the help of the local population. The degree and extent of such collaboration varied diversely by territory and was manifested either by denouncing Jews in hiding, or in the form of other activities aimed at capturing Jews; sometimes they were murdered directly. In the northeastern part of the former Second Republic of Poland, the Vilna region, there was also active participation of Lithuanians in the genocide of the Jews, committed mainly by the Lithuanian police, but also perpetuated by part of the Lithuanian armed underground acting on their own. The Polish population in that area collaborated with the Germans much less frequently. In the Łomża region, however, there were incidents of mass murder of Jews committed collectively – at the inspiration and encouragement of the Germans – by the local Polish population. We know of such criminal actions in Jedwabne, Radziłów, Wąsosz, Kolno, Szczuczyn, and other places. Jews, among them women, children, and the elderly, were burnt alive in synagogues and barns, had their throats cut, were killed with axes, or were drowned. In the area of Eastern Galicia (Lvov, Drohobycz, Borysław, Bolechów and other towns and cities) as well as Volhynia, the Germans wereassisted, and sometimes even outdone, i n the mass murder of the Jews by Ukrainian nationalists. While not all of these events listed here are named in the documents collected by Emanuel Ringelblum’s team, they referred to them, and sometimes also described them.
Often, all that sufficed for the local population as a pretext to take partin the murder of Jews was the belief that the Jews allegedly extensively collaborated with the Soviet occupation authorities. They were among others said to have greeted the entering Red Army with triumphal arches, to have been particularly active in pointing people for deportation to the special Soviet police, denouncing Polish independence activists.
While such attitudes did indeed occur, they were not typical of the behaviour of the majority of Jews. Moreover, representatives of other national groups living in these areas also collaborated with the Soviet occupiers. According to reliable historical research, the number of Jews working in the administration under the Soviet occupation was not – in proportion to the population – greater than the number of Poles, Ukrainians, or Belarusians. It is just that the presence of people of Jewish origin was more noticeable to non-Jews, andsuch collaboration bothered Poles and Ukrainians more than the presence of members of their own ethnic groups in the occupier’s administration. Untilthe outbreak of war, the situation had been different. Jews had no access to
PREFA C E TO THE PO L ISH E DITION XVIII
