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June 28, 2011

The Legacy of the Kielce Pogrom

By Rabbi Yonah Bookstein

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“... The sight of the large, modern apartment house on Planty Street was the ultimate in ruthless havoc. ... The immense courtyard was still littered with bloodstained iron pipes, stones and clubs, which had been used to crush the skulls of Jewish men and women. Blackening puddles of blood still remained. ... Blood-drenched papers were scattered on the ground — sticky with gore, they clung to the earth though a strong wind blew through the yard.”

— S. L. Schneiderman, “Between Fear and Hope,” 1947

Sixty-five years ago, on July 4, 1946, in the central Polish city of Kielce, a mob of thousands surrounded the Jewish community house; killed 42 Jewish men, women and children; and maimed and injured more than 100 others. The victims were residents of a communal house for survivors and returnees from Soviet Russia. The tragedy of their murder has been overshadowed by politically motivated struggles to define history from the moment the wounded were evacuated to Lodz. The emotional and crippling injuries that afflicted the survivors went unnoticed for decades. Kielce, the last major anti-Jewish pogrom, became the final chapter of the Holocaust.

Because the pogrom occupies such a controversial place in Polish-Jewish consciousness, I felt drawn to understand how it happened. Thus began my search to discover as much about the pogrom as I could, and in the process, examine the messy and emotional web of Polish-Jewish relations. My investigation began on the streets of Kielce in 1992. From the scene of the crime, I traveled across Poland, to Oxford, London, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ashdod, New York, Moscow and many places in between.

I scoured secret archives that are today inaccessible or missing; interviewed witnesses, perpetrators and survivors; interviewed a dying, octogenarian journalist who covered the trial that followed the massacre. I consumed books, articles, videos, photos, anything that might shed light on that dark day. I discussed the events with scholars and intellectuals, historians and journalists, doctoral candidates and government officials, all in an attempt to understand, describe, explain and bear witness.

The story begins with the disappearance of 9-year-old Henryk Blaszczyk. A rumor spread that he had been kidnapped by Jews and kept in a basement with other children to be used for making matzah. After he was found, the police brought Henryk to the building on Planty Street and found that the building had no basement. However, the angry mobs had already started to gather.

We know that in the harrowing hours that followed, thousands of Kielcers, hundreds of armed soldiers, militiamen, the fire department and other security forces all descended on the building. After being disarmed by the army, and despite pleas for protection from Dr. Kahane, the head of the local Jewish community, men dressed as soldiers began removing the Jews, ostensibly for their safety. However, the mob descended on the Jews and the building, and in the ensuing mayhem and murder, Kielce’s fate was sealed. Kielce became a town of infamy.

News of this massacre spread across the globe. Journalists, officials, independent observers and communal workers dashed to the scene of the crime to see the streets still covered in Jewish blood. The implements of death used to bludgeon and maim still littered the street. A hastily convened military tribunal passed out sentences and even executed nine accused ringleaders.

The pogrom sounded the alarm for 100,000 Polish Jews, who headed to the borders. And though many murders occurred after the war across Poland, the scale and ferociousness of Kielce signaled that remaining in Poland was another death sentence. Politicians, journalists and survivors immediately labeled this tragedy the Kielce Pogrom, and it was canonized into the history of the Holocaust, becoming an epilogue to Polish-Jewish relations. Kielce was betrayal. Polish Jews would never forget or forgive that after all they endured during the war, a medieval blood libel yet again resulted in more Jewish martyrs.

When World War II officially ended in the West, Poland still struggled in civil war. Members of the Soviet red army, the army of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Polish army fought a guerrilla war with the anti-communist, nationalist Home Army, the Ukrainian Insurrection Army and the ultra-nationalist National Armed Forces. Poland’s future lay in the balance. Whether Polish rule would be under the harsh repression of Stalin or the nationalist independent and usually anti-Semitic elements on the Polish right was still in question. The communist officials in Warsaw promised the Jews something other than harassment, pogroms and fear. As Antek Zuckerman, a Warsaw Ghetto hero, wrote, “In that period, to be a partner of the communists was a Jewish national role, if only from the single perspective of Jewish existence.” It was against this backdrop of civil war that Kielce erupted.

The stories and allegations of guilt fall into a few main narratives:

• The communist authorities immediately blamed the pogrom on anti-Semitic anti-communists. Within hours of the pogrom, they issued a release placing responsibility on the ultra-nationalists. While this was politically expedient in order to consolidate power, it was also not without merit. In Kielce and surrounding areas, anti-Jewish leaflets warned Jews to leave starting in 1945. Jews were murdered in other cities by these gangs.
• The nationalists, who were anti-communists, immediately blamed the communist government and the U.S.S.R. Their theory was that the Polish secret police and the Soviet NKVD orchestrated the pogrom to distract attention from the corrupt July 1 referendum that had made Poland a protectorate of the Soviet Union. They said the pogrom was meant to sideline the anti-communists, who would lose support from the West if they were perceived to still be hunting down Jews. While it is a fact that communist soldiers were involved in some way, they claimed to be trying to protect the Jews.
• Other, more conspiratorial, theories blame the British and even the Jews themselves.
• Lastly, there is a theory that a tragic, spontaneous chain of events sparked the pogrom. Polish hatred toward the Jews fueled the murderous mobs, which were joined by local members of the army and militia. Poles in Kielce were afraid Jews would take back their prewar houses and businesses, which represented substantial parts of downtown. Kielcers also blamed communism on the Jews. Local Catholic clergy were unsympathetic, and insinuated that Jews might use blood in their matzah. As well, the Kielce district was notoriously nationalist and anti-communist.

A government investigation concluded as recently as 2004 that there was still not enough evidence to make a definitive finding. While many books, journalists and former members of the secret services have blamed the Soviets, the Polish investigators dismissed the theory of Soviet inspiration because of a lack of direct evidence and obvious Soviet interest in provoking the events.

The pogrom continues to be enmeshed in crossing accusations of guilt. Despite a formal apology from the Polish government, many Poles still maintain that the pogrom was conceived by the Soviets, eager to discredit Poland in the eyes of the world.

To those willing to ascribe blame for the pogrom on Polish anti-Semitism, the denial of responsibility by many Poles stands as

further evidence of Polish society’s unwillingness to confront a history of anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, the last survivors are almost gone. Although some were able to move past the events to establish families and businesses in Israel and America, others were permanently damaged. Despite miraculously surviving the Holocaust, Jews in Kielce saw their own neighbors and countrymen try to extinguish them, leaving them unable ever to overcome their physical and psychological injuries.

I did not find the smoking gun that conspiracy buffs yearn for. Rather, I reached the unsettling conclusion that the communists, anti-communists, the church, local politicians and others — and even, ironically, the Jewish survivors who fled Poland in the aftermath — all benefited in some way from the horrific pogrom.

Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, founder of Jewlicious Festival and executive director of JConnectLA, based this article on his manuscript “Legacy of the Kielce Pogrom.” A Fullbright scholar,  Bookstein worked in Poland for the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation on Jewish community renewal and innovation from 1991 until 2001.  Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiYonah.

A version of this article appeared in print.

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There are reasons to be proud to be Polish-American; the black mark of Kielce isn’t one of them, as told at the Holocaust Museum and likely in War of the World by Niall Ferguson.  Born in ‘68, I had even visited Poland as a youngster long believing Poles and Jews were strongly bonded by their suffering during WWII.  The naivety is oddly a tribute to my parents that I long had no reason to believe otherwise.

To move forward, it’s critical that people are looking back to understand the roots of such senselesness.  Thank you for your research.

Comment by Chris on 6/29/11 at 1:00 am

Always important to retell these stories. I am just reading “Fear” by Jan Gross which tells this story in much more detail.

Comment by Dan on 6/29/11 at 8:23 pm

Sad events such as the murder of 42 Jews by alleged anti-Semitic Catholic Poles in Kielce should never be forgotten.

We should also always remember that in 1945 alone the number of members of the Polish Underground State [Catholic Poles] deported to Siberia reached 50,000. In the years 1944–1956 around 300,000 Polish citizens had been arrested.  There were 6,000 death sentences pronounced. This was all done by the Communist Police (MBP) operating from 1945 to 1954 under Jakub Berman, a notorious Jewish Pole of the Politburo, along with other Communist Jewish Poles: Izak Fleischfarb, Fajga Mindla Danielak,  Józef Goldberg, Izydor Kurc, Mojżesz Bobrowicki, and countless others.

Comment by Elżbieta Dolińska on 7/04/11 at 7:11 am

Elzbieta - You are blaming the death of 6,000 poles on the Jews? That is the deep rooted anti-semitism that still persists in Poland. Berman’s Jewish roots, as proven in many scholarly works, are irrelavent. He was a communist, and was doing what all the other communists were doing. He didn’t hate poles. He loved Poland.

On the other hand, the totally anti-semitic crowds that butchered the 42 Jews in kielce hated Jews.

Berman and the UB targeted anyone that opposed them - Jew or Catholic- and the sooner that you and Poland stop blaming the “Zydo-kommuna” for all your suffering, the sooner that you will be able to move forward as a nation.

Comment by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein on 7/04/11 at 5:10 pm

Elzbieta exactly explains the Shoa.  Read her post again: after the German and Polish murder of the Jewish people, all she can think to say is that a Communist of Jewish ancestry, part of the Communist ruling dictatorship and head of the police, sentenced 6,000 Poles to death (and of course she won’t blame any other “pure” Poles (i.e. not tainted with Jewish blood) for being a part of that.  Nice going Elzbieta, and Heil Hitler.

Comment by george on 7/04/11 at 8:35 pm

My mother’s family tried to go back to Lublin after spending the war. Their home was occupied by a Pole. They had to buy back their furniture from him. She was the only Jewish girl in her high school, and the teachers called her “Jidovechka” in front of the class. After a while, her family realized that there is no future there and moved to Israel, along with 90% of the Jews who were left in Poland after the war. As father Stanislaw Musial said: “The Jews know that we are pleased that Poland’s Jewish Problem has been resolved once and for all, and not by our hands at that”.

Comment by Dan on 7/04/11 at 9:23 pm

Recently, I discovered that the Nazis were not anti-Semitic but anti - Jewish.

Hitler was a friend of the Mufti of Jerusalem (Al-Husseini) and almost brought the final solution to the Jews in Israel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OcFj5Z0jCQ&feature=related

Mufti’s cousin is a man we all know - Yasser Arafat(leader of the Fatah movement which Mahmoud Abbes leads today ).

shocking.

Comment by Leon on 7/05/11 at 6:31 am

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