When the Zionists and the Reactionary Right Wing Polish Government Fight, the Truth May Surface

 

by Yossi Schwartz, Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine), 21.2.2018, http://www.the-isleague.com

 

 

 

Last November 11, during Poland's independence day celebration, around 60,000 right wingers marched in Warsaw with banners saying “Clear Blood,” and “White Europe”. By the end of the weekend, as AP reported, the official and unofficial events merged. The police arrested 45 counter-protesters.

 

Poland's Foreign Ministry said the next Monday that the day had been “a great celebration of Poles, differing in their views, but united around the common values of freedom and loyalty to an independent homeland.” [1] Thus, in the eyes of the right wing Polish government racism and Islamophobia are part of the legitimate political spectrum.

 

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman called the march dangerous, but no Zionist politician called to end the diplomatic relations with Poland or any other diplomatic punitive measures.

 

This weekend, Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland's right wing prime minister, answering the question of Ronen Bergman, a Zionist reporter from Israel, who asked whether the new legislation amounted to the criminalization of discussion of Polish complicity in the crimes committed during the second world war, replied: "Of course not. It's not going to be punishable, it's not going to be seen as criminal to say that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Ukrainian; not only German perpetrators."

 

This reply coming from a close friend of the Israeli state led to him being accused by Zionist politicians as a Holocaust denier who equate the Jews with the Nazis.

 

Strictly speaking, the comments of Mateusz Morawiecki were not a denial of the Holocaust, or an equation of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust to the Nazis who perpetrated genocide.

 

The Polish government said in a statement on Saturday night: “The words (...) should be interpreted as a sincere call for open discussion of crimes committed against Jews during the Holocaust, regardless of the nationality of those involved in each crime.” [2]

 

Polish and Zionist Collaborators

 

However, the last thing the Zionists want regarding the Holocaust is an open discussion. Such discussion, after all, would have to be inclusive of crimes committed against Jews during the Holocaust, regardless of the nationality of those involved in each crime. Much like the Polish right wing nationalists, the Zionists can handle only part of the truth. It is beyond doubt that there were Poles who collaborated in the mass killings of Jews and it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that there were Jewish policemen Kapos and many leading members of the Judenrat who helped the Nazi's extermination of the Jews.

 

It is not easy to find out how many Poles joined the Nazis for ideological reasons. The Zionists argue that the Poles who served the Nazi did it because of ideological reasons, while the Jews who served the Nazis, did it to save their lives, their families and friends and they even say: "Who can blame them for trying to save their lives"?

 

It is very difficult to know how many Poles participated in the mass killing of Jews. In a 1970 article, pioneering Polish-Jewish historian Szymon Datner estimated that 200,000 Jews died at the hands of Poles during World War II. Attempting to flee the Germans’ cattle cars and camps, they found their deaths after being handed over to the authorities, informed upon while in hiding, or through murder by their Polish neighbors. Some of them might also cling to the claim that they were forced to act in such a way, since hiding or aiding fleeing Jews carried a death sentence at the hands of Nazi occupation.

 

From 1942 to 1945, according to Datner’s calculations, of the 250,000 Jews who attempted to escape the Germans in occupied Poland, only 10-16 percent survived. [3]

 

The Zionists would like to hide that there were Jews, mostly Zionists who collaborated with the Nazis. It is much easier to accuse only the pro Nazis Poles. Yair Lapid, head of Yesh Atid, a center right Israeli opposition party, demanded that Israel recalls its Polish ambassador. “The Jewish state will not allow the murdered to be blamed for their own murder,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “A comparison between the activities of Poles and the activities of Jews during the Holocaust is unfounded,” the Israeli government says.

 

The fact is that without the collaboration of Poles and Zionists with the Nazis it would be difficult for the Nazis to carry out the genocide of the Jews. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum wrote that while some Judenrat (Jewish council under the Nazis) refused to help the Nazis and were killed or committed suicide, other Jewish council officials advocated compliance, believing that cooperation would ensure the survival of at least a portion of the population. In Lodz, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who tried in vain to persuade the Nazis to reduce the number of Jewish deportees, urged ghetto residents to report for deportation as ordered. Rumkowski also adopted a policy of "rescue through labor," believing that if the Germans could exploit Jewish labor, deportation might be averted.

 

Jewish council members held varied views on resistance. In Sosnowiec, Moshe Merin denounced the underground, believing that armed resistance would doom the entire ghetto. In Vilna, Jewish council chairman Jacob Gens decided to hand over underground leader Yitzhak Wittenberg, claiming that if the council did not turn Wittenberg in the Nazis would liquidate the ghetto. Jewish council opposition to resistance often prompted resentment within the underground, which sometimes accused the Jewish councils of collaboration with the Nazis (in Warsaw, the underground attacked the Jewish police). [4]

 

Jewish policemen in the ghetto

 

The Jewish Organization for the Maintenance of Public Order (German: Jüdischer Ordungsdienst; Polish: Żydowska Służba Porządkowa), was established under Nazi occupation in most East European ghettos. The establishment of a police force usually was connected with the creation of the ghettos, which excluded the Jewish population from general police jurisdiction and thus created a need for an alternative system of ensuring that the Jewish population complied with German occupiers’ orders.

 

The absence of a general German order regarding the establishment of the Jewish police indicates that in all probability, it was the various local occupying forces—and not the Central Reich Government—that took the initiative to set up this force. Indeed, the composition of the Jewish police in different ghettos, their jurisdictional powers, and their status within the Jewish community varied from ghetto to ghetto, according to local conditions.

 

A small ghetto could muster only a handful of individuals to join its police force, whereas the Warsaw ghetto police comprised more than 2,000 members. Some Jewish police units in some ghettos became independent of the Judenräte. The primary task of the Jewish police was to maintain public order and to enforce German orders transmitted by the Judenräte to the Jewish population. Jews joined it for social motives and out of a desire to help maintain order in the ghettos and assist Jewish autonomy.

 

They were part of the battle against those who disobeyed German orders, although the scope of their jurisdiction varied from place to place. Prisons were erected in the larger ghettos and detention rooms in the smaller ones; rarely were inmates transferred to the Germans. In most cases, ghetto police themselves carried out the punishment that ghetto courts imposed on the accused. Sometimes they even assisted in executing German-ordered death sentences.

 

Police were supposed to be paid by the Judenräte, but often their salary was insufficient and irregular. Thus, they were open to bribes, a situation that adversely affected moral standards. Understanding that the Jewish police served to enforce German policy, many left it; their places were taken mainly by people with no obligation to the Jewish population and by other doubtful elements.

 

After Jewish police began taking part in sending Jews to labor camps in 1940, Ghetto police personnel were generally exempt from labor service and were even empowered to release others from their labor obligations (in exchange for bribes). Guarding the ghetto walls also corrupted the police and placed them in confrontations with the local public. Often Jewish policemen worked with local police and even with German soldiers to control smuggling. Their close ties with the German and local authorities and the opportunity for kickbacks led many Jewish communities to identify them with the occupying forces.

 

The onset of deportations to killing centers in 1942 led to a new phase in the history of the Jewish police. The Germans generally ordered ghetto police forces to assist in deporting Jews and sometimes even in selection. In return, the Nazis assured them that they and their families would not be deported. Police officers who refused to obey the orders joined the deportees or were killed on the spot. In most instances, the police complied with German demands.

 

During this period, the status of the ghetto police hit an all-time low in Jewish eyes. At the end of the war, the role of Jewish police and their actions became a highly controversial issue among Holocaust survivors. Dozens of police officers were tried in Jewish honor courts for improper conduct. Some were expelled from the Jewish community while others were merely barred from holding public office. [5]

 

The British Library has a similar account: "The Jewish policemen in the ghettos were controversial figures. They were often given extra privileges such as uniforms, bicycles, food rations and contraband from smuggling operations. Many faced moral dilemmas when forced by Nazi officers to perform violent acts on fellow Jews. There is evidence that some Jewish policemen were killed on the way to the camps by their fellow Jews, as recompense for treachery.

 

Selected tasks of Jewish policemen: to guard the ghetto gates together with Nazi guards and their collaborators; to direct traffic in ghetto streets; to guard post offices, kitchens and community administration; to deter and suppress smugglers; to curb beggars in the ghetto; to assist in liquidations of the ghettos.” [6]

 

An unpleasant truth

 

As Tony Greenstein wrote: Everywhere the Nazis conquered, “the most important concentration measure prior to the formation of the ghettos was the establishment of Jewish councils (Judenräte).”[7] As Eichmann commented, “The assimilated Jew was, of course, very unhappy about being moved to a ghetto. But the orthodox were pleased with the arrangement, as were the Zionists.” [8] Some two-thirds of the Judenräte consisted of Zionist supporters. [9]

 

Thus the all truth is very unpleasant for the Polish nationalists and for the Zionists. For the Zionists who claim that they represent the Jews hiding the full truth is necessary in order to justify the oppression of the Palestinians. For the Polish right wing nationalist it is important to hide the full truth in order to attack the immigrants, the Muslims and the Jews who live in Poland while swearing loyalty to Israel.

 

We call upon all freedom loving, working class and oppressed people of the world to unite under slogans such as: Anti Semite, Islamophobe, racist and fascist scum out! Refugees and immigrants - welcome!

 

 

 

References:

 

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/

 

[2] https://tinyurl.com/y955xb9g

 

[3] https://tinyurl.com/yblo2fht

 

[4] https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005265

 

[5] http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Ghettos/Ghetto_Police

 

[6] https://tinyurl.com/yczda9qv

 

[7] R. Hilberg, The destruction of European Jews, New York 1985, p.75

 

[8] L. Brenner, 51 documents, New Jersey 2002, p.274

 

[9] I. Trunk, Judenrat: the Jewish councils in eastern Europe under Nazi occupation, New York 1972

 

 

 

See on this subject also: Yossi Schwartz: The Origins of the Jews, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/origins-of-jews/