PROMOTING GOODWILL BETWEEN JEWISH AND POLISH PEOPLE: 
THE OBSTACLE OF THE KIELCE POGROM OF JULY 4, 1946

A Study by Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski

Pogonowski is a renowned author of books and articles about Poland and is particularly knowledgeable about the history of Jews in Poland. As reference material for this writing he has referred extensively to "Poland, Communism, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism" by Michael Checinski, "Poles, Jews, Communism-- The Anatomy of Half-Truth 1939-1968" by Krystyna Kersten and "Pogrom of Jews in Kielce, July 4, 1946" by Bozena Szaynok. He also credits the Information Services of the Canadian Polish Congress for special materials and help.

Part 5 of 5

MILITARY TRIALS FOLLOWING THE POGROM

The murders and other crimes committed by the non-Soviet participants during the pogrom were within the jurisdiction of the local civilian court. Instead, the Supreme Military Court, closely supervised by the Soviet Smersh, was selected to try civilian perpetrators of the pogrom. The show trial was preceded by Soviet-style investigations, during which tortures were often used to extract confessions. The role of uniformed men and armed security agents who inflicted bullet wounds in Jewish victims was excluded from the investigations and the show trial of the rioters.

The show trial was conducted from July 9 to July 11, 1946. Though they acknowledged that an organized provocation had occurred (Checinski, p. 23), the military court did not reveal who was responsible. Of the mob, 12 men were tried of which nine were sentenced to death. These included seven of the onlookers who joined in the murders conducted by agents of the terror apparatus, and two uniformed men who were not a part of the UB operation. Those who did most of the killing were never tried. The prosecutor, Kazimierz Golczewski, a Polish Jew known as an old NKVD hand, consistently violated all normal legal procedures during the trial. He did this with full approval of the three military judges, namely, Marian Barton, Stanislaw Baraniak and Antoni Lukasik (Antoni Czupinski, "Recent History of Poland: People's Poland 1944-1989," Poznan, 1992, p.113). At one point during the trial, Golczewski went as far as to threaten a defendant with additional bodily harm when the man was complaining about tortures inflicted upon him during the interrogation.

The entire show trial was a mockery of the law. It was a Soviet-style show trial conducted in Poland to fulfill political and propaganda purposes. The very conduct of the show trial was a proof of the complete Soviet domination of life in Poland. It was absolutely impossible for anyone other than the Soviets to provoke and stage a pogrom in which security forces either directly participated in the riot or stood by and let the pogrom go on under their noses for eight hours. The sentries who were posted around the riot area did prevent Catholic priests Roman Zelek and Jan Danielewicz from reaching the places of the violence, because it was their intention to try to pacify the mob. (Kersten, p. 128; also S. Meducki and Z. Wrona, "Anti-Jewish Riots in Kielce, July 4, 1946: Documents and Materials," Kielce Historic Society, Kielce: 1992. p. 94). Because of Moscow's control over the Polish communist government, the global Soviet policies determined the events in Poland. This explains why a high-ranking intelligence officer like Dyomin, who was also a Jewish specialist, was sent to Kielce and stayed there only long enough to supervise the staging of the riots, then to interrogate witnesses, and then departed immediately as soon as his short assignment was completed.

The weaknesses of the show trial created a need to announce the arrest of the officers who "did not show enough resolve during the riot." Military and police officers associated with the pogrom were arrested and were given very light sentences by the Military Regional Court in Warsaw on December 16, 1946 (Kersten, p. 128). The most immediate instigator of the Kielce violence, Antoni Pasowski, a Jewish member of the Public Security Agency, was never tried. Henryk Blaszczyk was not asked to testify. Other less-advertised trials were held in Kielce on September 24, October 10, December 3, 1946 and March 1947 (Szaynok, pp. 74-93).

Maj. Sobczynski-Spychaj, the head of the Kielce State Security Forces was promoted to head the regional Informacja soon after the Kielce event. This promotion was typical, for he was in the middle of a long career of being used by the Soviets to betray Poland. According to testimony of Jozef Swiatlo-Fleischfarb (former NKVD an UB agent who defected to the West), Sobczynski-Spychaj was the Soviet agent who was parachuted to Poland during the war and brought with him instructions for the communist underground to collaborate with the Gestapo in betraying to the Germans the organization of the Polish Home Army controlled by the Polish Government-in-Exile in London. While in Poland, Sobczynski-Spychaj worked as radio-code operator for communication with Smersh under the command of Gen. Iwan Sierow. Sobczynski-Spychaj was flown to the USSR in 1944 by a special NKVD plane. (Kersten, p. 96, 129). Later in his career, in the Summer of 1950, he was appointed to head the passport office in Warsaw. As the head of the passport office Sobczynski-Spychaj persecuted Jewish applicants for passports. He was reported to have used foul language and threw a number of persons down the stairs. At the request of the Soviets, Sobczynski-Spychaj was promoted to the rank of colonel and was elevated the head of personnel office of the Ministry of Defense. He was kept in sensitive posts as a useful agent of the NKVD. In June 1958 he earned his high school diploma. He died in 1988 in Warsaw. (Szaynok, 92).

Widespread awareness of the Soviet provocation of the riot caused protests against the death sentences. Demands were made for a full investigation into the affair. Catholic clergy, including then absent Bishop Kaczmarek, the opposition parties as well as General Wladyslaw Anders and other leaders of Polish political emigration were named during the show trial as anti-communist conspirators behind the Kielce violence. The show trial could not substantiate any of these charges.

The hurriedly-organized show trial did not give any chance for the defense lawyers to prepare themselves. There was, however, plenty of effort made to bring a large crowd of Polish and foreign news correspondents. The communists counted on the ignorance of foreign reporters of Soviet show-trial techniques and they assumed that Polish newsmen would be too intimidated to report on the abuse of the law. It was clear that for the Soviets, anti-Semitism was a convenient political and propaganda tool used to disrupt Polish society. It also served to identify anyone smeared with anti-Semitism as a "fascist" guilty of collaboration with the Nazis during the war.

DISBELIEF, PAIN, SHAME

In Poland, the news of the details of murders in Kielce caused first disbelief, then pain and shame that a Polish mob could be capable of such horrible atrocities and brutal killing frenzy no matter whether the crimes were provoked by the Soviets or not. Throughout Poland meetings were held condemning the pogrom of Kielce as a horrible atrocity. Mikolajczyk, the leader of the opposition peasant party, immediately condemned the pogrom. However, reports of his condemnation in the media were censored. The demand for a parliamentary investigation of the pogrom was rejected by the communist government. The Soviet-led government promised formation of an investigative commission composed of all political parties. It never materialized.

Since one of the aims of the Soviets was to cause an exodus of Jews from Poland, the Soviet authorities took actions to make the exit from Poland as easy as possible. A few days after the funeral of the victims of violence staged by the Soviets in Kielce, Russian General Gwidon Czewinski, the chief of border guards, called his Jewish assistant, Michal Rudawski, and ordered him to establish two more "illegal" crossing points for Jews on the Czechoslovakian border. (Krzysztof Kakolewski, "I apologize for Dariusz Rosati", Konflikty, Warsaw: March 28, 1996). These crossing points were supposedly illegal, but in reality they were purposely established by the Soviets and allowed free egress for Jews but not for anyone else. The new crossings were added to those existing already in Szczecin (Jewish code name Khyzar, or bristle in Hebrew, because Szczecin in Polish means bristle market) and in Klodzko (Jewish code name Dorom). The southern crossings were to serve Jewish emigrants going though Austria to Palestine and the northern crossing at Szczecin served those Jews who travelled to West German displaced persons' camps arid from there south though Austria or Italy to Palestine. As stated before, about two-thirds of the Jewish emigrants preferred to go to the United States, France, or other western country. As a result of Jewish emigration, by the end of 1946, there were 100,000 Jews left in Poland of the quarter of a million that were there at the beginning of the year. At the same time, over 200,000 Polish Jews were in West Germany and Austria waiting for further migration. The Anglo-American Commission promised admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine. In the West German Displaced-Persons' camps, Jewish socialists advocated returning to Poland while Zionists insisted on immigration to Palestine. (I.C. Pogonowski, "Jews in Poland: A Documentary History," New York: Hippocrene Books Inc., 1993, p. 349).

A Polish motion picture, "The Witnesses," illustrates the feelings of pain and shame inflicted on the Polish society by the Kielce Pogrom. Many realized that the Soviet provocation succeeded in damaging the good name of the Polish people by cynically staging the vicious pogrom and playing up the card of anti-Semitism. Soviet occupation and policies conditioned a limited number of people in Kielce to respond to the provocation. Also, no one familiar with the Kielce Pogrom claimed that it was a spontaneous violence. (Kersten, pp. 96, 130). The Catholic Church clearly stated that the provocateurs and perpetrators of the murder in Kielce must be absolutely and without any reservations condemned in the light of God's and human laws and that all rumors about Jewish ritual murders are lies (July 7, 1946, Bishop Teodor Kubina). Cardinal Hlond, the Catholic Primate of Poland, stated on July 11, 1946: "Catholic clergy always and everywhere condemn murder. Murder must be condemned also in Poland: against Poles, against Jews in Kielce and other locations. The violence in Kielce was not brought by racism, but by entirely different painful and tragical causes." (Kersten, p. 102). Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel price laureate for Polish literature, called these tactics "socialist terrorism." Among victims of the Soviet or socialist terrorism were many Polish democratic leaders who were neither anti-Semitic nor reactionary.

Unfortunately, the Moscow files on the Kielce violence have never been opened. These perhaps contain the reports of NKVD/KGB Col. Natan Shpilevoy and G.R.U. high-ranking officer Mikhail Dyomin, who apparently was in charge of choosing the site and staging the provocation in Kielce. Thus, in the absence of direct evidence from Moscow, the Soviet provocation remains the most likely hypothesis, one that is corroborated by all of the available evidence. Clearly, the presence and activities of these two Soviet officers preclude any possibility that the violence in Kielce erupted spontaneously.

CONCLUSION

The tragic events known as the Pogrom of Kielce of 1946 are demonstrably a part of Soviet postwar global strategy. The Soviets ruthlessly exploited Jews for Soviet political purposes. The pogroms staged behind the lines of the Red Army were provoked or condoned in order to generate an exodus of Jews who otherwise would not emigrate. The migration of Jews to Palestine was needed by the Soviets to abolish the British mandate there and profit from Arab-Israeli conflict in order to interfere with oil supplies to the West. Meanwhile, a minority of the Jewish population was used by the Soviets to establish communist regimes in the satellite states.

The Pogrom of Kielce was ignited by the Soviet introduction of an organized provocation based on planting false reports of ritual murders, a method of provoking violence originally started by the czarist governments. As was detailed, a very similar provocation was staged a year earlier in Rzeszow by the same NKVD agents. The Pogrom of Kielce was timed for anti-Polish propaganda purposes to persuade the Western powers that Poland should remain a colony of the Soviets, rather than being allowed to return to freedom as did other Allied nations. For that reason it was singled out for extensive news coverage which was to convince Western politicians that "Polish anti-Semitism" could only be tamed by the Soviets and that allowing Poland to become free would cause another wave of anti-Semitism and murders of Jews.

The Kielce Pogrom, perhaps more than any other historical occurrence, has been used to falsely show evidence of Polish actions to exterminate Jews. This view, clearly put forward by a 1940's Soviet establishment keen to subjugate Poland, has been allowed to become the commonly accepted "conventional wisdom." In this case, the conventional wisdom is wrong: it does not square with the historical facts. Those who can examine the historical record, but then choose to ignore it and purposely libel an entire nation and ethnic group, are on the wrong side of history: they are using the methods of Hitler and Stalin.

It is sometimes said that throughout history people and their nations are inclined to gear up to fight the last war. So it may be with attempts at ethnic destruction. In the Information Age, new Holocausts may be possible not so much by gas chambers, the technology of genocide for World War II, but by printing presses and their modern-day electronic equivalents. Is hatred for a person simply because of his ethnicity more acceptable today, as long as the object of the hatred is a Pole rather than a Jew? And once it is decided that it is important to instill hatred against members of a given ethnic group, can there be any limit to the perpetration of lies, myths, and mischaracterizations to drive the hatred home? And once ethnic hatred is started and nurtured in a people, where will it end? The Holocaust itself unfortunately provides one answer, one such ending point.

Clear and reprehensible evidence of anti-Polonism can be seen by inclusion of the events at Kielce, horrible though they were, as a Polish continuation of Hitler's evil work of the Holocaust. This defamation of Polish people can be seen in downtown Washington, D.C., at the Holocaust Museum. This type of anti-Polonism can be read in occasional press accounts that slur the Polish people and sometimes can even be heard in informal discussions. Despite these open sores, it is not too far-fetched, I think, to imagine that Jews and Poles, two peoples who survived a twin Holocaust perpetrated by the same country, could develop a new relationship based on friendship and goodwill. It may well be time, fifty years after this tragic event took place, to put the Kielce Pogrom in its proper perspective as an event unconnected with the Holocaust and an event not conducted by a free and willing Polish population, a population that in actual fact abhorred this violence. The Soviet design to falsely discredit the Polish people through this staged event has amazingly outlived even the Soviet Union itself. The spirit of hatred of World War II and the associated Holocaust, and the habit of hate against Poles promoted by the former "evil empire" of the Soviet Union will still exist as long as its tentacles still reach into the minds and actions of ordinary people. Shalom, my friends, and pokoj.

Peace to all.