JEWISH SENTINEL

26 JEWISH WORLD • DECEMBER 20-26, 2024 O n the eve of World War II, Po- land's 3.3 million Jews formed a vibrant and diverse society, noted Havi Dreifuss, director of the Center for Research on the Holocaust in Po- land at Yad Vashem and professor of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University. “Many were engaged in Jewish and Polish causes or active in political movements such as the Bund, Zionist, and Orthodox groups. While most lived in cities, these were often small, alongside Yillages that reflected the richness of Polish Jewish life." This last point is a critical issue for Holocaust scholarship, Dreifuss said. “Research often focuses on large ghettos like Warsaw and Lodz, each housing hundreds of thou- sands of Jews. But over 340 ghet- tos existed in the General Govern- ment, 83% of them with fewer than 5,000 Jews,” she said. “These smaller ghettos, representing the majority of Polish Jewish com- munities, remain understudied, desSite their significant role in un- derstanding Polish Jewry during the Holocaust." Chronologically, Polish perse- cution of the Jews progressed in three stages, according to Grabowski. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the Third Reich entrusted Polish police forces to introduce and enforce new restrictions on the Jews. The first Shase was the Eegin- ning of the inhuman ghettoization of the Jews," Grabowski said. "The Germans created laws designed to break down the Jews, limiting where they could go and what they could do or own. Yet until now, vir- tually no historians have examined how the large Polish police force suddenly became so deeply in- volved with Jewish affairs, effec- tively condemning them to starva- tion. By 1941, Polish forces began working on the second phase, liqui- dating hundreds of ghettos. As train- loads of Jews were sent to concentration camps like Aus- chwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka in 1942 and 1943, Polish police partic- ipated in the Nazi evacuations of these ghettos, rounding Jews up, killing anyone who resisted, and sometimes even conducting the evacuations themselves. "It is important to understand that it wasn't the Germans coercing the Poles to shoot; it was the Polish ex- ecution squads making these deci- sions themselves," Grabowski said. "In November 1941, Polish police were shooting Jews on a regular ba- sis, much earlier than in Nazi-occu- pied countries in Western Europe." Perhaps the Poles were just acting to avoid facing punishment from the Nazis? "The interesting thing is that there is no record of any penalty given to someone who refused to kill a Jew, except maybe some sneers by your colleagues," Grabowski said. "If you didn't want to do it, there was always someone else who would be happy to." After the ghettos were liquidat- ed, Polish forces continued their killing sprees through the third phase, searching throughout the country for Jews who may have es- caped, according to Grabowski. "At this point, they are murder- ing with gusto, without any Ger- man involvement," according to Grabowski. "They are working with locals, with their neighbors, and they don't even inform the Ger- mans about what they are doing." As the Holocaust progressed, Polish police acted on their own to kill Jews without coordinating with Germany, Grabowski said. "They knew that if they reported their activities to the Nazis, they would have been forced to share the money and property they stole,” he said. “They might also incrimi- nate their neighbors who were ac- tively sheltering Jews. And they didn't want that." Poland’s Foreign Ministry de- They killed friends and schoolmates with- out remorse, even in places where no Germans ever came to check up on them. A group of 5aai police in 6tfin}^, 7oland, . Poland continued from page 22 clined to respond to the claims in Grabowski’s books, saying, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not coPPent on the scientific ac- tivities of individual people, con- sidering scientific sShere and ac- tivity exempt from political assessment.” While writing On Duty, Grabowski faced a powerful bar- rage of opposition from the Polish government and was slapped with a number of lawsuits, two of which are still pending. "It has not been good for my psychological well-being,” Grabowski said. “When you study for a PhD, no one trains you in how to handle attacks from the state for slandering the good name of the nation.” But exposing the truth is exactly why Grabowski believes his work is important. “The Holocaust has become a universal benchmark of evil, but even after decades of Holocaust education, you have governments bending history out of shape to conform with their own needs,” he said. “This is a very dangerous precedent, and we have a responsi- bility to prevent it to preserve our future". Grabowski’s 496-page book may be purchased at Yad Vashem’s web- site: https://store.yadvashem.org/ en/on-duty-2 Jed Stub is an author at the JTA. 7olish and .erman police oɉcers inspect the papers of a 1e^ish man, >arsa^, . Police who previously were in charge of en- forcing mundane civilian laws were quickly transformed into ruthless killers. 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