Volume devoted to the issue of collaboration and cooperation with the German occupier (by both Poles and Jews), together with the complicated issue of post-war account-settling

The author reflects upon Jan Błoński’s essay “Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto” (Poor Poles look at the ghetto) nearly twenty years of its publication by Tygodnik Powszechny. He points at the innovative character of the depiction of Polish-Jewish issues in the moral context, outside of all the political embroilments. Błoński’s voice is unique, because it acknowledges, in the spirit of the Gospels, that analysis of Polish-Jewish relations is a fundamental issue for the Polish society, a “homework” that needs to be done. This essay, Głowiński claims, is free from the embroilment in the dualism of the negative and positive myths regarding these relations. The author writes about reactions to this text, the letters to the editor and notes one particular voice, which he reads as an internalised nationalist ideology and the dangerous continuation of the nationalist discourse. Głowiński’s sketch concludes the post scriptum, in which the
author refers to another article, published in 2006 by Gazeta Wyborcza, regarding the current historical policy, whose proponents see Błoński’s essay as a negative reference point. The author notes that this essay constantly evokes strong emotions, and, as an expression of critical patriotism, still has its ardent opponents.

This article deals with the most notorious political crime committed by the Germans on independence -oriented underground in German-occupied Poland. On 13 July 1944, Ludwik Widerszal and Jerzy Makowiecki with his wife were killed by a patrol of  “Andrzeja Sudeczko” sabotage group. Both were prominent officers of the Information and Propaganda Bureau (BiP) of Home Army High Command, who exerted a powerful influence on the ideology of the key agency of the Polish underground army. Both assassinated men were also political activists involved in the left-wing Stronnictwo Demokratyczne (Democratic Party), which was accused of pro-Soviet sympathies and crypto communism. The author demonstrates that allegations of treason or communist influences levelled at Makowiecki and Widerszal have no foundation in sources. They originated from prejudice and misunderstanding, easily begotten in the stuffy air of conspiracy, when no open political discussion was possible due to the terror of German occupation authorities. 

            Since Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert several years ago finally dismissed the thesis that this murder was inspired by Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (National Armed Forces, NSZ), and demonstrates the involvement of a “conspiratorial mafia group” which used a few high-ranking conspirators, we know that this group was made up of three men. It is also certain that at least two of them: Wit old Bieńkowski and Władysław Jamontt (both brave and distinguished conspirators with big political ambitions) acted purposely, carrying out a political plan, which, in their opinion, was to block the political influence of the BiP in the underground and bring them some profit. Finding the culprits and the potential supporters of the plot is impossible. The author analyses in detail the circumstances of the investigation carried out by underground authorities and considers the actual motive behind the crime. He dismisses the thesis that the murder was ideologically inspired by the NSZ. The death of Makowiecki and Widerszal, veteran conspirators and patriots shot in infamy as traitors was a hopeless attempt by Bieńkowski and Jamontt to get involved, identifying a threat where there was none. The real enemy – Moscow's agents, concealed within the Delegatura (Government Delegate's Office at Home) and the Home Army, remained undetected, patiently waiting for the Red Army to arrive.

Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish ‘national communism’. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers’ Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this context, commentaries on the Nazi judeocide were an important element in their endeavors to influence the prevailing mood in the country: The underground communist press often pointed to the fate of the murdered Jews as a warning in order to make it clear to the Polish population where a deficient lack of resistance could lead. However, an agreed, unconditional Polish and Jewish armed resistance did not come about.

At the same time, the communist press constantly expanded its demagogic confrontation with Polish “reactionaries” and accused them of shared responsibility for the Nazi murder of the Jews, while the Polish government (in London) was attacked for its failure. This antagonism was intensified in the fierce dispute between the Polish and Soviet governments after the rift which followed revelations about the Katyn massacre. Now the communist propaganda image of the enemy came to the fore in respect to the government and its representatives in occupied Poland. It viewed the government-in-exile as being allied with the “reactionaries,” indifferent to the murder of the Jews, and thus acting ultimately on behalf of Nazi German policy. The communists denounced the real and supposed antisemitism of their adversaries more and more bluntly. In view of their political isolation, they coupled them together, in an undifferentiated manner, extending from the right-wing radical ONR to the social democrats and the other parties represented in the underground parliament loyal to the London based Polish government. Thereby communist propaganda tried to discredit their opponents and to justify the need for a new start in a post-war Poland whose fate should be shaped by the revolutionary left. They were thus paving the way for the ultimate communist takeover

In this article, the author attempts to present the sensitive issue of denunciation of Jews during the occupation. The analysis is based on Polish sources, supplemented with memoirs and testimonies. The starting point and an important intellectual context is the pioneer book by Barbara Engelking „szanowny panie gistapo” (Dear Mr Gistapo).

Informers, acting anonymously, were therefore often more dangerous than the szmalcownicy (blackmailers) and did not see anything morally reprehensible in their actions. Yet it was one of the most menacing and hideous wartime occupations. The author also verifies the commonly held opinion that this phenomenon was relatively limited. It seems that this was a veritable plague during the occupation, which is reflected in literary texts. The fear of a blackmailer or informer was a feeling known to many Jews in hiding. In line with Barbara Engelking, the author treats denunciation as a form of collaboration, secret co-operation with the Nazis in their atrocious pursuits.

One of the most important issues dealt with in this article is to answer why the Jews were denounced. Among the primary motives are: the desire seize the victim's property, frustration, feelings of superiority and power afforded by the perpetrator's anonymity, but also anti-Semitism and racial hatred.

As part of the purification and self-cleansing atmosphere in the newly liberated countries of Europe following the end of World War II, dozens of Jews were put on trial for their actions during the war, and some were even convicted. This dispensation of justice did not pass by the young Jewish state. In 1950, the "Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, 5710-1950" was passed in Israel. Although the law was supposedly intended to bring to justice Nazis, in fact the majority of defendants were Jews. Until the beginning of the 1960s, close to 40 Jewish survivors of the holocaust who were accused of collaboration with the Nazis, were put on trial under this law. Most of them had been prisoners with special duties in Nazi camps, which were known by the collective name, "Kapo".

The main sources used in this article are investigation and court files of post-war trials of 15 former journalists of Nowy Kurier Warszawski, so-called “reptile newspaper” (gadzinówka), a newspaper published by German authorities in General Government throughout the entire occupation. They were charged and convicted of collaboration on the basis of the so-called “August decree” of the Polish Committee of National Liberation. The sentences in this trial were surprisingly low as compared with those of others tired for collaboration with the Germans, including many Home Army soldiers. Such trials were used by the communist government to eliminate political opponents in post-war Poland. In this article, the author considers whether the journalists' trials should also be treated as a political issue, and formulates a definition of collaboration, delineating its boundaries in the light of court rulings. The defendants' and witnesses' testimonies are used to present work conditions in Nowy Kurier Warszawski and methods of recruitment among the Poles. A reconstruction of the newspaper's employees' line of defence made it possible to determine the structure of this type of narration and confront it with the witnesses' testimonies, recollections of other journalists and documents of the Home Army, the Delegatura Rządu RP na Kraj (Government Delegate's Office at Home), as well as personal files of the Security Service (Służba Bezpieczeństwa, SB). Available materials made it possible to get acquainted with the post-war fate of the defendants and analyse what influence on their future lives had their work for the “reptile newspaper” (gadzinówka).

Fritz Seifter, a Jewish-German journalist and Polish citizen, collaborated with the German authorities on two occasions: first during 1933–1934 in Bielsko, where, supported by the Reich Ministry of National Education and Propaganda, he launched his newspaper Jüdische Wochenpost; second, in July 1940, when the General Governor's Department of National Education and Propaganda in Cracow appointed him editor-in-chief and managing director of Gazeta Żydowska. But in either case the circumstances and motives for collaboration differed significantly.

            In the case of Jüdische Wochenpost, Seifter completed a project he had been planning to carry out since the late 1920s. His newspaper was to consolidate the bonds of German-speaking Polish Jews with Germany. The Reich Ministry of National Education and Propaganda supported the establishment of this newspaper in order to tone down the opinions of Polish Jews regarding the Nazi regime in Berlin. During 1933–1934 Seifter saw himself as an agent of the German Ministry of Propaganda.

In 1940, German occupation authorities in Krakow searched for and found Fritz Seifter, who was to be appointed editor-in-chief and managing director for the German-planned Gazeta Żydowska, completely controlled by the Germans. Its principal aims were to isolate the Jews even further from their Polish environment, herd them to work and give illusions of hope for emigration after the war.

Thus there was no continuity in Seifter's co-operation with the German authorities, and collaboration was not the case. During 1933–1934, Seifter's main reason to launch his newspaper was German nationalism, which ostensibly linked him to the Germans. In 1940, however, Fritz Seifter no longer acted of his own accord, and any illusions as to the genocidal character of the Nazi regime was out of the question: Seifter alongside the rest of Polish Jews wanted only to survive.

This article analyses unpublished memoirs of Adam Żurawin, a Gestapo informer, believed to have been involved in the so-called “Hotel Polski Affair”. Żurawin wrote them shortly before his death. They offer a rare opportunity to look at a German collaborator through his own eyes. The analysis is carried out from a few complementary points of view: historical (comparison with other sources), literary criticism (the poetics of personal document and self-creation), and psychological (motivations, feelings). Indeed, in his memoirs, Żurawin portrays himself as a knight-hero figure, who had never tarnished his hands with collaboration, but played a game with the Germans (and with the Poles), aimed only at saving his own family. The author tries to find what factors are involved in this self-creation

This article attempts to define collaboration with the Nazis and the most commonly used terms both in archival sources and literature. Furthermore, cases of individual collaboration with the Gestapo are discussed. One of the typical routes that led to collaboration was the involvement of Jewish policemen, who followed more and more controversial German orders during deportations, and thus underwent a process of brutalisation and an increasing dependence on their German bosses. This article analyses modes of informers' activity in the Cracow area as well as in Hungary, which led to arrests of Jews living in hiding or under false names on the “Aryan” side. It also shows the economic exploitation of the needy and the fate of the victims arrested as a result of denunciation. The article's conclusion contains an analysis of the causes and motivations of Jews involved in the treacherous business of denunciation of fellow Jews to undertake collaboration with the Gestapo.

This article follows the postwar trial of Shepsl Rotholc.  Rotholc was a successful interwar boxer for the Jewish sports club Gwiazda who was a Polish national champion in the flyweight class.  In the Warsaw ghetto he joined the ranks of the Jewish police [służba porządkowy].  After the war survivors accused Rotholc of mistreating them during deportations from the ghetto, and the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce), the principal representative of the postwar Jewish community in Poland in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, put him on trial in November 1946 in its recently established citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny], whose charter authorized it to determine whether a Jew suspected of reproachable behavior under the German occupation of Poland “behaved in a manner befitting a Jewish citizen” [“zachował postawę godną obywatela-Żyda”].  Rotholc was the first defendant to be tried before the citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny] of the CKŻP.

            At his trial Rotholc denied the charge that he had abused fellow Jews in the ghetto.  By his own account, he had joined the Jewish police to support his family because under the color of his authority and thanks to his reputation in the boxing ring he was able to protect smugglers who compensated him for his assistance.  He even claimed to have rescued members of his family and friends from deportation.  Defense witnesses painted a different picture.  His alleged victims repeated their accusations of his mistreatment of them during roundups, and postwar Jewish leaders who had taken part in the Jewish underground vilified the Jewish police in the ghetto.

            The citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny] of the CKŻP found Rotholc guilty of violating its charter.  The basis for his conviction was not his mistreatment of fellow Jews but rather his continued service in the Jewish police after the conclusion of the first wave of deportations from Warsaw in September 1942, when, the judges reasoned, the Germans’ true intentions not to resettle but to murder the Jews of Poland was unmistakable.  In accordance with sanctions authorized in its charter, the tribunal [sąd społeczny] expelled Rotholc from the Jewish community for two years, revoked his right to participate in communal activities for three years, and ordered publication of his conviction in the Jewish press.  After two years Rotholc petitioned for and received a commutation of his sentence.  He then left Poland and immigrated to Canada.

            After Rotholc an additional twenty-four Jewish defendants were tried in the citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny] of the CKŻP through the end of 1949.  Of these, eighteen, including Rotholc, were found guilty, while seven were acquitted.  The cases of an additional fifty suspected Jewish collaborators were dropped by lawyers for the CKŻP because of the lack of incriminating evidence.  Although Rotholc’s conviction was to be expected, the subsequent record of the tribunal [sąd społeczny] suggests that it took seriously the agonizing task of identifying putative collaborators from within the ranks of the Jewish remnant in postwar Poland and acted with a fair share of judicial integrity.

Presented below is a fragment of Józef Górski’s diaries regarding the situation in Podlasie in the first years of the German occupation. It illustrates the author’s view on “the final solution of the Jewish question”. Górski himself says that he looked at the Holocaust as a Christian, who feels compassion for the victims, and at the same time as a Pole and a faithful follower of Roman Dmowski. From the latter point of view, he clearly welcomed the Holocaust. Józef Górski’s diaries could certainly be classified as an “oddity”, and as one reads them a number of painful questions arise, primarily about the scale of (silent) consent to the murder. In other words, to what extent did Górski’s clear (although frightening) views fit the framework of the “ordinary people” of occupied Podlasie?

On 2 January 1943, the president of the Republic of Poland, Władysław Raczkiewicz, sent a telegram to Pius XII via the Polish Embassy at the Holy See. In dramatic words he described the intensifying German terror in occupied Poland and appealed for moral support: “The last weeks of the previous year brought new shocking information from Poland. The terror that afflicted all strata and segments of Polish society has taken on terrifying forms, not only in the refined cruelty of methods applied, but also in its sheer scale. The extermination of the Jews, including many Christian Semites, turned out to be the first attempt at a systematic and veritably scientific mass murder.” The fate of Polish Jews was to herald the physical extermination of the Polish nation, as proved by the deportations from the Zamość region ...

The text called Szmul Rozensztajn’s Diary, catalogue number 302/115, can be found in the Memoirs collection of the Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute. This is a typewritten text in Yiddish, 161 pages long, compiled on the basis of a manuscript written in the Łódź Ghetto. Daily entries cover the period from 20 February 1941 to 21 November 1941. This is no doubt part of a larger whole. Both the immediate post-war scholars of Jewish literature from the Łódź Ghetto – Ber Mark and Iszaja Trunk – and the contemporary editors of fragments of Szmul Rozensztajn’s Diary translated into English – Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides – say that the original of the Diary is kept at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, while the typewritten text is in Yad Vashem Archives in Jerusalem. But the inventory of the Jewish Memoirs collection of the Jewish Historical Institute published in 1994 mentions only a typewritten copy. The whereabouts of the original are unknown. We do not know which part of the copy is available to us.

This article describes the circumstances in which a German crew shot a film in the Warsaw Ghetto in May and June 1942. The author employs visual materials and eyewitness' accounts of Warsaw Ghetto Jews. They are an important counterpoint, revealing the background and the persuasive dimension of the Nazi message. The text is aimed at an understanding of the propagandistic intention, rooted in the specifically Nazi techniques of persuasion. To do this, the author refers to the sources of anti-Semitic imaginarium and the modes of depiction of the Jew as an enemy figure. The reconstruction of the image of the Jewish community in this film is reinforced by references to broader ideological and socio-cultural contexts.

Extermination centres had their own foremen and architects of death. At KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, the killing and the disposal of bodies was to proceed uninterruptedly, efficiently and leave no trace. In order to achieve this, the SS hired civilian experts. 

The article "Komiksem w historię" discusses, on the basis of selected examples of Polish and foreign comic books, the artistic modes of representation of historical events, primarily the Holocaust. The author puts the comic book medium in the context of tension between high and low culture, and in the context of this medium's appropriateness for the gravity of “historical narration”. The author analyses, among others, comic books by: Art Spiegelman, Joe Kubert, Krzysztof Gawronkiewicz and Krystian Rosenberg, Jason Lutes, as well as Joe Sacco or Frederik Peeters. The article outlines some characteristic tropes, shows the variety and importance of historical and contemporary issues, dealt with by the cartoonists and scriptwriters.

This article deals with the establishment and the brief history of the only official newspaper in the Łódź Ghetto. The author focuses primarily on a few selected themes and analyses them in terms of style and language, which leads her to classify the discourse of the Geto-Cajtung as one of propaganda. The quotations from the press and relevant commentaries demonstrate the role of the newspaper's propaganda discourse in the shaping of a favourable image of the “Elder” of Łódź Ghetto Jews – Mordechaj Rumkowski.

I met this priest only twice. On the second occasion, we had a longer conversation: for over an hour we strolled round the gardens of the Jesuits in Cracow, in Kopernika St., where Father Stanisław lived. It was July 2003. That conversation was very important for me; we were supposed to return  to it. Unfortunately, we did not. On 15 March 2004 I attended his funeral. The mass, in a full basilica of the Heart of Jesus, was concelebrated by 87 priests led by Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, the then archbishop-metropolitan of Cracow; in attendance were also the bishop of the Evangelical Reformed Church and a Lutheran minister. The main celebrant also led the funeral ceremony at the cemetery, where Father Musiał drew even bigger crowds. The presence of a sizeable group of Jews was something extraordinary, and they had come not only from Poland but also from Israel. Among the Jewish celebrities were three rabbis: the chief rabbi of Poland, the rabbi of Cracow and the Hasidic rabbi of Jerusalem; the latter sang kaddish over the Father's grave. The Jews of Cracow were represented by the chairman of the local community. Israeli ambassador in Poland David Peleg was also present.