When we visit Poland we tour the streets of the Cities, towns [שטאָט], villages [שטעטל] and village [דאָרף] which on German occupation were mainly policed by Granatowa policja (Polish Blue police). The German security forces included - dedicated units of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen) which were tasked with arresting or outright killing of those resisting the German occupation. These were supplemented, in the first months, by armed squads of ethnic German-Polish militia called Selbstschutz (Self-Defence) [see my blog post] organised for Operation Tannenberg [see my blog post]. and then disbanded at beginning 1940 - with Selbstschutz members transfering to various units of the SS, Gestapo and the German police.

These Blue Police formations officially came into being on 30 October 1939 when Germany drafted Poland’s prewar Policja Państwowa (Poland’s state police officers), into organized local units under German leadership.

From the German perspective, the primary role of the Blue Police was to maintain law and order on the territories of occupied Poland, as to free the German Order Police for other duties. As Heinrich Himmler [see my Blog Post] stated in his order from 5 May 1940:

“providing general police service in the General Gouvernement is the role of the Polish police. German police will intervene only if it is required by the German interests and will monitor the Polish police.”

On 30 October 1939, Higher SS and Police Leader in General Government Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger [see my blog post] ordered the mobilization of the pre-war Polish police into the service of the German authorities. The policemen were to report for duty or face severe punishment.

As there were not enough Polish-speaking Germans even from the Volksdeutsche-Polish population [people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship]. Please note that in Occupied Poland, Nazi authorities compiled specific lists and registered people as ethnic Germans in the “Deutsche Volksliste” in 4-categories.

The main reason for the restoration of the Polish police, into the Blue Police, was:

  • the inability to maintain order under wartime conditions,

  • the lack of knowledge of the Polish language by German policemen and occupation officials, as well as

  • the undecided fate of the occupied Polish lands, the formation of the so-called residual-buffer state, “Reststaat” for Slavs, was still under consideration. This would be instituted in conjunction with the plan for the Jews “Nisko Plan” [see blog entry] expulsion and resettlement of the Jews of Europe into a remote corner of the Generalgouvernement [see my blog post] territory, bordering the cities of Lublin and the Nisko Plan, [see my blog post, was devised by Adolf Hitler and formulated by assistants and bore similarities to the American Indian reservations.

The Blue Police, initially employed purely to deal with ordinary criminality, was later also used to counter smuggling, which was an essential element of German-occupied Poland’s underground economy.

The Blue Police organization was officially dissolved and declared disbanded by the Polish Committee of National Liberation on 15 August 1944.

The Blue Police was finally formed on 17 December 1939, by order of Governor General Hans Frank. In January 1940, the manpower of the Blue Police amounted to more than 10,000 men, including 1173 criminal policemen. After verification of personnel and the removal of most senior officers, the newly created police force was subordinated to the Kommandeur der Ordnungspolizei [KdO].

The Blue Police did not have a separate commander, but this role was de facto performed by its organizer Major Hans Köchlner - who had been a supervisory officer in the Polish State Police for 2-years prior to invasion, and then Staff-Commander in the Occupying Ordnungsdienst [Order Police]. Köchlner had a reputation as an expert on the Polish police, as he had served an internship with them in 1937. He was assisted by a liaison officer, Lt. Col. Roman Sztaba, who before the war was the police commandant of the Wołyń voivodeship.

Blue Police were in fact a local- communal- institution, maintained by the local government. The highest level of command within its ranks was that of district or city commandant. In fact within the German security services of Occupied Poland the Blue Police was essentially the executive body of the local Gendarmerie and Schupo. The role of the district commandant was diminishing, and by the end of the occupation he had effectively become a figurehead.

In the districts, individual stations were directly under the supervision of the local Gendarmerie.

In urban areas, the role of commandants was somewhat greater, although they were also under the strict control of the local [uniformed] Schutzpolizei des Reiches (Schupo) the state protection police of Nazi Germany and a branch of the Ordnungspolizei. [Schutzpolizei is the German name for a uniformed police force] **this meant that an order to a Blue Policeman could be given by any uniformed German functionary**.

After the German attack on the USSR the District of Galicia was incorporated into the General Gouvernement, [see my blog post] but the Blue Police was not established there, local policing was under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian police.

During the first year of occupation, about 1,000 Blue Police stations were restored in the Generalgouvernement. The Blue Police had little autonomy, and all of its high-ranking officers came from the ranks of the German police (Kriminalpolizei). It served in the capacity of an auxiliary force, along with the police forces guarding seats of administration (Schutzpolizei), Railway Police (Bahnschutzpolizei), Forest Protection Command (Forstschutzkommando) and Border Guard (Grenzschutz).

To sum-up, the Blue Police was subordinate to the German Order Police with Polish prewar regulations.

The Anwärter, new volunteers to the Blue Police, were trained at a police school in Nowy Sącz, [see blog post] with 3,000 graduates (receiving salary of 180 zł each) The school was run by Schutzpolizei Major Vincenz Edler von Strohe (real name Wincenty Słoma, a Reichdeutscher [ ethnic Germans who resided within the German state that was founded in 1871] formerly in the Austrian police). There were additional though separate courses for Polish and Ukrainian enlisted ranks.

As the force was primarily a continuation of the prewar Polish police force, it also relied largely on prewar Polish criminal laws, a situation that was accepted as a provisional necessity by the Germans.

Scholars disagree about the degree of involvement of the Blue Police in the rounding up of Jews. Although policing inside the Warsaw Ghetto was a responsibility of the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Ghetto Police) [see my blog post], a Polish-Jewish historian Emmanuel Ringelblum, [see my blog post] chronicler of the Warsaw Ghetto and leader of the underground Oneg Sabbes, mentioned “Polish policemen” carrying out extortions and beatings. The “Polish Police” also took part in street roundups.

On 3 June 1942, members of the Blue Police refused to execute 110 Jews in Gęsiówka prison in Warsaw, but they were forced to watch, some of them wept, while the Germans themselves executed the victims.

According to Szymon Datner:

“The Polish police were employed in a very marginal way, in what I would call keeping order. I must state with all decisiveness that more than 90% of that terrifying, murderous work was carried out by the Germans, with no Polish participation whatsoever.”

According to Raul Hilberg:

“Of all the native police forces in occupied Eastern Europe, those of Poland were least involved in anti-Jewish actions…. They [the Polish Blue Police] could not join the Germans in major operations against Jews or Polish resistors, lest they be considered traitors by virtually every Polish onlooker. Their task in the destruction of the Jews was therefore limited.”

Jan Grabowski, a Polish-born Jewish writer, has claimed that:

Blue Police played an important role in the Holocaust in Poland, often operating independently of German orders and killing Jews for financial gain. Grabowski states:

“For a Jew, falling into the hands of the Polish police meant, in practically all known cases, certain death… The historical evidence—hard, irrefutable evidence coming from the Polish, German, and Israeli archives—points to a pattern of murderous involvement throughout occupied Poland.”

According to Emanuel Ringelblum, of the underground Oneg Shabbes, Ringelblum compared the role of the Polish _Blue Police _ to the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Order Service aka Ghetto Police): “The uniformed police has had a deplorable role in the “resettlement actions”. The blood of hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews, caught and driven to the “death vans” will be on their heads. The Germans’ tactics were usually as follows: in the first “resettlement action” they utilized the Jewish Order Service, which behaved no better from the ethical point of view than their Polish opposite numbers. In the subsequent “actions,” when the Jewish Order Service was liquidated as well, the Blue (Polish) Police force was utilized.”

However, A substantial part of the Blue Police belonged to the Polish underground resistance AK Home Army, mostly its counterintelligence and National Security Corps. Some estimates are as high as 50%.

There were some Blue Police members who reportedly acted against round-up orders. But, police officers who disobeyed German orders did so at the risk of death.

We know of one Blue Policeman who was awarded Righteous among the Nations [see my blog post], Bronisław Marchlewicz (b.1899-d.1972), who in 1942 saved 5-year-old Marysia Osowiecka, who survived the Warsaw ghetto, from the hands of the Germans, and there were probably more Blue Policemen who saved Jews.

Bronisław Marchlewicz