Cries of the Mob in the Pogroms in Rzeszów (June 1945), Cracow (August 1945), and Kielce (July...

1

East European Politics and Societies

Volume XX Number XMonth XXXX xx-xx

© 2011 Sage Publications10.1177/0888325411398916

http://eeps.sagepub.comhosted at

http://online.sagepub.com

Cries of the Mob in the Pogroms in Rzeszów (June 1945), Cracow (August 1945), and Kielce (July 1946) as a Source for the State of Mind of the ParticipantsJoanna Tokarska-BakirWarsaw University and Polish Academy of Science

although the starting point for all the Polish postwar pogroms (save for one) was a blood libel, this particular motif did not attract the historians’ attention until recently. Theories on plots devised by “Soviet advisors” or “Zionists” enjoyed an incomparably greater popularity. This article, based upon the documentation of the Rzeszów and Kielce pogroms, the most recent ethnographic resources (2005–2009), the documen-tation used in Marcel Łoziński’s documentary Świadkowie (The Witnesses; made in 1980s), and an intensive search at the National Remembrance Institute (IPN), reveals a uniform social-mental formation of those partaking in the pogroms—the attackers and militiamen disciplining them, public prosecutors, and judges. all of them—including militiamen and Security Service officers—were subject to a blood libel suggestion. Traces of this thread have survived till this day in some segments of Polish society—not only in the countryside population, despite any appearances. This article aims at showing how an anti-Jewish alliance was getting formed in the first years after the liberation, on the grounds of a gradually strengthening “Polish national socialism,” and along with it, a synthesis of religious anti-Semitism (Jew as a “kidnapper/bloodsucker”) and a modern anti-Semitism (Jew as a “capitalist/bloodsucker” and “Judeo-communists” contaminating a sound national/party organism).

Keywords: Polish postwar pogroms; anti-Semitism; aftermath of the Holocaust; Victor Turner’s social dramas concept; Elias Canetti

Judging from the popularity of conspiracy theories regarding the postwar Polish pogroms against Jews,1 Polish historians are less interested in what was overt in

those pogroms than in what was hidden in them. Very few studies have dealt with, for example, the character and conditions of aggression against the Jews quite manifest in the pogroms.2 In this article, I analyze source materials hitherto overlooked that

2 east european Politics and Societies

refer to immediacy. The immediacy of sources appears in historical discourse when—instead of paraphrasing the utterances of the actors—they are simply allowed to speak. a paraphrase is always anachronistic, whereas speech written down in sources is a kind of fossil that transmits the spirit of the era.

Inspired by Victor Turner’s anthropology of performance,3 I will analyze a par-ticular aspect of this voice—the screaming of pogrom mobs in three incidents. The first is an exploration of the group gathered along the route traveled on 12 June 1945 by the Jewish tenants of a house at 3 Tannenbauma Street, escorted by the militia; the second cites the words of mobs gathered on 11 august 1945 at 27 Miodowa Street in Kraków; and the third explores words of those gathered at 7 Planty Street in Kielce on 4 July 1946.4 I will treat the words spoken on these occasions as sources for a study of the frame of mind of the era. Those cries enable us to examine the three pogroms as a kind of spectacle, which Turner calls “social drama.” Thanks to particu-lar performative features, mob cries reveal, in historical events,

the “taxonomy” of social relations between actors (their family relationships, structural positions, social classes, political status), their current relationships and conflicts of interest and friendship, the network of personal relationships and informal relations.5

Let us examine what those shouts say about the character of the pogrom mobs, about their “program,” and about their accusations against Jews.

The issue raised here, even as it has already been explored by Polish researchers, is far from unambiguous.6 although it has been established that all but one postwar pogrom in Poland—that of Przedbórz—began with a blood libel (as Marcin Zaremba was the first to have noted7), most researchers do not give full weight to this explana-tion. even an inquisitive sociologist such as Jan Tomasz gross questions the social ontology of blood libel, calling it a mere “pretext” to justify the violence. He argues that as there was no profusion of Jewish aggression toward “Christian children,” the belief in ritual murder could not have been the cause of the explosion of collective anti-Jewish phobia.8 One would otherwise have to assume a complete dissonance between social experience and collective action. “Jews . . . could not have been per-ceived as a threat by their neighbors because they were vampires,” gross writes. The desire to wipe them off the face of the earth was not, according to him, a manifestation of paternal love and despair in response to a Jewish threat; “assaulting the Jews did not visibly promote one’s children’s welfare.”9 Therefore, gross concludes, pogroms were not triggered by the population’s conviction that Jews were murdering.

although I share gross’s assertion that the ritual murder legend, since its concep-tion in europe, functioned to justify violence against Jews undertaken for economic or political reasons, I cannot agree that the accusers would deny belief in the blood libel. Historical sources and evidence of the blood legend are still noted in Polish provinces.10 The fact that they are still present in contemporary Poland is also gener-ally denied. This situation has been aptly summarized by Zaremba: “The myth of

Tokarska-Bakir Cries of the Mob in Poland, 1945-1946 3

Jewish vampirism does not fit the dominant picture of immediate postwar Polish-Jewish relations.”11

Based on an analysis of the shouting of pogrom mob participants, I once again propose to examine this issue, focusing on the character of the mobs in Rzeszów, Kraków, and Kielce, and on the character of anti-Jewish aggression and the role of the blood libel in its initiation.

Four Features of a Mob

Three types of utterances characterize the shouting at pogroms: statements, slogans,12 and exhortations.13 The first category consists of observations, complaints, and voices of indignation,14 which, albeit audible to those situated closest to the speaker, did not reach the status of collective apostrophes, as did the more abstract slogans and exhorta-tions. Whereas statements are always connected to the personal context of the speaker, slogans15 and exhortations can function independently, making it possible to set the mob “swinging,” particularly by hypnotic, repetitive formulas.16

elias Canetti writes about four features of a crowd-mass, irreducible to the individuals it is made up of. First it wants to grow constantly. Second, within the mass there is equal-ity, “absolute and undisputed. . . . People turn into mass due to this equality.” Third, the mass has a proclivity for thickening: “It is never too dense.” Fourth, mass needs a direc-tion: “It is in motion and moves toward something definite. The direction common to all its members reinforces the sense of equality.”17

If by “direction” we mean identity gradually obtained by a pogrom mob, this criterion could be treated more significantly than the others. It enforces the internal “equality” of the crowd, and as a result of the expulsion of alien elements, it also influences its “density.” By contrast, the “growth” of a mob will depend on the attractiveness of the mob’s identity to bystanders and—important for the events described—to the security services deployed to pacify the mass. according to the four criteria, we can synthetically describe all three of the pogrom crowds.

Direction and Density

all of the pogrom mobs gained “direction” from exhortations calling for revenge on the Jews. In Kielce, mobs were activated by rumors of the abduction of a boy, Henio Błaszczyk. In a forthcoming article, I explore how the mobs believed in the slogans they proclaimed and that these statements were not mere cynical provocations.18 Sincere belief in the blood libel was evident in the most common outcries of the Kielce pogrom: “Down with the Jews, kill them, because they catch Polish children and torture them cruelly”;19 “give our children back”;20 “Jews, where are our children; where did you put our children?”;21 “My dear baby, . . . they killed it here” (a woman moaning in front of the building at 7 Planty Street)”;22 “Where [are] our murdered


children, we’ll take revenge on you”;23 “Oh, oh! Our Polish children murdered” (a woman at 7 Planty Street);24 “Down with the Jews! They’re murdering our children! We don’t need the Jews!” (Biskupska);25 “Beat them for our children”;26 “The Jews are in power and that’s why they murder our children!” (Biskupska);27 “It must be true that our children have been tortured to death! and look! and look!” (a nun);28 “The Jews have murdered children” (workers from the “Ludwików” steel mill);29 “The Jews murdered fourteen of our children, and all mothers and fathers should gather and kill all the Jews.”30

Similar rants are found in documents from the Rzeszów pogrom: “The murder of several dozen children by the Jews!” (a news dealer’s shouts);31 “Criminals and mur-derers of Catholic children!” (mob gathered in Tannenbauma St.);32 “Sons of bitches, you wanted Poland, you murderers!”33

and from Kraków: “Help, people, [the Jews] were trying to murder me!” (the shouting of thirteen-year-old antoś Nijaki, rushing out of the synagogue in Miodowa Street);34 “We did not raise our children to have them now murdered by the Jews!” (a judge’s wife at the Tandeta, the market in Kazimierz);35 “You lousy kike woman, you murdered two Polish children, you’re gonna die in jail” (gendarmerie Corporal Jan Podstawski, militiamen edmund Bartosik and Czesław Hynek to Stanisława Saletnik, taken for a Jewish woman);36 “That’s the one who murdered in the prayer house” (militia men Bolesław Skrzypek and Józef Bednarczyk about Hilel Kleiner).37

The pogrom mob appears to consist of amorphous riff-raff, but eventually a clear collective identity emerges. What the mob resorts to, particularly in acts of violence, is irrevocable, and this determines its identity and further behavior to a very strong extent.38 Thus emerges a collective Wirbewusstsein,39 a feeling of “who we are,” who might be “one of us, (unsereiner),40 and who is alien. Characteristically, each identity begins to define itself by determining the latter.41 In a pogrom mob, identity markers are expressed by exhortations, which operate like performatives and are the program-ming behaviors of the crowd. Not all individual cries are adopted by a mob,42 as the words must fit its expectations. Cries identified by the mob as its own then trigger the process of increased segregation into “us and them,” of specifying who is who and what one can do to the accused.

Here are examples of such cries from Kraków: “Kike women, kike women!” (street urchins to Hanna Zajdman and her girlfriend);43 “Those lousy kikes” (an employee of the city’s municipal board);44 “Beat the Jews” (caretaker Franciszek Bandys);45 “a kike woman? If she’s a kike, beat her” (corporal of the gendarmerie of the Polish army and two militia men);46 “Kill, cuz’ it’s a Jewish child” (political and educational officer of the 1st Polish army Staff, running after a five-year-old girl);47 “What business is it of yours, you son of a bitch; it’s a Jewish child” (a militiaman to a KRN [Krajowa Rada Narodowa; State National Council] member, who was trying to stop him);48 “It’s scandalous for a Pole not to have the civil courage to hit an unarmed man” (a railroad worker, beating a wounded Jew in a hospital);49 “This crooked kike woman, they did her pretty” (a nun in a hospital to the wounded Hanna Zajdman, taken for a gentile);50


“The mob shouted that I had to be arrested because I’m a Jew” (Dawid Ruber);51 “Fuck it, why do you work for those fucking Jews!”52 (militiaman Franciszek Kucharski to a girl in a shop owned by Jews).53

Here are shouts of the same category from the Kielce pogrom: “a Jew! Hit him!”;54 “Hit,” “Jew” (a young man having checked the ID of abram Moszkowicz);55 “Hit [her]! It’s a kike woman” (women in Planty);56 “You kike woman” (to Jadwiga Najgeburska);57 “a man was walking, they said he was a Jew, so I hit him. an officer said that I cannot hit him because he’s not a Jew. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have hit.”58

an attack on a Polish woman with a Semitic appearance was regarded as a mistake.59 Similarly, a civilian was left in peace, saved by his wife’s or relative’s words: “Don’t hit him, he’s a Pole.”60 This was not the case with a soldier of the Polish army, Maks erlbaum:

[Testimony of an employee of the Kielce PUBP (Powiatowy Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, District Office of State Security)]: I saw a sergeant draw a revolver from that Jew’s holster. Then the soldier shouted [at the defendant, 2nd Lieutenant Marzęcki], “Lieutenant [“I‘m Polish”—the witness added these words later in the interrogation], please defend me” and showed him his military ID. The lieutenant examined the ID, returned it to the soldier, and ordered the sergeant to return the seized pistol, which is what the sergeant did. Then a woman shouted: “Let me go, I’ll identify him,” and started to open the fly on his pants. at that moment I took the soldier and brought him to the Division Staff. . . . Next to Lieutenant Marzęcki stood a student, who said: “erlbaum is a Jewish surname.”61

Maks erlbaum, the aggrieved, gave a different version:

as I was approaching the end of the street, at one moment the accused Manecka grabbed me by the wrist and demanded to see my documents. . . . Then a lieutenant arrived and I approached him and asked him to help me, and showed him my military ID. The lieu-tenant glanced at the ID and returned it to me, saying, “There’s no mention of religion here.” When the crowd started to press on me, I caught Lieutenant Marzęcki’s belt with both hands, and asked him to help me. The lieutenant threw my hands back, in an effort to withdraw. . . . The crowd, seeing that the lieutenant was not helping me, began to pull on my clothes. . . . a State Security Sergeant saved me from the hands of the crowd. Who was pulling my pants down I don’t know.62

andrzej Drożdżeński, a memoirist, describes a similar scene: “That’s a Jew,” some men were to have shouted about a man in uniform.63 The mob told him to say “Our Father” and sing “Kiedy ranne wstają zorze,” a religious hymn. a soldier’s cry was heard: “I know him, he’s a Jew from the UB [State Security]. Hit him, but take off his uniform first.”64 The mob started beating him.

In these descriptions and in subsequent cries, we observe recurrent wartime behav-ior toward Jews. There, “some student” demonstrated his occupation-time cultural competence (“erlbaum is a Jewish name”). Here is how the adults talked: “Jew, your


papers”;65 “Then I wanted to hide with Zieliński, the baker, who nevertheless cried: ‘get out!’ and slammed the door in my face” (Hersz gutman’s testimony);66 “‘You son of a bitch, take off your shoes!’ I took them off” (Mojżesz Cukier, a tailor report-ing on a soldier’s or militiaman’s behavior);67 “We’ll murder you all, because Hitler did not murder you” (ewa Szuchman, a seamstress from 7 Planty Street, reporting on a soldier);68 “You had it coming, they should’ve wiped you all out” (militiaman Marian antonkiewicz to the wounded in hospital, after they had been searched and robbed);69 “and Hitler should have a golden monument cuz’ he taught us how to beat the Jews!”;70 “as Hitler didn’t finish you off, we will”;71 “The germans didn’t finish you off, so we will” (militiaman Władysław Błachut to ewa Szuchman);72 “Surrender all you got, surrender your dollars” (militiaman to Regina Fisz and abram Moszkowicz);73 “Bump them off” (militiaman Mazur to a colleague, about Regina Fisz’s child);74 “Tkaczyk adam observed that the defendant’s bayonet is covered with blood . . . and asked defendant Kołpacki [a Polish army soldier] why he had a red bayonet, and Kołpacki replied: ‘I don’t know, I was in the square, where there was work,’75 and when Tkaczyk admonished him . . . the defendant explained that the Jew was lying, still alive, in pain, and ‘I have [a weak?] conscience, and I can’t look at his suf-fering, so I gave him a coup de grâce with a bayonet’”;76 “Nowakowski said that there is a Jewess and a Jew and the flat must be closed and we have to do our thing” (Stefan Mazur, PPR [Polish Workers’ Party], aL [People’s army], functionary of the post at 12 Sienkiewicza Street);77 “I took things from a Jewish home, because I knew that everyone was doing that and I supposed it was legal . . .”;78 “When the caretaker woman said, who would pay her for all that, then I told her: ‘everything is all right, you can take things because the Jews aren’t coming back.’”79

an analogous wartime skaz80 of speaking to and about Jews in postwar Poland is found in sources for the Kraków pogrom. This linguistic marker itself is a historical source that points to the distance separating us from that period.

One of the most active participants in the pogrom was the caretaker of the shelter at 26 Miodowa Street, Kazimierz Bandys.81 One of his two cries makes reference to a blood legend: “You are on Polish soil and you murder Polish children”;82 and the other is a threat: “You old whores, if Hitler couldn’t finish you all off, we will.”83 During the pogrom, Bandys showed regressive behavior, repeating occupation-time patterns of searching for Jews and looting (szaber). When interrogated, he testified,

[The soldiers] called me to help them in finding Jews. . . . I said I wanted high boots, but he [Ptasznik, a Jew] did not want to give them and only when a soldier helped me, we forced him to take them off. Those boots I took for myself, they are those I’m wearing. . . . I had a revolver and an ax in my hands.84

at the climax of the Kraków pogrom, “the interior of the [Kupa] synagogue was burned, and the perpetrators took the Torah scrolls out onto the street, put them on a heap, and set them on fire according to the german method.”85


Crowd Growth and Equality

We have thus far discussed the direction and density of the pogrom mass. another tendency was for it to constantly grow. Records of cries produced by the Kraków mob enable us to see the function of threats directed at Jews in the growth and self-organization of the mob: “We’ll cut all your heads off” (four militiamen and civilians to Jews in the shelter at Miodowa Street); “Quiet or I’ll cut your head off” (a militiaman to an inhabitant of a shelter);86 “We will prevail over you all”;87 “That railroad worker cried that they will be shooting a Jew” (a Soviet soldier who saved Hilel Kleiner’s life);88 “We’re from the aK; there are eighteen of us armed; we’ll kill you all” (militiamen and other attackers, breaking into a Jewish shop);89 “They want communism, so I’ll give them communism” (militiamen);90 “a Jew is a Bolshevik” (militiamen);91 “enough of our blood” (militiamen).92

The Rzeszów mob organized itself in a similar manner. Participants shouted, “Beat the Jews!”;93 “Kill them, stone them!”;94 “The germans didn’t finish you off, we will!”95

and the Kielce mob, as expressed in the testimony of edward Jurkowski, a musician:

I drank a quarter liter of vodka and had something to eat and, somewhat tipsy, also joined the crowd, and also shouted that we must murder the Jews, if they murder our people, and shouted: “Forward, men.” I stood next to a Polish army ensign and shouted at him that if he’s a hero, he should go and beat the Jews. I ran around among the people and kept shouting that Jews had to be beaten. On the way with the crowd I kept telling the people that we should go and see, and if twenty or thirty of us were to fall, we should show that we can fight.96

The growth of the mob encapsulates a radical equality within it. although indi-viduals suffer the loss of their personal identity,97 in return they are infected with the feeling of the mob’s power, combined with the impression of melting into something larger than themselves, a factor that at the same time frees them from responsibility. at the expense of submission, every member of the collective takes on the mob’s attributes: its infallibility, its fearlessness, and its inviolability. Precisely for that rea-son, the collective identity of the pogrom crowd is attractive for onlookers and for the order services.

This is not the only cause of attraction for those groups. as we know, in Kielce, Kraków, and Rzeszów, the affinity between the order services and the mobs prevented the former from doing their jobs. The course of this process is seen in documentary evidence from the Kielce pogrom. In the cries of the mob gathered at 7 Planty Street, there gradually emerged an alliance of the militia and the army with the mob:

[Mob to soldiers]: “Finish the Jews off”;98 “Having approached the door, one of the gendarmes hit a Jew, which raised a storm of applause and the cry of ‘Long live our army!’”;99 “‘Long live our army and the MO!’”;100 and “Bravo militia!”101 “The popula-tion shouted: ‘Long live the Polish army,’ although there were many militiamen among


the troops. Then among the soldiers one could see satisfaction and signs of zeal in dragging the Jews out”:102

I didn’t react because I knew that, apart from civilians, MO functionaries and soldiers were also involved in the murder, and I didn’t want to undermine the favorable opinion of the army and the MO among the mob, which shouted, “Long live the Polish army,” “Soldiers, beat the Jews for our children!” (Militia man)103

The cries demonstrate that the basis for the anti-Jewish alliance is the Wirbewusstsein—the unity in the worldviews of both groups, which are virtually indistinguishable if we consider the circumstances behind recruitment into the militia and the army.104 Both formations were not only “ready to believe the rumors about murders of chil-dren committed by the Jews,”105 and militiamen and soldiers were equally certain that they had been sent to defend the murderers of children.106

an analysis of trial documents, memoirs, and witness statements leads one to assume that on the scene of the pogrom at Planty Street, one could hardly find a person able to resist the hypnotic influence of fantasy.107 If such a group did exist, it was composed of those whom the rumor threatened. They might have been Jews or—to use Krzysztof Kaczmarski’s peculiar term—“Soviets.”108 Jews did not believe the blood legend because they were perfectly aware of its function and its manifestations. The others, among whom one might include communists of various ethnic backgrounds, particu-larly those who had spent the war in the Soviet Union, had been indoctrinated about atheism, a factor that might have weakened their religious belief about the veracity of the blood legend. But not all benefited from such indoctrination. The fear of Jews was strong, and for centuries it had been part of the education of Polish children.109 In addition, some graduates of the Kuybyshev NKVD school (such as Michał Kołacz of Rzeszów; see below) believed that Jews blocked their avenues to better jobs under communism.

The alliance between the militia, the army, and the people (“mob equality”) was sealed in the following assurance of soldiers in Kielce: “Don’t be afraid; we won’t shoot our own people.”110 The extent to which the people’s regime merged with the “people” is demonstrated in another statement, also from Kielce:

The militiamen from the MO precinct in Sienkiewicza Street were the worst behaved. They walked between the civilians in the crowd, saying: “Poles, don’t be afraid.” One of the soldiers shouted that he had seen four dead children in line, and a militiaman by the house door shouted that his child was dead and was in that house.111

This is what witness Zbigniew Niewiarowski says about the early stages of the pogrom:

at the beginning of the incident, the building was actually guarded by MO functionaries. But this did not last long, because the municipal commandant of Kielce, Markiewicz,


who was on the spot when the crowd, stirred by various dark elements, shouted and cried: “Let us in, and we’ll take care of them,” accompanied by various cries: “Down with the Jewish servants”; “Long live our army”; “Down with Russian [state] security, which protects the Jews,” etc. Major Markiewicz, giving no orders, roamed among the crowd, and later told the mob, “Come on, get in and see for yourselves, and search everywhere.”112

Other witnesses spoke as well: “Defendant Furman [MO functionary] instigated the crowd, shouting: ‘Look for the children!’”113

an analysis of some accounts demonstrates that the attack on the Jewish shelter was carried out jointly by the militia and the army.114 It was accompanied by gunshots from the mob standing outside the building, interpreted as Jews defending themselves with firearms.115 This is reflected in the following rants: “gentlemen! The Jews killed a Polish officer!” (a civilian fleeing from Planty Street);116 “The Jews killed your Lieutenant; beat them” (women to Polish army soldiers);117 “[Militiaman Szymkiewicz] told me to shoot a kneeling Jewess. When I replied that she had done nothing and I wouldn’t shoot her, defendant Szymkiewicz told me that I am not a good Pole, and added that the ‘whore’ shot a Polish officer.”118

The turning point in the Kielce pogrom likely occurred when the militia and the army began fighting with the Security Office forces,119 perhaps deployed to withdraw the militia, whose appearance to carry out a search in a “Jewish home” was a spark that set off the pogrom.120 Pogrom cries make it possible to reconstruct the process. The mob stood in defense of the MO—against the UB.121 Beginning with the refrain “Beat the Jews” (at around 9:00122 and also at 12:30),123 it moved to attack the “UB-men,” identified as “defenders of the Jews.”

Whoever did stand up for Jews was personally threatened: “What, you’re defend-ing the UB men?”;124 “State security men, Jewish servants, they defend the Jews”;125 “Jewish servants gave weapons to the Jews, but we’ll take them away and murder the Jews.”126 Czesław Konarski, a Kielce WUBP functionary, reported the following:

In a conversation with one woman . . . in which the woman said that several days ear-lier those Jews murdered some Polish children, and I asked whether she had actually seen it, and precisely at that time a Polish Captain standing by turned to me with these words: “[You] Jewish servant, I’ll shoot you in the head,” and kicked me and called the soldiers to take me away, but I escaped then.127

Whoever defends the enemy becomes an enemy himself. The Kraków mob shouted rants such as “Fuck you, you side with the Jews” (a militiaman to a PUBP employee);128 and “They defend the Jews, and only Jews do that” (a militiaman, a Polish army Sergeant).129

Similar cries “thickened” the Kielce mob. Their words were syllogisms encour-aging segregation: “He defends the Jews because he’s a Jew himself” (the mob of Jurkowski of the UB);130 “all Jews are from the UB”;131 “The Jews are the UB. The UB are the Jews”;132 “a Jew is a Bolshevik.”133


The mob shifted its aggression onto other institutions, and accused the Jews of running the government: “Poland is ruled by Jews!”;134 “Down with the Jewish government!”;135 “all this is happening because we have a Jewish-communist dictatorship!”;136 “Down with the Jews! Down with the Jewish troops!”;137 “Beat the Jews, we have a Jewish-Russian government, and not a Polish one, down with the Jewish threat”;138 “They want communism, so I’ll give them communism.”139

In this context, consider the symbolic statement of Stanisław Rurarz, a mentally unstable person:

Some woman said that we have three governments: Polish, Russian, and Jewish. Perhaps I said quite unwittingly in the street that there are three governments: Polish, Russian, and Jewish. The passers-by asked what that meant, and I replied that I don’t know. I explain that it just crossed my mind then, and that’s why I shouted that.140

This testimony can be disproved in the same manner that one discredits the tes-timonies of drunken people or children. Distorting the facts, statements of such people as Rurarz nevertheless truly reflect the sick logic of a society, its persecution schemata.141 another statement by Rurarz even more clearly voices the category of “vengeance”142 as an aberrational rendering of revenge for a nonevent. at the level of language, it is hard to find a better example of projection:

I showed the people, saying: “blood stains on the jacket and pants,” expressing that it was the blood avenged for the murdered Polish children. The blood spurted from the Jew I was beating.143

Standing against “Jewish communism,” neither the mob in Kielce Planty, nor in Rzeszów, nor in Kraków ever decided to cross the border behind which a regular anticommunist guerrilla could begin. The primary objects of assault were Jews. even though the mob was “nationally inspired,” the cries did sometimes have left-wing over-tones. These expressions were legitimated on the condition that they were related to anti-Semitism. an example is found in the shouts quoted by two witnesses: Janina Safian and edward Brandemburg:

In the crowd stood an individual [Stefan Franczak of Ostrowiec],144 who shouted: “Beat the Jews! Murder the Jews!” . . . The individual further shouted that the PPR doesn’t want the Jews and said that tomorrow he would be in jail for this. He also adds that she heard that the individual shouted: “Long live the PPR!”145

Preliminary Conclusions

This article combines a case study (a comparative analysis of three pogroms) and a methodological study (anthropology of performance). Thanks to a combination of


these elements, we can formulate preliminary hypotheses and point the direction for further research.

1. Fragmentary analysis of pogrom cries shows structural similarities among the three collectives illustrated—Rzeszów, Cracow, and Kielce. all of them ascribe to conspiracy scenarios (the sequence: rumor about a child murdered “for blood”—the aggression of a mob trying to punish the perpetrators—and an attempt to control it by security services). The decomposition of those forces is in essence a spontaneous process, whose repetitive character suggests that pogrom crowds performed these conflicts within the structure of the transforming postwar state authorities. These conflicts included those within the communist milieu, and were characterized by growing hostility between communists of Jewish and non-Jewish origin.146

2. Pogrom crowds, on the one hand, performed the wartime past—the killing of Jews and the plundering of their property by the Poles that accompanied the Holocaust; on the other hand, they tried to prevent the anticipated future, related to the sudden change of the status of the Jews after the war.147

3. an important stereotype in triggering the emotions of those mobs, as well as in forming their pogrom identity, was that of the Jew-Bloodsucker. This figure, referred to in pogrom cries that drew upon blood libel, is one of the most powerful symbols of the immediate postwar period in Poland influencing the imagination, and it is still inadequately problematized. In principle, its source is the religious blood legend. adopted by nationalist rhetoric in the interwar period, and on the other hand present in left-wing discourse after World War II, it was also exploited in the phraseology of the developing Polish National Socialism. The religious aspect of the discourse on the Bloodsucker, known as the blood libel theme148 in the national discourse, is dominated by the figure of the “convert.” The figure refers to the literal “sucking of blood,” the latter to Jewish vampirism, which pollutes the “Nation’s blood”—the capitalist Bloodsucker theme might be altogether overlooked because it employs an ostensibly innocuous metaphor. The example that I shall restrict myself to comes from a song in Yiddish and Russian of 1930, entitled Vampirn (“Vampires”), recorded by M. Bieregowski in Uman in Ukraine. The “bloodsuckers-exploiters” mentioned in the song are capitalists, including, as we may surmise, Jewish capitalists.149 as a reflection of its time, the figure of the Bloodsucker appears in the title of the play Bedbug, written by Vladimir Mayakovsky. as in the religious metaphor, the Bloodsucker might (but not necessarily) be a Jew; not every Jew is a Bloodsucker. This latent metaphor is one whose meaning can easily be awoken.150

The awakening took place between 1945 and 1946, when three Bloodsucker discourses converged under the banner of defending Poland’s independence, which was perceived as threatened by the Soviets. after World War II, aversion to a figure comprehensible to all the addressees—Catholics, nationalists, and communists—began to cement the Polish imagined community (as in the theory of Benedict anderson151), which had been shaken by the upheaval of the Polish social hierarchy, and in which the Jews turned out to be shockingly visible (see Max gluxman’s dominant cleavages


theory152). aversion was of the few emotions that in the new conditions and on the grounds of variously interpreted patriotism could unite a Catholic, a nationalist of the NSZ (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne; National armed Forces), an idealist aK soldier, and an aL member reluctant to participate in “Jewish communism.” The only novelty was that it soon became apparent to some communists, who in search of legitimizing com-munist rule combined nationalist phraseology with the left-wing critique of “capitalism.”

an example of the popular synthesis of these three discourses is found in a state-ment of Michał Kołacz, a Rzeszów militiaman and graduate of the Kuybyshev NKVD school,153 who included the following in his report, written three days after the Rzeszów pogrom:

It is a big disgrace for the government, in how it looks and in its attitudes among a population of a free, independent, and democratic Poland, where the government best respects Jews, perennial exploiters, capitalists, persecutors of the Christian faith, and murderers of the Polish nation.154

In Kołacz’s statement, the different versions of the Bloodsucker figure converge: left-wing, religious, and national. It also demonstrates how real the fear of Jews was in 1945–1946:

among the civilian population there still lingers the anger and hatred of the Jews, related to the uncovered murder. . . . [State] security says that it is only one girl, but where are the rest of the missing children and women from the provinces, who went to town with provisions and disappeared without a trace? How to explain the presence of human skulls there, of clothes, shoes with legs in them? No force can cover up this terrible massacre of Polish children and the making of sausages, of which several kilo-grams were found in the chimney. They say that it should be in every Pole’s interest and he should take revenge for the innocent Polish children. . . . They say that [state] security claims that Nazi fascists did it, but they are thoroughly mistaken and they should not fool around, because even during the occupation, the worst of the Nazis never tor-mented Poles while killing them, because they would tell them to lie down and then shoot from behind, and they would cut the head of a living person, gouge the eyes out, cut the veins while one slowly dies, and this is very brutal, and even if the matter would go unpunished, it would be bad, it would cause unrest among the population and lead to civil war.155

The vision of legs sticking out from shoes of abducted children and women, and the “sausage variant of the blood legend” voiced in the statement render Kołacz’s report highly plebeian, Rabelaisian. The images, however, are not ironic as they are in Rabelais. They are characterized by metaphorical lateralization, symbolic equation, to use Hanna Segal’s term,156 which under Polish conditions was deadly dangerous. The Bloodsucker underwent a similar transformation in Kołacz’s report written on the second day of the Rzeszów pogrom, embodied in a concrete Jew, a militiaman:


I personally know a woman in whose place a Jew-militiaman lives. The Jew told me that he had come to Poland to dip his hands in Polish blood.157

This formulation is so clumsy that it is simply hard to believe that it was taken seriously. That, however, is the power of metaphorical concretization. It is hard to believe in it, but, as Krystyna Kersten has remarked, it is the literal figure of the Bloodsucker, and not the news of the Jewish UB executioners, that brought the pogrom mobs out into the street in postwar Poland and in neighboring countries.158 as long as we deal with a metaphorical “bloodsucker,” a “leech,”159 or even with “Jewish bugs,”160 the violence these figures trigger generally has a symbolic character as well. The situation changes when in a concrete “Jewish cellar,” a “Jew Rabbi’s cell,” there appears a real Jew “in a bloodstained coat, next to a dead girl hanging upside down.”161 The Rzeszów investigators quickly identify him: his name is Leib Thorn.162

It is convenient to put down the belief in the blood rumor to folk naïveté. Such interpretations make the other actors of the historical scene invisible: bishops, priests, officers of the underground army, communists, the intelligentsia. But historical sources make us aware that in 1946 the rumor of ritual murder hypnotized not only “ignorant Poles,” but also—as arieh Kochavi’s study shows—high-ranking Vatican functionaries, who were in touch with the U.S. State Department.163 In Poland the rumor was believed not only by the bishops (such as Juliusz Bieniek or Stefan Wyszyński), but also by sober-minded people, such as WiN (Freedom and Independence) officers, who wrote reports during the Rzeszów pogrom. The following is an example:

In the cellar of a Jew Rabbi’s basement at Tannenbauma Street [in Rzeszów] a rabbi was found in a bloodstained coat, next to a dead girl hanging upside down. a militia patrol passing by was alarmed and found human body parts belonging to sixteen persons. When they got to work on him, the rabbi cracked and admitted that those were remains of six-teen children. But he claimed that this was not ritual murder, but that the Jewish people had suffered great losses and many of his most distinguished individuals had to be fed human blood, which is thus obtained. Upon hearing of this incident, the people threw themselves on the Jews, carrying out a pogrom.164

It is thus a mistake to minimize the role of the belief in blood libel in triggering anti-Jewish violence. Like the medieval exempla, based on the truth claim,165 this one belief guarantees the social reproduction of anti-Semitism. It remains, as Krystyna Kersten called it, the same “social dynamite” it has always been.166

according to a folklore historian, “rumors that are not contradicted survive and become part first of the store of oral history, later also of oral tradition.”167 The rumors do not disappear because they perform hidden functions. It is the job of historians to define these functions.


Notes

1. among Polish researchers of postwar pogroms, those who claim that pogroms were conditioned by the “blood legend” are in a decisive minority. The most important theorist who claims this interpreta-tion is Krystyna Kersten, who called it “social dynamite” (Polacy, Żydzi, komunizm. Anatomia półprawd 1939-68 [Warsaw: Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1992]; hereinafter, Kersten I). In the same vein, the legend was discussed by anna Cichopek (Pogrom Żydów w Krakowie 11 sierpnia 1945 r. [Warsaw, 2000]; hereinafter, C); Bożena Szaynok (Pogrom Żydów w Kielcach 4 lipca 1946, [Wrocław, 1992]); and Marcin Zaremba (“Mit mordu rytualnego w powojennej Polsce. archeologia i hipotezy,” Kultura i Społeczeństwo 2 [2007]; hereinafter, Zaremba). Their arguments did not find wide interest. Journalists (Krzysztof Kąkolewski, Umarły cmentarz. Wstęp do studiów nad wyjaśnieniem przyczyn i przebiegu morderstwa Żydów w Kielcach dnia 4 lipca 1946 roku [Warsaw, 1996]), priests (J. Śledzianowski, Pytania nad pogromem kieleckim [Kielce, 1998]), and numerous historians persistently searched for a conspiracy. Verification of the conspiracy thesis was assumed in the twelve-year-long investigation by the IPN (Institute of National Remembrance), summarized in two volumes: Wokół pogromu kieleckiego, ed. Jan Żaryn, Łukasz Kamiński, vol. I (Kielce, 2006) (see particularly pp. 478, 471–2, etc.); vol. II (Kielce, 2008); hereinafter, respectively, Kielce I or II. NKVD conspiracy was searched for in Stalin’s file (NKWD o Polsce i Polakach. Rekonesans archiwalny, ed. Wojciech Materski and andrzej Paczkowski [Warsaw, 1996]; Teczka specjalna J. W. Stalina. Raporty NKWD z Polski 1944-1946, ed. Tatiana Cariewskaja, andrzej Chmielarz, andrzej Paczkowski, ewa Rosowska, and Szymon Rudnicki [Warsaw, 1998]). Józef Orlicki found that Zionists were searched for in it (Szkice do dziejów stosunków polsko-żydowskich 1918-1949 [Szczecin, 1983]). a similar hypothesis, though not restricted to Zionists, is elaborated by Bishop Czesław Kaczmarek, Raport biskupa Czesława Kaczmarka przekazany ambasa-dorowi USA wWarszawie Arthurowi Bliss Lane’owi, quoted in Kielce I, 191. Others, such as recently an employee of the Rzeszów IPN branch, Krzysztof Kaczmarski (Pogrom którego nie było. Rzeszów 11-12 czerwca 1945. Fakty, hipotezy, dokumenty [Rzeszów, 2008]; hereinafter, Kaczm), seem to have been persuaded by a modernized version of blood libel, which ascribes to the Jews the desire to “feed on” the blood of “Polish children” after the war.

2. One could mention here the publications by authors listed in note 1, but only Marcin Zaremba’s study is entirely devoted to the issues in question.

3. Victor Turner, Od rytuału do teatru. Powaga zabawy, transl. M. and J. Dziekanowie (Warsaw, 2005); hereinafter, VT), 110. also Victor Turner, Schism and Continuity in an African Society (Manchester, 1957); Victor Turner, Gry społeczne, pola i metafory. Symboliczne działanie w społeczeństwie, transl. W. Isakiewicz (Kraków, 2005).

4. Sources: Kielce I; Kielce II; Antyżydowskie wydarzenia kieleckie 4 lipca 1946 roku. Dokumenty i materiały, vol. I., ed. Stanisław Meducki and Zenon Wrona (Kielce, 1992); vol. II, ed. Stanisław Meducki (Kieleckie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1994); hereinafter, respectively, Meducki I and II. Materiały z filmu ‘Świadkowie’ Marcela Łozińskiego, recording transcript, unpublished manuscript; Zabić Żyda! Kulisy i tajemnice pogromu kieleckiego 1946, ed. Tadeusz Więcek (Kraków, 1992) hereinafter, ZŻ. Danuta Blus-Węgrowska, “Pogrom kielecki,” master’s thesis supervised by Prof. Marcin Kula (Warsaw: Uniwersytet Warszawski, 1994); hereinafter, Blus.

5. Turner, Od rytuału do teatru, 9. 6. See note 1. 7. Zaremba, 91. 8. Zaremba writes, “Characteristically, a virtually similar position that diminishes the significance of

the ritual murder myth, can be found in Catholic historiography. J. Żaryn, “Hierarchia kościoła katolickiego wobec relacji polsko-żydowskich w latach 1945” (in Kielce I, 94–7), refuting charges formulated in Poland against the Church—namely, the lack of strong reaction on the part of the bishops to the spread of ritual murder stories after the war—pointed to those who invented the rumors and created a “certain psychosis” but also admitted that in the Catholic Church there was a “tradition that should not be neglected.”


9. Jan T. gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 245–6.

10. See J. Tokarska-Bakir, Legendy o krwi. Antropologia przesądu (Warsaw, 2008), 411–54. 11. Zaremba, 92. See also Kersten I, 118: “even politicians from the former ONR milieu understood

that . . . the blood murder rumor could not demonstrate that the Polish nation does not want communism, but only to show the terrifying ignorance of the Poles.”

12. “a slogan is a brief, apt formula, easy to repeat, polemical and most frequently anonymous, aimed at persuading the masses to some action and does so both through style as an element of self-justification, emotional or intellectual that it includes.” Olivier Reboul, “Kiedy słowo jest bronią,” in Język i społeczeństwo, ed. M. głowiński (Warsaw, 1980), 299 f.

13. a slogan (e.g., “Mourir pour Danzig?” the title of Marcel Déat’s article in Oeuvre [august 1939]) is true or false by virtue of a statement it must necessarily include, whereas a reclaimer (e.g., “Forward!”) does not, in principle, contain such a statement. Reboul, Kiedy słowo jest bronią, 307. Manipulating the truth status of a statement, however, often blurs the difference between a reclaimer and a slogan.

14. Statement of a civilian employee in the KW MO building in Rzeszów: “I would shoot all of them,” Sprawozdanie z przebiegu zajść antyżydowskich w Rzeszowie, 12 June 1945, Sporządzonego przez zarząd Żydowskie Gminy Wyznaniowej w Rzeszowie dla CKŻP, quoted in Kaczm, 94; see also ibid., 97: “We have found out through practice what the attitude of our defenders is should the Jews find themselves in a critical position, which could be expressed in words of one militia man addressed to a Polish female friend: ‘We can’t do anything to them as long as the Soviets are [here]; I would shoot 100 myself.’”

15. For example, “They transport coal to the Soviets, and from there [bring] carloads of Jews,” Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Władysława Sobczyńskiego, 7 august 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 319.

16. For example, “Beat the Jews!” Rzeszów pogrom: Zeznanie Leiba Kaplana, quoted in Kaczm, 76. 17. elias Canetti, Masa i władza, transl. eliza Borg and Maria Przybyłowska, introduction Lech

Budrecki (Warszawa, 1960/1996). 18. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “The Figure of Bloodsucker in Polish Religious, National and Left-Wing

Discourse in the Years 1945/1946. a Historical anthropology Study,” Polin (forthcoming). 19. Protokół zatrzymania, 4 July 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 114. 20. Nurowska, ZŻ, 62. 21. Zeznanie w WUBP w Kielcach Marii Welfman, 6 July 1946, quoted in Kielce I, 161. 22. Bishop Czesław Kaczmarek, Raport biskupa Czesława Kaczmarka przekazany ambasadorowi

USA Warszawie Arthurowi Bliss Lane’owi, quoted in Kielce I, 191. 23. Zeznanie w WUBP w Kielcach Marii Welfman, 6 July 1946, quoted in Kielce I, 161. 24. Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanej Antoniny Biskupskiej, 5 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 129. 25. Ibid. 26. Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Ryszarda Sałapy, 24 July 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 216. 27. Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanej Antoniny Biskupskiej, 5 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 131. 28. Ibid. 29. ZŻ, 10. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Mariana Nogaja, 15 October 2001: “an employee of

the forgery [Ludwików Steel Mill] . . . ran around the plant departments with a metal bar in his hand . . . saying a Polish boy whom the Jews wanted to kill for matzo had escaped from a Jewish home,” quoted in Kielce II, 122.

30. Protokół przesłuchania Mojżesza Cukiera, 6 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 113–4. 31. Notatka kpt. Braude, quoted in Kaczm, 134. also Sprawozdanie w sprawie wypadków zaszłych

w Rzeszowie w dniu 12 czerwca 1945, Wojewódzka Żydowska Komisja Historyczna, 16 June 1945, quoted in Kaczm, 100.

32. Sprawozdanie w sprawie wypadków zaszłych, quoted in Kaczm, 99. 33. Ibid. 34. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Antoniego Nijakiego w WUBP, 14 august 1945, quoted in

C, 150–1.


35. Akt oskarżenia przeciw 25 uczestnikom pogromu w dn. 11 sierpnia, 5 September 1945, quoted in C, 212. Cf. a similar shouting in Kielce: “whose children are we going to raise, etc.,” testimony of barber Tadeusza Kociałkowski, quoted in Blus, 53.

36. Postanowienie o pociągnięciu do odpowiedzialności karnej Podstawskiego Jana i Bartosika Edmunda z dn., 22 July 1945, quoted in C, 81.

37. Przesłuchanie Hilela Kleinera—agenta towarzystwa ubezpieczeniowego, quoted in C, 82, 157, 211. 38. See arjun appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on Geography of Anger (Durham, NC,

2006), 6: “Violence can create a macabre form of certainty and can become a brutal technique (a folk discovery-procedure) about ‘them’ and, therefore, about ‘us.’”

39. Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (London, 1985), 92. 40. Isаiah Shachar, The Judensau: A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif and Its History (London, 1974), 3. 41. This is in line with what we know about the importance of difference for the emergence of col-

lective identities; see Józef Obrębski, Józef Obrębski, Problem grup etnicznych w etnologii i jego socjo-logiczne ujęcie, “Przegląd Socjologiczny,” 4(1936):177-95; Fredrik Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969).

42. Thus, for example, during a PPR demonstration to condemn the Kraków pogrom of august 1945, Kraków did not follow the exhortations “To the University!” that were to direct “people’s anger” at the profes-sors of the Jagiellonian University, accused by the communist authorities of having organized the pogrom. See Protokoły posiedzeń sekretariatu PPR 1945–1946, ed. a. Kochański (Warsaw, 2001: 221), 97: “The reclaimer ‘To the University!’ was not acted on by Drobner [deputy chairman of the Supreme Council of the PPS], but he did dissolve the rally. The workers were furious.”

43. Protokół spisany z ob. Zajdman Hanną, ur 1930 w Warszawie, 20 august 1945, aŻIH (archiwum Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego [archive of the Jewish Historical Institute]), 301/1582.

44. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Artura Silbera, quoted in C, 165. 45. Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Franciszka Bandysa w MUBP, quoted in C, 138. 46. Postanowienie o pociągnięciu do odpowiedzialności karnej Podstawskiego Jana i Bartosika

Edmunda z dn, 22 august 1945, quoted in C, 81. 47. Postanowienie o pociągnięciu do odpowiedzialności karnej sierż. Jedynowicza Stanisława z dn.,

22 august 1945, quoted in C, 83, 209. 48. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Drzewieckiego Michała, posła do Krajowej Rady Narodowej

z dn., 21 august 1945, quoted in C, 83. 49. Protokół spisany z ob. Zajdman Hanną, ur 1930 w Warszawie, 20 august 1945, aŻIH, 301/1582. 50. Ibid. 51. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Dawida Rabera w MUBP, quoted in C, 135. 52. Zeznanie współpracownika MUBP Edmunda Łukawieckiego o zachowaniu milicjanta Kucharskiego,

quoted in C, 136. 53. Ibid., in C, 206. 54. Kalicki, ZŻ, 86. 55. Quoted in Meducki I, 119. 56. Drożdżeński, ZŻ, 29. 57. Morawski, Pytlakowski, ZŻ, 104. 58. Zeznanie Juliana Chorążaka, ślusarza, Protokół rozprawy Najwyższego Sądu Wojskowego na

sesji wyjazdowej w Kielcach przeciw Antoninie Biskupskiej i współoskarżonym, quoted in Meducki I, 163. 59. Morawski, Pytlakowski, ZŻ, 104. 60. Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Ryszarda Sałapy, 24 July 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 214.

a similar story regarding “citizen Pardoła” is told by antoni Sałaj, 5 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 117. 61. Protokół rozprawy głównej przed Wojskowym Sądem Rejonowym w Kielcach, quoted in

Meducki I, 287. 62. Ibid., 288.


63. Drożdżeński, ZŻ, 30. 64. Ibid. according to witness Sobański, the words “Do not tarnish the uniform” were to have been

uttered by an unknown boy scout, and the witness was to have repeated them; Protokół rozprawy głównej przed Wojskowym Sądem Rejonowym w Kielcach, quoted in Meducki I, 289.

65. Kalicki, ZŻ, 86; see also Meducki I, 121. Cf. Władysław Sobczyński’s testimony: “groups of civilian persons wandered around town searching for the Jews and checking documents,” 11 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 317.

66. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Hersza Gutmana, 5 July 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 121. 67. Protokół przesłuchania Mojżesza Cukiera, quoted in Meducki I, 113–4. 68. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Ewy Szuchman, quoted in Meducki I, 112. 69. Wyrok Wojskowego Sądu Rejonowego w Kielcach w sprawie Mariana Antonkiewicza, 28 March 1947,

quoted in Kielce II, 239. See also Wyrok Wojskowego Sądu Rejonowego w sprawie Antoniego Apajewskiego, Czesława Chojnackiego, Stefana Palczyńskiego, Józefa Kanasa, Zenona Kołpackiego, Jana Pompy i Ludwika Nowaka (all were Polish army soldiers), 3 December 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 202–3.

70. Materiały z filmu «Świadkowie« Marcela Łozińskiego, 17. 71. Relacja Wacława Ziółka, 26 april 1990, quoted in Kielce II, 114. 72. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Ewy Szuchman, quoted in Meducki I, 112. 73. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Abrama Moszkowicza, 6 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 119. 74. Protokół rozprawy Najwyższego Sądu Wojskowego na sesji wyjazdowej w Kielcach przeciwko

Antonie Biskupskiej i współoskarżonym, quoted in Meducki I, 172. 75. “I have some work to do,” said Nowakowski, one of the killers of Regina Fisz and her little son.

“The items of that killed Jewess were taken by Nowakowski, among them: money, 17 dollars and three rings.” Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Stefana Mazura, 7 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 132.

76. Wyrok Wojskowego Sądu Rejonowego w sprawie Antoniego Apajewskiego, Czesława Chojnackiego, Stefana Palczyńskiego, Józefa Kanasa, Zenona Kołpackiego, Jana Pompy i Ludwika Nowaka (all were Polish Army soldiers), 3 December 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 203.

77. Protokół rozprawy Najwyższego Sądu Wojskowego na sesji wyjazdowej w Kielcach przeciw Antoninie Biskupskiej i współoskarżonym, 9 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 170.

78. Protokół przesłuchania Eugeniusza Krawczyka, Kielce, 27 July 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 130. Krawczyk eugeniusz (age fifteen, referred to in the judgment as an “MO functionary”), a runner of the Kielce WKMO . . . ran to 7 Planty Street, where he pushed his way through a crowd of people, took five kg of rice, two shirts, two towels, seven packs of tea, one pair of underpants, a blanket, a razor, some dried apricots, and walnuts from inside a suitcase he had found. Having packed it into the suitcase, he carried [it] onto Sienkiewicza Street, entered a shop, sold the rice, the tea, and the apricots for 1,150 zlotys. at the bazaar he sold to trader, whom he accidentally met, a towel for 30 zlotys, and another one for a bottle of lemonade and a cigarette. The rest of the things he took to the barracks, where he sold the razor. Having returned to the bazaar he noticed a man of Jewish origin led by militia men, whom he hit . . . ,” quoted in Meducki I, 250.

79. Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Stefana Mazura, 7 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 132. 80. Skaz (Rus.), which carries the “forgotten voice of that time,” is a term used by Henryk grynberg

to describe Bohdan Wojdowski’s writing (Prawda nieartystyczna [Warsaw, 2001], 263). grynberg bor-rowed this term from Russian folklore studies. See J. Tokarska-Bakir, “Skaz antysemityzmu,” Teksty Drugie 1:2(2009): 302–17.

81. according to the indictment, he had contacts with the NSZ, quoted in C, 75, note 27, with a quotation from the indictment.

82. Ibid., quoted in C, 206. 83. Ibid., quoted in C, 206. 84. Protokół przełuchania podejrzanego Franciszka Bandysa w WUBP, 15 august 1945, quoted

in C, 163.


85. Sprawozdanie CKŻP o zajściach antyżydowskich w Krakowie w sobotę dnia 11 sierpnia 1945; Julian Kwiek, “Wydarzenia antyżydowskie 11 sierpnia 1945 w Krakowie,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów 1:193(2000): 26, also C, 88.

86. Zeznania świadków Sary Stern i Renaty Hiller w Komitecie Żydowskim, 13 august 1945, quoted in C, 140.

87. Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Franciszka Bandysa w MUBP, 11 august 1945, quoted in C, 138.

88. Protokół przesłuchania świadka, Ilji Chorowoja (Red army soldier), 11 august 1945, quoted in C, 134.

89. Quoted in C, 194; and Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Franciszka Kucharskiego w WUBP, 30 august 1945, quoted in C, 79.

90. Postanowienie o pociągnięciu do odpowiedzialności karnej sierżanta Jedynowicza Stanisława z dn., 22 august 1945, quoted in C, 83.

91. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Hilela Kleinera, quoted in C, 157, 82. 92. Ibid. 93. Protokół zeznania świadka Leiba Kaplana w sprawie wypadków w mieście Rzeszowie, quoted in

Kaczm, 76. 94. Sprawozdanie z przebiegu zajść antyżydowskich, quoted in Kaczm, 93. 95. Sprawozdanie w sprawie wypadków zaszłych, quoted in Kaczm, 102. 96. Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Edwarda Jurkowskiego, 5 July 1946, quoted in Meducki

I, 122–3. 97. S. Freud, “Psychologia zbiorowości i analiza ja,” in Frued, Pisma społeczne (Warsaw, 1998), 74. 98. Protokół przesłuchania oficera Informacji WP Józefa Lewartowskiego, 6 January 1994, quoted in

Kielce I, 234. 99. Raport funkcjonariusza PUBP w Kielcach Henryka Rybaka do szefa PUBP, 4 July 1946, quoted in

Kielce I, 150. “The soldiers walked around the entire square and street mixing with the instigated crowd and ultimately yielded to the crowd’s agitation, e.g. the hitting of a Jew on the face by a soldier met with a great enthusiasm among the crowd, which shouted: ‘Long live the Polish army!’” Raport Jana Jurkowskiego i Henryka Gutowskiego, pracowników Departamentu II MBP, będących na wyjeździe służbowym w Kielcach 4/7/1945 dla Ministra BP, Radkiewicza, quoted in Blus, 62–3.

100. Sprawozdanie zastępcy szefa PUBP Alberta Grynbauma z przebiegu zajść antysemickich w Kielcach, Kielce, 6 July 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 117.

101. Protokół przesłuchania w WUBP świadka Jury Mojżesza, 6 July 1946, quoted in Kielce I, 159–60.102. Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Ryszarda Sałapy, 25 July 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 218–9.103. Ibid.104. Zaremba, 96, 100, 102, 107, etc. Piotr Majer, Milicja Obywatelska 1944–1957 (Olsztyn, 2004),

23–272.105. Krystyna Kersten, Pisma rozproszone, ed. T. Szarota and D. Libionka (Toruń, 2006), 290;

hereinafter, Kersten II. See also Sprawozdanie instruktorów KC PPR z pobytu w woj. kieleckim w czasie od 4 do 15 lipca 1946: “The militia and the army were not disciplined. Instead of liquidating the riots, they mixed with the crowd and yielded to the influence of the crowd,” Meducki II, 137; “demands were made to withdraw the army and the MO, which got to close to the agitated crowd,” quoted in Meducki II, 149. See also Blus, 62–3.

106. “But the greatest influence on the course of the pogrom was the awareness of the militia men and soldiers sent to defend, the conviction that they would be told to defend the Jews who had murdered Polish children,” Kersten II, 276.

107. Niby (as if, were to) or the adverb rzekomo (allegedly), appear very seldom in interrogation transcripts. For example, see the statement of albert grynbaum, an employee of the Kielce WUBP: “I heard that the Jews were to have killed Polish children” (Protokół przesłuchania świadka ppor. Albert Grynbaum, an employee of the Kielce WUBP, 2 august 1946, quoted in Meducki, I 342). This is not to


be found in a number of statements, where we would expect to find it. For example, in Kazimierz golczewski’s story, who had accused in Kielce: “I don’t remember . . . if I heard then . . . that a child was detained by the Jews in a basement of a house at Planty St., to use his blood to ‘make matzo.’” The child survived, I don’t remember how. This, as I remember was the cause of those incidents.” (Protokół przesłuchania prokuratora WPR w Kielcach, Kazimierza Golczewskiego, 10 March 1992, quoted in Kielce II, 243; see also Protokół przesluchania podejrzanego Władysława Sobczyńskiego, 7 august 1946: “Kuźnicki replied that one would have to examine what the matter looks like, because they have information that the Jews did kill,” quoted in Meducki I 322.)

108. See Kaczm, 35.109. “To children of kindergarten age . . . in the villages, towns and suburbs, the word ‘Jew’ brought

associations of a man in a black gabardine stretching to the ground, in a black hat or cap, with a sack on his back, and necessarily with a cane or umbrella in his hand. a cane, or rather a kind of stick were some-times used by this man to chase away dogs, which were particularly fierce toward him. . . . When such a figure appeared a shout was usually heard: ‘There goes a Jew with a sack!’, to which shout groups of children vanished from the streets as if frightened sparrows. . . . How any times have I heard it spoken to me or about others: ‘You’ll see! a Jew will kidnap you and put you in a sack.’ Or: ‘You’ll see, I’ll sell you to a Jew, and he’ll put you in a sack.’” Franciszek Kotula, Tamten Rzeszów czyli wędrówka po zakątkach i historii miasta (Rzeszów, 1985), 379.

110. Relacja kanclerza Kurii Diecezjalnej Kieleckiej ks. Henryka Peszko na temat pogromu kieleckiego, 1981, quoted in Kielce I, 210–1. Jerzy Daniel (Żyd w zielonym kapeluszu. Rzecz o pogromie 4 lipca 1946 [Kielce: Scriptum, 1996], 78) noted a charactersitic interpretation of the issue in a proclamation signed by the Kielce Province governor eugeniusz Wiśnicz-Iwańczyk and Bishop Czesław Kaczmarek: “No shot was fired at people [i.e., at non-Jews].” Comment in gross, Strach [Fear], 189.

111. Raport funkcjonariusza PUBP w Kielcach Henryka Rybaka do szefa PUBP, 4 July 1946, quoted in Kielce I, 151. Similar false testimonies were given by soldiers in Kraków. Raport radzieckich służb specjalnych [Report of Soviet security services] mentions the following incident with the militia par-ticipating: “They introduced themselves as soldiers of the Kraków Military District and gave their names: Wasilewski Jan, Perek Tadeusz, and gacek Roman. They stated that they had witnessed the four Jews they brought murdering Polish Jews in the synagogue.” S. Kriwienko,“Raporty z Polski,” Karta 15 (1995): 31–2; 30 august 1945, Soobszczenije Seliwanowskowgo NKWD SSSR Berija, d. 98 (336–7a), quoted in C, 73.

112. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Zbigniewa Niewiarowskiego, 5 July 1945, quoted in Kielce II, 113.113. Postanowienie Najwyższego Sądu Wojskowego w sprawie skarg i wniosku rewizyjnego na wyrok

uniewinniający Jana Rogozińskiego, Ludwika Pustułę i Franciszka Furmana, 12 March 1947, quoted in Kielce II, 250–1.

114. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Zbigniewa Niewiarowskiego, 5 July 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 116.115. Franciszek Jonkisz testified about this: “The crowd gathered outside the Provincial J[ewish]

C[ommittee] at 7 Planty St. threw people out of the window, and from the mezzanine the Jewish population living at 7 Planty St. while others shouted that the Jews with grenades and automatic weapons were getting ready for a fight with the people gathered outside the building immediately killed the Jews that had been thrown out. Personally I can state what is in concordance with the fact that from the building, i.e., on the part of the Jewish population, there were no shots, and most shots came from the MO [i.e., Milicja Obywatelska, the Citizens’ Militia],” Protokół przesłuchania świadka Franciszka Jonkisza, 7 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 115. See a second-hand story that contradicts this opinion in a testimony of the Kielce Province governor, e. Iwańczyk-Wiśnicz, quoted in Kielce I, 273. On the Jews firing shots, see also the testimony of Ryszard Sałapa: “Witnessing the raging crowd murdering Jews, I was so dizzy that I thought it some honor, telling Wróbel that I was still in the building and next to me they were shooting at the Jews lying in bed, and on the other hand saying that the Jews also were shooting at us,” Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Ryszarda Sałapy, 25 July 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 218–9. a similar rumor triggered a wave of violence during the Kraków pogrom. The shooting was interpreted according to views regarding the nature of the


clashes. The Jewish Press agency (Żydowska agencja Prasowa) informed people that the army and the militia had been fired on twice, without specifying by whom. The NKVD claimed that soldiers fired a few shots for the sake of provocation, although there were rumors that it was the Jews who fired the weapons. among those who believed that the Jews were guilty, the dominant view was that of the Jews firing shots from the rooftop. The news echoed in the grodna Wandersagen of 1920, September 1939, and august 1944—the shooting is mentioned together with pouring hot water or hot vinegar (see Tokarska-Bakir, “The Figure of Bloodsucker in Polish religious, national and left-wing discourse in the years 1945/1946”). according to WiN sources, the Jews were to have fired pistols or even a heavy machine gun from the neighboring houses.

116. Drożdżeński, ZŻ, 28.117. Protokół przesłuchania świadka Tadeusza Lisa, Kielce, 4 July 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 116.118. “Zeznanie Bronisława Tchórza,” Protokół rozprawy głównej przed Wojskowym Sądem Rejonowym

w Kielcach, quoted in Meducki I, 285.119. antoni Kręlicki’s statement: “The crowd began to gather during the clash between the UB

functionaries and militia men,” quoted in Kielce II, 121.120. On animosities or even hostility between the militia and “[state] security” during 1944–1946, see,

for example, Piotr Majer, Milicja Obywatelska 1944–1957 (Olsztyn, 2004), 60–75. also Blus, 57, and others.121. Kielce II, 452.122. Kalicki, ZŻ, 69.123. Kalicki, ZŻ, 80.124. Drożdżeński, ZŻ, 28.125. Zeznanie kpt. Jana Muchy, kierownika Wydziału II PUBP w Kielcach, 3 august 1946, quoted in

Meducki I, 351.126. Zeznanie Zdzisława Sitka, Protokół rozprawy Najwyższego Sądu Wojskowego na sesji wyjazdowej

w Kielcach przeciw Antoninie Biskupskiej i współoskarżonym, 9 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 250.127. Protokół przesłuchania Czesława Konarskiego, Kielce, 4 July 1946, quoted in Kielce II, 122.128. Zeznanie współpracownika MUBP Edminda Łukawieckiego o zachowaniu milicjanta Kucharskiego,

quoted in C, 136.129. C, 83. See also Akt oskarżenia przeciwko 25 uczestnikom pogromu w dniu 11 sierpnia, quoted

in C, 214.130. Protokół przesłuchania funkcjonariusza Departamentu III MBP Henryka Gutowskiego, 9 august 1996,

quoted in Kielce I, 386.131. Drożdżeński, ZŻ, 28.132. Nurowska, ZŻ, 60.133. Kraków, Protokół przesłuchania świadka Hilela Kleinera, quoted in C, 82.134. Kielce, Protokół przesłuchania świadka Jana Mańturza, 7 July 1945, quoted in Meducki I, 116.135. Kielce, Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanej Antoniny Biskupskiej, 5 July 1946, quoted in

Meducki I 131.136. Raport funkcjonariusza PUBP w Kielcach Henryka Rybaka do szefa PUBP, 4 July 1946, quoted

in Kielce I, 150.137. Kielce, Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanej Antoniny Biskupskiej, 5 July 1946, quoted in

Meducki I, 131.138. Raport funkcjonariusza PUBP w Kielcach Henryka Rybaka do szefa PUBP, 4 July 1946, quoted

in Kielce I, 150.139. Kraków, Postanowienie o pociągnięciu do odpowiedzialności karnej sierżanta Jedynowicza

Stanisława z dn., 22 august 1945, quoted in C, 83.140. earlier: “I explain that the blood on my clothes came by splashing off on me from the [beaten] Jew,”

Protokół przesłuchania podejrzanego Stanisława Rurarza, 5 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 124–7.141. R. girard, Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde. (Paris: grasset, 1978), 171.142. See Tokarska-Bakir, Legendy o krwi, 183 f.


143. “Zeznanie St. Rurarza,” Protokół rozprawy Najwyższego Sądu Wojskowego na sesji wyjazdowej w Kielcach przeciw Antoninie Biskupskiej i współoskarżonym, 9 July 1946, quoted in Meducki I, 166.

144. Biographical entry in Protokół rozprawy głownej przed Wojskowym Sądem Rejnowym w Kielcach, quoted in Meducki I, 263.

145. “Zeznaje Janina Safian, zeznanie potwierdza edward Brandemburg,” Protokół rozprawy głównej przed Wojskowym Sądem Rejonowym w Kielcach, quoted in Meducki I, 285. another form of shouting, “Down with the Jews! We don’t want Jews in Poland! Death to the PPR men! Long live Sanation Poland!” is cited by Stanisław Rurarz, quoted in Blus, 86.

146. The above issue will be discussed in my book, dealing with the careers of Kielce and Rzeszów militiamen, employees of the state security offices, and other pogrom participants, taking into consideration their postwar trials. The background of the process was outlined by Jan Tomasz gross in Strach, in the chapter entitled “Kooptacja radykalnych nacjonalistów.”

147. according to Max glucksman’s theory (Analysis of Social Situation in Modern Zululand [Rhodes Livingstone Paper 28, Manchester, 1958]), the roots of sudden outbursts of violence can be found in the violation of dominant cleavages, that is, the relations between the main factions of society. Some of them, albeit those more wealthy and better educated, remain, as the Jews in prewar Poland, in a subordinate posi-tion. When this system is violated, social opposition and violence follow.

148. In Thompson’s index—motif V361; Stith Thompson, “Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: a Classification of Narrative elements in Folk-Tales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends,” FF Communications 106 (Helsinki 1932).

149. “What do the rulers want, what do the vampires want? / They suck out the worker’s last [drop of] blood / and then you’ll know what it means to be exploited / and to look for a better life for yourself / The workers’ fight carries on and on / Stand up and fight for the working class / and then you’ll learn what [it] means to be exploited / [and] to fight for a better life for yourself.”

150. See the manipulation of the Bloodsucker figure after the Kielce pogrom by the communist author-ities. “On 11 July a joint conference of the PPR and the PPS was held in Kielce. at the conference it was decided that arersts among parasytic elements be launched, ‘entertainment homes’ closed, and thus vacated space [was] offered to workers. Ours and all PPS agitators pointed to the oppressors of the people in the form of restaurant owners and social activists [?]. at all the mass rallies the people shifted their indignation from the Jews onto parasitic elements in general. The action was well received because it had corresponded with the animated mood of the disenchanted. a view was formed that finally the Party is looking for and push-ing oppressors of the people.” Sprawozdanie instruktorów KC PPR z pobytu w województwie kieleckim od 4 do 15 lipca 1946, quoted in Meducki II, 142.

151. Benedict R. anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev.ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 224.

152. Max gluckman, Analysis of Social Situation in Modern Zululand, Rhodes Livingstone Paper 28, Manchester, 1958.

153. Biographical entry in Kaczm, 69.154. Raport sytuacyjny Michała Kołacza, 14 June 1945, quoted in Kaczm, 81.155. Kaczm, 81.156. See Hanna Segal, Marzenie senne, wyobraźnia i sztuka, transl. P. Dybel (Kraków, 2003). The

operation of a symbolic equation consists in a pathological “equation (identification) of a symbol with the object it represents. as a result of this process, an actual object with a (unconscious) symbolic meaning ceases to be identified by the individual as what it actually is . . . but literally transforms into what it symbolizes.” “Wywiad z Hanną Segal,” Gazeta Wyborcza/Wysokie Obcasy, 7 February 2004.

157. Kaczm, 70.158. Kersten I, 90. Ibid., 134, on the pogrom in Velke Topolany in Slovakia, where the “crowd attacked

with knives a physician who vaccinated,” which also happened in pogroms in Hungary.159. See a. Cała, Wizerunek Żyda w polskiej kulturze ludowej, 52: “the suckers of our blood.”160. J. Kwiek, Żydzi, Łemkowie, Słowacy w województwie krakowskim w latach 1945-1949/50 (Kraków,

1998), 74.


161. It must have been a strong folklore topos because as late as 2005 it was noted during ethno-graphic research in the Sandomierz region. It appeared in the so-called “memrat,” in a story of a witness (or a person close to him), who, during a visit in a Jewish home, was to have seen a “Pole hanging upside down in a closet”; see statement in artur Żmijewski’s film Polak w szafie (Pole in a Closet; 2007), featur-ing students who had taken part in my research near Sandomierz in 2005: “[a student tells the informant whose uncle] opened the door of the cupboard and found a Pole hanging with his throat slit! The woman gave us graphic details, with beneath him a bowl for the blood. This was for the confection of matzo bread, she told us.”

162. For a biographical entry of Rabbi Leib Thorn, who resided at 12 Tannenbauma Street, and for some time was also an army chaplain in Warsaw, see Kaczm, 78. For the later fate of Lejb [Leib?] Thorn, who several days after the pogrom was said to have visited Rzeszów, see gross, Strach, 79–82.

163. arieh Kochavi, “Polscy biskupi, Watykan i Żydzi polscy w czasie przejmowania władzy przez komunisów na podstawie brytyjskich raportów dyplomatycznych,” Zagłada Żydów, vol. 5 (Warsaw, 2009), 159. an analysis of diplomatic correspondence between the British and the Vatican shows that “the Vatican totally accepted the fabrication that the child in Kielce, whom it referred to as ‘enrico Baslzozyk’ (in fact, his name was Henryk Błaszczyk) had been kidnapped for his blood.”

164. Raport Brygad Wywiadowczych, jesień 1945 Załącznik do raportu Okręgu Rzeszowskiego Brygad Wywiadowczych, 15[?] September 1945, quoted in Kaczm, doc. 33.

165. Tokarska-Bakir, Legendy o krwi.166. Kersten I, 132.167. Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (London, 1985), 6–7.

Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, born 1958, is a cultural anthropologist and professor at the Institute of applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw, and in the Polish academy of Sciences. Since 2005, she has directed the etnographic archive team (www.archiwumetnograficzne.edu.pl) collecting oral history on Shoah and blood libel in Polish hinterlands (Sandomierz, Zamość, Podlasie, etc). Her work includes Legendy o krwi. Antropologia przesądu (Blood Libel Legends. anthropology of Prejudice) (in Polish, 2008; forthcoming in French); “The Unrighteous Righteous and Righteous Unrighteous,” Dapim. Studies on the Shoah 24 (2010): 11–64; and “The Figure of Bloodsucker in Polish Religious, National and Left-Wing Discourse in the Years 1945/1946. a Historical anthropology Study” Polin (forthcoming).

Cries of the Mob in the Pogroms in Rzeszów (June 1945), Cracow (August 1945), and Kielce (July...

Documents

Transcript of Cries of the Mob in the Pogroms in Rzeszów (June 1945), Cracow (August 1945), and Kielce (July...