During theGerman occupation of Poland, citizens of all its major ethnic groupscollaborated with theGermans. Estimates of the number of collaborators vary. Collaboration in Poland was less institutionalized than in some other countries[1] and has been described as marginal,[2] a point of pride with the Polish people.[3] During and after the war, thePolish government in exile (a member of theAllied coalition that foughtNazi Germany) and thePolish resistance movement punished collaborators and sentenced thousands of them to death.
Following theGerman occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939,Hitler sought to establishPoland as aclient state, proposing amultilateral territorial exchange and an extension of theGerman–Polish non-aggression pact. ThePolish government, fearing subjugation toNazi Germany, instead chose to form analliance with Britain (and later withFrance). In response, Germany withdrew from the non-aggression pact and shortly beforeinvading Poland, signed theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact with theSoviet Union, safeguarding Germany against Soviet retaliation if it invaded Poland, and prospectively dividing Poland between the twototalitarian powers.
On 1 September 1939Germany invaded Poland. TheGerman army overran Polish defenses while inflicting heavy civilian losses, and by 13 September had conquered most of western Poland. On 17 September theSoviet Union invaded the country from the east, conquering most ofeastern Poland, along with theBaltic states and parts ofFinland in 1940. Some 140,000 Polish soldiers and airmen escaped toRomania andHungary, and later many soon joining thePolish Armed Forces in France. Poland's government crossed the border into Romania, and later formed agovernment-in-exile in France and then inLondon, following the French capitulation. Poland as apolity neversurrendered to the Germans.[4]
Nazi authorities annexed the westernmost parts of Poland and the formerFree City of Danzig, incorporating it directly into Nazi Germany, and placed the remaining German-occupied territory under the administration of the newly formedGeneral Government. The Soviet Union annexed the rest of Poland, incorporating its territories into theBelarusian andUkrainianSoviet republics.[5] Germany's primary aim in Eastern Europe was to expand Germany'sLebensraum, in the name of whichelimination or deportation of all non-Germanic ethnicities, includingPoles in the areas controlled by theGeneral Government was to make them "free" of Poles within 15–20 years.[6] This resulted in harsh policies which targeted the Polish population, in addition toNazi Germany's explicit goal ofexterminating Polish Jews, which was carried out in the occupied Polish territories.
Estimates of the number of individual Polish collaborators vary according to the definition of "collaboration".[7] According to Klaus-Peter Friedrich estimates range from as few as 7,000 to as many as several hundred thousand (including Polish officials employed by the German authorities;Blue Police officers, who were required to serve; compulsory "labor service" workers; members ofPoland's German minority; and even Poland's peasantry, which on the one hand was subject to food requisitions by the Germans, and on the other collaborated and benefited financially from the wartime economy and the removal of Jews from the Polish economy for much of the war.[8][9] Post-war communist Polish propaganda painted the entire non-communist Polish resistance, in particular theHome Army, as "Nazi collaborators".[10]
Czesław Madajczyk estimates that 5% of the population in the General Government actively collaborated, which he contrasts with the 25% who actively resisted the occupation.[11] HistorianJohn Connelly writes that "only a relatively small percentage of the Polish population engaged in activities that may be described as collaboration, when seen against the backdrop of European and world history." However, he criticizes the same population for its indifference to the Jewish plight, a phenomenon he terms "structural collaboration" (see morebelow).[7]
Unlike the situation in most German-occupied European countries where the Germans successfully installed collaborationist governments, inoccupied Poland there was no puppet government.[8][12][13][14] The Germans had initially considered the creation of a collaborationist Polishcabinet to administer, as a protectorate, the occupied Polish territories that had not been annexed outright into theThird Reich.[13][15][16] At the beginning ofthe war German officials contacted several Polish leaders with proposals for collaboration, but they all refused.[17][18] Among those who rejected the German offers wereWincenty Witos, peasant party leader and former Prime Minister;[19][13][20] PrinceJanusz Radziwiłł; andStanisław Estreicher, prominent scholar from theJagiellonian University.[21][22][23][24]
In 1940, during theGerman invasion of France, the French government suggested that Polish politicians in France negotiate an accommodation with Germany; and in Paris the prominent journalistStanislaw Mackiewicz tried to get Polish PresidentWladyslaw Raczkiewicz to negotiate with the Germans, as the French defenses were collapsing and German victory seemed inevitable. Three days later the Polish Government and Polish National Council rejected discussing capitulation and declared they would fight on until full victory over Nazi Germany. A group of eight low-ranking Polish politicians and officers broke with the Polish Government and inLisbon, Portugal, addressed a memorandum to Germany, asking for discussions about restoring a Polish state under German occupation, which was rejected by the Germans. According toCzeslaw Madajczyk, in view of the low profile of the Poles involved and of Berlin's rejection of the memorandum, no political collaboration can be said to have taken place.[25]
TheNazi racial policies and Germany's plans for the conquered Polish territories, on one hand, and Polish anti-German attitudes on the other, combined to prevent any Polish-German political collaboration.[17] The Nazis envisioned the eventual disappearance of the Polish nation, which was to be replaced by German settlers.[8][13][26] In April 1940Hitler banned any negotiations concerning any degree of autonomy for the Poles, and no further consideration was given to the idea.[13]
Shortly after the German occupation began, pro-German right-wing politicianAndrzej Świetlicki formed an organization - theNational Revolutionary Camp - and approached the Germans with various offers of collaboration, which they ignored. Świetlicki was arrested and executed in 1940.[27]Władysław Studnicki, another nationalist maverick politician and anti-communist publicist,[28] andLeon Kozłowski, a former Prime Minister, each favored Polish-German cooperation against theSoviet Union, but were both also rejected by the Germans.[27]
The main security forces in German-occupied Poland were some 550,000 soldiers and 80,000SS and police officials sent from Germany.[29]
In October 1939 the German authorities orderedmobilization of the prewarPolish police to serve under the GermanOrdnungspolizei, thus creating the auxiliary "Blue Police" that supplemented the principal German forces. The Polish policemen were to report for duty by 10 November 1939[30] or face death.[31] At its peak in May 1944, the Blue Police numbered some 17,000 men.[32] Their primary task was to act as a regularpolice force dealing with criminal activities, but the Germans also used them in combating smuggling and resistance, rounding up random civilians (łapanka) for forced labor or for execution in reprisal for Polish resistance activities (e.g., the Polish underground's execution of Polish traitors or egregiously brutal Germans), patrolling for Jewish ghetto escapees, and in support of military operations against thePolish resistance.[8][33]
The Germans also created aPolnische Kriminalpolizei.[citation needed]. The Polish criminal police team was trained at the Security Police School and the Security Service of theReichsführer SS (SD) inRabka-Zdrój. It's estimated that there were between 1,790 and 2,800 ethnic Poles in the Polish Kripo units.[34] The organization of the Polish Criminal Police was analogous to the organization of the German “Kriminalpolizei" and consisted of various police stations. Station 1 dealt with robberies, assaults, murders and sabotage; station 2 - with small thefts; station 3 - with burglary and house thieves; station 4 - moral crimes; station 5 - with internal service, search of Jews in hiding and other wanted persons; station 6 - with registration of wanted persons, station 7 - with forensic technique, and photographic laboratory.[35]
The German General Government tried to form additional Polish auxiliary police units—Schutzmannschaft Battalion 202 in 1942, andSchutzmannschaft Battalion 107 in 1943. Very few men volunteered, and the Germans decided on forced conscription to fill their ranks. Most of the conscripts subsequentlydeserted, and the two units were disbanded.[36]Schutzmannschaft Battalion 107 mutinied against its German officers, disarmed them, and joined theHome Army resistance.[37]
Some Poles also passed on the side of the Soviet partisans - likeMikołaj Kunicki, Kompanieführer in Schutzmannschaft 104. Poles also served inByelorussian Auxiliary Police[38] or inYpatingasis būrys[39] - due to the fact that part ofLithuania andBelarus was part of theSecond Polish Republic.
In 1944, in the General Government, Germany attempted to recruit 12,000 Polish volunteers to "join the fight against Bolshevism". The campaign failed; only 699 men were recruited, 209 of whom either deserted or were disqualified for health reasons.[40]
Following theGerman invasion of Poland in 1939, many former citizens of theSecond Polish Republic from across the Polish territories annexed by Nazi Germany were forcibly conscripted into theWehrmacht inUpper Silesia and inPomerania. They were declared citizens of theThird Reich by law and therefore subject to drumhead court-martial in case of draft evasion. Professor Ryszard Kaczmarek of theUniversity of Silesia in Katowice, author of a monograph,Polacy w Wehrmachcie (Poles in the Wehrmacht), noted that the scale of this phenomenon was much larger than previously assumed, because 90% of the inhabitants of these two westernmost regions of prewar Poland were ordered to register on the German People's List (Volksliste), regardless of their wishes. The exact number of these conscripts is not known; no data exists beyond 1943.[41]
In June 1946, the BritishSecretary of State for War reported to Parliament that, of the pre-war Polish citizens who had involuntarily signed theVolksliste and subsequently served in the GermanWehrmacht, 68,693 men were captured or surrendered to theAllies innorthwest Europe. The overwhelming majority, 53,630 subsequently enlisted in thePolish Army in the West and fought against Germany to the end of World War II.[42][41]
In May 1940, the Germans instituted aBaudienst ("construction service") in several districts of the General Government, as a form of compulsorynational service that combined hard labor withNazi indoctrination. Service was rewarded with pocket money, and in some places it was a prerequisite for occupational training. Starting in April 1942, evasion ofBaudienst service was punishable by death. By 1944,Baudienst strength had grown to some 45,000 servicemen.[43]
Baudienst servicemen were sometimes deployed in support ofaktions (roundup of Jews fordeportation or extermination), for example to blockade Jewish quarters or to search Jewish homes for hideaways and valuables. After such operations the servicemen were rewarded with vodka and cigarettes.[8] Disobedience while in "service" was punished with commitment to punitive camps.[44]
There were threeBaudienst branches:
In occupied Poland there was no Polish film industry.[45] However, a few formerPolish citizens collaborated with the Germans in making films such as the 1941anti-Polishpropaganda filmHeimkehr (Homecoming). In that film, casting for minor parts played by Polish actors was done byVolksdeutscher actor andGestapo agentIgo Sym, who during the filming, on 7 March 1941, was shot in hisWarsaw apartment by the PolishUnion of Armed Struggle resistance movement; after the war, the Polish performers were sentenced forcollaboration in an anti-Polish propaganda undertaking, with punishments ranging from official reprimand to imprisonment. Some Polish actors were coerced by the Germans into performing, as in the case ofBogusław Samborski, who played inHeimkehr probably in order to save his Jewish wife.[46]
During the occupation,feature-film showings were preceded bypropagandanewsreels ofDie Deutsche Wochenschau (The German Weekly Review). Some feature films likewise contained Nazi propaganda. The Polish underground discouraged Poles from attending movies, advising them, in the words of the rhymed couplet,"Tylko świnie siedzą w kinie" ("Only swine go to the movies").[47]
Following the Polish underground's execution ofIgo Sym, in reprisal the Germans took hostages and, on 11 March 1941, executed 21 at theirPalmiry killing grounds. They also arrested several actors and theater directors and sent them toAuschwitz, including such notable figures asStefan Jaracz andLeon Schiller.[48]
The largest theater for Polish audiences was Warsaw'sKomedia (Comedy). There were also a dozen small theaters. Polish actors were forbidden by the underground to perform in these theaters, but some did and were punished after the war. Many other actors supported themselves by working as waiters.Adolf Dymsza performed in legal cabarets and wasn't allowed to perform at Warsaw during a short period after the war.[49] A theater producer Zygmunt Ipohorski-Lenkiewicz was shot as a Gestapo agent.
The legal press in German-occupied Poland was a German propaganda tool, which Poles calledgadzinówka [pl] ("reptile press").[40] Many respected journalists refused to work for the Germans; and those writing for the German-controlled press were considered collaborators.[citation needed]
Jan Emil Skiwski, a writer and journalist of extremeNational Democrat andfascist orientation,collaborated withGermany, publishing pro-Nazi Polish newspapers inGerman-occupied Poland. Toward war's end, he escaped advancingSoviet armies, fled Europe, and spent the rest of his life under an assumed name inVenezuela.
The main armed resistance organization in Poland was theHome Army (Armia Krajowa, orAK), numbering some 400,000 members, including Jewish fighters.[50][51][52][53] The Home Army command rejected any talks with the German authorities,[51]: 88 but some Home Army units in eastern Poland did maintain contacts with the Germans in order to gain intelligence on German morale and preparedness and perhaps acquire needed weapons.[54] The Germans made several attempts at arming regionalHome Army units in order to encourage them to act againstSoviet partisans operating in theNowogródek andVilnius areas. Local Home Army units accepted arms but used them for their own purposes, disregarding the Germans' intents and even turning the weapons against the Germans.[55][56][51]Tadeusz Piotrowski concludes that "[these deals] were purely tactical, short-term arrangements"[51]: 88 and quotesJoseph Rothschild that "the Polish Home Army was by and large untainted by collaboration."[51]: 90
The Polish right-wingNational Armed Forces (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, orNSZ) – a nationalist, anti-communist organization,[57]: 137 [58]: 371 [59] widely perceived as anti-Semitic[60][61]: 147 [58]: 371 [62][63] – did not have a uniform policy regarding Jews.[51]: 96-97 Its attitude to them drew on anti-semitism and anti-communism, perceiving Jewish partisans and refugees as "pro-Soviet elements" and members of an ethnicity foreign to the Polish nation. Except in rare cases,[51]: 96 the NSZ did not admit Jews,[61]: 149 and on several occasions killed or deliveredJewish partisans to the German authorities[61]: 149 and murdered Jewish refugees.[60][61]: 141 [64] NSZ units also frequently skirmished with partisans of the Polish communistPeople's Army (Armia Ludowa).
At least two NSZ units operated with the acquiescence or cooperation of the Germans at different times.[61]: 149 In late 1944, in the face of advancing Soviet forces, theHoly Cross Mountains Brigade, numbering 800-1,500 fighters, decided to cooperate with the Germans.[65][66][67] It ceased hostilities against them, accepted their logistical help, and coordinated its retreat to theProtectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Once there, the unit resumed hostilities against the Germans and on 5 May 1945 liberated theHolýšov concentration camp.[68] Another NSZ unit known to collaborate with the Germans wasHubert Jura's unit, also known asTom's Organization, which operated in theRadom district.[69]
The Communist underground (PPR,GL) denounced Home Army operatives to the Nazis, resulting in 200 arrests. The Germans found a Communist printing shop as a result of one such denunciation byMarian Spychalski.[70][71]
HistorianMartin Winstone writes that only a minority of Poles took part either in persecuting or in helping Jews. He compares Poland with other occupied countries and asserts the largest part of society was indifferent. Regarding the purported low Polish resolve to save Jews, Winstone writes that this tendency may be partly explained by fear of execution by the Germans. He nevertheless notes that the Germans imposed death sentences for many other acts and quotes Michał Berg: "[Poles] were threatened with death not only for sheltering Jews, but for many other things... [but] they kept right on doing them. Why was it that only helping Jews scared them?" Winstone comments, "it may well be that the risk of hiding a Jew was greater, but that is in itself suggestive since the Germans were not the only danger"; he goes on to explain that Poles who had helped Jews were afraid of repercussions even after liberation.[72]
SociologistJan Gross writes that a leading role in the 1941Jedwabne pogrom was carried out by four Polish men, including Jerzy Laudański and Karol Bardoń, who had earlier collaborated with the SovietNKVD and were now trying to recast themselves as zealous collaborators with the Germans.[73]
HistorianJohn Connelly wrote that the vast majority of ethnic Poles showed indifference to the fate of the Jews; and that "Polishhistoriography has hesitated to view [complicity in the Holocaust of Jews] as collaboration... [instead viewing it] as a form of society's 'demoralization'".[7] Klaus-Peter Friedrich wrote that "most [Poles] adopted a policy of wait-and-see... In the eyes of the Jewish population, [this] almost inevitably had to appear as silent approval of the [German] occupier's actions."[8] According to historianGunnar S. Paulsson, in occupied Warsaw (a city of 1.3 million, including 350,000 Jews before the war), some 3,000 to 4,000 Poles acted as blackmailers and informants (szmalcowniks) who turned in Jews and fellow-Poles who provided assistance to Jews.[74] Grzegorz Berendt estimates the number of Polish citizens who participated in anti-Jewish actions as being a "group of dozens of thousands of individuals".[75]
In 2013, historianJan Grabowski wrote in his bookHunt for the Jews that "one can assume that the number of victims of theJudenjagd could reach 200,000—and this in Poland alone."[76] The book was praised by some scholars for its approach and analysis,[77][78] while a number of other historianscriticized his methodology for lacking in actual field research,[79] and argued that his "200,000" estimate was too high.[80][81]
TheLviv pogrom was carried out by theOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN),Ukrainian People's Militia and local Ukrainian mobs in the city ofLwów (now Lviv,Ukraine), between June and July 1941, shortly after the German takeover of the city.[82] The pogrom was organized by the GermanSSEinsatzgruppe C and OUN leaders under a pretext that the local Jews were co-responsible for the earlier Soviet atrocities in the city.[83] In total, around 6,000 Jews were killed by the Ukrainians, followed by an additional 3,000 executed in subsequentEinsatzgruppe killings. The pogrom culminated in the so-called "Petlura Days" massacre, when more than 2,000 Jews were killed.[84]
Germans used thedivide and rule method to create tensions within the Polish society, by targeting several non-Polish ethnic groups for preferential treatment or the opposite, in the case of the Jewish minority.[85]
During theinvasion of Poland in September 1939, members of theGerman ethnic minority in Poland, which had numbered some 750,000 persons before the war,[86] assisted Nazi Germany in its war effort. The number of Germans in prewar Poland who belonged to pro-Nazi German organizations is estimated at some 200,000, primarily members ofJungdeutsche Partei,Deutsche Vereinigung,Naziverein, andDeutsche Jugendschaft in Polen.[87] They committed sabotage, diverted regular forces, and committed numerous atrocities against the civilian population.[88][89] Additionally, German-minority activists helped draw up a list of 80,000 Poles who were to be arrested after the invasion of Poland by German forces; most of those on the list lost their lives in the first few months of the war.[90]Volksdeutsche were highly praised by German authorities for providing information on Poland and on Polish activists, which was considered invaluable to the successful military campaign against Poland.[90]
Shortly after the German invasion of Poland, an armed ethnic-German militia, theVolksdeutscher Selbstschutz, was formed, numbering some 100,000 members.[91] It organized theOperation Tannenberg mass murder of Polish elites. At the beginning of 1940, theSelbstschutz was disbanded, and its members were transferred to variousSS,Gestapo, and German-police units. TheVolksdeutsche Mittelstelle organized large-scale looting of property, and redistributed goods toVolksdeutsche. They were given apartments, workshops, farms, furniture, and clothing confiscated from Jewish Poles and ethnic Poles.[92] In Gdańsk Pomerania, by 22 November 1939, 30% of the German population (38,279 persons) had joined theSelbstschutz (almost all the German men in the region) and had executed some 30,000 Poles.[93]
During the German occupation of Poland, Nazi authorities established aGerman People's List (Deutsche Volksliste", or "DVL), whereby former Polish citizens of German ethnicity were registered asVolksdeutsche. The German authorities encouraged registration of ethnic Germans, and in many cases made it mandatory. Those who joined were given benefits, including better food and better social status. However,Volksdeutsche were required to perform military service for theThird Reich, and hundreds of thousands joined the German military, either willingly or under compulsion.[94]
According toRyszard Kaczmarek [pl], in 1939Poland's German minority numbered some 750,000 and constituted the principal citizen collaborators.[95][96]
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Before the war,Poland had a substantial population ofUkrainian andBelarusian minorities living in her eastern,Kresy regions. After theSoviet invasion of eastern Poland on 17 September 1939, those territories wereannexed by the USSR. Following theGerman invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, German authorities recruited Ukrainians and Belarusians who had been citizens ofPoland before September 1939 for service in theWaffen-SS andauxiliary-police units, serving as guards in the German-runextermination camps set up by the Nazis in occupied-Poland, and to assist withanti-partisan operations.[97] InDistrict Galicia, theSS Galicia division andUkrainian Auxiliary Police, made up of ethnic-Ukrainian volunteers, took part in widespreadmassacres and persecution of Poles and Jews.[98][99] Also, as early as theSeptember Campaign, theOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiya Ukrayins'kykh Natsionalistiv, orOUN) had been “a faithful German auxiliary"[100] carrying out acts of sabotage against Polish targets on behest of theAbwehr.[101]
A minority of Jews chose to collaborate with the Germans, in return for limited freedom, safety and other compensation (food, money) for the collaborators and their relatives. Some were motivated purely by self-interest, such as individual survival, revenge, or greed,[102] while others were coerced into collaboration.[51]: 67
TheJudenräte (s.Judenrat, literally "Jewish council") were Jewish-run governing bodies set up by the Nazi authorities inJewish ghettos across German-occupied Poland. The Judenräte functioned as a self-enforcing intermediary and were used by the Germans to control the Jewish population and to manage the day-to-day administration of the ghettos. The Germans also required Judenräte to confiscate property, organize forced labor, collect information on the Jewish population and facilitate deportations to extermination camps.[103][104][105]: 117–118 In some cases, Judenrat members exploited their positions to engage in bribery and other abuses. For example,Chaim Rumkowski (head of the Judenrat in theŁódź Ghetto) eliminated his political opponents by submitting their names for deportation to concentration camps, hoarded food rations, and sexually abused Jewish girls.[106][107][105]Tadeusz Piotrowski cited Jewish survivor Baruch Milch who wrote that "Judenrat became an instrument in the hand of the Gestapo for extermination of the Jews... I do not know of a single instance when the Judenrat would help some Jew in a disinterested manner." though Piotrowski cautions that "Milch's is a particular account of a particular place and time... the behavior of Judenrat members was not uniform."[51]: 73-74 Political theoristHannah Arendt stated that without the assistance of the Judenräte, the German authorities would have encountered considerable difficulties in drawing up detailed lists of the Jewish population, thus allowing for at least some Jews to avoid deportation.[105][page needed]
TheJewish Ghetto Police (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) were volunteers recruited from among Jews living in the ghettos who could be relied on to follow German orders. They were issued batons, official armbands, caps, and badges, and were responsible for public order in the ghetto. They were also used by the Germans for securing the deportation of other Jews to concentration camps.[108][109] The numbers of Jewish police varied greatly depending on the location, with about 2,500 at theWarsaw Ghetto, 1,200 at theŁódź Ghetto, and about 500 at theLwów Ghetto.[110]: 310 Historian and Warsaw Ghetto archivistEmanuel Ringelblum described the cruelty of the Jewish Ghetto Police as "at times greater than that of the Germans", concluding that they distinguished themselves by their shocking corruption and immorality.[102][109]
In Warsaw, the collaborationist groupsŻagiew andGroup 13, led byAbraham Gancwajch and colloquially known as the "Jewish Gestapo", inflicted considerable damage on bothJewish andPolish underground resistance movements.[111] Over a thousand such Jewish Nazi collaborators, some armed with firearms,[51]: 74 served under the GermanGestapo as informers on Polish resistance efforts to hide Jews,[111] and engaged in racketeering, blackmail, and extortion in theWarsaw Ghetto.[112][113] A 70-strong group led by a Jewish collaborator called Hening was tasked with operating against the Polish resistance, and was quartered at the Gestapo's Warsaw headquarters on Szucha Street.[51]: 74 Similar groups and individuals operated in towns and cities across German-occupied Poland — includingJózef Diamand inKraków[114] andSzama Grajer inLublin.[115] It is estimated that at the end of 1941 and the start of 1942 there were some 15,000 "Jewish Gestapo" agents in the General Government.[51]: 74
The Germans used Jewishagent provocateurs to bait Jews hiding outside of the ghettos, turn them over to the Germans, and occasionally entrap Poles who were helping the Jews. One example of such actions is the “Hotel Polski Affair”. After the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, agents from the Żagiew network lured Jews out of hiding and to theHotel Polski, with the promise that they would be allowed to emigrate from Nazi-occupied Europe. Around 2,500 Jews came out of their hiding places and went to the hotel, where they were captured by the Germans.[51]: 74 In another incident in the village ofPaulinów, the Germans used a Jewish agent to pose as an escapee looking for a hiding place with a Polish family, after receiving help the agent denounced the Polish family to the Germans, resulting in the deaths of 12 Poles and several Jews who were hiding with the family.[116][117] Smaller scale provocations were more common, with Jewish agents approaching Polish resistance members asking for fake documents, followed by Gestapo arresting said resistance members.[118]
Some members of Jewish Social Self-Help (Jüdische Soziale Selbsthilfe), also known as the Jewish Social Assistance Society, collaborated with Nazi authorities in the deportation of Warsaw Jews todeath camps. The group was formed as a humanitarian organization funded by theAmerican Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which also supplied it with legal cover,[119] and was allowed to operate within theGeneral Government. Concerned with its lack of effectiveness, and seeing it as acover for Nazi atrocities, both Jewish and Polish underground movements actively resisted the organization.[120]
The Germans singled out as potential collaborators two ethnographic groups that had some separatist interests: theKashubians in the north, and theGorals in the south. They reached out to the Kashubians, but that plan proved a "complete failure".[85]: 86–87 The Germans had some limited success with the Gorals – establishing theGoralenvolk movement, whichKatarzyna Szurmiak calls "the most extensive case of collaboration in Poland during the Second World War."[85]: 86–87 Overall, however, "when talking about numbers, the attempt to create [a]Goralenvolk was a failure... a mere 18 percent of the population took up Goralian IDs... Goralian schools [were] consistently boycotted, and... attempts to create a Goralian police or a Goralian Waffen-SS Legion... failed miserably."[85]: 98
Gestapo agentHubert Juraa.k.a. Herbert Jung, known also by the nickname "Tom", was of mixed German and Polish ancestry. With his friends, Jura formed a group called Tom's Organization after being expelled from theHome Army due to criminal activity and, with German support, strove to take revenge.[121] They managed to insert themselves into theNational Armed Forces, with Jura commanding a group of soldiers. In 1944, after the fall of theWarsaw Uprising, members of the Tom Organization came toCzęstochowa. "Tom" received a villa from the Germans at Jasnogórska Street, which became the headquarter of the group for a few months. Later in 1944, a group of soldiers of the National Armed Forces commanded by Jura attacked the village ofPetrykozy. According to the report from March 9, two Jews hiding there were murdered. After the war, most of the organization's members fled and Jura as well as his former associate, Gestapo member Paul Fuchs[122] operated for the US intelligence network created to work in the newly established countries controlled by the Soviet Union. Later, Jura moved to Venezuela, and in 1993 to Argentina.[122]
In 1942,Ludwik Kalkstein started to collaborate with Blanka Kaczorowska for the Gestapo. Kalkstein and Kaczorowska were responsible for the subsequent capture and execution of several high ranking Polish undergroundHome Army officers, including GeneralStefan Rowecki.[123] In 1944, Ludwik Kalkstein served in SS (during the Warsaw Uprising).[124] His wife was protected by the Gestapo until the end of the war.
[T]he Poles, though strongly anti-Russian and anti-Jewish, did not significantly collaborate with Nazi Germany, whereas the Lithuanians and some of the Ukrainians (occupied by the USSR from 1939-41) did.
kolaboracja... miała charakter-na terytoriach RP okupowanych przez Niemców-absolutnie marginalny (collaboration ... on the territories of German occupied Poland can be characterized as absolutely marginal)
Unlike many other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe, Poland was not allowed to form even a puppet government
Paweł Dybicz for Tygodnik "Przegląd" 38/2012.
{{cite book}}:|work= ignored (help)Poland had no feature film production during the occupation.
Some actors were coerced by the Germans into collaborating. The Germans wanted to create the appearance that "order" prevailed in Poland, and that people who did not rebel were provided with entertainment at a level suitable for them. Bogusław Samborski played in the anti-Polish filmHeimkehr probably in order to save his Jewish wife. (pl.:Niektórych aktorów Niemcy szantażem zmuszali do współpracy. Zależało im na stworzeniu pozorów, że w Polsce panuje „ład i porządek", a ludzie, którzy się nie buntują, mają zapewnioną rozrywkę na odpowiednim dla nich poziomie. Bogusław Samborski zagrał w antypolskim filmie Heimkehr, prawdopodobnie po to, by ratować żonę-Żydówkę.
Tylko świnie siedzą w kinie
They are particularly incensed by the false accusation that the Home Army did not accept Jews, and by even wilder talk about it being an anti-Semitic organization. The fact is, Jews with the various religious or political connections served with distinction both in the Home Army and in the People's Army.
Na wschodzie, na polskich terenach wcielonych, przed wybuchem wojny olbrzymią rolę odgrywała mniejszość niemiecka i spośród jej przedstawicieli rekrutowała się głównie grupa aktywnych kolaboracjonistów.
{{cite book}}:|work= ignored (help)Hubert Jura aka Herbert Jung ... acting as Captain Tom, in fact, a Gestapo agent (pl - Hubert Jura vel Herbert Jung...wystepujacy jako kapitan Tom w rzeczywistości agent gestapo.)