In the TV-Series "Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter", Polish Partisans are presented as extremly Anti-Semitic. Is there any historical basis for this?

by [deleted]
[deleted]

So this is an area of intense debate, and many Polish scholars would protest against what I am going to say, but the answer really is "yes."

Many scholars of the Holocaust have seen the Poles as willfully complicit, not perhaps in the Holocaust proper, but certainly in the persecution of Polish Jews under German rule. This is addressed many times with specific examples in Art Spiegelman's Maus, is touched on briefly in Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men, but the definitive work is Jan Gross' Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland.

There is little doubt among most that there was a significant amount of Polish anti-semitism, with many crimes, not only informing, but also lynchings and other murders. Most of the debate now focuses on degree.

Timber_Beast

Some Polish partisan groups were antisemitic, some extremely so. It depends which partisan group you're covering. There was a large political spectrum in the Polish underground.

There is eyewitness testimony from both Jewish and Christian Poles that some partisan groups participated in robbing and killing groups of Jews who were seeking refuge in the forests. There is also evidence of right-wing Polish partisan groups relaying information about Jews to the Nazis or even handing them over in arranged truces. That's not to imply that all right-wing Polish partisans or partisan groups engaged in this sort of thing.

The sentiments that led to these actions is documented in articles and other pieces in the Polish underground press. For example, some right-wing writings expressed opposition to the Holocaust, not on humanitarian grounds, but because the Jews were, according to the writings, a Polish problem that Poles would deal with (the envisioned solution never mentioned).

Larger and more centrist groups, which included the Home Army (the largest resistance group) were not openly antisemitic, even if some of their membership was/may have been. Many of them refused to allow Jews to join them, but there were pragmatic reasons for this that go beyond prejudice.

The groups that were the most friendly (and accepting) of Jews were often (1) specifically Jewish partisan groups or (2) the Communists. The Communist-aligned partisans were the only major partisan grouping to accept large numbers of Jews into their fold.

Keep in mind, though, that local groups may have differed from the norm in their behavior, and that some "partisan" groups were nothing but armed bandits who preyed upon vulnerable people (like fugitive Jews). Eastern Europe and Poland in particular saw some strange and fascinating things during WWII, most of them incompletely documented--Partisans fighting each other, partisans fighting against both sides, paramilitary death squads terrorizing different ethnic groups, partisan groups retreating behind the retreating Germans to escape the Red Army, etc. etc.

Sources:

Klaus-Peter Friedrich’s “Collaboration in a ‘Land without a Quisling’: Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II”

Strengths: Exhaustive research, good use of statical evidence Weakness: Interchangeable use of the terms compliance, cooperation, and collaboration

John Connelly’s “Why the Poles Collaborated so Little: And Why That Is No Reason for Nationalist Hubris”

Strength: Good English-language presentation of the evidence from the mainstream "Polish" perspective. Weakness: Distorted presentation of evidence to minimalizes the appearance of wrongdoing by non-Jewish Poles

Carla Tonini’s “The Polish Underground Press and the Issue of Collaboration with the Nazi Occupiers, 1939-1944.”

Strength: Well-documented, includes sources unused elsewhere Weakness: Only deals with the press