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

Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany Under the Third Reich, by Ulrich Herbert. 1985, translated 1997. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York

Prejudicial Policies Against Poles, and Not Only Jews, in Nazi Germany

The author is a German scholar who has studied the system of forced labor in the Third Reich. I focus on the racist aspects of Nazi thinking about Poles, which was just as real as was Nazi racism against Jews.

WEARING THE LETTER P DID NOT BEGIN UNDER THE NAZIS

Jews commonly point to the compulsory wearing of the Star as predating the Nazis and use this fact to mystify the durability of antisemitism, to dramatize the Holocaust over all other genocides, to reduce the guilt of the Germans, and to conflate Christianity with Nazism. Of course, it does not matter that Jews wearing the Star, in a few long-past Christian societies, had done so for very different reasons from the later Nazis.

It turns out that the letter P, which Polish workers in the Reich were forced to wear, also did not originate with the Nazis, but went further back–into the realm of age-old German prejudices against Poles. The author writes, “Indeed, measures often thought to have been invented by the Nazis, such as special compulsory badges for Poles, were already in practice, or at least envisaged, back in 1915.” Needless to say, I never see this fact mentioned, much less mystified.

POLES AND NOT ONLY JEWS WERE EXISTENTIAL ENEMIES OF THE THIRD REICH

We hear so much about how the Nazi Germans made Jews into existential enemies–all in an effort to elevate the moral prestige of the Holocaust and to get it more attention. Not mentioned is the fact that the Nazis also made Poles into existential enemies. To the Nazis, the Poles were much more than a despised and conquered people, as usually thought.

Herbert comments, “It is thus not surprising that the initiatives for discriminatory regulations for Polish workers were not justified by reference to law enforcement or internal security but to ‘race’…The Poles were represented as sly, brutal and primitive; along with the Jews, they posed the greatest danger to Germany.” (p. 69. Emphasis added).

The all-powerful malevolent Pole found his place right next to the all-powerful malevolent Jew. Herbert quotes from a proclamation from the Folk League for German Culture Abroad [VOLKSBRUND FUR DAS DEUTSCHTUM IM AUSLAND] as follows, “‘If someone comes and tells you “his Pole” is a decent chap, you tell him that for us Germans, there is no such thing as a decent Pole–just as there is no such thing as a decent Jew.'” (p. 77. Emphasis added).

NAZI GERMAN DISCRIMINATION AGAINST POLES LIKE THAT AGAINST JEWS

Poles in Nazi Germany had to pay a discriminatory special tax just as did the Jews and Gypsies. Herbert writes, “In their commentary on labor law for Poles, Kuppers and Bannier provided a rationale for this additional tax, which was shortly afterwards extended to Jews and Gypsies…The social compensation tax represented a new instrument in the history of German law: it linked a special tax to nationality, but it showed clear affinities with the discriminatory special legislation against German Jews.” (p. 91).

Poles were explicitly juxtaposed with Jews, in Nazi German discriminatory policies, in other ways. Herbert comments, “In December 1940, the Trustee for Labor in Magdeburg ordered that Poles, like Jews, should be excluded from receiving a Christmas bonus, because ‘the Christmas holiday in particular, the way it is celebrated here, is a purely German festival; to use it to grant special benefits to the enemies of our people, such as the Jews and Poles, would mean going against popular sentiment.” (p. 109).

For more on the parallels between the Nazi German treatment of the Poles and that of the Jews, see:

Nazi Scapegoats: Poles Too (jewsandpolesdatabase.org)

POLES AND NOT ONLY JEWS WERE SCAPEGOATS OF THE THIRD REICH

We hear over and over again that the Nazis blamed the Jews for anything and everything that went bad for the Third Reich. It is never mentioned that exactly the same thing happened to the Poles. Herbert remarks, “Not only did workers from the East serve as a convenient scapegoat on which the German population could vent its repressed rage and frustration over the military situation, the bombing and the constantly worsening living conditions in German towns; to a certain extent, their situation was also viewed as a just punishment for the hardships the enemy had visited upon Germany.” (pp. 321-322).

PREJUDICIAL POLICIES: THE RACIST DECREES ON POLES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS

German scholar Herbert elaborates on the Polenerlasse (Decrees on Poles)(pp. 69-79). For details, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/polokaust-wearing-letter-p-knab/

The Polenerlasse existed less for practical reasons than it did for enshrining German racial superiority over the Poles. This is acknowledged by Herbert in reference to Nazi Party members, “The latter were interested not so much in the effective deployment of Poles as in a codification of their own superiority over them as the ‘master race’: the victory which had been achieved must bear fruit, even for the most insignificant little Nazi.” (p. 71).

Medical care for ill Poles was very limited, and this became a precedent for even more racist anti-Slavic policies. The author writes, “An official stipulation such as this makes it chillingly clear how brutally the authorities intended to proceed against the Poles. Just one year after the start of the war, the groundwork was being laid for measures that were to be continued in other forms: the ‘disposal’ of sick Soviet POWs and the murder of Eastern workers in concentration camps and hospitals who were ‘no longer fit for labor.'” (p. 109).

The persecution of Poles was not incidental. Author Herbert alludes to “the entrenched policy of extremely poor treatment for Polish and Soviet workers”. (p. 321). He also comments on the opposition to proposed improvements in the lot of the Poles, even if done for utilitarian purposes, “The RSHA [Reich Main Security Office]…with the proviso that Poles must continue to be harshly oppressed.” (p. 386).