Source:
https://www.renegadetribune.com/jews-and-communism-in-poland-1918-to-1938/
By
Karl Radl
The
relationship between jews and communism in Poland is probably the most debated
of all the links between jews and communism outside of what was then the former
Russian Empire and the nascent Soviet Union. This is almost entirely because the
so-called ‘Holocaust’ is a hotly-debate subject between the jews and
the Poles which basically amounts to a victimhood Olympics by both side with the
jews insisting the Germans primarily targeted jews and the Poles insisting that
the German also heavily targeted Poles.
I won’t
get into the ins and outs of the argument, but essentially the focus of the
debate has shifted away from the ‘Holocaust’ itself over time and
towards what we might call ‘Polish culpability for the Holocaust’ and
also for ‘Polish atrocities against the jews after the Second World War’ with
the focus being on Poles who aligned themselves with the Third Reich (such as
the Polnische Polizei im Generalgouvernement aka ‘The Blue Police’)
and/or agreed with the German views and/or policies to resolve the jewish
question as well as the widespread anti-Semitism of the Polish population
before, during and after the Second World which led most famously to the Kielce
pogrom on 4th July 1946.
Naturally the debate has then further focused on the reasons why the Poles hated
the jews so much in the first place, which could then lead them to repeatedly
rise against and massacre the jews less than two years after the jews were
allegedly being gassed and made into lampshades and soap by the Germans in the ‘Holocaust’.
That
reason above all others is the jewish relationship (and involvement) with
communism and thus their culpability and apologetics for Stalin’s numerous
genocides and massacres as well as those of Lenin, Trotsky and others.
In
Poland this concept is so famous that it even has its own term to describe it:
Zydokomuna.
So
desperate are jews and leftist to dismiss this thesis of close jewish
collaboration with the Soviet Union and its web of communist parties that they
usually resort to ridiculous counter-factual statements that dismiss it entirely
as a ‘deluded myth’.
For
example, Andre Gerrits – a Belgian scholar of Russian History – claimed rather
absurdly in 1995 that:
‘Judeo-Communism is a ‘xenophobic assertion’… indeed a myth, a delusion, which
has never existed.’ (1)
This
however is complete nonsense both quantitively and qualitatively as Jaff Schatz
explains in his 1991 study of the role of jews in communism in Poland.
He
writes how:
‘Throughout the whole interwar period, Jews constituted a very important segment
of the Communist movement. According to Polish sources and to Western estimates,
the proportion of Jews in the KPP was never lower than 22 percent. In the larger
cities, the percentage of Jews in the KPP often exceeded 50 percent and in
smaller cities, frequently over 60 percent. Given this background, a
respondent’s statement that “in small cities like our, almost all Communists
were Jews,” does not appear to be a gross exaggeration.
The
proportion of Jewish members in the KPP reached its peak in 1930 at 35 percent.
During the remainder of the 1930s, the proportion is said not to have exceeded
24 percent. However, there are data suggesting that it might have increased
further in the larger cities: Jewish membership in the Communist organization in
Warsaw increased dramatically from 44 percent in 1930 to over 65 percent in
1937.
All
in all, most estimates put the proportion of Jews in the KPP at an average from
22 to 26 percent throughout the 1930s. In the semiautonomous KPZU and KPZB, the
percentage of Jewish members was at least similar to that in the KPP.
In
the Communist youth organizations, the proportion of Jewish members was even
higher than in the party itself. In 1930, Jews constituted 51 percent of the
KZMP [Komnunistyczne Zjednoczenie Mlodych Polakow or Communist Union of Polish
Youth], while ethnic Poles were only 19 percent (the remaining number was
composed of Ukrainians and Byelorussians). And in 1933, Jews made up 31 as
compared to ethnic Poles who made up 33 percent. If we assume that Polish-Jewish
Communists constituted between one-third and one-fourth of the total membership
of the whole movement (KPP, KPZB, KPZU; and their youth organizations) in the
1930s, this would approximate between 5,000 to 8,400 Jewish Communists, without
counting those in prison. If we include those imprisoned, the total number of
Jews in the Communist movement in Poland during that period would probably rise
to between 6,200 to 10,000 individuals.’ (2)
Naturally pro-jewish writers like Jan Gross have tried to attack Schatz’s
research because he used official Polish communist party sources for his data,
which Gross pejoratively labels as ‘unrealistic’ but doesn’t explain
why Schatz’s figures – taken from official Polish communist sources remember –
are ‘unrealistic’ beyond the fact that they show the stereotype of
Zydokomuna to have a lot of truth to it. (3)
This is
why Gross spends little time discussing the interwar Polish Communist party and
immediately tries to talk about the mythical but more arguable idea of post-war ‘Stalinist
anti-Semitism’ instead, because Gross knows he doesn’t actually have an
argument against Schatz’s figures but because he is desperate to try to attack
the ‘myth of Zydokomuna’ in order to support his thesis of widespread
irrational anti-Semitism in Poland before, during and after the Second World
War: (4) he has to find some way to dismiss Schatz’s figures because they
completely destroy his contention that Zydokomuna is just an ‘anti-Semitic
myth’ with no basis in fact.
The fact
is however that Schatz’s figures have been repeatedly endorsed and supported by
other academic specialists on the Polish communist party and the general
historical era in Poland such as Henryk Cimek and Tadeusz Piotrowski.
The
latter for example is quite specific in explaining just how powerful and
important jews were in the Polish communist party writing how:
‘According to Andrzej Zwolinski, in Polish court proceedings against communists
between 1927 and 1936, 10 percent of those accused were Polish Christians and 90
percent were Jews. According to Henryk Cimek, out of the fifteen leaders in the
central administration of the Polish Communist Party (Komunistcyzna Partia
Polska, or KPP) in 1936, eight were Jews and seven were Poles. Jews were 53
percent of the members of the “active center” (aktyw centralny), 75 percent of
the KPP publication apparatus, 90 percent of the International Organization for
Help to the Revolutionaries, and 100 percent of the “technical apparatus” of the
Home Secretariat. Before the dissolution of the KPP in 1938, Jews accounted for
25 percent of its membership. In the urban centres of central Poland, that
membership rose to 50 percent.’ (5)
The key
point here is that Piotrowski is pointing out that other strands of documentary
evidence – such as the court records of trials against communists between 1927
and 1936 – also point to the same conclusion and that when we look at who the
members were of individual apparats and organizations within – or aligned to –
the Polish communist party: they are overwhelming dominated by jews.
Another
strand of evidence indicating this overwhelming jewish domination of the Polish
communist party between 1918 and 1938 that Piotrowski points to in order to
further illustrate the point is that when Stalin revived the Polish Communist
party in 1942; its nucleus was communist jews from Warsaw. (6)
This is
hardly surprising given Schatz’s comment that:
‘Communists of Jewish origin occupied most of the seats on the Central Committee
of the KPRP and KPP.’ (7)
But it
has received further substantive confirmation from Cimek who explains that:
‘Jews played a dominant role in the Polish communist movement in the interwar
period. Their views and activities sometimes provoked controversies. The
communists of Jewish nationality were accused inter alia of breeding separatist
and dogmatic tendencies. In terms of percentages, the share of the Jews in the
communist movement as compared to their share in Poland’s population was the
highest of all nationalities. The crucial role of the Jews was especially
visible in the leadership of Komunistyczna Partia Polski (KPP) [Polish Communist
Party] and Komunistyczny Związek Młodzieży Polski (KZMP) [Communist Union of the
Polish Youth] (until February 1930 – Związek Młodzieży Komunistycznej w Polsce (ZMKP)
[Union of the Communist Youth in Poland]), as well as, albeit to a lesser
extent, in Komunistyczna Partia Zachodniej Białorusi (KPZB) [Communist Party of
the Western Belarus] and Komunistyczna Partia Zachodniej Ukrainy (KPZU)
[Communist Party of the Western Ukraine], being autonomous organizations related
to KPP.’ (8)
In
addition to this Knebel records that 526 out of the 4,669 employees of the
post-war communist Polish internal security service (the UB) between 1945 and
1956 were jewish (as well as that this is likely an significant underestimate to
the tune of between 10 to 15 percent) which is 11 percent of the total (9) when
in 1945 jews were 0.4 percent (circa 100,000 jews out of an estimated Polish
population of 24 million in 1945) of the population of Poland.
Knebel
also documents that this wasn’t some weird aberration either when she writes
how:
‘Paczkowski (2008) referred to a report of October 20, 1945 by Nikolay
Selivanovsky, the chief Soviet adviser at the Ministry of Public Security.
According to this report, Jews made up 18.7% of the ministry’s workforce, and
held half of the managerial positions. I am using this report’s results for do a
comparative analysis with the results of the IPN tables. The IPN Tables include
all the MBP sections: Central Ministry departments (later converted to the
Committee), the local Provinces, and Prisons and Camps in Poland. When taking
into account the Ministry of BP as a whole system, my calculation shows, in the
MBP management cadre in 1945, Jews constituted only 12% (142 Jews in the MBP out
of all 1194 MBP employees). However when calculating only the numbers of
participants in the Central Ministry departments, we see that there was a
participation of 42.86% Jews. Out of the 42 employees in the Central Ministry,
18 were Jews. (16 plus additional two that were identified as Possibly Jews).
Soviet participation was at 26.19%.’ (10)
The
point being that if the Polish Communist party was re-created by Stalin in 1942
out of – presumably senior – communist refugees from the original KPP that had
been dissolved on Stalin’s orders in 1938 and the party’s leadership and cadre
was overwhelmingly jewish and then that same party goes on to recruit jews
hugely out of disproportion to their representation in the population into both
its government and security apparatuses in the first years of the Polish
communist state. Then it is reasonable to conclude both that this later
jewishness of the early Polish communist state was linked to the earlier jewish
dominance of the Polish communist party as well as that the jewishness of the
earlier party was at least partly why the early Polish communist state was also
dominated – again to a frankly ludicrous degree – by jews in positions of power.
Cimek
does a good job of summarizing this jewishness in relation to the complicated
and inter-linking nature of the various entities aligned to the Polish communist
party between 1918 and 1938, which I quote at length so the reader may
understand just how crazy the numbers involved really are as well as understand
the different groups involved since the network of different groups that were
aligned with (or were under) the Polish communist party is one way that
traditionally
To wit:
‘Jews played a dominant role in the Polish communist movement in the interwar
period. Their views and activities sometimes provoked controversies. The
communists of Jewish nationality were accused inter alia of breeding separatist
and dogmatic tendencies. In terms of percentages, the share of the Jews in the
communist movement as compared to their share in Poland’s population was the
highest of all nationalities. The crucial role of the Jews was especially
visible in the leadership of Komunistyczna Partia Polski (KPP) [Polish Communist
Party] and Komunistyczny Związek Młodzieży Polski (KZMP) [Communist Union of the
Polish Youth] (until February 1930 – Związek Młodzieży Komunistycznej w Polsce (ZMKP)
[Union of the Communist Youth in Poland]), as well as, albeit to a lesser
extent, in Komunistyczna Partia Zachodniej Białorusi (KPZB) [Communist Party of
the Western Belarus] and Komunistyczna Partia Zachodniej Ukrainy (KPZU)
[Communist Party of the Western Ukraine], being autonomous organizations related
to KPP.
[…]
There were also Jewish workers’ parties in Królestwo Polskie, which were under
the influence of Zionists (Jewish nationalists) who expressed aspirations of
those Jews. They manifested Jewish nationality, aiming at uniting the Jewish
diaspora and establishing their own state in Palestine. By contrast, Bund
postulated that the Jewish question was to be resolved by introducing a
socialist political regime in Poland that would grant the Jews national-cultural
autonomy. In turn, Żydowska Socjalno-Demokratyczna Partia Robotnicza Robotnicy
Syjonu (Jidysze Socjalistisze Arbeter Partaj Poale Syjon), which was created in
Królestwo Polskie in 1905, wanted to combine the socialist slogans with the
Zionist ones.
Similar postulates were put forward by Żydowska Socjalistyczna Partia Robotnicza
Zjednoczeni (Jidysze Socjalistisze Arbeter Partaj Ferajnigte), which was called
into existence in November 1918 by the so-called Zionists-socialists.
Within the listed Jewish workers’ parties ideological polarization and splits
occured as a result of which the leftist groupings either joined KPRP or created
Jewish communist organizations. This phenomenon was more massive than in the
milieu of Polish socialist parties. The Poale Syjon split in July 1920, giving
birth to Poale Syjon-Lewica and Poale Syjon-Prawica. The former opted for Jewish
emigration to Palestine, being on the other hand dedicated to socialism and
internationalism. This grouping criticized separatism, believing in merits of
cooperation between the Jewish socialists and all socialist parties in Poland.
A
Poale Syjon-Lewicy delegation took part in the proceedings of the III Congress
of the Communist International (22 June – 12 July 1921). The party was ready to
join KPRP, but wanted to preserve autonomy as far as Jewish issues in which the
decisive say was to belong to the international organization Poale Syjon.
[…]
Since October 1921 a communist fraction existed within the Poale Syjon-Lewicy –
Żydowski Związek Komunistyczny Poale Syjon [Jewish Communist Union of the Paole
Syjon] that joined KPRP following its exclusion of the Paole Party in November
1921. It was headed by Saul Amsterdam-Henrykowski (1898–1937), Gerszon Dua-Bogen
(1892–1948) and Alfred Lampe (1900–1943). They held key positions in the party.
G. DuaBogen was inter alia a secretary to Centralne Biuro Żydowskie KC KPP
(1922–1927), and since the I Congress of KPZB (25 June – 25 July 1928) – a
member of its KC [Central Committee]. The two other activists occupied even
higher ranks in the party hierarchy being long-term members of KC KPP and of
Biuro Polityczne KC KPP 5 P P4F [KC KPP Political Bureau].
[…]
In
August 1921 KPRP was also joined by a group that branched off from Ferajnigte,
which was the weakest of all of the mentioned Jewish parties. Among the
Ferajnigte members who joined KPRP there were, inter alia, Izrael Gajst vel
Geist (1888–1939) and Izaak Gordin- -Lenowicz (1899–1937). The former, a member
of KC Ferajnigte, joined KPRP mid-year in 1919, being a member of Centralne
Biuro Żydowskie KC KPRP (1919–1920) and a deputy member of KC KPP (1930–1933).
The latter, Gordin, belonged to CBŻ (1923–1927).
[…]
The
Bund issue in Poland was also discussed by the Communist International’s
Executive Committee on 19 March 1921. Its representatives – Grigorij Zinowjew
(G. Radomylski) and Karol Radek (K. Sobelsohn) – were of the opinion that the
immediate merger of Bund with KPRP was not to be pressed for in spite of the
CI’s principle that stipulated that only one communist party could exist in a
country. The KPRP delegates thought otherwise: Henryk Walecki (Maksymilian
Horwitz) and others were against the inclusion of Bund in the IC. The
aforementioned activists of the IC and KPRP were all of Jewish origin. Walecki
maintained that Bund had not got rid of its nationalism. That was perceived as a
threat to KPRP in a situation when at the beginning of 1920 this party counted
circa 5500 members, including many Jews, while Bund had almost 10 thousand
membership.
[…]
However, taking into account the fact that Kombund counted probably around 2
thousand members, while a few months after its accession, that is in August
1923, KPRP had a little more than 5500 members, it could be hypothesized that
there were possibly more than 50% of the Jews in KPRP. Additionally, it is to be
remembered that the Jews had belonged to KPRP even before it was joined by
Kombund. There were some district organizations that were almost exclusively
Jewish or at least with significant shares of the Jews, such as Komitet Okręgowy
KPRP Lublin in which the Jews constituted 76,3% members in 1923, while in 1925 –
as many as 82,4%. In turn, the KO KPRP Siedlce counted 60% of the Jews in 1923,
whereas in June 1924 their share rose to more than 81%.
This
increase in the share of the Jews was even more conspicuous in ZMK which counted
around 4 thousand members as of December 1922. After it had been united with
Cukunft a few months later, the latter’s circa 3 thousand members most probably
increased that percentage to at least 60%.
[…]
The
Jews belonged also, albeit in smaller numbers, to autonomous KPRP organizations
that came into existence at the end of 1923 – that is KPZU and KPZB. Those
parties were dominated by peasants, but for instance in 1924 KPZU counted 13,3%
of the Jewish members, while in Związek Młodzieży Komunistycznej Zachodniej
Ukrainy their share was 25% as of 1926. In November 1924 they constituted 18–20%
of KPZB.’ (11)
This is
all explained in summarised tabular form by Cimek as follows: (12)
Cimek’s
summary table shows us the fact that from the available data we have on the
ethnic breakdown of the Polish communist party (from 1931) and its youth wing
(from 1926) they are both dominated by jews during the whole period under
discussion. The youth wing in particular started off with 42 percent of its
members being jews in 1926 and by 1933 this had fallen but only to a still
humongous 32 percent jewish having been 48 percent jewish two years earlier in
1931.
But how
disproportionate was this membership relative to the jewish population as a
percentage of the population of Poland?
Jews
were 7.8 percent of the population of Poland in 1921 and 8.6 percent in 1931.
(13) This increase in the jewish population of Poland as a percentage of the
total population was not owing to jewish having a lot more children but rather
was caused by two factors: shifting national borders and a movement inside
Polish jewry inspired by the Zionist movement not to label themselves as Polish
but rather jewish. (14)
It is
worth noting that a similar situation prevailed in Latvia albeit in reverse
where the jewish population officially decreased in 1935 as the Latvian
government had arbitrarily reclassified them as ‘Russians’. (15)
So, if
we take the jewish representation within the Polish communist party (22 percent)
and its youth wing (44.2 percent) in 1931 against the Polish census figure for
how many jews there were in Poland in that year (8.6 percent). Then we get that
jews were overrepresented to the tune of 2.6 times their demographic
representation in the Polish communist party in 1931 and 5.1 times their
demographic representation in the party’s youth wing in the same year.
Those
are figures which quite frankly cannot be explained by ‘accident’, ‘coincidence’ nor ‘literacy
rates’ especially as the Polish socialist party – the Polish communist
party’s main rival on the political left in interwar Poland – appears to have
had something of the same problem despite being desperate to have actual Polish
workers join its ranks. (16)
Similarly, the Polish communist party and its youth organizations (the latter
organizations if totalled up were 60 percent jewish in terms of their ethnic
demographics) (17) recognized the problem and desperately tried to engage in the
forced Polonization of their organizations as Cimek explains:
‘The
KPRP leadership saw disadvantages that followed from having such numerous Jews
among its rank and file. They put forward, inter alia, an idea of Polonization
of KPRP as well as tighter linkages between CBŻ’s activities and those by the
main party.’ (18)
The
effect of this forced Polonization drive was that in the party’s youth wing the
membership was 51 percent jewish and 19 percent Polish in February 1930 and then
32 percent jewish and 33 percent Polish in October 1933. (19)
To
understand the practical reality behind these numbers if we look at the total
membership figures of the party’s youth organization we can see that it doubles
between 1931 and 1932 (from 7,000 to 14,000 members) which means – in essence –
that if 51 percent of the party’s youth organization’s membership was jewish in
February 1930 then out of 4,100 members at that time 2,091 were jewish and only
779 were Polish. (20)
Then by
October 1933 because the party’s youth organization had grown from 4,100 members
to 15,000 members in the previous three years: the number of jews in the
organization (32 percent) more than doubles to 4,800 which is then only covered
up by the fact that the number of Polish members (33 percent) roughly multiplied
by five to 4,950.
In
addition to this; we should note that this is almost certainly an underestimate
as numerous members of the party’s youth organization would have migrated – by
virtue of coming-of-age – to the Polish communist party proper and no longer be
members of the party’s youth organization, which we can in turn see likely
represented in the four percent increase in jewish members of the Polish
communist party in 1932. (21)
Thus, we
can see that while the forced Polonization of the Polish communist party
superficially seemed to reduce the significant jewish overrepresentation among
the organizations of the communist movement in Poland; it actually represents
the opposite. Namely a doubling of the number of jews in the communist movement
in Poland which was covered up with the fig leaf of a large relative increase in
the number of actual Poles in the movement.
The
problem was not only that jews in Poland were primarily an urban population,
(22) but also openly despised and/or looked down on actual Poles especially
those in rural areas as Cimek explains:
‘The
process of the peasants’ joining the communist parties was inter alia hindered
by the negative attitude adopted by some of the Jews – who dominated small town
party organizations – regarding agitation activities to be carried out in
peasant milieus. Most often they excused themselves with the peasants’
anti-Semitism, even though in reality such a phenomenon was not always present.
Moreover, the Jews from some local organizations regarded peasants as a
“burdensome element” whose understanding is difficult to achieve.’ (23)
Now this
obviously supports MacDonald’s theory of ethnocentrism being at the heart of
jewish identity as well as what Duke refers to as ‘jewish supremacism’,
but what is interesting here is this provides a cogent explanation of three
things all at once.
Namely
it explains in part why communist agitation failed in Poland (jews viewed
communism as ipso facto jewish and therefore recruiting Poles was less important
than recruiting other jews), where the stereotype of Zydokomuna comes from
(actual experience with the representatives and knowledge of the Polish
communist party) as well as why jews (as members of the post-war Polish secret
police and government) primarily targeted Poles for repression in the early
communist state in Poland (this ethnic under targeting is also in evidence in
the 133 Days of Bela Kun in Hungary (24) and during the Soviet occupation of
Latvia from 1940-1941). (25)
In
short: jews viewed communism in as a jewish intellectual movement and the Soviet
Union as a jewish state and they acted accordingly which in turn drove Poles to
become increasingly anti-Semitic over time.
A good
example of how this hugely disproportionate jewish domination of the Polish
communist party and its ancillary organizations was is provided by the example
of the Soviet organization MOPR (International Red Aid) in Poland with Cimek
commenting how:
‘The
biggest share of the Jews was, however, found in Międzynarodowa Organizacja
Pomocy Rewolucjonistom (MOPR) [International Organization of Assistance for the
Revolutionaries], which had in its big city constituencies around 6 thousand
members in Poland as of 1932. 92% of them were Jewish, whereas in rural
constituencies this share was 88%.’ (26)
While
Schatz states that:
‘In
addition, Jews were in an overwhelming majority in the Polish MOPR (Miedzynarodowa
Organizacja Pomocy Rewolucjonistom, International Organization for Help to the
Revolutionaries), which collected money for and channelled assistance to
imprisoned Communists. In 1932, out of 6,000 members in the MOPR, about 90
percent were Jews.’ (27)
The
overwhelming and near complete jewishness of the MOPR organization in Poland was
also mirrored around the same time in Lithuania where 60 percent of MOPR members
were jewish in 1938. (28)
However,
in its almost complete jewishness the MOPR organization Poland was certainly not
alone nor unusual. Since as Cimek explains:
‘According to Sekretariat Krajowy KC KPP, at the beginning of 1936, the share of
the Jews in the executive ranks of the whole party and that of KZMP was too big
– 54%. Moreover, the share of the Jews in MOPR reached 90%, in the party
technical apparatus about 75%, and in the technical apparatus of the Sekretariat
and the leadership of KO KPP Warszawa – 100%. Faced with the overwhelming
dominance of the executive by petty bourgeoisie and industrialists who were
mainly of Jewish descent, Sekretariat Krajowy decided to introduce more
industrial workers in the executive structures. It also tried to increase the
number of farm workers and peasants among the activists.’ (29)
Put
another way: the Polish communist party was being led by a bunch of largely
jewish capitalists or children of such in much the same way that the Hungarian
Soviet Republic was largely led by jews from a not dissimilar background. (30)
This is
what senior Polish communist activist Wincas Mickiewicz was referring to when in
July 1930 he stated that:
‘Those comrades were right who were talking about sui generis two parties: a
Jewish one and a Polish one.’ (31)
The ‘two
parties’ that Mickiewicz was talking about was both a reference to the fact
that jews were massively overrepresented while Poles were massively
underrepresented in the ranks of the Polish communist party, but also how there
was a significant differential between the two in terms of their power.
This is
an area that is rarely acknowledged – let alone discussed – by self-styled ‘debunkers
of the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism’ in that they ignore the relative power of
individuals as well as how much the given party and/or state bureaucracy – the
operational and decision-making heart of any organisation/regime thus the true
holders of power – were jewish. In favour of focusing on the silly idea that if
you have twenty inconsequential ministers but a jewish interior minister,
defence minister and foreign minister that therefore the twenty inconsequential
ministers mean that the much larger relative power of a jewish interior
minister, defence minister and foreign minister is somehow completely nullified
and the ‘myth of jewish power’ debunked because there are ‘more
non-jewish ministers’.
Schatz
is unusual in the literature in that he factors this relative power differential
into his analysis of jewish power and representation inside the Polish communist
party when he states that:
‘The
qualitative significance of Jewish Communists was even larger than their sheer
numbers would indicate. Despite the fact that the party authorities
conspicuously strove to promote classically trained proletarian and ethnically
Polish members to the cadres of leaders and functionaries. Jewish Communists
formed 54 percent of the field leadership of the KPP in 1935. Moreover, Jews
constituted a total of 75 percent of the party’s technika, the apparatus for
production and distribution of propaganda materials.’ (32)
Cimek
echoes Schatz’s analysis when he writes that:
‘The
percentage of the Jews was usually higher within KPP’s and KZMP’s leaderships
than among their rank and file. During all of the six KPP congress, in total 172
KC members and their deputies were elected, some of whom had been elected more
than once (Świetlikowa 1958: 96 and ff.; 1959: 31). In January 1936 the national
composition of the central party authorities looked as follows: out of the 19 KC
KPP’s members, 11 were Polish, 6 Jewish (31,6%), 1 was Belarusian and 1
Ukrainian; among the 15 members and deputy members of KC KPZB Belarusians were
the most numerous – 7, and apart from them 6 were Jewish (40%), 1 Polish and 1
Latvian; out of the 7 KC KPZU’s members 3 were Ukrainian and 3 were Jewish (each
42,9%) plus 1 Polish. Even more Jews were to be found within the ranks of the
district KPP activists in 1935 – out of 52 individuals 28 were Jewish (53,8%)
and 23 Polish.’ (33)
What
both Cimek and Schatz are saying is that Mickiewicz’s ‘jewish party’ was
largely the leaders, officials and activists of the Polish communist party,
while the ‘Polish party’ was largely confined to the ordinary rank and
file membership. Thus, we can reasonably and quite accurately speak of how the
Polish communist party was largely run by jews.
We can
further see this in how during the 1930s while the percentage of jews as members
of the party compared to Poles was decreasing – although as we have in real
numbers it actually doubled – the relative power of the ‘jewish party’ inside
the Polish communist party was substantially increasing.
As Cimek
relates:
‘Towards the end of 1936 the national composition of KPP leadership was changed
even more to the disadvantage of the Poles. According to a written report by KPP
leaders on the Party’s activities after its IV Plenum (February 1936) in
December 1936 the KPP’s authorities counted 15 persons (excluding KPZB and KPZU),
including 8 Jews (53,3%) and 7 Poles. Moreover, among the 15 district
committees’ secretaries, out of their total number which was 18, 8 were of
Jewish descent (53,3%), while 7 of Polish descent. A year earlier, in February
1936, there were 30 members and deputy members of KC KPP, including 15 Poles, 12
Jews (40%), 2 Ukrainians and 1 Belarusian. Added KC KPZB and KC KPZU (excluding
deputy members of KC), there were 52 persons, out of whom: 21 Jews (40,4%), 17
Poles (32,7%), 8 Belarusians (15,4%), 5 Ukrainians (9,6%) and one Lithuanian
(1,9%). In the central executive, publishing apparatus and technical apparatus
of Sekretariat Krajowy, the percentage of the Jews was even higher, respectively
53%, 75% and 100%.’ (34)
This is
also shown in the origins of the official delegates to the party congresses with
the same pattern holding and also showing that while the forced Polonization of
the Polish communist party was effectively hiding the severely outsized and
disproportion jewish membership and role in it; the amount of Polish
representatives being sent to the party congresses massively decreased
throughout the 1920s to the 1930s, while the amount of jewish delegates
massively increased in the same period.
As Cimek
remarks:
‘The
share of the national minorities was growing also among the delegates to KPP
congresses, resulting in decreasing participation of delegates of Polish origin
who constituted 85,5% in 1923 to drop to 59,8% in 1932.
[…]
The
biggest increase in the share of the delegates to KPP congresses applied to the
Jews: from 7 persons in 1923 to 23 persons in 1932. In reality there were many
more of the Jews if one were to add on top of this a group of Poles of Jewish
descent, since, as exemplified by II KPRP Congress, apart from 7 Jews, there
were 14 Poles of Jewish descent there.’ (35)
Cimek
once again has summarised this reality nicely in tabular form as follows: (36)
Thus, we
can see that between the formation of the Polish communist party in 1918 and its
dissolution in 1938 on the orders of Stalin; the party was profoundly jewish in
every possible sense and that despite policies attempting to mask this. Jewish
power and influence in the party only increased over time with Stalin’s
ascension to power and further that the atrocities and genocides against Germans
and Poles undertaken by the early Polish communist state (37) were primarily
undertaken on orders of – and carried out by – jews.
Thus, we
can reasonably refer to the jews in Poland as ‘Stalin’s Willing
Executioners’.
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References
(1) Andre Gerrits, 1995, ‘Antisemitism and
anti‐communism: The Myth of ‘Judeo‐Communism’ in Eastern Europe’, East
European Jewish Affairs, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 50-51
(2) Jaff Schatz, 1991, ‘The Generation: The Rise and Fall
of the Jewish Communists in Poland’, 1st Edition, University of
California Press: Berkeley, pp. 96-97
(3) Jan Gross, 2006, ‘Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after
Auschwitz’, 1st Edition, Random House: New York, pp. 194-197
(4) Ibid., pp. 197-203
(5) Tadeusz Piotrowski, 1998, ‘Poland’s Holocaust: Ethnic
Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic,
1918-1947’, 1st Edition, McFarland: Jefferson, p. 36
(6) Ibid., p. 37
(7) Schatz, Op. Cit., p. 97
(8) Henryk Cimek, 2012, ‘Jews in the Polish Communist
Movement (1918–1937)’, Polityka i Spoleczenstwo, No. 9, p. 42
(9) Batya Knebel, 2016, ‘Revisiting the Jewish Role in
Polish Security Service, the UB: Between Soviet Communist Rule and a Hard Place’,
Published Masters Theses: Duke University, p. 58
(10) Ibid., p. 60
(11) Cimek, Op. Cit., pp. 42-50
(12) Ibid., p. 51
(13) Ibid., p. 43
(14) Ibid., pp. 42-44
(15) Aadne Aasland, 1994, ‘Russians in Latvia: Ethnic
Identity and Ethnopolitical Change’, Published PhD Theses: University of
Glasgow, p. 55
(16) Implied by Bernard Wasserstein, 2012, ‘On the Eve:
The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War’, 1st Edition,
Profile: London, pp. 54-55
(17) Cimek, Op. Cit., p. 51
(18) Ibid., p. 50
(19) Ibid., p. 52
(20) Figures taken from Ibid., p. 51
(21) Idem.
(22) Ibid., p. 44; Howard Sachar, 2002, ‘Dreamland:
Europeans and Jews in the Aftermath of the Great War’, 1st Edition,
Vintage: New York, p. 65
(23) Cimek. Op. Cit., p. 52
(24) On this please see my article:
https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-versus-non-jewish-victims
(25) On this please see my article:
https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-communism-in-latvia-1918
(26) Cimek, Op. Cit., p. 53
(27) Schatz, Op. Cit., p. 97
(28) Liudas Truska, n.d., ‘Preconditions of the
Holocaust: The Upsurge of Anti-Semitism in Lithuania in the years of the Soviet
Occupation (1940-1941)’, p. 9 (Available here:
http://www.komisija.lt/Files/www.komisija.lt/File/Tyrimu_baze/Naciu%20okupacija/Holokausto%20prielaidos/Eng/Truska/Research%20by%20L.Truska%20(english).pdf)
(29) Cimek, Op. Cit., pp. 53-54
(30) On this please see my article:
https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-jewish-role-in-the-hungarian
(31) Cimek, Op. Cit., p. 52
(32) Schatz, Op. Cit., p. 97
(33) Cimek, Op. Cit., p. 53
(34) Ibid., p. 54
(35) Idem.
(36) Ibid., p. 55
(37) On this cf. J. Otto Pohl, 2022, ‘The Years of Great
Silence: The Deportation, Special Settlement, and Mobilization into the Labor
Army of Ethnic Germans in the USSR, 1941–1955’, 1st Edition, ibidem Verlag:
Stuttgart and Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, 2006, ‘A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic
Cleansing of the East European Germans’, 2nd Edition, Griffin:
New York
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