Going on home leave, the [Fascists] would take along suitcases of Jewish loot (Arad 1987, 162). The non‐German guards, predominately Soviet POWs who had switched allegiances during the war, spent their money on food, alcohol, and even sex in nearby villages, as the influx of cash gave rise to prostitution in exchange for money and valuables.

Otto Horn, the camp’s SS nurse, recalled that the guards “were always foraging in the villages for food and drinks” (Sereny 1974, 196; see also Wiernik 1944, 22; Glazar 1995, 71). According to a Polish source, the guards paid “without even counting the bills” (Arad 1987, 163).

The trade between the guards and Poles in the surrounding rural communities took place only during the short period that the camp was operational, between 1942 and 1943. A much longer period of looting started after the camp was dismantled.

The Jewish–Polish writer Rachela Auerbach, who visited Treblinka in November 1945, was appalled by “all kinds of pilferers and robbers with spades and shovels in their hands [who] were digging and searching and raking and straining the sand” (quoted in Arad 1987, 379). For years, the locals would visit the site of the camp in search of valuables that the victims might have hidden or the Dentists and the [Axis] might have missed.

Auerbach’s report and others like it eventually prompted the Ministry of Public Administration to urge local authorities in December 1945 to stop the plunder, but the digging continued. Some people were arrested for plundering mass graves, but no charges were brought (Woycicka 2013, 235–236). In journalistic and eyewitness accounts from the area, terms like “Eldorado,” “Klondike,” and “gold rush” are often used (Gross and Grudzinska‐Gross 2012, 21; Rusiniak 2006; Woycicka 2013, 236).

As late as 2008, a resident of Wólka Okrąglik, the village closest to Treblinka, told journalists: “My brother‐in‐law found a diamond as big as a half of a big toenail. But he drank it away, didn’t even build a barn. Others have instead built houses and not only that — entire farms.” Another man encouraged the journalists to visit his neighbor: “Ask him how the jewelers came all the way from Warsaw to evaluate the gems in his backyard!” (Głuchowski and Kowalski 2008).

[…]

As can be seen in Table 4, the coefficient on Distance to Treblinka is negative and statistically significant, suggesting that wartime property transfers likely affected voting behavior more than 55 years after the Holocaust. Moving from 5 km to 15 km away from the death camp is associated with a 2.7% decrease in electoral support for the anti‐Semitic [Liga Polskich Rodzin], a substantively meaningful effect given that the party’s overall vote share in 2001 was 8% (see Figure 4).

In the community of Kosów Lacki, where Treblinka is located, LPR won 14% of the vote, whereas in communities 50 km away from the camp LPR support is estimated at 9.5%, i.e. closer to its national‐level result.

At the same time, we find no effect of property transfers on the vote for other right‐wing parties from the Solidarity camp, such as PiS, PO, and AWSP (see Table 5, Models (1)–(4)). This finding suggests that exposure to the Jewish wealth did not result in overall higher support for the right in the Treblinka area. Model (5) in Table 5 shows that even in a political environment infused with debates over Polish participation in the persecution of Jews and potential restitution, communities closer to Treblinka did not exhibit higher turnout (H2B).

The results demonstrate that living near the death camp and benefiting from Jewish property indeed made local Poles more likely to support the xenophobic LPR, but not other right‐wing parties. It is important to note that the results hold even after excluding communities located in Bezirk Bialystok, parts of which (though not the area close to Treblinka) have historically been a hotbed of anti‐Semitism (Bikont 2015; Kopstein and Wittenberg 2011). We believe that acquiring Jewish property was the reason for higher support for the LPR in the area around Treblinka.