of events after 17 September 1939. Throughout the entire territory, the local community welcomed the Soviet troops; there were also many organised sabotage operations against the defeated Polish troops. The most significant sabotage operations took place in Grodno, Wołkowysk, Skidel, Zelwa, and Motol. In all those cities, towns, and many smaller localities, Belarusians and Jews fought together against Polish soldiers and military settlers. Polish wit-nesses of those events noted that the Soviet troops were greeted by the local Jewish and Belarusian population – not by everyone though, but by individuals with communist leanings, or by Jewish paupers, the unemployed, and poor Belarusian peasants.30 Sources also confirm that the situation in the countryside, where robberies of property and lynching were widespread, was significantly different from the towns, where the spontaneously forming “people’s militia” and revolutionary committees were generally able to maintain order until the invasion of the Soviet Army.
According to the German biased study by J. Pohl from 1942, the fact that activists of Jewish origin dominated in the Communist Party of Western Belarus was associated with a strong politicisation of the Jewish community in the Republic of Belarus. Supposedly as many as 6.2 per cent of Jews were members of the party or the Komsomol; they were said to have constituted as many as 16 per cent of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and more than 23 per cent of oblast authorities.
In September and October 1939, Byelorussian Soviet authorities delegated 700 members of the Communist party to work in the newly acquired terri-tory. Until the beginning of 1940, a total of more than 4,500 party vostoch-niks and 6,000–8,000 Komsomol members arrived to take control of the new territory. Among them were many Jews. For example, among officers servingin Białystok alone (excluding the militia and the NKVD), until October 1940there were approximately 600 Jews (21.5 per cent), while 1,100 were Russian (the rest were Belarusian). As for people serving in various regions of the Białystok oblast, Jews constituted only 3–9 per cent.
In March 1940, the Białystok militia employed 188 Jews (11 per cent) and only 70 Poles (4 per cent). The majority of militia employees were Belarusian
