On Duty - The Polish Blue & Criminal Police in the Holocaust
On Duty - The Role of the Polish Blue and Criminal Police in the Holocaust
By Jan Grabowski
The Polish Police, commonly called the Blue or uniformed police in order to avoid using the term “Polish,” has played a most lamentable role in the extermination of the Jews of Poland. The uniformed police has been an enthusiastic executor of all German directives regarding the Jews.
Emanuel Ringelblum, Warsaw, 1943
Shortly after the occupation of Poland in the fall of 1939, the Germans created the Blue Police, consisting mainly of prewar Polish police officers. Within a short time, this police force was responsible for enforcing many anti-Jewish regulations issued by the Nazis. Who were these policemen, and how did they transform from ordinary policemen to murderous executioners? And what was the role of the Germans in this horrifying picture?
“Jan Grabowski has been a courageous and acutely well-informed voice in the ‘history wars’ over the role of Poles under German occupation in the Holocaust. On Duty meticulously documents the increasing complicity of the Polish Blue and Criminal Police, as well as other seemingly innocuous organizations such as the construction service, firefighters, and village night guards, first in the enforcement of initial Nazi anti-Jewish policies, then in ghetto liquidation, and finally and most fatefully in the hunt for hidden and passing Jews.
Grabowski also demonstrates how, in the face of looming German defeat, many policemen established ties with the Polish underground to secure their future while still continuing to aid the German campaign to kill all surviving Polish Jews. Grabowski establishes beyond doubt that while Poles were victims of brutal German occupation, many were simultaneously victimizers of Polish Jews.”
Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“This is an extraordinary piece of research on an important organization that participated in the implementation of the Holocaust—the so-called Polish Blue Police. Based on original archival research, this book fills a glaring gap in the existing historiography. Eighty years after the end of the war, Grabowski has written the first monograph on this fundamentally important topic. A must read for all students of World War II and Holocaust history.”
Jan T. Gross, Emeritus Professor of History at Princeton University
