Collaboration in German-occupied Poland
Following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Hitler sought to establish Poland as a client state, proposing a multilateral territorial exchange and an extension of the German–Polish non-aggression pact.
[11] Historian John Connelly writes that "only a relatively small percentage of the Polish population engaged in activities that may be described as collaboration, when seen against the backdrop of European and world history."
[17][18] Among those who rejected the German offers were Wincenty Witos, peasant party leader and former Prime Minister;[19][13][20] Prince Janusz Radziwiłł; and Stanisław Estreicher, prominent scholar from the Jagiellonian University.
[27] Władysław Studnicki, another nationalist maverick politician and anti-communist publicist,[28] and Leon Kozłowski, a former Prime Minister, each favored Polish-German cooperation against the Soviet Union, but were both also rejected by the Germans.
Professor Ryszard Kaczmarek of the University of Silesia in Katowice, author of a monograph, Polacy w Wehrmachcie (Poles in the Wehrmacht), noted that the scale of this phenomenon was much larger than previously assumed, because 90% of the inhabitants of these two westernmost regions of prewar Poland were ordered to register on the German People's List (Volksliste), regardless of their wishes.
[41] In June 1946, the British Secretary of State for War reported to Parliament that, of the pre-war Polish citizens who had involuntarily signed the Volksliste and subsequently served in the German Wehrmacht, 68,693 men were captured or surrendered to the Allies in northwest Europe.
Some Polish actors were coerced by the Germans into performing, as in the case of Bogusław Samborski, who played in Heimkehr probably in order to save his Jewish wife.
[citation needed] Jan Emil Skiwski, a writer and journalist of extreme National Democrat and fascist orientation, collaborated with Germany, publishing pro-Nazi Polish newspapers in German-occupied Poland.
Toward war's end, he escaped advancing Soviet armies, fled Europe, and spent the rest of his life under an assumed name in Venezuela.
The main armed resistance organization in Poland was the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK), numbering some 400,000 members, including Jewish fighters.
[54] The Germans made several attempts at arming regional Home Army units in order to encourage them to act against Soviet partisans operating in the Nowogródek and Vilnius areas.
[55][56][51] Tadeusz Piotrowski concludes that "[these deals] were purely tactical, short-term arrangements"[51]: 88 and quotes Joseph Rothschild that "the Polish Home Army was by and large untainted by collaboration.
"[51]: 90 The Polish right-wing National Armed Forces (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, or NSZ) – a nationalist, anti-communist organization,[57]: 137 [58]: 371 [59] widely perceived as anti-Semitic[60][61]: 147 [58]: 371 [62][63] – did not have a uniform policy regarding Jews.
[51]: 96-97 Its attitude to them drew on anti-semitism and anti-communism, perceiving Jewish partisans and refugees as "pro-Soviet elements" and members of an ethnicity foreign to the Polish nation.
[61]: 149 In late 1944, in the face of advancing Soviet forces, the Holy Cross Mountains Brigade, numbering 800-1,500 fighters, decided to cooperate with the Germans.
Regarding the purported low Polish resolve to save Jews, Winstone writes that this tendency may be partly explained by fear of execution by the Germans.
"[76] The book was praised by some scholars for its approach and analysis,[77][78] while a number of other historians criticized his methodology for lacking in actual field research,[79] and argued that his "200,000" estimate was too high.
[82] The pogrom was organized by the German SS Einsatzgruppe C and OUN leaders under a pretext that the local Jews were co-responsible for the earlier Soviet atrocities in the city.
[84] Germans used the divide and rule method to create tensions within the Polish society, by targeting several non-Polish ethnic groups for preferential treatment or the opposite, in the case of the Jewish minority.
[98][99] Also, as early as the September Campaign, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiya Ukrayins'kykh Natsionalistiv, or OUN) had been “a faithful German auxiliary"[100] carrying out acts of sabotage against Polish targets on behest of the Abwehr.
The Germans also required Judenräte to confiscate property, organize forced labor, collect information on the Jewish population and facilitate deportations to extermination camps.
In the Łódź Ghetto, the reign of Judenrat head Chaim Rumkowski was particularly inhumane, as he was known to get rid of his political opponents by submitting their names for deportation to concentration camps, hoard food rations, and sexually abuse Jewish girls.
"[51]: 73-74 Political theorist Hannah Arendt stated that without the assistance of the Judenräte, the German authorities would have encountered considerable difficulties in drawing up detailed lists of the Jewish population, thus allowing for at least some Jews to avoid deportation.
[111] Over a thousand such Jewish Nazi collaborators, some armed with firearms,[51]: 74 served under the German Gestapo as informers on Polish resistance efforts to hide Jews,[111] and engaged in racketeering, blackmail, and extortion in the Warsaw Ghetto.
[112][113] A 70-strong group led by a Jewish collaborator called Hening was tasked with operating against the Polish resistance, and was quartered at the Gestapo's Warsaw headquarters on Szucha Street.
[51]: 74 Similar groups and individuals operated in towns and cities across German-occupied Poland — including Józef Diamand in Kraków[114] and Szama Grajer in Lublin.
The group was formed as a humanitarian organization funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which also supplied it with legal cover,[119] and was allowed to operate within the General Government.
[85]: 86–87 The Germans had some limited success with the Gorals – establishing the Goralenvolk movement, which Katarzyna Szurmiak calls "the most extensive case of collaboration in Poland during the Second World War.
With his friends, Jura formed a group called Tom's Organization after being expelled from the Home Army due to criminal activity and, with German support, strove to take revenge.
Kalkstein and Kaczorowska were responsible for the subsequent capture and execution of several high ranking Polish underground Home Army officers, including General Stefan Rowecki.
