The Pinsk massacre was the mass execution of thirty-five
Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
ish residents of
Pinsk
Pinsk ( be, Пі́нск; russian: Пи́нск ; Polish: Pińsk; ) is a city located in the Brest Region of Belarus, in the Polesia region, at the confluence of the Pina River and the Pripyat River. The region was known as the Marsh of Pinsk a ...
on April 5, 1919, by the
Polish Army
The Land Forces () are the land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 62,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military history stret ...
. The Polish commander "sought to terrorize the Jewish population" after claiming to being warned by two Jewish soldiers about a possible Bolshevik uprising. The event occurred during the opening stages of the
Polish–Soviet War
The Polish–Soviet War (Polish–Bolshevik War, Polish–Soviet War, Polish–Russian War 1919–1921)
* russian: Советско-польская война (''Sovetsko-polskaya voyna'', Soviet-Polish War), Польский фронт (' ...
, after the Polish Army had captured Pinsk.
The Jews who were executed had been arrested while meeting in a Zionist center to discuss the distribution of American relief aid; the meeting was described by the Poles as an "illegal gathering". The Polish officer-in-charge ordered the
summary execution
A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial. Executions as the result of summary justice (such as a drumhead court-martial) are sometimes include ...
of the meeting participants without
trial
In law, a trial is a coming together of Party (law), parties to a :wikt:dispute, dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence (law), evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to Adjudication, adjudicate claims or d ...
, and based on the information about the gathering's purpose that was founded on
hearsay
Hearsay evidence, in a legal forum, is testimony from an under-oath witness who is reciting an out-of-court statement, the content of which is being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. In most courts, hearsay evidence is inadmis ...
. The officer's decision was defended by high-ranking Polish military officers, but was widely criticized by international
public opinion
Public opinion is the collective opinion on a specific topic or voting intention relevant to a society. It is the people's views on matters affecting them.
Etymology
The term "public opinion" was derived from the French ', which was first use ...
.
Mass execution
The battle for Pinsk was won in March 1919 by General Antoni Listowski of the
Polish Army
The Land Forces () are the land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 62,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military history stret ...
regional commander of the Polish forces in Podlasie.
The city was taken over in a late-winter blizzard with considerable human losses sustained by the 34th Infantry Regiment under
Major Narbutt-Łuczyński who forced the Bolsheviks to retreat to the other side of the river. Before their withdrawal however, the Russians had raised an armed militia composed of a small, non-representative group of local peasants and young Jewish communists who kept on shooting at the Poles from concealment.
An interim civilian administration was set up in Pińsk, but the hostilities continued. There were instances of Polish soldiers being singled out at night and murdered.
[Dr. Andrzej Nieuważny]
Atlantyda Polesia
p. 4 of 6. Rzeczpospolita (newspaper)
''Rzeczpospolita'' () is a Polish nationwide daily economic and legal newspaper, published by Gremi Media. Established in 1920, ''Rzeczpospolita'' was originally founded as a daily newspaper of the conservative Christian National Party during in ...
15 June 2013.
On April 5, 1919, seventy-five Jewish residents of the city met at a local Zionist center to discuss the distribution of American relief aid according to eyewitness accounts.
[Yisrael Gutman. "Poles and Jews between the Wars: Historic Overview." In: Herbert Arthur Strauss, ed]
Hostages of Modernization: Studies on Modern Antisemitism, 1870-1933/39.
Walter de Gruyter, 1993.[Mieczysław B. Biskupski, Piotr Stefan Wandycz]
Ideology, Politics, and Diplomacy in East Central Europe.
Boydell & Brewer, 2003. Public meetings were banned at the time because random shots were still being heard and the town was recently under Bolshevik control. According to some accounts the meeting had received approval from Polish military authorities. When major
Aleksander Narbutt-Łuczyński heard,
that the meeting was a Bolshevik gathering, he initially ordered his troops to arrest the meeting organizers.
[Henry Morgenthau, French Strother]
All in a Life-time.
Doubleday, Page and Company, 1922, p. 360. Original from the New York Public Library, digitized Jul 17, 2007> The night before the event, two Jewish soldiers, Daniel Kozak and Motel Kolkier, reported that they were offered a bribe to join Bolshevik conspiracy in local synagogue. The town commander fearing a Bolshevik uprising, which he did not investigate, ordered the execution of the hostages. Within an hour, thirty-five
detainees
Detention is the process whereby a state or private citizen lawfully holds a person by removing their freedom or liberty at that time. This can be due to (pending) criminal charges preferred against the individual pursuant to a prosecution or ...
were put against the wall of the town's cathedral,
and machine-gunned by a firing squad composed of the Polish soldiers.
[ Mission of The United States to Poland, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. Report] It was claimed that some men and women were stripped and beaten.
According to historian
Norman Davies
Ivor Norman Richard Davies (born 8 June 1939) is a Welsh-Polish historian, known for his publications on the history of Europe, Poland and the United Kingdom. He has a special interest in Central and Eastern Europe and is UNESCO Professor at ...
, the executions were intended as a deterrent to those planning any further unrest.
Davies notes that the exact nature of the meeting was never clarified, and that it was variously described as Committee of American Relief distribution, Bolshevik cell or assembly of local co-operative.
Initial reports
Initial reports of the massacre, echoing the claims that the victims were Bolshevik conspirators, were based on an account given by an American investigator, Dr. Franciszek (Francis) Fronczak, who was a former health commissioner of
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...
.
[ Fronczak became member of the Paris-based Polish National Committee (''Komitet Narodowy Polski'', KNP),] where he directed the organization's Department of Public Welfare helping thousands of refugees.[ He arrived in Europe in May 1918, with permission of the ]State Department
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...
. Back home, he was a leader of the National Polish Department of America, a major organization of Polish-American
Polish Americans ( pl, Polonia amerykańska) are Americans who either have total or partial Poles, Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 9.15 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing abou ...
expats
An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person who resides outside their native country. In common usage, the term often refers to educated professionals, skilled workers, or artists taking positions outside their home country, either ...
. Upon his arrival, he identified himself to local authorities as the ARC mission's Lieutenant Colonel sent to investigate local health conditions in hospitals.[ Although not an eyewitness, Fronczak accepted Luczynski's claims that the aid distribution meeting was actually a Bolshevik gathering to obtain arms and destroy the small Polish garrison in Pinsk. He himself claimed to have heard shots being fired from the Jewish meeting hall when Polish troops approached. He also claimed he had heard a confession from a mortally wounded Jew when he arrived at the town square where the executions had taken place. The initial wire reports of the massacre and a Polish military report which cleared the local authorities of any wrongdoing and denounced the Jewish victims, was based largely on Fronczak's testimony.]
The version of the events cited by the Polish parliament were based on the account of Barnet Zuckerman, a representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, also known as Joint or JDC, is a Jewish relief organization based in New York City. Since 1914 the organisation has supported Jewish people living in Israel and throughout the world. The organization i ...
who had interviewed survivors on the day of the massacre.[ At the time, he was in charge of delivering the relief aid from the committee, negotiating the appropriate way to distribute it. Instead of personally investigating the matter, he went from Brest to Warsaw as soon as he learned of what had happened, where he publicized his version of the events as -''"A Massacre of Innocent Civilians"''.][
In an attempt to assure Herbert Hoover that everything was alright, ]Ignacy Jan Paderewski
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (; – 29 June 1941) was a Polish pianist and composer who became a spokesman for Polish independence. In 1919, he was the new nation's Prime Minister and foreign minister during which he signed the Treaty of Versaill ...
said that:"In this district he region around Pinsk which is the scene of serious warfare against the Bolshevists, it becomes necessary to act with considerable energy and prompt decision. It is a case of destroying the Bolshevistic disease or being destroyed by it."
Despite attempts of the Polish authorities to suppress the story, accounts of the incident in the international press caused a scandal which would have strong repercussions abroad.
Reactions
Polish army
The Polish Group Commander General Antoni Listowski
Antoni Listowski (29 March 1865, Warsaw - 13 September 1927, Warsaw) was a Polish military officer. After being a mayor general of the Imperial Russian Army (from 1916 on), he became general in the Polish Armed Forces and took part in the Polish ...
claimed that the gathering was a Bolshevik meeting and that the Jewish population attacked the Polish troops. The overall tension of the military campaign was brought up as a justification for the crime. In his order to the population of Pinsk of 7 April 1919, two days after the massacre, Listowski justified the massacre as the "town's Jews as a whole were guilty of the crime of blatant ingratitude".[Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History](_blank)
Indiana University Press, David Engel, page 33
The Polish military refused to give investigators access to documents, and the officers and soldiers were never punished. Major Łuczyński was not charged for any wrongdoing and was eventually transferred and promoted reaching the rank of colonel (1919) and general (1924) in the Polish army.[Lista starszeństwa generałów polskich w 1939 roku]
/ref> The events were criticized in the Sejm
The Sejm (English: , Polish: ), officially known as the Sejm of the Republic of Poland (Polish: ''Sejm Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej''), is the lower house of the bicameral parliament of Poland.
The Sejm has been the highest governing body of t ...
(Polish parliament), but representatives of the Polish army denied any wrongdoing.
International
In the Western press of the time, the massacre was referred to as the ''Polish Pogrom at Pinsk'', and was noticed by wider public opinion. Upon a request of Polish authorities to president Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
, an American mission was sent to Poland to investigate nature of the alleged atrocities.
The mission, led by Jewish-American diplomat Henry Morgenthau, Sr.
Henry Morgenthau (; April 26, 1856 – November 25, 1946) was a German-born American lawyer and businessman, best known for his role as the United States Ambassador to Turkey, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Morgenthau was on ...
, published the Morgenthau Report The Morgenthau report, officially the ''Report of the Mission of the United States to Poland'', was a report compiled by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., as member of the "Mission of the United States to Poland" which was appointed by the American Commission ...
on October 3, 1919.
According to the findings of this commission, a total of about 300 Jews lost their lives in this and related incidents. The commission also severely criticized the actions of Major Łuczyński and his superiors with regards to handling of the events in Pinsk.[Czerniakiewicz, p. 587] At the same time the allied commission determined that the cause of the events couldn't be attributed to antisemitism and the United States representative lieutenant Foster stated that Major's Łuczyński i's actions were justified in the circumstances.
Morgenthau later recounted the massacre in autobiography, where he wrote:
Who were these thirty-five victims? They were the leaders of the local Jewish community, the spiritual and moral leader of the 5,000 Jews in a city, eighty-five percent of the population of which was Jewish, the organizers of the charities, the directors of the hospitals, the friends of the poor. And yet, to that incredibly brutal, and even more incredibly stupid, officer who ordered their execution, they were only so many Jews.
Commemoration
In 1926, kibbutz
A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...
Gevat
Gvat ( he, גְּבַת, also transliterated ''Gevat'') is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located near Migdal HaEmek in the Jezreel Valley, it falls under the jurisdiction of Jezreel Valley Regional Council. In it had a population of . The kibbutz ...
(Gvat) was established by emigrants from Pinsk to the British Mandate of Palestine British Mandate of Palestine or Palestine Mandate most often refers to:
* Mandate for Palestine: a League of Nations mandate under which the British controlled an area which included Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan.
* Mandatory P ...
in commemoration of the Pinsk massacre victims.
Controversy
English historian Norman Davies
Ivor Norman Richard Davies (born 8 June 1939) is a Welsh-Polish historian, known for his publications on the history of Europe, Poland and the United Kingdom. He has a special interest in Central and Eastern Europe and is UNESCO Professor at ...
has questioned whether the meeting was explicitly authorized and notes that "the nature of the illegal meeting, variously described as a Bolshevik cell, an assembly of the local co-operative society, and a meeting of the Committee for American Relief, was never clarified". American historian Richard Lukas described the Pinsk massacre as "an execution of a thirty-five Bolshevik infiltrators...justified in the eyes of an American investigator",[ ] while David Engel has noted that the Morgenthau report, the summary of an American investigation into the Pinsk and other massacres led by Jewish-American Henry Morgenthau, Sr.
Henry Morgenthau (; April 26, 1856 – November 25, 1946) was a German-born American lawyer and businessman, best known for his role as the United States Ambassador to Turkey, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Morgenthau was on ...
, contradicts the accounts presented by Davies and Lukas. In its summary of its investigation of the Pinsk massacre, the Morgenthau report notes that, with respect to the claims of the Polish authorities that the meeting was a gathering of a Bolshevik nature,
We are convinced that no arguments of a Bolshevist nature were mentioned in the meeting in question. While it is recognized that certain information of Bolshevist activities in Pinsk had been reported by two Jewish soldiers, we are convinced that Major Luczynski, the Town Commander, showed reprehensible and frivolous readiness to place credence in such untested assertions, and on this insufficient basis took inexcusably drastic action against reputable citizens whose loyal character could have been immediately established by a consultation with any well known non-Jewish inhabitant.
The report also found that the official statements by General Antoni Listowski, the Polish Group Commander, claiming that Polish troops had been attacked by Jews, were "devoid of foundation."[David Engel. Poles, Jews, and Historical Objectivity. ''Slavic Review'', Vol. 46, No. 3/4 (Autumn - Winter, 1987), pp. 568-580. See also Mission of The United States to Poland, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. Report]
In either case, Davies concluded that " he topicwas well suited for sensational headlines... the publicity reflected badly on the Polish army ndconformed the popular idea throughout the world that all Polish soldiers were anti-semites and all Bolshevicks Jews".
See also
*List of massacres in Belarus
The following is a partial list of selected massacres that are known to have occurred in the territory of modern-day Belarus (some numbers may be approximated):
References
{{Europe topic , List of massacres in
Belarus
Massacres
*
Massacres ...
*Vilna offensive
The Vilna offensive was a campaign of the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921. The Polish army launched an offensive on April 16, 1919, to take Vilnius ( pl, Wilno) from the Red Army. After three days of street fighting from April 19–21, the ...
References
Bibliography
*
*
{{Massacres of Jews
1919 in Belarus
Massacres in 1919
1919 in Judaism
April 1919 events
Antisemitism in Belarus
Jewish Polish history
Jewish Belarusian history
Massacre
A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especially those who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves. A massacre is generally considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when per ...
Anti-Jewish pogroms of the Polish-Soviet War
Polish war crimes
Massacres in Belarus
Western Belorussia (1918–1939)
Persecution of Jews
Anti-Zionism in Poland