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

Postepowanie karne prowadzone…w sprawie przestepstwo okupacyjnych popelnionych przes policjanta granatowego Jana Blazeja, by Roman Gieron. 2017

The “Polish” Police on the Dock for Its Conduct Towards Jews: Seldom-Appreciated Facts

This Polish-language study was published in Analecta Cracoviensia 49:219-247. It is about the trial of Jan Blazej, a member of the Krakow-area Policja Granatowa (Blue Police), who was accused of shooting some fugitive Jews.

NOT COMPLICITY IN THE HOLOCAUST

The phrase “Polish complicity in the Holocaust” is a vague, undefined, and emotional term. The accusation serves its political purposes, which has nothing to do with the discovery of the truth.

Common-sense dictates that “complicity in the Holocaust” should mean agreement with Hitler’s objective of destroying the bulk of Europe’s Jews. Merely killing some Jews should not, by itself, be equated with agreement with Hitler.

In fact, the court established (p. 232) that Jan Blazej was free of Nazi ideology. So, even if he was guilty of the unjustified killings of Jews, it does not make him, and still less all of Poland, “complicit in the Holocaust”!

MEMBERS OF THE BLUE POLICE WERE NOT WILLING PARTICIPANTS

In October 1939, German Commander Kruger ordered all former Polish police to report for duty, with severe consequences for disobedience. (p. 222). After the German attack on its erstwhile Soviet ally in 1941, the Germans drafted additional police in Krakow, and Blazek complied. (p. 226).

Blazej himself pointed out that he only joined the Policja Granatowa out of fear of otherwise being sent to a Nazi concentration camp, or placed before a military tribunal, where he could have been put to death. (p. 236).

DIRECT GERMAN COMPULSION

Jan Blazej testified that he was under a specific German order to execute apprehended fugitive Jews. (p. 234, 237). Now, the question of “obeying orders” has been brought up many times before, but the reader should appreciate the essential difference between a German disobeying a German order, and the Pole disobeying a German order.

Most of the Jew-killings, conducted by Blazej, occurred while he was in the company of German gendarmes. (p. 234, 235). He had no choice.

THE “VOLUNTARY” POLISH KILLINGS OF FUGITIVE JEWS

It is, however, alleged that Blazej’s shootings of the Messinger family occurred without the presence of nearby Germans. (p. 237). The German orders, however, were the same. There are other pertinent factors to consider.

Blazej testified that he shot the Jews in order to pre-empt the Germans. He stated that he misrepresented the Jews’ location (as from the fields) in order to hide the identities of the Polish rescuers. Otherwise, the eventual searching Germans would kill the Polish rescuers along with the Jews. (p. 236).

There is more. The soltys (village mayor), Wincenty Adamski, declared that the Germans warned him that, if they find one Jew, they will shoot not only the Polish rescuer family, but also a total of ten Polish families. (p. 242).

Clearly, Blazej had faced a choiceless choice: Either kill the fugitive Jews himself, or risk them being found later by the Germans–at a cost of not only the lives of the Jews themselves, but also their Polish rescuers, and the lives of ten Polish families.

THE VERDICT

Blazej was convicted. However, the courts acknowledged that it is difficult for the courts to discern the real motives of the accused. (p. 236). Now, the defendant always gets the benefit of the doubt. So why was Blazej not acquitted?

Author Gieron concludes that not much is known about the scale of the German-directed Jew-apprehensions and Jew-killings by the Policja Granatowa. (p. 243). Clearly, there should be no rush to judgment by the Jews, specifically by the likes of Jan Grabowski and company.