Kielce Pogrom Circumstantial Evidence Checinski

Poland, Communism, nationalism, anti-semitism, by Michael Checinski. 1982

So-Called Kielce Pogrom: Circumstantial Evidence Points to Soviet Involvement of Some Kind

The tale of the Kielce Pogrom is well known. Someone started a rumor that a Polish boy had been kidnapped by Jews and killed for his blood to be used in the making of matzo. The Poles, backward and bigoted and stupid as they are supposed to be, believed it all, and went on a spontaneous murderous rampage against the poor local Jews. Communist propaganda baselessly blamed Polish nationalist forces for the Kielce Pogrom. The left-wing press in the west took it all in and presented it as fact, as do modern educational Holocaust materials.

THE MUCH-NEEDED CONTEXTUALIZATION OF THE KIELCE POGROM

To begin with, the backdrop for Polish-Jewish tensions had not been religious prejudices nor archaic superstitions, but property disputes in a war-ravaged nation together with the fact of Poles and Jews falling on different sides in attitude towards the impending Soviet-imposed puppet state. The author Checinski, a onetime Jewish member of the much-hated Communist security forces (UB, or Bezpieka) provides evidence that the so-called Kielce Pogrom was staged by Communist forces, with direct coordination by the Soviet occupants of Poland.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE POINTS TO THE SOVIETS AS BEHIND THE KIELCE POGROM

A top Soviet intelligence official (Dyomin, or Demin), came to the Kielce area shortly before the pogrom and left soon afterwards. The boy’s kidnapping was faked, with a group of men threatening him with a beating if he did not claim that he had been kidnapped by Jews. Significantly, the boy was the son of a Communist informer. Later, Dyomin himself interrogated the boy. During the Kielce pogrom, the Communist militia disarmed the Jews and shot many of them in cold blood. Significantly, neither the father of the “kidnapped” boy nor members of the Communist militia ever faced trial.

Other accounts not mentioned by Checinski corroborate his findings. Intriguing detail is provided by Zuckerman (A Surplus of Memory, p. 661), whose account only accentuates the staged nature of the pogrom by pointing out that the disarming of the Jews by Communist militia taking place the day BEFORE the pogrom. A Russian article cited by Chodakiewicz (After the Holocaust, p. 184) points to the Soviet set-up of the Kielce Pogrom. However, recently (August 2018, Chodakiewicz (personal communication) stated that there still is no smoking gun for either side of the Kielce Pogrom controversy.

CANDOR ON THE SCALE AND MAGNITUDE OF THE ZYDOKOMUNA

Checinski describes Jews as having played a significant role, in both the leadership and rank-and-file, of the Communist-front organization of Poles in the USSR (p. 11). He also speaks of Jewish Communists as “having been a major asset in the imposition of Communism in Poland”. (p. 165). He also speaks of the “relatively high percentage of Jews in the Communist power elites” (p. 89) of Soviet-ruled Poland. However, Jewish Communists in Poland were encouraged to change their names and to deny their Jewishness (p. 13), causing obvious difficulties in arriving at any estimate of their numbers. The latter also intensified Polish-Jewish antagonisms by adding credence to Polish concerns about crypto-Jews in high positions.

ZYDOKOMUNA: THE CANNED EXCULPATIONS

Checinski acknowledges the Polish Jews’ support for the Soviets during and after the German-Soviet conquest of Poland in 1939 as a factor in the intensification of antisemitic feelings among Poles. In common with many other authors, he attributes the pro-Soviet Jewish attitude to the fact of Soviet deliverance from the Nazis. But this does not hold. To begin with, the genocidal intentions of the Germans had not been generally taken seriously by most Polish Jews at this time, as they tended to see the Germans as a cultured people. And, in either case, a large fraction of Polish Jews had also exhibited a pro-Soviet stance during the 1920 Polish-Soviet war, well before the Nazis even existed. Furthermore, the pro-Russian orientation of eastern Polish Jews goes back to tsarist days, even though Russian antisemitism was, by any measure, much more severe than Polish antisemitism.

Checinski suggests that the surviving postwar Polish Jews were attracted to Communism because of its promises of egalitarianism and the abolition of antisemitism, but then shoots down his own argument by acknowledging the fact that the Stalinist purges of the 1930’s, which had claimed the lives of many Jewish Communists, had been “unknown or conveniently forgotten” (p. 8). Apropos to “unknown”, Checinski seems to forget the fact that Communism had shown its true face from the very beginning (to anyone not blinded by ideology) as a movement based on deception, state terror, and totalitarianism.

Evidently, Jewish conduct is animated less by fear of anti-Semitism, or by idealism, than it is by opportunism.

THOSE POSTWAR KILLINGS OF JEWS

One common Holocaust myth would have us belief that it was only in postwar Poland that Jews were killed over property disputes, and that these were strictly antisemitic outrages. In actuality, such occurrences also took place in Hungary and Slovakia. Checinski cites a source (pp. 15-16) that relates these events to the extreme destitution of the postwar population. Not mentioned is the fact that the killings took place within the context of the general lawlessness spawned by the just-concluded war and brutal German occupation.

FOR A LONG TIME, JEWS IDOLIZED COMMUNISM AND TURNED A BLIND EYE TO THE ANTI-SEMITISM IN COMMUNISM

Checinski devotes the bulk of his book to discussing how antisemitism developed and flourished within Communism. Note that much of contemporary western academia and mass media is left-wing, and, owing to its latent anti-Christian bigotry, has always tried to blame Christianity for the existence of antisemitism. The falseness of this charge is inadvertently shown by Checinski. The reader learns in detail how the Communists, who had repudiated religion and had especial contempt for Christianity, and who could not care less about who ostensibly was responsible for the crucifixion of Christ (deicide), were quite antisemitic. Communist antisemitism wore many disguises, including anti-Zionism and anti-Trotskyism. In the early postwar period, it showed as early as 1946, when many Communist Jewish officials were removed from power. Communist antisemitism only grew and expanded after Stalin’s death, and culminated in the events of 1968.

Let us keep things in perspective. Should we cry over the fact that the Jewish Communist thief lost his booty to the gentile Communist thief?

A CALL FOR MEDIA OBJECTIVITY ON THE KIELCE POGROM

Author Micheal Checinski has performed a valuable service by showing that the so-called Kielce Pogrom was no spontaneous Polish-made anti-Jewish riot. As for Soviet involvement, the lack of a smoking gun on this question means that there is no blame-the-Poles certainty about Kielce. It is high time that the mass media in the west, and Holocaust materials in particular, recognize and publicize this fact. Fat chance.