Polish Collaboration Very Rare Sword

Deportation and Exile: Poles in the Soviet Union, 1939-48, by Keith Sword. 2014

Very Low Rates of Polish Collaboration. Clarifies Jewish Deportees and the False “Fear of the Nazis” Zydokomuna Exculpation

This work by a British author provides details of not only the deportations and “amnesty”, but also many other aspects of Soviet aggression towards Poland. It gets into the politics behind the Soviet confiscation of the Kresy (Poland’s eastern half), the disbanding and frequently murder of AK (A.K.) units that had just been fighting on behalf of the Soviets against the Germans, and the early forced Communization of Poland on the heels of the Red Army.

HOW MANY POLISH DEPORTEES?

How many Polish citizens were deported in 1939-1941? Sword cites Bogdan Podoski’s estimate of 1,692,000 and others down to about 1,000,000 (pp. 25-26). Although Sword does not get into recently-cited Soviet figures that admit less than 400,000 Polish citizens deported, he does mention Soviet verbal allegations that there were only 388,000 Polish citizens in the USSR in June 1941. Sword suggests that this can be explained by the high mortality of the deportees (up to 30% annually), the re-definition of non-ethnic Polish citizens as non-Poles, and, above all, the unreliable, even conjectural, nature of Soviet statistics. (p. 27).

Of all the 1939-1941 waves of deportations, the one in late June 1940 was perhaps the most devious. When the Germans had invaded Poland in 1939, many Polish citizens fled east, only to end up trapped in Soviet-annexed eastern Poland. The Soviet authorities announced that these refugees could return to their homes in German-occupied western Poland, and even provided trains for this purpose. It was a cruel ruse. Instead of transporting the refugees westward as promised, the trains moved these refugees east into the interior of the USSR as a disguised wave of deportation! A large fraction of these refugees was Jewish. [p. 18]. (This confirms historian Jerzy Robert Nowak.) According to the scholar Podoski, the refugees consisted of 138,000 ethnic Poles and 198,000 Jews. (p. 26).

ZYDOKOMUNA EXCULPATION FAILS

Consider the implications of the foregoing. One common exculpation for the Zydokomuna (Jewish-Soviet collaboration) in 1939 is the Jewish fear of falling into the hands of the Nazis, and gratitude to the Soviets for preventing this from happening. Podoski’s figures, even if exaggerated several-fold, soundly refute this. Were Jews actually afraid of the Nazis at this time, it would be virtually impossible to find even a single Jew, safe in Soviet hands, who would deliberately seek to return to Nazi-held territory. Instead, there were plenty.

EXTREME RARITY OF POLISH COLLABORATION WITH THE SOVIETS

The high rate of Jewish-Communist collaboration contrasts with the almost monolithic Polish rejection of any hint of Communism. For instance, in 1940, the Soviets found only 15 Polish officers, out of many thousands interned before Katyn, sympathetic to the Soviet cause. (p. 232). This comes out to around 1 in 500 (0.2%).

THE 1941 “AMNESTY”

After Nazi Germany attacked its erstwhile Soviet ally, the Polish deportees were given an “amnesty”. Sword details how only a fraction of the captive Poles were actually released. The Soviets, having redefined Jews, Byelorussians, and Ukrainians as Soviet citizens, wanted to keep them in the USSR to reinforce their claims for the Kresy. They spread propaganda to Jews, telling them that the Polish Government does not want them. (p. 51). The Polish Jews, or at least the Zionists, for their part, asserted their long-held separatism by wanting to be part of a semi-independent brigade instead of integration into the Polish Army. (p. 58). General Anders rejected this proposal. Later, of course, many Polish Jews deserted in Palestine.

A LITTLE FUN

Sword has a place for humor. He comments (quote) The Poles are famed for their political jokes and their grim humour in adversity. A contemporary tale (from 1944) had a Russian major cajoling Poles to join the Red Army, maintaining that the Poles should fight at their side against the common fascist enemy. One of the “recruits” turned to the Russian officer and asked, “Have you ever seen two dogs fighting over a bone?” “Yes, I have—came the answer.” “And—continued the Pole—did the bone take an active part in the struggle?” (unquote)