structurally improved, and who previously were mainly exposed to persecution,insults, and excesses from the Polish element, they all also have a positive, if not enthusiastic, attitude towards the new regime. [. . .] The intelligentsia, however, and the more prosperous and cultural Jewry (of course, with rare exceptions, and without taking into account the appearances) often rather think about the Poles with some fondness, and would welcome a change in the status quo – namely, independent Poland. [. . .] In principle, however, and en masse, the Jews createda situation in which Poles consider them faithful servants of the Bolsheviks and – safe to say – they are waiting for an opportunity to simply take revenge on the Jews. In principle, all Poles are resentful and disillusioned with the Jews – thevast majority (mostly young people, of course) are literally waiting for an oppor-tunity to exact “bloody revenge”. [. . .] Establishing a broader common frontwould face considerable difficulties on the part of broad sections of Polish society,whose antisemitism is by no means diminished.
Two years after the report of Jan Karski, Polish ambassador to Russia Stanisław Kot (in a letter to the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs in London dated 8 November 1941) assessed Polish–Jewish relations in the Borderlands in a very similar manner:
The Poles are generally very bitter towards the Jews because of their behaviour during the occupation, greeting the Red Army with delight, insulting arrested Polish officers and soldiers, serving the Soviets, denouncing the Poles. [. . .] Such allegations are made almost exclusively against the Jews from the Eastern Territories, who had gravitated towards Russia even before the war, and espe-cially the Jewish plebs. [. . .] But the behaviour of the Jewish intelligentsia and bourgeoisie is much more positive, most of them identifying themselves publicly as Poles and keeping in communication with the entire Polish society. Some deserve credit for boldness in their speech. Lower Jewish classes provoked antip-athy also for the reason that they constantly speculated, bought out all goods, and raised prices, without consideration of the needs of others.
Thousands of individual messages collected among Polish exiles by the Historical Bureau operating in the Anders Army, and dozens of diaries and memoirs published after the war express sentiments in a similar vein, full of blame and resentment. This begs the irresistible conclusion that the pre-war Republic of Poland did not build a system of communal ties in the Eastern Borderlands that would withstand as serious a trial as the Soviet occupation. In a situation where the authorities’ policy failed to create a sense of responsibility for the common state and the consequent obligation of solidarity
GENERA L INTRO D U C TION XXXII
