Tomasz Frydel

Biography

My dissertation aims at a social history of the destruction of Poland’s Jewish minority during the Second World War following Operation Reinhard. It pays particular attention to a whole complex of village structures that were co-opted by the occupation authorities into the so-called “hunt for Jews” (Judenjagd) from 1942-45, which included fire brigades, night guards, partisan units, village heads, peasant search parties, and the local Polish “blue” Police. This close study contextualizes the shelter and the hunt for fugitive Jews with parallel processes aimed at other fugitives groups, such as Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), partisans, deserters from the German army, Roma, and others. The primary archival sources used here are the postwar investigation and trial records conducted on the basis of the so-called Decree of August 31, 1944 issued by the pro-Soviet Polish government, much of which have not seen the light of day. The dissertation is built around a microhistory that explores several counties in the southeastern region of District Krakow of the General Government: Tarnów, DÄ™bica, Rzeszów (Reichshof), JarosÅ‚aw, JasÅ‚o, Krosno, PrzemyÅ›l, and Sanok. It also uses the German-administered county of DÄ™bica as a statistical case study. My dissertation aims at a social history of the destruction of Poland’s Jewish minority during the Second World War following Operation Reinhard. It pays particular attention to a whole complex of village structures that were co-opted by the occupation authorities into the so-called “hunt for Jews” (Judenjagd) from 1942-45, which included fire brigades, night guards, partisan units, village heads, peasant search parties, and the local Polish “blue” Police. This close study contextualizes the shelter and the hunt for fugitive Jews with parallel processes aimed at other fugitives groups, such as Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), partisans, deserters from the German army, Roma, and others. The primary archival sources used here are the postwar investigation and trial records conducted on the basis of the so-called Decree of August 31, 1944 issued by the pro-Soviet Polish government, much of which have not seen the light of day. The dissertation is built around a microhistory that explores several counties in the southeastern region of District Krakow of the General Government: Tarnów, DÄ™bica, Rzeszów (Reichshof), JarosÅ‚aw, JasÅ‚o, Krosno, PrzemyÅ›l, and Sanok. It also uses the German-administered county of DÄ™bica as a statistical case study.

Research Interest

History