Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Nazi Persecution of Polish National Minorities in the Rhineland-Westphalia Provinces in the Years 1933-1945, by Miroslaw Cyganski. 1976

Hitler Went After the German Poles, No Less Than the German Jews, the Moment He Came to Power (1933)

This is a review of a scholarly paper that appeared in POLISH WESTERN AFFAIRS 17(12?)115-138. Nowadays, the Nazi policies against Jews are often mystified, and the systematic Nazi antagonism to Poles is treated as a secondary matter, and moreover as something that did not develop until Poland was made into a military adversary of Nazi Germany in 1939. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nazi enmity towards Poles and Jews always existed in parallel, and became actualized from the very beginning of the Altreich (Third Reich in her original borders).

GERMANY’S POLES SUFFER IN EARLY NAZI GERMANY

In 1920, about 350,000 Poles lived in Rhineland-Westphalia. (p. 116). And then Hitler became dictator. Cyganski describes what happened, “In reply to results of parliamentary and communal elections in March 1933 the Nazis began mass persecutions of Poles living in Germany. They thus realized threats uttered for a long time, namely the ultimate settling of accounts with the Polish population. Intensified anti-Polish terrorist activities, which were to quash all forms of organized Polish life, took place in Germany since March 1933. Nazi persecutions of Poles in spring and summer 1933 struck a blow against Polish emigrant communities in western and central Germany for the first time since the relatively remote times of the Kulturkampf and anti-Polish terrorist excesses in Rhineland-Westphalia in the years 1920-1921.” (pp. 125-126).

The tentacles of the Third Reich sunk deeply into Germany’s Poles. Cyganski continues, “The Administration issued bans on all organized Polish functions…Possibilities of work of Polish economic and educational institutions were curtailed, the circulation of Polish papers was made impossible, individuals engaged in Polish social activities were dismissed from work. All these moves considerably restricted the freedom of public activity of emigrant organizations. The persecutions were carried out directly by units of the ruling NSDAP, particularly by the Party fighting squads–SS and SA.” (p. 126).

NOT ONLY GERMAN JEWS WERE REMOVED FROM POSITIONS OF AUTHORITY. GERMANY’S POLES WERE TOO

Cyganski comments, “In spring 1933 the process of the illegal removal of Poles from councils reached, in Westphalia and other areas of western Germany, such dimensions that the G. U. P. made a formal protest to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This complaint proved futile. Under the guise of ousting representatives of liquidated German political parties from self-government organs, the Nazis caused the removal of Poles from all official posts and from self-government representations in western and central Germany already at the decline of summer 1933.” (p. 127).

NAZI GERMAN VIOLENCE AGAINST GERMANY’S POLES AND NOT ONLY AGAINST GERMAN JEWS

The latter is widely publicized in terms of Kristallnacht, and the former is ignored. Cyganski does not overlook the Poles, who, like the Jews, were defenseless. He writes, “The chief aspects of Nazi terrorism against Poles in the Rhineland-Westphalia region in spring and summer 1933 involved numerous acts of violence against Polish organizations, their members and activists and also against non-organized Poles, committed by German groups and chauvinistic elements. Attempts at seeking the help of the police were useless since members of this force either cooperated openly with the Nazis or showed indifference.” (p. 127).

GERMAN POLES SOMETIMES OPENLY JUXTAPOSED WITH GERMAN JEWS

Cyganski comments, “…east German Nazis…considered the Polish population—besides Communists, Social-Democrats, and Jews—to be their major enemy.” (p. 130).

NAZISM RADICALIZES ITS POLICIES AGAINST POLES AS WELL AS AGAINST JEWS

Well before the September 1939 German attack on Poland that began WWII, the Third Reich turned decisively against German Poles. The author writes, “At the turn of 1938 there appeared new elements in the policy of Nazi authorities in relation to the Polish movement in Germany. Among other things there was a more severe police control of activities of Polish organizations.” (p. 135).

Author Cyganski continues, “The persecution of Poles living in autochthonic borderlands increased sharply in April, May, June and July 1939. This took the form of numerous anti-Polish excesses, particularly the breaking up of meetings and interruption of church services together with demolition of Polish property, ejection of Polish activists into Germany proper and their expropriation, arrests of Poles, deportations to concentrations camps…” (p. 135).

Of course, things got worse for the German Poles during WWII. But this was only a crowning of Nazi German polices that went back to the first days of Nazi Germany.

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Jews were persecuted by the Nazis throughout German-occupied Europe. But so were the Poles:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/polokaust-cultural-genocide-aspect-lorentz/

Jews were made into scapegoats by the Nazis throughout the war. Then again, so were the Poles:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/poles-also-nazi-scapegoats-goebbels/

The Nazis thought the Poles, no less than the Jews, as a problem to be solved:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/final-solution-did-include-poles-and-gypsies-noakes/