Big Bulletin: Polish Non-Complicity in the Holocaust

The information below is an analysis written by Jan Peczkis, who has analyzed over 1,700 works by Jewish and non-Jewish authors on historical and contemporary Polish-Jewish interrelations. We feature Jan’s database website on our Resources webpage in the section titled “Polish-Jewish Relations”. The article titled “Jan Peczkis’s 1,700 book reviews will improve your understanding of Polish-Jewish relations” provides you with the link to his website and explains how readers can use it to learn essential facts about the Poles, Polish Jews, and Polish-Jewish relations, particularly during World War II and the post-war Communist period. As will be seen, Jan presents excerpts from these works in which the authors falsify, misrepresent, or omit critical facts about Poland and the Poles, and this largely explains why Polish-Jewish relations remain problematic. Disappointingly, many of these distortions and omissions appear in high-school curricula, the media, popular literature, and academic sources. As will be seen, Jan’s Big Bulletin below invalidates the often-repeated, risible canard that Poland was complicit in the Holocaust, and he cites the applicable sources and includes relevant links to his website.

• Polish non-complicity? Note that “Polish Complicity in the Holocaust” is an undefined, finger-pointing term. How much of the local population, acting in unambiguous solidarity with Hitler, must do acts against Jews for it to be presumably valid? 1 in 100,000? 1 in 10,000? 1 in 1,000? Who decides this?
• Goebbels asserted that the British and Americans secretly approved of what the Nazis were doing to the Jews. (Johnson 1989). When Jews today accuse Poles of delighting in the demise of the Jews, they are making common cause with Nazi German propaganda!
• Polish non-complicity: The “fugitive Jews were totally at the mercy of the Poles” mantra is false. A large fraction, perhaps majority, of fugitive Jews were found directly by the German gendarmes, who regularly combed the Polish countryside (Gradzka-Rejak 2018).
• Another large fraction of fugitive Jews was denounced or killed not by ethnic Poles, but by Volksdeutsche (Polish-speaking Germans) (Zychowicz 2018).
• Only some 21,000 Poles were convicted of collaboration. This is a staggering ONE-TENTH OF ONE PERCENT of the Polish population. (Brechtken 2019). This is in spite of the fact that the Communist government was pro-Jewish.
• It is untrue that there was no Polish Quisling because the Germans never wanted one. Germans did seek to form a Polish collaborationist government (Karski 1943, Tory 1990, Witos 1964), but no Pole of any significant prewar stature agreed to serve in this role.
• In fact, according to leading SS man Schoengarth, “Not a single Pole would now come forward and really work for the government.” (Piotrowski 1961).
• The 200,000 figure of fugitive Jews killed by Poles, is propaganda and media sensationalism: It has been pulled out of thin air! No hard evidence (surveys, censuses, archives, etc.) has ever been presented to justify the widely quoted alleged fantastic death toll of Jews (200,000) from Polish acts (Berendt 2017).
• In fact, only 3,000 Polish Jew-betrayals and Jew-killings can be considered “reliably authenticated” from archival sources (Gutman et al. 1986). This is a far cry from the mythical 200,000 and is dwarfed by the tens of thousands of Poles murdered by Jews (Jewish Communists). (Szwagrzyk 2005).
• All police forces under the German occupation were NOT the same. Do not lump them together. For example, the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei consisted of volunteers that agreed to collaborate with the Germans. (Domanski and Majcher-Ociosy 2019). The Polish Blue Police consisted of conscripts that the Germans had forced into service. (Hempel 1990; Markiewicz 2021).
• Polish acts against Jews were involuntary. The Germans forced the Polish Blue Police, and village mayors, to turn in any and all fugitive Jews. (Frydel 2021).
• Accusations against the Blue Police are made in the usual Judeocentric contextual vacuum, where only Jews were victims. In actuality, the Blue Police no more acted against Jews than it acted against Poles. (Domanski 2020, Gradzka-Rejak 2018).
• Fugitive Jews often resorted to banditry, forcing the starving Poles to defend themselves by denouncing or killing the Jews, sometimes pre-emptively (Bechta and Zebrowski 1997, Porat 2009, Katz 2013).
• Furthermore, fugitive Jews were commonly complicit in the Communist GL-AL bands, in the robbery and murder of Poles, as verified by archives. (Chodakiewicz 1997). This made them legitimate targets of Polish counter-aggression and gave a bad name to all fugitive Jews.
• The Germans forced captured fugitive Jews to divulge the hiding places of other Jews (Frydel 2021), including that of Polish benefactors. This encouraged Poles to pre-emptively denounce fugitive Jews in order to protect themselves.
• Since the Germans forced captured fugitive Jews to identify the hiding places of other fugitive Jews, this domino effect guaranteed a low overall fugitive Jewish survival rate, moreover with little Polish involvement.
• The fact that some Poles were anti-Semitic proves nothing. Being anti-Semitic is not synonymous with seeking to kill Jews on behalf of Hitler! Ironically, many Polish benefactors of Jews were openly anti-Semitic (Friedman 1957).
• Polish non-complicity: No evidence has been presented that Poles proportionately collaborated with the Nazis any more than Jews did. But the Jews get a pass.
• Polish non-complicity: There is no evidence that Poles proportionately collaborated any more than members of other German-occupied nations. It is selective indignation. Danes are uncritically glorified for their “heroic rescue” of Jews, and we never hear about the outright Danish-Nazi collaborators. (Bjerregaard 2017).
• As a principle, we are told not to single out Israel for malfeasance. So don’t single out Poland for malfeasance, much less for unsupported accusations!
• Uncorroborated accusations by Holocaust survivors should not automatically be believed, even by journalists. Jews have proved capable of fabricating lurid and believable pogrom stories, complete with “eyewitnesses”, such as in the case of the bogus 1906 pogrom in New York. (Ribak 2008).
• In addition, Holocaust survivors are prone to mix statements that they have heard from others, but never personally experienced, with their own personal experiences. (Browning 2010, Fernyhough 2013, Marwell 2020, Wieviorka 2006). Considering all the anti-Polish hearsay circulating in the Jewish community, is it any wonder that Holocaust survivors “remember” malevolent Polish acts that never happened?

Sources: jewsandpolesdatabase.org (this website)

Bechta and Zebrowski. 1997. Narodowe Sily Zbrojne na Podlasiu. Tom 1, p. 68

Berendt. 2017. Zydowski Uciekinerzy I Tulacze w Okupowanej Polsce. IPN BULLETIN 6(139)55

Bjerregaard. 2017. Danish Volunteers in the Waffen-SS, p. 8, 221.

Brechtken. 2019. Political and Transitional Justice in Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union, pp. 162-165. (Article by Paczkowski)

Browning. 2010. Remembering Survival, p. 11

Chodakiewicz. 1997. Tajne Oblicze Gl_AL I PPR, volume 1, p. 102

Domanski. 2020. Korekty Ciag Dalsze, p. 27

Domanski and Majcher-Ociosy. 2019. Policja Granatowa w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie w Latach 1939-1945, pp. 25-29.

Fernyhough. 2013. Pieces of Light, pp. 211-213

Friedman. 1957. Their Brothers Keepers, pp. 114-115, 206

Frydel. 2021. Village Society and the Holocaust in the General Government. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Phd THESIS, many pages

Gieron. 2017. Postepowanie karne prowadzone…ANALECTA CRACOVIENSIA 49: 236-237, 242

Gradzka-Rejak. 2018. The Holocaust and Polish-Jewish Relations, pp. 149-151, 206

Gutman. 1986. Unequal Victims, p. 238

Hempel. 1990. Pogrobowcy Kleski, p. 133

Johnson. 1989. A History of the Jews, p. 503

Karski. 1943. Story of a Secret State, p. 132, 155-163

Katz. 2013. Gone to Pitchipoi, p. 213

Markiewicz. 2021. Unlikely Allies, p. 43

Marwell. 2020. Mengele: Unmasking the Angel of Death, pp. 77-78

Piotrowski. 1961. Hans Frank’s Diary, p. 143

Porat. 2009. The Fall of the Sparrow, pp. 158-159

Ribak. 2008. “They are slitting the throats of Jewish children”. AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY 94:175

Szwagrzyk. 2005. Apparat Bezpieczenstwa w Polsce 1944-1956, p. 59

Tory. 1990. Surviving the Holocaust, p. 108

Wieviorka. 2006. The Era of the Witness. pp. xiii-xiv.

Witos. 1964. Moje Wspomnienia, p. 12

Zelkovitsch. 2003. In Those Terrible Days, p. 306