Revised january 30, 2009 a tangled web
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- 9 April 1944
- 1 June 1944
5 March 1944The detachment Ordzhonikidze [i.e., Bielski’s combatant unit] took part in accomplishing a fighting mission organised by the Kirov Brigade, under the leadership of the brigade’s commander, Captain Vasiljev [Vasiliev], to destroy the White Poles in the district of Lida, on the right bank of the Niemen. … During the fight the detachment went in the direction of Filenovcy [Filonowce near Dodukowo] and then moved in the direction of Petry [Piotry]. … After fulfilling the task the detachment returned to the camp. Seventy people took part in the task. 9 April 1944The Ordzhonikidze detachment, under the leadership of the brigade’s commissar, Comrade Kondiakov, fulfilled a combat task, worked out by the brigade, to destroy a group of White Poles in Lida district, on the right bank of the Niemen. The task set them to clear the White Poles from the villages of Burnosy, Milegovo [Mielgowo] and Biskopcy [Biskupce] and the farmstead of Biskopcy was completely achieved. Sixty people took part in the operation.247 Closer to Wilno, the struggle with the Polish partisans came to a fore when the Soviet partisans entered territory that was populated predominantly by Poles (as opposed to the mixed Polish-Belorussian areas to the east), and which was under the control of the Home Army. The Poles were adamant in standing firm in the face of Soviet encroachment. The main concentration of Soviet partisans was the Rudniki forest (Puszcza Rudnicka), a large primeval wilderness situated to the south of the city of Wilno. As Yitzhak Arad notes, “Clashes and conflicts broke out between the Polish and Soviet partisans. The Jewish partisans in Rudniki [forest] took part in these clashes and suffered losses in the fighting with the Poles.”248 What Arad neglects to mention is that Soviet and Jewish partisans also attacked and murdered Polish partisans and civilians. The entries in the “operations diary” of a Jewish partrsan unit mention the following assaults:249 1/44 [January 1944] In the operation to destroy the armed village of Koniuchy, 30 fighters took part, of the units “Avenger” and “To Victory.” (Commander: Jacob Prener) 4/44 [April 1944] The building of the “White Poles” was burned down in the village of Niewojniance [Niewoniańce]. 5/27/28/44 [May 27/28, 1944] … On the way back [from arms requisitions in the villages of Jurkiańce and Krumińce] two “White Poles” were taken prisoner and the following arms in their possession were confiscated … The fate of any Polish partisan who fell into the hands of the Soviet and Jewish partisans, as well as their civilian supporters, was also sealed. The following Jewish accounts illustrate this point. One day a fighting unit set off for the Lithuanian village of Yurkents [Jurkiańce] near the town of Olkieniki. … On the way back they took captive two uniformed and armed officers in the Polish bands. Besides the weapons, the unit brought back to camp a radio receiver, a large quantity of food, and various belongings. The two Polish officers were executed.250 If Jewish and Polish partisans met on a path away from camp, there might be a fight. The next day a Jew would be missing, or else he would stumble into a roll call dazed but triumphant, a Polish pistol in his pants.251 And then we came to the Niemen, we heard shots coming from all sides which later on, we discovered it was our own guys who were patrolling the area of the edge of the forest near the Niemen that they didn’t know what’s going on. And they thought sort of maybe the Poles, the AK [Armia Krajowa], are trying to come on this side. Because they didn’t look like an army, and, therefore, they fired the shots. A few casualties were done, nothing is done to my platoon but some of the others.252 We suffered a lot from the Polish partisans of the area so a decision was made to clear Smorgon [Smorgonie] and Vistoma [Wojstom] from both Germans and the Polish AK. … [in mid–March 1944] our specific brigade was transferred in sleds to the direction Vistoma, to fight the Polish Whites. … The Poles were waiting for us. Right at dawn the battle began, but it was a children’s play in comparison to the Smorgon battle [against the Germans]. We had the upper hand both from the point of weapons and numbers. So all we wanted was to have the fewest number of victims from our side. We let the Pole [sic] shoot until their ammunition was dwindling. At nine in the morning they started retreating to the North West. We were too tired to follow them closely. We entered Vistoma. The town was burning. There were many bodies of Polish fighters and residents of the city. We called the residents to stop the fire. It was a big day of victory. Vodka was spilled like water everywhere. The town mayor, the police and the collaborators that didn’t escape were executed. I think that this was a happy day for some of the women in the town [who were likely raped—M.P.].253 Polish accounts confirm the inhumane treatment meted out to captured Polish partisans who, according to international law, should have been treated as prisoners of war. On June 5, 1944 there was an altercation near Tołmuciszki between an unknown Polish unit and a Soviet partisan unit. Two Polish partisans perished in this battle and two more were taken captive and were killed in a cruel manner. On the body of one of them they left a note saying that every Pole will meet this fate.254 The families of Home Army members considered themselves fortunate if they were simply robbed of their possessions and livelihood. According to a typical Soviet-Jewish report from that period, 1 June 1944The first and the 2nd companies of the [Bielski’s Ordzhonikidze] detachment … in the district under the White Poles in the area of Ruda-Gancevichi [Hancewicze]-Guta [Huta], took away 34 cows belonging to the families of White Poles …255 Perhaps this is not surprising. After all, neither the Soviets nor the Germans respected the rules of warfare, and routinely murdered their opponent’s prisoners of war. Soviet partisans fared no better and repaid captured German soldiers in kind.256 The Soviets, and less so the Germans, often doled out the same treatment to Polish prisoners of war. When it came to Polish partisans, and their supporters, they were shown no mercy. That there were Polish retaliations and Soviet counter-retaliations was not surprising. Few, if any, of the Polish operations were directed specifically at Jews. Rather, as the following accounts describing an assault on Polish partisans near Radziusze on February 2, 1944 show, Jews fell as members of Soviet partisan forces. Home Army members and their sympathizers apprehended by the Soviets could not expect any mercy at the hands of their captors. When we arrived at Gvardia, we were issued new submachine guns and short carbines with plenty of ammunition. Most of the men in the Gvardia and Nikolaev’s otriads were trained in partisan fighting, and had been parachuted behind the German lines. The entire specgruppa [a spetsgruppa is an NKVD unit of paratroopers on a special assignment—M.P.] consisted of over 150 partisans, well-armed and in good shape. … We were now a total of six Jews in the Gvardia … Dawn was breaking when we came back out of the woods and into the open fields of a village near Oczmiany [Oszmiana], which was held by the AK [Armia Krajowa]. Manochin’s [Manokhin’s] brigade and our specgrupppa converged in that area and we spread out. This was the first time that a Soviet partisan force of such magnitude had moved into AK territory. I saw the village from afar. Our commissar came galloping up on horseback and told us that it was essential to take this village from the AK. … The AK had launched a surprise attack on one unit of the Manochin otriad inside the woods. The unit began to retreat. Another unit of the Manochin otriad came to their rescue and stopped the attack. Our mission was to go around the village and to reach the AK from behind. I shot at anything that was moving. The AK partisans began to flee in panic in all directions. They hadn’t expected to be attacked from behind. We tried to shoot them down or to capture them. Within minutes it was all over. Most of the AK, however, managed to escape into the swamps. We counted only six killed and five captured. Some of the captured AK members wore German uniforms. The only thing that distinguished them … were their armbands that said WP, which was the symbol of the Polish forces, and their caps which displayed a crowned eagle, a Polish emblem. Four of the Manochin otriad were killed. … We stayed in the village because we were all too exhausted to move on. … Before we left we buried our dead. … The AK dead were handed over to the villagers for burial. … Toward evening I heard movement. I lay down silently and saw a cart with one farmer on it. I decided to capture him. … He was a Pole in his twenties. I took him to the commander and returned to my post. I was soon relieved by another partisan. When I came back to the base, the farmer was being interrogated by one of our partisans, who was also a Pole. Since I had also spoken Polish when I captured the young farmer, he was sure that we were all AK and began to tell us everything that was happening in the area. We found that there were two AK brigades in the vicinity, and that they were very well armed with equipment they received from the Lithuanians, in return for promises that they would fight the Soviet partisans. Our captured farmer was also acting as a courier for the AK since he could not leave his farm to join them. … If the Soviet army arrived, the farmers were to leave for the woods and form partisan groups to fight the Soviets, whom they perceived as enemies. … The poor farmer turned white and almost fainted. He began to plead for his life, promising to do anything we ordered and to cooperate with us fully. Nikolaev placed him under guard and we prepared to move on. When dusk set, we departed. On the way I heard a shot … I never saw the captured farmer again.257
The following day in the forest we questioned the Pole [the son of a woman whom the Soviet partisans had turned to for provisions] about the Home Army and their collaborators in the area. At first he refused to talk, but after rather rough treatment he broke down and told us a great deal about their activities. It became clear that his unit was the one that had attacked the Kostas Kalinouskas [sic] partisans and caused them heavy losses. After intensive interrogation, the Pole was executed. He begged for mercy, but that did not help him.259 What was the fate of Jewish partisans at the hands of the Poles? Although Holocaust memoirs and other Jewish sources speak of large numbers of victims, scholarly studies do not support this claim. After detailing the murder of scores of Jews at the hands of Soviet partisans, Israeli historian Dov Levin attributes to “White Poles” fourteen combat deaths, out of the 156 Jewish partisans from the Kaunas and Wilno regions who perished in former Polish territories assigned to Lithuania and Western Belorussia. Sixteen Jewish partisans were reportedly killed by fellow partisans (Soviet and Jewish) and 92 by the Germans and allied Lithuanian forces.260 Without offering much by way of evidence, Yitzhak Arad accuses the Home Army of murdering “hundreds of Jews in family camps or hiding with farmers.”261 There is a dearth of hard evidence to back this claim. Not one member of the 1,200-strong Bielski partisan and family group was killed by a Polish partisan, or by any Pole for that matter, whether as Soviet partisans or as Jews. Indeed, Bielski’s group suffered very few casualties because they rarely engaged in combat with the Germans. Most of their losses, as we shall see, were a result of internal frictions. Jews who fought in the Home Army in the Wilno area did not encounter assaults on Jews by the Polish underground. Józef Szczeciński (later Joseph Stevens), a Jew who posed as a Pole in Rukojnie near Wilno, joined the Home Army and took part in various anti-German operations (such as disrupting communications, laying mines, and stealing weapons). Yet in his memoir, he does not mention any such misdeeds on the part of the Polish underground in that area.262 George Sten, another Jew who served in the Home Army’s Third Brigade in the Wilno region, under the command of Lieutenant Gracjan Fróg (“Góral”, “Szczerbiec”), does not mention any such activities directed at Jews in his memoir either. Onone occasion, the commander turned away a small group of Jewish stragglers who wanted to join the underground, but they were not harmed in any way by the Poles. While noting anti-Jewish sentiments among some of the partisans, Sten, who concealed his Jewish identity, attests to their valour and readiness to fight the Germans and their Lithuanian collaborators. He does not suggest that Polish partisans were preoccupied with killing Soviet and Jewish partisans for sport, as some would have it, though they did once eliminate a bunker with about six Soviet partisans who were known to rob peasants in the area. Moreover, Sten’s memoir confirms German reports regarding the high level of internal discipline within the Home Army and its proper relations with the Polish and Belorussian villagers. The Polish partisans are portrayed as brave and motivated patriots, and not as fanatical, bloodthirsty chauvinists. The Lithuanian Police and the Germans were constantly after us. … Small units of Germans and Lithuanian policemen kept bothering us, but on the whole, after a number of skirmishes, we were the winning side. … Early one morning in the middle of January 1944 … A detachment of Germans and Lithuanian policemen were advancing through this open field towards us, with one machine gun and carbines firing. We returned fire with our carbines, and, a few minutes later, our machine guns were in place and we opened fire on the advancing enemy. … After about ten minutes of this exchange of fire, the enemy started to retreat. … the Germans and Lithuanians had retreated completely, leaving behind them a few dead, and the machine gun, some carbines and ammunition. They were routed although we had been caught without any forewarning. From that time on they did not molest us. We were the aggressors, not the Germans.
The unit was growing—now we not only had the Frenchmen, we also had an Austrian deserter from the German army and some Dutchmen who had worked for the Germans on the railway. … We had in our unit Frenchmen and Dutchmen and one Austrian, but they would not take Jews. At least they did not kill them. [emphasis added]
There was a history of bad blood between the Home Army and the Lenin Komsomol Brigade from as far back as June 1943. The Lenin Komsomol Brigade were notorious marauders who were amassing huge quantities of provisions for the winter months.265 In December 1943, they murdered 12 Poles in a forester’s lodge near Kamionka where they had previously received shelter and food.266 Had the Home Army wanted to liquidate the enitre brigade it could have done so easily given their undisputed superiority in this region at the time.267 After the October 1943 altercation, Jewish partisans caught up with the farmer who had allegedly betrayed them to the Polish partisans and exacted their cruel revenge:
The experiences of Abraham Lipkunsky (later Avraham Aviel), who hails from Dowgieliszki, a small rural settlement near Raduń, are also telling.271 After escaping from the ghetto in Raduń, Abraham and his older brother made their way back to Dowgieliszki where they were fed and sheltered by many Polish farmers. They met up with their father, who had escaped from the ghetto earlier and was living in the nearby forest. The group of fugitives relied on the assistance of a number of Poles for their survival: “We also started to visit other farmers who had been friends of the family, particularly those who had been Father’s friends in the past. … These farmers who had been Father’s friends would give us bread and milk still warm from the cow, and also bread for the following day.”272 Despite the increasing number of German soldiers and police units scouring the countryside for escaped Jews, “many farmers who had been friends in the past, managed to overcome their fears and help us out with food and advice. More than once, they endangered themselves in the process.”273 Apart from the Germans, the immediate threat to the Jews’ safety were former Soviet soldiers hiding in the forests. One farmer “warned us against an armed Russian who was also roaming about in the area and who killed whoever he came across, including Jews, and added that he chased after a Jew from Dowgalishok [Dowgieliszki] and shot him.”274 After taking temporary shelter with several Polish families, the Jewish group decided to build an underground bunker in the forest. They were reluctant to borrow tools from a local farmer “lest our purpose in borrowing them was revealed. Obviously, it had to be a complete secret.” Therefore they embarked on a course of conduct that would assume an ever greater importance in their existence—robbery.
In the early period, however, the Jewish fugitives tended to eschew violence during their expeditions. According to Lipkunsky, Unlike the partisans, we did not carry weapons, nor did we try to obtain them until then, though we could have had them for a comparatively cheap price. There was a sort of unstated agreement among the Jews of Dowgalishok [Dowgieliszki] not to use arms as long as there was no need to, so that the farmers would not be frightened when we came to ask for food and that they would not feel they were being forced to give us it. We did not wish to antagonize ae community which accepted our existence and had been tolerant towards us. We did not want to give them an excuse or pretext to drive us away. … Despite these considerations, we began to try to get weapons, not for our immediate use but to prepare for the time when we would have to leave the area or for any emergency that might arise.276 Increasingly, the forests were becoming a menacing place for individual Jews. The situation for farmers’ was also becoming more precarious. Lipkunsky recalled: This called for great caution, as we had heard of various groups that roamed the forest. There were separate groups of Jews and Russians, and also mixed groups of Jews and Russians. The Russians in the forest were the remnant of the Soviet army who had been stranded behind the German front and not taken prisoner. Among these groups there were those who were murderers and thieves and they were prepared to rob, rape and kill whoever they encountered, especially Jews, out of blind hatred. … One night in October 1942 we set out to meet Father. … During our conversation, he confirmed that the rumors were indeed true and that the previous evening, the partisans had visited Andzielevitz [Andzielewicz, a member of the Home Army, was one of Lipkunsky’s benefactors; he also took in a Jewish convert from Raduń who lived in his house openly—M.P.], that most of them were Jews and the minority Russians, and that they were armed with weapons that included rifles, revolvers and hand grenades. Farmer Andzielevitz, who feared that they may take a pig or rob him of clothing or other things, brought Father out of hiding in order to show them that he was anti-German as well, so that they should do him no harm. This proved to be the case, for they did not take advantage of him but merely spent the night in the haystack in his barn, and used it as resting quarters throughout the following day. … In the course of these conversations Father learned that these partisan groups were not organized or armed, and that the existing groups did not execute or fulfill military roles … There were indeed smaller groups and some of their members had very old weapons. The rest had none at all. They lived in a similar fashion to our groups in the forests of Dowgalishok [Dowgieliszki]. The difference between us was that we received food from the farmers on the basis of our former good relationship from better times. The farmers gave us food and clothing of their own free will and also in exchange for goods that we had left other farmers. They, on the other hand, had to buy their food from farmers living near the puszcza [a primeval forest] and had no choice but to steal and plunder in order to stay alive. They went to farmers far from ancient forest and seized what they needed by intimidating them. Threatening them with arson was also effective if the farmer was reluctant to supply them with food.277
As could be expected, the conduct of the forest groups and the vigilance and cruelty of the German authorities brought about a change in the attitude of the farmers towards those who came around for assistance. Farmers became more and more reluctant to give up the little provisions that they had. Some of them even turned to the German authorities for protection, and later—when the Polish partrisans became active in the area—the Home Army. Occasionally, villagers attacked the marauders or led the Germans to their hide-outs. Lipkunsky reduces this complex set of circumstances to just one factor: Polish hatred of Jews. He alleges that the Home Army, who were “supposedly fighting” the Germans, “saw it as their patriotic mission to help the Germans rid Poland of the Jews.”278 Using a similar rationale, one could view the mission of the Jews as simply one of helping the Soviets to enslave Poland by destroying Poland’s native underground. The Jewish forest groups that formed in the area were generally inhospitable to outsiders. Abraham Paikovsky and his son Nahum were turned back several times, since no group would accept them as members.
There was an ample quantity of fresh meat, since herds of cows or pigs were brought to the camp and kept at some distance. … The cows and pigs would be slaughtered according to need … 281 Here there was no problem of obtaining food, which was plentiful, nor did we lack clothing. When on a mission, we would take off our ragged and dirty clothes and change them for others at the homes of farmers.282 … we were eager to spend the Day of Atonement with other Jews in order to fast and pray together. We decided, therefore, to go to Mezanze [Mieżańce] woods to be among the Jews there. En route to Mezanze, we passed through one of the nearby villages and stole a few chickens for the ritual sacrifice on the eve of Yom Kippur (kapparot). Later on, we were ashamed to learn that we had taken the chickens from a friendly farmer.283 To carry out raids effectively weapons were needed and initially these weapons had to be procured from the local inhabitants. Elka obtained arms was still the farmers who had collected the weapons discarded by the Red Army during their panicky retreat in 1941. It needed intelligence work to find out who had hidden arms, but by threats and intimidation, indeed sometimes with blows, we would unearth the weapons …284 Conflicts also developed with non-Jewish groups and with the Soviet partisan command: There was suspicion and animosity particularly between the Jewish groups and the non-organized Russian groups. The source of much of this animosity was the girls in the Jewish groups. The Russians, who were given to drinking too much, would fall upon the Jewish girls, and there were even cases of rape, which naturally led to armed struggles between the Jews and the Russians. … the Russians were made up of small groups of two or three men, who were immensely mobile … They were well armed, and terrorized the farmers in the region.285 One fine day we were shocked to learn that Elka Ariovitz [“Todros”] had been summoned before the headquarters of the Kotovsky unit and sentenced to death. The gist of the charge was that before the establishment of the unit, back in the past, he had robbed farmers and taken food and clothing from them ‘illegally’, and that this accounted for their unwillingness to cooperate with the partisans. A number of other charges were also invented to justify the sentence. It was obvious to the Jews amongst us that behind the mask of so called ‘justice’, lurked blatant anti-Semitism and personal envy. … After the deaths of Elka Ariovitz and [commander] Stankevitz [Stankevich] relations between the veteran Jewish fighters and the unit’s command had deteriorated.286
It was an hour before midnight and the moon was rising in the sky, shedding light on the dust road we were walking along in Indian file. … We passed alongside the colonies of the village Lonki [Łunki] on our way to Saltanishok [Sołtaniszki] and Kovalka [Kowalki]. … Suddenly the silence was shattered by rifle fire, directed at us from behind the houses to the left and the rear. While dashing past, I saw a number of shadows moving around behind the houses. We were few and there was no point in starting a gun battle, so all we could do was to get up and run like the wind. … The frying pan and other utensils were knocking against one another and sounded like an orchestra of drums accompanied by cymbals. … There were many such encounters with the White Poles. … It was a miracle that in this ambush no one was killed, and when we arrived in the forest, all were alive and unhurt. … The White Poles … were supported and assisted by their fellow farmers. In every village, they had contacts who supplied them with information, and they aware of the routes we would pass and where we were settled. This was the reason why we had to change our quarters so very frequently, for we had to be wary of every farmer who may reveal our whereabouts.287 The fate of the forest Jews who had survived on their own for more than a year, by begging for food from the farmers, took a dramatic turn for the worse when the Soviet (and Jewish) partisans moved into their area and established contact with them. They became tainted by association. Liebke and her parents escaped to the forest and reached the neighborhood of the villages of Mezanze [Mieżańce] and Ivonza [Ejwuńce], and they turned to the farmers Winzia, Ambraziuk, and Marishka, and these were their contacts. These farmers were in the region of Radun [Raduń] and knew where the Jews were hiding. They did them no harm, not even revealing what they knew to others. … On more than one occasion, they endangered their lives in order to render assistance, or when hiding Jews from their pursuers and warning them of impending danger.288 A few weeks after I reached the [Nacza] forest, a group of partisans went out on a mission to obtain food for the unit in the neighborhood of Dowgalishok [Dowgieliszki]. I joined this action, together with Abraham Paikovsky, as we knew the roads and farmers of this area. We also wanted to meet the Jews of Dowgalishok, tell them about the forest and try to convince them to return with us. We managed to locate them and stayed with them for a whole day. I met Father and urged him to return with me to the forest. … Unfortunately father did not react to my explanations, nor did the rest of the Jews. He did not refuse point-blank to go with me, but merely repeated his former arguments: ‘Here I know everyone since I was a child and everyone knows me. I have worked for them and served them for many years, and they are my friends and would not do me any harm. Proof of this is that they have helped me until now and treated me with affection, as a friend. And what is more, now the area is ruled by the partisans, and the rumors of large Jewish partisan groups, they would not harm the Jews out of fear of reprisals.’ … A short while after having parted from Father, another group of partisans set off for the Dowgalishok neighborhood, and I asked them to take him with them back to the forest. On their return, they gave me the terrible news that they had not met him and that the White Poles (the AK [Armia Krajowa]) had attacked all the Jews of Dowgalishok on the eve of Shavuoth and killed most of them, my father among them.289 The heaviest losses sustained by the family groups were not at the hands of the local population or the Home Army, however, but occurred during a massive, fifteen-day blockade of the Nacza forest by the Germans forces in June 1943 when some seventy Jews were killed.290 Moreover, any Pole suspected of actively supporting the Home Army or of being otherwise “hostile” became fair game for the Soviet and Jewish partisans. Lipkunsky describes the case of a Pole from Raduń by the name of Vinzkovsky [Więckowski?], who had joined up with Ariovitz’s forest group after the Germans learned of his involvement in an ambush on a group of policemen masterminded by the Polish commander of the local police. Vinzkovsky had a history of helping Jews and was considered to be “loyal to the Jews” and was “trusted by them.” However, with the appearance of the Home Army in the area, Vinzkovsky’s loyalty “began to be questioned.” Fearing that he was planning to leave the Soviet-Jewish partisan group and join the Poles, the Jewish partisans “decided that he must be silenced.” He was shot in the back when he went on patrol with three of his Jewish colleagues. Lipkunsky rationalized the execution in this way: “One can understand Vinzkovsky’s motives in wanting to go over to the White Poles, for he knew that his life would be much better and more comfortable (after living in the forest for over a year and a half). To this very day, we do not know whether he managed to pass on any information concerning the whereabouts of the Jews to his fellow Poles.”291 On another occasion, early one morning, Lipkunsky’s group came across some woodcutters, a father and his son, in the forest.
To those among us who were in the know and had experience, they were evidently scouts and contacts of the White Poles or the Germans. We were faced with a hard dilemma—what was to be done with them? … After some discussion, we decided to kill them quietly—not by shooting. This would serve as a warning to the nearby village’s [sic] not to enter the forest. So they were hanged, and buried under one of the trees, with the grave well-disguised.292 A Home Army unit eventually attacked the Soviet partisan unit in that area, burned their camp and killed some of the marauders. Suspecting that they had been betrayed by a farmer from the village of Montaty who knew where their camp was located, a group of Jewish partisans descended on the village just before sunset and murdered the farmer and torched his farm. In retaliation, Polish partisans again attacked the Soviet partisan camp killing a few more partisans.293 Some of the more heinous crimes committed by the Soviet-Jewish partisans in the Raduń area are not mentioned in Jewish sources. For example, in the winter of 1943–1944, six women were burned alive in the hamlet of Sapuńce where the partisans also raped teenaged girls and young women. (When reading about such atrocities, one should bear in mind that, unlike Jewish victims, non-Jewish victims could not seek redress against the perpetrators after the Soviet “liberation,” because Soviet partisans were considered to be “heroes” of the Fatherland and their victims were by definition “Nazi collaborators.”) Lipkunsky’s group also served as “an intelligence source” in the area: “The task given to us by the unit was to gather intelligence and convey it to the unit. Once every week or two, five of us would leave for the unit to hand over information and receive instructions.” Lipkunsky acknowledges that his group was “not equipped nor suited to engage in armed conflicts with the Germans or the Poles.”294 As we shall see, many of the Jewish partisans, Lipkunsky among them, continued to serve the Soviets after the arrival of the Red Army. They willingly joined the NKVD, “whose principal responsibility was to help the Red Army uncover White Poles and bring them to the security police to be investigated.”295 Thousands of Home Army members were arrested, and many of them perished. Yet at no point in his lengthy memoirs does Lipkunsky raise the question of whether robbing and spying on the local population could have had an impact on the attitude of the Poles or whether fighting alongside the Soviet partisans, whose aim it was to eradicate the Home Army and enslave Poland, could have been the source of some of the conflict with the local population and the Home Army. The demonization of the Home Army does not stop there. Yitzhak Arad, as do other former Jewish partisans, claims that the Home Army “engaged in very little anti-German activity.”296 It has been well documented, however, that Home Army units in the Nowogródek region, who were less numerous and not as well-armed as the Soviet partisans, engaged the Germans in military operations more frequently than the Soviet partisans (who preferred sabotage and diversionary actions), and were regarded by the Germans as a more formidable foe than the Soviet partisans.297 Some of the charges one reads in Jewish memoirs are even more outlandish, and demostrably untrue. One partisan, Peter Smuszkowicz, for example, claims that after the Soviet assault on Burzyński’s partisan unit. Many Jews lost their lives to these AK [Armia Krajowa] partisans, especially the unit of General Kaminiski [sic]. These were Polish, Belorussian, and Ukrainian collaborators and were actually working for the Germans.298 It is trite knowledge that Kaminsky’s forces had nothing whatsoever to do with the Home Army. Brigadeführer SS Bronislav Kaminsky (Kaminskii) was the leader of the so-called RONA (Russkaia Osvoboditelnaia Narodnaia Armiia–Russian National Liberation Army), a formation of collaborators consisting of Russians, Belorussians, Ukrainians, as well as others, who became infamous for pacification actions in German-occupied Belorussia and during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Their ranks did not include Poles.299 Moreover, what is one to think when one sees crude statements like the following, which show a singular inability to grasp historical reality, pepper the memoirs on which Holocaust history is written? The Polish government, in exile in London, was in touch with the AK [Armia Krajowa]. By 1942 the Polish underground in our vicinity were under orders from the Polish government in exile in London to organize in secret, collect weapons, divide into battle-ready squads and wait until it could be determined which side would win the war. If the Germans succeeded on the Russian front, their orders were to join them and declare a free Poland. If the Allies were winning, they would join them instead. … There was no official stance on the fate of Poland’s three million Jews. In fact the AK were extremely anti-Semitic. In many parts of Poland they actually participated in the mass executions of Jews.300 This account is sheer fantasy. The notion that anyone would believe that the Germans contemplated a free Poland under German auspices is simply baffling. The Poles harboured no such illusions. The Polish underground played a pivotal role in transmitting the news of the Holocaust and German military secrets (such as the V-1 and V-2 missiles) to the West, and it was the Polish government in exile that was the first and only government to speak out about the fate of the Jews and to call for punitive measures against the Germans.301 The Poles’ commitment to the Allied cause is beyond question. How can one explain this skewed perspective? Sociologists offer the following caution when assessing the testimony of eyewitnesses: Actually, according to current empirical research, memory suffers as a result of traumatic events. Under conditions of great stress people are poorer perceivers, because stress causes a narrowing of attention.302 More recently, this acrimonious debate has witnessed a major breakthrough. Yisrael Gutman, the director of the Centre of Holocaust Research at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem, acknowledged rather belatedly that the Jewish perspective is not the only valid one in assessing the events in question. One should not close one’s eyes to the fact that Home Army units in the Wilno area were fighting against the Soviet partisans for the liberation of Poland. And that is why the Jews who found themselves on the opposing side perished at the hands of Home Army soldiers—as enemies of Poland, and not as Jews.303 However, Israel Gutman’s enlightened perspective is not at all popular with academics and the Jewish mainstream. Nechama Tec, for example, alleges that “White Poles were using Jews as shooting targets.”304 A study guide on the Bielski partisans prepared for American students by the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation offers the same nationalistic perspective. The study guide poses the following questions requiring a textual analysis: “What do you understand about the relationship between the Bielski partisans and the Polish partisans? What evidence do you have from the text to support your understanding?” The only reference in the text to this matter is the following: “There were groups of antisemitic Polish partisans who hunted down and killed Jewish partisans—members of the Polish Home Army, or Army [sic] Krajowa.” Indeed, why complicate matters? They’re only highly impressionable students, after all.305 The portrayal of the Polish Home Army as a “fascist” organization that spent most of its time attacking Jews and Soviet partisans is a propaganda relic of the Stalinist era that should finally be put to rest. Armed confrontations with the more formidable Soviet partisan formations were generally defensive or retaliatory in nature. A radical reappraisal of other matters is also in order. The notion that the Soviet partisans (and by extension Jewish partisans) played a significant role in the defeat of the German forces in the Nowogródek and Wilno regions is a myth that needs to be cast aside once and for all. Reports of the exploits of the Soviet partisans, who avoided direct confrontations with the Germans until the arrival of the Soviet army, are often exaggerated, even grossly, and need to undergo careful verification.306 In fact, the military accomplishments of the fairly substantial Soviet partisan bases in Naliboki and Rudniki forests were rather modest. As pointed out by Russian historian Boris Sokolov, not a single Wehrmacht operational transport was stopped as a result of partisan activities, nor was a single large German offensive hindered.307 According to research conducted by historian Bogdan Musiał, According to that [standard Soviet] narrative, the Soviet partisans killed 1.5 million “Germans and their collaborators.” In reality, the casualties inflicted on the enemy did not exceed 45,000, half of them Germans. As Musial puts it, “The higher the position of the official submitting the report, the higher the enemy losses reported.” In the meantime, the Soviet partisan commanders deluged Moscow with “euphoric reports about their military successes which did not reflect reality.” Regarding the German antipartisan pacification action “Hermann” in the Naliboki Forest undertaken between 13 July and 8 August 1943, the communist partisan leader reported the annihilation of the staff and the commanding officer of the infamous SS-Dirlewanger Sonderbrigade, and boasted of “3,000 killed and wounded enemies, 29 POWs taken, 60 destroyed enemy vehicles, 3 tanks and 4 armored cars taken over.” The Soviet losses were put at “129 killed, 50 wounded, and 24 missing.” In reality, Dirlewanger died after the war and his staff escaped unscathed. The German casualty rolls show 52 killed, 155 wounded, and 4 missing. On the other hand, the Nazis reported 4,280 killed and 654 captured “bandits.” Among the combat casualties, in addition to Soviet guerrillas, there were also Polish independent Home Army partisans. However, most of the losses consisted of civilian Poles and Belarusans [sic], including the denizens of Naliboki which was completely obliterated by the Nazis. Hundreds of inhabitants were shot, several hun several hundred were deported to slave labor in the Reich, and only a few managed to flee.308 In general, the Soviets seriously limited their attacks on German military and police targets. They preferred to assault the poorly armed and trained Belorussian and other auxiliary self-defence forces. The guerrillas torched and levelled Polish landed estates much more frequently than they blew up military transports and assaulted other hard targets. In fact, “by the end of 1943, most large landed estates had been destroyed.”309 Likewise, there is no basis on which to dispute the assessment of Raul Hilberg, one of the foremost scholars of the Holocaust, that the Germans “did not suffer much from Jewish resistance.”310 Yüklə 1,68 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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