Narodowcy

Kamil Kijek
Beyond “Objective Factors”, towards Political Mobilization and Radical Anti-Semitism: Remarks on Anti-Jewish Violence in Kielce Voivodeship, 1931-1936

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In order to understand the impact of the European fascism on ideological development in Polish national movement we need to study the impact that Hitler’s rise to power in Germany had on the political imagination of the Polish right-wing opposition, especially on the Young generation of the national movement. It is important to note that the dominant Polish historiography of Endecja in interwar Poland concentrates on showing a clear distinction between the non-Christian, racial nationalism of the Nazis and the “Catholic nationalism” of the National Democrat establishment, or at least its older variety.
This distinction may hold true on the level of the official, central party press. But the situation looks different if we compare what was said during party rallies and conferences with what was published in the party press. Kielce voivodeship example demonstrates that at least in the realm of program of policy towards Jews, the impact of the German national socialist example on the Polish right wing was much greater than most of the recent historiographies tend to admit.
For example, on 2nd of April 1933, during the county gathering of the National party in the town of Jędrzejów, catholic priest Adam Błaszczyk – a deputy of the Sejm and an important National Party leader in the Kielce region – discussed Hitler’s anti-Jewish measures “as worth of praise and following”. This was not an isolated incident. The German model was called upon in various local meetings and in the local press by “Young” as well as “Old” members of the National Party. The very same positive things about Nazi prosecution of the Jews, supplemented with satisfaction with observation of similar surge of radical anti-Semitism also in Poland, were said by Stefan Sołtyk, a leader of the nationalist in the Radom area (where Przytyk pogrom took place), on the gathering of the National Party activists on 9th of April 1933.
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Źródło / source:
Polish-Jewish Relations and Anti-Semitism in Interwar Poland Proceedings of the International Seminar - Kanazawa University Kyoto, 2018