[A. Destruction of
the Jewish existence in Poland
1929-1939]
[5.2. Discrimination and murderous pogroms in
anti-Semitic
Poland 1935-1939]
[Discrimination of Jews in Poland
is
harsher than in the Third Reich]
The economic problems, which will be discussed below, were accompanied
by a growing crescendo of physical attacks by anti-Semitic elements on
the Jewish population. At times these attacks tended to overshadow the
dismal poverty into which the Jewish masses were sinking. The physical
attacks were accompanied by acts of deliberate discrimination that
equaled, and often exceeded, the steps taken by Germany's Nazis at that
time.
[March 1935: Lodz: Subsidies for
Jewish institutions abolished]
In early March 1935 the Endeks [National Democrats] ruling in the
municipality of Lodz (a town with a Jewish population of 200,000)
abolished all subsidies to Jewish institutions.
(End note 3:
Jewish Chronicle,
3/22/35 [22 March 1935], p.22)
[Years 1935-1937: Discrimination
of
Jewish students from universities enforced]
Late in 1935 the long-standing Endek demand to separate Jewish
university students from their non-Jewish colleagues was put into
operation in Lwów; the Warsaw Polytechnic followed suit in October
1937, as did the universities of Vilna, Cracow, and Poznan.
(End note 4: Ibid. [
Jewish Chronicle],
12/20/35 [20 December 1935], 1/17/36 [17 January 1936]. R61-report on Poland,
February 1939, 46-report 1938;
special bulletin of AJC [American Jewish Committee], 2/1/38 [1 Feb
1938])
[Since early 1935: Boycotts and
pogroms against Jews with stones, fire and many murders]
Starting in early 1935, boycotts of Jews spread all through the Polish
countryside. These were followed by pogroms: window-smashing, the
overturning of Jewish market stalls, beatings, arson, and finally
murder. The details of these brutalities are repetitive and terrible.
In 1935 pogroms took place at Radomsko in April, at Radosc (near
Warsaw) and Grochow in May, at Grodno in May. In December [1935] these
isolated occurrences began to harden into a campaign: disturbances in
Klwow, Lodz, Katowice, Kielce, and Hrubieszow were followed in January
1936 by attacks on Jews in Cracow and Warsaw, among other places.
On March 9, 1936, a terrible pogrom occurred at Przytyk, where two Jews
were killed and many houses burned: Bombs were thrown in those same
months in 13 more towns, including Minsk Mazowiecki; there a second
pogrom occurred in early June and, after four Jews had been killed,
most of the Jewish population left for Warsaw.
During 1936 and early 1937 the pogroms became a daily occurrence in
Poland, and clearly indicated increasingly better oganization. In
Czestochowa riots started in June 1937 (p.183)
with a fight between two porters; a well-organized boycott movement
against the Jews prolonged the unrest there for months.
Kahn discerned "carefully planned activities of anti-Semitic elements,
in which high government officials participated." In the course of the
Czestochowa pogrom, the Endek paper
Ganiec
Czestochowski gave lists of streets on which Jews had not as yet
been robbed.
(End note 5: Large amounts of material on the pogroms are available at
the JDC archives, files R13, R52, R60, 8-21, 14-5, 46-reports 1936,
1937, 1938; See also: WAC, Boxes 345 and 366. The quotation is taken
from Kahn's report, 6/7/37, in R52; See also: Jewish Chronicle 4/19,
5/3, 5/10, 6/14, 9/6, 11/2, 12/6, 12/13/35; 3/13, 3/27/36; et seq.)
75 Jews were wounded in this particular outbreak.
In May 1937 another outbreak occurred at Brest Litovsk, where a number
of Jews were killed and some 200 wounded.
(End note 6: R13-Hyman's report to the Budget and Scope Committee,
6/27/37; see also WAC, Box 366 (a)
Between May 1935 and January 1937, 118 Jews were killed and 1,350
wounded; 137 Jewish stores were destroyed. A total of 348 separate
violent mass assaults on Jews were counted during the period, and the
compilation was termed both "unofficial" and "incomplete". Another
compilation showed that between the end of 1935 and March 1939, 350
Jews had been killed and 500 wounded.
(End note 7:
--
New York Times, 2/7/37
[7 Feb 1937];
-- R10-American Jewish Committee review of the European situation,
3/30/39 [30 March 1939] (by Moses Moskowitz)
The wave of pogroms did not abate throughout 1937 and 1938. In August
1937 five severe outbreaks occurred in central Poland, and anti-Jewish
demonstrations occurred in seven towns, including the capital.
(End note 8: WAC, Box 366 (f)
One result of these events was an increased movement of the Jews from
smaller places, where they felt themselves exposed, to the larger
towns, where they thought they would be safer.
But in early 1938 the riots spread to Warsaw, and from then on attacks
on Jews in the larger cities became a normal occurrence.
[Jews on strike and self-defense
units against riots - police supports the pogroms]
Several times the Jews reacted by demonstrations and general strikes
(March 1936, May and June 1937). In Warsaw and Lodz the Bund tried to
create Jewish self-defense units. These were supported by PPS as well,
but police intervention in favor of the pogromists
(End note 9: "Jews have been deserting many villages en masse and going
to the cities, their property burned down and their very lives
endangered" - JDC Executive Committee (ECO), 9/23/37 [23 September
1937])
neutralized Jewish opposition.
(End note 10: 44-3, cable 3/20/38 [20 March 1938]; ibid., 8-21
[1938-1939: Poland: Boycott
movements in anti-Semitic Poland ruin Jewish communities]
In 1938 and 1939 the anti-Jewish boycott movement became more and more
effective. Again, it was mainly the small Jewish communities that were
hit, and in this a parallel to the experience in Germany can clearly be
discerned. These boycott actions were usually organized by the Endeks,
but by early 1939 the government OZN group also supported them.
In February 1939 an OZN- (p.184)
inspired boycott in the Lublin area caused Jewish economic life to be
"practically ruined".
(End note 11: R61, February 1939)
The number of Jewish stores in town after town decreased, while the
Polish stores grew in number, despite the continued economic crisis.
(End note 12:
-- JDC, 45-publicity, Warszawski Dziennik Narodowy, 4/14/38;
-- R28-
Fortnightly Digest, no.
14 (5/1/38 [1 May 1938], et seq.)
[Early 1939: Poland: Deportations
of Jews from the frontier towns]
In early 1939 Jews were forced to leave certain frontier towns because
they were considered to be unreliable elements - as though Jews were
less interested in resistance to the Germans than were the Poles. In
this connection "almost one-quarter of the Jewish population of Gdynia
was deported". At Katowice it was "feared that half the local
Jewish population may be forced to emigrate elsewhere."
(End note 13: See note 11 [R61, February 1939])
[1939: Anti-Semitism also in
Western and Northwestern Poland]
Riots, pogroms, and boycotts now spread to areas in western and
northwestern Poland, where the number of Jews was very small; up till
then these areas had been spared from excesses.
(End note 14: 45-publicity, bulletin, 3/10/30 [10 March 1930]; thus a
bloody pogrom in Dobrzyn caused "many Jews to be wounded", etc.; at the
same time the pogroms did not cease elsewhere).
[April 1936: Poland: Law against
ritual slaughter]
Jews, especially observant Jews, who formed the majority of Polish
Jewry, were hard hit by Polish laws against ritual slaughter (shehita)
enacted in April 1936 and, in a final and drastic form, in March 1939.
Not only was religious freedom sharply diminished, but a large number
of Jewish butchers and supervisors of ritual slaughter were threatened
with economic ruin.
[March 1939: Poland is threatened
after German occupation of CSR - laws against Jews in anti-Semitic
Poland]
The general and extreme anti-Jewish movement, both political and
economic, continued until the spring of 1939. Only with the increased
Polish-German tension after Hitler's conquest of Czechoslovakia in
March did Polish anti-Semitism show signs of weakening, as the
attention of the Polish nationialists became directed outward.
Yet the long campaign against the Jews was even then by no means over;
on the contrary, it was the clear intention of the middle-class parties
to enact openly anti-Jewish legislation. Laws modeled on Nazi
legislation were to include "the revision of citizenship and the
elimination of the Jews from the economic and cultural life of Poland."
(End note 15: 44-4, memo, 5/1/39 [1 May 1939])
