Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

István Deák is Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University and the author of, among other books, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, l848-1918. Jan T. Gross is Professor of Politics and European Studies at New York University. He is the author of, among other books, Revolution from Abroad: Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton). Tony Judt is Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies at New York University. His many books include The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, and the French Twentieth Century.

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"This volume will contribute greatly to the reconfiguration of our understanding of Europe in the last fifty years and is of great help in stimulating an understanding of why it took so long for the democratic ideal to triumph over the whole of the continent."--Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University

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THE POLITICS OF RETRIBUTION IN EUROPE

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Preface Tony Judt.....................................................................................................................................viiPART I: PRELIMINARIES..................................................................................................................................1Introduction Istvn Dek..............................................................................................................................3Themes for a Social History of War Experience and Collaboration Jan T. Gross..........................................................................15PART II: THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR.........................................................................................................................37A Fatal Compromise? The Debate over Collaboration and Resistance in Hungary Istvn Dek...............................................................39A Tangled Web: Confronting Stereotypes Concerning Relations between Poles, Germans, Jews, and Communists Jan T. Gross.................................74PART III: TRIALS AND POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY..............................................................................................................131Justice in Postwar Belgium: Popular Passions and Political Realities Martin Conway....................................................................133The Criminal Justice System As a Political Actor in Regime Transitions: The Case of Belgium, 1944-50 Luc Huyse........................................157"Restoration of Confidence": The Purge of Local Government in the Netherlands As a Problem of Postwar Reconstruction Peter Romijn.....................173Postwar Justice in France: Bordeaux 1953 Sarah Farmer.................................................................................................194The Cold War and the Appropriation of Memory: Greece after Liberation Mark Mazower....................................................................212The People's Courts and Revolutionary Justice in Hungary, 1945-46 Lszl Karsai.......................................................................233The Politics of Retribution: The Trial of Jozef Tiso in the Czechoslovak Environment Bradley Abrams...................................................252PART IV: EPILOGUE......................................................................................................................................291The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe Tony Judt..............................................................................293List of Contributors...................................................................................................................................325Index..................................................................................................................................................327

Chapter One

Introduction

Conquering armies over the centuries have always found willing collaborators in the countries they occupy, and, if sufficiently oppressive and brutal, they have also met with civilian resistance. Following occupation, those who had given aid and comfort to the enemy were often hunted down and punished. In the annals of history, however, never have so many people been caught up in the process of collaboration, resistance, and retribution as in Europe during and after the Second World War. True, even then, active collaborators and active resisters were but a small minority among the many who just wanted to get by, but the impact of collaboration and resistance was so great as to affect nearly everyone's life.

Postwar purges, part of a brutal and sweeping pattern of retribution, produced an enormous demographic upheaval-especially in Central and Eastern Europe-one whose long-range consequences we are still unable to fathom. Moreoever, an extraordinary number of individuals were prosecuted, after the war, for collaboration and war crimes. This is not to say that all the guilty were actually punished. Far from it-some of the most obnoxious traitors and war criminals escaped retribution altogether. 1 It is to say only that all across what once had been Hitler's Europe, an attempt at retribution frightened or, alternately, exhilarated vast sections of the population.

What motivated the postwar antifascist regimes was, primarily, rightful indignation over the many acts of cruelty and treason committed by the collaborators. There were other motives as well: the desire to place the blame on specific individuals for what had been, in reality, a large scale, popular accommodation with the enemy, and the perceived need to eliminate, or at least to reduce, the influence of social, political, and ethnic groups that might stand in the way of the creation of a new society and state.

Just as accommodation to the wishes of the occupier had been popular in most occupied countries, so now did the prosecution of collaborators meet with widespread public approval. It was as if the Europeans hoped to rid themselves of the memory of their compromises and crimes by decimating their own ranks.

It is nearly impossible to calculate the total number of persons targeted by postwar retribution, but, even by the most conservative estimates, they numbered several million, that is, 2 or 3 percent of the population formerly under German occupation. Because educated adult males constituted the majority of those purged, this segment of the population was even more seriously affected. In some countries, such as France, actors, actresses, cabaret singers, journalists, writers, poets, and philosophers were especially singled out by the prosecutors.

Punishment of the guilty ranged from lynchings during the last months of the war to postwar death sentencing, imprisonment, or hard labor. Added to those harsh punishments were condemnation to national dishonor, the loss of civic rights, and/or monetary fines as well as such administrative measures as expulsion, police supervision, loss of the right to travel or to live in certain desirable places, dismissal, and the loss of pension rights. It is one of the great paradoxes of the postwar era that in all of Europe, the smallest percentage of former Nazis was executed or imprisoned in Western Germany. On the other hand, Western Germany made a greater effort than any other country in Europe to atone collectively for its past.

To the bewildering array of persons who were charged by the national courts for what was alternately, or often simultaneously, termed collaboration with the enemy, treason, and war crimes should be added those who were not charged individually but belonged to one or another group held collectively responsible for what had taken place during the war. These groups included, among others, the thirteen to fifteen million Volksdeutsche, German-speaking inhabitants of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Russia, and the three Baltic countries, who were charged collectively with war crimes and treason by the governments of their own countries and by the leaders of the three great Allied powers meeting at Potsdam in June 1945. These Germans were either killed or expelled to what remained of Germany after the war.

Collective punishment targeted more than just the Volksdeutsche. Other ethnic groups, such as the Hungarians in Czechoslovakia, the Poles in the Ukraine, the Ukrainians in Poland, and the...