&pg=PA258&ots=SeZGtCJ7_5&sig=YwTC4O67Gvggrm0-vy34zObU8LM Jewish Responses to Antisemitism in Poland, 1944-1947.] In: Joshua D. Zimmerman, ed. Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath. Rutgers University Press, 2003.] Dobroszycki wrote that "according to general estimates 1500 Jews lost their lives in Poland from liberation until the summer of 1947." [Cited in Engel, 1998] David Engel of New York University stated that Dobroszycki "offered no reference for such 'general estimates'" which "have not been confirmed by any other investigator" and "no proof-text for this figure" exists, not even a smaller one of 1000 claimed by Gutman.cite book | author =Yisrael Gutman | title = The Jews in Poland after World War II (Hebrew), (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1985)] Engel wrote that "both estimates seem high." [David Engel. [http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203128.pdf Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1944–1946.] "Yad Vashem Studies", 26 (1998): 43–85.] Deak, Gross and Judt note that Dobroszycki "always paid meticulous attention to numerical statistics." Other estimates include those of Anna Cichopek claiming more than 1000 Jews murdered in Poland between 1944 and 1947 Cichopek, "The Cracow pogrom of August 1945", p. 221.] while Dr Lidiya Milyakova of Russian Academy of Sciences placed that number at 1500-1800. Similarly, according to a Jewish historian Stefan Grajek around 1000 Jews were murdered in the first half of year 1946pl icon Stefan Grajek, "Po wojnie i co dalej? Żydzi w Polsce, w latach 1945−1949", (translated from Hebrew by Aleksander Klugman), Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, Warszawa 2003, pg. 254 [http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=21F8A4F9-9306-4E36-81FD-7E84C781B737] ] while Polish-American sociologist Tadeusz Piotrowski assumed 1500-2000 victims between the years 1944 and 1947,cite book | author =Tadeusz Piotrowski | title =Poland's holocaust : ethnic strife, collaboration with occupying forces and genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947 | year =1998 | pages = 130 | chapter = | url=http://books.google.com/books?id=A4FlatJCro4C&pg=PA130&ots=0IlRM2OGVU&dq=1,500-2,000+jews+between+1944+and+1947&sig=84o9Z9cKWyrW65b6fIZmcBdgIWg#PPA130,M1 | publisher =McFarland and Company | oclc=37195289 | isbn=0786403713 ] constituting 2 to 3 percent of the total number of victims of postwar violence in the country.

Notes