Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, 1919-1945

Brzezany, located 80 km SE of Lwow and founded by a Pole (p. 5), was the home of Rydz-Smigly. (p. 22, 27, 29, 50). It was once visited by US President Herbert Hoover (p. 27), a Polonophile. Very few Brzezany Jews survived the Holocaust, and the onetime Brzezany Jews interviewed by Redlich, most living in Israel, were largely prewar emigrants. Most Brzezany Poles interviewed consisted of expellees who now live at Ustron in Silesia. (p. 25). A few Poles still live in Brzezany (p. 12, 26, 154), and one interviewed Brzezany Pole is an American emigre. The Ukrainians interviewed consisted of an assortment of émigré Ukrainians and locals. However, most current "Brzezanians" are postwar-resettled eastern Ukrainians. (pp. 3-4, 147). The separatist OUN murdered not only Poles but also Ukrainians who merely criticized them. (p. 41, 69). The prewar Polish government eventually closed the local Proswita and abolished the Ukrainian Scouts (Plast) for the unmentioned reason that they had become hives of sedition. The government, well aware of the fact that the extremist OUN wanted to provoke a Polish crackdown that could only antagonize Ukrainian moderates, had long delayed its actions. Consider Vasyl Fanga, a former UPA member who still lives in Brzezany: "Vasyl admitted, however, that Polish anti-Ukrainian acts were child's play compared to what would happen later under the Soviets." (p. 69). The awfulization of the Jewish and Ukrainian experiences under Polish rule is strongly rejected by Redlich. Among the spectrum of Ukrainian opinions are some Ukrainians who remember generally positive Polish-Ukrainian relations. (p. 65). She also comments: "If there was anti-Semitism in interwar Brzezany, it usually assumed quite mild forms." (p. 67; see also p. 70). Also: "Although `Polishness' was a dominant feature, Jews and Ukrainians weren't completely alienated." (p. 164). For instance, Ukrainians enjoyed considerable cultural autonomy (p. 54), and some Jews and Ukrainians participated in events commemorating May 3, Nov. 11, etc. (p. 47). Froyko Schmidt of Israel recounted how those who greeted the Soviet tanks at Brzezany in 1939 were mostly Jews. (p. 88). Vasyl Fanga acknowledged widespread Ukrainian-Nazi collaboration, and faulted Ukrainians for naively believing that Hitler would create an independent Ukraine. (p. 115). Redlich touches on the OUN-UPA genocide of Poles, the AK's use of the Bernardine Cloister and the Farny Church at Brzezany as samoobrony (defense points), Operation Burza (Tempest)(p. 111, 130), and the later Soviet-formed Polish STREBKI. (Battalions of Destruction)(pp. 145-147). She repeats the Poles-started-it-at-Kholm (Chelm) myth. (pp. 101-102, 131). In actuality, Polish attacks on Ukrainian (and German) settlements there had been a reaction against the systematic German-sponsored forced replacement of Poles with Germans and Ukrainian collaborators. Do anti-Polish Jews influence other Jews? This is now confirmed in print. Redlich