Poland's Holocaust ─ Ethnic Strife, Collaboration With Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947

With the end of World War I, a new Republic of Poland emerged on the maps of Europe, made up of some of the territory from the first Polish Republic, including Wolyn and Wilno, and significant parts of Belarus, Upper Silesia, Eastern Galicia, and East Prussia. The resulting conglomeration of ethnic groups left many substantial minorities wanting independence. The approach of World War II provided the minorities’ leaders a new opportunity in their nationalist movements, and many sided with one or the other of Poland’s two enemies—the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany—in hopes of achieving their goals at the expense of Poland and its people. Based on primary and secondary sources in numerous languages (including Polish, German, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Russian and English), this work examines the roles of the ethnic minorities in the collapse of the Republic and in the atrocities that occurred under the occupying troops. The Polish government’s response to mounting ethnic tensions in the prewar era and its conduct of the war effort are also examined.

Tadeusz Piotrowski is a professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire in Manchester where he also teaches courses in anthropology and the Holocaust, and where he served as the Associate Dean of Faculty. He has received many awards including the Outstanding Associate Professor Award. He is also the author of The Polish Deportees of World War II (2004), The Indian Heritage of New Hampshire and Northern New England (2002), Vengeance of the Swallows (1995, winner of the Cultural Achievement Award from the American Council for Polish Culture) and Genocide and Rescue in Wolyn (2000). He lives in Manchester, New Hampshire.