Page 284 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

“vegetating on the terrain of the town” and “living in the most awful conditions in the basements and

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cellars of Jewish houses,” where they were exposed to infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

Similarly, while the municipal authorities claimed that they had tried to raise the “sanitary standard”

in the town’s “former Jewish ghetto,” the TRZW played down such progress, arguing instead that the

area had maintained its “backwardness.” 111 In short, as they blamed Jews for the low levels of

material civilization among urban-dwelling Poles, the TRZW’s supporters built upon, rather than

rejected, the modernizing language of Józewski’s post-1928 administration.

KOP officials also got involved in the processes of fixing Jewishness in the borderlands. If

they depicted “Ruthenians” as conservative people who were unable to lift themselves out of their

own backwardness unaided, KOP not only excluded Jews from its civilizing mission, but also

showed them to be the major obstacle in the state’s quest to civilize rural populations. Anti-Jewish

initiatives had already been developed by individual battalion leaders in the 1920s. In 1927, for

instance, the leader of the second battalion, which was stationed in Bereźne, had decided to garner

the support of a population that was “naturally mistrustful and suspicious” by buying their produce

and thus persuading them not to sell to Jews. 112 KOP’s promotion of cooperatives was similarly

deemed to be a useful method through which to “oust Jews from the borderland” (ruguje z

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pogranicza żydów). But while these techniques dated back to local initiatives in the 1920s, they
gained momentum in the new politically radicalized environment of the mid-to-late 1930s.

The 1938 illustrated KOP guide to rural behavior implied that kresy Jews constituted an

unrelenting—and seemingly irredeemable—impediment to economic progress in the countryside. In

particular, it suggested that by discouraging villagers from using standardized (civilized) weights and

110 “Komunikat Zarządu Głównego Nr. 13/38/19,” DARO 182/1/6/19. See also letter from TRZW circle in Równe
to TRZW in Łuck (May 14, 1938), DARO 182/1/2/204.
111 Ilustrowany przewodnik po miescie Równem, 11-12.
112 “Stosunek Oddziałów K.O.P. do ludności cywilnej” (Berezne, September 5, 1927), ASGwS 541/71/9.
113 Ibid., 9.

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