Revised january 30, 2009 a tangled web
An Overview of Polish-Soviet Wartime Relations
Yüklə 1,68 Mb.
|
|
An Overview of Polish-Soviet Wartime Relations
As historian Norman Davies points out, Poles and other peoples in East-Central Europe were in a hopeless predicament, caught in the same double bind, overtaken not just by one occupation, but by two: Eastern Europe lay astride the battleground of the two greatest tyrannies which the world has yet seen; and the full horror of its fate can never be comprehended unless events on either side of the dividing line are related to each other.27 Conditions throughout occupied Poland varied greatly. In some areas, especially in northeastern Poland, the situation was particularly volatile. The Soviet Union invaded and annexed the region in September 1939, in violation of a treaty it had signed with Poland in Riga in 1921 and the Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1932. The Soviet occupation, which lasted until July 1941, targeted foremost the Polish population—officials, officers and soldiers, as well as the nascent underground, but also consumed tens of thousands of Polish civilians especially the elites.28 As could be expected, resentment over the Soviet occupation of 1939–1941 lingered after the arrival of the German occupiers, and engendered suspicion about all subsequent Soviet actions and designs. Polish-Belorussian relations had also taken a turn for the worse with the murder of about two thousand Poles by radical, primitive and especially Communist-inspired factions among the Belorussian population in September 1939.29 An increasingly formidable and dense network of Soviet partisans, which became heavily infiltrated by NKVD agents, was viewed as a vehicle for the furtherance of Soviet interests and the feared reincorporation of Poland’s Eastern Borderlands into the Soviet Union.30 For most Poles, a head-on clash with the Soviets loomed as an inevitable and palpable reality. These fears would prove to be correct. Essentially, the only non-Soviet underground military organization operating in this region was the Polish Home Army, who answered to the Polish government in exile in London. The Home Army was under orders to avoid open conflict with the Soviet partisans.31 Contrary to claims found in Holocaust literature, there were no other Polish partisan formations in this area to speak of, such as the right-wing National Armed Forces (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne—NSZ),32 nor was there any national Belorussian resistance movement.33 There were, however, various Belorussian and Lithuanian formations, both military and police, in the service of the Germans.34 In April 1943, some 30,000 members of the Belorussian auxiliary police were pitted against some 75,000 Soviet partisans, engaged in open warfare.35 Many Belorussian nationalists had sided with the Germans in the vain hope that they might one day allow the Belorussians to establish their own state or protectorate. The Soviets executed pro-German Belorussian administrative officials and social and political activists by the hundreds.36 While many Belorussians fought in the ranks of the Soviet partisans, that force could hardly be regarded as a national Belorussian underground, as it answered only to the Soviet government. To round out this picture we should mention other lesser players on the scene: Cossacks in the German army,37 the so-called Russian National Liberation Army (RONA), and Ukrainian and Latvian police and SS divisions. A Lithuanian anti-partisan known as the Litauische Sonderverbände (Lietuvos Vietinė Rinktinė), under the command of General Povilas Plechavičius, which was entirely under German control, was also active in the Wilno region in 1944 and targeted both the Polish underground and its supporters.38 There was no armed Lithuanian resistance to the Germans, and therefore German retaliations rarely targeted Lithuanians.39 The Lithuanian partisan movement, whose base of operation did not extend east of Wilno, did not emerge until the arrival of the Red Army in the summer of 1944 and fought the Soviets.40 Relations between Poles and the local Polish and Belorussian population became increasingly strained. Unfortunately, there are few objective overviews of this entire complex topic. One worth mentioning is by Polish historian Teresa Prekerowa, who was awarded by Yad Vashem for her rescue activities on behalf of Żegota, the Polish Council for Aid to Jews.41 Prekerowa notes that when the Jews first started to escape from the ghettos in northeastern Poland (in the latter part of 1941), they encountered only small groups of Soviets, as regular Soviet and Polish partisan units formed only later. Most of the Jewish fugitives would never be accepted by the Soviets, however, because they lacked weapons—a standard precondition for joining any partisan unit.42 They banded together and eventually, as more Jews—especially women—joined them, they established camps. Reluctant to part with what little money and valuables they had brought with them, in order to survive the Jews had to beg for food or simply take it. Initially, the local peasants were quite willing to share their food, which is confirmed in the accounts referred to later on. However, as the number of Jews in the forests grew, and given the concurrent demands for food quotas imposed by the Germans and the confiscations carried out by Soviet partisans,43 as well as the needs of the nascent Polish partisan units, the attitude of the impoverished villagers, who endured these onerous burdens from all factions, started to change. According to German historian Alexander Brakel, who underook a detailed study of the Baranowicze region, one of the focal points of Soviet partisan activity, unlike Soviet historiography, which paints a rosy picture of the relationship between the Soviet partisans and the local population—one characterized by mutual friendship and assistance, both German and Polish sources paint a picture of a successively radicalizing partisan movement, which secured its supplies from the rural population by force of arms. While the central leadership of the Soviet underground attempted, from 1942, to prevent the accompanying assaults, rapes and pillage, it could not do without the procurement of provisions from the local population. The comparatively high food rations of the underground fighters, as compared to that of the impoverished countryside, suggest that considerations for the welfare of the local population were not a high priority for the Soviet leadership.44 When the Polish partisan units became active, and assumed the role of protectors of the Polish civilian population, another dimension came to the fore and conditions became more precarious still. Polish historian Michał Gnatowski argues that the Soviet partisans resorted to exceptionally brutal robberies that began to take on the characteristics of class and ethnic-based retaliation directed at those suspected of supporting the Polish underground.45 Another important overview is Tadeusz Piotrowski’s Poland’s Holocaust,46 which traces the major political developments affecting Soviet-Polish relations in that period. An appreciation of those conditions is an essential backdrop for any serious study of the relations between the Poles and the Jewish partisans in this area.
As a result of the above-mentioned order, the partisan unit led by Antoni Burzyński (“Kmicic”) was liquidated, at the end of August 1943, as was, later [that year], Kacper Miłaszewski’s unit as well.50 The modus operandi was always the same: leaders of the Polish partisans were invited for talks, during which they were disarmed and their units liquidated. Similar events occurred in the Wilno area, in Lublin, in Wołyń [Volhynia], and in Eastern Galicia, including Lwów itself, where the regional AK [Armia Krajowa] leaders under Lieutenant Colonel Władysław Filipkowski, as well as a group of members of the regional Polish Government Delegation for the Homeland, were arrested and sent to the USSR. On February 18, 1944, Deputy Ivan Serov51 of the First Belorussian Front, the chief officer in charge of the mopping-up operations aimed against Polish resistance, reported to [Minister of Internal Affairs Lavrentii] Beria that he had arrested 5,191 Poles. On July 14, 1944, Stalin issued his Order No. 220145 to General [Ivan] Cherniakovsky52 of the Third Belorussian Front and to Serov. This new order called for an “immediate and energetic action against Polish armed underground formations.” On July 17, Beria informed Stalin: Today, we called upon the so-called general—major “Wilk” (Kulczycki) [Aleksander Krzyżanowski]. We informed “Wilk” that we were interested in the combat abilities of Polish formations and that it would be good if our officers could become acquainted with these tactics. “Wilk” agreed and revealed to us six locations of the whereabouts of his regiments and brigades. We were also interested in his officers corps and proposed a meeting with all the leaders of his regiments and brigades, their deputies, and chiefs of staff. “Wilk” also agreed to this and gave corresponding orders to his liaison officer who promptly left for headquarters. Later, we disarmed “Wilk.” … On the basis of the information provided by “Wilk,” we came up with the following plan. … [Beria’s July 19, 1944 report:] The action lasted two days. Yesterday [July 18] … as of 4:00 P.M., we disarmed 3,500 persons, including 200 officers and NCOs.53 That July, Beria reported to Stalin that 60,000 Polish soldiers had been disarmed, including 15,000 AK members. Beria and Cherniakovsky then requested Stalin’s permission to hand over to the NKVD, the NKGB [National Commissariat for State Security], and SMERSH the officers with an “operative value” (i.e., potential for collaboration with the Soviets [and those who may have had intelligence information—M.P.]) and to direct the remaining officers to various NKVD camps “lest they undertake the organization of numerous Polish underground formations.”54 In another report based on Serov’s field reports, Beria informed Stalin: “In the course of our work in the liberated territories of the Lithuanian SSR [i.e., the Wilno area], from July to December 20, 1944, the NKVD and NKGB arrested 8,592 persons. 1,589 bandits were killed. From December 20, 1944, to January 1, 1945, 3,857 persons were arrested. 985 were killed. Thus, the NKVD and NKGB in the Lithuanian SSR arrested 12,449 persons in all and killed 2,574 bandits as of January 1, 1945. [Among those arrested were: … (d) 3,976 members of the Home Army.]” After these successes, Serov was sent to the Lublin area, where, under the direction of the NKVD, NKGB and SMERSH, further “actions” were carried out. In December 1944, Serov informed Beria that 15,000 AK members were detained in Lublin. Meanwhile, on November 14, 1944, Lavrenti Tsanava (of the Second Belorussian Front and the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs in Belorussia) and Viktor S. Abakumov informed Beria: “On November 12, 1944, we sent a second transport (no. 84180) consisting of 1,014 active members of the AK and other Polish underground organizations to the NKVD camp in Ostashkov. During the operation, 1,044 persons in all were arrested and deported.” On January 11, 1945, Beria issued Order No. 0016 instructing his commanders to deal with “hostile elements in the liberated territories.” On January 11, 1945, Serov informed Beria that 13,000 members of the AK and other Polish organizations had been arrested. In a report issued one week later, Serov told Beria of the arrest of an additional 10,000 persons, including over 5,000 participants in the Warsaw Uprising. In April 1945, Beria’s Order No. 00315 called for the execution of “hostile elements.” This order also specified that county officials, town and regional civil servants, editors of newspapers and journals, and authors of anti-Soviet publications be arrested and deported to the USSR. At the end of that month, Serov informed Beria that 50,000 persons had been detained in his sphere of operation. Several of the high-ranking operatives in this territorial cleansing of anti-Soviet forces were Jews—for example, Serov’s deputy Aleksandr Vadis and Tsanava and his deputy Yakov Yedunov. Both Vadis and Yedunov served as chiefs of SMERSH. The Soviet war against the Polish underground continued for the remainder of the war and beyond. According to General Leopold Okulicki, commander of the Home Army, between July and December of 1944, some 30,000 AK members east of the Vistula found themselves under Soviet arrest. (In Lublin province the number was 15,000, in Białystok province, 12,000.) According to Czesław Łuczak, of the 70,000 AK members who participated in Operation “Burza” (“Tempest,” the 1944 attempt to liberate Polish territories), 5,000 were killed in action and 50,000 were deported to the USSR, where many more died. Meanwhile, oblivious to this treacherous turn of events in the summer of 1943, the Polish government-in-exile in London, and consequently the leadership of the AK, continued for a time to encourage the members of the Polish underground to cooperate with the Soviet army and partisans in the war against the Germans. It is against this background that one must view and assess the “tactical collaboration” of individual AK units in Wileńszczyzna and Nowogródek.55 Thus the situation in northeastern Poland—the Wilno and Nowogródek regions—became increasingly complicated and volatile. The Home Army was late in forming in that area, coming out into the open as a combat force only in the spring of 1943.56 It was not at any time in effective control of much of that ethnically mixed territory, which was composed mostly of Poles and Belorussians, with pockets of Lithuanians along the prewar Polish-Lithuanian border, i.e., the westerly part of this region.57 (By then only tiny remnants of the Jewish population survived hiding in the forests.) The strength of the Home Army depended not on the control of the forests, where the Soviet partisans were based and predominated, especially in the eastern portions, but on the support it received from the Polish countryside, where its members were recruited and where they often hid from the Germans. The Home Army, the only Polish underground force in the area, was a national army which was loyal to the Polish government in exile and sought to protect the interests of its constituents. Unlike the Soviet partisans, its membership was voluntary. Its composition reflected the make-up of the local population, and thus consisted mainly of villagers. In the Nowogródek region, it is estimated that between 30 and 40 percent of its members were Belorussians of the Orthodox faith.58 The Home Army also welcomed Muslim Tatars and Russians into its ranks,59 and (as we shall see) even some Jews, whom they helped much more frequently than they took in. Indeed, without the support of a large part of the non-Polish population, it would be inconceivable for the Home Army to become the force that it did in this ethnically mixed region. Both numerically and especially in terms of weapons, however, the Home Army was significantly weaker than the Soviet partisan forces in this area.60 Yet despite this disadvantage, Polish partisans were known to stage daring attacks on German troops, convoys and outposts (e.g., Wawiórka, Horodno, Iwieniec, Traby, etc.), whereas Soviet partisans engaged in low-key sabotage and diversion.61 The Home Army assault on the large German garrison in Iwieniec (consisting of about 100 German gendarmes, a Luftwaffe company, and 300 Belorussian policemen who were heavily infiltrated by Poles with connections to the Home Army), on June 19, 1943, was a particularly spectacular accomplishment. The German forces were decimated in a pitched battle and the Belorussian police was disarmed. The Poles captured large quantities of weapons with which they armed their partisan ranks. Polish prisoners as well as about a dozen Jews were liberated.62 There were no comparable military operations of this magnitude undertaken by the Soviet partisans. In the initial stages, the Soviet partisans consisted, for the most part, of former Soviet soldiers caught behind the line of the German advance in mid–1941, who had hidden out in the forests and on farms or who had escaped from German prisoner-of-war camps. Soon they began to form small armed groups which lacked discipline and became known for their crimes.63 A large number of partisans from Soviet Belorussia also moved into the area. The Soviet partisan command parachuted in a significant number of men to lead, organize and reinforce the Soviet partisan presence. The Soviet partisan movement in this area was divided into three zones or regions, each headed by a recently nominated “general”: the Baranowicze region by “Platon,” the Lida region by “Sokolov,” and the Iwieniec region by “Dubov.” According to research carried out by historian Bogdan Musiał in the former Soviet archives in Minsk, in Belarus, the Soviet guerrilla operations were initiated by the NKVD/NKGB immediately after the Nazi invasion of the USSR and of its occupied Polish, Baltic, and Romanian territories. On 26 June 1941 the Soviet leadership in Belarus ordered fourteen guerrilla units into the field. They consisted of 1,162 fighters including 539 NKGB, 623 NKVD, and the remainder the Red Army. These detachments were quickly wiped out or dispersed. The forests and swamps of Belarus filled up with tens of thousands of Soviet troops, the stragglers whose regular units had been destroyed in the Blitzkrieg. For the most part, these stragglers remained militarily inactive and found some employment with the local rural population, both Polish and Belarusan [sic]. The Germans left them alone until Spring 1942, when they tried to apprehend them. The stragglers fled back into the forest, individually and in small groups, where they established encampments and bases. Soon these groups were joined by the fugitive Soviet POWs and some Jews. There were also camps established and run exclusively by Jewish inhabitants of the area. Meanwhile, the remnants of the original NKVD commandos who had survived the Nazi assault of summer and fall 1941, and new NKVD men sent as reinforcements by Moscow, located the forest hideaways and gradually subordinated to themselves many of their denizens. Simultaneously, the NKVD men reestablished the clandestine communist party structures. By January 1944, out of 1,156 Soviet partisan units of 187,571 fighters, 723 units comprising 121,903 persons, or 65 percent of the total, operated in tiny Belarus.64 The ethnic make-up of the Soviet partisans was diverse. The core consisted of Soviet soldiers who had been left behind during the hasty retreat of the Soviet army in June and July 1941, Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) who had escaped from German camps,65 and, later, Belorussians and Russians sent from prewar Soviet territory. Jews escaping from the ghettos started to join the small groups of Soviets operating in the forests as they were transformed into a full-fledged partisan formation; but Jews were not always accepted, especially if they did not have weapons. Some local Belorussian peasants joined the Soviet partisans to avoid being taken to the Reich for forced labour or because they were wanted by Germans, and not for ideological reasons. The Soviet partisans also began to actively recruit the local population (mostly Belorussians), which was carried out by force to a considerable degree. Some of the conscripts managed to desert, the Poles in particular.66 Those who avoided conscription met with harsh retaliation. Frol Zaitsev, the commander of the Chkalov Brigade, announced that if the men were not at home with their families during partisan inspections, “the partisans would consider this an attempt at resistance. The threat did not help and farmsteads near the villages of Nikolayevo [Mikołajów] and Malaya and Bol’shaya Chapun’ [Czapuń] in Ivenets [Iwieniec] Rayon were burned down.”67 “Informers” faced similar punishment. On September 10, 1943, the partisans “burned the village of Stavishche [Stawiszcze near Osipowicze] to the ground and executed the residents—young and old alike—who did not manage to flee to the forest.”68 Towards the latter part of the war, sensing that the tide was turning and fearing retribution, large numbers of former Nazi collaborators (mostly Belorussians, Ukrainians and Russians), who had served in the auxiliary police and other formations, left their posts and were taken into the ranks of the Soviet partisans.69 Very few Poles joined the Soviet partisans (and then usually under duress); they made up no more than two percent of their strength in the entire region. The Soviet partisans were therefore not a native formation. They consisted of non-locals to a large extent, and did not reflect the ethnic composition of the area.70 Historian Bogdan Musiał provides the following breakdown of the ethnic make-up for the 11,193 Soviet partisans in the Baranowicze district in July 1944: 6,792 Belorussians (60.7%), 2,598 Russians (23.2%), 973 Jews (8.7%), 526 Ukrainians (4.7%), 143 Poles (1.3%), and 161 others (1.4%).71 Israeli historian Leonid Smilovitsky gathered the following statistical informaton from Soviet archives, which confirms that few Poles served in the ranks of the Soviet partisan movement: In 1943–1944 Jews fought in most of Belorussia’s partisan formations. In Baranovichi [Baranowicze] Oblast alone, out of 695 fighters and commanders of the Lenin Brigade, 202 were Jews; in the Vpered Brigade, 579 and 106 respectively; in the Chkalov Brigade, 1,140 and 239 respectively. Altogether, 8,493 partisans fought in 15 brigades in Baranovichi Oblast, Belorussians comprising 46.8 percent, Jews 12.4 percent, and Poles 1.3 percent. By the time the republic was liberated in July 1944, there were 4,852 partisans in the Lida partisan zone (Belorussians comprising 48.9 percent, Jews, 28 percent, and Poles 0.5 percent). An analysis of the sources of reinforcement of partisan formations is also significant. Sixty-seven people were sent from behind the lines; 225 came out of the encirclement; 505 escaped from captivity; 313 deserted police formations and crossed over to the partisans; 2,404 came from the local population; 124 from the forest and from private low-paying jobs; and 1,196 from ghettos. 72 Yitzhak Arad describes the composition of his otriad (also transliterated as otryad, meaning unit or detachment) of the Voroshilov Brigade commanded by Fedor (Fiodor) Markov, which was based in Koziany forest, about a hundred kilometres north of Lake Narocz, as follows: The Chapayev unit had about sixty partisans. Its commander was a Red Army officer, Sidiakin, known as Yasnoya Moria [Iasnoie More] (“Clear Sea”). Most of the men were Red Army soldiers who had remained behind the enemy lines when their units disintegrated in front of the sudden German attack in the summer and autumn of 1941. Some of them had been taken prisoner by the Germans and later escaped. There were also local people who joined the partisans for a variety of reasons. Some had been active Communists and joined the partisans out of ideological conviction. Others had joined in search of adventure or to avoid being sent to work in Germany. There were also some sought as criminals by the German authorities who found shelter with the partisans. The Chapayev unit had five Jews who had escaped to the woods in the summer of 1942, when the ghettos in the area were liquidated.73 The number of Jews in other units was considerably higher. According to David Meltser, The core of the first partisan detachments in the Belorussian forests consisted of escaped ghetto inmates and Red Army soldiers. Jews from the Minsk ghetto made up a significant portion of nine partisan detachments (the Kutuzov, Budenny, Frunze, Lazo, Parkhomenko, Shchors, 25th Anniversary of the Belorussian Republic, No. 106, and No. 406) and the first battalion of the 208th independent partisan regiment. Jews were active in many other partisan groups as well. In the Lenin brigade (Baranovichi [Baranowicze] district) 202 of the 695 fighters and commanders were Jews, in Vpered 106 of 579, in Chkalov 239 of 1,140, and in Novatory 48 of 126. Jews composed more than one-third of the partisans in the detachments that fought in the Lid [Lida] partisan zone. In the Naliboki wood [sic] 3,000 of the 20,000 partisans were Jews, many of them in positions of command. Incomplete data record that some 150 Jews were commanders, chiefs of staff, and commissars of partisan brigades and detachments.74 The undivided loyalty of the Soviet partisans lay with the Soviet Union which had seized and annexed Poland’s eastern territories in September 1939 and fully intended to hold on to them, and more. Thus, despite the outbreak of war between the Soviets and Germans in July 1941, the Soviet Union had no intention of renouncing the illegal gains it had acquired under the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. The leadership in the field was made up of NKVD officers and was subordinated not to the Red Army but to the Communist Party. They treated the local population, among whom they spread their network of spies, as pawns in the war against Germany, employing brutal measures against them that aroused resentment and resulted in German reprisals. German field reports from that period attest to widespread plundering and terrorization of the population by Soviet partisans.75 There was thus, from the outset, a political, territorial, and ideological conflict between the two main partisan forces in the area—Soviet and Polish. The fact that the Jews, with few exceptions, ended up joining the Soviet partisans, who generally had the upper hand, did not augur well for future relations with the local population. Historian Teresa Prekerowa has taken issue with the often-repeated claim that the Jews escaping from the ghettos had to join the Communist partisans because they were turned away by the Polish underground.76 In fact, most of the escapees from the ghettos had no desire to join up with the Poles. Many Jews from the Eastern Borderlands, especially the younger generation, were pro-Soviet in their outlook, if for no other reason than the widely-held belief that the Soviet Union was a far more formidable force than the Poles in the struggle against Germany. Moreover, the territory in question was in dispute, with the Soviets having gained the upper hand in 1939–1941, and many Jews were convinced that the Soviets would retake the region after the eventual defeat of Germany. Furthermore, there was a strong ideological factor at play. According to Prekerowa, “there was no shortage either of Communists or of members of other pro-Soviet parties within the leadership of the Jewish resistance. … although they did not express the views of the entire Jewish underground, parties sympathetic to the Soviet Union did play a major, if not a leading, role.” Finally, by the time the Home Army partisan units became active, most of the Jewish escapees had joined up with the Soviet partisans or with affiliated Jewish groups such as Bielski’s. The notion that the Home Army could integrate the Jews who escaped to the forest or take them their wings, as some Jewish historians suggest, must be dismissed as highly unrealistic in the context of the Polish-Soviet struggle for supremacy that was unfolding in this region. The Home Army was a military organization, not a social relief agency, and it only accepted trusted armed fighters. As Prekerowa points out, the natural allies of the Jewish fugitives were the Soviet partisans in Eastern Poland and the Communist underground in central Poland, and not the Home Army which supported the Polish government exiled in London and fought for the integrity of Poland’s statehood and prewar territory. The basis for this relationship was founded not just in ideological considerations, but also in the enjoyment of mutual benefits. On the one hand, unlike the Polish partisan movement, the Soviet partisans (and Communist underground in central Poland) needed manpower, which the local population was reluctant to supply to that cause. On the other hand, participation in the armed actions of the Soviet partisans (and Communist underground) gave the Jews a chance to wreak revenge on the Germans, without regard to the consequences that befell the local population. Prekerowa concludes her penetrating analysis by noting that “the Home army had good reason to think that a part of the Jewish resistance movement was linked with the enemy Communist camp, and this is a view … that was widely held.”77 Contrary to what is often claimed, as documented in Part One, a significant number of Jews were accepted into the Home Army. Many of them posed as Christian Poles, but some of them did not. Few of them, however, served in the Wilno and Nowogródek regions where generally the goal of the Jews escaping from the ghettos was to join up with the Soviet partisans.78 Some Jews joined the “Kmicic” (Antoni Burzyński’s) unit referred to later.79 Moreover, some Jews who entered the Soviet partisans in Naliboki forest wanted to go over to Miłaszewski’s unit, but Miłaszewski could not accept them because of an agreement with the Soviet partisans not to raid each other’s members.80 Because of the warm reception given by a large part of the Jewish population to the invading Soviet Army, and the many instances of collaboration with the new regime to the detriment of Poles in the years 1939–1941, the Home Army in this area was extremely leery of accepting local Jews into its ranks unless their credentials were impeccable. They simply did not trust the local Jews because they believed that they were more inclined to support Soviet rather than Polish interests.81 Unfortunately, this assessment proved to be accurate in very many cases. Furthermore, like the Soviet partisans, the Home Army as a rule did not accept unarmed men82 (most Jewish escapees from the ghettos fell into that category). Nor did it create camps for non-partisans (many of the Jews fell into that category). In the early stages, Polish partisans were usually based in the countryside and in villages, and not in the forests, and the Home Army simply did not absorb non-partisans. Another practical consideration which militated against absorbing large numbers of Jews was the increased prospect of brutal German retaliations that inevitably would have been invited.83 Finally, the Home Army came into its own only in mid–1943, well after the Soviet partisans had established their bases in the forests of northeastern Poland. By that time most of the Jewish fugitives had joined or become attached to the Soviet partisan movement. The Jews hiding in the forests, whether as partisans or forest dwellers, were preoccupied not with fighting the Germans but almost exclusively with their own survival. They dispatched an endless flow of armed groups into the villages to seize food and other belongings from the villagers. In these undertakings, they enjoyed the protection of those Jews who had been accepted into Soviet partisan units and were engaged in similar raids. These so-called “economic” operations or missions assumed massive proportions,84 resulting in many skirmishes with the impoverished villagers who increasingly resented and opposed the systematic stripping of most of their possessions. Villages that did not cooperate were considered to be “pro-Nazi” and could expect harsh retaliations, as the following account from the Stołpce area illustrates. I met up with two Jewish partisans who were from Shverzhen [Świerżeń]. … Every few kilometers, they walked into villages in the Shverzhen region, and requisitioned all kinds of produce from the peasants, taking it all back to the other partisans in the woods. These two Jewish partisans were well armed. The peasants were afraid of them and gave them anything they asked. … We walked … into another forest near the village of Kapula. When we got there, other Jews came out to greet us. There were around thirty of us all together—men, women, and children. … The younger people in the group went into the nearby villages to requisition food from the peasants. The peasants were afraid of us. They gave us food, thinking there were many partisans in the woods, in whose name we came. The peasants were afraid we’d burn their village down, like the partisans did to many others when they were refused food.85 A Jewish woman who joined the Soviet partisans, after escaping from the Głębokie ghetto with the aid of a Polish farmer, reported that the partisans’ wrath was directed primarily against the local population because of their alleged collaboration with the Germans. We killed mercilessly. We killed. We used to go into villages where we knew that the people collaborated with the Germans. We used to kill them indiscriminately. We killed off an awful lot of people we knew that were against the Jews. My brother was the leader, he was very good at it … We used to go into villages. We used to find out where they lived, and we pulled them out one by one, and we killed them.86 The close association of the Jewish groups with the Soviet partisans also branded them as pro-Soviet in the eyes of the local population, which did not augur well since the track record of the partisans was increasingly marred by horrific crimes. The Soviet partisans made it clear from the outset that the lives of ordinary civilians counted for very little. Belorussian villages bore the brunt of their cruel retalation. Not untypical was the raid on the village of Simakovo [Simakowo] near Mir on 10 November 1942. The partisans burned down the Schutzmannschaft outpost building, which had recently been abandoned, 14 houses with their outbuildings, seven barns full of produce, the village hall, the school and the church. One calf, six pigs and 13 sheep died in their stalls.87 The number of civilian casaualties in not known. On the early morning of April 14, 1943, Soviet partisans indiscriminately stabbed and shot residents of Drazhna near Slutsk to death and burned alive people, mostly women and children, after a failed attack on a nearby garrison of Belorussian police collaborators, in which the partisans suffered heavy casualties. The partisans burned 37 houses to the ground. Twenty-five villagers were slain by members of the Kutuzov detachment.88 Another reason the peasants became increasingly frightened of contacts with partisans and forest people was because of the punitive measures taken by the Germans. Scores of villages were burned to the ground for their actual or perceived support of the partisans and their inhabitants were murdered or rounded up for slave labour in Germany. An early punitive expedition is described by a Jew who escaped from the ghetto in Stołpce and joined the Soviet partisans: On Sunday morning, January 31, 1943, we arrived in the village of Zhavolki [Żawołki? Żyhałki?]. The people received us well. We ate, washed our clothes. Some weeks later, after we’d been long gone, a German retaliation squad, reinforced by Radianov’s people, came to Zhavolki. They found out how hospitable Zhavolki had been to the escaped Jews. As a revenge, they massed together the whole village, young and old, babies and gray old men, ordered them all to drop to their knees, and shot every one of them.89 As we shall see, German punivtive expeditions intensified in the area of Rudniki forest in the early part of 1944. Likewise, because of an assassination of a German official or some insignificant sabotage operation (e.g., tearing up a railroad track that was soon rebuilt90), after which the Soviet partisans promptly fled, the local population routinely bore the brunt of harsh German retaliations, as was the case in the vicinity of Święciany where at least 500 Poles were executed in May 1942 by German and Lithuanian police.91 Some Jewish partisans who engaged in sabotage against the Germans coldly calculated the consequences of their actions for themselves and for their Christian neighbours—the proverbial “other,” and the latter inevitably lost out. Reportedly, the first mission undertaken by the Jewish underground in Wilno was a sabotage action on a train carried out by three of its members sometime between May and July 1942 (various dates are given), some seven or eight miles (kilometres, according one account) southeast of Wilno, near Nowa Wilejka (sometimes given as the distant town of Wilejka). The incident gains particular significance from the propaganda value that Jewish partisans, and afterwards historians, sought to attach to it. At the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, Abba Kovner, a Wilno underground leader, testified that this was “the first German [military] train to be blown up in the entire country of Lithuania.” He emphasized that “no train had been blown up, not by the Poles, and not by the Lithuanians, and not by the Russians, but one was blown up by a Jewesss who, after she had done it, had no base to which she could return, unlike any other fighter.”92 According to one version, the Jewish underground in Wilno had searched for an appropriate location to strike
A few days later, Abba [Kovner] saw the story in an underground newspaper. It said that Polish partisans had blown up a German train transport. Over two hundred German soldiers had been killed. The SS then marched into the nearest Polish town and killed sixty peasants. “This is not something I felt guilty about,” Vitka [Kempner] later said. “I knew that it was not me killing those people—it was the Germans. In war, it is easy to forget who is who.”93 [emphasis added] Abraham Sutzkever, a member of the Jewish underground in Wilno, penned the following—somewhat different—description of these events in 1944: It was a May night in 1942. A young man [Matskevich] and woman [Vitka Kempner] crawled through a hole in the fence surrounding the Vilna Ghetto and entered the city. … They had to hurry. It was already 8:30, and it was permitted to be on the streets only until 9:00. They passed Polotskaya [Połocka] Street and headed toward the highway … They had arranged to meet Brauze at 11:30 next to an old oak tree near the paper mill. … Brauze had the mine in safekeeping. They moved silently. They went into the woods. Matskevich and the girl crawled under the rails. Brauze stopped in case he might have to cover them. Matskevich dug under the rails with his bear hands. Into the small pit he placed some stones that Vitka had given him. … Having laid the mine, they covered it with sand and headed for Vileika [Nowa Wilejka]. They waded across a stream and stopped on a hill under the branches of a willow tree. … Now the steam engine could be clearly seen emerging from the depths of the woods; behind it came a chain of rumbling train cars. … Railroad ties, people, and iron went flying into the air … Twelve train cars loaded with weapons and Germans rushing to Polotsk [Połock] were blown to bits. … The peasants who were forced to take away the bodies the next morning told us that they counted two hundred dead Germans.94 [emphasis added]
At the dawn Vitka reached the Ghetto, her legs torn and bleeding, but her face radiant. The mine had been planted and nobody had noticed them. … News of the explosion arrived at 3 p.m. The train was destroyed, both engines and ammunition waggons. The Germans were at a loss, for this was the first operation of its kind near Wilna … It was a happy day for the Fighters in the Ghetto. They laughed in the streets. … Many coaches containing German soldiers and ammunition in the train which was on its way to Polotsk was smashed. In the morning the peasants counted about 200 bodies of soldiers, apart from those who were completely blown apart and could not be counted. After their census the peasants collected pistols, rifles, and many bullets.96 [emphasis added] Isaac Kowalski, a member of the Jewish underground, alleges that in addition to killing more than 200 German soldiers, the explosion resulted in “an even larger number” of wounded soldiers.97 Another—more modest—version of these events, but darker in its implications, is by one of the participants themselves, who, however, claims a much considerably more modest toll of German victims:
“Finally, after months of planning, and with the help of a policeman from the ghetto, we sneaked out the bomb that Abba had built and detonated it. When we managed to get back into the ghetto [without being discovered] it was a day of celebration,” Vitka remarks. The bomb worked as planned, and according to the newspapers, a great deal of damage was done to the train cars, and a few soldiers were killed. “The Germans believed in collective responsibility and had they known that Jews had executed the bombing they would have had us killed by the thousands.” The Germans did not imagine that this was the work of Jews, and therefore, retaliated by executing all the residents in a nearby Polish town.98 [emphasis added] When, where and how exactly this event occurred, if at all, is not free from doubt, since even authoritative ghetto chronicles from that period do not acknowledge it.99 However, this does not alter in any way how the Jewish underground weighed the impact of such operations: their attitude toward exposing the surrounding Christian population to risk stands in marked contrast to their preoccupation with not endangering the lives of Jews by exposing the ghetto population to collective punishment. It is worth noting that it was the Polish community of Wilno who provided the Jewish underground with safe shelters and meeting places outside the ghetto, as well as couriers to maintain contact with other ghettos.100 Yüklə 1,68 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
|