18

Poles and Jews

In describing their prewar life in Wierzbnik, most Jews testified to widespread Polish anti-Semitism even before 1939. They experienced this hostile environment not only in the boycott of Jewish businesses but also in the insecurity they felt from random acts of vituperation and violence, all suffered without recourse to protection of the law. Only a minority testified that a dramatic rise in Polish anti-Semitism occurred only after the outbreak of war and the arrival of the Germans. From that point on, a negative portrayal of Polish-Jewish relations was a matter of general consensus.

Three specific accusations of misbehavior occur frequently in the postwar testimonies. The first is that Poles openly displayed their joy at the suffering and humiliation of the Jews. As noted earlier, according to three testimonies, during the march from the marketplace to Strelnica, Poles lined the streets through which the Jews ran. They not only rejoiced at the Jews’ misfortune and picked up whatever they could lay their hands on, but applauded, spit, and threw stones.¹ According to yet another witness, the occasional march from the camps through town to the baths also took place along streets lined with unsympathetic spectators, a deeply humiliating experience.² Jews also remembered acts of torment at the workplace, in the form of verbal or physical assault as well as the discriminatory actions of Polish foremen who could assign the worst jobs to Jewish workers.³ In its most extreme form, this accusation alleged undisguised Polish satisfaction that Hitler and the Germans were exterminating the Jews.⁴

A second frequent accusation was that Poles made no attempt to help Jews, even when such help could have been provided at no risk and little cost. A number of survivors noted that it would have been easy to leave a piece of bread at the workplace (such as one survivor experienced later at Buna) or throw a piece of bread or potato to Jews on the march.⁵ The most uncompromising of these accusatory accounts alleges that “not one Pole” performed such a simple “good deed” in Starachowice.⁶

The third frequent accusation was that Poles identified and pointed out Jews to the Germans, who otherwise would not have been able to distinguish between Poles and Jews. The Germans alone could not have enforced the requirement of wearing the Jewish star if Poles, able to recognize Jews by nuances of accent, gesture, and appearance, had not stood ready to point them out. Jews would have been far more willing to risk fleeing to the forest, going into hiding, or trying to live on false papers, if that did not mean living under the constant threat of denunciation from Polish informers eager to turn them in to the Germans.⁷ One survivor even classified the Poles as “the greater enemy.”⁸ Expressing her deep sense of betrayal, another survivor—an assimilated, fluent Polish-speaker and former admirer of Polish culture from Płock—emphasized that she hated the Poles “more than the Germans because they were my neighbors.”⁹

In sharp contrast to these blanket accusations, three survivors explicitly emphasized the crucial help they had received from Poles. When Josef Czernikowski learned that his sister was still alive in a labor camp in Sandomierz, he resolved to join her. A Polish friend from work promised to help. When Josef escaped from camp, the Polish friend bought him food and a train ticket. He then escorted him to the camp gate in Sandomierz and helped make arrangements for his entry.¹⁰ Abramek Naiman saluted his “three Polish angels”—first, a Pole who took him from Strelnica to Majówka to be reunited with his parents; second, the family who hid his mother’s fur coats and then hid her for two nights while she arranged for their sale; and third, a Pole who stopped others from beating him at work.¹¹ Esther Stern emphasized that Stefan, whom she married after the war, brought food, money, and clean clothing to her in Tartak, and that the Polish mechanic Janek saved her by warning her to hide when her name appeared on a list of prisoners to be transferred. “If not [for] the Poles, I would be already dead,” she said. “I can say nothing bad about them.”¹² The last two, it should be noted, juxtaposed their atypical praise of their Polish saviors with atypically harsh criticism of the Jewish camp elites.

Between sweeping accusations of Polish misbehavior and the rare invocation of Polish saviors, many survivors compartmentalized disparate experiences and memories. They acknowledged or took for granted the generally hostile and anti-Semitic environment in which they had lived but could not tell their stories without including the mention of individual Polish friends and benefactors. Contrary to the sweeping accusation that “not one Pole” gave food to Jews, a number of survivors explicitly mentioned receiving gifts of food, especially at work.¹³ The most nuanced analysis was by Chaim Kleinberg. He noted that one had to be “lucky” to have Polish coworkers who would “share” their food, because they were not well off either. However, “there were a lot of good Poles who had sympathy,” he asserted.¹⁴ A number of other survivors also noted favorable relations with Poles at work, at least in some cases.¹⁵

Those most frequently mentioned, as well as most important, were the Polish friends, neighbors, and business associates with whom the families of survivors had left property for safekeeping. With a few exceptions,¹⁶ these arrangements were honored, and as long as they remained in Starachowice, most Jews were able to access the property they had left with Poles either through transactions in the factories or through occasional visits from camp.¹⁷ Returning after the war to reclaim property, long after the Polish holders of Jewish property had presumed the original owners to be dead, Wierzbnik Jews would have a very different experience.

Concerning Poles with whom property was left, some of the testimonies use the precise term of Polish or Christian “friends.”¹⁸ Others refer to a “wonderful Polish family,”¹⁹ “neighbors” whom the family knew “well,”²⁰ or a “nice Polish guy.”²¹ Some testimonies imply somewhat more distant, less personal relations, referring to Polish “neighbors,”²² a former Polish landlady,²³ a Polish family,²⁴ or “the gentile to whom we gave our jewels.”²⁵ In Wierzbnik, where many Poles and Jews lived in mixed apartments and neighborhoods prior to ghettoization, and Jewish retailers and craftsmen had many Polish clients and customers, clearly there was frequent contact between Poles and Jews. As a result, friendships as well as cordial business relationships were not uncommon. No testimony suggested that any Jewish family in Wierzbnik had not left property with Poles simply because they knew no one with whom they could enter into such a relationship. They stood in sharp contrast to the Jews from Łód and Płock, who could not avail themselves of such relationships.²⁶

Polish friends and acquaintances were individual people and could be identified as such; the Polish population at large, however, was anonymous and faceless, and beleaguered Jews could not distinguish who among them was a potential informer or predator. As a composite, Poles represented a grave and unknown danger to any Jew risking hiding, escape, or even brief business transactions outside the camp. Thus, Jews who could speak positively of individual Polish friends and acquaintances with whom they left property and from whom they received help could simultaneously speak of “the Poles” or even “the Polacks” as anti-Semites and collaborators in German persecution. Individual Polish friends and helpers on the one hand and “the Poles” as a source of hostility and danger on the other were simply experienced, remembered, and spoken about in a compartmentalized manner by survivors.