Kielce pogrom

Kielce pogrom refers to the events on July 4, 1946, in the Polish town of Kielce, when forty Polish Jews were massacred and eighty wounded out of about two hundred Holocaust survivors who returned home after World War II. Among victims were also two Gentile Poles. While far from the deadliest pogrom against the Jews, the pogrom was especially significant in post-war Jewish history, as the attack took place 14 months after the end of World War II, well after the Nazis were defeated.

The pogrom

During World War II, Kielce was entirely ethnically cleansed of its Jewish population. By the summer of 1946, some 200 Jews, mostly former residents, returned home from the death camps and from their hiding places. Most of them lived in a single building.

The referendum in 1946 showed that the Communist plans met with little support, with less than a third of the Polish population. Only vote rigging won them a majority in the carefully controlled poll.

It has been alleged that the Soviet-dominated Urząd Bezpieczeństwa organized the pogrom to distract the western media's attention from the fabricated referendum.

On July 4, 1946, an anti-Semitic blood libel resulted in disruption outside Jewish residences, and police entered their buildings and began shooting Jews and looting their homes. The Jews who fled were attacked by mobs on the street. Two Poles were killed as Jews tried to defend themselves.

The aftermath

The brutality of the Kielce pogrom put an end to the hopes of many Jews that they would be able to resettle in Poland after the end of the Nazi regime. In the words of Bożena Szaynok, a historian at Wrocław University:

File:Kielcepogrom.jpg

Jewish survivors awaiting transportation to the British Mandate of Palestine

Until July 4, 1946, Polish Jews cited the past as their main reason for emigration...After the Kielce pogrom, the situation changed drastically. Both Jewish and Polish reports spoke of an atmosphere of panic among Jewish society in the summer of 1946. Jews no longer believed that they could be safe in Poland. Despite the large militia and army presence in the town of Kielce, Jews had been murdered there in cold blood, in public, and for a period of more than five hours. The news that the militia and the army had taken part in the pogrom spread as well. From July 1945 until June 1946, about fifty thousand Jews passed the Polish border illegally. In July 1946, almost twenty thousand decided to leave Poland. In August 1946 the number increased to thirty thousand. In September 1946, twelve thousand Jews left Poland.

Many of these Jews were smuggled out illegally by the Berihah organization.

The official reaction to the pogrom was described by Anita J. Prazmowska in Cold War History, Vol. 2, No. 2:

Nine participants in the pogrom were sentenced to death; three were given lengthy prison sentences. Policemen, military men, and functionaries of the UBP were tried separately and then unexpectedly all, with the exception of Wiktor Kuznicki, Commander of the MO, who was sentenced to one year in prison, were found not guilty of "having taken no action to stop the crowd from committing crimes." Clearly, during the period when the first investigations were launched and the trial, a most likely politically motivated decision had been made not to proceed with disciplinary action. This was in spite of very disturbing evidence that emerged during the pre-trial interviews. It is entirely feasible that instructions not to punish the MO and UBP commanders had been given because of the politically sensitive nature of the evidence. Evidence heard by the military prosecutor revealed major organizational and ideological weaknesses within these two security services..

On September 14, 1946, Pope Pius XII gave audience to Rabbi Phillip Bernstein who had replaced Judge Simon Rifkind as the advisor on Jewish affairs to the U.S. European theater of operations. Bernstein asked the pope to condemn the pogroms, but the pope claimed that it was difficult to communicate with the Church in Poland because of the Iron Curtain.

Modern research and reconciliation

The Kielce pogrom has been a difficult subject in Polish history for many years, and there is still confusion over blame. Allegations have been made that this was part of a much wider action organized by the KGB in countries controlled by the Soviet Union, and that Soviet-dominated agencies like the Urząd Bezpieczeństwa were used in the preparation of the Kielce pogrom. But this may also sound dubious since Soviet Union's policies were not anti-Semitic until the campaign against "rootless cosmopolitanism" started after 1948. In recent years, the Kielce pogrom and the role of the Poles in the massacre are more openly discussed in Poland.

References

Inline:

General:

1. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (2003). After the Holocaust. East European Monographs. ISBN 0880335114. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
2. Jan Śledzianowski (1998). Pytania nad pogromem kieleckim. Kielce: Jedność. p. 218. ISBN 8372240574. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)

External links

• The Jewish Pogrom in Kielce, July 1946 - New Evidence by Bozena Szaynok
• Kielce pogrom at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• The Pogrom in Kielce (with maps)
• The Truth about Kielce by Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, blames the Soviets for the pogrom