What proportion of the Polish population collaborated with the Nazis?

You should take a break from commenting on Polish historic threads. Seriously.

You do realise Hungary and Romania were official allies of nazi germany dont you?

Certainly you are selling here nonsense. Romania and Hungary were Hitler's allies they collaborated with Germany officially on the state level.
Poland was fighting against Hitler from the first day till the end and paid for that terrible price - incomparable price.

I say that if you call collaboration few Polish people working for Germany than I must remind you that on a much grater scale the Jews had been collaborating with the Hitler's Germany.

Typical anti-Jewish diatribe. The facts are that while Humgary and Romania both were collaborators, they both had a history of shameful treatment of their Jews, compared with say Bulgaria, as I've proviously posted here on PF. By asserting that Jews in order to save their skins "collaborated", i.e. were cooerced into cooperating, with the Nazis is like saying that holding a gun to someone's head is giving the person a choice as to whether they want to live or die! The virulent anti-semitism merely aided and abetted Hitler's forces in certain of the above-mentioned countries. Had ALL of Europe acted as did Bulgaria, Denmark or Sweden, the history of the Shoah would have been written quite differently, I can assure you-:)

Well, If you are calling the truth - anti-Jewish diatribe? than I can only be sorry that seemingly an intelligent and educated person like yourself fall for the self-propelling myth that only Jews were the victims during WWII.

Few odd and atypical examples of the criminal behavior in Poland doesn't even deem the name of collaboration. Such individuals can be found in any given society including Jews. :)

Denmark? The whole 8,000 Danish Jewish community went to Sweden.

Sweden profited from the Holocaust. Even Wallenberg’s relatives made money converting Nazi gold into Swedish crowns and that Sweden provided iron ore and ball bearings to the Nazis. Some Swedes actually sided with the Nazis and volunteered to fight for Hitler, they were members of the Waffen SS and served in police batallions. Sweden received 38 tons of gold from Nazi Germany (worth today US $430 million). Many Swedish companies, such as Ericsson, AGA and Hasselblad Cameras, as well as the country’s paper and wood industries traded with Nazi Germany. Swedish jewelers bought stolen diamonds, which were smuggled into Sweden by civil servants working at the German legation in Stockholm.

Still ready to ASSURE us?

Sure. And had jews (example: chaim rumkowski) not collaborated with the germans or fought along side the germans (example: werner goldberg - nazi poster boy), the history of the shoah would have been written quite differently, i can assure you-:)

And what do you know about NSZ???Just because some NSZ units had a temporary armistice agreement with Germans when both were fighting Soviets don't mean they colaborated.Next time get you facts straight before posting.

Did he have that much choice - he was forced into the ghetto with the rest of the Jewish community in Lodz and refusing to be the Altester would just have got him shot.


There are some very dark chapters in the history of the NSZ. Do not try to pretend they were all angels or that atrocities did not happen.

Yes he did.


They were defending Poles, somebody had to.

Noone, least of all yours truly, ever asserted that Jews were the ONLY victims of either the Holocaust/Shoah or of the Second World War. I'm a historian, after all. Even a non-historian who's attended university at any rate, would clearly agree by the sheer overwhelming evidence that Russia lost far more gentile Russians than the documented six million Jews Hitler had exterminated. He wanted to annihilate eleven million of us, at least that's what the original document of the Wannsee Conference states!

Back to the dispute. Of course there were Jews who "collaborated" with the Nazis, but those were the types who would've curried favor with the top brass in any situation probably, just to save their own asses! And then of course there are miscreants of every ethnic stripe (Jews included) who'd hang their own mother froma a meat hook-:)

Remember: Not EVERY victim was a Jew, but EVERY Jew was a victim, by virtue of simply being who they were, good, bad, WWI staunch vet (The Hymn of Hate against Britain "'Ran an den Feind....Bomben, Bomben nach Engeland.." in the First World War by Ernst Lissauer, a German Jew on both sides!!), criminal of virtuous soul. Hitler didn't care. The Poles may not have been the originators of Nazi policy, but many certainly acted against the Jews on a locla level with few exceptions.

What proportion of the Polish population collaborated with the Nazis?

i really have no data which can proove that in anyway and if there are i am too lazy to dig them up.

by logic and nazi procedure, in all countries they occupied were people collaborating with them. those who did i willingly, thinking this brown bunch is the nwo ;) and those who were forced to do it, just to survive...

now, for me the 1st group is much more interesting, because they tend to change the course at soon as the allies came in. thats the deal. no moral and usually those were getting in the social ladder quite high.

the quantity is not so important, just from the humanistic perspective its shocking but reality. humans are weak. they fall eventually for all kinds of bs.

Do it or be killed. Some choice.


No. In and among their defending, the NSZ did many things that weren't defending anybody. Just atrocities.

How do you define the "Polish population"? Along the ethnicity, or citizenship lines?
If the pre-1939 citizenship counts, then the proportion was fairly large - Poland had a substantial German minority, which actively assisted the German Army in 1939 (the Fifth Column), and then defined themselves as Volksdeutsche (in some cases it was even possible for individuals to apply for the Reichsdeutsche status).

Also, the collaboration of the Ukrainian and Lithuanian minority is well documented. Jews preferred to collaborate with the Stalinist regime that occupied parts of Poland (although if we define the Blue Police as collaborators, then the same definition must apply to ghetto police units, if we want to avoid using double standards).

As for ethnic Poles, the willingness to collaborate, in a strict sense, was low and can probably be best illustrated by the German attempts to form the Goralische Waffen SS Legion. The 300 volunteers (out of whom 1/3 was unsuitable for military service) may very well just represent the population of village idiots.

If the term "collaboration" is less strictly defined, then you can also count the Blue Police, tasked mainly with enforcing criminal law. The less strict definition is necessary, because this wasn't a voluntary collaboration - pre-war police officers were ordered to report to work under the threat of the death penalty. As a whole, the Blue Police was not considered a collaboratory unit by post-war Polish courts (which were usually strict with regards to cases of collaboration). On an individual level, cases of collaboration by Blue Policemen were prosecuted. On the other hand, the Blue Police had strong ties with the Polish underground (est. 25-30% officers were members of the underground).

I think the most substantial cases of collaboration involved denouncing Jews. The problem was real enough to force the Polish government in exile to announce that:


Death sentences for such collaboration were served by the Home Army (although, according to W. Bartoszewski, the number of such sentences was not sufficient to end the practice, due to the limited investigative capabilities of the Home Army). Also, after the war such collaboration was routinely prosecuted.

The bottom line: the collaboration was present, but nowhere near the European average. There was no institutional collaboration, originating from any Polish level of government, whatsoever. The individual collaboration was considered a crime, both during and after the war.

Excellent post, grummi gruffti!

You're on the money as concerns the very correct distinction between so-called ethnic Poles vs. ethnic "Germans" or 'Volksdeutsche' minorities living principally in Silesia. While it is accurate to state that the Germanic elements in occupied countries by and large supported Hitler and his racist policies, we musn;t forget either that without that grassroots support, Hitler couldn't have made the inroads which he did into converting the hearts and minds of foreign nationals to the Nazi cause, as was the case in Norway, Vichy France, Lithuania, Hungary or Romania.

As Raul Hilberg has often said, the Nazis did NOT act alone, they had help, lots of it!!

So you are a Jewish historian ...


... doing some amateurish anti-Polish propaganda. I'm afraid you are not going to get promoted with that clumsy argumentation. It's really hard to take you seriously. Even on a good day.

History is about FACTS, not opinions-:)

You are in short supply on the former and abundant on the latter.

No surprise there; Jewish people don't know their own history well. Only selling their emotional side well.

Use few instead of many and we will have an agreement....


That was a choice that many faced. Not to mention those who were risking the life of their families to help the Jews.


Thats is a post factual judgment. The WWII was about atrocities more than about anything else, especially in Poland.

It only takes one massacre to be remembered.


Which you and I have the luxury of hindsight to criticise. Nobody can condemn Rumkowski for saving his own life (and that of others).


What other kind can we make about history? See above.
[quote=Ironside]The WWII was about atrocities more than about anything else, especially in Poland.
In areas occupied by Japan too. Poles were by no means unique in victimhood, nor did the war end on 8/5/45. Nothing alters the fact the the Polish NSZ committed some appaling acts, so vile as to be beyond justification or explanation.

those issues needs to be examined by the independent and trusted historians !there no facts - just stipulations and accusations.

Lyzko

What was the case with Lithuania? Lithuanian government did not collaborated with Nazis nor there was Lithuanian SS division. There were some Lithuanians who collaborated and killed Jews but there were also some who tried to rescue them. In general Germans and Russians were considered as enemies of the country, both of them were equally bad.

Lithuania, like other neighboring countries overtaken by the Nazis, was NO innocent lamb taken to the slaughter either! While certainly noone denies that ALL occupied areas suffered under German control, the Jewish populations of various countries definitely fared better than in some-:)

Who but a fool would assert that Jews are basically bad, bringing on their own misery, any more than Germans, Balts, Magyars, etc.. are basically anything other than human with good as well as bad points in their character?

Admittedly national/ethnic character is to be sure molded by historical experience. Had the European nobles allowed the Jews to integrate into society (WITHOUT the threat of forced conversion!) not long after they first arrived, they would have blended into European culture naturally, not seen as eternal outsiders who lived off of others, as they would have been able to join the army, guilds, attend university etc.. As it was, Jews were forced into money lending in order to survive, being used then as pawns by the ruling nobles who pitted them against their gentile neighbors, rightly jealous of Jewish acquisition of properties etc.. they the Chrtistians could not afford, forgetting though that it wasn't the Jews who decided where they should live, what profession they may or may not practice!!!

By the way, Midis, your English isn't bad. However, as with many foreign speakers, you continually forget the infinitive and the article: "THE Lithuanian government did not COLLABORATE (not: "collaborated")........"

Lyzko

If you put it like this - I support you.
Simply Lithuania is usually drawn like monster who drank Jews blood. Actually Lithuanians should be blamed for passiveness in this matter. As I wrote previously there was small number of people who participated in killings. However majority simply did nothing. It seemed everyone tried not to see what happened and to be quiet. It could be that people were already scared by soviet invasion, exile to Siberia and subsequent Nazi invasion.

Later soviet rule tried to erase memory of the Jews (at that period Jewish tombstones were used for staircases - I remember that from my childhood).

About my English - somehow I can't develop the sense for article placement :)

All it takes for evil to take root is for good men to do nothing.

As far as difficulties with article placement, join the club (you're in fine company)-:)

@Lyzko, #85.


I do, in a certain sense. In another thread yesterday I was discussing with someone interested in the ratio of interfaith marriages between Poles and Jews in the pre-war period. I quoted an opinion with regard to such marriages from a present-day rabbi. First the quote, then a discussion.

Now, my points:

1. If a contemporary Catholic priest or a Protestant minister wrote such garbage, he would be branded a medieval bigot. Just as we brand the mullahs in Tehran. Yet this is the official position of Judaism, in contemporary America. Can you believe this?

2. What the quote directly illustrates is that it is Jews who have been and still are reluctant (to put it mildly) to integrate into the non-Jewish society, not the other way around. Sure, thank God, such attitudes slowly disappear, but I dare to say that another 40 years in the desert still won't be enough to eradicate them completely.

3. If anti-semitism is a unique phenomenon, qualitatively different (and worse) than attitudes in the U.S. toward Koreans, in Poland toward Vietnamese, in Britain toward Pakistani etc., then we need to find a similarly unique, qualitatively distinct factor responsible. Now we have a choice between (a) finding such factors for each and every ethnicity where anti-semitism occurs, or (b) assuming that some unique to them factor makes Jews particularly disliked. Occam's razor, Lyzko, and I don't care how much politically incorrect this is - the Jewish exceptionalism (translated into relationships with the host populaces) is the root of the problem.

Is this enough to "bring on their own misery"? Sometimes not at all, but under certain circumstances - absolutely. The former case is the pre-1939 situation of Jews in Poland. Jews had a substantial autonomy, and formed (voluntarily!) a parallel, closed society. Then 1939 came, and now, in this context, Jews ask the following question:


The answer is two-fold.
1. As an organized society, Poland could not. Poland fought a war against the Nazi Germany, and lost 3 million of her non-Jewish citizens, in addition to 3 million Jews. The Polish government in exile introduced laws protecting Jews and enforced them, within the available means, on the territory occupied by Germany. No level of the Polish government ever collaborated with Nazi Germany. Not the central government, not the voivodships, not the counties, not the municipalities. Poland was alerting other Allies about the genocide, and this was met with indifference (in particular, when Szmul Zygielbojm, a Bund leader and a member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile, was committing suicide, the U.S. Jews couldn't care less.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szmul_Zygielbojm
It took them around 50 years to wake up and now accuse Poles of the complicity in the Holocaust). What else could have been done?

2. At the individual level, sure, even more Poles could have risked their own lives and the lives of their families to defy the occupiers' policies and try to save their "better" neighbors. But here is the catch: Why should they take this risk, in a situation when the MAJORITY of their "better" neighbors had persistently refused to ask themselves the following question: "Could I be a better citizen and neighbor?" When the highly visible minority of Jews actually actively assisted the Soviet occupiers? The rest is history - many Poles risked their lives to save Jews. Many refused, but Jews have no moral right to blame them for this. Selfless heroism is never an obligation, and asserting the existence of such obligation by representatives of a nation that has its own hands rather dirty is a hypocrisy.

What I wrote is brutal, but logical and based on historical facts. Perhaps the biggest disservice done to Jews by other nations is not explaining these things openly, but rather pu$syfooting (Admin - this is NOT a "bad" word, update your dictionary) around the subject, out of some silly, gentile "sensitivity". I don't believe in any genetic traits responsible for any nation's misery. But I do believe that certain cultures may have certain rotten aspects, and it's karma's nature to eventually bite.

The trouble with much of your argumentation thus far is that, although you'll find no sharper critic of contemporary Judaism than a Jew, namely I, your bluntness (like anything blunt!!) misses the subtleties of historial context. Christianity failed Germany as its teachings were never adopted on a fundamental level. The 'German Enlightenment' turned out to be a joke, almost an oxymoron, since when the chips were down, which 'good' German did Germans applaud under their Fuehrer, Lessing (Protestant minister from Lower Saxony with a humanitarian bent 'Nathan The Wise' etc..)??? No, the 'bad' German personified, super-mega pagan Teuton Herr Wagner!!!! The goal of the Enlightenment was to bring light to an unenlightened flock, the German people. Christianity was sort of hijacked by the German aristocracy (according to Plessner, anyway) and turned into a state bureacracy of control instead of a means of spreading the original gospel of love, equality and harmony among peoples.

Poland merely proved itself no less than average in many instances. Heck, only the rare human being refuses to jump on the badwagon of bigotry with the rest and subject himself to ridicule, torture, isolation or worse. Not every Dane was a Kaj Munk either , believe me. The Danes too had a Nazi Party (Dr. Frits Claussen - a bush league fuehrer of a small minority), but was nominally rejected by their own parliament as "undanish" in character.

Finally, the Poles proved themselves all too often to be all too willing accomplices, with or without the threat of exposure.

To a large degree, this is a Jewish myth. The small degree to which this is true is the role of the individuals who were denouncing Jews to Germans. This was a supplementary only role, however. Germany had full control over the Polish territory, Germans were able to implement the genocide using their own means, and the role of the "szmalcownik" was inherently limited to denouncing the limited number of the escapees. Interestingly, Jews always omit one fact: that for any such escapee to survive more than one day, an infrastructure of non-Jewish helpers (risking their lives to help!), both individual and institutional (Żegota) had to exist in the first place.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBegota
To provide food (normally rationed). To provide shelter. To provide false documents. Right? But, of course, this obvious fact is incompatible with the Jewish myth, hence we have the theory of "a few who helped, and the majority who threatened".

The persistence of this myth is responsible even for attacking the Jews who dare to tell about their own experience. Szpilman and Polanski's account (they were both saved by Poles, "The Pianist" is a movie directed by Polański and based on Szpilman's memoirs) had been criticized for non-compliance. A couple of days ago, as a fan of Warehouse 13, I was doing some reading about Saul Rubinek. To my not-so-great surprise I found out that his account of his parents' survival (saved by a Polish farmer) generated a resounding 'oy-vey', and the guy was forced to explain himself ("I am not a historian"). Now, believe in what you want, but please be advised that it is precisely such attitudes and false accusations that are responsible for the miserable state of the Polish-Jewish relationships, including the phenomenon of 'anti-semitism without Jews'. The theory of the Polish complicity in the Holocaust is a nonsense totally equivalent to the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and we hold those who are peddling it responsible.

Lest the unspeakble horrors of the Shoah be neither trvialized nor consigned to oblivion through indifference, one might draw a lesson from the dismaying trend of certain prominent post-War American Jews (even representing the rabbinate), notably Mr. Normal Finkelstein, to label the spate of writings, films etc. about Auschwitz etc.. "the Holocaust industry". Make no mistake, he is no 'lone soldier of truth' or something of this nature, but a shameful example of perverting the meaning of history.

We don't condemn the frightened, only the truly wicked, i.e. those who denounced without cause or compassion!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Police

The Blue Police had little autonomy, and all of its high ranking officers came from the ranks of the German police (Kriminalpolizei).

The role of the Blue Police in its collaboration and resistance towards the Germans is difficult to assess as a whole, and is often a matter of dispute.[11]

those 2 quotes are taken from the link. obviously sth pl hasnt gotten over with or is on the way.

to me quite frankly strange that it comes up here. during the nazi time almost all countries being occupied had collaborators, not only the axis powers were in charge of the greueltaten. so, ?