Poland Action

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Expulsion of Jewish Poles from Nuremberg on October 28, 1938, photo taken from the Federal Archives

The Polish Action was the name given to the arrest of at least 17,000 Jews living in the German Reich who had immigrated from Poland and their expulsion and removal to the Polish border, which was carried out at the end of October 1938 on Heinrich Himmler's instructions and in coordination with the Foreign Office . The deportation was violent and came as a complete surprise for those affected. Herschel Grynszpan , whose parents were affected, shot the German embassy employee Ernst Eduard vom Rath on November 7th in Paris , who died on November 9th, which in turn was the cause of the November pogroms in 1938 .

history

Memorial plaque on the former Polish Consulate General in Leipzig , where around 1300 Polish Jews found shelter in 1938 ( Musikviertel , Wächterstrasse 32)

On March 31, 1938, the Polish Parliament passed a law providing the possibility of revoking citizenship from all Polish citizens who have lived abroad for more than five years. The main reason for this was the annexation of Austria , after which the Polish government expected up to 20,000 Jewish refugees of Polish origin from occupied Austria to arrive soon. A decree followed on October 9, 1938, according to which, from October 30, 1938, passports issued abroad only permitted entry to Poland with a verification note from the Polish consulate . In this way the Polish government wanted to prevent a mass expulsion to Poland of Jews of Polish nationality living in the German Reich.

State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker expressed to the Polish Ambassador Józef Lipski the fear of the German leadership that “a lump of 40-50,000 stateless former Polish Jews would fall into our lap through expatriation”. On October 26th, the Polish government was finally asked to allow holders of Polish passports to enter the country without a visa, otherwise the Polish Jews would be deported before the law came into force.

In the Nazi-controlled press, Jews of Eastern European origin in particular had been vilified and defamed more and more drastically since the " seizure of power " in 1933. Around 72,000 Jews of Polish nationality lived in the German Reich and the adjoining areas at that time. Reinhard Heydrich had numerous Jews of Polish nationality arrested between October 28 and 29, 1938. Quick access was made possible by the Jewish index that has been in existence since 1935 . Although this action came as a surprise, the police were only able to arrest and deport part of the Polish Jews. Some were not found in the home, had to be released due to illness or frailty , or were able to go into hiding. Male adults were mainly affected by the action. They were initially held in prisons and assembly camps and then deported by guarded special trains across the border, especially at Zbąszyń ( Bentschen ), Chojnice ( Konitz ) in Pomerania and Bytom in Upper Silesia . The deportees were only allowed to take food for two days and a few personal belongings. Some of them were later allowed to return to Germany for a short time to sell their property. However, the proceeds were deposited in blocked accounts.

The forced eviction came as a surprise to the Polish border authorities, so that they were completely overwhelmed under the circumstances and acted differently depending on the location. At some border towns, the deportees were able to travel on unhindered without their names being recorded. In Zbąszyń an attempt was made to register the deported persons or to check their passports. Around 10,000 of those deported were allowed to travel further inland within the first two days. However, those who had no family members or acquaintances with whom they could find accommodation in Poland and those who were refused entry were interned in Zbąszyń. The warehouse there was financially supported by the American Joint Distribution Committee . In the winter of 1938/39 there were up to 8,000 people in the camp, where the hygienic conditions were catastrophic.

After protests by the Polish Foreign Ministry , the Polish campaign was stopped. Those Jews who could not be driven across the Polish border were brought back into the interior by the German authorities. In January 1939, Poland and the German Reich concluded an agreement according to which around 6,000 family members of those previously deported (women and children) were allowed to enter Poland.

The later literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki was affected by this measure. Furthermore, Zindel (Sendel) Grynszpan, a master tailor from Hanover , was with the deportees along with relatives . His 17-year-old son, Herschel Grynszpan, who lives in Paris, heard of his family's martyrdom. To draw attention to the situation of the Jews, on November 7, 1938, he shot the third secretary of the German embassy, Ernst Eduard vom Rath , who died on November 9. The National Socialists took this as an opportunity to trigger the November 1938 pogroms the following night .

Zindel (Sendel) Grynszpan testified as a witness in the Eichmann trial in 1961 about the circumstances of his deportation and those of his family during the "Poland Action".

The cooperation between the Reichsbahn and the authorities during the deportation provided the model for the later deportations to the concentration and extermination camps .

literature

  • Jerzy Tomaszewski: prelude to destruction. The expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany in 1938. Fiber, Osnabrück 2002, ISBN 3-929759-63-2 . Excerpt
  • Thomas Urban : The loss. The expulsion of the Germans and Poles in the 20th century. Munich 2004.
  • Léon Noël : The German attack on Poland. Verlag Arani, Berlin 1948 (report by the French ambassador to Poland 1935–1939).
  • Emanuel Feinermann, Rita Thalmann : The Kristallnacht. European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-434-46211-2 (first 1987).
  • Wojciech Olejniczak / Izabela Skórzyńska (ed.): Do zobaczenia za rok w Jerozolimie. Deportacje polskich Żydów w 1938 roku z Niemiec do Zbąszynia / See You next Year in Jerusalem. Deportations of Polish Jews from Germany to Zbąszyń in 1938. Fundacja TRES, Zbąszyń 2012 (bilingual publication, Polish and English).
  • Bonnie M. Harris: The Memoirs of Cantor Joseph Cysner. A rare testimony to the “Poland Action” . In: Hamburg Key Documents on German-Jewish History , October 25, 2017, doi: 10.23691 / jgo: article-94.de.v1 .
  • Alina Bothe, Gertrud Pickhan (eds.): Expelled! Berlin, October 28, 1938. The history of the "Poland Action" . Berlin, Metropol 2018, ISBN 978-3-86331-411-8 .
  • Alina Bothe: Radicalization in full view. The "Poland Actions" 1938/39. In: information. Scientific journal of the German Resistance Study Group 1933–1945, Issue 89, 2019.
  • Heidi Behrens , Norbert Reichling : "I was a rare case". The German-Jewish-Polish history of Leni Zytnicka , Essen, Klartext-Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-8375-1986-0 .

Web links

Commons : Polenaktion (1938)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d The deportation of Polish Jews from the German Reich 1938/1939 and their tradition . Federal Archives. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
  2. ↑ The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945. Volume 2: German Reich 1938 – August 1939 (edited by Susanne Heim ), Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , p. 52.
  3. ↑ Record of the State Secretary dated November 8, 1938, quoted from: The persecution and murder ..., vol. 2, p. 52 with note 136.
  4. ^ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: "Reichskristallnacht" - The November pogroms 1938. Munich 2000, ISBN 3-612-26753-1 , p. 57.
  5. ↑ The persecution and murder ..., Document 112, p. 322.
  6. ↑ 12,500 as a figure in Rita Thalmann, Emmanuel Feinermann: Die Kristallnacht. Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-434-46211-2 , p. 38.
  7. ^ The Eichmann Trial, Jerusalem 1961. Testimony of Zindel (Sendel) Grynszpan. Retrieved January 28, 2015.