(JTA) — Writing a comprehensive history of Polish citizens during the Holocaust is a hefty task. A Polish law that criminalizes any mention of Polish responsibility for or complicity in Nazi crimes makes it even harder.
That makes the groundbreaking research conducted by acclaimed Holocaust historian Jan Grabowski for his new book, “On Duty: The Polish Blue & Criminal Police in the Holocaust” all the more remarkable.
Relying on meticulous documentation, the book argues that Polish institutions were more than willing to assist the Nazis in their extermination campaign, and often led the way through their own initiatives. Grabowski, a professor at the University of Ottawa, spent more than 10 years conducting the research, including years in Poland going through Polish archives, private diaries and records from more than 100 small towns where Jews lived in high concentrations.
“I read horrifying things in the diaries of Polish policemen describing how many Jews they killed each day,” said Grabowski, 61. “There were anecdotes about a cop asking for a glass of vodka before shooting a Jew, or using hot water to clean the blood off their hands. They killed friends and schoolmates without remorse, even in places where no Germans ever came to check up on them.”
Much of the evidence Grabowski uncovered had never been seen before.
“It’s not easy to write a book like this when you have opposition from massive Polish organizations with teams of PhDs whose job is to go after people like myself,” said Grabowski, who began his research for the book before Poland passed the controversial 2018 Act on the Institute of National Remembrance. “But thorough and independent historical research is necessary to make sure that a nation can’t rewrite its history into a happy story of righteous Poles saving Jews.”
In particular, the book focuses on the actions of Poland’s Blue Police, officially known as the Polish Police of the Generalgouvernement, established shortly after the German occupation of Poland in 1939 and consisting mainly of prewar Polish police officers.
“We are talking about a police force of 20,000 people that previously was in charge of enforcing mundane civilian laws like making sure that horses walking on the street had horseshoes,” Grabowski said. “What fascinates me is how quickly these normal ordinary cops were transformed into ruthless killers.”
Grabowski’s 496-page book is now available on Yad Vashem’s website.
Grabowski has written numerous books and articles focusing on the Holocaust in Poland. His book “Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland” won the Yad Vashem International Book Prize in 2013.
On the eve of World War II, Poland’s 3.3 million Jews formed a vibrant and diverse society, noted Havi Dreifuss, director of the Center for Research on the Holocaust in Poland at Yad Vashem and professor of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University.
“Many were engaged in Jewish and Polish causes or active in political movements such as the Bund, Zionist, and Orthodox groups. While most lived in cities, these were often small, alongside villages that reflected the richness of Polish Jewish life.”
This last point is a critical issue for Holocaust scholarship, Dreifuss said.
“Research often focuses on large ghettos like Warsaw and Lodz, each housing hundreds of thousands of Jews. But over 340 ghettos existed in the Generalgouvernement, 83% of them with fewer than 5,000 Jews,” she said. “These smaller ghettos, representing the majority of Polish Jewish communities, remain understudied, despite their significant role in understanding Polish Jewry during the Holocaust.”
Stages of progression
Chronologically, Polish persecution of the Jews progressed in three stages, according to Grabowski.
After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the Third Reich entrusted Polish police forces to introduce and enforce new restrictions on the Jews.
“The first phase was the beginning of the inhuman ghettoization of the Jews,” Grabowski said. “The Germans created laws designed to break down the Jews, limiting where they could go and what they could do or own. Yet until now, virtually no historians have examined how the large Polish police force suddenly became so deeply involved with Jewish affairs, effectively condemning them to starvation.”
By 1941, Polish forces began working on the second phase, liquidating hundreds of ghettos. As trainloads of Jews were sent to concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka in 1942 and 1943, Polish police participated in the Nazi evacuations of these ghettos, rounding Jews up, killing anyone who resisted and sometimes even conducting the evacuations themselves.
“It is important to understand that it wasn’t the Germans coercing the Poles to shoot; it was the Polish execution squads making these decisions themselves,” Grabowski said. “In November 1941, Polish police were shooting Jews on a regular basis, much earlier than in Nazi-occupied countries in Western Europe.”
Perhaps the Poles were just acting to avoid facing punishment from the Nazis?
“The interesting thing is that there is no record of any penalty given to someone who refused to kill a Jew, except maybe some sneers by your colleagues,” Grabowski said. “If you didn’t want to do it, there was always someone else who would be happy to.”
After the ghettos were liquidated, Polish forces continued their killing sprees through the third phase, searching throughout the country for Jews who may have escaped, according to Grabowski.
“At this point, they are murdering with gusto, without any German involvement,” according to Grabowski. “They are working with locals, with their neighbors, and they don’t even inform the Germans about what they are doing.”
As the Holocaust progressed, Polish police acted on their own to kill Jews without coordinating with Germany, Grabowski said.
“They knew that if they reported their activities to the Nazis they would have been forced to share the money and property they stole,” he said. “They might also incriminate their neighbors who were actively sheltering Jews. And they didn’t want that.”
Poland’s Foreign Ministry declined to respond to the claims in Grabowski’s books, saying, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not comment on the scientific activities of individual people, considering scientific sphere and activity exempt from political assessment.”
While writing “On Duty,” Grabowski faced a powerful barrage of opposition from the Polish government and was slapped with a number of lawsuits, two of which are still pending.
“It has not been good for my psychological well-being,” Grabowski said. “When you study for a PhD, no one trains you in how to handle attacks from the state for slandering the good name of the nation.”
But exposing the truth is exactly why Grabowski believes his work is important.
“The Holocaust has become a universal benchmark of evil, but even after decades of Holocaust education, you have governments bending history out of shape to conform with their own needs,” he said. “This is a very dangerous precedent, and we have a responsibility to prevent it to preserve our future.”
This article is sponsored by and produced in collaboration with Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. This story was produced by JTA’s native content team.