Żydokomuna

' (, Polish for "Judeo-Communism") is an anti-communist and antisemitic canard, or pejorative stereotype, suggesting that most Jews collaborated with the Soviet Union in importing communism into Poland, or that there was an exclusively Jewish conspiracy to do so. A Polish language term for "Jewish Bolshevism", or more literally "Jewish communism", ''Żydokomuna'' is related to the " Jewish world conspiracy" myth.Gerrits, André (1995). "Antisemitism and Anti-Communism: The Myth of 'Judeo-Communism' in Eastern Europe". ''East European Jewish Affairs''. 25(1), 71 (49–72).

The idea originated as anti-communist propaganda at the time of the Polish–Soviet War (1919–1920), and continued through the interwar period. It was based on longstanding antisemitic attitudes, coupled with a historical fear of Russia. Most of Poland's Jews supported the government controlled by Józef Piłsudski; after his death in 1935, rising levels of popular and state antisemitism pushed a small minority, several thousand at most, into participating in, or supporting, communist politics, which were relatively more welcoming to Jews. This was seized upon and inflated by antisemites.

With the Soviet invasion of Poland and Stalin's 1939 occupation in eastern Poland, the Soviets used privileges and punishments to encourage ethnic and religious differences between Jews and Poles, characterized by Jan Gross as "the institutionalization of resentment". The stereotype was also reinforced because, as noted by Jaff Schatz, "people of Jewish origin constituted a substantial part of the Polish communist movement", even though "Communist ideals and the movement itself enjoyed only very limited support" among Polish Jews. There was an upsurge in the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews as Communist traitors; it erupted into mass murder when Nazi Germany invaded Soviet eastern Poland in the summer of 1941.

The stereotype endured into postwar Poland because Polish anti-communists saw Poland's Soviet-controlled Communist government as the fruition of prewar communist anti-Polish agitation and associated it with the Soviets' appointment of Jews to positions of responsibility in the Polish government. It was also reinforced by the prominent role of a small number of Jews in Poland's Stalinist regime (in particular, Jakub Berman and Hilary Minc). Michael C. Steinlauf noted that Jewish communists, despite their small number, have gained a notorious reputation in Poland, "believed to have masterminded the enslavement f that country and became "demonized" as part of the ''Żydokomuna'' canard.

Background

The concept of a Jewish conspiracy threatening Polish social order may be found in the pamphlet (The Year 3333, or the Incredible Dream) by Polish Enlightenment author and political activist Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz; it was written in 1817 and published posthumously in 1858. Called "the first Polish work to develop on a large scale the concept of an organized Jewish conspiracy directly threatening the existing social structure," it describes a Warsaw of the future renamed Moszkopolis after its Jewish ruler.

At the end of the 19th century, Roman Dmowski's National Democratic party characterized Poland's Jews and other opponents of his party as internal enemies who were behind international conspiracies inimical to Poland and who were agents of disorder, disruption and socialism. Historian Antony Polonsky writes that before World War I, "The National Democrats brought to Poland a new and dangerous ideological fanaticism, dividing society into 'friends' and 'enemies' and resorting constantly to conspiratorial theories ("Jewish-Masonic plot"; "''Żydokomuna''"—"Jew-communism") to explain Poland's difficulties." Meanwhile, some Jews played into National Democratic rhetoric by their participation in exclusively Jewish organizations, such as the Bund and the Zionist movement, even as other Jews zealously participated in national institutions such as the Polish Army and Józef Piłsudski's ideologically multicultural Sanation regime.

History

Origins

According to Joanna Michlic, "the image of the secularized and radically left-wing Jew who aims to take over he countryand undermine the foundations of the Christian world" dates to the first half of the 19th century, to the writings of Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and Zygmunt Krasinski; by the end of the 19th century it had become part of the political discourse in Poland. The phenomenon, described with the term ''Żydokomuna'', originated in connection with the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and targeted Jewish Communists during the Polish–Soviet War. The emergence of the Soviet state was seen by many Poles as Russian imperialism in a new guise. The visibility of Jews in both the Soviet leadership and in the Communist Party of Poland further heightened such fears. In some circles, ''Żydokomuna'' came to be seen as a prominent antisemitic stereotype expressing political paranoia.

Accusations of ''Żydokomuna'' accompanied the incidents of anti-Jewish violence in Poland during Polish–Soviet War of 1920, legitimized as self-defense against a people who were oppressors of the Polish nation. Some soldiers and officers in the Polish eastern territories shared the conviction that Jews were enemies of the Polish nation-state and were collaborators with Poland's enemies. Some of these troops treated all Jews as Bolsheviks. According to some sources, the anti-Communist sentiment was implicated in anti-Jewish violence and killings in a number of towns, including the Pinsk massacre, in which 35 Jews, taken as hostages, were murdered. During the Lwów pogrom during the Polish–Ukrainian War, 72 Jews were killed. Occasional instances of Jewish support for Bolshevism during the Polish–Soviet War served to heighten anti-Jewish sentiment.

The concept of ''Żydokomuna'' was widely illustrated in Polish interwar politics, including publications by the National Democrats and the Catholic Church that expressed anti-Jewish views. During World War II, the term ''Żydokomuna'' was made to resemble the '' Jewish-Bolshevism'' rhetoric of Nazi Germany, wartime Romania and other war-torn countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Interwar period

During the period between the two world wars, the myth of ''Żydokomuna'' became intertwined with that of the "criminal Jew". Statistics from the 1920s had indicated a low Jewish crime rate. In 1924, 72 percent of those convicted of crimes were ethnic Poles, 21 percent "Ruthenians/Ukrainians", and 3.4 percent Jews. A reclassification of how crime was recorded, which now included minor offenses, reversed the trend. By the 1930s, Jewish criminal statistics showed an increase relative to the Jewish population. Some Poles, particularly as reported within the right-wing press, believed these statistics confirmed the image of the "criminal Jew"; additionally, political crimes by Jews were more closely scrutinized, enhancing fears of a criminal ''Żydokomuna''.

Another important factor was the dominance of Jews in the leadership of the Communist Party of Poland (KPP). According to multiple sources, Jews were well represented in the KPP. Notably, the party had strong Jewish representation at higher levels. In January 1936 the national composition of the central party authorities were as follows: out of the 19 KC (central committee) KPP members 11 were Polish, 6 were Jewish (31,6%), 1 was Belarusian and 1 Ukrainian. Jews made up 28 out of the 52 individuals of the "district activists" of the KPP (53.8%), 75% of its "publication apparatus", 90% of the "international department for help to revolutionaries", and 100% of the "technical apparatus" of the Home Secretariat. In Polish court proceedings against communists between 1927 and 1936, 90% of the accused were Jews. In terms of membership, before its dissolution in 1938, 25% of KPP members were Jews; most urban KPP members were Jews, which was a substantial number, given an 8.7% Jewish minority in prewar Poland. Some historians, including Joseph Marcus, qualify these statistics, alleging that the KPP should not be considered a "Jewish party", as it was in fact opposed to traditional Jewish economic and national interests. The Jews supporting the KPP identified as international Communists and rejected much of the Jewish culture and tradition. However, KPP, along with the Polish Socialist Party, was notable for its decisive stand against antisemitism. According to Jaff Schatz's summary of Jewish participation in the prewar Polish Communist movement, " roughout the whole interwar period, Jews constituted a very important segment of the Communist movement. According to Polish sources and Western estimates, the proportion of Jews in the KPP he Communist Party of Polandwas never lower than 22 percent. In the larger cities, the percentage of Jews in the KPP often exceeded 50 percent and in smaller cities, frequently over 60 percent. Given this background, a respondent's statement that 'in small cities like ours, almost all Communists were Jews,' does not appear to be a gross exaggeration." It was the disproportionately large representation of Jews in the communist leadership that led to ''Żydokomuna'' sentiment being widely expressed in contemporary Polish politics. However, the total number of Jewish Communists was low at 5,000–10,000 members or less than 1% of the Polish-Jewish population.

According to some bodies of research, voting patterns in Poland's parliamentary elections in the 1920s revealed that Jewish support for the Communists was proportionally less than their representation in the total population. In this view, most support for Poland's Communist and pro-Soviet parties came not from Jews, but rather from Ukrainian and Eastern Orthodox Christian Belarusian voters. Schatz notes that even if post-war claims by Jewish communists that 40% of the 266,528 Communist votes on several lists of front organizations at the 1928 Sejm election came from the Jewish community were true (a claim that one source describes as "almost certainly an exaggeration"), this would amount to no more than 5% of Jewish votes for the communists, indicating the Jewish population at large was "far from sympathetic to communism".

According to Jeffrey Kopstein, who analyzed the communist vote in interwar Poland, " en if Jews were prominent in the Communist Party leadership, this prominence did not translate into support at the mass level." Only 7% of Jewish voters supported Communists at the polls in 1928, while 93% of them supported non-communists (with 49% voting for Piłsudski). The pro-Soviet Communist party received most of its support from Belarusians whose separatism was backed by the Soviet Union and had been radicalized between 1922 and 1928 by a combination of Polish discrimination against them and Soviet interference in Polish politics; whereas 7% of Jewish voters supported Communists in 1928, 44% of Eastern Orthodox voters did, including around 25% of Orthodox Ukrainians and a figure likely rather higher than 44% among Belarusians. In Lwów, the CPP received 4% of the vote (of which 35% was Jewish), in Warsaw 14% (33% Jewish), and in Wilno 0.02% (36% Jewish). Among communist voters, Jews were not particularly prominent either, as only 14% of the communist vote came from Jews, less than the 16% which came from Catholics, and most of the rest coming from Orthodox Christians. While one viewpoint explains the high level of Jewish support for Pilsudski, higher than any other group, as Jews turning to him as a protector, another view holds that when faced with threats of a "nationalizing" ethnic Polish state, whereas Belarusians tended to turn to pro-Soviet "exit" strategies and Uniate Ukrainians threw their weight behind ethnic interest parties, Jews instead took a different strategy of showing their loyalty to Poland. Kopstein concluded: "Even in the face of both public and private prejudice, ... st Jews were thus politically neither "internationalist" nor ethnically exclusionary, as a large vote for the minority parties in 1928 would have indicated. Rather they were casting their lot with the Polish state. ... Our data do not speak to whether Jews were disproportionately represented among the leadership of interwar Poland's communist parties. Yet even if this were true, ... it means the Jews did not vote communist even when their co-ethnics were leading the communist parties."

Invasion of Poland and the Soviet occupation zone

Following the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, resulting in the partition of Polish territory between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR), Jewish communities in eastern Poland welcomed with some relief the Soviet occupation, which they saw as a "lesser of two evils" than openly antisemitic Nazi Germany. The image of Jews among the Belarusian and Ukrainian minorities waving red flags to welcome Soviet troops had great symbolic meaning in Polish memory of the period. Jan T. Gross noted that "there were proportionately more communist sympathizers among Jews than among any other nationality in the local population". In the days and weeks following the events of September 1939, the Soviets engaged in a harsh policy of Sovietization. Polish schools and other institutions were closed, Poles were dismissed from jobs of authority, often arrested and deported, and replaced with non-Polish personnel. At the same time, 100,000 Jewish Poles fought to defend Poland against the Nazi-Soviet invasion, while at least 434 Polish Jews who had been awarded officer rank by the Polish Army were murdered by the Soviets in the Katyn Massacre because of their loyalty to Poland.

Many Poles resented their change of fortunes because, before the war, Poles had a privileged position compared to other ethnic groups of the Second Republic. Then, in the space of a few days, Jews and other minorities from within Poland (mainly Ukrainians and Belarusians) occupied newly vacant positions in the Soviet occupation government and administration—such as teachers, civil servants and engineers—positions that some claimed they had trouble achieving under the Polish government. What to the majority of Poles was occupation and betrayal was, to some Jews—especially Polish Communists of Jewish descent who emerged from the underground—an opportunity for revolution and retribution.

Such events further strengthened ''Żydokomuna'' sentiment that held Jews responsible for collaboration with the Soviet authorities in importing communism into divided Poland. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, widespread notion of Judeo-Communism, combined with the German Nazi encouragement for expression of antisemitic attitudes, may have been a principal cause of massacres of Jews by gentile Poles in Poland's northeastern Łomża province in the summer of 1941, including according to Joanna B. Michlic the massacre at Jedwabne. Doris Bergen writes that "it was often precisely those Polish gentiles most deeply implicated in Soviet crimes who were quicket to take the lead in attacks on Jews—attacks that would serve both to deflect the anger of their neighbors and to curry favor with the new Germans occupiers."

Though some Jews had initially benefited from the effects of the Soviet invasion, this occupation soon began to strike at the Jewish population as well; independent Jewish organizations were abolished and Jewish activists were arrested. Hundreds of thousands of Jews who had fled to the Soviet sector were given a choice of Soviet citizenship or returning to the German-occupied zone. The majority chose the latter, and instead found themselves deported to the Soviet Union, where, ironically, 300,000 would escape the Holocaust. While there was Polish Jewish representation in the London-based Polish government in exile, relations between the Jews in Poland and Polish resistance in occupied Poland were strained, and armed Jewish groups had difficulty joining the official Polish resistance umbrella organization, the Home Army (in Polish, Armia Krajowa or AK), the heads of which often referred to them as "bandits". More acceptance was found within the smaller Armia Ludowa, the armed branch of the Polish Workers' Party, leading to some Jewish groups operating under their (and other Soviet partisan groups') auspices or protection, further strengthening the perception of Jews working with Soviets against the Poles.

Communist takeover of Poland in the aftermath of World War II

The Soviet-backed Communist government was as harsh towards non-Communist Jewish cultural, political and social institutions as they were towards Polish, banning all alternative parties. Thousands of Jews returned from exile in the Soviet Union, but as their number decreased with legalized aliyah to Israel, the PZPR members formed a much larger percentage of the remaining Jewish population. Among them were a number of Jewish communists who played a highly visible role in the unpopular Communist government and its security apparatus.

Hilary Minc, the third in command in Bolesław Bierut's political triumvirate of Stalinist leaders, became the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Industry, Industry and Commerce, and the Economic Affairs. He was personally assigned by Stalin first to Industry and then to Transportation ministries of Poland. His wife, , became the Editor-in-Chief of the monopolized Polish Press Agency. Minister Jakub Berman—Stalin's right hand in Poland until 1953—held the Political propaganda and Ideology portfolios. He was responsible for the largest and most notorious secret police in the history of the People's Republic of Poland, the Ministry of Public Security (UB), employing 33,200 permanent security officers, one for every 800 Polish citizens.

The new government's hostility to the wartime Polish Government in Exile and its World War II underground resistance—accused by the media of being nationalist, reactionary and antisemitic, and persecuted by Berman—further strengthened ''Żydokomuna'' sentiment to the point where in the popular consciousness Jewish Bolshevism was seen as having conquered Poland. It was in this context, reinforced by the immediate post-war lawlessness, that Poland experienced an unprecedented wave of anti-Jewish violence (of which most notable was the Kielce pogrom

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