Book Review: Jan Grabowski, On Duty: The Polish Blue & Criminal Police in the Holocaust

Writing about the relations between Poles and Jews during World War II is not an easy task, yet Jan Grabowski, a courageous and fearless historian, has written an exceptional study that adds significantly to our understanding of why the Jews ended the war feeling betrayed by their fellow citizens.

His focus is the Blue Police, officially known as the Polish Police of the Generalgouvernement (Warsaw, Krakow, Radom and Lublin), which primarily consisted of prewar Polish police officers. Ninety-five percent of the officer corps viewed themselves as “Poles, Roman Catholics,” and in the lower echelons, the percentage was approximately 97 percent. There were also a limited number of Greek Catholics and Protestants. Among the more than 1,000 police ranking officers, there were only 12 of the “mosaic faith.” Jews could only advance in the system if they assimilated and converted.

In the late fall of 1939, not long after the conquest of Poland, the Germans established the Blue Police, known as the “Blues,” because of the color of their uniform. They were initially responsible for restoring order and thwarting the increasing chaos that ensued after the German conquest. Later they were charged with enforcing the German anti-Jewish regulations. The “Blues” participated in liquidating the ghettos, and together with local volunteers, helped in identifying Jews who were in hiding.

As long as the Jews remained in the ghettos, where they had to show official documents classifying them as Jews and were marked as Jews, the Germans were basically able to handle the situation by themselves. Once Jews escaped to the Aryan side, the Germans found the Jews to be virtually undetectable.  The only way to expose them was with the aid of the Polish policemen and their helpers. They knew Jewish customs, accents and daily routines, which they used to ferret them out with “frightful efficiency.” Grabowski concluded that without the crucial assistance of the Poles and the local population, the Germans would not have been able to succeed in reaching their objectives in the annihilation of Polish Jewry.

The Polish firefighters resumed their duties in October 1939 when Jews and other “politically suspect” individuals were expelled from the organization. The voluntary and professional firefighting sections were under the control of the German Fire Protection Police of the Generalgouvernement, which answered to the commander of Orpo (Ordnungspolizei, the Order Police). This meant that the Polish firefighters and the Polish policemen had to follow all orders issued by any German in uniform.

The firefighters played an integral part in the destruction of Polish Jewry in a number of ways. They sealed the borders of ghettos in many towns throughout Europe, while they were being closed down. They guarded Jews while they were being loaded on to the transports to the extermination camps, and were actively involved in the liquidation Aktionen (actions) process. They participated in burying the victims of mass shootings, and even organized intensive searches to apprehend Jews who had escaped, which they conducted without explicit German involvement.

He decided to write this book after researching about the Holocaust in southeastern Poland, where he uncovered information about thefts, rapes, and murders committed by Polish policemen on their ill-fated Jewish victims. Grabowski found “The scale of this complicity was astounding: The efficiency of the blue-clad murderers matched that of their German overseers—the gendarmes and the Schupo (Shutzpolizei, the German uniformed protection squad.”

His book is a quest to explain how during three years of the war and occupation did these Polish policemen, who were ordinary officers of the law, transform into lethally proficient cold-blooded murderers of their own countrymen, some of whom were friends, schoolmates and neighbors. He notes there were many young policemen who enlisted in the police who engaged in brutality. Yet, the “majority” of the policemen who murdered Jews in significant numbers were married men, who were fathers, and officers who had served for twenty years in the prewar period.

One rationalization is that the officers transferred from northern and western Poland to the Generalgouvernement were working in an unfamiliar area, and thus felt minimal kinship with the local population. They did feel a connection with the Germans. They spoke fluent German, and some had served in the German army during World War I.  Grabowski found there was no significant difference in the behavior  between  the local policeman and those from other parts of Poland in their treatment of the fellow Jewish citizens.  Both aggressively engaged in implementing the “Final Solution.”

Jan Grabowski, On Duty: The Polish Blue & Criminal Police in the Holocaust (Jerusalem: The International Institute for Holocaust Research: Yad Vashem, 2024) ISBN 978-965-308-698-2