The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedländer Page A
Authors: Saul Friedländer
Tags: History
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secret police, precursor of the KGB]. 154 Trunk’s harsh judgment was probably influenced by his own Bundist hatred for communism and thus may also be in need of some revision.
The difficulty in assessing Jewish reactions to Soviet occupation, at least during the first weeks and months, derives in part from the temporary convergence of gut feelings of relief probably felt by all Jews who came under Soviet rule and the quite differently motivated enthusiasm of Jewish communists. When, for example, the news spread among the Warsaw Jews that they would possibly be in the Soviet zone, their enthusiasm knew no bounds, according to a somewhat later entry in Kaplan’s diary. Kaplan was politically conservative and an Orthodox Jew who detested the Soviet regime. Nonetheless, his description of Jewish reactions, on October 13, 1939, is telling: “There are no signs of Jewishness at all in Russia. Yet nevertheless, when the news reached us that the Bolsheviks were coming closer to Warsaw, our joy was limitless. We dreamed about it; we thought ourselves lucky. Thousands of young people went to Bolshevik Russia on foot; that is to say, to the areas conquered by Russia. They looked upon the Bolsheviks as redeeming Messiahs. Even the wealthy, who would become poor under Bolshevism, preferred the Russians to the Germans. There is plunder on the one hand and plunder on the other, but the Russians plunder one as a citizen and a man, while the Nazis plunder one as a Jew. The former Polish government never spoiled us, but at the same time never overtly singled us for torture. The Nazi is a sadist, however. His hatred of the Jews is a psychosis. He flogs and derives pleasure from it. The torment of the victim is a balm to his soul, especially if the victim is a Jew.” 155
Kaplan touched on the most fundamental motivations of the Jewish populace. The role of Jewish communists is more complex; the degree of their participation in the Soviet repression system has been variously assessed. According to historian Jan T. Gross, questionnaires filled by Polish refugees from the formerly Soviet-occupied zone, who fled after the German attack of June 1941, do not seem to confirm this common accusation. “Among other things,” Gross writes, “we know scores of names of members of village committees and personnel of rural militias that served all over the area— and Jews are only infrequently mentioned among them [emphasis in the original]. We know also that higher echelons of the local Soviet administration—on county, or city level—were staffed by functionaries brought in from the east and while there were Jews among them, of course, they were not any more numerous than in the administration apparatus in the Soviet interior.” 156 On the other hand Alexander B. Rossino, quoting research by Yitzhak Arad and Dov Levin, as well as an earlier study by Jan T. Gross and mainly Evgeny Rozenblat’s research about the Pinsk district, near Bialystok, offers a different picture: “In his examination of various sectors of local society, Rozenblat found that, despite the fact that Jews made up only 10 percent of the regional population, they held 49.5 percent of the leading administrative positions in the Pinsk oblast [district], including 41.2 percent of those in the judicial and police administration.” 157
Very soon, however, many Jews became disenchanted with the new rulers: Economic hardship spread; Jewish religious, educational, and political institutions were disbanded; NKVD surveillance became allintrusive; and in the spring of 1940, mass deportations, which had already targeted other so-called hostile groups, began to include segments of the Jewish population, such as the wealthier Jews, those who hesitated to accept Soviet citizenship, and those who declared that after the war they wanted to return home. 158 In view of these worsening conditions in the Soviet zone, thousands of Jews even attempted—and managed—to return to the
The difficulty in assessing Jewish reactions to Soviet occupation, at least during the first weeks and months, derives in part from the temporary convergence of gut feelings of relief probably felt by all Jews who came under Soviet rule and the quite differently motivated enthusiasm of Jewish communists. When, for example, the news spread among the Warsaw Jews that they would possibly be in the Soviet zone, their enthusiasm knew no bounds, according to a somewhat later entry in Kaplan’s diary. Kaplan was politically conservative and an Orthodox Jew who detested the Soviet regime. Nonetheless, his description of Jewish reactions, on October 13, 1939, is telling: “There are no signs of Jewishness at all in Russia. Yet nevertheless, when the news reached us that the Bolsheviks were coming closer to Warsaw, our joy was limitless. We dreamed about it; we thought ourselves lucky. Thousands of young people went to Bolshevik Russia on foot; that is to say, to the areas conquered by Russia. They looked upon the Bolsheviks as redeeming Messiahs. Even the wealthy, who would become poor under Bolshevism, preferred the Russians to the Germans. There is plunder on the one hand and plunder on the other, but the Russians plunder one as a citizen and a man, while the Nazis plunder one as a Jew. The former Polish government never spoiled us, but at the same time never overtly singled us for torture. The Nazi is a sadist, however. His hatred of the Jews is a psychosis. He flogs and derives pleasure from it. The torment of the victim is a balm to his soul, especially if the victim is a Jew.” 155
Kaplan touched on the most fundamental motivations of the Jewish populace. The role of Jewish communists is more complex; the degree of their participation in the Soviet repression system has been variously assessed. According to historian Jan T. Gross, questionnaires filled by Polish refugees from the formerly Soviet-occupied zone, who fled after the German attack of June 1941, do not seem to confirm this common accusation. “Among other things,” Gross writes, “we know scores of names of members of village committees and personnel of rural militias that served all over the area— and Jews are only infrequently mentioned among them [emphasis in the original]. We know also that higher echelons of the local Soviet administration—on county, or city level—were staffed by functionaries brought in from the east and while there were Jews among them, of course, they were not any more numerous than in the administration apparatus in the Soviet interior.” 156 On the other hand Alexander B. Rossino, quoting research by Yitzhak Arad and Dov Levin, as well as an earlier study by Jan T. Gross and mainly Evgeny Rozenblat’s research about the Pinsk district, near Bialystok, offers a different picture: “In his examination of various sectors of local society, Rozenblat found that, despite the fact that Jews made up only 10 percent of the regional population, they held 49.5 percent of the leading administrative positions in the Pinsk oblast [district], including 41.2 percent of those in the judicial and police administration.” 157
Very soon, however, many Jews became disenchanted with the new rulers: Economic hardship spread; Jewish religious, educational, and political institutions were disbanded; NKVD surveillance became allintrusive; and in the spring of 1940, mass deportations, which had already targeted other so-called hostile groups, began to include segments of the Jewish population, such as the wealthier Jews, those who hesitated to accept Soviet citizenship, and those who declared that after the war they wanted to return home. 158 In view of these worsening conditions in the Soviet zone, thousands of Jews even attempted—and managed—to return to the
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