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

Between Rocks and a Hard Place: Village Heads in Polish Villages during the German Occupation and the Holocaust, by Lukasz Krzyzanowski. 2025. SLAVIC REVIEW 84:64-78

Polish Soltys and German-Made Holocaust: Comprehensive German Policies

Author Krzyzanowski, following Andrew Kornbluth, asserts that most of the August Decree trials served no purpose for state propaganda (p. 65)–a rather sweeping and unsupported generalization! To his credit, however, he acknowledges a few of the limitations of the August Decree trials. He comments, “The documents of the postwar investigations, like any material of this kind, contain many often contradictory claims and explanations of actions undertaken by village heads.” (p. 77)

BLAMING THE POLES NO MATTER WHAT

This author’s article is uncritically favorable to the likes of Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking. For instance, he writes, “There seems to be little doubt, however, that some village officials initiated searches on their own authority. Such manhunts claimed many victims especially in the aftermath of deportations from nearby ghettos.” (p. 75). In doing so, Krzyzanowski does not indicate if these statements, of Poles acting independent of the Germans against Jews, are based upon solitary Jewish accusations. Nor does he indicate how any accuser, Jewish or Polish, could possibly know for sure that the village heads were acting on their own. In other words, how could they possibly be privy to the absence of German orders given the village heads? Accusing Polish village heads of collaboration has now grown to grotesque proportions:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2026/03/14/disinformation-fundamentals-of-blaming-poles-on-steroids/

Finally, even if the village heads were “acting on their own”, it does not mean that they were exempt from German expectations, much less free of German coercion! See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/04/19/useful-devoted-polish-holocaust-hostages/

Despite these shortcomings, this article presents some useful information, and that is my main focus.

POLISH SOLTYS (VILLAGE HEAD, OR HEADMAN): “NAZI COLLABORATION” IS AN AMORPHOUS TERM THAT SHOULD BE RETIRED

The author acknowledges the rarity of true Polish solidarity with Nazi Germany. He writes, “I focus here not on the relatively rare cases when village heads openly engaged in long-term collaboration with the Nazi regime (willingly supporting Nazi ideology and working to attain its goals).” (p. 65)

He even questions the use of the term “collaboration”, “Studying village heads in German-occupied rural Poland sheds light on the extremely hostile environment in which headmen functioned and the difficult choices they were forced to make. Furthermore, it allows us to question the extent to which collaboration (especially in its narrow legal meaning) proves to be useful as an analytical category for studying occupied local communities.” (p. 78).

POLISH SOLTYS (VILLAGE HEADS) TIGHTLY CONTROLLED BY THE GERMANS

Author Krzyzanowski realizes that Polish village heads had very little freedom to act independent of the Germans, even in relatively minor matters. He comments, “The authorities issued circulars containing information to be distributed among the villagers (about mandatory blackout of windows, removal of dead fruit trees and planting new ones, care for sanitary conditions in villages, rules on purchasing building materials, taxes for dog and bicycle owners, inventorying horses and carts). The village heads were not only responsible for passing along the information but also for their villagers’ adherence to the rules. The occupying power held village heads accountable for any breach of regulations that occurred in the villages they headed.” (p. 70).

The draconian German rule over the conquered Poles had other consequences. Krzyzanowski writes, “In addition to managing the village on a daily basis, village officials occasionally assisted the German gendarmerie during arrests or searches carried out in the village. Some were more willing than others, but all had to comply at least to some extent. The consequences of disobeying German gendarmes could be deadly for the village head and/or his family.” (p. 74). It is a bit ironic that Jews complain that Polish soltys (village heads) were used against Jews when in fact Polish soltys (village heads) were also used against fellow Poles!

THE WAGON-CART LIE

In Marzynski’s movie SHTETL, there is a mendacious scene of Polish horse-drawn wagons used to transport Jews to their eventual deaths. This scene falsely implies that Poles voluntarily allowed use of their wagons against the Jews. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2022/06/30/saving-jews-unappreciated-difficulties-of-hiding-jews-marzynski-shtetl-movie-misleading-dziura-dziurski/

In actuality, the Germans forced the Poles to make their horse-drawn wagons available for this purpose. Krzyzanowski admits, “In some places where local ghettos were far away from railway lines, village heads were tasked by the Nazi authorities with supplying horse wagons and carters to assist in the deportations from the ghettos to trains destined to death camps. Horse wagons and carters designated by village heads on occasion also transported Jews to mass execution sites in the vicinity of the ghettoes.” (p. 74).