were dismissed from jobs of authority, often arrested and deported, and replaced with non-Polish personnel. At the same time, 100,000 Jewish Poles fought to defend Poland against the Nazi-Soviet invasion, while at least 434 Polish Jews who had been awarded officer rank by the Polish Army were murdered by the Soviets in the Katyn Massacre because of their loyalty to Poland. Many Poles resented their change of fortunes because, before the war, Poles had a privileged position compared to other ethnic groups of the Second Republic. Then, in the space of a few days, Jews and other minorities from within Poland (mainly Ukrainians and Belorussians) occupied newly vacant positions in the Soviet occupation government and administration—such as teachers, civil servants and engineers—positions that some claimed they had trouble achieving under the Polish government. What to the majority of Poles was occupation and betrayal was, to some Jews—especially Polish Communists of Jewish descent who emerged from the underground—an opportunity for revolution and retribution. Such events further strengthened Żydokomuna sentiment that held Jews responsible for collaboration with the Soviet authorities in importing communism into divided Poland. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, widespread notion of Judeo-Communism, combined with the German Nazi encouragement for expression of antisemitic attitudes, may have been a principal cause of massacres of Jews by gentile Poles in Poland's northeastern Łomża province in the summer of 1941, including according to Joanna B. Michlic the massacre at Jedwabne. Doris Bergen writes that "it was often precisely those Polish gentiles most deeply implicated in Soviet crimes who were quicket to take the lead in attacks on Jews—attacks that would serve both to deflect the anger of their neighbors and to curry favor with the new Germans occupiers." Though some Jews had initially benefited from the effects of the Soviet invasion, this occupation soon began to strike at the Jewish population as well; independent Jewish organizations were abolished and Jewish activists were arrested. Hundreds of thousands of Jews who had fled to the Soviet sector were given a choice of Soviet citizenship or returning to the German-occupied zone. The majority chose the latter, and instead found themselves deported to the Soviet Union, where, ironically, 300,000 would escape the Holocaust. While there was Polish Jewish representation in the London-based Polish government in exile, relations between the Jews in Poland and Polish resistance in occupied Poland were strained, and armed