75 years ago, on July 4, 1946, the largest post-war Jewish pogrom in Europe took place in the Polish city of Kielce. This led to the fact that the Jews who remained in the country after the war left Poland.
National question
Pre-war Poland was a multinational state - a large percentage of the population of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was Ruthenians, Belarusians and Little Russians (Russians), Germans, Jews (8-10%), Lithuanians, etc. At the same time, the Polish elite pursued a nationalist policy, oppressing and oppressing national minorities, especially Russians (Rusyns, Belarusians and Ukrainians). Anti-Semitism also flourished.
In Poland, the slogan "Jews to Madagascar!" Was used practically at the state level. Warsaw viewed Hitler's anti-Semitic actions with sympathy. In particular, the Polish ambassador to Berlin, Pan Lipsky, in 1938 warmly welcomed the Fuhrer's initiative to send Jews to Africa, more precisely, to Madagascar. Moreover, a Polish commission even went there to check how many Jews could be deported there.
They prefer not to remember this history of theirs in modern Poland, focusing only on the “innocent Polish victim” that was crushed by Germany and the USSR.
The Second World War brought about dramatic changes in the population of Poland. Western Russian regions returned to Russia-USSR. The exchange of population between Poland and the Ukrainian SSR was also completed. Hundreds of thousands of Rusyns-Russians (former Polish citizens) were evicted to Ukraine. During the war and occupation, the Nazis staged a genocide of Polish Jews.
After the war, at the suggestion of Stalin, some of the Slavic regions of Germany, the lands located east of the Oder-Neisse river line, were annexed to the Polish Republic. Poland included West Prussia (part), Silesia (part), East Pomerania and East Brandenburg, the former Free City of Danzig, as well as the Szczecin district. The German population of Poland (citizens of the old Polish republic) fled partly to the west during the war, and then were deported to the rest of Germany.
Poland becomes an almost mono-national state. It remains only to resolve the "Jewish question". Before Hitler's invasion on September 1, 1939, 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland. Many of them fled to the east, to the USSR (more than 300 thousand). Part - the Nazis destroyed during the invasion of the USSR and the occupation of the western part of Russia. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, the surviving Jews were given the opportunity to return to Poland. By the summer of 1946, 250 thousand Jews were registered in the Polish Republic, some survived in Poland itself, some returned from various concentration camps, some from the USSR.
Pogroms
The Poles, who survived the war and the German occupation, greeted the repatriates unkindly. There are many reasons for this. From historical - traditional anti-Semitism, ordinary Poles (as well as Little Russians) did not like Jews, who in the past often played the role of governors under the masters and tore off seven skins each. Later, Jews, who partially migrated from the countryside to the cities, took the place of the urban middle class. This caused massive outrage among ordinary Poles during the Great Depression. Before the household, the Polish neighbors did not want to return the property of the escaped or stolen Jews appropriated during the war - land, houses, various goods. Also, Polish nationalists hated the "Jewish commissars", with whom they personified the representatives of the authorities of the new Polish republic.
Polish authorities noted that between November 1944 and December 1945, 351 Jews were killed in the country. And in the period from the surrender of the Reich to the summer of 1946, 500 people were killed (according to other sources - 1500). The attacks most often took place in small towns and on the roads. Most of the incidents took place in the Kieleckie and Lubelskie Voivodeships. Among those killed were concentration camp prisoners and even partisans. The Jews, who miraculously survived the Nazi hell, fell into the clutches of the Polish pogromists. Attacks on Jews were usually caused by religious enmity (rumors of ritual murders of children), material interest - the desire to drive out the returned Jews, take away their property, and rob.
In June 1945, there was a pogrom in Rzeszow, all the Jews fled from the city. No one died due to the intervention of the Soviet military. On August 11, 1945, there was a pogrom in Krakow - 1 dead, several seriously wounded. The pogrom began with throwing stones at the synagogue, then attacks began on the house and dormitory where Jews lived. The pogrom, which could cause mass casualties, was stopped with the help of units of the Polish Army and the Red Army.
Drama in Kielce
But there were no Soviet troops in Kielce. Before the German invasion in 1939, there were about 20 thousand Jews in the city, a third of the population. Most of them were destroyed by the Nazis. After the war, about 200 Jews remained in Kielce, many of them went through German concentration camps. Most of the members of the Kielce community lived in house no. 7 on Planty Street. The Jewish Committee and the Zionist Youth organization were located here. This house became the target of Polish anti-Semites.
The reason for the attack was the disappearance of a Polish boy, Henryk Blaszcz. He disappeared on July 1, 1946. His father reported this to the police. On July 3, the child returned home. But in the city there was already a rumor about the ritual murder that the Jews had committed. On the night of July 4, the father of the child again appeared at the police station and said that his son had been abducted by Jews and kept in a basement, from where he fled. Later, the investigation found out that the boy was sent to relatives in the village and taught what to say.
On the morning of July 4, a police patrol, around which a large excited crowd quickly gathered, went to house No. 7. At about 10 o'clock, units of the Polish Army and State Security arrived at the house, but they did nothing to calm the crowd.
The crowd was furious and shouted: "Death to the Jews!", "Death to the murderers of our children!", "Let's finish Hitler's work!"
The district attorney Jan Wrzeszcz arrived at the scene, but the military prevented him from going through. Two priests tried to calm the people down, but they were also thwarted. By lunchtime, the crowd was completely brutalized and began lynching. And in the forefront were soldiers. The thugs broke into the house and began to beat and kill people. The pogrom spread to the entire city. Only a few hours later the troops put things in order. The surviving Jews were taken to the commandant's office, to the hospitals, where the wounded were brought, and guards were posted. In the evening, additional troops arrived in the city, a curfew was imposed. The next day the Jews were taken to Warsaw.
As a result, 42 Jews died, among them children and pregnant women, more than 80 people were injured. Many died from gunshot wounds or were killed with bayonets. Several Poles were also killed, either mistaken for Jews or trying to protect their Jewish neighbors.
Outcomes
On the same day, about 100 rioters were arrested, including 30 "siloviks". The Polish authorities said that the emissaries of the Polish government in the West and General Anders and the militants of the Home Army were responsible for the pogrom. However, this version was not confirmed.
The pogrom was spontaneous, caused by the long-standing traditions of xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Poland, supported by the policy of extreme nationalism in the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1918–1939). Already on July 11, 1946, the Supreme Military Court sentenced 9 people to death, 1 pogromist received life imprisonment, 2 - prison terms. On July 12, those sentenced to death were shot. Later, several more trials took place.
Pogroms and anti-Semitism led to the fact that a significant part of the remaining Jews in Poland left the country. Poland became a mono-national country. The Poles who shouted on July 4, 1946 in Kielce, "Let's finish Hitler's work!", Could be pleased.
In his autobiography, former Auschwitz prisoner and Polish counterintelligence officer Michal (Moshe) Khenchinsky, who emigrated to the United States, put forward a version that the USSR secret services were behind the pogrom. After 1991, the Soviet version, as well as the version about the involvement of the authorities and special services of the Polish People's Republic, was supported by the prosecutor's office and the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland (INP). However, no evidence was found.
Therefore, the most obvious and reasonable version is that the events were spontaneous and occurred as a result of an unfortunate coincidence of circumstances.
It is worth noting that nationalism is popular again in modern Poland.
Warsaw does not want to remember and answer for its crimes. In particular, the Polish Seimas adopted amendments to the Administrative Code, which introduced a 30-year limit on appeals against decisions to seize property. In fact, the descendants of Polish victims of the Holocaust lose even the theoretical opportunity to return the property taken from their ancestors during and after World War II. Poland blocks restitution (material compensation for damage) and dumps all the blame only on Nazi Germany.
