Collaborators One and All? Jews, Volksdeutsche, Poles and the (Re)Construction of Community in Postwar Poland

• In Event: 261 - Section on Political Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 15. Political community and power

Abstract

This article uses the trials of Nazi collaborators in postwar Polish courts of law to frame how large-scale projects of political transformation intersect with the efforts of local communities to repair and reaffirm the boundaries of “social belongingness” shaken by war and mass atrocity. An analysis of 198 cases of suspected Nazi collaborators investigated by Prosecutors’ Offices in Lodz, Lublin, and Warsaw between 1944-1946 demonstrates how exacerbated ethnic tensions between Jews, Volksdeutsche, and Poles became the basis for forging ties of solidarity at both the local and the national level. By carefully examining prosecutorial and judicial decision-making, this study finds that Poland’s postwar project of punishment failed to uniformly create the vertical and horizontal ties that form the basis of national belongingness (i.e.-citizenship). Instead, the manner in which social solidarity was created or reaffirmed was specific to ethnic group.

Author

• Louisa M. McClintock, Columbia University