Kielce pogrom

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The building at 7 Planty Street

The Kielce pogrom refers to the events that occurred on July 4, 1946, in the Polish town of Kielce, when 37 Polish Jews were murdered and 82 wounded out of about 200 Holocaust survivors who had returned home after World War II.

Among the victims were former prisoners of concentration camps as well as Jewish soldiers and Russian Jews on their way to Palestine; two or three Gentile Poles also died, killed by the Jews defending themselves. While far from the deadliest pogrom against the Jews, the pogrom was especially significant in post-war Jewish history, as the attack took place fourteen months after the end of World War II, well after the Nazis were defeated and the extent of the Holocaust was well known to the world.

[edit] The pogrom

During the Nazi occupation, Kielce was entirely ethnically cleansed of its Jewish population. By the summer of 1946, some two hundred Jews, mostly former residents, returned home from the death camps and from their hiding places. Most of them lived in a single building of the Jewish Committee of Kielce Voivodeship at 7 Planty Street. ^[1] Planty is a small street in the center of the town, and it ran perpendicular to the main streets in which the Communist government's regular police, the secret police, and the army had their regional headquarters.

On July 1, 1946, an eight year old Polish boy, Henryk Błaszczyk, was reported missing by his father Walenty. Two days later, the boy, his father and one of their neighbors went to a local police station where Henryk claimed that he had been kidnapped by Jews. He accused the Jews of killing children and keeping the bodies in the cellar of the Kibutz on Planty Street, among other horrors. In short time, three police patrols of about ten policemen each were dispatched to the Jewish house. The were soon joined by an army contingent of about one hundred soldiers and five officers.

By 9 a.m. anti-Semitic blood libel resulted in a gathering outside the Jewish residence in anticipation of a search for bodies of Christian children. Uniformed servicemen of the MO police and the Polish People's Army, as well as some members of the Internal Security Corps (possibly also UBP secret police) broke down the doors and entered the building to disarm the inhabitants, as the Jews had permits to bear arms for self defense. One man was arrested and beaten by the police while Dr. Seweryn Kahane, head of the Jewish Committee, tried to convince them of their mistake, pointing out that the building had no basement.

By 10 a.m. after the first shot was fired – it is unclear by whom: a policeman, a soldier or one of the Jews – violence broke out in the confusion and the servicemen began killing Jews. Dr. Kahane was shot in the back of head and killed while he was trying to call the authorities for help and at least two Poles including a police officer were killed as Jews tried to defend themselves. After the attack inside the building, more Jews were then forced outside by the soldiers (some were thrown out of windows) and attacked by the mob on the street, members of which also entered the building.

By noon, the arrival of estimated six hundred to one thousand workers from the nearby Ludwików steel mill marked the beginning of the next phase of the pogrom, during which about twenty Jews lost their lives killed in a cruel fashion. Neither the military and secret police commanders, nor the local political leaders from the Polish Workers' Party did anything to stop the workers from attacking Jews. A unit of police cadets from the nearby MO school joined in the looting and murdering of the Jews, which continued inside and outside the building.

Killing of Jews at 7 Planty Street continued until the arrival of new units of security forces from a nearby UBP academy commanded by Colonel Stanisław Kupsza and the additional troops from Warsaw at approximately 6 p.m., when all wounded and still living were removed from the building.

The violence in Kielce did not stop at 7 Planty Street and soon people began looking around for more Jews. Even trains passing through the main railway station were searched for Jews by civilians and a railway guards; two Jews were thrown out of the trains and killed. In addition, a crowd approached the hospital and demanded that the wounded Jews be handed over to them.

[edit] The aftermath

Between July 9 and July 11, 1946, twelve among the alleged pogrom’s civilian perpetrators, mostly accidental people - one of them metally ill, were tried by the Supreme Military Court. Nine of them were sentenced to death and remaining three received prison terms ranging from 7 years to life. Chief provocateurs, including Walenty Błaszczyk and his son Henryk, were released from the UBP custody in 1947.

The brutality of the Kielce pogrom put an end to the hopes of many Jews that they would be able to resettle in Poland after the end of the Nazi regime. In the words of Bożena Szaynok, a historian at Wrocław University:

Jewish survivors awaiting transportation to the British Mandate of Palestine

Until July 4, 1946, Polish Jews cited the past as their main reason for emigration...After the Kielce pogrom, the situation changed drastically. Both Jewish and Polish reports spoke of an atmosphere of panic among Jewish society in the summer of 1946. Jews no longer believed that they could be safe in Poland. Despite the large militia and army presence in the town of Kielce, Jews had been murdered there in cold blood, in public, and for a period of more than five hours. The news that the militia and the army had taken part in the pogrom spread as well. From July 1945 until June 1946, about fifty thousand Jews passed the Polish border illegally. In July 1946, almost twenty thousand decided to leave Poland. In August 1946 the number increased to thirty thousand. In September 1946, twelve thousand Jews left Poland.^[2]

Many of these Jews were smuggled out illegally by the Berihah organization.

The official reaction to the pogrom was described by Anita Prazmowska in Cold War History, Vol. 2, No. 2:

Nine participants in the pogrom were sentenced to death; three were given lengthy prison sentences. Policemen, military men, and functionaries of the UBP were tried separately and then unexpectedly all, with the exception of Wiktor Kuznicki, Commander of the MO, who was sentenced to one year in prison, were found not guilty of "having taken no action to stop the crowd from committing crimes." Clearly, during the period when the first investigations were launched and the trial, a most likely politically motivated decision had been made not to proceed with disciplinary action. This was in spite of very disturbing evidence that emerged during the pre-trial interviews. It is entirely feasible that instructions not to punish the MO and UBP commanders had been given because of the politically sensitive nature of the evidence. Evidence heard by the military prosecutor revealed major organizational and ideological weaknesses within these two security services..^[3]

On September 14, 1946, Pope Pius XII gave audience to Rabbi Phillip Bernstein who had replaced Judge Simon Rifkind as the advisor on Jewish affairs to the U.S. European theater of operations. Bernstein asked the Pope to condemn the pogroms, but the Pope claimed that it was difficult to communicate with the Church in Poland because of the Iron Curtain.^[4]

[edit] Speculations and conspiracy theories

The Kielce pogrom has been a difficult subject in Polish history for many years, and there is still confusion over blame.

While it is beyond doubt that a mob consisting of some portion of the gentile inhabitants of Kielce, as well as the members of the Communist militsiya and army, carried out the pogrom, there has been considerable controversy over the possible outside inspiration for the events. A hypothesis that the event was provoked, or inspired, by the Communist secret services or the Soviet intelligence appeared immediately in Poland and a number of such scenarios are still offered.

In modern historical works, for instance by Tadeusz Piotrowski,^[5] by Abel Kainer,^[6] or by Jan Śledzianowski^[7] allegations are made, that the events were part of a much wider action organized by the Soviet intelligence in countries controlled by the Soviet Union, and that Soviet-dominated agencies like the UBP were used in the preparation of the Kielce pogrom. In common with many conspiracy theories, such explanations are based on circumstantial evidence such as cui bono reasoning, and attempt to show that the Communist government or other groups or forces would have gained various political benefits from the pogrom and thus could have inspired it. No solid, direct evidence of such outside provocation has come to light. Furthermore, even if such a provocation were to be demonstrated, the participants in the pogrom would still bear the moral responsibility for having succumbed to it.

One line of argument that implies external inspiration goes as follows:^[8] The 1946 referendum showed that the Communist plans met with little support, with less than a third of the Polish population. Only vote rigging won them a majority in the carefully controlled poll. Hence it has been alleged that the UBP organized the pogrom to distract the western media's attention from the fabricated referendum. Another element of distraction was the upcoming ruling in the Katyń Massacre in the Nuremberg Trials, from which the communists tried to turn international attention away, placing Poles in an unfavorable spotlight.

On the other hand, a contemporary but considered by many a revisionist historian, Jan T. Gross, blames the massacre on Polish hatred of Jews,^[9] pointing, in addition to the history of uneasy Jewish-Polish relations, to the fact that, following the pogrom, authorities attempted to conduct the mass-signing of a workers' petition condemning the massacre in many factories. Only a few of the workers signed it and it was in this event's aftermath that the connection between the Communists and Jews firmed up in the worker's minds. However, Gross's most recent book, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, offers a somewhat different and more nuanced interpretation. He argues that the complicity of gentile Poles in the Holocaust combined with demands for the return of Jewish property confiscated during World War II created a climate of "fear" that pushed Poles to commit violence against Jews. He thus argues against any notion that it was a "provocation," or that the alleged cooperation of Jews with communism, an enduring and powerful stereotype of anti-Semitism in Central Europe and particularly in Poland (known in Polish as Żydokomuna, or "Judeo-Communism"), caused the violent anti-Semitism that exploded in Poland after 1945.

It is also noteworthy that the alleged Soviet involvement in clearly anti-Semitic action largely contradicts the country's policy and interests of the time. In the wake of the recent European-wide Genocide of Jews committed by Nazi Germany, its allies and local collaborants, the Soviet Union had assumed the role of the liberator of Europe from the Genocidal Nazi regime. The USSR was among the first powers to support the creation of Israel and Soviet internal policies prior to the onset of the 1948 campaign against "rootless cosmopolitanism" was never anti-Semitic.^{[citation needed]}

Still, the opinion that the Soviets arranged the massacre in order to discredit the Poles in the eyes of the world remains common in Poland to this day despite a thorough investigation that did not discover any evidence in support of this version and the formal apology for the massacre that was issued by the Polish government. A stance that maintains the foreign responsibility for such a disturbing event (similar to the version that the Germans rather than the Poles were responsible for the Jedwabne pogrom) is ill regarded by some Jewish groups who view it as evidence of the lack of determination in Polish society to confront and address a persistent and pervasive anti-semitism in Poland.^[10]

[edit] Attempts of explanation and reconciliation

Memorial plaque at the Planty 7 house

In recent years, the Kielce pogrom and the role of the Poles in the massacre are openly discussed in Poland. A formal investigation of the pogrom conducted by Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) since 1990, finished inconclusively in 2004, as it did not find sufficient evidence to charge any specific living individual with crimes committed during the pogrom. However, the timeline of events on that fateful day is well established. According to IPN's prosecutor Krzysztof Falkiewicz, in face of the collected evidence, the most probable explanation is that the massacre was a result of spontaneous behaviour of the mob, sparked by unfortunate coincidences of historical nature[1]. In course of the investigation IPN dismissed the theory of Soviet inspiration because of "lack of direct evidence and lack of obvious Soviet interest in provoking the events". ^[11]

A monument by New York based artist Jack Sal (www.jacksal.com) entitled White/Wash II commemorating the victims was dedicated on July 4, 2006 in Kielce, at the 60th anniversary of the pogrom. At the dedication ceremony a statement from the Polish president, Lech Kaczyński condemning the events as a crime and "a great shame and tragedy for the Poles and the Jews" was read on the president's behalf by an aide (the president himself did not attend the ceremony and his office cited the health-reasons for that). The presidential statement asserted that today's democratic Poland had "no room for racism and antisemitism" and brushed off any generalizations of the anti-semitic image over the Poles as a nation rejecting "the stereotype of the Polish antisemite".^[10]

[edit] See also

• Kraków pogrom
• 1968 Polish political crisis

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

1. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (2003). After the Holocaust. East European Monographs. ISBN 0-88033-511-4. 
2. Jan Śledzianowski (1998). Pytania nad pogromem kieleckim. Kielce: Jedność. ISBN 83-7224-057-4. 
3. Bożena Szaynok, Ryszard Śmietanka-Kruszelnicki, Jan Żaryn, Jacek Żurek (2006). in Łukasz Kamiński, Jan Żaryn: Wokół pogromu kieleckiego. Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. ISBN 83-60464-07-3. 
4. Jan T. Gross (2002). Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09603-1. 
5. Jan T. Gross (2006). Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-12878-2. 

[edit] External links

• The Jewish Pogrom in Kielce, July 1946 by Bozena Szaynok
• The Pogrom in Kielce
• The Truth about Kielce by Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, arguing that the Soviets were responsible for the pogrom