Painfull events in common Polish - Ukrainian history...

[steve_vlasenko]

And all those Railway workers were on the margins because they didn't want to convert to Polish Catholicism. Strange that religious persecution ain't seen as an issue to the Polish Nationalist

Strange again how the Pol who laments the loss of empire seems only to see Ukrainian tyrannies.

One could almost say blinkered.

Vlas.

[steve_vlasenko]

I have posted this without the permission, if this is a problem please email me and I▓ll delete it.
KUTY
ECHOES OF A VANISHED HERITAGE
An historical outline of the Jewish community of Kuty,
a kehila in Eastern Galicia,
culminating in its destruction during the Holocaust.
Martin Rudner Copyright ╘ Martin Rudner, 1993

2. KUTY IN INTER-WAR POLAND

Polish Nationalism and Jewish Marginalization

The Jews presented a quandary for independent Poland. Polish nationalism emphasized ethnic exclusivity, and provided little if any sense of belonging for minority populations. Although some prompted the League of Nations to require Poland to sign a minorities treaty, guaranteeing the rights of minority ethnic communities, this did not prevent successive governments embarking on policies that tended to slight or discriminate against the Jewish population. While some Polish political leaders attempted to avert, or at least mitigate, acts against Jews, officially-sponsored anti-Semitism took on a more virulent and exclusionary character.

Economic Development Reaches Kuty

As compared to other places in Eastern Galicia, Kuty experienced a broad economic uplift following Poland's independence. Due in part to its strategic location on the southernmost tip of Poland. At the same time, certain traditional Jewish occupations were threatened by the economic nationalist policies pursued by the Polish government. During the late 1930s an increasingly strident ethnocentric nationalism led to the introduction of regulatory and fiscal measures designed to marginalize Jews economically and socially. Government regulations were introduced to exclude Jews from certain industries and occupations which they, historically, had originally developed. Thus, licensing requirements served, in effect, to exclude Jewish artisans from specific crafts and trades. Jewish enterprises were subject to boycotts and harassment, Jewish commercial neighbourhoods to intimidation and pogroms. Government fiscal measures magnified the economic burden on Jewish business, as Jews ended up paying some 40% of all direct taxes.

Whereas the government-promoted cooperative movement did not as yet extend to Eastern Galicia, whose rural population was predominantly Ukrainian, and therefore did not attract the same concern on the part of the Polish authorities, it nevertheless presented a latent, looming threat to the numerous small and vulnerable Jewish shopkeepers and traders who so characterised the subsistence economy of Galicianer Jewry. The threat was made explicit, and was even conveyed in the semi-official newspaper Gazeta Polska:
The development of the co-operative movement is a healthy and satisfying phenomenon and we should support it notwithstanding the fact that it spells disaster to Jewish trade. I like the Danes very much but if there were three million of them in Poland I would pray to God to take them away. Maybe we should like the Jews very much if there were only 50,000 of them in Poland. [editorial in Gazeta Polska, 16 January 1937]
Polish anti-Semitism even received religious legitimacy from the Roman Catholic hierarchy. In 1936, Cardinal August Hlond, newly appointed primate of Poland, expressed the church's prescriptions against Jews in a widely disseminated pastoral letter.
It is an actual fact that the Jews fight against the Catholic church, they are free-thinkers, and constitute the vanguard of atheism, bolshevism and revolution... It is also true that in the schools the Jewish youth is having an evil influence, from an ethical and religious point of view, on the Catholic youth... One does well to avoid Jewish shops and Jewish stalls in the markets, but it is not permitted to demolish Jewish businesses. One should protect oneself against the influence of Jewish morals...but it is inadmissible to assault, hit or injure Jews.

Kehila Politics

As in other Jewish communities in Galicia and elsewhere in Poland, Zionist youth movements were actively involved in Kuty in mobilizing young people, fostering career training and aliyah (emigration to Eretz Israel), and political consciousness-raising. A Shomer Ha'tzair (socialist "Young Guard") cell had been established as early as 1921, and continued to function until 1939. Gordonia, a labour Zionist youth movement, established itself in Kuty in 1926, but ceased discontinued by the early 1930s. The Zionist Revisionist Beitar ("Covenant of [Josef] Trumpeldor") youth movement began operating in Kuty in 1930 and seems have been active up to 1939.
It is clear that most Kuty Zionists consistently favoured the labour Zionist movement, notably the Poalei Zion and to a lesser extent the radical Zionist parties. The more conservative General Zionists and the right-wing nationalist Revisionists garnered considerably lower levels of support. The religious Mizrachi movement won least. This electoral pattern reflected the broadly secular outlook prevailing among Kitever Zionists, and the intense ideological and class polarization of the community's body politic as between the large and increasingly assertive labour movement and the more conservative employer interests.

Community Institutions and Social Services

Each year, when the summer holiday season commenced at the vacation facilities in Kuty, there was always a risk that unruly Polish holiday-makers would assault local Jews. In order to stave off rowdiness and violence, Jewish youth banded together in a self-protection organization. Nonetheless, there was an incident in which visiting Polish rowdies smashed windows of Jewish homes on the outskirts of the town.

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Further Non-Ukrainian evidence of Polish oppression of minorities in the interwar period. Formation of radical Zionist groups; is there not a similarity with the formation on the OUN and later the UPA? These Zionist groups later went on to form ZOB.

Apologies for the length of this post but I thought it was most relevant.

Take Care.

Vlas.

[Bartosz]

Unlike Ukrainian nationalists these Jewish have never entered the path of the terrorism. I don't mention about colaboration with Germans.

ZOB was subodrdinated to the Polish government in London, and was receiving the supply from Polish Country Army. When friends from SS of combatants of Halitia were suppressing the insurrection in Warsaw Ghetto, Jews and Polish volunteers were dying fighting with nasizsts.

Generally Jews and Poles made part of the anti-nazi coalition, Ukrainian nationalists were on the other side of the barricade. No metter what were their intentions, they contributed to longering the agony og Hitlers regime.