From: dobo@cs.UAlberta.CA (W. Dobosiewicz)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Follow-up - Polish-Jewish history - Home Army WWII
Keywords: References Jews Poland Home-Army Government-in-Exile
Date: 9 Sep 92 14:23:47 GMT
Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

avr@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (adam.v.reed) writes:

[...]

>Stefan Korbonski: The Polish Underground State - A Guide to the
>Underground 1939-1945. New York, Hippocrene Books, 1981(1978).

>To W. Dobosiewicz: Your "matter of fact" happens to be
>counterfactual. The organization that was to become known as
>"Armia Krajowa", or home army, was founded October 10, 1939, as
>"Service for Poland's Victory" (Korbonski, p. 18), and
>re-organized as the "Union for Armed Struggle" on December 4,
>1939 (Korbonski, p. 23). On February 14, 1942, the name of the
>"Union for Armed Struggle" was changed to "Home Army", but this
>merely changed the name of an organization that had functioned
>continuously since 1939 (p. 57).

What you forgot to add is that the initial organisation had about 12
members, all of them working on getting together the prewar political
parties. They were not large organisations, had no armed forces, etc.
The ZWZ became a large organisation only in 1941. And that was the period
when its armed forces started their activities.
Up to May 1940, those Poles who wanted to actively fight the Nazis usually
escaped to the Polish Army in France (via Hungary). That alone caused the
military strnegth of ZWZ to be minimal. Serious work started only in the
Fall of 1940. As it was done underground, it took time.

>The initial exclusion of Jews from the "official" (UAS/HA) Polish
>resistance is documented by Gutman (p.184).  The AKs approval
>of collaboration with early anti-Jewish measures is documented
>there, and also in Korbonski's chapter on "collaboration"(p.140).
>In preparation for the incarceration of Polish Jews in the
>ghettos, the occupation authorities ordered Feliks Mlynarski,
>the head of the Bank of Poland, which was renamed Bank of Issue
>for the Generalgouvernement, to organize the confiscation of all
>Jewish accounts in Polish banks. Mlynarski asked the Government
>Delegate (the chief of the political echelon of the Home Army)
>whether to follow this order or resign, and was told that
>staying (and therefore organizing the confiscation on behalf of
>the Nazis) would be considered "service motivated by the welfare
>of the Polish Nation".

One may ask whether this was a wise move or not. Which was better: to have
"their man" in office or to have the bank run by someone else?
After all, the Nazis would have had no problems finding somebody else.
For example, consider what happened to Starzynski (president of the city
council of Warsaw). He refused to cooperate on German terms and was simply
shot and replaced by a German.
Judging by your position on Mlynarski, you probably consider Czerniakow to
be a monstrous collaborator. On the other hand, did his suicide change
anything?

By the way, while the name is mentioned, just yesterday, I reread a few
pages from Czerniakow's diary. By accident, these dealt with Jewish
accounts in banks. Not knowing what would be politically correct in 1992,
Czerniakow described the accounts as being "frozen" (not confiscated) and
also described how he proceeded to recover money from them (the Nalewki 9
murder case). He did not mention Mlynarski's name even once - according to
him, the accounts were frozen by the Nazis and he negotiated their
recovery not with any bank official, but with the SS (name of SS officers
and other details readily available on request).

[...]

>I have not been able to find a reference to a "Hirszfeld" in the
>AK. However, it is possible that such a person existed, and was
>one of a number of Jews who joined the AK in or after 1942. The
>hunting down of Jews by the NSZ, and the NSZ murder of two Jewish
>officers of the AK High Command, engineer Jerzy Makowiecki and
>professor Ludwik Widerszal, are also documented by Korbonski
>(p.137). Korbonski says nothing about why the AK did nothing
>about these murders.

I made it clear that I do not remember the name. This subject is not the
hobby of my life and, having read about it many years ago, I remember it
vaguely.
However, Makowiecki and Widerszal were both Jews and were running BIP (in
command of), a propaganda/intelligence arm of the Home Army. Certainly,
they did not "join in or after 1942", as you seem to maintain.
It is incorrect to say that the Home Army did nothing about it, as they
sentenced to death and executed the murderer, a certain Sudeczko (albeit
in shady circumstances). Better informed netters, please step forward with
more details, please.

Talking about the NSZ, I could never understand why the Home Army wanted
to have anything to do with them. My suspicion was that the NSZ targetted
primarily communists (Jews were only a secondary target for them). Must be
there were people in the HA who liked that, but could not themselves attack
communists because of HA policy.
As a consolation, the Jews murdered by the NSZ were avenged by the NKVD,
which dealt with members of the NSZ in a most ruthless fashion.

>			Adam_V_Reed@ATT.com

On some other matters, "szmalcownictwo" in particular, I fully agree with
you (or rather with Korbonski, by coincidence my mother's uncle).
But this profession was staffed mainly with volksdeutsch's,
Nazi collaborators and informers and was certainly not considered an
honest profession by the majority. Nevertheless, it existed and even
thrived.

To add a "controversial" statement that will certainly offend our
hyper-Polish-nationalistic friends, I believe that at least a million
Poles collaborated with the Nazis in one way or another (mind you, less
than 10 percent).

Then, there were tens of thousands of Jews doing the same, even though it
was destroying their very nation. How about "King Haim I" of Lodz, how
about the Judenpolizei?

The difference is: many living Poles have blood on their hands, while the
collaborating Jews paid with their lives.

W. Dobosiewicz

P.S. Adam, I am awaiting the rest of the story, particularly the Hebrew
texts in Polish!