Betrayals Jews By Poles From German Collective Reprisals Sledzinski

Governor Frank’s Dark Harvest, by Waclaw Sledinski. 1946

1939 Zydokomuna in Action. Poles Denounced Poles (and Jews) Out of Fear of Collective German Terror-Reprisals

Waclaw Sledzinski was an eyewitness to many tragic events which transpired between fall 1939 and spring 1942, after which he escaped to the west.

NOT ALL UKRAINIANS WERE ANTAGONISTIC TO POLAND

During the German-Soviet conquest of Poland, both Soviet Communists and Ukrainian separatists (e. g., the OUN) incited Ukrainians to kill “those Polish landlords” and `those Polish colonists on Ukrainian lands”. Sledzinski’s experience was quite different: “When we were fleeing from the Germans towards the East, we spent one night in a Polish-Ukrainian village not far from Luck [Lutsk]. The Ukrainians did not everywhere receive the Poles cordially, but in that village they were very hospitable…I talked with them for hours, about the war, Poland, and the Ukrainians.” (pp. 12-13). They wanted Poland to return.

SIGNIFICANT, THOUGH OF COURSE NOT TOTAL, JEWISH DISLOYALTY TO POLAND

While in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland, Sledzinski encountered the Zydokomuna: “A Soviet soldier came in to the little Jewish cafe where we were sitting over a cup of tea…The local Jews in particular looked on him with great satisfaction and caught his words greedily…It was at Dubno, on the second day of the occupation, that I saw a very sad scene. Two young Jews, communist militiamen, brought out a couple of Polish officers, a colonel and a lieutenant, from a house. In the market-place, surrounded by a party of militiamen…stood a superior sort of commissar, a young fellow with a markedly Semitic cast of countenance.” (p. 11). The commissar slapped the colonel hard in the face. The subsequent fate of the Polish officers is not indicated.

Nearly two years later, Sledzinski visited German-occupied Lwow (Lvov, Lviv) and said: “I asked whether the Jews had really rendered services to the Bolsheviks. ‘Yes’, one of my friends told me. `Many worked for the N.K.W.D [NKVD]. But one cannot generalize. There were other Jews who did not forget that they were Poles.’” (p. 137).

POLES GENERALLY SYMPATHETIC TO JEWISH SUFFERING

The author contends that Polish-Jewish relationships improved during at least the first few years of the German occupation: “The Poles too are hungry, suffer and perish. But the attitude of the Polish population to the Jews is full of sympathy. It is indisputable that the occupation has completely cured our community of anti-Semitism.” (p. 123).

GERMAN TERROR IS WHAT INDUCED SOME POLES TO DENOUNCE OTHER POLES (AND JEWS)

Sledzinski sheds light on the motivations behind Polish collaboration, specifically the choiceless choices involved. Jozef Wojcik had concealed some arms in his barn and: “Andrzej Wojcik, a distant relation of Jozef, had known of his action, and had uttered threats against him…Andrzej had spoken of Jozef and the concealment of arms [to the vogt, or village leader]. He even told the vogt it was his duty to give information, as otherwise the whole village would suffer for it. The Germans shot Jozef Wojcik in the forest near the village.” (p. 163). Now if the collective policy of German terror was such that it could motivate a Pole to betray a fellow Pole, even a blood relative, one can better understand its power to motivate a Pole to betray or kill a fugitive Jew!

The facts are clear. So much for the JUDENJAGD of Jan Grabowski vel Abrahamer.

A TASTE OF THE POLOKAUST: NOT ONLY THE JEWS WERE SLATED FOR EXTERMINATION

The author is very descriptive about German atrocities, and I will only provide a summary: “The criminality and sadism displayed at the examinations in Pawiak Gaol surpass imagination…(p. 74)…For German criminality is so frightful, so improbable, that only those who have experienced it–as the whole Polish nation have experienced it–can believe in it.” (p. 79). Poles were forced to serve in the German Army (p. 229). Sledzinski also comments: “Doubtless you all know already that the Germans are waging war against our culture. You know how they are burning, destroying, or carrying off everything…” (p. 101). For instance, the Germans systematically burned the contents of Polish libraries (p. 103, 104, 189).

In fact, before (and during) the genocide of Jews, there was the genocide of Poles: “The German occupation policy, on the other hand, aims quite simply and clearly at the extirpation of the whole Polish nation. Do you know that the secret press has declared that the Germans murder on an average 2,500 Poles every day, and that since the beginning of the occupation [up to that time–Feb. 1942] more than one and a half million Poles have been shot by firing squads or murdered in concentration camps?” (p. 210).

This is, of course, in addition to passive genocidal methods: “The German occupation has brought Poland nothing but devastation and death. The death rate increases month by month, as the population becomes impoverished and epidemics spread. Before the war the birth rate in Poland was one of the highest in the world; whereas now the death rate surpasses all records. In Warsaw in the first two years of the occupation 32 per cent of children under five died. The German machinery for starving the Polish people works with ever-increasing speed…If the Polish nation should have to be ground in the mill of occupation for a lengthy period, say ten years, it would be completely destroyed by starvation in the end.” (p. 242).

Finally: “For if the Germans completely exterminate the Jews, then they will assuredly go on to the extermination of the Poles.” (p. 124).

THE PAIN OF GERMAN BOMBS AND GUNS WAS NOT AS GREAT AS THE PAIN OF LOSING FREEDOM

The Poles maintained an indomitable spirit: “Almost everyone who went through the siege of Warsaw tells me that in September last year the calm before the capitulation was more terrible than the hellish fire of the big guns and the unceasing hail of bombs.” (p. 27). Also: “The Germans are helpless in Poland, for we have what I suppose is the richest literature in the world concerning nationalist struggles against occupying powers; our State having originated in conspiratorial activity.” (p. 55).

Waclaw Sledzinski provides a good summary of Polish Underground activities. Apart from such common things as sabotage, there were various armed attacks on Germans by Poles (p. 58, 132, etc.). The large-scale guerilla actions of Hubal and his successor Bem, which persisted until June 29, 1940, and which caused significant German losses, are especially elaborated (pp. 65-67).