Last revised august 30, 2004

, translation of Sefer zikaron le-kehilat Meytshet (Tel Aviv: Meytshet Societies in Israel and Abroad, 1973), 293–99, 328–31.

A number of Jewish testimonies and memoirs contain favourable information about Polish officials in the local administration and Polish policemen. The first head of the police in Mir, a Pole by the name of Krawczenko who was removed from his post by October 1941, saved the life of Lev Abramovsky. See Martin Dean, “Microcosm: Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust in the Mir Rayon of Belarus, 1941–1944,” in Gaunt et al., Collaboration and Resistance During the Holocaust, 226 n.12. A Jew from Dołhinów describes the deleterious effect of the change in that town, which initially had a Polish mayor who “treated the Jewish people decently,” when the head of police, “a decent Christian man”, was replaced by a “thug” from Krzywicze. See Yakov Segalchick, “Eternal Testament: Memoirs of a Partisan,” in Josef Chrust and Matityahu Bar-Razon, eds., Esh tamid-yizkor le-Dolhinow: Sefer zikaron le-kehilat Dolhinow va-ha-sevivah (Tel Aviv: Society of Dolhinow Emigrants in Israel, 1984), 274 ff.; English translation, Eternal Flame: In Memory of Dolhinow, posted on the Internet at: . According to Avraham Friedman, also of Dołhinów, at least three Poles in the small Polish-Belorussian police force actively assisted Jews in escaping from the ghetto and provided shelter for them outside the ghetto. See Avraham Friedman “Chapters of Life as a Fighter with the Resistance,” in ibid., 525 ff. The Polish mayor of Kurzeniec is praised in several testimonies: “Matros, a schoolteacher by profession, was made town mayor. This liberal man managed to help some Jews. … During the akzia [Shimke Alperovich] was hidden by the mayor in the town hall.” See Yoran, The Defiant, 59. The massacre of the Jews in Kurzeniec was carried out by “SD troops, with the help of Ukrainians serving in the German forces … with their Lithuanian and Latvian auxiliary units.” Ibid., 88. According to Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer, “the Polish teacher Matoros [sic] … was both the mayor appointed by the Germans and a friend of the Jews. … Matoros not only helped youngsters from the underground group [to whom he issued bogus labour certificates] but also personally saved Nahum Alperovicz,” and assisted his family. He “also aided Jewish refugees, exposing himself to considerable danger.” Matoros or Matros was executed, with his family, in the summer of 1942, apparently because of his contacts with the Polish underground. See Yehuda Bauer, “Kurzeniec—A Jewish Shtetl in the Holocaust,” Yalkut Moreshet: Holocaust Documentation and Research [Tel Aviv], no. 1 (Winter 2003): 143, 147, 151–52. The Polish chief of police in Raduń, Franciszek Ługowski, provided considerable assistance to Jews. See Aviel, A Village Named Dowgalishok, 25–26, 262–63; testimony of Beniamin Rogowski, March 14, 1965, Yad Vashem Archives, file 03/2820. For additional favourable references to Polish policemen see: Tec, Defiance, 192 (Kołdyszewo); Cholawsky, The Jews of Bielorussia during World War II, 136 (Kurzeniec); Levin and Meltser, Chernaia kniga z krasnymi stranitsami, 315 (Lida); Levine, Fugitives of the Forest, 105 (Żołudek); Eliach, There Once Was a World, 598, 601, 606 (Raduń); Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, 289 (Woronów); Duffy, The Bielski Brothers, 196 (Lida); Beirach, Aus dem Ghetto in die Wälder, 85 (a Polish policeman in Lida saved the author and his wife when they were about to be executed after an SS selection and brought them to a labour camp where the mayor enrolled them); Lyuba Rudnicki, “Outside of the Ghetto,” in Yerushalmi, Navaredok Memorial Book, Internet: , 246ff. (police chief in Nowogródek); testimony of Golda Shwartz, July 25, 1993, Yad Vashem Archives, file 03/6922, Internet: (Szczuczyn). It should be noted that the Soviet underground also had liaison men who infiltrated the German police. See Kahn, No Time To Mourn, 130; Nachum Alperovich, “Thus It Began: Chapters from the Underground,” in Meyerowitz, The Scroll of Krzeniac, 321ff.; Alexander Manor, Itzchak Ganusovitch, and Aba Lando, eds., Sefer Lida (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Lida in Israel and the Relief Committee of Lida Jews in USA, 1970), 367ff.; translated as Book of Lida, Internet: .

561 Bernhard Chiari, “Has There Been a People’s War? The History of the Second World War in Belarus, 60 Years After the Surrender of the Third Reich,” in De Wever, et al., Local Government in Occupied Europe (1939–1945), 236.

562 Wołkonowski, Okręg Wileński Związku Walki Zbrojnej Armii Krajowej w latach 1939–1945, 76.

563 Evgenij Rosenblat, “Belarus: Specific Features of the Region’s Jewish Collaboration and Resistance,” in Gaunt, et al., Collaboration and Resistance During the Holocaust, 261–82.

564 Bernhard Chiari, “Has There Been a People’s War? The History of the Second World War in Belarus, 60 Years After the Surrender of the Third Reich,” in De Wever, et al., Local Government in Occupied Europe (1939–1945), 235.

565 For example, in Głębokie: “A goodly portion of the peasants did not want to make the exchange. They would prefer to remain in their own homes, near their fields, their gardens, orchards, barns and stables, where they were born, grew up and lived their lives, rather than go into the expensive, beautiful [Jewish] apartments in the center of the city.” See M. and Z. Rajak, Memorial Book of Gluboke (Canton, New York, 1994), 46; translation of Khurbn Glubok…Koziany (Buenos Aires: Former Residents’ Association in Argentina, 1956).

566 Rajak, Memorial Book of Gluboke, 51.

567 Testimony of Liber Losh of Szczuczyn, Yad Vashem Archives, file 03/4378, O33C.

568 “The Diary of Hinda Daul,” in Gelbart, Sefer Zikharon le-kehilat Oshmana, 25ff.

569 Tec, In the Lion’s Den, 76.

570 Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, 289.

571 Testimony of Leon Salomon, dated June 18, 1990, Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Internet: