The provinces
Polish historical literature on the German occupation features a rather one-dimensional picture of the provinces. For a number of years it chiefly focused on the martyrdom of the Polish population, social resistance and – primarily – on the functioning of armed underground formations. In the days of the People’s Republic of Poland, researchers concentrated on armed Communist formations, whereas after 1989 – on the Home Army. Monographs and studies as well as publications on the independence-oriented regional and Communist underground, do mention the presence of the Jews (both those published before 1989 and after), but do so rather briefly, and, furthermore, selectively. The authors usually mentioned basic facts and a handful of details concerning aid to the Jews. On the other hand, Jewish historiography, quite naturally, focused on the fate of the victims: the extermination and resistance, and – significantly – presented Polish-Jewish relations more grimly. In certain approximation, we have been dealing with two parallel narrations: the history of the Poles, resisting the occupier’s terror and offering help to the Jews, on the other hand, the history of the Jews, suffering and slaughtered on a mass scale in a hostile or indifferent environment.
Lack of profound analysis on the provinces, resulted in our incomplete knowledge of the extermination of the Jews in Poland, particularly in the context of Polish-Jewish relations. In the early days of the occupation they looked different than those in the cities which had separate “Jewish districts”. Thus in the provinces the everyday contacts were closer and the distance between the two communities, despite the occupation laws and intensifying repression, was much smaller. From the contemporary point of view, it seems that – apart from a description of the process of the extermination of the Jews – the most important issue for Polish historians is the sphere of Polish-Jewish contacts during the war and the occupation. We need to strive to overcome the division into the “Polish” and the “Jewish” truth as regards the provinces, which are the most visible, and to reconstruct the fact on a broader source basis than it has been done so far.