Black Earth(87)

That winter, Jews were indeed murdered by such a “preparation”: the exhaust fumes that had already been tested in Belarus and in the east. The killing machines at Che?mno, where Jews from ?ód? and elsewhere in the Warthegau were taken beginning in December 1941, were parked gas vans guarded by German Order Policemen. This was a modification of a technique earlier used to kill people designated as “unworthy of life.” Immediately after the German invasion of Poland, the Germans had emptied Polish mental hospitals by gassing their patients. The SS commando responsible for these killings, led by Herbert Lange, was entrusted with the killing at Che?mno. There was also a certain amount of influence from the east. Otto Bradfisch had been the commander of Einsatzkommando 8 in Belarus, which painted Stars of David on its vehicles to proclaim its annihilatory task. In April 1942, he was assigned to ?ód?, where he oversaw the continuing deportation of Jews to Che?mno.

As of the end of 1942, however, a large number of Jews were still alive in the Polish territories annexed to Germany, chiefly in ?ód?. After the first selections, the ghetto there was transformed into a work camp, producing armaments. Tens of thousands of Jews would survive in ?ód? until almost the end of the war, when they were deported to Auschwitz.

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In the General Government, all of the major Jewish communities had been destroyed by autumn 1942. The Jews who were alive, with very few exceptions such as laborers in arms factories, were killed on sight by German police. Poles in the General Government who were caught aiding Jews were also subject to the death penalty, and villages where Jews were found were subject to collective retribution. In the last weeks of 1942, the main task of the German police in the General Government was what they called the “Jew hunts.” There was so much shooting in the countryside that dogs on Polish farms ceased to react to the sound of gunfire.

In 1943 and 1944 in the General Government, German police sought to bring about the cooperation of Poles in the hunts. Himmler was at the top of the chain of command. His orders were passed through the Higher SS and Police Leader for Warsaw to the German Order Police. In turn, the German Order Police was to “involve in this action the broadest possible masses of Polish society.” Thus, the German Order Police engaged two institutions that had existed in independent Poland, but which had been transformed by its destruction. The first was the Polish Order Police, which since 1939 had been purged, racialized, and subordinated to German purposes. The second were Polish local authorities, deprived of their previous relationship to state and law, but with two years of responsibility for German racial policy. Polish policemen and Polish local authorities were made personally responsible to their German superiors for ensuring that no Jews were left alive in their districts.

There was a politics to all this, but it was not a national politics. It is not clear in any event how many Polish-speaking peasants identified with the Polish nation and state in 1939. The social distance between peasants and Jews (although they lived in the same places) and between peasants and Polish officials (although they spoke the same language) was perhaps greater than nostalgic sentiment or wishful nationalism might suggest. What can be said with some confidence is that after three years of German rule, Polish-speaking peasants saw the Polish order as vanquished and lived within the German one. They were constantly told, and those who were literate could read, that their local authorities were responsible for keeping their village or county free of Jews. The village head had to post a notice promising death to Poles who aided Jews and rewards for those who turned them in. Jewish survivors remembered seeing such posters in every Polish village. If a Jew was hiding in a village, the village head could be denounced to the Germans by his own people, perhaps by a rival or someone bearing a grudge. In the Polish countryside people denounced one another quite regularly for all sorts of reasons; the presence of Jews was often just the pretext to settle a score. The legacy of prewar antisemitism, spread by both the secular Right and the Roman Catholic Church, was that Poles who wished to aid Jews feared other Poles. A village head could not organize or sanction a rescue of Jews unless he was sure that he could expect the solidarity of all villagers. This led to absurd situations in which village heads bribed their own villagers not to denounce them to the Germans.

Poles were not always executed for sheltering Jews, but they were often enough that the fear was real. In thousands of cases across the General Government, the German police carried out mass murders of Poles for one violation or another. In Krosno prison, a Polish woman was executed right after the Jew she had been sheltering was shot, her corpse pushed on top of his. All this took place in front of the other Polish prisoners, who could draw their own conclusions. When there was a denunciation, German policemen arrived to find and kill the Jews, and to punish the village if none were produced. In cases of uncertainty the villagers were required to join the Germans in the hunt for the reported Jews. During the “Jew hunt,” the village leaders were made hostages and, in principle, could pay with their lives if the Jews were not found. The village night guard, men who in times of peace watched for fire or disorder, took part in the Jew hunts and were also made hostages. If they captured Jews, they would be rewarded. If they failed to find Jews, their lives were forfeit.