#3 Poland. Polish Mayors during the Holocaust

Poland had the largest Jewish community in Europe before the war. Most of the more than 3 million Jews living in Poland were murdered in the Holocaust. In our first episode on Poland, we talk with historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe about the role played by Polish mayors in the German-occupied General Government during the Holocaust. As part of the occupation, the Germans dismantled the Polish central state. On the local level, however, Polish officials were often allowed to remain in office. It was primarily the mayors who represented the population’s interests to the occupying power.

Shownotes: 


Map of the General Government and bordering Polish territories on the Website of the the series The Persecution and Murderof the European Jews by Nazi Germany, 1933–1945.


Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe on FU Berlin and Landecker Fundation


Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Stepan Bandera. The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide, and Cult”, Stuttgart 2014.


Arnd Bauerkämper and Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe (ed.), “Fascism without Borders. Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe 1918 to 1945”, Oxford 2017.


Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Racism and modern antisemitism in Habsburg and Russian Ukraine. A short overview, in: Raul Cârstocea and Eva Kovács, Modern antisemitisms in the peripheries”, Vienna 2019, p. 133-160.


Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine: Historical Research, Public Debates, and Methodological Disputes”, in: East European Politics and Societies 34, 1 (2020), p. 129-142.


In German: Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Polnische Bürgermeister und der Holocaust im Generalgouvernement. Besatzung, Kollaboration und Handlungsmöglichkeiten”, in: Einsicht. Bulletin des Fritz-Bauer-Instituts 2021, p. 26-35.