"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (260 page)

58.
See, for example, the decisions of March 31, 1942, by the Hohensalza Special Court (listening to foreign radio stations) (quoted in Łuczak,
Dyskriminacja Polaków
); of March 18, 1942 (Az. Ds 178/72), July 2, 1941 (Az. Ds 76/72), and August 8, 1941 (Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
), by the Bromberg Municipal Court; and of June 30, 1943, by the Lissa (Leszno), Warthegau, Municipal Court. The commentary to the decision mentioned as an exacerbating factor that “the accused, a Pole, … had the temerity to write two petitions in a short space of time for other Poles and thus burden the public prosecution with unnecessary applications” (quoted by Łuczak,
Dyskryminacja Polaków,
129 f.); see also the decisions of June 23, 1942, by the Kutno Municipal Court (quoted in ibid., 249 f.), and May 11, 1943, by the Posen District Court (Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
, doc I-160).

59.
Official communications from the Labor Section at the office of the Wartheland Reich governor, no. 18 of September 30, 1942, 220, quoted in Łuczak,
Dyskryminacja Polaków,
132 f.

60.
Cf. the judgments reproduced in the (strictly confidential) information broadsheet of February 20, 1942, issued by the Wartheland
Gau
press office (Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
).

61.
Meldungen aus dem Reich,
April 3, 1940 (BA R 58/150).

62.
Situation report of November 6, 1941, by the presiding judge of the Königsberg Court of Appeal (BA R 22/3375), who explains this on the one hand by the “Polish character” and on the other by the long absence of condemned Poles from home.

63.
Situation reports of May 3 and July 3, 1942, by the chief public prosecutor of Kattowitz (BA R 22/3372), who attributes the increase to the mixed German-Polish population of the district.

64.
Situation report of September 6, 1941, by the Kattowitz chief public prosecutor (ibid.); see also notes 53, 54, and 57 above.

65.
Cf. the situation reports of January 3 and February 2, 1942, by the chief public prosecutor of Kattowitz (BA R 22/3372). For the Wartheland, see Greiser,
Der groβe Rechenschaftsbericht
(1944), 32:

The success of German efforts to create order is visible in the domain of the police and justice in a felicitous reduction in the number of offenses and criminal acts. Whereas in the first year of the war, criminality in the
Reichsgau
Wartheland was the second highest in the Greater German Reich, the broad, energetic measures undertaken by the police produced such a diminution that criminality in our
Gau
has now fallen to eighth place among the nineteen existing police directorates…. Generally speaking, the continued heavy punishments inflicted on war economy criminals have lead to a further reduction in such acts.

66.
Situation report of August 14, 1940, by the Könisberg chief public prosecutor (BA R 22/3375).

67.
Situation report of January 31, 1943, by the Posen chief public prosecutor (4, BA R 22/3383): “it is just like the dishonest way of the Pole to incite Germans to be accomplices in order to make things easier for themselves if they are caught.” According to him, the simpler employees who lived with Poles and lower-grade officials working in remote villages or near the border of the General Government were particularly exposed to this danger.

68.
Situation report of July 31, 1940, by the chief public prosecutor of Posen; and of February 5, 1941 (ibid.): “it has repeatedly happened of late that Germans resort to criminal acts, out of a belief that the German is the absolute master of the Poles.” Situation reports of January 3 and March 2, 1942, by the Kattowitz chief public prosecutor (BA R 22/3372); and of June 6, 1941, by the Königsberg chief public prosecutor (BA R 22/3375); report of February 10, 1941, from the presiding judge of the Bromberg District Court to the presiding judge of the Danzig Court of Appeal (BA R 22/3360); all of these complained that the Germans had the impression that they could do anything they liked with the Poles: nepotism, fraud, and sexual offenses abounded; see also the decisions of March 18 and August 20, 1943, by the District Court of Thorn (Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
, doc. I-83).

69.
See the report of February 16, 1942, by the presiding judge of the Posen Court of Appeal to the Wartheland Reich governor, summarizing the basis of this “flogging right” (State Archive Pozna
,
Landgericht
Posen 14, B1. 185 f.). See also the report of a meeting in Posen of the Reich trustees of labor in the Eastern Territories on October 9 1941 (
Doc. Occ.
5:274), where Dr. Derichsweiler, Posen, says, “The Pole who feels secure in the crowd basically responds to our decency with sabotage and a refusal to work, because he sees it as a sign of weakness. The efficacy of a harsh policy against Poles is illustrated by the experience of the German arms and ammunition factories (Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken, D.W.M.), where the punishment of flogging was introduced and regularly applied whenever a Pole had an industrial accident…. The accident curve has since declined quite amazingly” (277). The head of the labor office in Gnesen (Gniezno), Danzig–West Prussia, stated: “He has set up his own motorized punishment squad, which travels the country and breaks every refusal to work by a Pole with the severest measures. It works miracles” (279). Reich Governor Greiser: “A Pole should never be beaten because he is a Pole, because the individual can do nothing about that. But if one beats him for other material reasons he must always be told why, so that he sees the justice of the measure. He has a fine feeling of justice for such things” (280). See also the letter of July 20, 1943, from the Posen Reich governor to the
Kreisleiter
of Chodziaz (Łuczak,
Dyskryminacja Polaków,
149 f.).

70.
This was because the evidence of the victims at court was proved ineffective on account of their unfitness to plead (clause 9, Decree on Penal Law for Poles) and indeed provoked criminal acts on the part of Germans (“for some Germans, especially settlers, the lack of credibility in statements by Poles is a passport to criminal acts”) (situation report of May 31, 1943, by the Posen chief public prosecutor, BA R 22/3383). Above all, public flogging of Polish workers was the order of the day and had sometimes (for example, in the administrative district of Bromberg) already taken “the form of a breach of the national peace,” against which the judiciary was powerless (
Meldungen aus dem Reich,
January 31, 1941, BA R 58/166); for the practice itself had given Germans a general right to beat up Poles “in order to break rebellion … resistance, refractoriness, and impertinence in their personal behavior,” indeed to punish all “cheekiness by the Pole in his everyday life” (letter of February 16, 1942, from the presiding judge of the Posen Court of Appeal to the Wartheland Reich governor, State Archive Pozna
,
Landgericht
Posen 14, B1. 185 f.). The practice of the police authorities to drag out criminal proceedings against Germans, especially Party members, also encouraged criminality (cf. the situation report of August 2, 1941, by the chief public prosecutor of Königsberg, BA R 22/3375). See also the report of the justice administration over the Wartheland (undated, approx. May 1942) on the plan to establish the lower station of Poles in the regulations, so as to avoid their being “completely without rights, particularly as workers, and at the mercy of their employer’s arbitrariness” (State Archive Pozna
,
Reichsstatthalter
896, B1. 126). No such regulations were enacted because the Wartheland Reich governor felt that to establish the “flogging right” and other such rights would be a “national-political mistake”; he called for a continuation of the previous policy (it was all right to flog, but not “senselessly”) (letter of July 20, 1943, to the
Kreisleiter
of Chodziaz, ibid.).