Post World War 2 Pogroms in Eastern Europe – Introduction

Anti-Semitism as an ideology has existed for thousands of years yet remains one of the most complex topics of historical research today. Its complicated nature stems from its wide range of causes and subsequent manifestations throughout history. In the medieval period, anti-Semitism was defined based on differing religious beliefs and was expressed primarily through claims of blood libel. Following the enlightenment period and scientific revolution, however, anti-Semitism was defined and redefined not religiously, but as a consequence of constantly changing ideological, economic, national and social factors.[1]

At different historical periods one such factor may have been the most prominent influence whereas in a contrasting historical period, another. Tsarist Russia’s experience of anti-Semitic expression was the result of social factors that perceived Jews as the ‘threatening other’, who refused to assimilate and part with their foreign customs. In contemporary times, anti-Semitism was, and still is, the result of national factors that stem from Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. During World War II, however, anti-Semitism was the result of different reasons in different areas. A Ukrainian’s anti-Semitism may have stemmed from economic considerations while a Pole’s was rooted in political factors. Even though historically deep enmity exited between Poles and Ukrainians, many found common ground in their loathing of the Jew.

In the Soviet Union and Poland, the end of the war did not signal an end to anti-Semitic feelings that were present to various degrees in the population and government. Rather, in certain areas, particularly in those that had been occupied by the Nazi’s, the end of the war brought about an intensification of such feelings. New factors emerged as a result of the occupation experience that replaced some existing stereotypes while reinforcing others.

The abrupt disappearance of Jews from villages, towns and cities throughout the extent of the German occupation zone led to new opportunities for the native populations at the expense of their former neighbors. Nazi collaborators were rewarded with abandoned Jewish property while the remainder was transferred to local municipalities. A special committee estimated their value and the residents paid the municipality if they desired the property.[2] Many ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians took advantage of this practice. After the war, however, they were confronted with the realization that not all the Jews had perished during the war. From then on they lived in trepidation that their Jew will return and demand his property be returned. Those who found better employment in positions vacated by Jews—especially in cultural institutions—also feared losing their newfound prominence and livelihoods. A smaller number of people who had collaborated with the Germans and denounced Jews to the Gestapo lived in constant fear that the returning Jews would in turn denounce them to the new authorities.

The Soviets were aware of the delicacy of the situation and its potential dangers. Soviet puppet governments in Eastern Europe and the Communist leadership of Ukraine feared that if they were identified with the return and reemergence of Jews they would lose the support of the population. But the identification of Jews with communism was already a well established phenomenon. The zydokommuna (judeo-communist) myth was firmly rooted in the memory of many Poles who could vividly recall Jews welcoming the Red Army warmly in 1939. Polish historian Krystyna Kersten shows that this connection, and the portrayal of Jews as hostile to Polish national goals, was a fundamental feature of Polish anti-Semitism from the beginning of the war until the late 1940s.[3] While abiding by a policy of distancing themselves from the Jewish returnees, the Soviet government disregarded the potential detrimental repercussions when it chose a policy of tolerating often times violent expressions of anti-Semitism.

Exploiting this failure in policy, underground movements in Poland and Ukraine made the most of anti-Semitism for their own nationalist aspirations as a challenge to their Soviet occupiers. On 25 March 1945, the central command of the Polish National Armed Forces (NSZ) issued an order recommending certain elements of the population for swift execution. They included all Jews and Jewesses, individuals in the employment of the Polish Worker’s Party (PPR) and Poles who had hid Jews during the Nazi occupation.[4] Another Polish underground movement, the Freedom and Independence (WiN), reported in October 1945 that all Jews are collaborators with the Security Services and the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD—Narodnii Kommissariat Vnutrennykh Del) as agents, confidence men, and informers.[5] With such sentiments running high and the palpable association of Jews with communists, circumstances inevitably led to gross manifestations of anti-Semitism. In the village of Poniatowka, near Chelm, NSZ gangs, together with police agents, murdered the Jewish Szczupak family a day after their return from a Nazi concentration camp.[6] On 25 June 1945, 21-year-old Abraham Berkowicz, who had just returned from the Thereseinstadt concentration camp and was the sole survivor of his family, was killed in his native village of Bolkow in the province of Lodz. He had come back in hopes of running his parents’ farm, despite being warned by a Jewish official in the province not to return to the village.[7] On 27 May 1945, in the small town of Przedborz situated 85 kilometers from Lodz, Wladysalw Kolacznski, the commander of an underground unit attacked the Jewish residents of the town but argued that his unit only shot ‘paid agents of Moscow’. The killings, however, appeared indiscriminate, much more akin to a pogrom than to a surgical strike against specific targets.[8] The attack resulted in the temporary liquidation of the entire Jewish community in the town and was significant enough to warrant a special session of the Polish provisional parliament on 21 July 1945.[9] While these smaller anti-Semitic incidents were a result of a mix of fear, prejudice and tensions with the Soviet authorities—larger scale manifestations exploited old anti-Semitic stereotypes in conjunction with contemporary myths.

The medieval myth of blood libel, which saw a great resurgence in Russia during the 1880s, experienced another revival in 1944. This myth of ritual murder reached its peak during the immediate post-war years in Poland and Ukraine, where it was the prime cause of large-scale anti-Semitic violence.[10] Rumors would be spread that Jews murdered a Christian child and sometimes a child would even be hidden away to support the accusations. Other times an already dead Pole or Ukrainian would be used to justify action and pave the way for anti-Jewish measures. In every case, the pogrom took place in the center of the city with a large crowd partaking. Jewish synagogues would be destroyed, homes looted, and businesses razed to the ground. The action would last between several hours to two days and would always result in casualties and often times, fatalities.[11]

Some pogroms, particularly those on the smaller side, broke out spontaneously when, for instance an ethnic Pole afraid of losing her comfortable apartment cried blood libel.[12] Others, however, especially the major and most notable, sprang up under enigmatic circumstances with traces of provocation. On 11 August 1945, Krakow was witness to a pogrom that foreshadowed the later, far more devastating riots in Kielce. Both pogroms shared similar characteristics in terms of the cause, the background of the participants and evident traces of provocation. On the Jewish Sabbath, members of the congregation caught several boys throwing stones at the synagogue on Miodowa Street 27. When several nearby women saw the Polish boys scuffling with the Jews they cried blood libel and the pogrom erupted in a flurry of beatings that spread throughout the district.[13] Usually, the participants were civilians who partook for anyone of the variety of reasons they had to detest Jews. In Krakow, however, soldiers, militiamen, railway workers and even health care personnel took an active role in the beatings and lootings. Some armed militia and soldiers extorted Jews demanding money in return for protection from their comrades. At least two Jews died, one 55-year-old woman was shot dead while another was beheaded. The synagogue on Miodowa Street was destroyed and its holy Torah scrolls burned.[14] After the scene had calmed, a Polish nurse was heard saying how much it angered her to have to save Jewish scum that murder children, while a nearby railroad worker commented, “it’s a scandal that a Pole does not have the civil courage to hit a defenseless Jew.”[15] The Krakow pogrom took place largely because of provocations made by a few select Poles with archaic anti-Semitic beliefs. Its expansion and spread throughout the city, however, was the result of the communist authorities’ unwillingness to intervene on behalf of the Jews. Historian Joanna Michlic-Coren has suggested that some archival evidence does exist claiming, Major Sobczynski was an ethnic Pole and member of the Public Security Office (UB) that planned the provocation in advance. If this was true then he definitely chose a favorable location. Krakow had been twice as dangerous for Jews as it had been for Poles at the time.[16]

It should be kept in mind while reading this article that it is fundamentally dangerous to generalize that an entire ethnic population is this or that, anti-Semitic or anti-Soviet and the like. All the while, however, history has recorded that Eastern Europe was the site of a violent series of pogroms in the 1880s and early 1900s; and it was the region ultimately chosen by Adolf Hitler for his extermination camps and mass graves for some six million murdered Jews. Milovan Djilas, a Yougslavian communist, wrote in 1952: “Anti-Semitism has already become routine in Eastern Europe. It is assuming monstrous forms which would be grotesque if they were not bloody and anti-social.”[17] While it is wrong in any case to generalize about an entire population, the history of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe cannot be denied. The eventual exploitation of anti-Semitism by the Soviet government in the occupied territories in the eastern zones further exemplifies the ubiquity and longevity of anti-Semitic feelings and beliefs there.

As the Red Army ‘liberated’ the eastern zones, NKVD detachments followed closely behind, often violently suppressing nationalist movements and any opposition to Soviet rule.[18] As their network of informants grew, the Soviet government realized by early 1946 the potential uses of anti-Semitism as official policy and implemented them. They used the shared anti-Semitic characteristic of the native non-Jewish populations to impose their rule on Poland and intimidate ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union from pursuing nationalistic goals.

The following case studies exhibit three unrelated anti-Semitic outbursts in L’viv, Kiev (Both in Ukraine) and in Kielce (Poland) on 14 June 1945, 4-7 September 1945 and 4 July 1946, respectively. They detail both the uniqueness of each individual event as well as shared characteristics of anti-Semitic expression in the Soviet Union and occupied eastern borderlands. Each incident and its ramifications are reflective of policy changes within the Soviet government that led to the appearance, implementation of and full-blown utilization of a Soviet state policy of anti-Semitism in the years after the war.

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