Beyond the Bystander. Relations Between Jews and Gentile Poles in the General Government

Abstract

In October 1942 Alter S., a 17-year old Jewish teenager, sneaked out of the Tarnów ghetto to the store his father had owned, grabbed some goods and fled. The store was now in the hands of Franciszek O., a gentile Pole, who took it over when, in the summer just gone, its Jewish proprietors had been forced to move into the ghetto. Franciszek O. immediately alerted the Polish ‘blue’ police, accusing Alter S. of burglary. The police searched for the teenager in vain. He managed to get away and was never heard of again. Another Jewish store in the town, in Narutowicza Street, was ‘ownerless’ after the deportation and murder of its Jewish proprietors during the first Aussiedlungsaktion in Tarnów. Two non-Jewish Tarnovians disputed who should ‘inherit’ it. The case was a heated one and, in August 1942 was being argued in court. In December 1942, the dead body of a Jewish boy was found near Tarnów’s railway station. The Polish lawyers suspected that he had been killed by non-Jewish Tarnovians who had at first tried to help him but who then decided to get rid of him in this way. All these cases occurred in a short space of time in one town, Tarnów, which lies some 80 kilometres east of Cracow. The present analysis aims to unveil the social processes that developed among the indigenous population under German occupation.