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

Unlikely Allies, by Pawel Markiewicz. 2021. Purdue University Press, Indiana

Quisling Governments Clarified. Local Police Forces Under the Nazis: Do Not Confuse Involuntary Service With Collaboration

This book focuses on Ukrainian tendencies of collaborating with Nazi Germany. I focus on deeper issues.

YES, VIRGINIA, THE NAZI GERMAN AUTHORITIES DID SEEK A POLISH QUISLING

In recent years, quite a few historians, following a Judeocentric bent, have tried to impugn Poland’s “heroic narrative” as “the nation without a Quisling”. They charged that the absence of a Polish Quisling government was only because the Germans never wanted a Polish Quisling in the first place. Taking their imaginations further, they claimed that the Germans did not think of occupied Poland as even worthy of a Quisling. This is as nonsensical as it is Polonophobic. Markiewicz writes,

“However, this is not to say that the occupiers didn’t search for Poles to cooperate with while entertaining ideas of creating a collaborationist government. Among those they approached with such propositions were Wincenty Witos, leader of the interwar Peasant Party and former prime minister, and Prince Janusz Radziwiłł. Both refused, with Witos even opting to remain in Gestapo custody rather than heading a government subservient to the Germans. Conversely, Andrzej Świetlicki, a member of the prewar National Radical Camp, and Władysław Studnicki approached the Germans with their own propositions that were ultimately rejected. After Hitler forbade his military commanders and administrators to hold further talks with Poles in April 1940, it became very clear that the Germans had no interest in granting them any authority.” (p. 63).

COMPLICITY IN THE HOLOCAUST? THE POLISH POLICE AND THE UKRAINIAN POLICE WERE NOT THE SAME!

Today’s standard Holocaust narratives commonly lump all the eastern European police forces, under Nazi Germany, as one and the same, and as more or less equally complicit in the killings of Jews. The Polish Blue Police (POLICJA GRANATOWA), the subject of many recent Holocaust-related attacks, is falsely portrayed as a collaborationist force. It most certainly was not. Markiewicz makes this clear, “Polish and Ukrainian Hilfspolizei or auxiliary police formations, directly subservient to the German police, existed at the lowest levels throughout the General Government. A chief difference was how each were enrolled into service–Poles often being ordered to continue prewar police duties while Ukrainians volunteered.” (p. 43).

Clearly, Poles were forced to serve the Germans and the Ukrainians served the Germans by their own deliberate choice. Quite a difference.

QUESTIONING THE CENSUS: TWO CAN PLAY THIS GAME

In the interwar period (and to this day), Ukrainians accused and still accuse the Polish authorities of falsifying the census data. However, Poles could and did say the same thing about the German-made census under the German occupation. Markiewicz comments,

“Polish underground reports accused the census of falsifying interwar figures, declaring that Polish society would not recognize the results in the future. With the UTsK [Ukrainian Central Committee] driving to reclaim latynnyky, one article in the Polish Nasze Ziemie Wschodnie stated: ‘In a word, the Ukrainians are acceding toward fabricating Volks-Ukrainians or Stamm-Ukrainians on the basis of classic Hitlerite examples!'” (p. 150). Touche!