Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944-1946

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Antisemitism History · Timeline · Resources Forms Anti-globalizational · Arab Christian · Islamic · Nation of Islam New · Racial · Religious Secondary · Academic · Worldwide Allegations Deicide · Blood libel · Ritual murder Well poisoning · Host desecration Jewish lobby · Jewish Bolshevism Usury · Dreyfus affair Zionist Occupation Government Holocaust denial Antisemitic publications On the Jews and Their Lies Protocols of the Elders of Zion The International Jew Mein Kampf The Culture of Critique series Persecutions Expulsions · Ghettos · Pogroms Jewish hat · Judensau Yellow badge · Spanish Inquisition Segregation · The Holocaust Nazism · Neo-Nazism Opposition Anti-Defamation League Community Security Trust EUMC · Stephen Roth Institute Wiener Library · SPLC · SWC UCSJ · SCAA · Yad Vashem Categories Antisemitism · Jewish history v • d • e

Anti-Jewish Violence In Poland, 1944-1946 refers to a series of violent incidents that immediately followed the end of the Second World War in Poland, the victims of which were individuals or groups of Poles of Jewish descent. The incidents ranged from individual abuse to a number of pogroms. The phenomenon, often attributed to anti-Semitism, is still a subject of research and debates of sociologists and historians.

Contents 1 Background 2 Statistics from records 3 Varying estimations 4 Notes

[edit] Background

Nazi Germans who occupied most of Poland for most of the war encouraged and rewarded persecution of the Jews by local populace in countries they occupied (see Holocaust in Poland). Although already strained, the relations between Jews and Poles significantly worsened after the Second World War. Immediately after the war anti-Semitism found its rationalization in the role that some Jewish people played in the Polish Communist party ("żydokomuna"). ^[1] While after the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland most Poles opposed Soviets and saw them as occupiers, some Jews treated them as liberators. According to Jewish records^[2] Soviet authorities trusted Jews more than other nationalities, viewed as more concerned with their national interests. By February 1945, Poland had been overrun by the Red Army again and as a result^[2] many important positions of power in a new communist People's Republic of Poland, particularly within the secret police and the Ministry of Public Security of Poland, were awarded by Soviet authorities to people of Jewish background. Two out of three communist leaders who dominated Poland between 1948 and 1956 (Jakub Berman and Hilary Minc) were of Jewish origin. The situation attributed to straining the Polish-Jewish relations, with Poles accusing Jews of implementing Soviet rule in Poland. The Kraków pogrom was the first major antisemitic riot in the postwar Poland.^[3][4] Similar acts of anti-Jewish violence were later recorded in other towns of central Poland.^[5][6] The most notorious of them was Kielce pogrom of July 4, 1946.

[edit] Statistics from records

The incidents were limited mostly to the eastern regions of Poland, as evidenced by the statistic presented in the Jewish deaths by violence for which specific record is extant, by month and province table below. ^{[7] [8] [6][9]}

	Białystok	Kielce	Kraków	Lublin	Łódź	Rzeszów	Warsaw	Other	Total
Sept 1944	.	.	.	.	.	.	1	.	1
Oct Nov Dec	. . .	. . .	. . .	6 . .	. . .	. . .	. . .	. . .	6 0 0
Jan 1945	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	0
Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec	. . . . . . . . . . .	. . 15 1 17 3 8 3 . . .	. . . 1 . . 1 . . . .	. 7 3 2 15 . 3 . . . 3	. . . 8 3 5 1 . . . .	. . . . 4 . 19 . . . .	. . 3 3 6 . 11 . . . .	. . 2 . 7 . 4 . . . .	0 7 23 15 52 8 47 3 0 0 3
Jan 1946	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	1	1
Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sept	. . 3 . . . . .	2 . 2 2 . 51 . .	4 . 20 11 9 . . .	7 12 . . 5 . . 3	5 . 2 . 1 . . .	. . . . . . . .	. . . . . 3 . .	5 . 5 2 3 . . 1	22 16 32 15 18 54 0 4
Total	3	104	46	66	28	23	27	30	327

[edit] Varying estimations

The renown Jewish-Polish historian Lucjan Dobroszycki wrote in 1973 that he had "analyzed records, reports, cables, protocols and press-cuttings of the period pertaining to anti-Jewish assaults and murders in 115 localities" and documented approximately 300 Jewish deaths. ^[10]

According to Holocaust scholar David Engel, writing in Yad Vashem Studies,

"Dobroszycki did not report the results of that analysis except in the most general terms, nor did he indicate the specific sources from which he had compiled his list of cases. Nevertheless, a separate, systematic examination of the relevant files in the archive of the Polish Ministry of Public Administration, supplemented by reports prepared by the United States embassy in Warsaw and by Jewish sources in Poland, as well as by bulletins published by the Central Committee of Polish Jews and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, has lent credibility to Dobroszycki's claim: it has turned up more or less detailed descriptions of 130 incidents in 102 locations between September 1944 and September 1946, in which 327 Jews lost their lives."^[8]

Some historians including Antony Polonsky and Jan T. Gross ^[11] cite a higher number of Jewish murder victims by Lucjan Dobroszycki, who has reported around 1500 Jews having been murdered during the postwar anti-Jewish violence in Poland.^{[12] [13] [14] [15]} This figure first appeared in Dobroszycki's work published in 1973.^[10] Dobroszycki wrote that "according to general estimates 1500 Jews lost their lives in Poland from liberation until the summer of 1947."^[16] David Engel of New York University stated that Dobroszycki "offered no reference for such 'general estimates'" which "have not been confirmed by any other investigator" and "no proof-text for this figure" exists, not even a smaller one of 1000 claimed by Gutman.^[17] Engel wrote that "both estimates seem high."^[16] Deak, Gross and Judt note that Dobroszycki "always paid meticulous attention to numerical statistics." Other estimates include those of Anna Cichopek claiming more than 1000 Jews murdered in Poland between 1944 and 1947^[18] while Dr Lidiya Milyakova of Russian Academy of Sciences placed that number at 1500-1800.^[4] Similarly, according to a Jewish historian Stefan Grajek around 1000 Jews were murdered in the first half of year 1946^[19] while British-Polish historian Tadeusz Piotrowski assumed 1500-2000 victims between the years 1944 and 1947,^[2] constituting 2 to 3 percent of the total number of victims of postwar violence in the country.

[edit] Notes