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

A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe, 1944-1989, by Krzysztof Persak and Lukasz Kaminski. (eds.) 2005. Instytut Pamieci Narodowej (IPN)

Soviet Russian Rule Over Poland After WWII. Brutal Suppression of Polish Patriotic Dissent

This book is timely for a number of reasons. Russia is on the warpath. Communism is now subject to an Orwellian minimization by being spelled with a small “c”. Nowadays, not a few leftist academics portray Communism as little more than a bad cold. Lewaks (Polish leftists) treat Communism as merely a “viewpoint” that was shared by a minority of Poles that, unfortunately, faced “persecution” from the majority of Poles that did not share this “viewpoint”.

Holocaust supremacists inveigh against the dangers of “double genocide”, wherein Soviet Communist crimes could (horror of horrors) be equated with Nazi German crimes (against Jews, that is). Worse yet, the increasing attention to Communist crimes could make Poles (and others) less likely to bow down in homage to the Jews and their presumably-special Holocaust. For example, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2022/05/26/holocaust-scholarship-jew-killing-wwii-by-poles-200000-fake-news-the-polish-jew-killing-horror-stories-renewed-grabowski/

My review is limited to the article by Antoni Dudek and Andrzej Packowski, on the Communist security system in Poland. It blows the Communist apologists and Holocaust supremacists to smithereens.

COMMUNISM WAS IMPOSED ON POLAND ON THE HEELS OF THE RED ARMY, NOT BY A TINY BAND OF HOMEGROWN POLISH COMMUNISTS

Dudek and Paczkowski write, “The Red Army on Polish soil was accompanied by units of military counter-intelligence (Smersh) and various NKVD formations. Local Smersh commanders were, as a rule, advisers to the budding Polish security structures, but the tasks of Soviet counter-intelligence were not limited to the control and protection of the Red Army, as it also carried out active operations against Polish conspirators (e. g. in March 1945, 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State were arrested and transported to Moscow).” (p. 222).

There is no escaping the fact that the entering Soviets were the ones that forcefully eliminated any opposition to their installed Communist puppet government. Local Polish Communists were a very distant second. Dudek and Paczkowski comment, “Smersh, using NKVD troops, played the key role in the disarming, internment and sending into exile in Russia of Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) soldiers mobilized to fight the Germans (in June and July 1944, similar operations were initiated against Home Army soldiers in areas annexed by the Soviet Union). Smersh also carried out extensive pacification and operational actions. Since October 1944, a division of NKVD troops (64 Infantry Division) stationed in Poland with over 10,000 soldiers, i. e. 10 times more than the emerging Polish internal troops. Periodically there were outfits of other divisions and NKVD border troops coming to Poland, which operated in the border areas (e. g. in Białystok region). (p. 222. Emphasis added).

THE SOVIETS WERE UNAMBIGUOUSLY THE RULERS OF POLAND

Leftist historians portray the postwar events in Poland as some kind of sporting contest in which the Communist Poles won and the anti-Communist Poles lost. Not quite.

It was a foregone conclusion. The Soviet Russians did not even leave as much as a glimmer of doubt about who was in charge of prostrate Poland. Dudek and Paczkowski remark, “In Poland Smersh had its own jails, the NKVD had its own camps not only for German POWs but also for detained Poles. Between 1944-1946 various Soviet units held around 47,000 people, with no less than 25 per cent of Polish underground soldiers, and half of civilians detained being Polish citizens. In the spring of 1945 about 15,000 Silesian miners were sent to the mines in Donetsk area in USSR.” (p. 222). That dang Polish proletariat!

LONG-TERM DIRECT SOVIET RUSSIAN RULE OVER POLAND

The second Soviet occupation of Poland was in full bloom, and it lasted much longer than necessary to eliminate any sort of Polish patriotic opposition. The Sovietization of Poland continued for at least 12 years after the Red Army had driven the Nazi Germans out of Poland. Dudek and Paczkowski continue, “In 1948 in four operational departments of the MBP (excluding foreign intelligence) there were 153 active Soviet advisers. Apart from that, many Soviet officers took executive posts within the MBP itself (e. g. heads of personnel, finances, operational technology, communications and weapons departments). Although Smersh departed with the Red Army to Germany, and the NKVD internal troops were withdrawn from Poland in 1947, both the advisers’ apparatus (albeit gradually decreasing) and a substantial part of Soviet MBP functionaries remained until 1956.” (p. 223).

EVERYDAY COMMUNIST TOTALITARIAN TERROR AS EXPERIENCED BY POLISH INDIVIDUALS

Dudek and Paczkowski leave nothing to the imagination as they write, “Hundreds of thousands of people were put on TW files. In their overwhelming majority these were people who had been broken, intimidated, blackmailed. There are no exact data as to the numbers involved, but in 1948 65 per cent of all agents and 33 of all informers were recruited using the so-called compromising materials, such as reports on theft, embezzlement or ‘improper sexual inclinations,’ as well as failing to mention in one’s personal data form one’s Home Army membership, having served as a civil servant before the war, or one’s ‘reactionary’ party membership, or one’s involvement in an anti-communist conspiracy (even if confessed during amnesty proceedings) or even having relatives living in the West…One of the most important places where recruitment was carried out were jails and prisons, where the selected candidates could be threatened with solitary confinement, offered to discontinue beating, or promised to be granted the right to receive a food parcel. One’s consent to become a TW sometimes meant release from prison (‘released for operational reasons’). As it was self-critically admitted, in 1954 the security apparatus commanded such an enormous fear that many people were just too afraid to refuse.” (p. 257. Emphasis added).

Communism was obviously something more than just a little political fad. The magnitude of the totalitarian terror makes it easier to understand why some erstwhile Polish rescuers of Jews preferred to keep a low profile and not advertise their acts for some time.