La Shoah en bas de chez soi : La microhistoire d’une « opération de relocalisation » dans une ville du Gouvernement général

Résumé 0

This paper is based on the doctoral studies of the author on the relationship between Jews and Gentiles in the Polish town of Tarnów between 1918 and 1956. It shows the value of studying the microhistory of the Shoah by presenting a “thick description,” as termed by Clifford Geertz, of the first Aussiedlungsaktion in Tarnów, which took place between June 11 and 18, 1942. A total of 1.8 million Jews were deported to the gas chambers of Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec during the Aktion Reinhardt. They were rounded up from their homes during so-called resettlement actions and “transported away.” This paper aims to depict what it truly meant to be deported to these far-flung extermination camps.During the first Aussiedlungsaktion that took place in Tarnów, 12,000 of the city’s 30,000 Jews were killed in one week. Eight thousand of these individuals were deported to the Bełżec extermination camp, while 4,000 were murdered on the spot. Still, the sheer numbers cannot capture the horror of what happened within the town. Through the lens of a “thick description,” we can delve deeper into the true meaning of “resettlement” and what this euphemism really meant for the local occupied society. What choices did the local population have? How did Jews react to the brutal radicalization of German extermination practices ? How did the non-Jewish locals behave, or in what ways did they participate in the events?The article references a variety of sources, primarily from Jewish survivors, as well as from the non-Jewish population that witnessed the massacres and various groups of German perpetrators (e.g. the Gestapo, SS, and civil administration) during the week. This tapestry of sources will create what Saul Friedländer called an integrated history of the Shoah—in other words, a stage for a wide variety of voices. This approach clearly shows that Tarnów’s first Aussiedlungsaktion was a public massacre that occurred in the town’s center and that all the non-Jewish citizens saw and heard the event. The article focuses on Jewish agency and survival strategies. It also describes how the city’s Jews were caught off guard by the German’s invaders disinformation policies and quick radicalization. The concept of “cumulative radicalization” (Hans Mommsen) is an important explanatory lens within German perpetrator research ( Täterforschung). Through this paper, the author’s goal is to show in concrete terms what “cumulative radicalization” meant for the Jewish population. Finally, the article also explores how non-Jewish locals were implicated in the massacre and in part profited from it. Consequently, it argues that the term “bystander” cannot be applied to these locals in the proximity of such violence.