Zydokomuna
Encyclopedia
Żydokomuna is a pejorative
antisemitic stereotype which came into use between World Wars I and II, blaming Jews for the rise of communism
in Poland
, where communism was identified as part of a wider Jewish-led conspiracy to seize power.
The idea of Żydokomuna continued to endure to a certain extent in postwar Poland, because Polish anti-communists saw the Soviet-backed communist rise to power as the fruition of prewar anti-Polish agitation; and with it came the implication of Jewish responsibility. The appointment of Jews to positions responsible for oppressing the populace further fueled this perception.
Żydokomuna survives in the post-Soviet era primarily in rhetoric on the political fringe. However, the contentions of some Polish historians regarding Jewish disloyalty to Poland following the Soviet takeover raises the specter of Żydokomuna in the minds of other scholars.
author and political activist Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz
, written in 1817 and published posthumously in 1858. Called "the first Polish work to develop on a large scale the concept of an organized Jewish conspiracy directly threatening the existing social structure," it describes a Warsaw
of the future renamed Moszkopolis after its Jewish ruler. (See "Judeopolonia
" article for more.)
At the end of the 19th century, Roman Dmowski
's National Democratic party characterized Poland's Jews and other opponents of Dmowski's party as internal enemies who were behind international conspiracies inimical to Poland and who were agents of disorder, disruption and socialism. Historian Antony Polonsky writes that before World War I "The National Democrats brought to Poland a new and dangerous ideological fanaticism, dividing society into 'friends' and 'enemies' and resorting
constantly to conspiratorial theories ("Jewish-Masonic plot"; "Żydokomuna"—"Jew-communism") to explain Poland's difficulties." Meanwhile, Jews played into National Democratic rhetoric by affirming themselves as alien through their participation in exclusively Jewish organizations such as the Bund and the Zionist movement
.
. The Russian revolution
and emerging Soviet regime was seen by many Poles as Russian imperialism
in a new guise. The visibility of Jews in both the Soviet leadership and in the Polish Communist Party further heightened such fears. According to Jaff Schatz, the strength of the Żydokomuna belief stemmed from age-old Polish fears of Russia and from anti-communist and antisemitic attitudes. Schatz writes that "because anti-Semitism was one of the main forces that drew Jews to the Communist movement, Żydokomuna meant turning the effects of anti-Semitism into a cause of its further increase." Żydokomuna boosted antisemitism by amplifying ideas about an alleged "Jewish world conspiracy." According to this thinking, Bolshevism and communism became "the modern means to the long-attempted Jewish political conquest of Poland; the Żydokomuna conspirators would finally succeed in establishing a 'Judeo-Polonia
.'"
Accusations of Żydokomuna accompanied the incidents of anti-Jewish violence in Poland during Polish–Soviet War of 1920, legitimized as self-defense against a people who were oppressors of the Polish nation. Some soldiers and officers in the Polish eastern territories shared the conviction that Jews were enemies of the Polish nation-state and were collaborators with Poland's enemies. Some of these troops treated all Jews as Bolsheviks. This Żydokomuna paranoia led to violence and killings of Jews in a number of towns, including the Pinsk massacre
, in which 35 Jews, taken as hostages, were murdered, and the Lwów pogrom
during the Polish-Ukrainian War
in which 72 Jews were killed. Occasional instances of Jewish support for Bolshevism during the Polish-Soviet War
served to heighten the stereotype.
The concept of Żydokomuna was exploited in propaganda by Poland's interwar National Democrats
. Publications of the Catholic Church in Poland also commonly expressed anti-Jewish views. Though Jews were well represented in the Polish Communist Party, Jewish communists were a minuscule political and social group with little actual influence in the Polish-Jewish community or Poland as a whole.
During World War II
, the term Żydokomuna was made to resemble the Jewish-Bolshevism rhetoric of Nazi Germany
, wartime Romania
and other war-torn countries of Central
and Eastern Europe
. A number of historians, such as Jan T. Gross
and Andre Gerrits, maintain that there was a strong tradition of anti-Semitism which provided a base for Żydokomuna to feed upon.
to Sejm
as the main opposition party to the Piłsudski government. Piłsudski had a liberal attitude towards minorities, and was respected by much of the Polish Jewish minority. In the midst of the Great Depression
and in a climate of widespread nationalist and antisemitic sentiment, the Endeks launched an anti-Jewish campaign aimed at exploiting dissatisfaction with the government at a time of economic crisis. The anti-Jewish agitation included calls for reducing the numbers of Jews in the country and an economic boycott (launched in 1931), leading to outbreaks of violence against Jews, particularly at universities. Following the death of Piłsudski in 1935, the Endeks moved towards seizing power in Poland, and began to exploit the "Jewish question" in full. The Endeks and other parties on the right employed the old Żydokomuna stereotype alongside a new slogan, Folksfront, both signifying an alleged alliance between Jews and communists. While there was a limited audience for Endek propaganda, it was supplemented by the much larger circulation enjoyed by Catholic Church publications, which increasingly referred to the communist threat and the alleged "Godlessness" of the Jews. One antisemitic Church newspaper alone, the Samoobrona Narodu ("Self-Defense of the Nation," which meant defense against Jews), had a circulation of over one million.
In the period between the two world wars, the Żydokomuna myth grew concurrently in Poland with the myth of the "criminal Jew." Statistics from the 1920s had indicated a Jewish crime rate that was well below the percentage of Jews in the population. However, a subsequent reclassification of how crime was recorded—which now included minor offenses—succeeded in reversing the trend, and Jewish criminal statistics showed an increase relative to the Jewish population by the 1930s. These statistics were used by the Polish antisemitic press to propagate an image of the "criminal Jew;" additionally, political crimes by Jews were magnified, creating a perception of a criminal Żydokomuna.
Another important factor was the perceived dominance of Jews in the leadership of the Communist Party of Poland
(KPP). As noted by historian Joseph Marcus, the KPP should not be considered a "Jewish party," as it was in fact in opposition to traditional Jewish economic and national interests. The Jews supporting KPP saw themselves as international communists and rejected much of the Jewish culture and tradition. Nonetheless, the KPP, along with the Polish Socialist Party
, was notable for its decisive stand against anti-semitism. Notably, the party had strong Jewish representation at higher levels. Out of fifteen leaders of the KPP central administration in 1936, eight were Jews. Jews constituted 53% of the "active members" of the KPP, 75% of its "publication apparatus," 90% of the "international department for help to revolutionaries" and 100% of the "technical apparatus" of the Home Secretariat. In Polish court proceedings against communists between 1927 and 1936, 90% of the accused were Jews. In terms of membership, before its dissolution in 1938, 25% of KPP members were Jews; most urban KPP members were Jews—a substantial number, given an 8.7% Jewish minority in prewar Poland
.
According to Jaff Schatz's summary of Jewish participation in the prewar Polish communist movement:
Research on voting patterns in Poland's parliamentary elections in the 1920s has shown that Jewish support for the communists was proportionally less than their representation in the total population. Support for Poland's communist and pro-Soviet parties came largely from Ukrainian and Orthodox
Belarusian voters. Schatz notes that even if post-war claims by Jewish communists that 40% of the 266,528 communist votes on several lists of front organizations at the 1928 Sejm election
came from the Jewish community were true (a claim Marcus describes as "almost certainly an exaggeration"), this would amount to no more than 5% of Jewish votes for the communists, indicating the Jewish population at large was "far from sympathetic to communism." In the end, while most Jews were neither communists nor communist sympathizers, a substantial and quite visible portion of the Polish Communist leadership in the interwar period was Jewish. "Even if Jews were prominent in the Communist Party leadership, this prominence did not translate into support at the mass level" wrote Jeffrey Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg, who analyzed the communist vote in interwar Poland. Only 7% of Jewish voters supported communists at the polls in 1928, while 93% of them supported non-communists (with 49% voting for Piłsudski). The pro-Soviet communist party received most of its support from Belarusians whose separatism was backed by the Soviet Union. In Lwow, CPP received 4% of the vote (of which 35% was Jewish), in Warsaw 14% (33% Jewish), and in Wilno 0.02% (36% Jewish). However, in terms of overall numbers, CPP was "the Jews' least favorite political grouping" during the 1928 elections. It was the disproportionately large representation of Jews in the communist leadership that led to the Żydokomuna myth being widely used in the propaganda of the Endeks.
, resulting in the partition of Polish territory between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR), Jewish communities in eastern Poland
welcomed with some relief the Soviet occupation, which they saw as a "lesser of two evils" from openly antisemitic Nazi Germany
. The image of Jews among the Belorussian and Ukrainian minorities waving red flags to welcome Soviet troops
had great symbolic meaning in Polish memory of the period. Young Jews joined or organized communist militias, others organized a new, communist, temporary self-government. Such militias often disarmed and arrested Polish soldiers, policemen and other authority figures; often, Poles and the Polish states were mocked. In the days and weeks following the events of September 1939, the Soviets engaged in a harsh policy of Sovietization
. Polish schools and other institutions were closed, Poles were dismissed from jobs of authority, often arrested and deported, and replaced with non-Polish personnel. Before the war, Poles had a privileged position. In the space of a few days, this changed. Jews and other minorities from within Poland occupied positions in the Soviet occupation government—such as teachers, civil servants and engineers—that they had trouble achieving under the Polish government. What to majority of Poles was occupation and betrayal, to some Jews, especially to Polish communists of Jewish descent, who emerged from the underground, was an opportunity for revolution and retribution. There were even some extreme cases of Jewish participation in massacres of ethnic Poles such as Massacre of Brzostowica Mała. This strengthened the myth of Żydokomuna, which would hold Jews responsible for the introduction of communism in Poland. Such behavior affronted non-Jewish Poles, who likely exaggerated Jewish participation in the Soviet occupation because a Jewish presence in the government apparatus was a novel phenomenon in pre-war Poland.
Such events implanted in the Polish collective memory the image of Jewish crowds greeting the invading Red Army
as liberators, and willing collaborators, further strengthening the antisemitic żydokomuna myth. "The relations between the Poles and the Jews are at present markedly worse than before the war" - noted a Polish observer in Stryj
in June 1940. Niall Ferguson
wrote: "The entire Polish population adopted a negative attitude towards the Jews because of their blatant cooperation with the Bolsheviks and their hostility against non-Jews...the people simply hate the Jews.".
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, belief in the Żydokomuna stereotype, combined with the German Nazi encouragement for expression of anti-Semitic attitudes, was a principal cause of massacres of Jews by gentile Poles in Poland's northeastern Łomża province in the summer of 1941, including the massacre at Jedwabne
.
Though some Jews had initially benefited from the effects of the Soviet invasion, this occupation soon began to strike at the Jewish population as well; independent Jewish organizations were abolished and Jewish activists were arrested. Hundreds of thousands of Jews who had fled to the Soviet sector were given a choice of Soviet citizenship or returning to the German occupied zone. The majority chose the latter, and instead found themselves deported to the Soviet Union, where ironically, 300,000 would escape the Holocaust. While there was Polish Jewish representation in the London-based Polish government in exile
, relations between the Jews in Poland and Polish resistance in occupied Poland were strained, and Jewish armed groups had difficulty joining the official Polish resistance umbrella organization, the Armia Krajowa
(AK). Some Jewish groups (such as the Bielski partisans
) were forced to rob local Polish peasants for food; in turn, the Polish underground often labeled those armed Jewish groups fighting for survival in the forests as "bandits" and "robbers." Jewish partisans instead more often joined the Armia Ludowa
of the communist Polish Workers' Party
and Soviet guerrilla groups
, which increasingly clashed with Polish guerillas
; contributing to yet another perception of Jews working with the Soviets against the Poles.
to Israel, the PZPR members formed a much larger percentage of the remaining Jewish population. Among them were a number of Jewish communists who played a highly visible role in the unpopular communist government and its security apparatus. Hilary Minc
, the third in command in Bolesław Bierut's political triumvirate of Stalinist leaders, became the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Industry, Industry and Commerce, and the Economic Affairs. He was personally assigned by Stalin first to Industry and than to Transportation ministries of Poland. His wife, Julia, became the Editor-in-Chief of the monopolized Polish Press Agency. Minister Jakub Berman
– Stalin's right hand in Poland until 1953 – held the Political propaganda and Ideology portfolios. He was responsible for the largest and most notorious secret police in the history of the People's Republic of Poland, the Ministry of Public Security
(UB) employing 33,200 permanent security officers, one for every 800 Polish citizens. The new government's hostility to the wartime Polish Government in Exile
and its WWII underground resistance – accused by the media of being nationalist, reactionary and antisemitic, and persecuted by Berman – further strengthened the myth of Żydokomuna, to the point where in the popular consciousness Jewish Bolshevism was seen as having conquered Poland. It was in this context, reinforced by the immediate post-war lawlessness, that Poland experienced an unprecedented wave of anti-Jewish violence
(of which most notable was the Kielce pogrom
).
The Polish-American historian Marek Jan Chodakiewicz
stressed that after the Soviet takeover of Poland in 1945 violence had developed amid postwar retribution and counter-retribution, exacerbated by the breakdown of law and order and a Polish anti-Communist insurgency
. According to Chodakiewicz, some Jewish "avengers" endeavored to extract justice from the Poles who harmed Jews during the War and in some cases Jews attempted to reclaim property confiscated by the Nazis. These phenomena further reinforced the stereotype of Żydokomuna, a Jewish-Communist conspiracy in post-war Poland. Chodakiewicz noted that after World War Two, the Jews were not only victims, but also aggressors. He describes cases in which Jews cooperated with the Polish secret police, denouncing Poles and members of the Home Army. Chodakiewicz noted that some 3,500 to 6,500 Poles died in late 1940s because of Jewish denunciations or were killed by Jews themselves.
Regarding this period, Andre Gerrits wrote in his study of the myth of Jewish communism, that even though for the first time in history they had entered the top echelons of power in considerable numbers: "The first post-war decade was a mixed experience for the Jews of East Central Europe. The new communist order offered unprecedented opportunities as well as unforeseen dangers."
The combination of the effects of the Holocaust and postwar antisemitism led to a dramatic mass emigration of Polish Jewry in the immediate postwar years. Of the estimated 240,000 Jews in Poland in 1946 (of whom 136,000 were refugees from the Soviet Union, most on their way to the West), only 90,000 remained a year later. The surviving Jews of Poland found themselves victims of the explosive postwar political situation. The image of the Jew as a threatening outsider took on a new form as antisemitism was now linked to the imposition of communist rule in Poland, including rumors of massive collaboration of Jews with the unpopular new regime and the Soviet Union. Of the fewer than 80,000 Jews who remained in Poland, many had political reasons for doing so. Consequently – as noted by historian Michael C. Steinlauf – "their group profile ever more closely resembled the mythic Żydokomuna."
Encouraged by their Soviet advisors, many Jewish functionaries and government officials adopted new Polish-sounding names hoping to find less acrimony among their adversaries. "This practice often backfired and led to widespread speculation about 'hidden Jews' for decades to come."
, the preferred Soviet policy was to keep sensitive posts in the hands of non-Poles. As a result "all or nearly all of the directors (of the widely despised Ministry of Public Security of Poland
) were Jewish" as noted by Polish journalist Teresa Torańska
among others. A recent study by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance
showed that out of 450 people in director positions in the Ministry
between 1944 and 1954, 167 (37.1%) were of Jewish ethnicity, while Jews made up only 1% of the post-war Polish population.
Among the notable Jewish officials of the Polish secret police and security services were Minister Jakub Berman
, Joseph Stalin's right hand in the PRL; Vice-minister Roman Romkowski
(head of MBP), Dir. Julia Brystiger
(5th Dept.), Dir. Anatol Fejgin
(10th Dept. or the notorious Special Bureau), deputy Dir. Józef Światło (10th Dept.), Col. Józef Różański
among others. Światło – "a torture master" – defected to the West in 1953, while Romkowski and Różański would find themselves among the Jewish scapegoats for Polish Stalinism in the political upheavals following Stalin's death, both sentenced to 15 years in prison on 11 November 1957 for gross violations of human rights law and abuse of power. While Jews were overrepresented in various Polish communist organizations, including the security apparatus, relative to their percentage of the general population, the vast majority of Jews did not participate in the Stalinist apparatus, and indeed most were not supportive of communism. Krzysztof Szwagrzyk has quoted Jan T. Gross
, who argued that many Jews who worked for the communist party cut their ties with their culture – Jewish, Polish or Russian – and tried to represent the interests of international communism only, or at least that of the local communist government.
In 1956, over 9,000 socialist and populist politicians were released from prison. A few Jewish functionaries of the security forces were brought to court in the process of de-Stalinization. According to Heather Laskey, it was not a coincidence that the high ranking Stalinist security officers put on trial by Gomułka were Jews. Władysław Gomułka was captured by Światło, imprisoned by Romkowski
in 1951 and interrogated by both, him and Fejgin
. Gomułka escaped physical torture only as a close associate of Joseph Stalin
, and was released three years later. According to Joanna Michlic, the categorization of the security forces as a Jewish institution – as disseminated in the post-war anti-communist press at various times – was biased and rooted in Żydokomuna while the belief that the secret police was predominantly Jewish became one of the factors contributing to the post-war stereotype of Jews as agents of the security forces.
The Żydokomuna myth and scapegoating of Jews reappeared at times of severe political and socioeconomic crises in Stalinist Poland. After the death of Polish United Workers' Party
leader Bolesław Bierut in 1956, a de-Stalinization
and a subsequent battle among rival factions looked to lay blame for the excesses of the Stalin era. According to L.W. Gluchowski: "Poland’s communists had grown accustomed to placing the burden of their own failures to gain sufficient legitimacy among the Polish population during the entire communist period on the shoulders of Jews in the party." (See: above.) As described in one historical account, the party hardline Natolin faction "used anti-Semitism as a political weapon and found an echo both in the party apparatus
and in society at large, where traditional stereotypes of an insidious Jewish cobweb of political influence and economic gain resurfaced, but now in the context of 'Judeo-communism,' the Żydokomuna." "Natolin" leader Zenon Nowak
entered the concept of "Judeo-Stalinization" and placed the blame for the party's failures, errors and repression on "the Jewish apparatchik
s." Documents from this period chronicle antisemitic attitudes within Polish society, including beatings of Jews, loss of employment, and persecution. These outbursts of antisemitic sentiment from both Polish society and within the rank and file of the ruling party spurred the exodus of some 40,000 Polish Jews between 1956 and 1958.
– was closely associated in Poland with the events of the Prague spring
which began on 5 January 1968, raising hopes of democratic reforms among the intelligentsia. The crisis culminated in the Warsaw Pact
invasion of Czechoslovakia on 20 August 1968. The repressive government of Władysław Gomułka responded to student protests and strike actions across Poland (Warsaw, Kraków) with mass arrests, and by launching an anti-Zionist campaign within the communist party on the initiative of Interior Minister Mieczysław Moczar (aka Mikołaj Diomko, known for his xenophobic and antisemitic attitude). The officials of Jewish descent were blamed "for a major part, if not all, of the crimes and horrors of the Stalinist period."
The campaign, which began in 1967, was a well-guided response to the Six Day War and the subsequent break-off by the Soviets of all diplomatic relations with Israel
. Polish factory workers were forced to publicly denounce Zionism. As the interior minister Mieczysław Moczar's nationalist "Partisan" faction became increasingly influential in the communist party, infighting within the Polish communist party led one faction to again make scapegoats of the remaining Polish Jews, attempting to redirect public anger at them. After Israel's victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War
, the Polish government, following the Soviet lead, launched an antisemitic campaign under the guise of "anti-Zionism," with both Moczar's and Party Secretary Władysław Gomułka's factions playing leading roles. However, the campaign did not resonate with the general public, because most Poles saw similarities between Israel's fight for survival and Poland's past struggles for independence. Many Poles felt pride in the success of the Israeli military, which was dominated by Polish Jews. The slogan, "Our Jews beat the Soviet Arabs" was very popular among the Poles, but contrary to the desire of the communist government.
The government's antisemitic policy yielded more successes the next year. In March 1968, a wave of unrest among students and intellectuals, unrelated to the Arab-Israeli War, swept Poland (the events became known as the March 1968 events). The campaign served multiple purposes, most notably the suppression of protests, which were branded as inspired by a "fifth column" of Zionists; it was also used as a tactic in a political struggle between Gomułka and Moczar, both of whom played the Jewish card in a nationalist appeal. The campaign resulted in an actual expulsion from Poland in two years, of thousands of Jewish professionals, party officials and state security functionaries. Ironically, the Moczar's faction failed to topple Gomułka with their propaganda efforts.
As historian Dariusz Stola notes, the anti-Jewish campaign combined century-old conspiracy theories, recycled antisemitic claims and classic communist propaganda. Regarding the tailoring of the Żydokomuna myth to communist Poland, Stola writes:
The communist elites used the "Jews as Zionists" myth for a purge of Jews from scientific and cultural institutions, publishing houses, and national television and radio stations. Ultimately, the communist government sponsored an anti-Semitic campaign which resulted in most remaining Jews being forced to leave Poland. Moczar's "Partisan" faction promulgated an ideology that has been described as an "eerie reincarnation" of the views of the pre-World War II National Democracy Party, and even at times exploiting the antisemitic Żydokomuna myth.
Stola also notes that one of the effects of the 1968 antisemitic campaign was to thoroughly discredit the communist government in the eyes of the public. As a result, when the concept of the Jew as a "threatening other" was employed in the 1970s and 1980s in Poland by the communist government in its attacks on the political opposition, including the Solidarity trade-union movement and the Workers' Defence Committee
(Komitet Obrony Robotników, or KOR), it was completely unsuccessful.
The expression Żydokomuna is now used almost exclusively by fringe nationalists, usually in reference to former communist party members and to "liberals" who have supported capitalist reforms, globalization
and European integration
. Organizations attacked as "Żydokomuna" have included the SLD
and UW
political parties
, and Gazeta Wyborcza
, whose editor-in-chief, Adam Michnik
, is of Jewish origin.
Historian Omer Bartov
has written that "recent writings and pronouncements seem to indicate that the myth of the Żydokomuna (Jews as communists) has not gone away" as evidenced by the writings of younger Polish scholars such as Marek Chodakiewicz, contending Jewish disloyalty to Poland during the Soviet occupation
.
On July 11, 2009, several hundred Polish neo-Nazi sympathizers marched on the streets of Warsaw
, shouting out slogans such as "National-Socialism", "Down with Jewish chauvinism" and "Down with the Jewish occupation".
of Żydokomuna remains controversial. Works such as those by Jan T. Gross
have polarized debate over anti-Jewish violence in Poland, Gross and his supporters characterizing Żydokomuna as an antisemitic cliché while to some of his critics Żydokomuna was a fact of history.
Historians Joanna B. Michlic
and Laurence Weinbaum charge that post-1989 Polish historiography has seen a revival of "an ethnonationalist historical approach". According to Michlic, among some Polish historians, "[myth of żydokomuna] served the purpose of rationalizing and explaining the participation of ethnic Poles in killing their Jewish neighbors and, thus, in minimizing the criminal nature of the murder."
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
antisemitic stereotype which came into use between World Wars I and II, blaming Jews for the rise of communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, where communism was identified as part of a wider Jewish-led conspiracy to seize power.
The idea of Żydokomuna continued to endure to a certain extent in postwar Poland, because Polish anti-communists saw the Soviet-backed communist rise to power as the fruition of prewar anti-Polish agitation; and with it came the implication of Jewish responsibility. The appointment of Jews to positions responsible for oppressing the populace further fueled this perception.
Żydokomuna survives in the post-Soviet era primarily in rhetoric on the political fringe. However, the contentions of some Polish historians regarding Jewish disloyalty to Poland following the Soviet takeover raises the specter of Żydokomuna in the minds of other scholars.
Prelude
The concept of a Jewish conspiracy threatening Polish social order dates in print to the pamphlet Rok 3333 czyli sen niesłychany (The Year 3333, or the Incredible Dream) by Polish EnlightenmentEnlightenment in Poland
The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment in Poland were developed later than in the Western Europe, as Polish bourgeoisie was weaker, and szlachta culture together with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth political system were in deep crisis...
author and political activist Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz
Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz
Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz was a Polish poet, playwright and statesman. He was a leading advocate for the Constitution of May 3, 1791.-Life:...
, written in 1817 and published posthumously in 1858. Called "the first Polish work to develop on a large scale the concept of an organized Jewish conspiracy directly threatening the existing social structure," it describes a Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
of the future renamed Moszkopolis after its Jewish ruler. (See "Judeopolonia
Judeopolonia
Judeopolonia - theory positing an alleged future Jewish domination of Poland. The idea had its roots in an 1858 book by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, but did not gain currency in anti-semitic tracts until around the turn of the century...
" article for more.)
At the end of the 19th century, Roman Dmowski
Roman Dmowski
Roman Stanisław Dmowski was a Polish politician, statesman, and chief ideologue and co-founder of the National Democracy political movement, which was one of the strongest political camps of interwar Poland.Though a controversial personality throughout his life, Dmowski was instrumental in...
's National Democratic party characterized Poland's Jews and other opponents of Dmowski's party as internal enemies who were behind international conspiracies inimical to Poland and who were agents of disorder, disruption and socialism. Historian Antony Polonsky writes that before World War I "The National Democrats brought to Poland a new and dangerous ideological fanaticism, dividing society into 'friends' and 'enemies' and resorting
constantly to conspiratorial theories ("Jewish-Masonic plot"; "Żydokomuna"—"Jew-communism") to explain Poland's difficulties." Meanwhile, Jews played into National Democratic rhetoric by affirming themselves as alien through their participation in exclusively Jewish organizations such as the Bund and the Zionist movement
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
.
Origin
The term Żydokomuna originated in connection with the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and became a prominent antisemitic stereotype expressing political paranoia and targeting Jewish communists during the Polish-Soviet WarPolish-Soviet War
The Polish–Soviet War was an armed conflict between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine and the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic—four states in post–World War I Europe...
. The Russian revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
and emerging Soviet regime was seen by many Poles as Russian imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
in a new guise. The visibility of Jews in both the Soviet leadership and in the Polish Communist Party further heightened such fears. According to Jaff Schatz, the strength of the Żydokomuna belief stemmed from age-old Polish fears of Russia and from anti-communist and antisemitic attitudes. Schatz writes that "because anti-Semitism was one of the main forces that drew Jews to the Communist movement, Żydokomuna meant turning the effects of anti-Semitism into a cause of its further increase." Żydokomuna boosted antisemitism by amplifying ideas about an alleged "Jewish world conspiracy." According to this thinking, Bolshevism and communism became "the modern means to the long-attempted Jewish political conquest of Poland; the Żydokomuna conspirators would finally succeed in establishing a 'Judeo-Polonia
Judeopolonia
Judeopolonia - theory positing an alleged future Jewish domination of Poland. The idea had its roots in an 1858 book by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, but did not gain currency in anti-semitic tracts until around the turn of the century...
.'"
Accusations of Żydokomuna accompanied the incidents of anti-Jewish violence in Poland during Polish–Soviet War of 1920, legitimized as self-defense against a people who were oppressors of the Polish nation. Some soldiers and officers in the Polish eastern territories shared the conviction that Jews were enemies of the Polish nation-state and were collaborators with Poland's enemies. Some of these troops treated all Jews as Bolsheviks. This Żydokomuna paranoia led to violence and killings of Jews in a number of towns, including the Pinsk massacre
Pinsk massacre
The Pinsk massacre was the murder of thirty-five Jewish residents of Pinsk taken as hostages by the Polish Army after it captured the city in April 1919, during the opening phases of the Polish-Soviet War. The local Jews were arrested while holding a meeting...
, in which 35 Jews, taken as hostages, were murdered, and the Lwów pogrom
Lwów pogrom (1918)
The Lwów pogrom of the Jewish population of Lwów took place on November 21–23, 1918 during the Polish-Ukrainian War. In the course of the three days of unrest in the city, an estimated 52-150 Jewish residents were murdered and hundreds injured, with widespread looting carried out by Polish...
during the Polish-Ukrainian War
Polish-Ukrainian War
The Polish–Ukrainian War of 1918 and 1919 was a conflict between the forces of the Second Polish Republic and West Ukrainian People's Republic for the control over Eastern Galicia after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary.-Background:...
in which 72 Jews were killed. Occasional instances of Jewish support for Bolshevism during the Polish-Soviet War
Polish-Soviet War
The Polish–Soviet War was an armed conflict between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine and the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic—four states in post–World War I Europe...
served to heighten the stereotype.
The concept of Żydokomuna was exploited in propaganda by Poland's interwar National Democrats
Endecja
National Democracy was a Polish right-wing nationalist political movement active from the latter 19th century to the end of the Second Polish Republic in 1939. A founder and principal ideologue was Roman Dmowski...
. Publications of the Catholic Church in Poland also commonly expressed anti-Jewish views. Though Jews were well represented in the Polish Communist Party, Jewish communists were a minuscule political and social group with little actual influence in the Polish-Jewish community or Poland as a whole.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the term Żydokomuna was made to resemble the Jewish-Bolshevism rhetoric of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, wartime Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
and other war-torn countries of Central
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
. A number of historians, such as Jan T. Gross
Jan T. Gross
Jan Tomasz Gross is a Polish-American historian and sociologist. He is the Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society and Professor of History at Princeton University.- Biography :Jan T...
and Andre Gerrits, maintain that there was a strong tradition of anti-Semitism which provided a base for Żydokomuna to feed upon.
Interbellum
The National Democrats (Endeks) emerged from the 1930 Polish electionsPolish legislative election, 1930
Polish legislative election, 1930, also known as the Brest elections , were the elections to the Sejm on 16 November 1930. The pro-Sanacja Bezpartyjny Blok Współpracy z Rządem party took 56% of the votes...
to Sejm
Sejm
The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. The Sejm is made up of 460 deputies, or Poseł in Polish . It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm ....
as the main opposition party to the Piłsudski government. Piłsudski had a liberal attitude towards minorities, and was respected by much of the Polish Jewish minority. In the midst of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
and in a climate of widespread nationalist and antisemitic sentiment, the Endeks launched an anti-Jewish campaign aimed at exploiting dissatisfaction with the government at a time of economic crisis. The anti-Jewish agitation included calls for reducing the numbers of Jews in the country and an economic boycott (launched in 1931), leading to outbreaks of violence against Jews, particularly at universities. Following the death of Piłsudski in 1935, the Endeks moved towards seizing power in Poland, and began to exploit the "Jewish question" in full. The Endeks and other parties on the right employed the old Żydokomuna stereotype alongside a new slogan, Folksfront, both signifying an alleged alliance between Jews and communists. While there was a limited audience for Endek propaganda, it was supplemented by the much larger circulation enjoyed by Catholic Church publications, which increasingly referred to the communist threat and the alleged "Godlessness" of the Jews. One antisemitic Church newspaper alone, the Samoobrona Narodu ("Self-Defense of the Nation," which meant defense against Jews), had a circulation of over one million.
In the period between the two world wars, the Żydokomuna myth grew concurrently in Poland with the myth of the "criminal Jew." Statistics from the 1920s had indicated a Jewish crime rate that was well below the percentage of Jews in the population. However, a subsequent reclassification of how crime was recorded—which now included minor offenses—succeeded in reversing the trend, and Jewish criminal statistics showed an increase relative to the Jewish population by the 1930s. These statistics were used by the Polish antisemitic press to propagate an image of the "criminal Jew;" additionally, political crimes by Jews were magnified, creating a perception of a criminal Żydokomuna.
Another important factor was the perceived dominance of Jews in the leadership of the Communist Party of Poland
Communist Party of Poland
The Communist Party of Poland is a historical communist party in Poland. It was a result of the fusion of Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and the Polish Socialist Party-Left in the Communist Workers Party of Poland .-1918-1921:The KPRP was founded on 16 December 1918 as...
(KPP). As noted by historian Joseph Marcus, the KPP should not be considered a "Jewish party," as it was in fact in opposition to traditional Jewish economic and national interests. The Jews supporting KPP saw themselves as international communists and rejected much of the Jewish culture and tradition. Nonetheless, the KPP, along with the Polish Socialist Party
Polish Socialist Party
The Polish Socialist Party was one of the most important Polish left-wing political parties from its inception in 1892 until 1948...
, was notable for its decisive stand against anti-semitism. Notably, the party had strong Jewish representation at higher levels. Out of fifteen leaders of the KPP central administration in 1936, eight were Jews. Jews constituted 53% of the "active members" of the KPP, 75% of its "publication apparatus," 90% of the "international department for help to revolutionaries" and 100% of the "technical apparatus" of the Home Secretariat. In Polish court proceedings against communists between 1927 and 1936, 90% of the accused were Jews. In terms of membership, before its dissolution in 1938, 25% of KPP members were Jews; most urban KPP members were Jews—a substantial number, given an 8.7% Jewish minority in prewar Poland
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...
.
According to Jaff Schatz's summary of Jewish participation in the prewar Polish communist movement:
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 [the Communist Party of Poland] 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 ours, almost all Communists were Jews," does not appear to be a gross exaggeration.
Research on voting patterns in Poland's parliamentary elections in the 1920s has shown that Jewish support for the communists was proportionally less than their representation in the total population. Support for Poland's communist and pro-Soviet parties came largely from Ukrainian and Orthodox
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
Belarusian voters. Schatz notes that even if post-war claims by Jewish communists that 40% of the 266,528 communist votes on several lists of front organizations at the 1928 Sejm election
Polish legislative election, 1928
The Polish legislative election, 1928 lasted from 4 to 11 March and was the third election in the Second Polish Republic. Bezpartyjny Blok Współpracy z Rządem ) - a coalition of the Sanacja faction - won the highest number of seats The Polish legislative election, 1928 lasted from 4 to 11 March and...
came from the Jewish community were true (a claim Marcus describes as "almost certainly an exaggeration"), this would amount to no more than 5% of Jewish votes for the communists, indicating the Jewish population at large was "far from sympathetic to communism." In the end, while most Jews were neither communists nor communist sympathizers, a substantial and quite visible portion of the Polish Communist leadership in the interwar period was Jewish. "Even if Jews were prominent in the Communist Party leadership, this prominence did not translate into support at the mass level" wrote Jeffrey Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg, who analyzed the communist vote in interwar Poland. Only 7% of Jewish voters supported communists at the polls in 1928, while 93% of them supported non-communists (with 49% voting for Piłsudski). The pro-Soviet communist party received most of its support from Belarusians whose separatism was backed by the Soviet Union. In Lwow, CPP received 4% of the vote (of which 35% was Jewish), in Warsaw 14% (33% Jewish), and in Wilno 0.02% (36% Jewish). However, in terms of overall numbers, CPP was "the Jews' least favorite political grouping" during the 1928 elections. It was the disproportionately large representation of Jews in the communist leadership that led to the Żydokomuna myth being widely used in the propaganda of the Endeks.
Invasion of Poland and the Soviet occupation zone
Following the 1939 Soviet invasion of PolandSoviet invasion of Poland (1939)
The 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland was a Soviet military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939, during the early stages of World War II. Sixteen days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviet Union did so from the east...
, resulting in the partition of Polish territory between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR), Jewish communities in eastern Poland
Kresy
The Polish term Kresy refers to a land considered by Poles as historical eastern provinces of their country. Today, it makes western Ukraine, western Belarus, as well as eastern Lithuania, with such major cities, as Lviv, Vilnius, and Hrodna. This territory belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian...
welcomed with some relief the Soviet occupation, which they saw as a "lesser of two evils" from openly antisemitic Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. The image of Jews among the Belorussian and Ukrainian minorities waving red flags to welcome Soviet troops
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
had great symbolic meaning in Polish memory of the period. Young Jews joined or organized communist militias, others organized a new, communist, temporary self-government. Such militias often disarmed and arrested Polish soldiers, policemen and other authority figures; often, Poles and the Polish states were mocked. In the days and weeks following the events of September 1939, the Soviets engaged in a harsh policy of Sovietization
Sovietization
Sovietization is term that may be used with two distinct meanings:*the adoption of a political system based on the model of soviets .*the adoption of a way of life and mentality modelled after the Soviet Union....
. Polish schools and other institutions were closed, Poles were dismissed from jobs of authority, often arrested and deported, and replaced with non-Polish personnel. Before the war, Poles had a privileged position. In the space of a few days, this changed. Jews and other minorities from within Poland occupied positions in the Soviet occupation government—such as teachers, civil servants and engineers—that they had trouble achieving under the Polish government. What to majority of Poles was occupation and betrayal, to some Jews, especially to Polish communists of Jewish descent, who emerged from the underground, was an opportunity for revolution and retribution. There were even some extreme cases of Jewish participation in massacres of ethnic Poles such as Massacre of Brzostowica Mała. This strengthened the myth of Żydokomuna, which would hold Jews responsible for the introduction of communism in Poland. Such behavior affronted non-Jewish Poles, who likely exaggerated Jewish participation in the Soviet occupation because a Jewish presence in the government apparatus was a novel phenomenon in pre-war Poland.
Such events implanted in the Polish collective memory the image of Jewish crowds greeting the invading Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
as liberators, and willing collaborators, further strengthening the antisemitic żydokomuna myth. "The relations between the Poles and the Jews are at present markedly worse than before the war" - noted a Polish observer in Stryj
Stryj
Stryj may refer to:*Stryj, Lublin Voivodeship *Stryi, Ukraine - Stryj in Polish...
in June 1940. Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson
Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson is a British historian. His specialty is financial and economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, as well as the history of colonialism.....
wrote: "The entire Polish population adopted a negative attitude towards the Jews because of their blatant cooperation with the Bolsheviks and their hostility against non-Jews...the people simply hate the Jews.".
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, belief in the Żydokomuna stereotype, combined with the German Nazi encouragement for expression of anti-Semitic attitudes, was a principal cause of massacres of Jews by gentile Poles in Poland's northeastern Łomża province in the summer of 1941, including the massacre at Jedwabne
Jedwabne pogrom
The Jedwabne pogrom of July 1941 during German occupation of Poland, was a massacre of at least 340 Polish Jews of all ages. These are the official findings of the Institute of National Remembrance, "confirmed by the number of victims in the two graves, according to the estimate of the...
.
Though some Jews had initially benefited from the effects of the Soviet invasion, this occupation soon began to strike at the Jewish population as well; independent Jewish organizations were abolished and Jewish activists were arrested. Hundreds of thousands of Jews who had fled to the Soviet sector were given a choice of Soviet citizenship or returning to the German occupied zone. The majority chose the latter, and instead found themselves deported to the Soviet Union, where ironically, 300,000 would escape the Holocaust. While there was Polish Jewish representation in the London-based Polish government in exile
Polish government in Exile
The Polish government-in-exile, formally known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile , was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which...
, relations between the Jews in Poland and Polish resistance in occupied Poland were strained, and Jewish armed groups had difficulty joining the official Polish resistance umbrella organization, the Armia Krajowa
Armia Krajowa
The Armia Krajowa , or Home Army, was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...
(AK). Some Jewish groups (such as the Bielski partisans
Bielski partisans
The Bielski partisans were an organisation of Jewish partisans who rescued Jews from extermination and fought against the Nazi German occupiers and their collaborators in the vicinity of Nowogródek and Lida in German-occupied Poland...
) were forced to rob local Polish peasants for food; in turn, the Polish underground often labeled those armed Jewish groups fighting for survival in the forests as "bandits" and "robbers." Jewish partisans instead more often joined the Armia Ludowa
Armia Ludowa
Armia Ludowa was a communist partisan force set up by the Polish Workers' Party during World War II. Its aims were to support the military of the Soviet Union against German forces and aid the creation of a pro-Soviet communist government in Poland...
of the communist Polish Workers' Party
Polish Workers' Party
The Polish Workers' Party was a communist party in Poland from 1942 to 1948. It was founded as a reconstitution of the Communist Party of Poland, and merged with the Polish Socialist Party in 1948 to form the Polish United Workers' Party.-History:...
and Soviet guerrilla groups
Soviet partisans
The Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....
, which increasingly clashed with Polish guerillas
Soviet partisans in Poland
Poland was annexed and partitioned by Germany and the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the invasion of Poland in 1939. In the pre-war Polish territories annexed by the Soviets the first Soviet partisan groups were formed in 1941, soon after Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet...
; contributing to yet another perception of Jews working with the Soviets against the Poles.
Communist takeover of Poland in the aftermath of World War II
The Soviet-backed communist government was as harsh towards non-communist Jewish cultural, political and social institutions as they were towards Polish, banning all alternative parties. Thousands of Jews returned from exile in the Soviet Union, but as their number decreased with legalized aliyahAliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
to Israel, the PZPR members formed a much larger percentage of the remaining Jewish population. Among them were a number of Jewish communists who played a highly visible role in the unpopular communist government and its security apparatus. Hilary Minc
Hilary Minc
Hilary Minc – born into a middle-class Jewish family of Oskar Minc and Stefania née Fajersztajn – was a communist politician in Stalinist Poland and pro-Soviet Marxist economist. Minc joined the Communist Party of Poland before World War II...
, the third in command in Bolesław Bierut's political triumvirate of Stalinist leaders, became the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Industry, Industry and Commerce, and the Economic Affairs. He was personally assigned by Stalin first to Industry and than to Transportation ministries of Poland. His wife, Julia, became the Editor-in-Chief of the monopolized Polish Press Agency. Minister Jakub Berman
Jakub Berman
Jakub Berman was born into a middle-class Jewish family. Berman first became a prominent communist in prewar Poland. Toward the end of World War II he joined the Politburo of the Soviet-formed Polish United Workers' Party...
– Stalin's right hand in Poland until 1953 – held the Political propaganda and Ideology portfolios. He was responsible for the largest and most notorious secret police in the history of the People's Republic of Poland, the Ministry of Public Security
Ministry of Public Security of Poland
The Ministry of Public Security of Poland was a Polish communist secret police, intelligence and counter-espionage service operating from 1945 to 1954 under Jakub Berman of the Politburo...
(UB) employing 33,200 permanent security officers, one for every 800 Polish citizens. The new government's hostility to the wartime Polish Government in Exile
Polish government in Exile
The Polish government-in-exile, formally known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile , was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which...
and its WWII underground resistance – accused by the media of being nationalist, reactionary and antisemitic, and persecuted by Berman – further strengthened the myth of Żydokomuna, to the point where in the popular consciousness Jewish Bolshevism was seen as having conquered Poland. It was in this context, reinforced by the immediate post-war lawlessness, that Poland experienced an unprecedented wave of anti-Jewish violence
Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944-1946
Anti-Jewish Violence In Poland, 1944–1946 refers to a series of violent incidents that immediately followed the end of the Second World War in Poland and influenced postwar history of Jews as well as Polish Jewish relations. The exact number of Jewish victims is a subject of debate, but the range...
(of which most notable was the Kielce pogrom
Kielce pogrom
The Kielce pogrom was an outbreak of violence against the Jewish community in the city of Kielce, Poland on July 4, 1946, perpetrated by a mob of local townsfolk and members of the official government forces of the People's Republic of Poland...
).
The Polish-American historian Marek Jan Chodakiewicz
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz is a Polish-American historian specializing in East Central European history of the 19th and 20th century. His historical works include: After the Holocaust: Polish-Jewish Relations in the Wake of World War II, and Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland...
stressed that after the Soviet takeover of Poland in 1945 violence had developed amid postwar retribution and counter-retribution, exacerbated by the breakdown of law and order and a Polish anti-Communist insurgency
Cursed soldiers
The cursed soldiers is a name applied to a variety of Polish resistance movements formed in the later stages of World War II and afterwards. Created by some members of the Polish Secret State, these clandestine organizations continued their armed struggle against the Stalinist government of Poland...
. According to Chodakiewicz, some Jewish "avengers" endeavored to extract justice from the Poles who harmed Jews during the War and in some cases Jews attempted to reclaim property confiscated by the Nazis. These phenomena further reinforced the stereotype of Żydokomuna, a Jewish-Communist conspiracy in post-war Poland. Chodakiewicz noted that after World War Two, the Jews were not only victims, but also aggressors. He describes cases in which Jews cooperated with the Polish secret police, denouncing Poles and members of the Home Army. Chodakiewicz noted that some 3,500 to 6,500 Poles died in late 1940s because of Jewish denunciations or were killed by Jews themselves.
Regarding this period, Andre Gerrits wrote in his study of the myth of Jewish communism, that even though for the first time in history they had entered the top echelons of power in considerable numbers: "The first post-war decade was a mixed experience for the Jews of East Central Europe. The new communist order offered unprecedented opportunities as well as unforeseen dangers."
The combination of the effects of the Holocaust and postwar antisemitism led to a dramatic mass emigration of Polish Jewry in the immediate postwar years. Of the estimated 240,000 Jews in Poland in 1946 (of whom 136,000 were refugees from the Soviet Union, most on their way to the West), only 90,000 remained a year later. The surviving Jews of Poland found themselves victims of the explosive postwar political situation. The image of the Jew as a threatening outsider took on a new form as antisemitism was now linked to the imposition of communist rule in Poland, including rumors of massive collaboration of Jews with the unpopular new regime and the Soviet Union. Of the fewer than 80,000 Jews who remained in Poland, many had political reasons for doing so. Consequently – as noted by historian Michael C. Steinlauf – "their group profile ever more closely resembled the mythic Żydokomuna."
Encouraged by their Soviet advisors, many Jewish functionaries and government officials adopted new Polish-sounding names hoping to find less acrimony among their adversaries. "This practice often backfired and led to widespread speculation about 'hidden Jews' for decades to come."
Stalinist violations of human rights law
During StalinismStalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
, the preferred Soviet policy was to keep sensitive posts in the hands of non-Poles. As a result "all or nearly all of the directors (of the widely despised Ministry of Public Security of Poland
Ministry of Public Security of Poland
The Ministry of Public Security of Poland was a Polish communist secret police, intelligence and counter-espionage service operating from 1945 to 1954 under Jakub Berman of the Politburo...
) were Jewish" as noted by Polish journalist Teresa Torańska
Teresa Toranska
Teresa Torańska is a Polish journalist. She is perhaps best known for her award winning book, Oni .-Biography:Teresa Torańska was born on January 1, 1944 in Wołkowysk, Belarus, which was then part of the occupied Second Polish Republic. She graduated from the Warsaw University's Department of Law...
among others. A recent study by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation. It specialises in the legal and historical sciences and...
showed that out of 450 people in director positions in the Ministry
Ministry of Public Security of Poland
The Ministry of Public Security of Poland was a Polish communist secret police, intelligence and counter-espionage service operating from 1945 to 1954 under Jakub Berman of the Politburo...
between 1944 and 1954, 167 (37.1%) were of Jewish ethnicity, while Jews made up only 1% of the post-war Polish population.
Among the notable Jewish officials of the Polish secret police and security services were Minister Jakub Berman
Jakub Berman
Jakub Berman was born into a middle-class Jewish family. Berman first became a prominent communist in prewar Poland. Toward the end of World War II he joined the Politburo of the Soviet-formed Polish United Workers' Party...
, Joseph Stalin's right hand in the PRL; Vice-minister Roman Romkowski
Roman Romkowski
General Roman Romkowski born Natan Grünspau [Grinszpan]-Kikiel, was a Polish-Jewish communist, second in command in Berman's Ministry of Public Security during the late 1940s and early 1950's. Along with several other high functionaries including Dir. Anatol Fejgin, Col. Józef Różański, Dir...
(head of MBP), Dir. Julia Brystiger
Julia Brystiger
Julia Brystiger was a Polish Communist activist and member of the security apparatus in Stalinist Poland...
(5th Dept.), Dir. Anatol Fejgin
Anatol Fejgin
Anatol Fejgin was a Polish-Jewish communist before World War II, and after 1949, commander of the Stalinist political police at the Ministry of Public Security of Poland, in charge of its notorious Special Bureau...
(10th Dept. or the notorious Special Bureau), deputy Dir. Józef Światło (10th Dept.), Col. Józef Różański
Józef Rózanski
Józef Różański was a communist in prewar Second Polish Republic, member of the Soviet NKVD and later, colonel of the Stalinist Ministry of Public Security of Poland. Born into a Jewish family in Warsaw, Różański became active in the Communist Party of Poland before World War II...
among others. Światło – "a torture master" – defected to the West in 1953, while Romkowski and Różański would find themselves among the Jewish scapegoats for Polish Stalinism in the political upheavals following Stalin's death, both sentenced to 15 years in prison on 11 November 1957 for gross violations of human rights law and abuse of power. While Jews were overrepresented in various Polish communist organizations, including the security apparatus, relative to their percentage of the general population, the vast majority of Jews did not participate in the Stalinist apparatus, and indeed most were not supportive of communism. Krzysztof Szwagrzyk has quoted Jan T. Gross
Jan T. Gross
Jan Tomasz Gross is a Polish-American historian and sociologist. He is the Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society and Professor of History at Princeton University.- Biography :Jan T...
, who argued that many Jews who worked for the communist party cut their ties with their culture – Jewish, Polish or Russian – and tried to represent the interests of international communism only, or at least that of the local communist government.
It is difficult to assess when the Polish Jews who had volunteered to serve or remain in the postwar communist security forces began to realize, however, what Soviet Jews had realized earlier, that under Stalin, as Arkady Vaksberg put it: "if someone named Rabinovich was in charge of a mass execution, he was perceived not simply as a Cheka boss but as a Jew..."
In 1956, over 9,000 socialist and populist politicians were released from prison. A few Jewish functionaries of the security forces were brought to court in the process of de-Stalinization. According to Heather Laskey, it was not a coincidence that the high ranking Stalinist security officers put on trial by Gomułka were Jews. Władysław Gomułka was captured by Światło, imprisoned by Romkowski
Roman Romkowski
General Roman Romkowski born Natan Grünspau [Grinszpan]-Kikiel, was a Polish-Jewish communist, second in command in Berman's Ministry of Public Security during the late 1940s and early 1950's. Along with several other high functionaries including Dir. Anatol Fejgin, Col. Józef Różański, Dir...
in 1951 and interrogated by both, him and Fejgin
Anatol Fejgin
Anatol Fejgin was a Polish-Jewish communist before World War II, and after 1949, commander of the Stalinist political police at the Ministry of Public Security of Poland, in charge of its notorious Special Bureau...
. Gomułka escaped physical torture only as a close associate of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, and was released three years later. According to Joanna Michlic, the categorization of the security forces as a Jewish institution – as disseminated in the post-war anti-communist press at various times – was biased and rooted in Żydokomuna while the belief that the secret police was predominantly Jewish became one of the factors contributing to the post-war stereotype of Jews as agents of the security forces.
The Żydokomuna myth and scapegoating of Jews reappeared at times of severe political and socioeconomic crises in Stalinist Poland. After the death of Polish United Workers' Party
Polish United Workers' Party
The Polish United Workers' Party was the Communist party which governed the People's Republic of Poland from 1948 to 1989. Ideologically it was based on the theories of Marxism-Leninism.- The Party's Program and Goals :...
leader Bolesław Bierut in 1956, a de-Stalinization
Polish October
Polish October, also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the Polish internal political scene in the second half of 1956...
and a subsequent battle among rival factions looked to lay blame for the excesses of the Stalin era. According to L.W. Gluchowski: "Poland’s communists had grown accustomed to placing the burden of their own failures to gain sufficient legitimacy among the Polish population during the entire communist period on the shoulders of Jews in the party." (See: above.) As described in one historical account, the party hardline Natolin faction "used anti-Semitism as a political weapon and found an echo both in the party apparatus
Apparatus
Apparatus may refer to:*Technical term for body of the Soviet and post-Soviet governments *Machine*Equipment*Critical apparatus, the critical and primary source material that accompanies an edition of a text-See also:*Fire apparatus...
and in society at large, where traditional stereotypes of an insidious Jewish cobweb of political influence and economic gain resurfaced, but now in the context of 'Judeo-communism,' the Żydokomuna." "Natolin" leader Zenon Nowak
Zenon Nowak
Zenon Nowak was a Communist activist and politician in the People's Republic of Poland. One of the members of the pro-Soviet Natolin faction of the PZPR Central Committee during the Polish October of 1956.-References:...
entered the concept of "Judeo-Stalinization" and placed the blame for the party's failures, errors and repression on "the Jewish apparatchik
Apparatchik
Apparatchik is a Russian colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party or government; i.e., an agent of the governmental or party "apparat" that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management...
s." Documents from this period chronicle antisemitic attitudes within Polish society, including beatings of Jews, loss of employment, and persecution. These outbursts of antisemitic sentiment from both Polish society and within the rank and file of the ruling party spurred the exodus of some 40,000 Polish Jews between 1956 and 1958.
1968 expulsions
The stereotype of Żydokomuna was reignited by Polish state propaganda as part of the 1968 Polish political crisis. Political turmoil of the late 1960s – exemplified in the West by increasingly violent protests against the Vietnam warVietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
– was closely associated in Poland with the events of the Prague spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
which began on 5 January 1968, raising hopes of democratic reforms among the intelligentsia. The crisis culminated in the Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
invasion of Czechoslovakia on 20 August 1968. The repressive government of Władysław Gomułka responded to student protests and strike actions across Poland (Warsaw, Kraków) with mass arrests, and by launching an anti-Zionist campaign within the communist party on the initiative of Interior Minister Mieczysław Moczar (aka Mikołaj Diomko, known for his xenophobic and antisemitic attitude). The officials of Jewish descent were blamed "for a major part, if not all, of the crimes and horrors of the Stalinist period."
The campaign, which began in 1967, was a well-guided response to the Six Day War and the subsequent break-off by the Soviets of all diplomatic relations with Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. Polish factory workers were forced to publicly denounce Zionism. As the interior minister Mieczysław Moczar's nationalist "Partisan" faction became increasingly influential in the communist party, infighting within the Polish communist party led one faction to again make scapegoats of the remaining Polish Jews, attempting to redirect public anger at them. After Israel's victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
, the Polish government, following the Soviet lead, launched an antisemitic campaign under the guise of "anti-Zionism," with both Moczar's and Party Secretary Władysław Gomułka's factions playing leading roles. However, the campaign did not resonate with the general public, because most Poles saw similarities between Israel's fight for survival and Poland's past struggles for independence. Many Poles felt pride in the success of the Israeli military, which was dominated by Polish Jews. The slogan, "Our Jews beat the Soviet Arabs" was very popular among the Poles, but contrary to the desire of the communist government.
The government's antisemitic policy yielded more successes the next year. In March 1968, a wave of unrest among students and intellectuals, unrelated to the Arab-Israeli War, swept Poland (the events became known as the March 1968 events). The campaign served multiple purposes, most notably the suppression of protests, which were branded as inspired by a "fifth column" of Zionists; it was also used as a tactic in a political struggle between Gomułka and Moczar, both of whom played the Jewish card in a nationalist appeal. The campaign resulted in an actual expulsion from Poland in two years, of thousands of Jewish professionals, party officials and state security functionaries. Ironically, the Moczar's faction failed to topple Gomułka with their propaganda efforts.
As historian Dariusz Stola notes, the anti-Jewish campaign combined century-old conspiracy theories, recycled antisemitic claims and classic communist propaganda. Regarding the tailoring of the Żydokomuna myth to communist Poland, Stola writes:
Paradoxically, probably the most powerful slogan of the communist propaganda in March was the accusation that the Jews were zealous communists. They were blamed for a major part, if not all, of the crimes and horrors of the Stalinist period. The myth of Judeo-bolshevism had been well known in Poland since the Russian revolution and the Polish-Bolshevik war of 1920, yet its 1968 model deserves interest as a tool of communist propaganda. This accusation exploited and developed the popular stereotype of Jewish communism to purify communism: the Jews were the dark side of communism; what was wrong in communism was due to them.
The communist elites used the "Jews as Zionists" myth for a purge of Jews from scientific and cultural institutions, publishing houses, and national television and radio stations. Ultimately, the communist government sponsored an anti-Semitic campaign which resulted in most remaining Jews being forced to leave Poland. Moczar's "Partisan" faction promulgated an ideology that has been described as an "eerie reincarnation" of the views of the pre-World War II National Democracy Party, and even at times exploiting the antisemitic Żydokomuna myth.
Stola also notes that one of the effects of the 1968 antisemitic campaign was to thoroughly discredit the communist government in the eyes of the public. As a result, when the concept of the Jew as a "threatening other" was employed in the 1970s and 1980s in Poland by the communist government in its attacks on the political opposition, including the Solidarity trade-union movement and the Workers' Defence Committee
Workers' Defence Committee
The Workers’ Defense Committee was a Polish civil society group that emerged under communist rule to give aid to prisoners & their families after the June 1976 protests & government crackdown...
(Komitet Obrony Robotników, or KOR), it was completely unsuccessful.
1989–present
Post-communist Poland experienced what has been described as a sudden, intense and widespread outburst of anti-Jewish mood, including allegations that Jews were to blame for Poland's "decline" during the communist years, and Jew-baiting of political opponents during election campaigns. More recent efforts have emerged from a wide range of sources in the Polish community to challenge these conceptions of Jews and to foster a pluralistic society in Poland.The expression Żydokomuna is now used almost exclusively by fringe nationalists, usually in reference to former communist party members and to "liberals" who have supported capitalist reforms, globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
and European integration
European integration
European integration is the process of industrial, political, legal, economic integration of states wholly or partially in Europe...
. Organizations attacked as "Żydokomuna" have included the SLD
Democratic Left Alliance
Democratic Left Alliance is a social-democratic political party in Poland. Formed in 1991 as a coalition of centre-left parties, it was formally established as a single party on 15 April 1999. It is currently the third largest opposition party in Poland....
and UW
Freedom Union (Poland)
The Freedom Union was a liberal democratic party in Poland. It was founded on March 20, 1994 out of the merger of the Democratic Union and the Liberal Democratic Congress . Both of these parties had roots in the Solidarity trade union movement. It represented European democratic and liberal...
political parties
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
, and Gazeta Wyborcza
Gazeta Wyborcza
Gazeta Wyborcza is a leading Polish newspaper. It covers the gamut of political, international and general news. Like all the Polish newspapers, it is printed on compact-sized paper, and is published by the multimedia corporation Agora SA...
, whose editor-in-chief, Adam Michnik
Adam Michnik
Adam Michnik is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, where he sometimes writes under the pen-names of Andrzej Zagozda or Andrzej Jagodziński. In 1966–1989 he was one of the leading organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland...
, is of Jewish origin.
Historian Omer Bartov
Omer Bartov
Omer Bartov is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and Professor of History and Professor of German Studies at Brown University....
has written that "recent writings and pronouncements seem to indicate that the myth of the Żydokomuna (Jews as communists) has not gone away" as evidenced by the writings of younger Polish scholars such as Marek Chodakiewicz, contending Jewish disloyalty to Poland during the Soviet occupation
Soviet invasion of Poland
Soviet invasion of Poland can refer to:* the second phase of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 when Soviet armies marched on Warsaw, Poland* Soviet invasion of Poland of 1939 when Soviet Union allied with Nazi Germany attacked Second Polish Republic...
.
On July 11, 2009, several hundred Polish neo-Nazi sympathizers marched on the streets of Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, shouting out slogans such as "National-Socialism", "Down with Jewish chauvinism" and "Down with the Jewish occupation".
Historiography
HistoriographyHistoriography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
of Żydokomuna remains controversial. Works such as those by Jan T. Gross
Jan T. Gross
Jan Tomasz Gross is a Polish-American historian and sociologist. He is the Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society and Professor of History at Princeton University.- Biography :Jan T...
have polarized debate over anti-Jewish violence in Poland, Gross and his supporters characterizing Żydokomuna as an antisemitic cliché while to some of his critics Żydokomuna was a fact of history.
Historians Joanna B. Michlic
Joanna B. Michlic
Joanna B. Michlic was a professor of Polish-Jewish history at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.-Selected works:*Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present, 2006, ISBN 0803232403...
and Laurence Weinbaum charge that post-1989 Polish historiography has seen a revival of "an ethnonationalist historical approach". According to Michlic, among some Polish historians, "[myth of żydokomuna] served the purpose of rationalizing and explaining the participation of ethnic Poles in killing their Jewish neighbors and, thus, in minimizing the criminal nature of the murder."
See also
- History of the Jews in PolandHistory of the Jews in PolandThe history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the...
- History of the Jews in Russia: Jews in the revolutionary movement