The ethnic relations in Ukraine could be concisely described as “mutual and intense hatred”. The Ukrainians hated the Poles and Jews. The Poles hated the Ukrainians and the Jews. And the Jews repaid the Poles and Ukrainians in the same coin. The Soviet authorities needed excellent diplomatic skills to maintain peace and order in those pleasant conditions without favouring or hurting anybody, but they showed those skills to a minimal degree.
As for the Jews, they were having their revenge on the Poles, often in a very hideous way. The expression, “These are no longer your times”, was not only used too often, but usually overused. Once I saw with my own eyes a Jew standing in a crowded train carriage reproach a sitting [8] Pole for not giving up his seat for him. When the Pole said that he did not see why he should have done that, the Jew hurled a stream of abuse at him, repeating the following question like a chorus, “What do you think? That these are still the old times?”
Incidents like that and similar ones could be seen at every step and were the reason why the Poles grew obstinate in their desire for revenge, particularly because they could not repay the Jews even with words, for even such an “innocent” insult as “you lousy Jew” was punishable with five years’ imprisonment for “spreading ethnic hatred”. For instance, once as I was walking with a Russian from the countryside I knew, a Polish pedestrian murmured, “These are Jews” to my companion as he was passing us by. Having heard that, my Russian friend stopped that Pole, called him names, and had the serious intention to hand him over to the NKVD. We barely managed to explain to him that a “Jew” was not an offensive word in Polish and that it had the same meaning as the Russian word Yevrey.682
Both on the incorporated territories and in the USSR proper Jews were pushing their way into the intelligentsia stratum and held the superior and better positions. If you ask a Russian, “What do Jews actually do in your country?” he will take a moment to think and then say, but without a hint of hatred, “Jews? Well, they are engineers, physicians, etc.”. But that did not exclude the fact of existence of one hundred per cent Jewish kolkhozes [state farms]. I myself knew a village on the incorporated territories where three Jews joined the kolkhoz.
