2010/01/01 by Claire Hubbard-Hall · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #European history and politics #Polish Historical and Cultural Studies #Eastern European Communism and Reforms
paper · doi:10.1057/9780230290488_7
openalex publication_date 2010/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
On 6 September 1939, Nazi troops moved into the town of Tomaschow Mazowiecki,1 located within the area of Radom, Poland. The Nazi occupation of the town and surrounding area began with a wave of unprecedented terror. Implemented by the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police), many Poles, Jews and members of the intelligentsia were either imprisoned, sent to concentration camps, deployed as forced labourers or were simply shot. During the next two years, Nazi racial policy was put into full force with the creation of a ghetto for the Jews of Tomaschow and its neighbouring villages. The last few months of 1942 saw the ghetto ‘cleared’, with surviving Jews being transported to the Nazi death camp of Treblinka. Initially, the Nazis faced fierce resistance from the Polish population, but within a year the ruthless counter-tactics of the Nazis had paid off. However, Polish resistance had not been completely eradicated and soon ‘secret societies were springing up all over the place, like mushrooms after the rain’.2 The Nazis’ genocidal policy had ensured that opposition grew on an unprecedented scale. The Gestapo responded by adopting a ‘hands-on-approach’ to policing in Nazi-occupied Poland by proactively recruiting Polish citizens as paid informers, known as Vertrauensleute (people of confidence). Through its network of paid spies, the Gestapo was able to eliminate partisan groups, but those groups soon mimicked the methods of the Nazi occupiers.