Wiedza naukowa
zajmująca się czynnikami szkodliwymi, czyli noksologia (od łac. noxa –
czynnik szkodliwy), uwzględnia szereg pomijanych zazwyczaj aspektów
oddziaływania czynnika szkodliwego na człowieka, do których należy
zróżnicowana podatność poszczególnych osób (rodzin) na czynnik
szkodliwy występujący w pojedynkę lub wespół z innymi, wzajemnie
potęgującymi niepożądane oddziaływanie na zdrowie. W noksologii za
punkt wyjścia procesu diagnostycznego przyjmuje się przyczynę zgodnie z
zasadą wyrażoną po łacinie słowami POSITA CAUSA, PONITUR EFFECTUS,
czyli „gdy działa przyczyna, jest i skutek” oraz NIHIL FIT SINE CAUSA - "nic nie
dzieje się bez przyczyny".
DO ZGŁASZANIA SKUPISK
FORMULARZ KONTAKTOWY
NA STRONIE GŁÓWNEJ
SKUPISKA
CHOROBY W POLSCE
DISEASE CLUSTERS IN POLAND
It is Europe that
is sick, all Europe with
the exception of
Poland. Neal Ascherson
Scottish historian Poland
(in English)
MOVE FOR HEALTH
WALK
POLAND GMO FREE LAND NUKES FREE LAND LAND OF THE FREE *** Poles
are fiercely independent and
stand up for their beliefs. US
Ambassador to Poland Victor
Ashe, Sept 24, 2008 ***
Poland
to ban Monsanto’s
genetically
modified maize
by Agence France-Presse
April 4, 2012
Poland will impose
a
complete ban
on growing the MON810
genetically modified strain
of
maize made by US company
Monsanto on its territory,
Agriculture
Minister
Marek Sawicki said Wednesday.
“The decree is in the works.
It
introduces a complete
ban on the MON810 strain
of maize in Poland,"
Sawicki told reporters,
adding that pollen
of this strain could have
a harmful effect on bees. GMO KILLS BEES
real +
virtual =
symbiotic space
the epidemiologist's view
of the ACTA controversy:
free entities appreciate symbiosis,
parasites hate symbiosis
- dr Halat
excerpts
of the First American Edition Random House Inc., New York 1988
http://www.halat.pl/poland.html
This web page is to be viewed in Central European Windows-1250
Character Set
The Third Partition, sealed by
treaty in January
1797
but dating in practice from 1795, ended the independence of Poland. The
Commonwealth vanished from the map of Europe. Austria took Kraków and
the
surrounding region, Prussia occupied central Poland as far east as
Warsaw,
the Russians advanced their frontiers to a line which - in its northern
trace - ran close to the present Polish-Soviet border along the Bug
river
. A secret clause in the Partition treaty - the first of many such
secret
clauses in Poland's history - laid down that 'the name or designation
of
the Kingdom of Poland . . . shall remain suppressed as of now and for
ever'.
A hundred and twenty-three
years were to pass
before a
sovereign Polish state reappeared. Poland had 'descended into the
grave',
as the Romantic poets were to put it, but it was an unquiet grave.
Poland
was not dead, and it was not only the Poles who tried to resurrect her.
France, at war with all
Europe, did not
abandon the Polish
cause, though ruthless calculation was as important as fraternal
emotion
in French actions. Napoleon allowed General Jan Henryk Dabrowski to
raise
two legions of Polish exiles in Italy (their 'March, march, Dabrowski'
song became Poland's national anthem) and another legion was organised
in Germany. They served France loyally, in part by helping to combat
the
national insurrection in Spain, and in 1807 Napoleon established the
Grand
Duchy of Warsaw, a satellite state carved out of the Polish territories
annexed by Prussia which soon included not only Warsaw but Kraków and a
part of the Austrian zone.
THE STRUGGLES FOR
POLAND BY NEAL ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
Juliusz Kossak:
Portret księcia Józefa na koniu.
1879. Akwarela. 78 x 63 cm.
Muzeum w Łańcucie.
Wojciech Kossak:
Książę Józef Poniatowski w roku 1812.
Piotr Michałowski:
Gen. Dwernicki na czele II pułku ułanów
January Suchodolski:
Napoleon i książe Józef Poniatowski pod
Lipskiem.
January Suchodolski:
Gen. Chłopicki i gen. Skrzynecki na czele
Wojska
Polskiego.
January Suchodolski:
Śmierć księcia Józefa Poniatowskiego pod
Lipskiem.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
January Suchodolski
"Death of Prince Jozef Poniatowski", prior
to 1830, oil
on canvas, private collection
January Suchodolski:
Odwrót spod Moskwy.
1844.
Muzeum Narodowe, Kraków.
January Suchodolski: Przejście
wojsk Napoleona przez
Berezynę.
1866.
Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań.
Wojciech Kossak
Wiosna 1813 roku.
1903. 0lej na płótnie. 70 x 131 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Szczecin.
January Suchodolski:
Szturm na mury Saragossy.
1845. Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
January Suchodolski:
Bitwa pod Somosierrą.
1860.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Szarża w wąwozie Somosierry.
1907. Olej na płótnie. 96 x 141 cm.
January Suchodolski:
Śmierć Cypriana Godebskiego pod Raszynem.
1855.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
January Suchodolski:
Wjazd gen. Henryka Dąbrowskiego do Rzymu.
1850.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
January Suchodolski:
Biwak ułanów polskich pod Wagram.
1859. Olej na płótnie. 82 x 109 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Depozyt w Muzeum Okręgowym w Radomiu
"Polish Uhlans' Bivouac near Wagram",
prior to 1859,
oil on canvas, National Museum, Warsaw
.
Juliusz Kossak:
Zmiana pozycji artyleryjskiej w bitwie pod
Wagram.
Although the Grand Duchy seemed to
Poles only a
prelude
to the restoration of full independence, the great process of reform
which
had begun in the time of King Stanisław August Poniatowski was revived
and carried further. The Napoleonic Civil Code of law was imported from
France, and has shaped the Polish legal and administrative tradition
ever
since. Serfdom was again abolished, and a modern constitution gave
equal
rights to all but the poorest peasants. Hope returned; Napoleon seemed
a liberator; and the Poles gave their treasure and their young men to
help
his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812.
But with Napoleon's defeat,
Poland again left
the map.
The Congress of Vienna in 1815 changed the Partition boundaries: the
Prussians
fell back some way to the west, Kraków became a 'free city' in practice
subject to the partitioning powers, and most of the old Grand Duchy of
Warsaw, including the capital, became a semi-autonomous region of the
Russian
Empire, the so-called 'Kingdom of Poland'.
Abroad, all those who
opposed the Holy
Alliance, the block
of three reactionary powers which not only suppressed Poland but seemed
to threaten liberty throughout Europe, gave at least sentimental
support
to the Polish cause. It was the sense of belonging to a 'liberal
international'
that encouraged a series of Polish national conspiracies, especially in
the Congress Kingdom.
Matters came to a crisis in
1830; the July
Revolution
in France spread waves of democratic unrest and turbulence across the
Continent,
while the Tsar prepared to send Russian troops (with Polish regiments)
to suppress the new and liberal state of Belgium.
The November Rising began
on the night of 29
November
1830 when a small party of officer-cadets attacked the Belvedere
Palace,
residence of the Russian viceroy, and another group captured the
Arsenal
with the assistance of the Warsaw population. The rising rapidly
developed
into a national insurrection, and the armies of the Congress Kingdom
fought
Russian troops in open warfare for almost a year before going down to
defeat.
But the leadership of the rising, ill-prepared, proved divided and
confused;
the liberal nations of the West, Britain and France, did not come to
Poland's
aid, although thousands of Poles secretly crossed frontiers to join the
insurrection; and the strategy of the generals did not match the
courage
and professionalism of their soldiers. Warsaw was recaptured by the
Russians
in September 1831, and by late October organised resistance was over.
The consequences of the
November Rising were
grim and
long-lasting. General Paskievitch in the Kingdom and General Muraviev
in
lithuania carried out their own versions of 'pacification': hundreds
were
executed, and some 180,000 Poles were deported, many in irons to
Siberia.
The civil service was purged, and the Kingdom lost its relative
autonomy,
to be ruled by decree. Polish institutions like the Bank, the army, the
Sejm and the Commission for National Education were systematically
abolished.
THE STRUGGLES FOR
POLAND BY NEAL ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
Wojciech
Kossak:
Noc
listopadowa.
1898.
Olej na płótnie.
Własność
prywatna.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Starcie belwederczyków
z kirasjerami rosyjskimi na moście w
Łazienkach.
Marcin Zaleski:
Wzięcie Arsenału w noc 29 listopada
1830 roku.
1831. Olej na płótnie. 52 x 79,5 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa,
(depozyt w Muzeum
Historycznym
m. st. Warszawy).
"Seizure of the Arsenal", 1831, oil on
canvas, National
Museum, Warsaw
Wojciech
Kossak:
Emilia
Plater w potyczce pod Szawlami.
1904.
Olej na płótnie.
Własność
prywatna.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Olszynka Grochowska.
1931, replika obrazu z 1886. Olej na
płótnie.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Pod Stoczkiem.
1927. Olej na płótnie. .
Własność prywatna.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Sowiński na szańcach Woli.
1922. Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum Wojska Polskiego, Warszawa.
Marcin Zaleski:
Powrót oddziałów wojska polskiego z
Wierzbna.
1831.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Wojciech Kossak
"Battle of Raszyn", 1913, 189.5 x 398 cm, National Museum, Warsaw
The 'Great Emigration' was Poland's
response to
the failure
of the November Rising. Most of the intellectual and political elite of
Poland fled abroad, some 10,000 in all, establishing their exile centre
in Paris around Prince Adam Czartoryski in the Hotel Lambert. This
outflow
of politicians, writers, musicians, philosophers and generals was the
most
extraordinary block of talent ever to transfer itself from one country
to another until the Jewish intellectual emigration from Germany and
Austria
to the United States a hundred years later.
Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz
Slowacki wrote
verse and drama,
mystical and moral and yet intensely political, that still suffuse and
inform the Polish imagination; Joachim lelewel wrote Poland's history;
Frederic Chopin composed; Cyprian Kamil Norwid developed a new poetry
whose
innovation and genius was only recognised in the following century.
This was a Romantic
culture. Neither the old
Age of Reason
nor the optimistic, liberal mood of the contemporary West could answer
the questions the Poles now put to themselves: why had Heaven allowed
the
martyrdom of their country when it sought only justice, and how - when
- could it be resurrected from the tomb? Against the background of
intense
Catholic faith, there developed the haunted idea of Messianism which -
in its extreme form presented Poland as the collective Christ,
crucified
to redeem the nations, one day to be resurrected by a new embodiment of
the Holy Spirit.
At home, the earth
continued to heave over the
buried
nation. Another national rising was planned for 1846, but ended in
multiple
disaster. In Prussian Poland, the leaders were arrested; Krakow rose,
but
the rebellion was rapidly crushed by Austrian and Russian troops. In
Galicia,
the portion of southern Poland held by Austria which stretched from
Krakow
eastwards to the fortress city of Lwow and on into the Ukraine, 1846
did
not just fail but turned into a slaughter of Poles by Poles. In this
overcrowded
province, nearly five million Polish and Ukrainian peasants worked the
lands of a tiny class of great landowning magnates. As the rising
began,
the Austrians were able to provoke a peasant rebellion against the
landlords
which turned into a massacre; some two thousand estate owners and their
families were murdered, and their manors burned down.
The fiasco of 1846 was a
turning-point in the
history
of the Partitions. From Kosciuszko's rising onwards, Polish leaders had
been able to rely on peasant support, promising an end to rural
servitude
in return for military service. Now, after Galicia, the Powers saw that
they could cut off this source of strength by exploiting social
divisions
in Polish society. In 1848, Count Franz von Stadion, the Austrian
governor
of Galicia, offered the peasants possession of their own land and the
abolition
of feudal labour services. The Russians took a similar course in 1864.
As a result of the failure
two years before,
the Polish
national leaders were too demoralised and disorganised to take a major
part in the liberal revolutions which blazed across Europe in 1848.
Minor
rebellions in Kraków and Lwów were bombarded into surrender by the
Austrians.
In Prussian Poland, a National Committee sprang up in Poznań seeking
autonomy
within Prussia, but the movement was suppressed a few months later as
the
Hohenzollern monarchy regained control in Berlin. But Polish exiles
fought
'for your freedom and ours' in almost every other nation in Europe
during
1848-9. The poet Mickiewicz raised a legion in Italy, General Ludwik
Mierosławski
(who had led the ill-fated 1846 rising in Poznań) fought in Sicily and
in southern Germany, General Henryk Dembiński and the legendary General
Józef Bem commanded armies in the Hungarian national revolution. In the
1848 'springtime of nations', European sympathy with the Polish cause -
rising all through the idealistic and revolutionary movements of the
first
half of the century - reached a peak, from which it then declined.
Europe
now entered a period of huge wars between empires and of internal class
struggle, in which the fate of a 'failed' nation-state seemed steadily
less relevant.
THE STRUGGLES FOR
POLAND BY NEAL ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
<>
Teofil Kwiatkowski:
"Chopin's Polonaise - a Ball in Hotel
Lambert in Paris",
water colour and gouache, 1849-1860,
National Museum in Poznan
<>
Fryderyk
Franciszek Szopen ( Frédéric François
Chopin ) Frederic Chopin Etude op.
10-12
"Revolutionary" Aya
Nagatomi on
YouTube
<>
Juliusz Kossak: Adam Mickiewicz z Sadykiem Paszą w
Turcji.
1890. Akwarela. 59 x 47 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań.
Muzeum Sztuki, Łódż.
Adam Mickiewicz
Pan Tadeusz
Chapter I
The Farm
O Lithuania, my country, thou
Art like good health; I never knew till now
How precious, till I lost thee. Now I see
The beauty whole, because I yearn for thee.
O Holy Maid, who Czestochowa's shrine
Dost guard and on the Pointed Gateway shine
And watchest Nowogrodek's pinnacle!
As Thou didst heal me by a miracle
(For when my weeping mother sought Thy power,
I raised my dying eyes, and in that hour
My strength returned, and to Thy shrine I trod
For life restored to offer thanks to God),
So by a miracle Thou 'lt bring us home.
Meanwhile, bear off my yearning soul to roam
Those little wooded hills, those fields beside
The azure Niemen, spreading green and wide,
The vari-painted cornfields like a quilt,
The silver of the rye, the whetfields' gilt;
Where amber trefoil, buck-wheat white as snow,
And clover with her maiden blushes grow,
And all is girdled with a grassy band
Of green, whereon the silent peear trees stand.
Such were the fields where once beside a rill
Among the birch trees beside a hill
There stood a manor house, wood-built on stone;
From far away the walls with whitewash shoe,
The whiter as relieved by the dark green
Of poplars, that the autumn winds would screen.
It was not large, but neat in every way,
And had a mighty barn; three stacks of hay
Stood near it, that the thatch could not contain;
The neighbourhood was clearly rich in grain;
And from the stooks that every cornfield filled
As thick as stars, and from the ploughs that tilled
The black earthed fields of fallow, broad and long,
Which surely to the manor must belong,
Like well-kept flower beds -- everyone could tell
That plenty in that house and order dwell.
The gate wide open to the world declared
A hospitable house to all who fared.
English translation by Kenneth R. Mackenzie
Based on the bilingual (Polish-English) edition
of Pan Tadeusz by The Polish Cultural Foundation, London, 1986.
To write about 'Polish history' in
this period
inevitably
distorts proportions. There was a common language, a common Polish
version
of Catholicism, a common culture whose strength and content could vary
greatly between regions and social classes. There were 'Polish events',
generally conspiracies which with great effort and luck could be made a
shared experience for some Poles in two, if not always three, of the
Partitions.
But most of the 'history' that Poles made or suffered in the nineteenth
century was - naturally enough an aspect of the history of Austria,
Prussia
or Russia. And these were very distinct experiences.
The Austrian Partition -
Galicia and Austrian
Silesia
- was the most lenient. Here the ever-changing efforts of a
multinational
empire to reach a stable relationship with its subjects - Germans,
Czechs,
Magyars, Croats, Poles and Ukrainians, to name only the larger
population
groups - allowed the Poles to acquire considerable autonomy in Galicia
where they numbered about three million, almost half the population of
the province. They - or rather the highly conservative Polish
landowners
- ran their own internal affairs, fostered Polish culture without much
hindrance, and for much of the period used Polish as an official
language.
As the Empire was itself Catholic, Polish religion raised no problems.
Galicia was economically backward and rural, and the Polish nobility,
nervous
both about peasant radicalism and the rise of the Ukrainian minority
(about
forty-one per cent of the province's population in 1880), relied on the
Austrians to protect them and became thoroughly nervous about ideas of
national resurrection.
In Prussia, by contrast,
the Poles - just
under three
million of them - were a minority. Up to the 1848 crisis, they had been
handled with tolerance. But in the second half of the century, as the
policy
of Germanisation set in, they were treated increasingly as a threat.
Their position became far
more exposed in
1871, when Germany
united into an empire under Prussian leadership. Bismarck, who had been
the chief minister to the Prussian King, now became the first
Chancellor
of the Hohenzollern Empire. Within a few years, the Prussian Poles were
embroiled in the Kulturkampf - Bismarck's attempt to break the
influence
of the Vatican and bring the Catholic Church throughout the German
dominions
under the control of the state. Bismarck did not launch the
Kulturkampfsimply
to break the national spirit of the Catholic Poles - though he
certainly
hoped for such a result. Neither did he attack the Church simply
because
he, like the rest of the Prussian ruling class, was a Lutheran
Protestant.
His central purpose was to destroy or at least disable any institution
which challenged the absolute authority of the German state. But the
effect
of Bismarck's onslaught against their church, coupled with his violent
contempt for the very idea of Poland, faced the Poles in Prussia with
the
most serious danger to their cultural survival that they had yet
encountered.
They became the target of
campaigns not only
against their
faith but against their education and finally against their land.
Government-financed
waves of German farmer-colonists were sent east to buy out the Poles
and
settle. On all three fronts the Poles of the Poznań region and West
Prussia
successfully defended themselves through a generally defiant Catholic
leadership
(Cardinal Ledóchowski was imprisoned for two years ), and through a
network
of self-help organisations which not only blocked the German
colonisation
plans but in some areas bought back farms that had been purchased from
Poles.
Bismarck regarded Poland as
a 'seasonal
state', a sort
of sandbank which appeared in times of international crisis but which
had
no title to be considered a nation. The keystone of his European
strategy
was the maintenance of peace between the German and Russian Empires
through
their common interest in the partition of Poland. After his fall in
1890,
when he was succeeded by Chancellor Caprivi, German policy changed
towards
a hostility to Russia that was to reach its climax in 1914, but this
brought
no relief to the Prussian Poles, now regarded as a security risk in a
military
frontier zone.
A notion of
Ausrottung in German and extermination in English, a
well established goal of German policy against non-Germans:
"Haut
doch die Polen, dass sie am Leben verzagen. Ich habe alles Mitgefuehl
fuer ihre Lage, aber wir koennen, wenn wir bestehn wollen, nichts
andres thun, als sie ausrotten; der Wolf kann nicht dafuer, dass er von
Gott geschaffen ist, wie er ist, und man schiesst ihn doch dafuer todt,
wenn man kann." "Let's
beat the
Poles until they despair of life. I have all pity for their situation,
but we can do nothing else, if we want to subsist, than to exterminate
them; the wolf cannot help having been made by God as it is, and yet
one shoots him dead for it when one can."
"Bijcie Polaków tak
długo, dopóki nie utracą wiary w sens życia. Współczuję sytuacji, w
jakiej się znajdują. Jeżeli wszakże chcemy przetrwać, mamy tylko jedno
wyjście - wytępić ich; wilk nic nie poradzi na to, że Bóg go stworzył
jakim jest, a jednak do wilka strzela się, kiedy tylko można." Otto
von Bismarck, a letter of 26 March 1861 to his sister Malwine, written
from St Petersburg, Russia, where Bismarck was Prussian Ambassador.
Source: "Gesammelte Werke", XIV/I page 568, quoted in Hans Rothfels,
"Bismarck, der Osten und das Reich", page 75.
"Ich bitte
Sie, das, was ich Ihnen in diesem Kreise sage, wirklich nur zu hören
und nie darüber zu sprechen. Es trat an uns die Frage heran: Wie ist es
mit den Frauen und Kindern? – Ich habe mich entschlossen, auch hier
eine ganz klare Lösung zu finden. Ich hielt mich nämlich nicht für
berechtigt, die Männer auszurotten – sprich also, umzubringen oder
umbringen zu lassen – und die Rächer in Gestalt der Kinder für unsere
Söhne und Enkel groß werden zu lassen. Es mußte der schwere Entschluß
gefaßt werden, dieses Volk von der Erde verschwinden zu lassen." "I
ask you that what I tell you in this circle you will really only hear
and never talk about it. The question came up to us: What do to with
the women and children? – I decided to find a very clear solution also
in this respect. This because I didn’t consider myself entitled to
exterminate the men – that is, to kill them or to have them killed –
and to let the children grow up as avengers against our sons and
grandsons. The difficult decision had to be taken to make this people
disappear from the earth." Heinrich
Himmler's statement at his Poznan, Poland, speech on 6 October
1943.Source: Märthesheimer/Frenzel, Im Kreuzfeuer: Der Fernsehfilm
Holocaust. Eine Nation ist betroffen, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH
Frankfurt am Main 1979, pages 112 to 114. Reference of quote: Heinrich
Himmler, Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945, edited by Bradley F. Smith and
Agnes F. Peterson, Berlin 1974, pages 169 more
Of all three fragments of
Poland, the Russian
partition
was easily the most oppressive. It contained the largest block of
Poland's
former population: there were over five million Polish subjects of the
Tsar, of whom about 4.3 million lived in the 'Kingdom of Poland' and
the
remainder either in the old lithuanian territories or in the eastern
Ukraine.
After 1831, the Kingdom was
in effect under
military occupation.
Polish culture was treated as subversive, and the Catholic religion was
regarded as a disqualification from official employment. The modest
political
liberty allowed in Prussia and still more in Galicia was unthinkable in
Russian Poland. Polish politics, to the extent that there were any
beyond
an unfocused hatred of anything Russian, could only develop as
conspiracies
prepared to use violence to maintain themselves and armed revolution to
achieve their ends. Between the Russian tradition of total, utterly
centralised
and despotic authority and Poland's history of free speech and limited
power, no stable compromise was possible.
After the Russian setback
in the Crimean War
(1854-6),
conspiracies were formed among the thousands of Polish students
studying
at Russian universities and there was a new restiveness in the Kingdom.
The new Tsar Alexander II, who had come to the throne in 1855, warned
the
Poles that they would win no concessions, but in 1860 patriotic
demonstrations
took place in Warsaw, followed by more in the following year which were
crushed by the gunfire of Russian troops. Plans were laid for another
national
insurrection, which exploded prematurely in January 1863.
THE STRUGGLES FOR
POLAND BY NEAL ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
Maksymilian Gierymski:
Wymarsz powstańców ze wsi w 1863 roku.
Ok. 1867. Akwarela, tektura. 17,3 x 28,7
cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Maksymilian Gierymski:
Powstaniec z 1863 roku.
Ok. 1869. Olej na desce. 31 x 24 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Maksymilian Gierymski
"1863 Insurgent", c. 1869, oil on panel, National Museum, Warsaw
Józef Chełmoński: Powstańcy na
postoju.
1875. Olej na płótnie.
Własność prywatna.
Maksymilian Gierymski: Patrol
powstańczy przy
ognisku.
1872. Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań.
Maksymilian Gierymski:
Patrol powstańczy - pikieta.
1872-73. Olej na płótnie. 60 x 110 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa
.
Kozacy w marszu.
1881. Olej na płótnie. 70 x 175 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie.
Józef Chełmoński:
Epizod z powstania 1863 roku.
Jan Matejko:
Rok 1863 - Polonia
"Year 1863 - Polonia", 1864, Czartoryski
Museum, Cracow
Tadeusz Ajdukiewicz
"Scene from the 1863 Insurrection", 1875,
oil on
canvas,
43 x 88 cm, private collection
Ryszard Okninski
"Insurgents of 1863", oil on canvas, 88 x
115.5 cm,
private
collection
Ryszard Okninski
"Cavalry During the Uprising of 1863", oil
on canvas,
28.6 x 41 cm, private collection
The January Rising was in some ways
a contrast to
the
rebellion of 1830-31. Politically it had been carefully prepared and
its
underground leadership was highly organised, but its military strength
was weak. There was no collision of armies; instead, partisan bands
fought
a guerrilla war throughout the Kingdom which soon spread to the huge
forests
of Lithuania and regions of Byelorussia and the Ukraine. The partisans
were supported by an 'underground state', running central and local
government,
foreign policy, a press and an arms industry.
The odds, however, were
hopeless. Feeble
attempts by France,
Britain and Austria to mediate with the Tsar were ignored. As in 1830,
thousands of Poles came from Austria and Prussia and from all the
emigrations
in the west to fight and die, but the Rising itself did not spread
beyond
the Russian partition. After fifteen months of desperate courage, the
insurrection
crumbled away, and its last leadership, headed by Romuald Traugutt, was
hanged outside the w arsaw Citadel.
The January Rising failed
mainly because,
without the
intervention of a foreign power , partisans could not defeat a Russian
army which came to number nearly 350,000 men. But its collapse was
hastened
by a clever stroke of politics. The underground 'government' had - as
usual
- promised the peasants full ownership of their land and an end to
labour
duties for the landlord. But in March 1864, Alexander II proclaimed a
version
of these reforms as his own, on behalf of the Russian government,
depriving
the Rising of much of its appeal to the rural poor.
THE STRUGGLES FOR
POLAND BY NEAL ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
Artur Grottger:
Pod eskortą.
Artur Grottger:
Pochód na Sybir.
1867. Kredka na kartonie.
Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu.
Ryszard Okninski
"Sending into Exile", c. 1880, oil on
canvas, 57 x
100.5
cm, private collection
Jacek Malczewski: Śmierć na
etapie.
1891. Olej na płótnie. 53 x 101 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań.
Jacek Malczewski: Wigilia na
Syberii.
1892. Olej na płótnie. 81 x 126 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Kraków.
Jacek Malczewski: Niedziela w
kopalni.
1882. Olej na płótnie. 118 x 180 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Rugi pruskie (z cyklu "Duch pruski").
1909. Olej na płótnie. 85 x 133 cm.
Muzeum Okręgowe, Toruń.
Aleksander Orlowski
"Mounted Cossack Escorting a Peasant",
1820s,
watercolor,
ink on paper, 54.5 x 45 cm
Ferdynand Ruszczyc:
W świat.
1901. Olej na płótnie.
Galeria Obrazów, Lwów.
Ferdynand Ruszczyc:
Wychodźcy.
1902.
Litewskie Muzeum Sztuki w Wilnie.
Józef Szermentowski:
Stary żołnierz i dziecko w parku
(Pasowanie na rycerza
przez dziadunia).
1868. Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań.
A thick darkness of repression now
fell on the
Kingdom.
Again, there were executions; again, thousands of Poles were herded off
in long convoys to Siberia. The Kingdom lost its name and its last
shreds
of autonomy, becoming the 'Vistula Territory' of the Russian Empire.
Poles
were excluded from almost all official positions; Russian became the
language
of education and government; the Catholic Church was persecuted and the
spread of the Orthodox faith encouraged; a stream of Russian
bureaucrats,
teachers and policemen moved in. The policy of 'Russianisation', the
deliberate
extermination of the Polish identity, was applied even more severely
after
the murder of Alexander II in 1881.
Under the Partitions, two
broad strategies
were open to
patriotic Poles. One was the Romantic tradition of armed insurrection,
a course which turned out to be hopeless in practical terms unless
there
was full-scale support from other European nations - which never
materialised.
The other was to preserve and build up the cultural and economic
strength
of the nation, which involved a degree of compromise and collaboration
with the partitioning Powers.
This second strategy, known
as 'Organic Work',
dominated
the decades after the failure of the 1863 Rising. In Galicia, the
agrarian
slum of Europe, there was little industrial development before the end
of the century. In Prussian Poland, the self-help policies of the
Poles,
combined with the economic dynamism of Germany, gave them a prosperous
farming interest and useful experience in finance and industry . But it
was in Russian Poland, in spite of ferocious political and cultural
suppression,
that the most vigorous changes took place.
Polish society there had
been shattered as
much by the
land reforms of 1864 as by the defeat of the Rising. The easy-going old
life of the rural gentry came abruptly to an end, with the loss of
unpaid
labour. A part of the petty nobility left the land and moved to Warsaw
where - barred from any responsible post they became the embryo of the
turbulent, independent Warsaw intelligentsia that survives today.
Others,
however, went to Russia itself, to study, to work as managers and -
often
- to encounter the new Russian generation of revolutionary
conspirators.
Professor Leslie records that the Polish population of St Petersburg
rose
from 11,000 in 1864 to 70,000 by 1914.
In 1851, the tariff barrier
between Russia and
the Kingdom
had been abolished; in the years after 1863, Russia's protectionist
policies
cut off the supply of industrial goods from the West. This was the
opportunity
for Russian Poland, still economically far more advanced than the rest
of the Empire. There were few Polish capitalists, but German investment
poured in to finance industrial development; large-scale industry
appeared
not only in the boom town of Lódź, whose textiles clothed all Russia,
but
in the coal and iron basin of the Dabrowa and in Warsaw in the form of
heavy and light engineering.
By 1900, Poland accounted
for an eighth of all
Russian
production. Organic Work, at a first glance, seemed to be paying off.
But
in fact it was already a discredited creed.
There were two reasons for
this. One was
social: the new
Polish working class was underpaid and atrociously housed, and - in
Russian
Poland - almost totally deprived of trade union protection until 1906.
Revolutionary socialist ideas spread rapidly , accelerated by the slump
at the end of the century. On the land, the end of serfdom and land
reform
had only created further problems as a rural population with a soaring
birth rate tried to fend off starvation on tiny plots of soil. Many
gave
up the struggle and emigrated, from Prussian Poland to the United
States
and to the Ruhr in western Germany, then from the old Kingdom, and
finally
in an enormous exodus from overcrowded Galicia which took over one
million
- Poles, Jews and Ukranians - abroad, mostly to the Americas, between
l870
and 1914.
The second reason for the
fading of the
Organic Work strategy
was political. If it was not to degenerate into mere opportunism, only
making life easier for those with money and position, it had to show
returns
- an appreciative readiness of the partition Powers to allow the Poles
to run their own affairs. But the opposite was true: in Russia and
Germany,
above all, imperialist russianising and germanising policies were
growing
rapidly more oppressive.
THE STRUGGLES FOR
POLAND BY NEAL ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
Leon Wyczółkowski:
Portret prof. Ludwika Rydygiera z
asystentami.
1897.
Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie.
Leon Wyczółkowski:
Portret Karola Olszewskiego.
Olga Boznańska:
Portret Henryka Sienkiewicza.
Muzeum Narodowe, Kraków.
Leon Wyczółkowski:
Portret Jana Kasprowicza.
1898. Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum Narodowe, Kraków.
Jacek Malczewski:
Portret Władysława Reymonta.
1905. Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Jacek Malczewski:
Portret Adama Asnyka z Muzą.
1895-97. Olej na płótnie. 154 x 177 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań.
Juliusz Kossak:
Woźnica warszawski.
1863. Akwarela, papier. 34,5 x 53 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Kraków.
Ferdynand Ruszczyc:
Ziemia.
1898. Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Józef Chełmoński:
Wypłata robocizny (Sobota na folwarku).
1869. Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Aleksander Kotsis:
W szynku.
Ok. 1870. Olej na kartonie.
Galeria Obrazów, Lwów.
Aleksander Kotsis:
Ostatnia chudoba.
1870. Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Aleksander Kotsis: Matula pomarli.
1868.Galeria Obrazów, Lwów.
Józef Szermentowski:
Pogrzeb chłopski.
1862. Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Jozef Szermentowski
"Peasant's Funeral", 1862, National
Museum, Warsaw
Aleksander Gierymski
"Bank of the Vistula", c. 1883, National
Museum, Cracow
It was at this stage in Polish
history that Jozef
Pilsudski
entered the struggle. As the nineteenth century ended, the Poles looked
back on a hundred years of humiliation and martyrdom and swore that
there
would not be another hundred. Internationally, the outlook for
restoring
an independent Poland was bleak. But the tightening vice of foreign
repression,
added to the miseries of the economic slump, was breeding up a fresh
militancy
in all the Polish lands. The emergence of coherent political movements,
like the Polish Socialist Party, gave resistance and struggle a quite
new
staying-power. Pilsudski was typical of the young Polish generation,
impatient
to renew the struggle, hoping against all reason for a sign of weakness
in one of its imperial enemies.
Józef Piłsudski was born in
a country manor in
Lithuania,
to a family of the Polish squires who had dominated that country for
centuries,
only four years after the suppression of the last great Polish
insurrection
which began in January l863. He grew up in a land helplessly exposed to
the Russian vengeance that followed the January Rising: executions,
torturings,
arrests, deportation to Siberia, the confiscation of estates, the
suppression
of Polish culture and language, and the persecution of the Catholic
Church.
At school, Piłudski's teachers were Russians who sneered at his
Polishness
and treated him as an alien in his own country. Józef Piłsudski
acquired
a hatred and fear of Russia which never left him. The Polish gentry in
Lithuania were little affected by the doctrines of compromise, of a
sort
of patriotic adaptation to foreign rule, which became widespread in
other
parts of the divided nation in the years after l863. They remained true
to the older tradition of romantic conspiracy, which looked to yet
another
armed insurrection to liberate Poland. (...)The situation at the turn
of
the century was a strange one. Poland had lost its independence just
over
a hundred years before, and remained partitioned between Russia,
Austria-Hungary
and the German Empire, which had inherited the conquests of Prussia. On
the one hand, the profound discouragement which had fallen upon the
Poles
after the failure of the January Rising in 1863 was rapidly wearing
off.
The sober doctrines which gained support in the decades after the
Rising,
suggesting that the true patriotism was to avoid head-on conflict with
the occupiers and build up the economic and cultural strength of the
nation
by hard work, agricultural improvemem and social organisation - this
cautious
approach was out of fashion. Political parties were being founded, some
operating openly in the relatively tolerant conditions of the Austrian
partition, others underground. Higher education, some of it
clandestine,
was reviving even under the Russians. In the Prussian partition, a
vigorous
and quite successful struggle was being waged on the land to resist
German
colonisation. The economic turn-down at the end of the century, which
had
reached the dimensions of a severe slump in Russia, was spreading
bankruptcies
and unemployment and undermining the case for patient, constructive
work.
The new generation, which had not experienced the devastating
consequences
of 1863, was disinclined to be patient.
THE STRUGGLES FOR
POLAND BY NEAL ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
Wojciech
Kossak:
Czerkiesi na Nowym Świecie. Ilustracja do
"Wspomnień".
1912. Akwarela.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Czerkiesi na Krakowskim Przedmieściu.
1912. olej na płótnie. 100 x 200 cm.
Własność prywatna.
Stanisław Masłowski: Wiosna roku
1905.
1906. Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Marszałek
Józef Piłsudski na
Kasztance.
1928.
Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum
Narodowe, Warszawa.
Alma Tadema
Ignacy Jan Paderewski
1891
Poland Resurrected: 1900-1921
1914, the novelist Joseph
Conrad decided to
take his family
on a continental holiday. He wanted to show his English wife and
children
the city of Kraków, where he had grown up and where he had buried his
father,
the revolutionary Apollo Korzeniowski. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
successor
to the imperial Austro-Hungarian throne, had been shot at Sarajevo a
few
weeks before. Like most ordinary Europeans, Conrad paid little
attention
to this. As a result, the outbreak of the First World War caught the
Conrads
in Krakow, in what was now the enemy territory of Austria-Hungary, and
it was only with the greatest difficulty that they managed to escape
internment
and make their way back to Britain.
On the night of the general
mobilisation, as
army cars
rushed hooting through the streets and crowds of unwilling young men
slouched
to the barracks to have their hair cut off and their uniforms fitted,
Conrad
and a group of Polish friends gathered in the smoking-room of his hotel
and contemplated the future.
'The big room was lit up
only by a few tall
candles, just
enough for us to see each other's faces by. I saw in those faces the
awful
desolation of men whose country, torn in three, found itself engaged in
the contest with no will of its own, and not even the power to assert
itself
at the cost of life. All the past was gone, and there was no future,
whatever
happened; no road which did not seem to lead to moral annihilation.'
Conrad,
recalling the scene a year later, wrote: 'I am glad I have not so many
years left me to remember that appalling feeling of inexorable fate,
tangible,
palpable, come after so many cruel years, a figure of dread, murmuring
with iron lips the final words: Ruin - and Extinction. (Joseph Conrad,
Notes on Lifes and Letters, J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1921, p.
229,
P.238)
Four years later, Poland
regained her
independence. The
war which seemed to promise only ruin and extinction led to the
collapse
of all the three partitioning empires. But there are lessons in that
memory
of Conrad's which should never be forgotten. Only hindsight or the
bravest
contemporary guess could identify those baleful days of 19l4 with the
beginning
of Poland's resurrection. Only the most absurd nationalism could
attribute
that resurrection to the actions of the Poles themselves. There was
nothing
inevitable about Poland's revival in 1918, which was the result of an
incredible
stroke of fortune. In 1914, there was no lack of Polish politicians
struggling
for the independence of their country, openly or underground, at
liberty
or in prisons. But Conrad in that Kraków hotel, like most Poles, shared
only their aspirations, not their optimism.
(...)
In the gap between the end
of the war and the
beginning
of Versailles, the new Polish frontiers were already being set.
Fighting
had broken out between Poles and Ukrainians at Lwów in November 1918,
ending
with all Galicia under Polish control seven months later. In December
1918,
there was a victorious Polish rising in the German province of Poznań.
The Lithuanian capital of Wilno was taken first by the Bolsheviks and
then
by the Poles. Czechs and Poles fought each other in the Cieszyń region,
the small industrial area which had been Austrian Silesia. That
struggle
ended in July 1920 when the Allied powers enforced a partition - a
solution
never accepted by the 140,000 Poles who found themselves on the
Czechoslovak
side of the frontier.
(...)
The toughest problem on the
western borders
was Upper
Silesia. With its concentration of coal-mines, many producing
high-grade
coking coal, and its iron and steel mills, this was the most valuable
industrial
area in central Europe. Under German rule, its population had become a
dense mixture of Catholic Poles and Catholic German Silesians under a
crust
of Prussian Lutheran administrators and industrial capitalists who were
usually German or German-Jewish. Many 'Germans' were of Polish descent
and had relations who considered themselves Polish. .
About the only problem modern Poland
has been
spared
is regionalism. Minorities of other nationalities are a different
matter;
the Poles themselves share a remarkably uniform culture. The exception
was - and to some extent still is - Upper Silesia, separated from the
Polish
state long before the Partitions and conscious of a distinct identity.
The Polish mining villages had given their hearts to the charismatic
Wojciech
Korfanty, who had represented them in the German Reichstag and who was
to be the only politician in independent Poland with a local support so
strong that he could defy the influence of Warsaw. Korfanty belonged to
the Christian Democrats, a Catholic party formed in 19°2 to block the
advance
of socialism in the working class.
Nobody was going to abandon
Upper Silesia
without a fight.
The economy of central and eastern Germany depended on it; but without
Upper Silesia, Poland would be a poor rural country lacking a primary
industrial
base. After two Polish insurrections in the region, the Allies
intervened
and held a plebiscite. This produced a German majority of votes,
inflated
but not decided by trainloads of Germans ferried in for the poll. The
result,
on 3 May 192 I, was a third Polish rising led by Korfanty and helped by
the passive support of the French occupation troops, which ended after
several months of savage fighting with the Poles in possession of most
of Upper Silesia. The League of Nations drew a final partition line in
October, giving the best part of the industrial districts to Poland.
These fights around the
frontier were
overshadowed by
the Polish-Soviet war of 1920-21, an event which for a brief but
terrifying
moment seemed to threaten the whole of Europe and whose baleful
consequences
were to determine not only the nature of the Polish state but the fate
of the next generation.
Here, Piłsudski was the
moving spirit. It is
still often
said that he attacked Russia in order to suppress Bolshevism, that he
acted
as mere tool of Britain and France who had already intervened
on
the White side in the Russian civil war. But this is a false account
both
of what happened and of Piłsudski' s motives. Paderewski in Paris had
once
suggested that Polish armies could be used to overthrow Lenin, but
nothing
had come of it. Piłsudski' s aim, in contrast, had always been to
restore
something akin to the old Common-wealth, by detaching the Ukraine from
Russia and bringing it into a federation with Poland. He failed to
reach
any agreement with the Whites, who could see no point in helping Poland
to demolish the empire they hoped to restore.
Ever since the Armistice,
the Germany army
stranded in
the east had formed a buffer between Poland and Russia. In February
1919,
it finally withdrew, and Polish and Bolshevik units began to collide.
Slowly
the old Commonwealth outlines began to reappear, as Polish troops took
Wilno in April 1919 and Minsk, the main city of Byelorussia, in August.
The Bolsheviks, preoccupied with the civil war, we re ready to be
flexible
over frontiers with the Poles, but talks between the two sides broke
down
in December. Meanwhile, the Allies were becoming alarmed by Piłsudski's
march to the east. They had no love for Bolshevik Russia, but neither
had
they expected Poland to turn into the enormous revival of historical
dominions,
which was now taking shape.
Piłsudski turned his
attention to the Ukraine,
which had
a precarious government of its own under the Hetman Petlura. He was
able
to force Petlura to agree that eastern Galicia - in spite of its
Ukrainian
majority in population- should be merged into Poland, in return for
Polish
protection for Petlura's authority in the rest of the Ukraine. But t e
deal did not stick; most Ukrainian patriots rejected the surrender of
Galicia
as unpardonable treachery. However, Polish troops supported by
Petlura's
forces went ahead with their attack on the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine,
on
8 May 1920.
By now the Bolsheviks saw
the Polish advance
as a threat
to the survival of the Revolution itself. A huge army was assembled,
and
in the summer of 1920 a double counter-offensive, led by Budyonny's
cavalry
army in Galicia and the talented young General Tukhachevsky in the
north,
burst through Piłsudski's defences and poured westwards towards Poland.
It seems to have been
Lenin, normally the
coolest of men,
who decided -against the, opinions of his colleagues, including Trotsky
and Stalin - that this offensive should go forward until it carried the
Revolution into the heart of Europe. Tukhachevsky proclaimed: 'Over the
corpse of White Poland lies the road to worldwide conflagration.' By
August,
the offensive was nearing Warsaw; Cossack cavalry crossed the Vistula
north
of the capital, and the Bolsheviks we re approaching the German
frontiers
of East Prussia. If Poland fell, the way to Berlin would be open. ,
Confident of victory, the
Soviet government
had set :up
a revolutionary committee, the nucleus of a Polish government, at
Białystok
under Julian Marchlewski, a Polish Communist who had been one of the
SDKPiL
leaders.
(...)
Tukhachevsky's armies
surging across northern
Poland were
leaving an undefended flank, and the Poles -outmanoeuvred but not
defeated
- took their chance. A strike force was hastily put together, and on 13
August it tore across Tukhachevsky's rear and cut him off. A hundred
thousand
prisoners were taken, and the Soviet armies fled out of Poland with
Piłsudski's
men at their heels.
Marian Żebrowski was a
young cavalry officer;
his regiment
headed the Polish counter-offensive as it hit the left flank of
Tukhachevsky's
advance. 'Army people know what it means when one is attacked across
the
line of one' s advance. That means the complete destruction of an
offensive
- and that's just what happened. The third and fourth squadrons
destroyed
everything ahead of them. The second squadron rode round the right
wing,
crossed a bridge and covered our right. The first squadron was sent to
deliver a cavalry charge on the left, where larger groups of the enemy
had been seen. In the last phase of its attack, the squadron got into
some
marshland and in this marshy ground there we re small units of the
enemy.
Our men fired on them, but the horses began to sink into the soft
ground
and the charge came to a standstill. The enemy redoubled their fire,
and
the squadron took heavy casualties . . . My friend, an officer-cadet
called
Suchodolski - his horse was killed and he fell, and was stabbed seven
times
with a bayonet. I helped to carry him to the ambulance cart and he just
said to me: "Marian, we won such glory today, though I won't see the
results
of it . . .'"
This was the battle
of Warsaw, or the 'Miracle on the Vistula'. It was one of the
most
dazzling operations in European military history. It saved Poland' s
independence,
and it forced Soviet Russia to abandon for ever the idea that November
1917 had been only the prelude to world revolution; from now on, Lenin
was to adopt a more defensive policy which was to end in Stalin's
formulation
of 'socialism in one country'. Many people, then and now, have
concluded
that in 1920 Poland saved Europe from Communism. It would be more
prudent
to say that the 'Miracle' probably saved Germany from Soviet invasion.
The revolutionary tide in Germany was ebbing fast by the summer of
1920,
and any Red Republic established there by Soviet troops would have been
swept away by the combined armies of the West.
(...)
THE
STRUGGLES FOR POLAND BY NEAL
ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
Wojciech
Kossak:
Potyczka z kozakami.
1917. Olej na płótnie. 80 x 85 cm.
Własność prywatna.
Stanisław Bagieński
Wejście Legionów do Warszawy, 1917, Muzeum
Wojska Polskiego, Warszaw
Stanislaw Bagienski
"The Polish Legions Entering Warsaw", 1917, Polish Army Museum, Warsaw
Wojciech
Kossak:
Orlęta - obrona cmentarza.
1926. Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum Wojska Polskiego, Warszawa.
Potyczka z kozakami przy studni
1930. Olej na dykcie. 55 x 80 cm
Własność prywatna.
Mikołaj Wisznicki
Szarża pod Wołodarką, 1935, Muzeum
Wojska Polskiego, Warszawa.
Mikolaj Wisznicki
Charge at Wolodarka, 1935, Polish Army
Museum, Warsaw
Jerzy Kossak
Cud nad Wisłą 15 sierpnia 1920 roku
1930. Olej na płótnie. 94 x 145 cm.
Własność prywatna.
Jerzy Kossak
Miracle of the Vistula August 15, 1920
Stanisław Kaczor-Batowski
"Battle of Zadworze", 1929, Polish Army
Museum, Warsaw
Stanisław Kaczor-Batowski
"Bitwa pod Zadwórzem", 1929, Muzeum
Wojska Polskiego, Warszawa.
Pościg ułanów krechowieckich za
bolszewikami
1930. Olej na tekturze. 33 x 48 cm.
Muzeum Wojska Polskiego, Warszawa.
Pościg 6 pułku ułanów za
bolszewikami
1930. Olej na desce. 22 x 38 cm.
Muzeum Historyczne miasta Krakowa.
Pościg za uciekającym komisarzem
1934. Olej na dykcie. 30,5 x 40 cm.
Własność prywatna.
Wojciech Kossak, Mlody obronca,
olej 1933
Wojciech
Kossak:
Zaślubiny Polski z morzem.
1931. Olej na płótnie. 118 x 174 cm.
Własność prywatna.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Apoteoza Wojska Polskiego
(środek tryptyku: Wizja Wojska Polskiego).
1935. Olej na płótnie. 200 x 300 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Wizja żołnierska.
1935. Olej na płótnie. 54 x 100 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Portret
Marszałka Józefa
Piłsudskiego.
1928.
Muzeum
Narodowe, Warszawa.
"Pilsudski
on Horseback", 1928,
109 x 93 cm, National Museum, Warsaw
Wojciech
Kossak:
Szarża
pułku ułanów.
1926.
Olej na płótnie.
Muzeum
Wojska Polskiego, Warszawa.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Ułani (Kawalerzyści).
1926. Olej na tekturze.
Muzeum Narodowe, Kraków.
Wojciech
Kossak:
Idzie ułan borem, lasem.
1934. Olej na płótnie. 90 x 120 cm.
Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa.
Ignacy Zygmuntowicz
"Polish Cavalry on Patrol", oil on canvas, 60 x 92 cm, private
collection
World War II
Germany occupied all
Bohemia and Moravia in
March 1939.
Simultaneously, the Germans issued an ultimatum to Poland over Danzig,
and Poland responded by moving troops up to the frontier.
(...)
On 31 March the British
prime minister,
Neville Chamberlain,
announced that Britain would guarantee Polish independence in the event
of attack. Beck flew to London, and the guarantee was made formal in
April.
Hitler retorted by renouncing his 1934 pact with Poland.
On 23 August, to the
stupefaction of the
world, Ribbentrop
and Molotov signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact of Non-Aggression. A secret
protocol
to the pact provided for the partition of Poland and the Baltic States
between Germany and the Soviet Dnion. Once again, the main dish at the
feast of friendship between Poland' s historic enemies proved to be
Poland's
independence. A few days later, Britain signed a more specific
alliance,
making it clear that a German attack would lead to war with Britain as
well as with Poland.
On 1 September 1939, with no
deelaration of war,
German
troops crossed the Polish frontier. On 3 September, Britain and France
declared war on Germany. Precisely a fortnight later, on 17 September,
the Red Army entered Poland from the east.
THE STRUGGLES FOR
POLAND BY NEAL ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
Treaty
of Nonaggression
Between Germany and the Union
of Soviet
Socialist
Republics
The
Government of the
German Reich
and the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics desirous
of strengthening the cause of peace between Germany and the U.S.S.R and
proceeding from the fundamental provisions of the Neutrality Agreement
concluded in April 1926 between Germany and the U.S.S.R., have reached
the following agreement:
ARTICLE
I
Both
High Contracting
Parties obligate,
themselves to desist from any act of violence, any aggressive action,
and
any attack on each other, either individually or jointly with other
powers.
ARTICLE
II
Should
one of the High
Contracting
Parties become the object of belligerent action by a third power, the
other
High Contracting Party shall in no manner lend its support to this
third
power.
ARTICLE
III
The
Governments of the two
High
Contracting Parties shall in the future maintain continual contact with
one another for the purpose of consultation in order to exchange
information
on problems affecting their common interests.
ARTICLE
IV
Neither
of the two High
Contracting
Parties shall participate in any grouping of powers whatsoever that is
directly or indirectly aimed at the other party.
ARTICLE
V
Should
disputes or
conflicts arise
between the High Contracting Parties over problems of one kind or
another,
both parties shall settle these disputes or conflicts exclusively
through
friendly exchange of opinion or, if necessary, through the
establishment
of arbitration commissions.
ARTICLE
VI
The
present treaty is
concluded
for a period of ten years, with the provision that, in so far as one of
the High Contracting Parties does not denounce it one year prior to the
expiration of this period, the validity of this treaty shall
automatically
be extended for another five years.
ARTICLE
VI
The
present treaty shall be
ratified
within the shortest possible time. The ratifications shall be exchanged
in Berlin. The agreement shall enter into force as soon as it is
signed.
Done
in duplicate, in
the German
and Russian languages.
MOSCOW,
August 23, 1939.
For
the Government of
the German
Reich:
V.
RIBBENTROP
With
full power of the
Government
of the U.S.S.R.:
V.
MOLOTOV
Secret Additional
Protocol
On
the occasion of the
signature
of the Nonaggression Pact between the German Reich and the Union of
Socialist
Soviet Republics the undersigned plenipotentiaries of each of the two
parties
discussed in strictly confidential conversations the question of the
boundary
of their respective spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. These
conversations
led to the following conclusions:
1.
In the event of a
territorial
and political rearrangement in the areas belonging to the Baltic States
(Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the northern boundary of
Lithuania
shall represent the boundary of the spheres of influence of Germany and
the U.S.S.R. In this connection the interest of Lithuania in the Vilna
area is recognized by each party.
2.
In the event of a
territorial
and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state
the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. shall be bounded
approximately
by the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula, and San.
The
question of whether
the interests
of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish
state and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely
determined
in the course of further political developments.
In
any event both
Governments will
resolve this question by means of a friendly agreement.
3.
With regard to
Southeastern Europe
attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia.
The
German side declares; its complete political disinterestedness in these
areas.
This
protocol shall be
treated by
both parties as strictly secret.
Moscow,
August 23, 1939.
For
the Government of
the German
Reich:
V.
RIBBENTROP
Plenipotentiary
of the
Government
of the U.S.S.R.:
V.
MOLOTOV
Poland is a country where brilliant
ideas have
been bom,
but seldom nursed up to full application. Nicolaus Copernicus, from
Toruń,
showed that the earth revolved round the sun; Michał Kalecki was a
pioneer
of modern socialist economics; Polish mathematicians from Poznań broke
the secret of the German 'Enigma' coding machine. But it was not Poland
that conquered the cosmos, ran a successful welfare stafe or won the
'secret
war' of cryptography between 1939 and 1945.
Other countries put these
ideas into practice.
So it was
with Blitzkrieg, the concept of waging offensive war with fast-moving
columns
of armour or motorised infantry, concentrating maximum force to punch
through
a minimum sector of enemy line. This theory came into the mind of a
young
French officer named, Charles de Gaulle as he witnessed the rapid
thrusts
of the Polish-Soviet War, utterly unlike the broad-front offensives
which
had gained so little at such hideous cost on the Western Front a few
years
before. What if those cavalry armies could be replaced by tanks built
for
speed?
But it was British and
German military
thinkers who developed
the idea of mobile warfare, years before de Gaulle finally put his
thoughts
on paper. And itwas the Germans who first tested his theory, in the
campaign
against Poland in September 1939. Poland was attacked from three sides
at once by Panzer divisions, and mobile units followed through the gaps
they made. The German ranks outnumbered the Polish by at least ten to
one,
and with an airforce five rimes as large as that of Poland - the
Germans
immediately seized command of the air.
It should have been an easy
victory, but it
was not. The
Germans afterwards regarded it as a hard-fought campaign, and were
disconcerted
by the capacity of the Poles to keep fighting and regrouping in spite
of
such hopeless weriority in weapons. The casualties Germany took were
heavier
than in the longer campaign in France the following year.
(...)
The extraordinary thing
about the Polish
soldiers was
the self-reliance: their capacity to reorganise into ever-smaller
units,
as all coherent command from above vanished, and to go on fighting.
Part
of the Polish navy had already escaped and reached British and French
ports,
ready to continue the war, and as resistance collapsed about a hundred
Polish aircrat - all that remained - flew to Romania.
At 3.30 on the morning of
17 September 1939,
the Polish
ambassador m Moscow was summoned from his bed and handed a 'Note'. The
Soviet Union announced that as the Polish state had ceased to exist
(which
was not true) steps had become necessary to protect the Ukrainian and
Byelorussiai
minorities in the 'former' Polish territories. An hour later, Soviet
troops
crossed the frontier.
At first, the incredulous Poles
imagined that the
Red
Army might be come to their assistance. There was little resistance to
the invasion, the eastern border being almost unprotected, but the
truth
became rapidly plain as the Soviet forces moved across eastern Poland
to
a demarcation line along the rivers Bug and San. A Fourth Partition of
Poland was taking place.
THE STRUGGLES FOR
POLAND BY NEAL ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
German-Soviet
Boundary and
Friendship
Treaty
The
Government of the
German Reich
and the Government of the U.S.S.R. consider it as exclusively their
task,
after the collapse of the former Polish state, to re-establish peace
and
order in these territories and to assure to the peoples living there a
peaceful life in keeping with their national character. To this end,
they
have agreed upon the following:
ARTICLE
I.
The
Government of the
German Reich
and the Government of the U.S.S.R. determine as the boundary of their
respective
national interests in the territory of the former Polish state the line
marked on the attached map, which shall be described in more detail in
a supplementary protocol.
ARTICLE
II.
Both
parties recognize the
boundary
of the respective nation interests established in article I as
definitive
and shall reject any interference of third powers in this settlement.
ARTICLE
III.
The
necessary
reorganization of
public administration will be effected in the areas west of the line
specified
in article I by the Government of the German Reich, in the areas east
of
this line by the Government of the U.S.S.R.
ARTICLE
IV.
The
Government of the
German Reich
and the Government of the U.S.S.R. regard this settlement as a firm
foundation
for a progressive development of the friendly relations between their
peoples.
ARTICLE
V.
This
treaty shall be
ratified and
the ratifications shall be exchanged in Berlin as soon as possible. The
treaty becomes effective upon signature.
Done
in duplicate, in
the German
and Russian languages.
Moscow,
September
28,1939.
For
the Government of
the German
Reich:
J.
RIBBENTROP.
By
authority of the
Government of
the U.S.S.R.:
W.
MOLOTOV.
Confidential Protocol
The
Government of the
U.S.S.R. shall
place no obstacles in the way of Reich nationals and other persons of
German
descent residing in the territories under its jurisdiction, if they
desire
to migrate to Germany or to the territories under German jurisdiction.
It agrees that such removals shall be carried out by agents of the
Government
of the Reich in cooperation with the competent local authorities and
that
the property rights of the emigrants shall be protected.
A
corresponding
obligation is assumed
by the Government of the German Reich in respect to the persons of
Ukrainian
or White Russian descent residing in the territories under its
jurisdiction.
Moscow,
September
28,1939.
For
the Government of
the German
Reich:
J.
RIBBENTROP
By
authority of the
Government of
the U.S.S.R.
W.
MOLOTOV.
Secret Supplementary
Protocol
The
undersigned
plenipotentiaries,
on concluding the German Russian Boundary and Friendship Treaty, have
declared
their agreement upon the following:
Both
parties will
tolerate in their
territories no Polish agitation which affects the territories of the
other
party. They will suppress in their territories all beginnings of such
agitation
and inform each other concerning suitable measures for this purpose.
Moscow,
September
28,1939.
For
the Government of
the German
Retch:
J.
RIBBENTROP
By
authority of the
Government of
the U.S.S.R.:
W.
MOLOTOV
The Reich
Foreign Minister to the Chairman of
the Council of
People's Commissars of the
Soviet the Soviet
Union.
(Molotov)
CONFIDENTIAL
Moscow,
September 28, 1939.
MR.
CHAIRMAN: I have the
honor to
acknowledge receipt of your letter of today, wherein you communicate to
me the following:
"Implementing
my letter
of today
about the formulation of a common economic program, the Government of
the
U.S.S.R. will see to it that German transit traffic to and from Rumania
by way of the Upper Silesia-Lemberg-Kolomea railroad line shall be
facilitated
in every respect. The two Governments will, in the framework of the
proposed
trade negotiations, make arrangements without delay for the operation
of
this transit traffic. The same will apply to the German transit traffic
to and from Iran, to and from Afghanistan as well as to and from the
countries
of the Far East.
"Furthermore,
the
Government of
the U.S.S.R. declares that it is willing. in addition to the quantity
of
oil previously agreed upon or to be agreed upon hereafter, to supply a
further quantity of oil commensurate with the annual production of the
oil district of Drohobycz and Boryslav, with the proviso that one half
of this quantity shall be supplied to Germany from the oil fields of
the
aforesaid oil district and the other half from other oil districts of
the
U.S.S.R. As compensation for these supplies of oil, the U.S.S.R. would
accept German supplies of hard coal and steel piping."
I
take note of this
communication
with satisfaction and concur in it in the name of the Government of the
German Reich.
Accept,
Mr. Chairman,
the renewed
assurance of my highest consideration.
VON
RIBBENTROP
Hitler Ansprache vor den
Oberbefehlshabern auf
dem Obersalzberg
22. August 1939 "Der Krieg würde bis
zur völligen
Vernichtung Polens
geführt mit größter
Brutalität und ohne
Rücksichten."
"Unsere
Stärke ist unsere
Schnelligkeit und unsere
Brutalität. Dschingis Khan hat Millionen Frauen und Kinder in den Tod
gejagt,
bewußt und fröhlichen Herzens. Die Geschichte sieht in ihm nur den
großen
Staatengründer. Was die schwache westeuropäische Zivilisation
über
mich behauptet, ist gleichgültig. Ich habe den Befehl gegeben – und ich
lasse jeden füsilieren, der auch nur ein Wort der Kritik äußert – daß
das
Kriegsziel nicht im Erreichen von bestimmten Linien, sondern in der
physischen
Vernichtung des Gegners besteht. So habe ich, einstweilen nur
im
Osten, meine Totenkopfverbände bereitgestellt mit dem Befehl,
unbarmherzig
und mitleidslos Mann, Weib und Kind polnischer Abstammung und Sprache
in
den Tod zu schicken. Nur so gewinnen wir den Lebensraum, den wir
brauchen.
Wer redet heute noch von der Vernichtung der Armenier?"
Hitler na odprawie generałów
formacji Wehrmacht Obersalzberg, 22
sierpnia 1939 Naszą siłą jest nasza
szybkość i
brutalność.
Dżyngis Chan rzucił na śmierć miliony kobiet i dzieci świadomie i z
lekkim
sercem – historia widzi w nim tylko wielkiego założyciela państw. Nie
ma
znaczenia, co o mnie sądzi słaba cywilizacja zachodnioeuropejska.
Wydałem
rozkaz - i zastrzelę każdego, kto wyrazi choć jedno słowo krytyki - że
celem wojny nie jest osiągnięcie jakiejś linii geograficznej, ale
fizyczna
eksterminacja wrogów. Obecnie tylko na wschodzie umieściłem
oddziały
SS Totenkopf (Z TRUPIĄ GŁÓWKĄ), dając im rozkaz nieugiętego i
bezlitosnego
zabijania kobiet i dzieci polskiego pochodzenia i polskiej mowy, bo
tylko
tą drogą zdobyć możemy potrzebną nam przestrzeń życiową. Kto
w
naszych
czasach jeszcze mówi o ekstermiancji Ormian?
Hitler's
speech to
Commanders-in-Chief, at Obersalzberg,
22 August 1939 Our strength is our
quickness and our
brutality. Genghis
Khan had millions of women and children hunted down and killed,
deliberately
and with a gay heart. History sees in him only the great founder of
States.
What the weak Western European civilization alleges about me, does not
matter. I have given the order - and will have everyone shot who utters
but one word of criticism - that the aim of {translator: this} war does
not consist in reaching certain {translator: geographical} lines, but
in
the enemies' physical elimination. Thus, for the time being only in the
east, I put ready my Death's Head units, with the order to kill without
pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or
language.
Only thus will we gain the living space that we need. Who still talks
nowadays
of the extermination of the Armenians?
Herbert Hupka, ein Offizier der Wehrmacht
awarded by Hitler for the Wehrmacht massacres and atrocities
in Greece
on racial grounds dismissed from the Wehrmacht as unworthy bear
arms
in 1944
(wehrunwürdig)
but awarded again with the Hitler's administration position
in German occupied Polish town Cieszyn, Silesia,
escaped justice in 1945
CONCISE STATISTICAL YEAR-BOOK OF
-POLAND SEPTEMBER 1939-JUNE 1941 PUBLlSHED BY THE POLlSH MINISTRY OF INFORMATION
FOREWORD TO FIRST EDITION
THE compilers of the Concise Statistical Year-Book of Poland for
1939-1941
had a twofold aim in view :
1. To give the statistical data concerning Poland as she was at the
outbreak of the war.
2. To give a correct picture of the rending of the living body of
Poland
into two, German-occupied and Russian-occupied, areas between September
1939 and June 1941. These data may help the reader to realize what
Polish
resources, human and material, were at that time at the disposal of
each
of the occupying powers. They will assist in forming a correct picture
of the resources exploited and pillaged by the Germans, who are now in
control of the whole territory of Poland.
The tables of the last, 10th edition, of the Concise Statistical
Year-Book
of Poland published by the Chief Bureau of Statistics of the Republic
of
Poland in June 1939, and which referred to the whole country, have
been,
in some instances, revised in such way that, beside the data referring
to the whole of Poland, data for German-occupied and Russian-occupied
Poland
have been added.
FOREWORD TO SECOND EDITION
ON presenting the British public with the second edition of the Concise
Statistical Year-Book of Poland, September 1939-June 1941, we ought to
stress that many data contained in it relates to the period prior to
1940
and accordingly may appeal out of date to the general reader. It is
thought,
however, that this Year-Book is still of actual value and interest
because
it gives a picture of the territorial, demographic, administrative and
economic state of the Republic of Poland at the time of the outbreak of
the second world war and in the years following immediately upon the
partition
of Polish territory between Germany and Russia.
GENERAL REMARKS
IN the preparation of the tables dealing with Polish and International
relations the only sources used have been the publication of the Chief
Bureau of Statistics of Poland, namely, the Concise Statistical
Year-Book
of Poland, as also the " Statistics of Poland" Series (Statystyka
Polski).
The informations regarding the territorial division of Poland into
Germany
and U.S.S.R. since September 1939 to June 1941 are based on estimates.
The data concerning Poland does not include the Zaolzie-Cieszyn
district
recovered in 1938, if not otherwise stated.
Ali weights and measures quoted in this Year-Book are, unless stated,
in the metric system, thus :
millimetre (mm)
metre (m) = 1000 mm
square metre (sq. m)
cubic metre (cub. m) kilometre (km) = 1000 metres square kilometre
(sq. km) hectare (ha) = WOOO sq. m litre (l)
hectolitre (hl) = 100 l kilogramrne (kg) = 1000 gramrnes quintal (g)
= 100 kg
ton (t) = 1000 kg
0•039 inch 39•371 inches 10•764 sq. feet 35•313 cub. feet
0•621 statute mile 0•386 sq. mile 2•471 acres
0•220 Imperial gallon 21•997 Imperial gallons 2•205 Ib. avoirdupois
220•462 Ib. avoirdupois 2204•621 Ib. avoirdupois
For parity and bourse rates of Zloty (zl.) in relation to the various
foreign currencies, see Section X, Table 20, page 103.
The following symbols have been applied throughout in the tables in
this Year-Book :
Dash (-) denotes that the given subject was non-existent. Zero (O)
is used to express values too. small to be noted, e.g. if production is
expressed .in thousand tons, the use of this symbol indicates that the
given output was below 500 tons.
Dot ( . ) indicates either no data or no reliable data are
available.
Cross ( x ) is put into spaces which cannot be filled out owing to
the composition of some tables.
Decimal figures are preceded in the tables by a full stop (.) and not
a comma.
Section I 9. Area, population and
density of population
in the
two enemy-occupied areas. 10. Urban and rural
population in the two
enemy-occupied
areas 11. Area, administrative
division and
population in
the two enemy occupied areas 12. Territorial changes in
Europe in result of
aggressive
action during the period March 1938-May 1941 19. Population, by
occupational groups, in
urban and
rural areas in the two enemy-occupied territories 20. Population, in
percentage, by occupational
groups,
in urban and rural areas in two enemy-occupied territories 25. Population of tbe large
towns
Section III 7. Dwelling-houses and
dwellings in 1931, in
the two
enemy-occupied areas 30
8. War damage in
Warsaw in September 1939 Section IV 2. Rural holdings,
according to area of land
utilizcd
for agriculture in 1931 in the two enemy-occupied areas - 31
Deutscher
Schulatlas 1942
Europa als
Lebensraum, Oktober
1942
Der
Aufbau des
Grossdetschen Reiches
seit 1933
Die
Gaueinteilung der
NSDAP
German
apartheid in occupied
Poland
Legal segregation system of Polish citizens in Eastern Part of Germany-occupied Poland called by Germans Generalgouvernement fuer die besetzten polnischen
Gebiete Generalgouvernement from September 1, 1939 till the end of German
occupation
Total population after annexing formerly Russian-occupied part of
Poland: 12.000.000 [Source: Jahrbuch der Weltpolitik 1942, 155]
Mother tongue: Polish
no
human rights no civil rights
In the beginning of occupation: deutsche Schutzangehoerige – German subjects of no
civil
rights Later: Staatenlose – stateless of no civil rights
Sources:
D e n n e w i t z, Volk und Staat,
s. 236.
Johanny - Redelsberger, Volk,
Partei, Reich,
35.
Verordnungsblatt GGP, 1939,
1.
W e h, Das Recht des
Generalgouvernements, B 400
- B
495.
W e h, Das Recht des
Generalgouvernements, F 100
- F
450.
Mother tongue: Jewish (Yiddish and Hebrew)
no
human rights no civil rights
Sources:
Verordnung ueber die Kennzeichnung
von Juden und
Juedinen im Generalgouvernement
vom 25. XI. 1939 (Verordnungsblatt GGP, 61)
Verordnung ueber die Einsetzung von
Judenraten
vom
28. XI. 1939 (Verordnungsblatt
GGP,72).
Die Burg. Jg. 1. Heft 1 Oktober
1940, 56-63.
Doz.
Dr. P. H. S e r a
p h i m, Die Judenfrage im Generalgouvernement als
Bevolkerungsproblem.
Das groessere Reich,
119-122
(Wachter).
Jahrbuch der Weltpolitik 1941, 323,
327, 328.
Voelkischer Beobachter, nr 303, 29.
X. 1940.
Gesprach mit SS-Gruppenfuehrer
Moder. Deutsche Ordnung durchgesetzt.
Mother tongue: German
Three categories: Lowest: Deutschstaemmiger – some
civil rights Medium: Volksdeutscher – limited
civil rights Highest: Reichsdeutscher – full
civil rights
Sources:
W e h, Das Recht des
Generalgouvernements, A 200
- A
295.
Jahrbuch fuer Politik und
Auslandskunde 1941,
327.
Verordnung ueber die Einfuehrung
einer Kennkarte
fuer deutsche Volkszugehoerige
im Generalgouvernement vom 26. I 1940. (Verordnungsblatt GG, I,
39).
Verordnung ueber die Einfuehrung
eines Ausweises
fuer Deutschstaemmige
im Generalgouvernement vom 29. X. 1941. (Verordnungsblatt GG, 1941,
622).
Nation und Staat, XVI Jg. April/Mai
1943, Heft
7/8,
214-217, J u e r
g e n A r n d t. Der Begriff der Deutschstaemmigkeit.
Mother tongue: Ukrainian in Distrikt Galizien
Privileged
although
formally Staatenlose
– stateless
Sources:
W e h, Das Recht des
Generalgouvernements, II.
Band.
Teil: Der Distrikt
Galizien und seine Bevoelkerung.
Verordnung ueber den Baudienst im
Generalgouvernement vom 1. XII. 1940
(Verordnungsblatt GG, 1940. I, 359).
The
special law for Poles and
Jews issued on December
4th, 1941 (Reichsgesetzblatt
1, 1941, p. 759)
- a few sections -
The Cabinet Council for the Defence of
the Reich
decrees with legal
force:
1. PRACTICAL PENAL LAW.
I.
1. Poles and Jews in the incorporated
Eastern areas
must behave in
accordance with the German laws and the regulations made fo~ them by
the
German authorities. They must abstain from anything that might harm the
Sovereignty of the German Reich or the Authority of the German
nation.
2. They will be condemned to death if
they perform an
act of violence
against a German for his adherence to German nationality.
3. They will be condemned to death-in
less serious
cases to penal
servitude--for revealing by odious or inflammatory acts a spirit
hostile
to Germany, especially by making hostile statements, tearing down or
defacing
public notices of German authorities or offices, or by detracting from
or injuring the Authority or Weal of the German Reich or the German
People
by their behaviour.
III.
1. Punishments meted out to Poles and
Jews are
imprisonment, fines
or confiscation of property. Imprisonment is punitive camp for a period
from three months to ten years. In serious cases it is an intensified
punitive
camp for a period of between two and fifteen years.
2. The death penalty will be exacted
where it is
indicated by law.
Also in cases where not specifically provided the death penalty will be
enforced, where the deed reveals an especially low mentality or is
especially
serious for other reasons; in such cases the death penalty is also
permissible
against juvenile criminals.
3. The shortest period of punishment
provided in
German criminal
law, or the prescribed punishment, may never be reduced, provided that
the crime is not enacted against the nationality of the
criminal.
4. In cases where a fine cannot be
extracted, then
imprisonment of
from one week to one year will be imposed.
VI.
1. Every sentence is immediately to be
executed; the
public prosecutor
can, however, appeal to the Court of Appeal against the sentence of the
magistrate. The period of appeal covers two weeks.
2. The right of complaint is also
reserved solely for
the public
prosecutor ; the Court of Appeal decides on the complaint.
VII.
Poles and Jews cannot object to a German
Judge on
grounds of bias.
•
IX.
Poles and Jews are not put on oath as
witnesses;
following untrue
or false evidence before the court the regulations concerning perjury
are,
of course, applicable.
XI.
Poles and Jews can take neither civil
action nor
coaction.
XII.
The Court and Public Prosecution outline
the
proceedings on the basis
of the German Criminal Law according to their own discretion. They may
diverge from the regulations of Legal Procedure and the Reich Criminal
Code, if this serves the quick and vigorous execution of the
proceedings.
Berlin, December 4th, 1941.
The President of the Cabinet Council for
the Defence
of the Reich:
Goring, Reich Marshal. Attorney-General for the Reich Administration:
Frick. Reich Minister and Chief of the Reich Chancellory:
Dr.
Lammers."
Bestiality
…unknown in any previous
record of
history… MR. BRENDAN BRACKEN, on
July 9, 1942
Issued by THE POLISH MINISTRY OF
INFORMATION London Stratton House, 1942
Printed by ST. CLEMENTS PRESS (1940)
LTD., London, W. C. 2.
CONTENTS
I INTRODUCTION 1
II Documents FROM POLAND 4
(1) AFTER HIMMLER'S VISIT 4
(2) TERROR AS A PROGRAMME 6
(3) COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY 7
(4) PRISONS AND CONCENTRATIO CAMPS 9
PAWIAK - OSWIECIM - BOJANOW, STUTTHOF, DZIESIATA,DZIALDOWO,
RAVENSBRUECK
CAMP FOR WOMEN.
(5) LETTERS FROM PRISON... 19
(6) DESTRUCTION OF THE JEWISH POPULATION 21
(7) PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 22
(8) THE TEN MARTYRS OF PRUSZKOW 26
III GENERAL SIKORSKI'S PROTEST SPEECH 31
IV RESOLUTION OF THE POLISH NATIONAL COUNCIL 36
V PRESS CONFERENCE AT THE MINISTRY OF INFOR MATION . 38
VI JUSTICE WILL BE DONE: OFFICIAL STATEMENTS AND
DECLARATIONS
51
I
On the basis of reports to the Polish Government
received by
the Prime
Minister, General Sikorski, from Poland, both of a general and of a
detailed
nature, the Polish Government now has a very clear picture of the
methods
of government, i.e., the German persecutions and barbarities in Poland
during the first six months of this year. It is a picture which freezes
the blood in one's veins. After the brief period prior to the outbreak
of war with Russia, while the Germans attempted to get the Polish
nation
to co-operate with them-towards which attempts Poland maintained her
inflexible
attitude of contempt and hatred for the criminal invaders - the
terrible
oppression has increased again, turning Polish life into one long
execution,
torment, slaughter, blood and tears. But it is also an unbroken
manifestation
of will to resistance, such as is almost without precedent in the
thousands
of years of world history, not excluding the martyrdoms of the early
Christians.
For that matter we know very well that the connection between all this
intensified persecution and the Polish refusal to co-operate with the
Germans
against Russia is only a transient and subsidiary element. The
immutable
essence of it all is different. The Germans, after preparing for years
to invade Poland as the gate- way and simultaneously the age-old
obstacle
to their drive Eastward, and after conquering Poland in their invasion,
decided to strangle, to destroy and exterminate the Polish nation for
ever.
They openly proclaimed this intention. And for three years, amid the
changes
of circumstances and despite various swindling subterfuges and pretexts
on this task of extermination day after day, hour after hour, and in
this
war have won their German knightly spurs as the most barbarous
murderers
in the history of the world.
The latest reports from Poland confirm the sombre news. which has come
in great detail during the last six months, and convey all the
incredible
dimensions of the crimes. It is no longer a case of hounding down only
those putting up opposition or suspected of active resistance. It is a
collective execution of a death sentence on a whole nation. The Germans
continue to murder social, scientific and spiritual leaders, but they
are
also murdering tens and tens of thousands of people in prisons and
concentration
camps, continually filling these places with new victims. after
exterminating
the others. In addition to the torture camps for men, with Oswięcim as
the chief, there are now torture camps for women, such as the one near
Flirstenberg (Mecklenburg) known as Ravensbrueck. Examinations and
investigations
constitute one long chain of the most terrible tortures, and people are
killed off in great droves, as has happened recently with hundreds of
thousands
of Jews, while millions are sentenced to starvation.
There was a time when the human imagination dreamed legends of lands
of abundance, serenity and happiness, but to-day reality has made of
Poland
in all the world's eyes a land of misery, torment, and death.
Only yesterday I was struck by the sombre news from France. Hitherto
the Germans there have taken hostages, and victims have been selected
from
these for execution, in the event of any attempt being made on a
German.
But yesterday it was, reported that arising out of anti-German
activities
near Boulogne fifty hostages have been taken to be sent to Poland, and
a further fifty are threatened with arrest and exile to the same
place.
So the Germans themselves seek to terrify the nations of Europe with
Poland, as though with one great concentration camp, and above its
gates
Dante's inscription
above the gates of hell: .
"Abandon hope all ye who enter in."
But for us Poland is our country, our sole country in
the
world, our
beloved land, our great Motherland, and it is the Poland to which
Słowacki
cried:
"For we have created of Thy name
A prayer that weeps and lightnings that flame."
And so it is: not only the prayers that are weeping today, but the
lightnings which will strike to-morrow.
The Germans are raging. They are satiating their age-old lust for
domination,
they are swimming in the blood of the defenceless and luxuriating in
the
torments of their victims. Their delirium adds to their fury when they
see that the victory which they thought certain and which seemed close
at hand is continually fleeing farther from them, is now definitely
unachievable.
They wade aberrantly through crime.
And they do not see that from the place where to-day the prayer of
suffering is weeping, from tormented Poland, from tortured Europe, from
the world infuriated to its depths, will fall the lightning of
punishment
tomorrow.
In connection with the solemn assurances by President Roosevelt, Mr.
Churchill and Mr. Eden that the German crimes in the lands affected by
the German invasions will be punished, and in connection with the
preparatory
labours of the Governments of the eight European States affected by the
German invasions, in order to assure the meting out of just punishment
after the war, a legislative project has been laid before the Polish
Government
for the punishment of wartime crimes committed in Poland since August
31st,
1939, by German troops, officials, and citizens.
Not one German will escape punishment in the court in which he will
hear the words:
"You have killed, you have tortured, you have stolen, you have
instigated,
you have sat privileged in other people's property, while Polish
children
went hungry."
Not one German will escape his full responsibility.
(From a speech broadcast on July 1st, 1942, by Prof. Stronski, Polish
Minister of Information.)
II DOCUMENTS FROM POLAND
The information on acts of savagery committed by the
Germans
in Poland,
which we give hereafter, brings the story down to the latest possible
date.
For much of it relates to the situation at the beginning of June, about
two months ago. And it confirms that the terror which the Germans
unleashed
in Poland three years ago, and which has, raged there ever since, is
still
continuing in all its violence and inhumanity.
All the documents following originate from the General Gouvernement
area of German-occupied Poland and are taken from reports received by
the
Polish Government in London direct from Poland.
We let the documents speak for themselves.
(1) AFTER HIMMLER'S VISIT
Ever since the spring the whole of the General Gouvernement has been
in the grip of a terror far exceeding anything previously achieved
during
the German occupation. In the general view this is linked up with
Himmler's
visit to the General Gouvernement last spring, during which he is said
to have confronted the General Gouvernement administration with a
number
of urgent tasks, the chief being:
1. The liquidation of the Polish secret organizations.
2. The liquidation of the
ghettoes. .
3. The crushing of illegal trade.
4. The supply of a million workers to Germany_
All the activities of the occupant authorities since that time have
been directed towards the realisation of these postulates, and
frequently
steps are taken which cover more than one.
After Himmler's visit there was a revival of the mass
mall-hunts and
round-ups in the streets of the larger towns. Following are a number of
the more extreme instances of these activities:
In Warsaw the entire staff and all the customers in the cafe Dana at
Bracka Street, No. 18, were arrested. This arrest was preceded by the
following
characteristic circumstance. For some months previously the cafe had
had
a regular visitor, who was very free with his drinks, spent large sums,
entered into conversation with other visitors and passed on all kinds
of
secret information. Thus he came to be well known and well liked by the
staff, and also by the other visitors to the cafe. On the day of the
arrests
two police cars drove up to the door and at the head of the detachment
was this same regular visitor, with a revolver in his hand. One of the
waitresses., who recognized him, called out to him in Polish, to which
he replied: “Schweigen Sie, ich verstehe nicht polnisch.”) (Shut up, I
don't understand Polish.) In the confusion one of the Poles present
saved
himself by running through the kitchen to the back stairs, and up into
the loft.
Another round-up occurred in Kerceli Square, in Warsaw, in April. Along
one of the streets leading into the square came a large detachment of
troops,
singing, as though marching to exercise. Suddenly it halted and
immediately
ran to take up points of vantage, surrounding the square and market
halls.
Through a megaphone it was announced that no one was to stir from where
he stood. Then followed a detailed search of all those caught in the
cordon,
which went on till late in the evening. Under the pretext of arresting
persons alleged to have hidden in the houses around the square, a
number
of permanent residents of these houses were also arrested. Altogether
it
is estimated that between two and three thousand people were arrested
that
day. All goods and money were confiscated.
Apart from these round-ups and street arrests, arrests are also made
of named persons, these usually being reserve officers and young
people.
It is estimated that between twelve and fifteen thousand people
altogether
have been arrested in Warsaw during a few days, and another five
thousand
in Cracow.
To illustrate the atmosphere in which Warsaw lives, we cite the
following
facts:
In the middle of April, a certain woman was informed that she was to
go immediately to Wlochy, near Warsaw, to receive the remains of her
son.
He had left his home only a few hours previously. When she arrived at
Wlochy
she found her son with several bullets in the back of his head, lying
with
other bodies on the floor of' a room. From the neighbours she learned
that
this room was the meeting-place of twelve young people who probably
belonged
to some secret organization. One of them came out on to the balcony,
and
a minute or two later there was the sound of shots from a Gestapo
detachment
which attacked the house. The person on the balcony, generally
considered
to have been an agent-provocateur, hid behind the door of the balcony
and
escaped.
Another example is of the unexpected arrest of two women. Having sat
rather late with their neighbours they wanted to go back to their home
in the next house, after the curfew hour. At that moment a police car
drove
up, they were forced into it, and together with others who were
arrested
before and after them, were carried to the neighbourhood of the Gdansk
railway station. This was in January last, and on the track was a train
full of wounded German soldiers, who had died of the cold during the
journey.
The arrested persons had to spend the whole night carting the bodies
out
of the train. The women had to remove the uniforms and bandages, the
men
dug trenches, and buried the bodies.
(2) TERROR AS A PROGRAMME
Not only have recent months seen a further development of the German
terror, but they have witnessed a far more open proclamation of terror
as a programme by representatives of the German occupant authorities.
and
the ostentatious, public application of terrorism.
Greiser's statement that anyone in the Polish Western provinces who
dares to resist the Germans or even to be refractory will quickly
become
"a child of death" has been followed by other German speeches and
public
statements of the same kind, especially in connection with the
introduction
of the new criminal code for Poles, which itself laid down the
principles
of the ruthless application of terror. In particular the Poznan
newspaper
Ostdeutscher Beobachter regularly writes of the necessity to apply the
most ruthless and harshest methods against Poles, when justifying the
monstrous
sentences of the special tribunals.
In the General Gouvernement a good example of this new development
was the public announcement by the Warsaw governor Fischer that 100
Polish
political prisoners had been executed on March 2nd, and that further
acts
of terror of this kind would follow. This announcement was preceded by
a talk between Fischer and several Polish public figures. In the course
of this conversation Fischer forecast that all attempts at Polish
political
activity would be drowned in torrents of blood. But it is significant
that
the mass murders of March 2nd were organized by Fischer on the pretext
of police suppression of banditry in Warsaw and Anin, which has nothing
whatever to do with Polish political activities.
(3) COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY
The Germans are more and more openly proclaiming that they intend to
apply the principle of collective responsibility to the Poles, and more
and more Poles are being executed in application of this principle, the
executions frequently taking place in public.
One Eugen Petrull, writing in the Ostdeutscher Beobachter on February
4th on the new criminal code for Poles, said, inter alia:
"The persecution of Germanism has burdened the Poles with a terrible
and inexpungeable guilt, which is directly borne by the Polish nation
as
a whole."
The linking up of this principle of the responsibility of "the Polish
nation as a whole" with the alleged persecution of Germans is obviously
a hypocritical attempt to provide a moral justification for the
increasing
application of the principle of collective responsibility.
Among the facts and cases based on this principle which have come to
knowledge so far are the following mass murders: in KALISZ county, 60
people;
in SULMIERZYCE, Wielun county, 10 persons; in ZGIERZ, 100 persons; in
LOMZA,
24 persons.
German judges have applied the same principle in their mass sentences
of Poles to death or to punitive camps for taking part in alleged
anti-German
acts of violence. Three hundred persons were also executed at
SZCZEPANOW,
in Poznania.
The principle of collective responsibility has also been applied in
the General Gouvernement, in fulfilment of Fischer's declaration. The
following
cases are known: 16 persons executed in STRUZA, Radomsk county; a large
number in CRACOW county; 100 persons from the Warsaw prison executed at
TREBLINKA on March 2nd, as announced by Fischer; 214 persons in
LUBARTOW
county; a couple of hundred young peasants in ZWOLEN, Radom county; 18
persons in BOCHNIA; 210 persons at JANOWIEC, Kozienice
county.
The principle of collective responsibility is also applied in economic
and social measures, for instance, the imposition of punishment on an
entire
village because one of the villagers fails to provide the assigned
quota;
the punishment of groups of workers or employees for crimes alleged
against
one member of the group, and so on.
But the most frequent excuse for the application of the principle and
for the organization of public executions is alleged attacks on
Germans,
committed by persons who as a rule go undiscovered, and more rarely for
charges of participation in Polish freedom activities.
(4) PRISONS AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS
PAWIAK
In Warsaw the victims of German arrests are taken mainly to the Pawiak
prison, where they are examined. This examination, and all their stay
in
Pawiak, is accompanied by tortures which in a number of cases cause
death
immediately or after a few days. For instance, recently, on May 25th, a
woman named Gillewicz was arrested together with her husband, a lawyer.
She was alleged to have been giving Polish children secret lessons. Her
husband died on the fourth day after arrest, while she committed
suicide
by hanging herself in her cell at Pawiak, in consequence of her
sufferings.
From Pawiak the prisoners are transported either to work in Germany
or to the concentration camp at Oswięcim.
The existence of 23 concentration camps where Poles are confined, is
known to us. These are their names:
Belzec, Buchenwalde, Ciechanow, Dachau, Dobrzyn, Dyle, Dzialdowo,
Dziesiąta,
Flossenburg, Gross - Rosen, Grudziadz, Hamburg, Hohenbrueck, Labiau,
Mauthausen,
Nasielsk, Oranienburg, Oswięcim, Plonsk, Ravensbrueck, Sierpc,
Stutthof,
Treblinka. (See map on pages 28 and 29.)
OSWIECIM
Further batches of prisoners are continually being sent to Oswięcim
concentration camp from all the prisons in Poland. In the second half
of
March a couple of hundred persons were sent from Warsaw to the camp;
among
them were several Polish warders of the Warsaw prison. In April several
hundred more prisoners, women as well as men, were sent from Warsaw.
News
is continually being received of deaths in Oswięcim of prisoners who
are
unable to stand up to the rigours of the camp.
Large parties of Oswięcim prisoners go to work every day on the
building
of a synthetic petrol works which is being erected in the vicinity. The
mortality among prisoners is indicated by the following details. Of a
party
of 40 prisoners transferred to the camp from Milanowek in July, 1940,
three
have returned home, two are still in the camp, and 35 have died. Of a
group
of 12 workers in the former Warsaw Committee for Social Self-help,
taken
to Oswięcim in July, 1941, only one remains; the others have all died
in
Oswięcim.
One of the favourite tortures in Oswięcim is to seize the victim by
the arms and legs and swing him against a post until his back is
broken.
But the "scientific" method of killing off prisoners is by injections
which
work slowly on the internal organs, especially on the heart. It is
universally
believed that the prisoners are used for large-scale experiments in
testing
out new drugs which the Germans are preparing for unknown ends. A case
was. known of a certain young and healthy man who was arrested and
taken
to a camp near Tarnow. After some months his wife was informed that her
husband was dying and that she could visit him before his death. She
was
able to arrive two hours before his last moment, and the dying man
managed
to tell her that all the prisoners have a band of some material sewn
into
their clothing around the neck, which they are not allowed to remove.
After
wearing the band around the neck for some days the part becomes red and
inflamed; this soon passes off, but throat trouble develops and quickly
progresses (the informant called it "throat consumption"), causing
speedy
death.
Among the other experiments being tried on the prisoners is the use
of poison gas. It is generally known that during the night of September
5th and 6th last year about a thousand people were driven down to the
underground
shelter in Oswięcim among them seven hundred Bolshevik prisoners of war
and three hundred Poles. As the shelter was too small to hold this
large
number, the living bodies were simply forced in, regardless of broken
bones.
When the shelter was full gas was injected into it, and all the
prisoners
died during the night. All night the rest of the camp was kept awake by
the groans and
howls coming from the shelter. Next day other prisoners had to carry
out the bodies, a task which took all day.
Recently the situation in Oswięcim has worsened, in consequence of
the formation of a women's section. The women are put on those few
lighter
jobs (scrubbing potatoes, cleaning, etc.) which previously were
performed
by a number of the men, who thus escaped heavier labour. Now the men
are
used exclusively for heavy physical labour, and are divided into
categories
according to their strength. It is estimated that the Oswięcim camp can
accommodate fifteen thousand prisoners, but as they die on a mass scale
there is always room for new arrivals.
In addition to the main camp, built near Oswięcim, there is an
additional
camp near by, in which the brutalities are so terrible that people die
there quicker than they would have done in the main camp. The prisoners
call this supplementary camp "Paradisal" (presumably because from it
there
is only one road, that leading to Paradise). The crematorium here is
five
times as large as the one in the main camp. The prisoners of both camps
are finished off in three main ways: by excessive labour, by torture,
and
by medical means. The prisoners of the "Paradisal" camp especially have
very heavy work to perform, chiefly in building a factory for
artificial
rubber production near by. The tortures, which are in accordance with
the
well-known German methods have, the effect of driving a number of
prisoners
every day to despair. Some of them fling themselves against the wire
surrounding
the camp. The wire is guarded by guards with machine-guns, and the
prisoners
are shot down.
BOJANOW, STUTTHOF, DZIESIATA
Recently 40 Polish priests were transferred from the camp at Dachau
to the camp at Bojanow, where they are being employed in a works
turning
out aeroplane parts. A large number of nuns formerly held in the
Bojanow
camp for nuns have been transported to forced labour in
Germany.
The concentration camp for Poles which was set up at STUTTHOF, near
Danzig, in September, 1939, is steadily losing its prisoners as they
die
off.
A new type of concentration camp for Poles has been started recently
near Dziesiąta, a suburb of Lublin. Originally it was intended for
Bolshevik
prisoners of war, some 1,200 of them being taken there at the end of
last
year. Now, after numerous shootings and as the result of the terrible
conditions
in the camp, only a couple of hundred are left. For some months past a
camp for Polish prisoners has been in being close to the barracks for
Soviet
prisoners. The Poles have been transferred from the prison in Lublin
Castle,
which is gradually being emptied, and is destined in future to
accommodate
only Polish political prisoners. At Dziesiąta 100 Polish prisoners are
employed on heavy punitive labour. The barracks are built of thin
boards
which do not properly meet, and in the wintertime the cold inside was
intense.
Altogether 250 barracks are to be erected at Dziesiąta.
DZIALDOWO
(An escaped prisoner's report.)
I spent five days in Dzialdowo, a camp set up in former
military barracks,
though other prisoners had spent as much as several weeks in this camp,
which is used as a transitional point. Even during the reception, for
which,
as in Dachau, prisoners waited for many hours, we were made familiar
with
the entire system of torture which is applied to prisoners. We were
ordered
to stand first with our backs to the buildings, then the other way
round.
An S.S. man walked continually up and down in front of the prisoners,
amusing
himself with taking aim at the windows (as though at prisoners alleged
to be or in fact looking out of the windows) and fired more than once
at
the windows. The camp commandant, a real brute in features and
behaviour,
also walked about with a whip in his hand and held conversations with
the
S.S. man on the following lines: "Why didn't you kill him? You must aim
straight," etc. Presumably this was for the benefit of the prisoners.
Women
also stood with the other prisoners; it was forbidden to move, and
there
was no food or drink. The courtyard is a large one, provided with a
tower
with a machine gun set up inside and guards with rifles at the ready.
As
we stood awaiting the reception, we saw S.S. men driving prisoners out
of a building and chasing them at a run across the yard, shouting:
"Faster,
faster!" and using their whips. After a moment we realised that the
prisoners
were being driven out to the closets, this procedure taking place three
times daily. Not, strictly speaking, to closets, but to a hole beside
the
closets, in a state which is unmentionable. During this procedure no
one
was allowed to stop even for a moment, so the prisoners could not
perform
the function of evacuation normally, but dirtied their clothes, boots,
etc. Women were also driven out, in a separate party; in Dzialdowo the
women en route for concentration camps are kept in separate
halls.
We also witnessed other things: while we were waiting another party
from another part of Poland was received; a young man without a hat was
taken aside and punished mercilessly. Later, from our cell windows we
saw
three Poles executed; on the word of command they were shot and then
finished
off with revolvers. During our reception, which took place only at
dusk,
each of us was driven along a corridor in order to be registered, to
hand
over our things, etc., and many of us were beaten in the course of this
procedure. My knowledge of German and close observation of the steps
which
had successively to be taken enabled me, by taking the head of the
queue
during the reception of my group, to save myself and my comrades from
getting
more than the normal amount of maltreatment. After the reception we
were
given small numbers. which we had to sew on our clothes. It was night
when
we were driven off to the rooms for sleep. I found myself in a smaller
room, for 20 people, and had a couple of my comrades with me ; it
transpired
that there were also people from Ostrolęka there. The cell was littered
with dirt and old straw, it was dark, and only by the light from the
window
did I discern forms rising from the floor, an older face with a beard,
and heard the question: "What news is there? Has America come in yet?"
It transpired that in this cell there were a mayor, the assistant head
of a county, an architect, a doctor, and so on.
It must be mentioned that during the reception of prisoners at
Dzialdowo
all valuables and money are taken away; Polish money is thrown into a
case,
on the ground that it is valueless: a large sum was collected in the
case.
Rings were torn from our fingers. I left there a gold watch and a
silver
pencil, and everything was lost; at Dachau the prisoners are told that
everything left at Dzialdowo will be returned to them; this is a
deliberate
lie. for at Dzialdowo everything was stolen.
After the maltreatment, the worst torment at Dzialdowo was the complete
absence of water (apparently the pipes had burst). There were prisoners
in Dzialdowo who had been in the camp for several weeks without a drop
of water. So there could be no thought of washing. The coffee in the
morning
(half a billycan for two) was also used for cleaning our teeth. With
the
coffee we had black bread. At noon there was soup, sometimes with a
bone
or a scrap of meat. The billycans were never washed or even rinsed out.
In the evening there was coffee or soup again. Meals were always
immediately
after the turnout for the closets (several thousand people being
involved).
During this turnout a machine-gun was trained on us, while S.S. men
with
revolvers and sticks accompanied us. The prisoners fetched their own
food
in tubs. Three times each day (at the time of the turnout for
lavatories)
we were allowed to bring our buckets out of the cells. The buckets were
always too small, always full to overflowing. It was strictly forbidden
to look out of the window. When the camp authorities entered a cell all
the prisoners had to sit down at once in their sleeping places and
remain
seated; only the senior was allowed to stand. and he reported the
number
of prisoners to the authorities. Often the Gestapo men came into the
cells
for the purposes of blackmail: they would come in and alarm the
prisoners
with the news that everything in the nature of small articles that the
prisoners had been left was to be taken away from them, and thus they
forced
the prisoners to give up any small things they had managed to retain.
There
were no examinations in Dzialdowo. Departures for other camps were
organized
every five days, batches of 1,200 prisoners being made up and marched
to
the station, the guards carrying rifles with bayonets fixed and turned
towards the prisoners. It was announced that for one man attempting to
escape 200 would be shot, but if anyone escaped from the trucks three
would
be shot. No one ever escaped, but several died in the train.
RAVENSBRUECK CAMP FOR WOMEN
This camp consists of sixteen blocks, so arranged along
the
street that
each pair of blocks, one on either side, forms a small, closed-in yard.
Each block holds from 190 to 200 prisoners, sometimes even more, and
has
a washroom, with twenty basins arranged along two sides, and from six
to
ten footbaths along the middle. The beds are, as a rule, arranged in
three
tiers, but when the blocks are crowded straw-filled palliasses are
spread
on the floor. The pillows are also filled with straw. Baths are taken
once
a week, under warm showers, often three persons under one shower, but
it
is possible to wash. There is a medical attendant, but in point of fact
no real medical treatment. is provided ; even those most seriously ill
must stand for hours in the queue to see the doctor, who makes a very
cursory
examination and prescribes no treatment at all ; people are regarded as
ill only when they drop. Small cupboards are provided in which the
prisoners
keep their personal articles; one cupboard to two prisoners. The camp
clothing
consists of grey-blue flannel skirts and overalls; slippers are
provided,
for use only in the blocks. In summertime and late into the autumn the
prisoners have to go barefoot, through streets sprinkled with coarse
gravel.
In consequence many prisoners get sore and festering heels, but they
have
to go on walking barefoot.
On their arrival at the camp the prisoners are lined up before the
administration building, where they wait for several hours. They are
photographed
in three positions, and are usually taken one by one to a room where
details
of age, date of birth, etc., are taken. They then go on to a second
room
where they have to strip and hand over all their things except their
shoes
and small personal articles. Then they have to wait, naked, until there
are sufficient to go to the bath-house; after the bath they again wait,
naked, to have their heads and all hairy parts of the body examined.
Not
always because insects have been found, but often out of sheer
brutality
certain of the women are forced to have their hair cut and are then
sent
to special quarantine. Then clothing and linen are issued, and all are
marched off to the ordinary quarantine building. It must be mentioned
that
during all the journey to the camp no food whatever is provided. Those
who happen to have any food of their own are allowed to eat it, the
others
go hungry.
The personal attitude of the guards and wardresses is always arrogant,
bullying and threatening. After the bath the prisoners are addressed by
a wardress, who tells them that they are Aus der Polakei (come from
Poland)
and they will be treated as they treated the German soldiers, they know
that besides the camp there are other forms of punishment,
imprisonment,
for instance. The wardresses are completely void of all human feelings.
There have been cases reported of Gestapo men having pity on women
trying
to shift an excessive load, but no cases have ever been known of
wardresses
doing so, so far as the reporter's observation went. The prisoners are
abused as Polnische Schweine (Polish swine) at every step, and the
wardresses,
who are all German, are continually shouting, bullying, and swearing.
Certain
of the prisoners are chosen as "seniors" of the halls and blocks, and
these
are held responsible for seeing that the regulations are observed and,
as the women chosen are usually of the very lowest type, they soon
learn
to imitate the German wardresses in their conduct towards the others.
At
night the prisoners have to fold up their clothing, and put it in a
pile,
with their number upward.
The prisoners are up at five or six a.m., according to the time of
year; by seven or eight a.m. all must be washed and dressed, and the
entire
block cleaned and tidied. Everything is done in a hurry, the prisoners
are driven, with shouts and insults. The daily diet is as follows:
breakfast,
coffee (substitute) without sugar, twenty dekagrammes (about
three-quarters
of an ounce) of bread per day; dinner, vegetable soup, with a minimum
quantity
of meat or fat in it; supper, also soup. Potatoes in their skins are
also
a frequent diet. In summer time raw vegetables are given for supper.
Jam
has been given only very rarely and in very small quantities. Although
the regulations allow it, prisoners are not allowed to subscribe to
newspapers.
From time to time the "seniors" managed to get hold of a newspaper
somewhere,
but they would only share it with those whom they greatly trusted, for
fear of the consequences. Although the prisoners can be sent ten marks
monthly from outside, they can spend only one mark, and that on tooth
powder
or similar items. There is no possibility of buying food.
Summary punishment, consisting of whacks and punches on the face, was
not met with in the block in which the informant was confined. The
principle
of collective responsibility was applied: punishment consisted of
standing
for an hour or more in the yard, irrespective of the weather, and not
necessarily
only once; or deprivation of dinner, or supper, for so many days,
together
with standing for one to two hours, during the entire meal time;
deprivation
of dinner for several Sundays in succession; confinement in a dark
cell,
without bedclothes, usually for 42 days. At a later period the dark
cell
punishment was added to by beating with metal rods twice a week (even
old
women of seventy were given this punishment). The punishment consisted
of twenty-five strokes with steel rods; sometimes the prisoner has the
choice of 25 strokes or 42 days in the dark cell. The prisoner must be
conscious during all the time of punishment by birching; a wardress
holds
the prisoner's pulse, and if she loses consciousness she is brought
round
before the punishment is continued. One case is known in which a
teacher
from Silesia, suffering from consumption, had a haemorrhage during the
punishment. Another punishment consists of transference to the
"punishment
barracks," where degenerates are detained. If a Polish woman talks to
a.
Jewess she is punished with 42 days in the dark cell; another woman
received
the same punishment for using the ends of threads from her needlework
to
bind the soles of her slippers. When the camp drainage system became
stopped
up, the prisoners were punished by collective deprivation of dinner.
Prisoners
are always being punished. There is a roll-call twice daily, which
sometimes
means that prisoners have to stand for hours. If anyone is missing, all
the prisoners in the block have to wait until she is found, and the
roll-call
of that block is made again when the others have had theirs. Prisoners
are punished for attempting to justify themselves if they have violated
the regulations, for coming out to the roll-call in their slippers
instead
of barefoot, for tying cardboard under their bare feet in winter-time,
and so on.
The first month of imprisonment in the camp is spent in quarantine,
and during this period the prisoners are not allowed to do anything
except
keep their block tidy and bring the cauldrons of food. There are no
books
in the camp. The prisoners' sole reading is of the scraps of newsprint•
in the closets, and they made playing cards from odd scraps of unused
paper.
At the end of the month's quarantine they are transferred to another
block, and are then set to work. The work is allocated by the prisoners
moving in single file past the camp authorities, who then assign them
their
respective tasks. For the kitchen, which is hard work starting at four
a.m. and carried out in continual haste, accompanied by shouts and
abuse,
teachers are chiefly chosen. The kitchen workers have to carry the
sacks
of food from the lorries. Bu t they are not allowed to lift the sacks
down;
the sacks are flung down into the women's arms. and they have to catch
them. This causes great pain in the arms, especially from the elbow
downward.
The other prisoners work in the camp, and last autumn and winter they
were
engaged on building houses for German officials, carrying bricks, sand,
lime, and stones. This was some distance from the camp. As only an hour
was allowed for dinner the prisoners had to do everything almost at the
double, wash, eat their soup and hurry back to work. Those who were not
engaged on these building activities worked in the camp, knitting
gloves,
sweaters, etc. Certain prisoners were deliberately left idle, as it had
been noticed that they sought to find relief and distraction in
work.
The camp contains Polish women from Silesia, Poznania, Polish Pomerania
and Suwalki; there were also Warsaw women, it was said, but these were
kept so isolated that it was impossible to see or communicate with
them.
In addition to Polish women there are German, and also Dutch women, who
were very sympathetic to the Poles. The Dutch had certain privileges,
they
could receive parcels and buy food. The prisoners were aged from
sixteen
to seventy. They were drawn from very varying walks of life; restaurant
owners, shopkeepers, waitresses, office workers, teachers, factory
workers,
peasants. They all wear a coloured triangle on their shoulder and a
number.
The triangle is coloured according to the nature of their " crime": red
is used for political prisoners.
(5) LETTERS FROM PRISON
I
x
Prison.
November 15th, 1941.
Dear Parents.
I am coming to the end of my torture, for sentence of death was passed
on me the day before yesterday. To-morrow more than a dozen of us are
to
die. I believe this letter will reach you, and I would like you to know
that my last prison was at ... , and the place of my execution will be
... near. . . . I do not know what death awaits me, but to-day I openly
admit that it will be as nothing compared with the tortures that have
been
inflicted on me for the past six months and nineteen days. Forgive me
all
the trouble you have had on my account, and I know you will forgive me,
for it is all for the future Poland. I ask you, dear parents, after the
war to divide the six acres of land which are my property as follows:
let
dad sell two acres and pay the money to (here follows the name of a
Polish
organization), Marysia is to have three acres, and Franek one acre. But
he is to take a handful of earth from . . . from a spot where there are
no graves, and scatter it over that acre. Thus I shall feel that my
dust
is resting in my beloved native earth. It is not hard for me to die,
for
I have endured everything, and they got nothing out of me which could
hurt
any others. I am only sorry that I have not been allowed to see a
priest
before my death. I take farewell of you in this world, but you must
live
with faith in Poland and God. Say goodbye to Franek for me and tell him
that as I take my farewell of him I believe that at the right moment he
will avenge my sufferings and death, first. and foremost on those who
betrayed
me, and that without doubt he will guess who is the traitor. Know that
I die with the words on my lips: "Long live Poland."
Your son.
II
... I am kept in isolation. I'm feeling pretty
rotten.
I'm dying of hunger. And death from starvation is the worst of all.
I would not want to be shot or die of hunger . . . . Down to to-day I
have
been examined three times: January 20th, January 30th and February
20th.
Depositions were taken during the tortures. The first time they
stripped
me to my shirt and beat me on the head with blunt instruments. I had
contusions
on the left side of my head. I was beaten all over my body with a
rubber
truncheon and a hammer. I lost consciousness again and again. There
were
nine torturers. I was beaten by them in turn for several hours, while
they
put forward all kinds of evidence .... The next time, January 30th, I
was
stripped naked and while I was beaten they repeated the questions of
the
first examination .... This time they beat me with rubber truncheons
and
a whip ending in small iron weights. . . .
(6) DESTRUCTION OF THE JEWISH POPULATION
The first manifestation of the new repressive measures against the
Jews took the form of mass shootings in Nowy Sącz, Mielec, Tarnow and
Warsaw.
A little later the ghetto at Lublin was wiped out. The German press
reported
that the ghetto had been transferred from Lublin to the village of
Majdan
Tatarski, but in fact almost the entire population was
exterminated.
For instance, it is generally known that a certain number of Jews from
the Lublin ghetto were shut up in goods trucks, which were taken out
beyond
the town and left on a siding for two weeks, until all inside had
perished
of starvation. The majority of the Jews of Lublin were carried off over
a period of several days to the locality of Sobibor, near Wlodawa,
where
they were all murdered with gas, machine-guns and even by being
bayoneted.
.It is an authenticated fact that Lithuanian detachments of szaulis,
who
have recently been brought into Poland, were used for these mass
executions.
The fetor of the decomposing bodies in Sobibor is said to be so great
that
the people of the district, and even cattle, avoid the place. One Pole
working in Sobibor wrote a letter pleading to be granted a transfer
elsewhere,
as he could not remain in such conditions.
Apart from the fortuitous slaughter of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and
the firing at every Jew who left the ghetto (it is confirmed that a
twelve-year-old
lad and an old beggar, both Jews, found outside the ghetto, were shot)
the mass of the Jews is still alive in the ghetto. It is known that
Jews
have been transported from the Reich to the Warsaw ghetto, and these
generally
arrived with baggage and other personal property. But the Warsaw
Gestapo
quickly robbed them of everything. It is also said that 12,000 Jews
were
transported from the Reich, only to be massacred when they reached
Poland.
In the Warsaw ghetto only a few comparatively affluent persons are
still not badly off, and these carry on extensive trading activities on
the occupant authorities' account. The supplies of several kinds of raw
materials, etc., come into the ghetto in this way. But the mass of the
Jews live in incredibly miserable conditions, the mortality is
enormous,
and it is an everyday phenomenon for dead bodies to be lying in the
streets.
The Germans have a particularly bestial method of choosing victims
for execution, or rather, they force the heads of the Jewish community
to provide lists of those to be executed. Then two Ruthenian and two
Jewish
police commanded by a German gendarme go to the houses where the
condemned
are living. If any of these attempt to escape they are found by the
Jewish
police. The victims, without their boots and outer clothing, which are
left for those remaining behind, are then packed horizontally in a
lorry,
often in two layers one on top of the other; are covered with a
tarpaulin,
the Jewish police salute on completion of their part of the task, the
Ruthenian
police seat themselves on the nearest bodies, and the lorry passes
slowly
through the town, driven by a driver in German uniform, with the German
gendarme sitting beside him. A little later a fresh layer of earth
somewhere
in the neighbourhood of Lwow covers a new party of people struck out of
the lists of the living.
In the provincial towns of South-Eastern Poland Ruthenian organizations
organize hunts after the Jews who are still hiding in numbers in the
villages.
The Ruthenian auxiliary police (Hilfspolizei) afterwards take the
prisoners
to the place of execution.
(7) PUBLIC EXECUTIONS
Of recent months the Germans have resorted more and more to the method
of carrying out executions in public.
A number of terrible cases of this nature have recently been reported,
chief among which is the mass public murder carried out at ZGIERZ on
March
20th. The circumstances of this execution are as follows:
On March 7th two Gestapo agents were shot by a Pole whom they were
arresting. The Pole escaped. In revenge, on March 20th the German
police
organized a great round-up in Zgierz and the neighbouring villages,
driving
crowds of Poles to the square in Piątkowska Street in a suburb of the
town
to watch the execution. The square was then surrounded by party and
police
forces. Out of the people who had been driven into the square 100 Poles
were selected at random ; then one of the local German police officials
made the following speech to the condemned and to the silent crowds of
Poles:
”You will have a free spectacle. In 1939 for the murder of one German
we shot 10 Poles ; to-day for the death of every German 50 Poles die,
and
any further incident of this kind will entail the death of 100 Poles
for
one German. The sentences will not be carried out haphazardly, but will
aim at exterminating the Polish intellectual class, which is your
leading
class."
Then the assembled crowd was called upon to hand over the man who had
shot the Gestapo agents within two minutes. As the period passed
without
result, preparations were made to carry out the executions. Lorries
filled
with 100 political prisoners from the prison at Lodz drove up ; and the
prisoners, who were tied in groups of 15, were thrown out so violently
that they fell one on top of another, wounding and maiming one another.
At the same time the 100 people chosen from the crowd were
released.
The execution then took place in front of the crowd, which numbered
some 7,000 people. Fifteen of the condemned were ordered to kneel down,
and were shot. After a salvo had been fired by the firing party, which
numbered 30 men, those still alive were finished off with revolvers.
Then
the bodies were covered with straw and the next 15 dragged up and
ranged
before them. The crowd and the condemned people were silent throughout
the executions, except that one woman as she faced the firing party
cried
out: "Poland was, is, and will be!" Ninety-six men and four women were
shot, among them being two priests, several lawyers, several doctors,
journalists,
and other prominent Poles.
After the execution the police and party forces turned on the assembled
crowd and dispersed it with sticks and rifle-butts.
At CIERLICK GORNY in Cieszyn county, Emil Trepa, a Pole
aged
32 years,
accused of escaping from a concentration camp and spreading foreign
wireless
news, was executed publicly before his own home. Polish miners from
Karwina
and Sucha were brought under police escort to watch the execution, and
the local inhabitants were also driven out to watch. The Germans
compelled
Polish students, colleagues of the condemned man, to set up the
gallows.
When the prisoner, Trepa, dressed only in his shirt and trousers, was
brought
from the prison, he was tortured for two hours in public, among the
crowd
being his paralysed mother, placed specially in front of the house, and
his father, brought from prison. Trepa behaved with dignity and
restraint,
and as he stood below the .gallows shouted:
" Long live Poland! "
At RUDA SlASKA (Polish Silesia) a gallows was prepared for Joachim
Achtelik, of Ruda, while Kokot, of Bielszowice and Sergeant Nowak, of
Godula,
who were to be hanged in their own localities, were compelled to stand
and watch their fellow Pole's death. Thousands of Poles and Germans
were
brought to watch the execution.
Achtelik was a very interesting case. His father regarded himself as
a Pole, but his mother brought up the young Achtelik as a German. The
lad
had artistic gifts, and funds for his education and training as a
painter
were raised by the Polish community. As he grew up he came to love
Poland
fervently and regarded himself as a Pole, and has now laid down his
life
for Poland. He died as he had lived. As he rode to the place of
execution
he carried his head high, but bowed low to the assembled Polish crowd,
many of whom were sobbing. While the sentence was being read in German
he took no notice, but called out to the crowd, asking questions about
his mother. When the sentence was read in Polish he stood to attention.
Before the noose was adjusted around his neck he asked God, in the
words
of Christ on the cross, for strength for himself, and forgiveness for
his
executioners. At this point all the crowd knelt down. Then the Germans
gave orders for them to stand, enforcing their order with the rattle of
carbines from the Hitler Youth. Achtelik died in fifteen
minutes.
The inhabitants of Ruda lit candles in their houses during the
execution
and said prayers for the dead. Although Achtelik asked for a priest, he
was not allowed to see one. Nor were public prayers allowed for his
soul,
and although at first the body was to have been handed to his mother,
the
Germans were so afraid of demonstrations that they removed it for
secret
disposal.
The other two men also died heroically. Kokot was hanged publicly in
BIELSZOWICE, saying not a word, and Sergeant Nowak in Godula. Nowak was
allowed to say good-bye to his wife and children. His last words
were:
"I was present at the death of my colleague, who asked forgiveness
for his executioners. I cannot ask that. I ask God that my blood may
raise
up avengers. You, you Hitlerite bandits, remember that you wilt not
escape
vengeance, even in the tenth generation. Goodbye, wife, good-bye,
children.
Glory to Christ the King!
Long live Poland! " .
On March 18th, not far from the camp for political prisoners situated
in the suburb of Dziesiata at Lublin, the Gestapo and the Lithuanian
camp
guard shot 140 prisoners. The other prisoners in the camp were driven
out
to watch the executions, and afterwards were compelled to bury the
bodies.
At JANOWIEC, Kozienice County, in revenge for the murder of two
Volksdeutsehe
by bandits, a special punitive expedition of German police shot 210
people.
At ZWOLEN, near Radom, a riot broke out as the result of German
pillaging
and stealing; in revenge the Gestapo and German police shot a couple of
hundred young peasants, before the eyes of their families and other
inhabitants.
At LOMZA recently, 24 Polish civil servants were shot because a
telegraph
line was broken during the transmission of German official telegrams.
The
executions were carried out without any preliminary
investigation.
At BOCHNIA, 18 persons accused of anti-German activities were recently
shot at the local cemetery.
It has only recently been possible to ascertain the place where the
100 Poles of WARSAW were executed and buried in a common grave on March
2nd on the order of Fischer, governor of Warsaw. The condemned were
taken
in lorries to TREBLINKA, near Sokolow, and there executed, while
prisoners
in Treblinka were compelled to bury the bodies.
(8) THE TEN MARTYRS OF PRUSZKOW
On September 17th, 1941, from six o'clock in the morning, detachments
of S.S. began to drive out the Polish inhabitants of Pruszkow (near
Łask)
village into the neighbouring forest. As no one knew what it all meant,
there was considerable alarm. Children were also driven out, crying
bitterly.
The people were told that in a few hours they would be returning home,
but the worst was expected. In a glade the people were drawn up in a
half-circle,
and the youngsters under eighteen and old people over sixty were
allowed
to go. To increase the feeling of solemnity the Germans forbade those
who
remained to light cigarettes or' to put their hands in their pockets.
Behind
the half-circle of Polish people were detachments of S.A., and, at
intervals,
fully armed police. Meantime, almost all the local German colonists had
also gathered. Cars drove up with the local military commander, police
commander, officials of the local council, and German middle class
people
from the county town of Łask. In front of the Poles the Germans built a
kind of fence and covered it with straw. When this task was completed a
lorry drove into the glade; it was covered with tarpaulin; out of it
climbed
an escort, who brutally dragged five condemned men. The Landrat (county
head) stepped into the middle of the glade, and began to read out the
sentence
in German, while an interpreter translated it into Polish. The manner
of
reading the sentence was very unpleasant, and its contents loathsome
and
merciless:
"Listen, Poles! On August 28th a German farm was burnt down at Dobroń,
several ricks were set on fire in the country of Sieradz, a German
estate
near Lodz was burned. During the last few days ricks have been burnt in
Marzenin. For all these crimes committed by a Polish band ten people of
Marzenin will be executed by shooting. The Polish criminals are burning
and destroying grain prepared for the German army, which is moving
forward
in a victorious campaign. By destroying this grain you want to strike
it
a blow in the back, but remember that that army will turn its anger
against
you and will punish you without mercy. The Polish bandits, the bands of
brigands and incepdiaries will be crushed. Remember, Poles, that if you
violate the German laws, if you do not submit to us in everything, the
punishing German hand will fall on every one of you."
When the Landrat had finished reading, the condemned were bound with
ropes at the wrists and turned with their backs to the public. Not one
of the condemned was recognised as among those who had been arrested at
Marzenin for burning down the ricks. They were all strangers, young,
and
completely unknown in those parts. They went to the place of execution
like automata. They looked like men who had been tortured and
tormented,
one of them could hardly walk at all, and staggered along. When the
youngest
realised what was about to happen to him he began to cry out:
"People, rescue me, what am I dying for? I am innocent ! "
The crowd remained passive, completely petrified.
The firing squad fired a salvo and the five men fell.
Then four more were dragged out of the lorry. They were elderly men,
inclined to corpulence, looking well and without a trace of having been
beaten up. Not one of these men either was recognised by any of the
watchers.
They were ordered to kneel down on the bodies of the previous five. One
of them screamed piercingly in German: "Brothers, you are shedding your
own blood. Brothers, I am perishing at your hands!"
The salvo rang out and put an end to their lives.
Then several Poles were summoned to remove the bodies. These men saw
that several of the dead men had been badly and bestially maltreated
again
and again, and one body was putrefying and the flesh falling away. A
tenth
man was lying in the lorry, already half dead; he was finished off with
rifle butts, and the other bodies flung in on top of him. It was stated
that there were two Germans among the ten men, and that the man who had
appealed to brotherhood was named Krause. Polish women began to swoon
during
the execution, and the members of the S.A. shouted:
"Polish bandits, Polish savages, hell, this is good for you! Now you
will learn that you can't destroy German grain."
Only one remark came from the crowd; it was made by an old
woman:
"May God take you to himself, as martyrs."
After the executions the Germans marched away singing their cheerful
soldiers' songs.
III GENERAŁ SIKORSKI'S PROTEST SPEECH
The wave of terror in Poland has assumed such vast
dimensions
in the
spring of this year, after Himmler’s visit, that the Polish Government
has again decided to call the attention of the Allied Nations to these
crimes unheard of in history. On Saturday, June 6th, the Polish Gabinet
debated the form of this protest, and it has been decided that General
Sikorski shall give a protest speech on the radio to Poland. This
protest
has been made known to the world in a diplomatic note which the Polish
Government has addressed to all Allied and Neutral
Governments.
General Sikorski said:
Mass-shootings and torture of tens of thousands in concentration camps;
confiscation of property and all means of production; expulsion from
businesses;
the deportation of over a million and a-half people; the systematic
starvation
of the Polish nation, and the banning of any assistance to the sick and
feeble; the methodic and continuous destruction of Polish culture; the
ruthless extermination of everything Polish in lands inhabited by Poles
for a thousand years - all these continue without respite.
.
For some time we did not bring this appalling state of affairs to the
notice of the world, but confined ourselves to noting only the facts
and
their perpetrators, so that the hour of victory should also be the hour
of stern retribution. However, when-under the influence of insane fear
- the wave of terror assumed such vast dimensions in Poland in the
spring
of this year, that is to say, after Himmler's visit to our country, the
Polish Government again decided to call the attention of the Allied
Nations
to these crimes, unheard of in history.
This new wave of terror began in March of this year by mass arrests
in Warsaw, Cracow, Lublin and other Polish towns, and by the
deportation
of the prisoners thus seized, including a large number of women, to
concentration
camps ill-famed for their cruelty.
The professors of the University of Lwow, who were imprisoned after
the Germans entered the city, have been deported to an unknown
destination,
and there is no trace of their whereabouts.
The same happened in Wilno, where the Archbishop Monseigneur
Jalbrzykowski,
a great patriot, beloved by his flock, was also arrested, and with him
the Canons of the Cathedral and the professors and students of the
local
seminary.
In the prisons of Poznan a number of prominent local citizens were
tortured to death. Additional victims who have been sentenced to death
await execution.
To smash the resisiance of the railwaymen in the Upper Silesian
junctions,
galIows have been erected in eighteen Silesian towns. Members of the
educated
classes, railwaymen and workers, are being hanged there, and
simultaneously
all the school children of Upper Silesia are herded there to watch this
cruel spectacle.
New concentration camps have been set up in which peasants are herded
for their refusal to supply the occupying authorities with their quotas
of agricultural produce.
The German authorities, in deathly fear of a Polish rising, sent 1,200
officers of the reserve to concentration camps in the April of this
year.
Several scores of Polish war prisoners were charged and
tried,
and
as a rule sentenced to death or lifelong imprisonment.
In February of this year special lecturers arrived in Poland from
Germany,
and in confidential German meetings they reviewed the general war
situation,
and explained the necessity for a policy of increased terrorism in the
following words :
"The war is nearing its end, and the final decision will soon be
reached.
"The Germans who came to the occupied countries must defend themselves
on the spot, and must actively co-operate with the occupying armies, as
the menace of the enemy is everywhere present. These Germans must rely
on their own strength in the first resort, they must be the guardians
of
the German armies' rear. They must keep constant watch on their own
houses
and those of their neighbours. The front turns its eyes to them and
requires
sacrifices from them. The year 1918 cannot be repeated, and they are to
see to this. The present war is not a war for territories or frontiers,
but a struggle for the very existence of Germany."
In accordance with this viewpoint, which betrays so significant a state
of mind, military organisations have been formed to which all civilian
Germans belong. They were given arms, they obtained the right to have
their
own court of law, and they were promised complete immunity for any acts
of brute force which they might commit against the defenceless
population.
Once more, Germany is seizing hostages in mass from amongst well-known
social and political workers, and every class of the nation. A month
ago,
in Warsaw, a hundred of them were shot as a reprisal for the shooting
of
one German, and in the Lublin district 400 were executed for the
killing
of one German henchman.
The Jewish population in Poland is doomed to die out in accordance
with the slogan, "All the Jews should have their throats cut, no matter
what the outcome of the war may be." Real massacres of tens of.
thousands
of Jews in Lublin, Wilno, Lwow, Stanislawow, Rzeszow and Miechow have
been
carried out this year. People are being starved to death in the
ghettoes.
Mass executions are held; even those suffering from typhus are
shot.
Finally, the German Reich, which is threatened by the gravest shortage
of man-power, has committed the greatest possible outrage. In Western
Poland,
which was incorporated in the Reich against international law, the
German
authorities are forcibly enrolling Poles in their army. The number of
Poles
thus enrolled already amounts to 70,000 in Pomerania and to 100,000 in
Silesia. In the so-called General Gouvernement the Poles are forced to
serve in the auxiliary formations of the German army. Both these
measures
are not only a clear violation of the Hague Convention of 1907, and
contrary
to elementary international usage, they are simply criminal. The
citizens
of an occupied country are being compelled by brute force to spill
their
blood in the cause of the hated invader. They are being forced to fight
against their brothers. The determined resistance to, and the mass
desertions
from, this pressgang conscription, unheard of in the 20th century, have
already led to numerous death sentences in the Home Country.
The Polish Government is bringing all these facts to the cognisance
of the Allied Governments, and to the public opinion of the world. The
German terror is also raging in other countries of Europe to-day. The
perpetrators
of these crimes must be brought to account, and this principle ought to
become the guiding policy of the Allies. Only the announcement of
retribution
and the application of reprisals, wherever possible, can stop the
rising
tide of madness of the German assassins, and save hundreds of thousands
of innocent victims from certain death.
While I am paying my deepest homage to the memory of the murdered and
tortured victims, I wish to assure my country on behalf of the Polish
Government
that the latter is fully aware of all these crimes, and will not omit
any
one of them from the final reckoning.
Be certain of victory – endure - do not allow yourselves to be
deflected
by outbursts of despair - do not let yourselves be influenced by false
suggestions. Maintain your discipline and determination as heretofore,
those qualities which have evoked admiration and respect for the Polish
nation throughout the world.
Germany has always worshipped brute force, and has
stained her
path
with rivers of blood. The Germans will certainly not overturn the Nazi
regime of their own free will, as this regime is ideally suited to
their
national character and given full play to their innate characteristics.
Therefore, the year 1918 will not be repeated in this war. But Germany,
who, as Goering has said, has been raised high by the genius of her
Fuehrer,
will fall into a bottomless abyss when the power of the German army and
of the Nazi party have been broken. Germany cannot escape her defeat.
This
is clearly shown by the events of all war fronts, and by the gigantic
raids
of the Allied Air Force, which bring the German nation only a foretaste
of the just and well-merited retribution she will undergo.
IV RESOLUTION OF THE POLISH NATIONAL COUNCIL
On July 7th, 1942, at a special session dealing with the
latest reports
of German atrocities in Poland the Polish National Council unanimously
adopted the following resolution:-
The Polish National Council, after hearing the report by the Polish
Minister for Home Affairs on the recent intensification of the crimes
committed
by the German occupants in Poland:
1. Charges their Executive Committee to add to the proclamation of
the National Council on June 10th to the Parliaments of all free
nations
the newly-revealed facts of the systematic destruction of the vital
strength
of the Polish Nation and the planned slaughter of practically the whole
Jewish population;
2. Supports the Government in all the steps it may take to strengthen
more than at present the interest of the Allied Governments and Nations
in the sufferings, without any exception, of the entire population of
the
Polish Republic, and in assuring the necessary punishment for these
crimes;
3. Appeals to the Government that, in co-operation with the Governments
of States fighting in the common cause, particularly Great Britain and
the U.S.A., it should find all possibilities and means of paralising
now,
by adequate retaliation while the war is still on, the terror being
carried
out by the Germans;
4. Expresses to the Polish people the deepest homage for their
steadfast
stand, in spite of the terrible persecutions, in the fight with the
invader,
and for their solidarity through mutual help, which surpasses all
differences
of religion and nationality, in holding out in the present immeasurable
misfortune;
5. Assures the people at home that the Polish Government, together
with the High Command of the Polish Armies and the National Council, is
striving for the most effective co-operation with the leaders of the
war
operations of the Allied States in their task and efforts for the
speedy
liberation of Poland from the German army of occupation;
6. Sends to the people at home words of faith in the undoubted victory
of the Allied States who, in freeing Poland, will bring plentiful
compensation
to the whole population for all the sufferings they are bearing at
present.
V PRESS CONFERENCE AT THE MINISTRY OF INFORMATION
On July 9th a press conference was held in the British
Ministry of Information)
under the chairmanship of Mr. Brendan Bracken, the British Minister of
Information, assisted by Mr. J. Brebner, the Director of the News
Division.
Mr. Mikolajczyk, the Polish Minister for Home Affairs, Prof. Stronski,
the Polish Minister of Information, and Father Kaczynski, Mr. Kulerski,
Dr. I. Schwarzbart and Mr. S. Zygielbojm, members of the Polish
National
Council, also took part. Below we give an extensive summary of the
statements
and reports presented to this conference.
COMMON MURDERERS
A DECLARATION BY MR. BRENDAN BRACKEN,
MINISTER OF INFORMATION
We are about to hear a tale as ghastly as any ever known to history.
700,000
Jews alone have been murdered in Poland. The treatment of every other
religion,
including the Catholic religion, has been marked by a bestiality
unknown
in any previous record of history. The Germans have excelled themselves
as the most brutal nation which has ever defaced the annals of the
human
race. WHAT GIVES ME SOME SMALL SATISFACTION IS THAT I, AS A MEMBER OF
THE
GOVERNMENT, CAN REASSURE OUR POLISH FRIENDS HERE THAT THE PEOPLE
RESPONSIBLE
FOR THESE MURDERS AND OUTRAGES IN POLAND WILL BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE.
They
will be treated as common murderers, which they are, and those
gangsters
will be punished with the utmost rigidity of the law, the utmost
strictness
of the law, and that is a matter of very great importance. I can assure
you that the Government of Great Britain and all the Governments of the
United Nations are in complete agreement on this question, that every
care
should be taken to secure the names of the persons responsible for
these
crimes; that they should be brought speedily to justice at the
conclusion
of the war, and that their punishment will fit their crimes; and,
believe
me, in view of the crimes committed by the Germans, the punishment will
be in many cases the most severe known to any law, and I hope that that
fact will be rubbed steadily into the minds of the beasts responsible
for
the terrible happenings in Poland.
THE GERMAN TERROR IN POLAND
STATEMENT BY THE POLISH MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS,
MR. S. MIKOLAJCZYK
You have before you a short resume of the statement which I made in the
Polish National Council as the Minister who is responsible for
informing
the Polish Government on the situation in Poland.
You will certainly be struck by the number of Polish citizens who have
been shot or murdered in other ways, which amounts to over 400,000. It
is almost certain that this figure is in reality still higher, but I
restrict
myself to those cases which are proved beyond all doubt. One year ago
the
figure was 80,000; later on 100,000 and 140,000: and in the last few
months
it has risen to 400,000 murdered Poles and Jews. There were two reasons
for this appalling increase. First, the tremendous increase in the
terror
applied to the Poles, and secondly, the beginning of wholesale
extermination
of the Jews.
The tide of German terror usually rises either as a prelude to a
military
offensive or in cases of growing resistance which threaten to lead to
an
outbreak of violence.
In Poland both reasons played their part, but there was also a third.
Polish territory separates Germany from the fighting zone of the
eastern
front, and therefore the Germans are particularly concerned with
keeping
the Poles in submission.
Yet the primary reason for the methods applied by the Germans in Poland
is that they are aiming at the extermination of the whole of the Polish
population, so as to make it possible to include the entire territory
as
bare land free of any traces of Polish life and culture into their
Lebensraum.
This explains the outstanding ferocity of the German terror in Poland,
which, coupled with an unusually destructive economic, social and
political
system, they believe to be the best means of wiping out all traces of
Poland.
The Germans have been strengthened in their resolve by the hopeless
failure
of their attempts to win over the Poles in 1939, and by the refusal of
the Poles to join the anti-Soviet crusade in 1941, both of which proved
beyond any doubt that there is no possibility of either breaking or
demoralising
my country.
It may seem to be impossible to exterminate a nation of 35 millions,
but the figure of over 2 1/2 million people who have disappeared from
Poland
since 1939, including 400,000 killed, tells a ghastly story. That does
not take into account the losses inflicted upon our nation by the
disastrous
decrease in the birthrate, and the increase in mortality through
epidemics
and systematic starva•tion, all of which are the blessings of Hitler's
"New Order."
THAT IS WHY MY COUNTRY APPEALS IN THE MOST URGENT TERMS TO OUR
GOVERNMENT
AND TO ALL ALLIED GOVERNMENTS, FIRST, FOR THE OPENING OF A SECOND FRONT
IN ORDER TO BRING ABOUT A QUICKER DEFEAT OF GERMANY, AND SECONDLY TO
BEGIN
WITHOUT DELAY RETALIATION AGAINST THE GERMAN NATION, A NATION WHICH
ONLY
UNDERSTANDS THE LANGUAGE OF IMMEDIATE RETRIBUTION FOR CRIME.
During the last three months the Gestapo have intensified the terror
very severely. Their efforts are directed towards the tracking down and
extermination of all signs of Polish patriotic and freedom activities.
Throughout the country, and particularly in Poznan and Warsaw, there is
a ceaseless wave of political arrests, and hardly anybody arrested is
being
released; most of those arrested are kept permanently in penal
confinement
under the Gestapo, in ordinary prisons and in concentration camps; many
of them, particularly in Western Poland and Pomerania, are executed by
the Gestapo shortly after their arrest.
During these months there has been a great increase in the application
by the Gestapo of third degree methods during the cross-examination of
persons arrested. The beating and torture of prisoners is so intense
that
more and more cases of death of prisoners during cross-examination are
occurring. The Gestapo applies not only terrible beatings, but also the
most ingenious sadistic tortures; the tearing out of nails, hanging by
the feet, beating in the stomach, injuring the most sensitive parts of
the body, and kicking with heavy boots so that pieces of clothing are
driven
into the flesh. Most of the victims return from the torture chamber to
prison in a state of terrible physical exhaustion; this hastens the
death
of many in prisons and concentration camps.
The Gestapo men in Warsaw and Poznan are specially distinguished by
their cruelties.
The torture of persons under examination always aims at the extraction
of personal information or concerning secret organizations, so that
afterwards
the Gestapo terror may the more easily seize up on fresh cases of
patriotic
activities and fresh people.
The state of things in this sphere is so severe and threatening that
all possible means should be taken to bring about an even partial
relief
and mitigation of the situation.
News has been received of increased terror in Upper Silesia. There
are gallows in eighteen Silesian towns. Those arrested are hanged. In
Dombrowa,
Szurley, Bendzin and Sosnowiec they are hanged publicly on gallows and
trees, the public, even schoolchildren, being driven to look at these
crimes.
In the concentration camp at Oswiecim itself the number of prisoners
held has risen in the course of three months by 8,000.
The mass arrests concern especially Polish officers of the reserve,
Polish peasants who do not deliver the quota of agricultural produce
demanded
by the Germans, and Polish railwaymen and workers accused of sabotage
in
their work.
A public execution of 100 Poles - of whom four were women - was carried
out at Zgierz, a town near Lodz, on March 20th, in the presence of
7,000
people, for the killing of two Germans by a Pole on March 7th. The
bodies
were beaten with revolvers while still alive. This took place after the
public announcement that 10 Poles had been shot for the killing of one
German - and now the rate is 50 for one.
On March 18th in the concentration camp at Dziesiąta, near Lublin
(where
there were formerly 1,150 Soviet prisoners, of whom 950 were shot), 140
Polish political prisoners out of 800 imprisoned there were shot. Among
them were a number of peasants imprisoned for delivering an
insufficient
agricultural quota.
At Zwolen, near Radom, 380 persons were shot before the eyes of their
families, and at Waclawow nearby 160 for the alleged killing of one
German.
In Janowiec, near Kozienice, 210 were shot for two Germans
killed.
400 Poles were shot near Lublin, and 540 near Radom - in each case
for one German killed. In Bochnia 18 people deported from Cracow were
shot,
in Lancut 30; near Hrubieszow 20 peasants were shot for sheltering
Russian
war prisoners. At Rudka Kijanska, near Lubartow, 211: persons were
murdered
in one village by being shot of having hand grenades thrown into their
homes. In Poznan there is an average of 200 executions at the citadel
monthly.
Sulmierzyce, Kalisz, Lask, Szczepanow and Radomsko are other places
where
mass murders have occurred. Everywhere throughout the length and
breadth
of Poland there are scenes of executions, murder and terror.
Still worse is the situation of the Jews. The Warsaw ghetto is already
notorious. Hunger, death and sickness are exterminating the Jewish
population
systematically and continually. In the Lublin district on the night of
March 23rd to 24th, the Jewish population were driven out of their
homes.
The sick and the infirm were killed on the spot. One hundred and eight
children of from 2 to 9 years old in a Jewish orphanage were taken
outside
the town, together with their nurses, and murdered. Altogether that
night
2,500 people were massacred, and the remaining 26,000 Jews of Lublin
were
removed to the concentration camps at Belzec and Trawniki. Eight
thousand
people were deported from Izbica Kujawska for an unknown destination.
In
Belzec and Trawniki murders are also carried out by means of poison
gas.
There have been mass murders at Rawa Ruska and Bilgoraj, where the
Jewish
communities have ceased to exist. At Wawolnica, near Kazimierz, on
March
22nd, the S.S. shot 120 Jews in the market-place. An unknown number of
Jews was led out of the town and slaughtered. On March 30th, Jews were
driven from Opole to Naleczow, 350 being killed on the way. The rest
were
put into goods trucks, which were then sealed, and deported to an
unknown
destination. At Mielec about 1,300 Jews were slaughtered on March 9th.
In Mir 2,000 Jews were slaughtered, in Nowogrodek 2,500, in Wolozyn
1,800,
and in Kojdanow 4,000. Thirty thousand Jews from Hamburg were deported
to Minsk, and there all were murdered. The Jews slaughtered in Lwow
amount
to 30,000, in Wilno 50,000, in Stanislawow 15,000, in Tarnopol 5,000,
in
Zloczow 2,000, and in Brzezany 4,000. Reports have been received of the
murder of Jews at Tarnow, Radom, Zborow, Kolomyja, Sambor, Stryj,
Drohobycz,
Zbaraz, Brody, PrzemysI, Kolo, and Domb.
The compulsion to dig one's own grave, mowing down with machine-guns
and hand grenades, and even poisoning with gas are everyday methods of
annihilating the Jewish population. In Lwow the Jewish Council itself
had
to provide a list of victims.
The number of Poles executed, murdered and tortured to death during
nearly three years of German occupation already amounts to 200,000
persons.
The number of massacred Jews exceeds 200,000.
Therefore we consider that from the beginning of war to date
about:
150,000 Poles were killed in the September, 1939, campaign; 200,000
are prisoners of war in Germany, 1,500,000 Poles deported to forced
labour
to Germany, 170,000 Poles have be en compulsorily recruited for the
German
Army from the incorporated territory; 400,000 Polish citizens (Poles
and
Jews) have been killed.
This picture takes on yet more sombre hues when we recall the number
of people, amounting to about 1,500,000, removed from Western
Poland-the
territory incorporated into the Reich - into the General-Gouvernement,
and the losses which we are bearing as a result of the fall in the
birth
rate, the increase in the death rate and the spreading of infectious
diseases.
The Germans, in relation to Poland, have applied and are applying the
policy of clearing Lebensraum for themselves by the systematic
extermination
of the whole population living in those territories and the
annihilation
of all traces of Polish life and culture.
The people in Poland think that the reaction to the unexampled torture
inflicted upon them is too weak, as much on the part of their own
Government
as on the part of the Pope and the Allies. They demand that an
equivalent
code should be applied to the Germans in the United States ; at least
some
tens of thousands of them should be imprisoned in concentration camps
and
regarded as hostages. The mere threat of a tribunal in the future and
the
inexorable application of reprisals does not help at all.
In connection with the above state of affairs, we have received from
Poland during the last few days the following appeal addressed by the
responsible
leaders of the Polish underground movement to the Polish Prime
Minister,
General Sikorski:
"For over 2 1/2 years the Germans have been carrying out a systematic
plan, prepared for years beforehand, for exterminating the Polish
nation
as a natural barrier to their centuries-old Drang nach Osten.
" The fury of this action has reached such dimensions during the past
few weeks that its further continuance threatens the Polish
intellectual
classes with complete annihilation, and the whole nation with such a
loss
in strength that after the war we may not be able to deal with the
great
tasks which will await us.
"From various parts of Poland alarming news is coming in confirming
that the furor teutonicus, having reached a murderous paroxysm, is
sowing
mass murder and fire among the innocent Polish people.
For example:
"1. For delay in delivering the agricultural quota, which very often
exceeds all possibility of fulfilment, there are tortures,
dispossession,
labour camps, concentration camps. which as a rule mean death
sentences,
and recently, as was proved in the Lublin districts, even destruction
or
burning down of the whole farm together with the farmer's family, who
are
locked up for the purpose in the farm buildings. those trying to save
themselves
by running away being shot on the spot.
"2. For an attack on a German, for giving shelter or help to escaping
Russian prisoners or partisans, for the damaging of communications by
saboteurs,
hundreds of innocent Polish people living in the neighbourhood perish
immediately.
"3. On the discovery of a secret publication or any kind of appearance
of partaking in freedom activities there are tortures and death
sentences,
or long terms in concentration camps, the equivalent of death
sentences,
with prolonged tortures.
"4. On discovery of trading in articles of daily use: labour camp,
concentration camp or death sentence.
"5. For any kind of patriotic gesture or of criticism towards the
occupants:
concentration camp. As basis for the authentication of these crimes,
all
denunciations resulting from personal prejudices are regularly admitted
as evidence.
"The wave of terror and murder includes the whole of Poland, although
only fragments of news of the German barbarism get through to the
civilised
world.
"It has gone so far that there is no Polish family to-day which is
not weeping for some dear one murdered or tortured in a concentration
camp.
"In this state of things, the protection of human life in Poland
assumes
a fundamental meaning for her future.
"There arises therefore urgent and definite necessity for:
" (a) Awakening the consciousness of the whole civilised world against
the German barbarians ;
"(b) Applying the most severe reprisals permitted •by international
law, preceded by a stern diplomatic note to the German Government and a
warning proclamation to the German nation, both the note and the
proclamation
being published in the languages of all civilised nations."
THE PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH
STATEMENT BY MONSIGNORE KACZYNSKI,
MEMBER OF THE POLISH NATIONAL COUNCIL
. The wounds inflicted on religion in Poland are indescribably
terrible.
Recent communications from the Vatican and from the Swedish Bishop Eric
Muller in Stockholm paint a tragic picture of the Church in Nazi
occupied
Poland.
According to this news, seven Polish dioceses have be en completely
liquidated: Poznan, Gniezno, Wloclawek, Plock, Pelplin, Lodz and
Katowice,
and many other dioceses have been partially liquidated. Seven bishops
were
deported and 90 per cent. of the clergy imprisoned or exiled. Still
worse,
a large number have been executed by the Gestapo. Churches are closed,
and many millions of Catholics are entirely without Mass or the
Sacraments,
in a country where over 70 per cent. of the people are Catholics. The
following
bishops are now in Nazi concentration camps: Archbishop Jablrzykowski
of
Wilno, Bishop Fulman of Lublin, Bishop Jasinski of Lodz, Bishop
Wetmanski
of Plock, Bishop Kozal of Wloclawek, the Bishop Auxiliary of Lublin,
Goral,
and the Bishop Auxiliary of Lodz, Tomczak.
In the Archdioceses of Poznan and Gniezno, before September, 1939,
there were 828 priests. Of these 86 were murdered by the Gestapo,
without
trial or evidence of guilt, 451 were arrested and sent to concentration
camps, while others were deported to the General Gouvernement. There
are
now only 34 priests left in these two dioceses for a Polish population
of about 2,000,000.
In Poznan, which had a population of over 200,000, there were 30
churches
and 47 chapels. To-day in Poznan there are only two churches open for
the
Poles.
In Lodz, with a population of 700,000, only four churches are now
open.
Since the beginning of the war 2,700 priests have been
arrested.
At this moment some 1,200 priests are in concentration camps.
The above is sufficient to show the difficult situation of the Churches
in Poland to-day, and there is no hope of immediate
improvement.
THE ORGANIZED SLAUGHTER OF JEWS
STATEMENT BY DR. 1. SCHWARZBART,
POLISH NATIONAL COUNCIL
The most horrible news about cold-blooded slaughter is reaching us
constantly.
But news which recently reached London from reliable sources surpass
the
most horrible examples in the history of barbarism. It is difficult to
grasp that a human being could fall so low as has the contemporary
German,
educated by Hitlerism.
It is difficult to believe these facts-and yet they are true. I wish
to give you some details of this catastrophe, out of this ocean of
suffering
which has befallen a nation with thousands of years of
history.
Wilno: Out of a Jewish population of 65,000, about 15,000 remain alive.
They are artisans-left alive because Hitler still needs them. All
others,
about 50,000, were gradually slaughtered by the Germans and Lithuanians
in the Ponary mountains.
Pinsk: The Germans slaughtered about 8,000 Jews between the ages of
16 and 60. At first they took about 3,000 Jews from their houses. In
the
villages Halewo and Zapole the Jews were ordered to dig their own
graves
and stand in front of them. Then machine-guns went into
action.
On another occasion about 4,000-5,000 Jews were taken from the town.
No trace was ever found of them.
Brzesc: about 6,000 Jews were slaughtered. Janow: about 300 Jews were
slaughtered; Homsk: the whole of the Jewish population were wiped out;
Motol: Jews were slaughtered, including children.
Kobryn: Jews were driven out of their homes and the whole Jewish
district
was set on fire. Wlodzimierz: many thousands of Jews were murdered. A
mass
grave is evidence of their fate. Bialystok: mass executions of Jews,
irrespective
of sex and age. Lomza: about
1,800 Jews were killed. .
Czyzew Szlachecki (near Lomza): about 6,000 Jews were driven together
into anti-tank trenches ; they were murdered and put into a mass grave.
But that does not exhaust the list. The Germans organized mass
slaughter
and mass executions in the towns: Zborów, Kołomyja, Sambor, Stryj,
Drohobycz,
Zbaraż, Przęmyślany, Kuty, Sniatyn, Zaleszczyki, Brody, Przemyśl, Rawa
Ruska, Kosów, Lachowicze, Tarnów, Radom and others.
The reports speak the same language of horror, suffering and death
as to the fate of Jews in other places, towns and villages.
STATEMENT BY MR. S. ZYGIELBOJM,
POLISH NATIONAL COUNCIL
I realise that the facts you have in the report of our
Minister of the
Interior, Mr. Mikolajczyk, are so horrifying that one may ask if human
beings can be degraded to
such a brutality. Therefore, I want, first of all, to make this point
clear: I was in Warsaw during the first six months of the German
occupation.
I wore the yellow badge all Jews are forced to wear. I myself lived in
the ghetto when it started, when the Germans expelled tens of thousands
of Jews, beaten and robbed of all their possessions, from their homes
in
Warsaw. I saw with my own eyes hundreds of acts of cruelty and murders
that made one's blood curdle, and I have more than once seen the
victims
or these cruelties.
Now reading the names of towns in which massacres are going on I can
see not only the faces of hundreds of friends brutally murdered, but I
can see also the figures and the faces of the Nazi henchmen, the
Gestapo
and the S.S. men doing their bloody job with a cynical smile.
Therefore,
I know that every word of the report is true. I was a member of the
Jewish
Community Council in Warsaw under the Gestapo control, and had to deal
with hundreds of cruel orders of the Gestapo, such as to deliver to
them
ten thousand Jews for forced labour and numbers of Jews to be shot for
imaginary individual crimes, as the Germans applied the principle of
collective
responsibility. More than once my friends and I had to defend ourselves
against the mean German demands to deliver to them the authors of
secret
patriotic pamphlets under the threat of shooting hundreds of hostages.
I also had to take care of thousands of Jewish victims deported from
the
parts of Poland incorporated in the Reich as well as of the families of
Jews brutally murdered by the Germans.
It is a nightmare which is still going on in Poland and we cannot yet
give the exact number of the Jews who have been murdered. In the
reports
we have received from Poland, written at different times, the total
amounts
to many hundreds of thousands.
Assuming that the occupant Germans are also using starvation as a means
for exterminating the Jews of Poland we have to accept as probable the
figure of 700,000 dead mentioned in one report from Poland. In the
Warsaw
ghetto alone 50,000 people died of starvation in 1941, and the death
rate
is now 6,000 a month.
In any case, there is no doubt that in Poland a monstrous plan of
extermination.
of all the Jews is being ruthlessly executed.
The mass slaughter of Jews is only a part of a general plan to destroy
the whole Polish nation in order to make living space for the
Germans.
TRAGIC TRUTH
BY PROFESSOR ST. STRONSKI,
POLISH MINISTER OF INFORMATION
I can assure you that what you have learned from our
information is
the truth, but it is only part of the truth, because sending
information
in to Poland about what happens in the world, and getting information
about
what happens in Poland is not a simple and easy task. But, as you know,
we Poles, for 150 years, have been not only the most studious scholars,
but, łet me say, masters of conspiracy. When we are able one day, after
this war, to write the full story of what was the information in Poland
and from Poland, it will be a most interesting chapter of journalism. I
trust you will remember that, whatever you can say and write about the
German horrors in Poland will never be exaggerated. EVEN THE TERRIBLE
FIGURE
OF 700,000 JEWS, IF YOU CALCULATE NOT ONLY THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN DIRECTLY
EXECUTED, BUT THOSE WHO HAVE LOST TREIR L1VES BY ANY K1ND OF
PERSECUTION,
S1NCE THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR, 1S CORRECT. This is only a part of the
tragic
truth about persecution of the whole Polish nation. Believe me, your
appeal
to world opinion is most necessary.
VI JUSTICE WILL BE DONE
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT issued on October 25th) 1941,
statement
declaring
that:
"The practice of executing scores of innocent hostages in reprisal for
isolated attacks on Germans in countries temporarily under the Nazi
heel
revolts a world already inured to suffering and brutality. Civilized
peoples
long ago adopted the basic principle that no man should be punished for
the deed of another .... Unable to apprehend the persons involved in
these
attacks the Nazis characteristical1y slaughter 50 or 100 innocent
persons.
Those who would collaborate with Hitler or try to appease him cannot
ignore
this ghastly warning. . . . These are the acts of desperate men who
know
in their hearts that they cannot win. Frightfulness only sows the seeds
of hatred, which will one day bring a fearful retribution."
THE PRIME MINISTER,MR. CHURCHILL, issued on the same day
a
statement
that:
"The Government associate themselves fully with the sentiments of
horror
and condemnation expressed by the President of the United States upon
the
Nazi butcheries in France. These cold-blooded executions of innocent
people
will only recoil upon the savages who order and execute them .... The
atrocities
in Poland, in Yugoslavia, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and above all,
behind
the German fronts in Russia, surpass anything that has been known since
the darkest and most bestial ages of mankind. They are but a foretaste
of what Hitler would inflict up on the British and American peoples if
only he could get the power. Retribution for these crimes must
henceforward
take its place among the major purposes of the war."
MR. EDEN, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on
June
17th, replying
in the House of Commons to Captain Graham, who asked about German acts
against Poles, said:
"His Majesty's Government have received information regarding these and
similar crimes and violations of international law committed by the
German
occupying authorities in Poland. I am glad to have this opportunity to
remind these authorities and also the Polish people, who are showing
such
tenacity and fortitude in their present trials, of the Prime
:Minister's
statement on October 25th last that retribution for such crimes must
henceforward
take its place among the major purposes of the war."
On July 1st, 1942, in the House of Common,)
Lieut.-Colonel Sir
Thomas
Moore asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps are
being
taken to warn the German people of the retribution that will be exacted
on them if they continue to support or endure their Nazi leaders and
countenance
the continued murder of innocent people in the conquered countries. MR.
EDEN replied:
"Both the Prime Minister and I have publicly declared that, by
continuing
to support and tolerate the Nazi regime, the German people are
accepting
an ever-increasing responsibility for the actions which that regime is
committing in their name. We are bringing this home to the German
people
by every means at our disposal. Detailed news of Nazi atrocities, which
are systematical1y suppressed in the German home Press and wireless,
are
given prominence by the British Broadcasting Corporation and in our
leaflets,
and the German people are continually warned of their responsibility in
condoning such atrocities."
At Nottingham, on July 23rd, MR. EDEN said:
"The recent German atrocities in occupied countries had shocked the
world.
These were not isolated acts springing from the barbarous impulses of
individual
Nazi soldiers and officials. They represented the policy of the German
Government, which had deliberately adopted a policy of terrorism. Such
was our solidarity that a crime against one was felt as a crime against
all. We stood united in our resolve to exact full and stern retribution
at the appointed time."
CHIEF RABBI, Dr. J. H. Hertz, in a broadcast speech on
June
28th, 1942,
said:
"Some months ago I had occasion to speak of the Jewish agony in
enemy-occupied
lands. I stated that men would turn grey when they heard the full story
of the Nazi torture and slaughter of Jews in Poland. Those who might
then
have doubted the accuracy of my information have now the official
account
just issued by the Polish Government, which records the cruel and
fiendish
killing of men, women and children on a scale unparalleled in the
annals
of Europe. I envy not the man who will learn the details of this
bestial
carnage and not be stirred to the depths of his being, and roused to
burning
indignation by the orgy of savagery it reveals. As to my Jewish
brethren,
each one of them can but repeat the words of lamentation spoken
twenty-five
centuries ago by Jeremiah the Prophet: 'Oh that my head were waters,
and
mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the
slain of my people.'
"And - most horrible thought of all - the slaughter of which we are
told to-day is only a beginning. Nazi spokesmen have repeatedly
informed
the world that the whole of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe -
seven
million human beings - must be exterminated. And that sentence of death
upon an entire people is being carried out! Alas, that the solemn
announcement
by the Allied Nations of condign and inescapable punishment for such
diabolical
murders has so far not prevented their continuance. And the systematic
mass massacre now in full swing against the Jews is not intended to end
with them. There is little doubt that many another people will
similarly
be doomed to extermination by these dehumanized criminals.
"Men of good will the world over at last realize the mortal danger
that threatens humanity and the whole sacred heritage of man at the
hands
of the barbarians of Berlin. They all join Israel in the fervent prayer
that God in His mercy speedily cause us to see the complete triumph of
the forces of Freedom in this cosmic conflict."
CARDINAL HINSLEY, the Archbishop of Westminster,
broadcast on
July 9th,
1942, the following special message:
Some people there are who reject offhand anything and everything that
does
not directly touch their own noses.
Others again are prevented by force of fraud and deliberate lying from
knowing the glaring facts which the rest of the world is obliged to
gaze
upon in an unmistakable torrent of fire and blood.
There are still other people who dismiss even the clearest evidence
with the sneer, "Oh! British propaganda."
But mighty is the truth; murder will out. Here and now I am going to
tell some items of the truth about the murderous work of the Nazis in
Poland,
and I will tell the truth without fear or favour. I am going to set
down
things which cannot be gainsaid concerning the barbarities of those
tyrannous
invaders in their treatment of Jews and Christians in Poland. History,
if impartial, will applaud whatever even-handed justice may mete out in
retribution to the doers of savage deeds. For the records of all past
ages
prove that right reacts against wrong; and for the times to come we are
witnesses of the unparalleled wrongs inflicted by the Nazis on men.
women
and children, untried and guiltless, in the lands overborne by the Nazi
mechanized hordes.
I cannot imagine that the German people are allowed to know or are
willingly ignorant of the crimes committed to the eternal dishonour of
their name by their present ruthless masters. They have carried war
into
peace-loving countries, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia,
Greece,
Norway, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Such unprovoked treacherous
aggression
horrified the world, but did not surprise us because we knew that the
ruling
party in Germany worships war and openly professed their intention to
enslave
all races they consider inferior to their own cultured greatness. We
have
been long aware from the testimony of the real representative of German
thought and culture, that the Nazi overlords have no higher ideas than
the tigers in the jungle. But we did not think that humanity could sink
so low as to revel in sadism and wallow in deeds of slaughter, in
cold-blooded
murders.
In Poland alone the Nazis have massacred 700,000 Jews since the
outbreak
of war. Must we not appeal to reason? A Jew is a man, and among
rational
civilized people no man may be condemned unless he is tried and found
guilty.
But the Nazis have done to death without the semblance of justice
numberless
innocent peoples of non-Aryan race.
Innocent blood cries to heaven for vengeance; the Lord
will
reply in
his own good time. We know, mark this, we know on the unimpeachable
testimony
of eyewitnesses, aye! on the evidence of authentic copies of Nazi
documents,
which ordered or recorded the brutalities that have doomed the millions
of heroic Polish Christians and Catholics to extermination - we know, I
say, what the Nazi New Order means for Poland.
I have before me at this moment documents which prove beyond question
the utter bestiality of German methods in the conquered but
unvanquished
land of Poland. Everything religious, whether Jewish, Catholic or
Orthodox,
is the target of the pagan hatred of the Nazi agents in Poland. Let me
say a word to the Catholics of Germany. You have heard what Pius XI
told
you about the persecution of religion in your own once noble country
(Mit
brennender Sorge). Rear what Pius XII had to say about the same
persecution
by the same savage despots; he is declared to have been convinced of
the
trutth of the reports he has received - all too completely confirmed -
on the martyrs' fate of Poland. The ferocity of the Nazi persecution is
directed not only against the Polish Clergy or Polish religious life,
but
against religion in general. The proud materialism of race, as Cardinal
Hlond writes, the materialism of race aims at blotting out the most
essential
spiritual elements of our civilization. Yes, blotting out every moral
value
in blood and ruin. Listen, Catholics of Germany, to this appeal from
the
Primate of Poland: "The Poles ask not to be forgotten; they ask the
conscience
of the people of the world not to sacrifice them to Nazi
barbarism."
I join with the Cardinal Primate of Poland and beg and pray that all
Christian people everywhere, and you my fellow Christians of Germany
particularly,
may listen to the voice of reason and humanity and resist these black
deeds
of shame. To condone them, to excuse them, to pass them over in
silence,
would make a futile mockery of the prayer: "Deliver from blood
guiltiness,
O Lord."
THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, Doctor O. F. Garbett, said in
the York
Diocesan
Leafiet, on July 11th, 1942:
"The treatment of Poland by the Germans is indescribably horrible. By
wholesale
massacre, torture and starvation the Nazis are deliberately
exterminating
this brave nation. The German cruelties and atrocities reported from
Poland
are so ghastly that they would be incredible if it were not for
overwhelming
evidence as to their truth. These atrocities are committed not by a
small
handful of sadists but by thousands of Germans, and as far as we know
not
a protest has been raised by those who are ordered to commit them, or
by
the people of Germany. Not only will it be necessary to bring justice
to
the criminals but to convert a whole generation from the spirit which
delights,
or at any rate acquiesces, in cruelty and violence. Meantime we must
pray
for the Poles that they may be strengthened in their martyrdom and that
the hour of their deliverance and of all other oppressed peoples may
speedily
come."
As long as acts
of hatred against
Polish
people go unpunished, some
wrongdoers plan,
encourage, and
advocate hate
crimes and biased
policies against
Poles and Poland.
In the 21st century anti-Polish
hatred and
anti-Polonism must
be treated as
a crime against
humanity
just like anti-Jewish
hatred and
anti-Semitism.
Those in doubt should
finally realize
that all
people are created
equal.
dr Zbigniew Halat
Was Poland right to goad Germany over Nazi
past?
Latest story: Germany's Nazi past has returned to haunt
the EU
summit.
A vitriolic outburst by Poland's prime minister revealed the Second
World
War bitterness that still strains the heart of Europe, accusing the
Germans
of "incomprehensible crimes" against his country Read
story »
Poland Occupied by the German State
before the Germans invaded their Soviet allies
188,7
48,4%
22 140 000
62,7%
-
annexed to
the Reich
92,5
23,7%
10 568 000
30,0%
- so
called
'General Government'
95,5
24,5%
11 542 000
32,6%
- area
occupied
by Slovakia
0,7
0,2%
30 000
0,1%
Poland Occupied by the Soviet Union
before the Germans invaded their Soviet allies
201,0
51,6%
13 199 000
37,3%
-
Ukrainian
Soviet Republic
89,7
23,0%
7 929 000
22,4%
-
Byelorussian
Soviet Republic
103,0
26,5%
4 733 000
13,4%
- area
occupied
by Lithuania
8,3
2,1%
537 000
1,5%
Poland's
Territory and Citizens War Losses
- 78,0
- 20%
- 11
409 000
- 32,3%
Post War Poland in new borders* on February 14, 1946 (census)
(* excluding more than
all Western Territories
of the Polish
- Lithuanian Commonwealth,
in fact the tripartite
Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian
Commonwealth
and including the Polish part of
the
Dominium Maris Baltici
plus Silesia and Great
Poland,
the cradle of the Polish State
regained after several hundred
years
of German domination
as a form of partial reparation
of Poland's World War II
Losses)
311,7
80%
23 930 000
67,7%
Source of numerical data: History of Poland in
Numbers, The
Central
Statistical Office, Warsaw, 2003
There was no surrender. In Poland,
the fighting
went
on. The siege of Warsaw, its people starving and its buildings
crumbling
under bombs and artillery bombardment, cost tens of thousands of dead.
Zofia Kolarska remembers: 'We alllived in cellers, taking beds,
mattresses
and whatever we could with us. The army was there, so there were many
horses:
women would go up to the dead horses with sharp knifes and we' d cut
off
chunks of meat, and that helped us to live through those days.'
Warsaw's 'President'
(mayor), the much-loved
Stefan Starzyński,
finally agreed to surrender on 27 September. Incredibly, the small
Polish
garrison on the Hel peninsula near Danzig, now hundreds of miles behind
the lines, held out until 2 October, and the last shots of the campaign
were fired at Kock, in central Poland, on 5 October.
For all their faults and
errors in the past,
the men who
had governed Poland never contemplated an armistice. Poland had not
ceased
to exist and would not cease to fight simply because its armies had
been
defeated and its territory was occupied by the enemy. The problem was
how
to carry on the struggle; Romania, under extreme pressure from both
Germany
and the Soviet Union, had interned the Polish military and political
leadership.
However, the Romanians did not detain General Władysław Sikorski. As an
old critic of the Sanacja regime, he had not held command in the
September
campaign and was allowed to leave Romania for France, where
the
Polish
ambassador in Paris - on his own authority - charged him with raising a
new Polish army out of refugees and Poles living in France. From
Romania,
President Mościcki managed to send to Paris a message announcing his
resignation.
The group of Polish leaders who had already reached France accepted it,
but rejected his ideas for a successor. They chose instead Władysław
Raczkiewicz,
a respected provincial governor who had not been tainted by too close
an
association with the Sanacja. Under the guise of a 'correct' transfer
of
power, a discreet revolution was now overthrowing the Sanacja.
President
Raczkiewicz took the oath in the Paris embassy on 30 September, and at
once appointed Sikorski as prime minister. Kazimierz Sosnkowski reached
France a few days later, sank old animosities and joined the new
government.
Finally, the absent Śmigły-Rydz was induced to resign in November, and
Sikorski became commander-in-chief as well as head of the government in
exile.
France and Britain at once
recognised the new
administration,
followed by the still-neutral United States. In some ways, this had all
happened before. After the 1830 Rising, the Great Emigration had
transferred
Poland' s cultural and political capital to Paris. In the 1914-18 war,
Roman Dmowski's National Committee had become a recognised government
in
waiting, also in Paris. Now again, with a deftness and confidence that
only a nation accustomed to disaster and occupation could achieve,
Poland
had ensured its international survival.
Physical survival, for the Polish
people at home,
seemed
less certain. The war had already cost the lives of 60,000 members of
the
armed forces and of many more civilians. Nearly half a million
prisoners
were in German hands and another 200,000 in Soviet camps. Much of
Warsaw
had been ruined, ani bombing had scorched the heart out of towns and
villages
along the track of the armies. And yet, as the fighting ended, the
sufferings
of Poland in the Second World War had scarcely begun.
In the Soviet-occupied zone, the
policy of the
conquerors
was at first erratic. Many Poles, then and now, see the secret protocol
of the Nazi-Soviet pact and the 'stab in the back' of 17 September as
the
realisation of a coldly planned design, a natural expression of
Russia's
attitude to the existence of an independent Poland ever since the
Russian
state had been bom. But in 1939 Stalin was probably less concerned with
Poland itself than with Germany. Through the pact with Hitler, he had
bought
time and space. The Soviet occupation of eastern Poland at least kept
the
Germans 600 miles frorn Moscow; if Stalin had left all Poland to
Hitler,
the Nazi tanks would be only 400 miles from the Kremlin.
The new 'demarcation line' - which
Stalin
intended to
make a permanent frontier - pushed 'the imperialist West' several
hundred
miles further away. This corrected Lenin's frontier compromise with
Pilsudski
at the Treaty of Riga eighteen years before, which the Soviet Union had
always intended to revise when it was strong enough. No doubt Stalin in
1939 shared traditional Russian suspicion of Poland as a country
dedicated
to the break-up of Russian empires whether Tsarist or Soviet. But a
stronger
motive was his concern to end the partition of the Ukrainian and
Byelorussian
populations between the USSR and a foreign state. He wanted those
unlucky
peoples all to himself.
The Soviet authorities carried out
an immediate
round
of arrests and deportations, principally of Polish local leaders.Then
there was a pause while the institutions of 'Sovietisation' were put in
place. Rigged elections in November produced dummy assemblies of
Ukrainians
and Byelorussians who voted unanimously for their incorporation into
the
Soviet Union. There was some land reform, some nationalisation. Poles
were
everywhere removed from official posts.
By Soviet standards-, this initial
phase was
deliberately
mild. Stalin did not occupy all the Polish territory offered to him by
the Nazi-Soviet Paces secret protocol, but accepted instead 'influence'
over, Lithuania. Soviet troops entered Polish Lithuania and took Wilno
on 18 September, but then restored the city and its region to the
Lithuanian
state. For a few months more, the Poles in Wilno were able to organise
themselves and live in relative freedom. In Byelorussia and the
Ukraine,
religious education in schools was forbidden and monasteries
commandeered,
but religion itself - Uniate or Catholic - was not suppressed. However,
the Soviet Union made it elear that the events of September implied not
only the end of Polish rule in western Byelorussia and Ukraine but the
final, irreversible abolition of Polish independence. Molotov announced
that 'nothing is left of Poland, that hideous offspring of the
Versailles
Treaty'. On 28 September, the USSR and Nazi Germany signed a further
'Friendship
and Frontier Agreement', whose secret clauses committed each power to
suppress
Polish agitation against the other, and to inform one another about
'suitable
measures' for dealing with the Poles. .
In late November 1939, the Soviet
Union attacked
Finland.
Stalin intended a rapid campaign to push the Finnish frontier back from
the approaches to Leningrad, but the 'Winter War' developed into a
long,
bloody struggle which disgusted the world and brought Britain and
France
to the verge of military intervention on the Finnish side. These
setbacks
may have prompted the Soviet Union to 'secure' its new western frontier.
In February 1940, there began the
first of a
series of
huge and brutal deportations of Poles. Families in the occupied areas
were
driven from their homes and packed into unheated cattle-trucks, which
headed
slowly for Siberia and the Soviet far east while their occupants
stifled,
starved or froze to death. One survivor, Aleksandra Rymaszewska,
recalls:
'We came to the long line of trains and the hordes and hordes of people
being pushed into cattle trucks . . . there was nothing, just bunks
from
one wall to the other, a small barred window, the hole in the floor
that
was supposed to be our toilet. After a few days we were put in
different
trains which we re on wider tracks, and these tracks, we knew, were
leading
into the depths of Russia.'
The deportations lasted until July
1940, and were
followed
by another round-up in June 1941. Between one and a half and two
million
Poles were herded into the trains, to be employed as slaves or forced
labourers
in mines and lumber camps near the Arctic Cirele, or to be dumped in
the
steppes of Kazakhstan. No political distinctions were made, and Polish
Communists from the abolished KPP (Communist Party of Poland) worked
and
perished alongside Catholic priests and university professors, farmers
and railwaymen. Tens of thousands of Poles who had held official posts
were 'tried' and consigned to long sentences in prisons or camps. No
reliable
figures exist on their fate, but it is estimated that anything between
a third and a half of the deported Poles were dead by the time of
Hitler's
attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. The 200,000 captured soldiers
remained in Soviet custody, while.the officers we re segregated into
separate
camps. Some 10,000 of these Polish officers, held in camps in the
Smolensk
region, remained in intermittent touch with their families until about
March 1940. Then all contact with them suddenly ceased.
After July 1940, another change came
over Soviet
policy
towards the Poles under Soviet occupation. The three Baltic republics
of
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were invaded in June and in July annexed
to the Soviet Union. But in Byelorussia and the Ukraine, the
deportations
were suspended, and cautious contact was made with some of the
remaining
Polish personalities in Lwów. The reason for this, fairly certainly,
was
Soviet alarm at the scale and ease of the Nazi victory over France and
Britain in the west, beginning with the German offensive in May and end
ing with the surrender of France and the evacuation of the defeated
British
in June. Facing the possibility that Hitler would now tum his
aggression
eastward, the Soviet Union wavered between the existing policy of
treating
the Poles under Soviet control as a menace to security in a frontier
region,
and the need for allies where they could be found. A group of Polish
officers,
including Colonel Zygmunt Berling, was invited to discuss the
possibility
of raising a Polish division for the Red Army. Meanwhile Wanda
Wasilewska,
a Polish Communist who had survived in Lwów on her wits and through her
connections with Stalin and his inner circle, was allowed to publish a
magazine and to press for the restoration of a Polish Communist Party.
The treatment of the Poles by the
Soviet Union
between
1939 and 1941 is still an unfamiliar story to foreigners. News of what
was going on came only scantily to the West at the time, and later in
the
war, when Britain and the United States became the allies of the USSR,
discussion of the episode was judged tactless and was discouraged. The
true story emerged only in fragments during the post-war years, and was
understandably overshadowed by the more spectacular and
better-publicised
savageries of the Nazi occupation of Poland and the rest of Europe. Yet
in its brutality and the sheer scale of its cold-blooded attempt to
obliterate
the Polish nation physically and culturally, this 21-month Soviet
occupation
far outdid all, the crimes committed against Poland during the
century-and-a-quarter
of Russian occupation under the Tsars.
The recent memory of Soviet
behaviour in Poland
was the
greatest single obstacle facing the new Communist authorities in Poland
after the war. They had to conciliate a people for whom a Soviet-backed
government seemed to threaten not only the abolition of private
property
and farms, and the suppression of the Catholic faith, but
transportation
to almost certain death in Siberian labour camps, probably to be
followed
by yet another cancellation of Polish independence.
The Germans controlled the heartland
of Poland,
with
a population of nearly twenty-two million. They made no secret of their
intentions. Hitler who took the salute at a victory parade in Warsaw on
5 October 1939, spoke on the 'artificial' and 'unviable' Polish state
which
was the 'foster-child of Western democracy and deserved its fate: 'to
be
swept off the face of the earth'. A few days later, the whole of
northern
and western Poland, including Poznań, Danzig and its hinterland, and
Polish
Silesia, was annexed to the Reich. The rest of the German-controlIed
area
became the so-called 'General Government': in reserve under martial law
to be exploited for its resources and labour without consideration for
the consequences. Its 'capital' was at Kraków, Warsaw being designated
for eventual destruction and replacement by a small German colony. Hans
Frank, a senior Nazi jurist with a princely lifestyle, became
Governor-General
and established his court at Kraków in the ancient Wawel Palace.
The Germans lost no time in showing
the Poles
what their
occupation would mean. Behind the advancing front-line troops came the
Einsatzgruppen, special execution squads drawn from the SS and the
police,
whose task was not only to crush resistance and opposition in the
civilian
population but to slaughter whole categories - the political and
intellectual
elite, the mentally sick, the leaders of Polish communities - as
potential
sources of racial or political infection.
Sometimes they shot, sometimes they
merely
arrested and
terrorised. The first great atrocity of the occupation ceńtred on the
town
of Bydgoszcz (Bromberg in German), where - the facts are still not
established
- a group of fanatical German civilians appear to have opened fire on
retreating
Polish troops during the September Campaign, leading to an outbreak of
violence against Germans in which many lost their lives. An official
German
report in November 1939 wrote of some 5 400 German residents in Poland
killed or missing in this and similar incidents elsewhere. In February
1940, the German press was instructed to revise this figure to 58,000.
The Einsatzgruppen had already undertaken a reprisal for the Bromberg
Massacre
and had shot nearly 20,000 Poles.
In the regions annexed to the Reich,
the Nazi
intention
was to carry through once and for all the colonisation policy which
Prussian
and German governments had failed to complete. The Polish inhabitants,
numbering between eight and nine million, were to be removed and
replaced
by Germans. While this was being organised, these regions were
subjected
to a 'Germanisation' process: the Polish language were forbidden in
public,
special limited shopping hours were imposed on Poles, and all education
over primary level and cultural activity were forbidden. In September
1940,
a decree confiscated all Polish property in land or commerce. The
Catholic
Church was closely persecuted, and in October 1941 several hundred
priests
were arrested and sent to concentration camps, while only a handful of
churches were permitted to remain open.
The colonisation programme began in
December 1939
with
a round-up of 90 000 Poles and Jews, mostly from the
'possessing
classes', who were transported to the General Government - the Jews
being
sent to the newly established ghettos. The next category to suffer were
the small farmers, often given less than an hour to leave their
villages
while SS men tore down the crucifixes and holy pictures from their
walls.
Most of them also went eastward to the General Government, though some
were conscripted as forced labour for war industry in Germany.
Meanwhile,
as a part of the Nazi-Soviet understanding, the ethnic German groups
living
in the newly acquired territories of the USSR - the Baltic states,
Volhynia,
Bessarabia - were expelled 'home to the Reich' and resettled on the
abandoned
Polish farms.
For all its root-and-branch vigour,
this
colonisation
project was not much more successful, even in the short-term, than its
predecessors. Deportations were broken on in the spring of 1941 and
never
resumed. About half a million Poles had been removed, not much more
than
six per cent of the total in the annexed territories, while som e
350,000
Volksdeutschen from the east arrived to replace them. At the end of the
war, alI were driven out of Poland for ever.
What was new about this episode of
German
repression
was its almost unimaginable savagery and cruelty - an entirely new
quality
of method. Between 1939 and 1944, the Nazis murdered something like
330,000
Poles in these annexed regions alone. But the policies themselves were
familiar to any Pole who had heard his father describe the Bismarck
period:
colonisation, expulsion, the simultaneous attack on the language and
the
Church. EqualIy familiar was the German assumption that the ruling
class
in Poland and above all the intelligentsia, were incurable patriots, to
be dealt with only by force. The Prussians had been saying this back in
the 1880s. The Nazis found their own solution to the problem of the
Polish
intellectuals: systematic extermination.
In the General Government, with a
population of
over
twelve million, a few weeks of weird calm folIowed the arrival of the
Germans;
theatres reopened and the universities prepared for the new academic
year.
But things changed instantly when Hans Frank took office. Stefan
Starzyński,
President of Warsaw, was arrested; the professors of alI higher
education
in Kraków were invited to a meeting, seized and sent to
concentration
camps where many of them were shot. Similar purges took place in all
the
cities, as the massacre of the intellectual class began. During the
Nazi
occupation, Poland lost half its doctors and more than half its
lawyers,
forty per cent of its university professors, half its engineers and
eighteen
per cent of its priests. Frank told a German police conference in
Kraków:
'The Fuehrer has told me that the leading groups in Polish society
already
in our hands are to be liquidated, and whoever appears to replace them
is to be detained and after an appropriate interval exterminated . . .
Gentlemen, we are not murderers. But as National Socialist these times
lay upon us all the duty to ensure that no further resistance emerges
from
the Polish people.'
The policy for the General
Government was that
this region,
too, would eventually be Germanised. AlI education above primary and
technical
level was abolished; all museums and libraries were closed; cultural
and
artistic activities were forbidden; paintings and sculptures were
removed
to the Reich, and monuments to great figures in Polish history were
demolished.
An universal, indiscriminate reign of terror descended on the Polish
population,
while the Jews, many thousands of whom had already been tormented in
public
and shot out of hand, were herded into walled-off ghetto quarters in
the
principal towns. Factories and offices were placed under German
direction,
to serve the war effort, and wages were frozen. At the same time, a
rapid
inflation began, reducing the purchasing power of ordinary Poles to a
fraction
of its pre-war level. The food rationing system that was eventually
introduced
allowed 2,613 calories a day to a German, but a mere 669 to a Pole.
This
was a frankly genocidal policy. Like the Jews, but on a slower time
scale,
the Poles had been designated as an inferior, vermin race to be
eliminated
from physical existence.
Especially after the German invasion
of the
Soviet Union
in June 1941, the General Government was used as a reservoir of forced
labour for the war industries and to replace German manpower called up
for military service from the farms. By 1942, about a million Poles had
been deported to work in Germany. Growing resistance to the mass
round-ups,
which required increasing numbers of police and troops and drove
thousands
of young men and women to seek refuge with the partisan bands in the
forests,
persuaded Hans Frank to question the whole policy. But he was overruled
by the SS, now becoming an autonomous empire within the Reich which not
only ran the concentration camps but possessed its own army - the
Waffen-SS
- and its own industrial economy. Village after village was burned and
their inhabitants murdered for real or imagined resistance; as the
historian
Norman Davies has pointed out, the famous tragedy at Lidice in
Czechoslovakia,
where a village was destroyed and its inhabitants massacred, was
repeated
in some three hundred Polish villages during the Nazi occupation.
In November 1942, Heinrich Himmler,
Reichsfuehrer
of
the SS, ordered that the colonisation policy should now be applied to
the
General Government. In the district of Zamość, near Lublin, some 40,000
Poles were driven from their villages, to be replaced by German
settlers
from Bessarabia. Their children were torn from them. A farmer' s
daughter
who was there, Wacława Kędzierska, saw how 'children up to the age of
fourteen,
even those as young as six weeks, were taken away. When their mothers
didn't
want to hand them over, the Germans hit the parents. And then they
started
to hit the children . . . a lot of the children we re thrown into the
mud,
even into the cesspit. They killed them. They took them by their legs
and
hit them against the corner of the barrack.'
The children were screened for Aryan
characteristics.
Those suitable for germanisation were held in SS orphanages where many
died of hunger or disease, and most were never seen again. The parents
were either sent to concentration camps or deported for labour to the
Reich.
The Zamość action was foIlowed in
early 1943 by a
new
series of manhunts in Warsaw and the main cities of the General
Government.
Streets were blocked, cinemas, streetcars or even churches surrounded,
and all those caught within the cordon transported. This time their
destination
was the concentration camps. The SS had begun to exploit the unpaid
labour
of the camps, numbering many hundreds of thousands, by inviting German
industry to settle in 'enterprise zones' around the camp peripheries.
This
was proving a great success, from the SS point of view, but the
turn-over
of labour was inconveniently rapid (the average life expectancy at
Auschwitz,
for those not at once sent to the gas chambers, was about twelve weeks)
and needed constant replenishment.
On this occasion, one of the supreme
officers of
the
SS, 'Gestapo' Muller, laid down a target of 35,000 prisoners for the
round-ups
in the Polish cities, but insisted that they must be fit for work, 'as
otherwise and contrary to intentions the concentration camps will be
overstrained'.
In practice, chaos developed as German security forces grabbed
everyone,
fit or unfit, without papers or even with a German work permit, male or
female, in order to filI Muller's quota. Those unfit for slave labour
we
re picked out in the camps themselves. 'Overstrain' usually came to
mean
overloading the crematoria with their corpses.
For the Poles, life in the cities of
the General
Government
slowly developed its own rules and expectations. Physical survival was
the issue. There was no safety from the haphazard nature of Nazi
terror.
At any moment, one might be seized for a labour round-up, arrested as a
hostage, or shot in the countless street executions - the inhabitants
ordered
to stay away from the windows; the victims, their mouths often stuffed
with plaster-of-paris to stifle their screams, hustled up against the
wall
and machine-gunned to death.
These places instantly became
shrines. General
Bór-Komorowski,
later the commander of the Warsaw Rising, describes in his memoirs how
his wife Renia, 'with her baby in the pram, passed Senatorska Street
where
an execution had just taken place. The corpses had already been taken
away,
but blood was splashed all over the pavement and bits of brains were
sticking
to the walls. People were kneeling all around, and in a few seconds the
whole place was covered with red and white flowers and burning candles.
Flowers were put in every bullet-hole in the wall. My sister stopped to
pray. German police appeared and she made off. When she looked back,
they
were shouting and beating people up - all in vain, for after a moment
the
crowd was back again and new flowers and new candles had appeared.
To stay alive required not only luck
but
law-breaking,
and most of the population was involved in black-marketeering, rackets
in stolen German supplies, theft from German-run factories and offices,
bribery and the forgery of every kind of document. The peasants were
besieged
by town dwellers seeking food in exchange for jewellery, gold or
furniture.
Władysław Baran, a small farmer, recalls: 'People started to come to me
from Warsaw, on bicycles. They could carry fifty kilos on a cycle; they
weren't well dressed, their cycles were falling apart, and they pushed
them on foot from Warsaw. Each took a few kilo s of wholemeal flour or
potatoes; they were a picture of poverty . . .'
The only Germans in close contact
with the city
Poles
were the German carpet-baggers and fortune-hunters who flocked to the
General
Government. They sold precious supplies and identity papers, but they
were
always dangerous and unreliable. An intense solidarity developed among
Poles, who devised elaborate alarm systems and code-words to warn each
other of nearby Germans or of a lapanka (round-up) in the next street.
The exception was the odious class of Jew-hunters, who made a living by
spotting and blackmailing Jews who had escaped from the ghettos and
were
trying to pass themselves on as gentiles. The Resistance imposed a
death
penalty for this crime, but the trade thrived throughout the occupation.
The Poles remain proud that - alone
in
Nazi-occupied
Europe - they produced no 'Quislings', no regime to coliaborate with
the
Germans. However, this was partly the result of German policy, oriented
towards the genocide of the Polish nation rather than towards
establishing
any client state.
(...)
Lack of food and medicines, and the
shortage of
clothes
and especially shoes (many families wore wooden clogs in winter and
went
barefoot in summer), led to a collapse of public health; deaths from
tuberculosis,
for example, rose almost fourfold in Warsaw between 1939 and 1941.
Self-help
committees, tolerated by the Germans but backed by the resistance, ran
soup kitchens and relief centres. Cultural life survived as best it
could.
The Germans took over all cinemas - the resistance mounted a rather
unsuccessful
movie boycott - but underground theatres flourished in many towns. One
of these, the Rhapsodic Theatre in Kraków, featured a young actor named
Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II.
(...)
In the midst of these events, the
greatest
tragedy of
the twentieth century was taking place on Polish soil. The 'Final
Solution
of the Jewish Problem', the systematic annihilation of the Jews of
Europe,
took place partly in the Baltic states and Nazi-dominated Russia, where
it was carried out by the firing-squads of the Einsatzgruppen. But the
central horror, the extermination of millions of human beings by
industrial
methods, was carried out in the gas chambers of concentration camps
built
on the territory of the General Government.
Intermittent massacres of Jews had
markedp the
first
months of Nazi occupation. There followed a series of decrees which
stripped
Jews of all human and economic rights, reduced their rations to
starvation
level and - in the course of 1940 - herded them into walled-off ghettos
within the larger cities and towns. The penalty for leaving the ghettos
or for sheltering Jews was death. The Jewish Councils (judenrate), set
up by the Germans, struggled to protect the ghetto populations by a
series
of ever-retreating compromises with the German authorities, but their
task
was hopeless. By 1941, over 100,000 Polish Jews had died or been
murdered.
Nightmarish conditions existed in typhus-ridden ghettos like that of
Warsaw,
where skeletal children prowled the streets and the corpses of those
who
had died of hunger or disease lay about the pavements.
The exact 'when' - and even the
'why' - of
Hitler's secret
order to carry out the methodical murder of European Jewry is not
known.
The order seems to have been given in late 1941, and was only confirmed
by the infamous Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20 January 1942.
For all the screaming rhetoric of
'extermination'
and
'wiping-out', Nazi policy towards the Jews was impromptu and erratic.
The
first idea, forced emigration, was frustrated by the 'closed-door'
attitude
of the West, especially of Britain in Palestine, and then by the
outbreak
of war. The next plan seems to have been the deportation of Europe's
Jews
to Asian territories conquered from the Soviet Union, where they would
be separated by sex to prevent breeding and then worked to death. The
massacres
by the Einsatzgruppen, who killed over a million Jews behind the
advancing
German armies, were seen as a mere clearing of the ground for what was
to follow.
It has been argued that the halting
of the German
armies
before Moscow in December 1941 determined the final form that the
'Solution'
took. There was now no prospect of a rapid conquest of vast and empty
Soviet
territories; the war in the east would be long and hardo Meanwhile, the
conditions in the ghettos and camps where Polish and other European
Jews
were being dumped were growing so appalling that the orderly German
mind
was alarmed. The time, space and resources for a 'working to death'
policy
were no longer available. An end had to be put to the 'Jewish problem',
quickly and on the spot.
The first experiments in gassing
were carried out
at
Chełmno in 1941. Early in the following year, extermination camps with
gas chambers were constructed at Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec, in the
General Government, and in the winter of 1942-3 the concentration camp
at Auschwitz, in Silesia, was extended to take a battery of immense gas
chambers and crematoria which could - and did - slaughter and consume
up
to 15,000 people within twenty-four hours. Not only the Jews but the
gypsy
nation was condemned to genocide, accompanied by hundreds of thousands
of others from almost every country in Europe. Auschwitz alone
accounted
for nearly 3 million dead. About 2.8 million Polish Jews perished in
the
extermination camps, with another million Jews brought to the gas
chambers
by train from all over the continent. Over 5 million Jews of all
nationalities
died in occupied Poland, in the camps or outside them.
The Auschwitz
Extermination Camp Part I V. Prisoners
The first prisoners in the concentration
camp at Auschwitz were 30 professional German criminals, who were
brought to Auschwitz at the beginning of June 1940, after having spent
many years in other concentration camps in Germany. SS-men had chosen
them as the executors of their criminal plans, and in the first place
as instructors in the laws and regulations of the camp. They had
received special instructions on how they must treat Polish political
prisoners. They could beat and torture them and were not responsible to
anyone. These prisoners filled the posts of camp seniors (Lagerälteste)
foremen of working companies (Blockälteste) roomorderlies
(Stubendienst) Capo and Obercapo and Foremen (Vorarbeiter). They did
not disappoint the hopes which had been placed in them, and they
grafted their ideas of morality upon whole series of other keepers,
whom they chose from among the most brutal individuals and professional
criminals.
On
the 14th
VI. 1940 the first transport of Poles arrived at Auschwitz. Innumerable
others followed which in the first period of the existence of the camp
brought Poles exclusively, and later on Poles and citizens of all the
conquered nations, and citizens of other countries, found in the
occupied countries during the German invasion.
From
the fragments of records which were found, and particularly bundles of
questionnaires amounting to about twenty undestroyed by the Germans it
appears that the following nationals were found among the prisoners:
Americans, Austrians, Belgians, Bulgarians, Chinese, Croats, Czechs,
French, Greek, Dutch, Spaniards, Serbs, Lithuanians, Latvians, Germans,
Norwegians, a Persian, Poles, Russians, Roumanians, Slovaks, Swiss,
Turks, Hungarians, Italians, Jews from Palestine and one Egyptian.
Among
the citizens of so many different countries mentioned here indubitably
the most numerous group was formed by Polish citizens (Poles and Jews)
next the Russians, Serbs and French, but in general the majority of the
prisoners were of other nationalities than Polish - prisoners of Jewish
origin, Especially numerous among the Jews from abroad were Hungarian,
Czech and Slovak Jews, and Jews from Germany, Greece and Holland.
Source:
German Crimes in Poland. Volume 1. Central Commission for the
Investigation of German Crimes in Poland. Warsaw,
1946
In July 1942, the Germans
began to deport the
population
of the Warsaw Ghetto to the gas chambers at Treblinka. Against the
prevailing
mood of hopeless fatalism, a Jewish Fighting Organisation was set up,
and
managed to make contact with the Home Army outside. Bunkers and petrol
bombs were prepared, and when the SS entered the almost empty ghetto
for
the final round-up on 19 April 1943, the Jewish resistance went into
battle.
It was a fight which the ghetto warriors knew they must lose; the odds
were crushingly against them, and the Home Army and the Communist
underground
were able to do little to help. But this was a tight not for victory
but
for honour, and for the future of the Jewish people. The handful of men
and women held out against tanks and artillery for almost a month,
while
the smoke of burning buildings and the stink of burning bodies drifted
across Warsaw. Before he committed suicide with his comrades, Mordechai
Anielewicz, the leader of the Ghetto Rising, said: 'I have seen Jewish
self-defence in all its glory.' Out of 3.35 million Polish Jews, about
340,000 were alive by the end of the war, most of them refugees in the
Soviet Union.
(...)
THE CHOSEN PEOPLE IN A PROMISED LAND
Of all the minority groups in Poland, the Jews,
ever
since the rise
of the Polish Commonwealth to a high rank, have created the most
eventful
racial problem. How they reached that peak of importance in Poland is a
matter of brief analysis of the European situation in the Middle Ages.
In all Christian nations in western Europe, the Jews were despised
as the "accursed race." They were barred from possessing land, farming,
from professions, and from trade. Business and banking or usury were
left
to them alone. As a result of the Crusades, however, many knights and
adventurers
were tempted to enter the business field; these commercial Christians
laid
heavier restrictions upon the Jews selling merchandise, to the extent
that
the Hebrews, in some countries, were limited to loaning money. Because
of charging high rates, - Shakespeare illustrated Jewish usury through
his creation of Shylock, they were disliked by royalty and nobility;
while
masses of people hated and persecuted them as non-believers. Even the
Church
recognized this racial difference, when Pope Innocent III ordered, in
1215,
all Jews within the Christian realm to wear badges in public. Jewish
ancient
mores, their attire, long beards, their adherance to old and utmost
contempt
for new customs antagonized the Christians. On various occasions there
were terrible massacres in France, England, and Germany. Finally all
Jews
except the wealthiest ones, were expelled from France (1254) and
England
(1290).
The mass of Jewish paupers found shelter in hospitable Poland. Kazimierz
the Great confirmed the autonomous privileges offered to the
Jews
by
Boleslaw the Pious. According to this law, Jews were considered as
slaves
of the ruling prince. This measure was necessary to safeguard them from
exploitation by other social classes such as knights and robbers. The
privileges
extended them protected the Jews against maltreatment and massacre. In
fact, the Christians were compelled by royal decree to defend the
Israelites
in case of attacks upon them.
Since other classes monopolized the trades and professions, the Jews
were limited to banking. They owed their choice of bank¬ing as an
occupation
to the Church law which forbade Christians to loan money on interest.
Jewish
traders and artisans supplied the needs of their own people. The
Church,
furthermore, pre¬scribed certain sections of the cities where the Jewry
could live.
These sections produced the Ghetto, and the Ghetto type of Jews.
At no time were the Jews persecuted in Polish towns. Occassionally
the Cracow "zaks" (students) perturbed a bearded patriarch, but there
were
no wholesale massacres. While western Europe severely persecuted them,
the Jews in Poland enjoyed peace and protection.
The persecution of Jews in Germany and their final expulsion in 1426
more than doubled the Jewish population in Poland, were they sought
relief.
They lived in their own communes, enjoying their religious, commercial
and educational liberty. Representatives of these communes met
frequently
in their dealings with the Polish government. At the head of these
meetings
presided the elders composed primarily of the richest merchants, - the
Jewish aristocracy. The elders were the official spokesmen of the Jews
as to matters of taxation, commerce, justice, and the like.
Jewish social life did not extend beyond the Ghetto. The patriarch
and his brethren wore and still wears a long high-buttoned
shapeless
coat; his pale face was outlined by a straggling beard and long curls
before
the ears. The Yiddish jargon, - a corruption of a low German dialect
with
an admixture of Polish words, - was written in Hebrew characters;
constant
reading of Hebrew sacred books, - the Talmud and the Torah; the old
dalapidated
buildings found in the poorest sections of cities; the squalor of the
people,
- characterized, as they characterize today, the Jews in Poland. Very
few
accumulated
wealth ; and these were half-way, if not entirely assimilated together
with other minorities like the Germans and Armenians. Semitic customs
did
create a feeling of mistrust and hostility in regard to Poles.
Jewish communes negotiated with town councils certain opportunities
in business and trade for themselves. When the towns were on the
decline,
the Jews gained more privileges.
The object of the voievodes in royal towns and the lords in
private
towns was to exploit the Jewish weakness for business privileges.
Although
the Szlachta felt contemptuous toward the Jews they utilized the Chosen
People's ambition to the detriment of the bourgeoisie who practically
disappeared
under the disadvantageous struggle. The Jews by helping the lords to
rise
in strength and wealth, helped themselves as well, to increased
business
opportunities in business. A prolific race, the Jews multiplied in
towns
very rapidly, and by the eighteenth century almost every city had one
hundred
Jew, to everyone thousand inhabitants in some towns like Kazimierz, in
still greater proportion; and villages also numbered the sons of David
among their inhabitants. The manored lord of the village employed Jews
as his agents and factors. With the help of their Jewish henchmen,
stooped
to the meanest levels in order to please their masters, the lords
exploited
the poor peasants, bringing them down, finally, to practical
enslavement.
Thus the Jews, by the favor of their lords, became renters of inns
(karczmy)
and saloonkeepers on manor property. To promote business, they
demoralized
the unsuspecting peasants who were encouraged to drink heavily.
In Polish Ukraine, besides holding a monopoly on liquor, the Jews held
great estates as managers for the absentee owners. Extension of their
power
into courts and parliament was just a step forward. In Ukraine, it was
because the Jewish exploitation, their lack of ethic, in business that
the Cossacks deplored Polish suzerainty: "The Poles enslaved us to the
accursed Jewish race." Subsequent rebellions in Ukraine, subsidized by
Russian gold, vented the Cossack wrath mercilessly upon the
defenseless
Jews.
Due to stubborn Hebraic resistance to world progress, and the
passionate
and sentimental naivete with which they clung to their ancient customs,
the status of Polish Jewry evolved slowly. However, some of them became
assimilated and proved to worthy citizens of Poland, in the realm of
commerce,
profession and even in literature. The real quarrel between the Pole
and
the Jew has arisen from the Polish attempt to free the peasant from
Jewish
monopoly and exploitation. The real representative of Polish Jew is
becoming
sociable and friendly toward Polish institutions; it is the Litwak, the
Russian Jew in Poland with his contemptuous attitude towards the new
government,
his fanatical adhesion to Russian doctrine who is causing all the
racial
turmoil in Poland.
After the downfall of Poland and the partition of the country, the
majority of the Jews found themselves incorporated into the hated
Russian
Empire. Not satisfied in creating the "pale" districts for the Jews in
Russia, the czars propelled the Jewish population towards Poland, until
that country faced another immigration of Jews into cities already
teaming
with them, Furthermore, to prevent any political understanding between
thr Poles and the Jews, the Russian tried to provoke animosity by
harping
upon their racial traditions: it was playing off the Jew against the
Pole,
and vice-versa. Though the work of the foreign press, this idea proved
practicable, though disastrous to Poland, particularly by reason of the
vast numbers of Jews harbored in Poland. Without any basic, scientific
facts to prove this offensive propaganda Poland was accused of numerous
atrocities and racial inequalities.
However, despite the unfavorable propaganda of the Jewish owned German
and American press, the Jews in Poland are satisfied with their lot and
political minority rights. Complaints do not emanate from them. Many of
those who emigrated to Palestine returned to Poland, the realized
"promised
land," where they have complete recognition, religious freedom, and
social
and political equality.
POLAND AND HER PEOPLE
BY Dr. Jerome I. Pawlowski, B. Sc., M. So.
DETROIT, MICH., FIRST EDITION, 1929
This Book is dedicated to those who, guided by altruism, a sense of
justice,
and benevolence, had offered their friendship, personal service, and
material
aid to Poland in the dark hour of her resurrection from a hundred and
fifty
year enforced political death.
In July 1943, the hinge of
the war began to
turn. At the
biggest tank battle in history, Hitler's offensive near Kursk was
brought
to a standstill and then driven back. The Red Army began to move
westward,
in a slow advance which was to end in Berlin almost two years later. In
January 1944, the first Soviet troops crossed the line which had been
the
old Polish frontier in 1939.
Much had happened to the Poles, both
to the
London government
and its resistance within the country. In April 1943, after the
discovery
of the bodies of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyń forest, near
Smolensk, the Polish government had accused the Soviet Union of their
murder,
and Stalin had broken off relations with Sikorski. A month later, he
had
begun to recruit a Polish army under Soviet command. In July, Sikorski
had been killed in an air crash at Gibraltar. After his death, his
combined
powers were divided between two of his senior colleagues in London:
Stanisław
Mikołajczyk, the Peasant Party leader, who became prime minister, and
General
Sosnkowski, who took command of Poland' s armed forces.
In Poland, Rowecki had been arrested
and was
succeeded
as AK commander by Bór-Komorowski, a cavalry officer of conservative
outlook.
Meanwhile, the Communists and their allies were preparing for the
arrival
of the Red Army, and setting up what looked like the foundations for a
pro-Soviet government.
The 'London' resistance clung on to
the hope - or
illusion
- that Poland might be liberated from the west, or at least by
Anglo-American
and Polish forces arriving at the same time as the Red Army. In late
1943,
however, the Warsaw leadership faced the growing possibility that this
would not happen. If Poland were to be occupied by the Soviet Union
alone,
what should the resistance do to maintain and assert Poland' s
independence,
and to prevent the reduction of Poland to a Soviet protectorate?
Instructions arrived from London
that the whole
structure
- the AK, the Government Delegate and all the rest - should stay
concealed
as the Soviet armies rolled over Poland and await further orders.
Bór-Komorowski
and his colleagues found this absurd and dishonourable. Instead, they
planned
an active policy. As the Soviet forces drew near, one AK unit after
another
would launch an insurrection against the disintegrating Germans,
liberate
its region, and meet the Red Army as 'host' in a manifestly free Polish
state whose government would soon return from London.
This was 'Operation Tempest'. !ts
weaknesses
sprang from
the ignorance of the underground leaders about the balance of power and
priorities in the anti-Hitler coalition. In the first place, 'Tempest'
assumed that the Soviet forces could be made to respect the pre-war
frontiers.
In fact, they had no intention of doing so, considering the lands
acquired
in September 1939 as integral regions of the USSR, while the British
and
Americans had shown that they would not risk a breach with Stalin by
insisting
that Poland should regain its old borders. Secondly, 'Tempest' was
based
on the belief that Stalin would accept the fait accompli of an
anti-communist
government in Poland with Western support. Again, this overlooked the
Teheran
meeting in November/ December 1943, at which Roosevelt and Churchill
had
extracted no guarantee from Stalin that he would recognise a post-war
Polish
government that refused to accept the new Soviet frontier along the
'Curzon
Line' - roughly, the partition line between Germany and the Soviet
Union
in 1939.
So 'Tempest' ran its doomed course.
In February
1944,
the AK in Volhynia launched a local rising and joined forces with the
advancing
Soviet troops. At first, the Soviet officers were affable and
cooperative,
though they declined to make any political statements about frontiers.
However, in April the new 'allies' we re defeated by a German
counter-attack,
and many of the Polish survivors were forced to enlist in the
Soviet-commanded
Polish army under General Berling. In July 1944, AK units helped the
Red
Army to drive the Germans out of Wilno, but a few days later their
officers
were arrested and their men either interned or drafted into the Berling
army. Later in July, 6,000 AK troops joined Soviet forces in a stiff
battle
for Lwów. The outcome was much the same; the AK commander was to told
that
Lwów was a Soviet city and his men were given the choice of joining the
Red Army or the Berling forces. When the pattern was repeated yet again
near Lublin, within the Polish borders as the Soviet Union understood
them,
it was plain that 'Tempest' had failed. In military terms, the Home
Army
had fought well and gained glory. Politically, the attempt to make the
Soviet commanders recognise its authority as the army of Poland's legal
government was completely ineffective.
On 22 July, the authority of the
London
government over
Poland had been formally challenged. The Soviet-backed Polish Committee
of National Liberation issued its July Manifesto in Moscow, proclaiming
a programme of democratic reforms and friendship with the Soviet Union.
A few days later, it moved to newly liberated Lublin, and was
reeognised
by the USSR as the legitimate authority in Poland. Meanwhile, the
forward
troops of Marshal Rokossowsky's First Byelorussian Army reaehed the
Vistula
on 25 July. The guns of the approaehing Red Army eould be heard in
Warsaw,
where the Germans began a frantie evaeuation. It seemed obvious that
Soviet
forces would be in Warsaw within a few days.
Bór-Komorowski and his offieers
deeided for a
rising
in Warsaw. Indeed, given the wild exeitement boiling up in the eapital,
they might not have been able to prevent one. All their calculations -
about enemy strength, about relief by the Red Army, about Allied
support,
about the political effeets of the rising - proved quite wrong. There
began
on 1 August 1944 the biggest, the most heroic, and by far the
bloodiest,
urban insurrection that Europe has ever seen. It ended in disaster - a
disaster in whieh not one of its survivors has ever regretted taking
part.
In 1940, Winston Churchill broadcast
to the
Polish nation.
He spoke from a Britain under siege, carrying on the war against Hitler
alone - but not quite alone, for in the streets of London, between the
German air raids, there could be seen soldiers in foreign uniforms,
some
of them wearing the 'Poland' shoulder-flash. He said: 'This war will be
lon g and hard, but the end is sure. The end will reward all toil,
alldisappointment,
all suffering, in those who faithfulIy serve the cause of European and
world freedom.'
No nation served that cause more
faithfulIy than
the
Poles. They fought Hitler from the first day of war to the last, on
land,
at sea and in the air. Polish troops fought in Poland itself, in Russia
and North Africa, in Norway, Italy, France and the Low Countries. They
were in at the kill in Germany, and Polish troops helped to conquer
Berlin.
The Polish navy was in action, on the surface and in submarines,
through
the Battle of the Atlantic, in the North Sea and the English
Channel.
Poland's airmen took part in the Battle of Britain, in the bombing
offensive
against Germany, and in the support of the armies over every front. One
in five of the entire population of Poland perished in the conflict.
They
gave new meaning to the old slogan of the Polish exiles who fought in
every
revolution for democracy throughout Europe in the nineteenth century:
'For
your freedom and ours!' But in the end it was true to say that, while
no
nation suffered so much, none gained so little.
The end of the war turned out a poor
reward for
'all
toil, all disappointment'. Poland in 1939 was an independent sovereign
state. It was no longer a parliamentary democracy and the colonels'
regime
of the Sanacja after Pilsudski's death was disliked by most of the
population,
but these were private problems which the Poles intended to solve
within
the family. In 1945, a ruined and decimated Poland had regained its
formal
independence, but was tied closely to the foreign policies of the
Soviet
Union and controlled by Polish Communists whose ideology was alien to
the
great majority of Poles.
Allies had withdrawn recognition
from the legal
government
to which most Poles had given allegiance throughout the German
occupation,
and had forced upon the nation the loss of its eastern territories,
granting
in exchange the German provinces as far west as the rivers Oder and
Neisse.
A ruthless civil conflict was being waged between pro-Communist forces,
aided by the Red Army, and the remnants of the wartime Home Army
resistance
in the hills and forests.
This was hardly the 'independence'
that the
British guarantee
to Poland in 1939 had sworn to restore. Tens of thousands of Polish
soldiers
in the West, who had for six years told themselves that every pace in
their
march through so many foreign countries was a step on the way home, now
chose to stay abroad as exiles. )
Many things might have been
different, but only
in detail.
The outlines of what was to happen to Poland became inevitable on 22
June
1941, when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. This had two results, both
inescapable. The first was to ensure the eventual defeat of Germany,
which
had broken the fundamental precept of German strategy: to avoid a war
on
two fronts. The second was to bring Russian power permanently in to the
heart of Europe, something which statesmen had been trying to prevent
for
over a hundred years. Everything else followed. There was no chance
that
the armies of the West, weaker and led with less resolution than the
Red
Army, could liberate Poland before the Soviet Union. There was no
chance
that Britain and the United States would risk the collapse of the
anti-Hitler
coalition in the middle of the war by defying Stalin over the future of
Poland - and even if they had dane so, no chance that their defiance
would
have been effective. Finally, although Stalin seems to have been at
first
flexible about the nature of the internal regime he preferred for
Poland,
there was no chance that he would permit the Polish state to regain the
freedom of action it had possessed before the war.
In 1940, none of this was apparent.
The Soviet
Union
was Hitler's ally, supplying him with trainloads of grain and oil. The
United States was neutral, though hostile to Germany. In France, the
British
and French armies waited cautiously for the inevitable German offensive
to begin. Their prime ministers, Neville Chamberlain and Edouard
Daladier,
still clung to the hope that the war might not last long, and could end
in a negotiated peace.
With great difficulty, some
43,000 Polish
officers and
men, determined to carry on the war, had made their way to France from
Romania and Hungary. Another 40,000 men were recruited from the large
Polish
community in France, mostly from the coal-mining regions of the north.
Sikorski's army saw action in April 1940, when the Germans invaded
Norway
and Denmark; a Polish brigade landed with the Aliied force near Narvik,
only to be evacuated again a few weeks later.
On 10 May the German armies attacked
in the west.
Holland
surrendered after five days, Belgium was rapidly overrun, and General
von
Rundstedt achieved complete surprise as his Panzer divisions thrust
through
the Ardennes, outflanked the Maginot Line defences and drove deep into
France. Within ten days, the British had been cut off and were
preparing
to evacuate across the Channel through Dunkirk. The French in the
north-east
were in chaotic retreat.
The Poles were stationed further to
the south. By
the
time they went into action, in early June, the campaign was lost.
Though
the Poles fought hard, they were driven into retreat as the French
divisions
around them fell to pieces. Some 13,000 men were forced back against
the
Swiss frontier; they beat off German attacks, but - in a
hopeless
situation - decided to cross the border and seek refuge in neutral
Switzerland.
Other units retreated across France until they reached the Atlantic
coast,
where some were able to board ship for Britain. Out of his army of
80,000,
Sikorski was left with about 25,000, counting the air force and the
navy.
Between a quarter and a fifth were officers; at the end of the
September
Campaign in 1939 many ordinary soldiers had chosen to stay in Poland
rather
than cross the borders into exile. The broken remains of the Polis h
regiments
were now sent to Scotland, where they prepared to defend the east coast
against the expected German invasion.
Winston Churchill had become the
British prime
minister
and formed an all-party government on the day that the German offensive
began. Now he assured Sikorski of his full support, ordering the heads
of his armed forces to give the Poles every assistance. The Polish
government
reassembled in London, setting up its General Staff in the Rubens Hotel.
In August 1940, the Battle of
Britain opened, as
the
Germans began the air offensive against southern England and London
which
was intended to break the Royal Air Force and elear the way for a
sea-borne
invasion across the Channel. Eighty-one Polish pilots fought in the
RAF,
and two Polish fighter squadrons - 302 Poznań and 303 Tadeusz
Kościuszko
- took part in the battle. The Polish fighter pilots became a legend in
wartime Britain for their ferocity, skill and recklessness, and
accounted
for one in six of ali German aircraft shot down in the four months of
the
Battle. But it was more than thirty years later that Britain revealed
another,
secret Polish contribution to the Battle of Britain and to eventual
Aliied
victory. By 1940, the British had broken the code of the German
'Enigma'
enciphering machine and were able to read Nazi radio traffic. This was
only made possible by a--'pre-war feat of Polish military intelligence,
aided by a group of brilliant young mathematicians: they had worked out
the 'Enigma' system, built a replica, and passed all its results to the
French and the British.
As the threat of German invasion
receded, the
Poles in
Britain were given a badly needed pause. In Scotland, the army trained
and exercised, striking up a warm friendship with the Scottish people.
General Sosnkowski regained contact with the underground in Poland, and
from February 1941 couriers and agents were parachuted into the
German-occupied
areas. The only land fighting was in North Africa, where in December
1940
the British attacked and destroyed a far larger Italian army. The
Polish
Carpathian Brigade, composed of troops who had escaped from Romania,
was
nearby in Palestine, but did not take part in the offensive for the
bizarre
reason that Sikorski had forgotten to declare war on Italy. This was
hastily
remedied.
The European war became a world war
on 22 June
1941,
when German armies stormed across the demarcation line in Poland and
attacked
the Soviet Union. Churchill at once offered Stalin unconditional
support.
This put Sikorski in a delicate position, dependent as he was on
British
hospitality. He issued a statement rejoicing at the outbreak of war
between
Poland' s enemies and suggesting that any Polish-Soviet alliance should
be conditional on Soviet recognition of the 1939 frontiers and the
release
of Poles in captivity within the USSR. Combined British and Soviet
pressure,
however, showed Sikorski that he would have to shelve the frontier
problem,
and on 30 July a Polish-Soviet agreement was signed in London. It was
too
much for several members of the Polish government, including
Sosnkowski,
who assumed that the Soviet Union would be rapidly crushed by Hitler
and
saw no reason to make concessions to Stalin. They resigned.
The agreement promised mutual
support in the war,
arranged
for the formation of a Polish army under the London government on
Soviet
soil, and declared that Poles captive in the Soviet Union should
receive
'amnesty' (although they had committed no crime save that of being
Polish).
On frontiers, the pact merely stated that territorial changes under the
Nazi-Soviet pact were no longer valid. To comfort Sikorski, the British
issued a declaration that they did not recognise changes in Poland's
borders
after August 1939.
Whatever its political shortcomings
from the
Polish point
of view, the Polish-Soviet agreement was utterly justified in human
terms.
Slowly and reluctantly, the gates of the Siberian and Asian prison
camps
swung open, and hundreds of thousands of Poles - soldiers, women,
officials,
priests, even orphaned children - began to make their way towards the
centres
where the new Polish army was being gathered. Many had already died;
many
we re not released. But the rest set out on the journey by rail,
sledge,
river raf t, or on foot. In the chaos of wartime, the Soviet
authorities
gave them little assistance or food, and thousands perished on the way.
Aleksandra Jarmulska was in an Arctic labour camp when the news came of
the Polish-Soviet agreement. We slept in a communal hut just on wooden
planks, and there was no cruelty: we were just told that we can't
escape
from there; we would be eaten by polar bears or die in the snows if we
did, but if we worked and earned some money. we could survive.' When
they
were released, Aleksandra and her companion made a raf t for their
river
journey to find their army. 'The river started freezing at the banks,
and
sometimes the raft couldn't get through and we just had to cm pieces of
the supports away to negotiate ourselves along. And sometimes the raft
would stick in the shallows, and then whoever was on it had to get into
the river to push.'
The army commander chosen by
Sikorski, Genera1
Władysław
Anders, had spent the last two years in the Lubyanka prison in Moscow.
Energetic and aggressive, Anders was intensely anti-Russian, and was
personally
convinced that the Soviet Union was losing the war against Hitler. He
set
up his headquarters at Buzuluk, between the Volga and the UraI
mountains.
By December 1941, he had 40,000 Polish soldiers, and 70,000 by March
1942.
This was hard to correlate with Polish records which showed that some
180,000
men had been taken prisoner by Soviet forces in 1939. Stranger still
was
the absence of officers. Only a few hundred arrived in the early
months,
although some 15,000 had been made Soviet prisoners-of-war.
On 30 November, Sikorski himself
arrived in the
Soviet
Union, welcomed on the snowy airfield by Vyacheslav Molotov, the man
whose
signature on me Nazi-Soviet pact had condemned Poland to extinction. On
3 December, he and Anders met Stalin and were guests at a banquet the
following
day. There were arguments about the slow pace of the releases of Poles,
about the missing officers, about inadequate rations and about the
Polish
frontiers. On all these problems Stalin was evasive. But before the
newsreel
cameras, Stalin and Sikorski signed a joint declaration proclaiming
their
intention to fight Germany to the end. Sikorski went on to Buzuluk,
where
he inspected the troops, confirmed to his satisfaction their impatience
to get back into battle against the Germans, and saw the mass of Polish
civilians and families around the camps being slowly fed and nursed
back
to health.
Many of those who had reached the
Anders army
were too
far gone to recover. Aleksandra Jarmulska, who had made the journey
from
the Arctic by raft and train, found starvation even in the army
camps.The
civilians were still being denied Soviet food ration cards. 'One
morning,
I just woke up and couldn't wake my mother. And then I realised she had
died in her sleep . . . There we re so many people dying there at that
time and the soldiers who were assigned to the job of burying them were
like the ghosts of an army. They just couldn't cope with it.'
Scenes like these, coupled with his
impressions
of the
Soviet leaders, left Sikorski with no illusions about Soviet-Polish
relations
in the past and their problems for the future. But he remained
convinced
that there was no alternative to the pact with Stalin if Poland were to
revive, victorious and independent, after the war. '
But the problems grew worse, not
better. The
Polish forces
under Anders were moved eastward to new camps near the Caspian Sea.
Their
rations were cut by the Soviet authorities, and disease broke out.
Early
in 1942, Anders refused a Soviet request to send a division to the
front
on the plausible grounds that his men were under-armed and unfit. This
refusal, later made much of by Soviet propaganda as evidence that the
Poles
were reluctant to fight the 'Hiderites', covered a serious disagreement
now emerging between Sikorski and Anders.
Sikorski continued to stand by his
agreement with
Stalin
that the Polish forces in the Soviet Union would fight on the Eastern
Front
alongside the Red Army. But Anders, whose distrust of Russians had
grown
even stronger, now pressed Sikorśki to allow his forces to be evacuated
to Iran, which was under British control.
At first, Sikorski would not hear of
this. He
allowed
Anders to evacuate those he could not feed because of the ration
shortage.
But he had three powerful reasons for keeping Polish troops in the
Soviet
Union. He would retain some leverage over Stalin, the army would
continue
to act as magnet and refuge for hundreds of thousands of Poles still
missing,
and - above all - a free Polish army under his command would help to
liberate
Poland from the east, frustrating any Soviet attempt to bring Poland
under
Soviet domination. Unfortunately, Stalin understood this last reason
perfecdy
well.
Stalin decided that this alien
presence on his
own soil
was more trouble than it was worth; the German thrust at Moscow had
been
beaten on in December 1941, and his military situation was no longer
desperate.
He began to encourage Anders in his plans to leave. In London,
Churchill
- now desperate in turn for troops to stem the German offensive against
Egypt, which began under General Rommel in June 1942 - also started
pushing
the Polish government to let Anders come out of Russia. Sikorski was in
no position to defy this combined pressure, and in August 1942 ships
carrying
Polish troops set out across the Caspian Sea for the Iranian shore.
In all, Anders was able to lead some
115,000
soldiers
and civilians out of the Soviet Union. In the safety of Iran, they were
at last given sufficient food and clothing by the British, and the
troops
were issued with new weapons. At the last moment Anders had beaten on a
Soviet objection to the departure of soldiers and their families who
had
Polish citizenship but not Polish 'nationality' - which meant Jews.
They
came tao. But over a million Poles remained in the Soviet Union. With
the
army gone, the Polish embassy in Moscow had little leverage to use in
persuading
Stalin to release them. The evacuation to Iran was seen by many Poles
as
a divine mercy, a flight from Babylonian captivity. For Sikorski,
however,
it was his worst diplomatic defeat, a calamity for his plans.
Deprived of a presence on the
Eastern Front, the
weakness
of Sikorski' s position became steadily more painful. In Decemher 1942,
he flew to the United States and urged Roosevelt to think seriously
about
an invasion of the Balkans. He hoped that an Anglo - American force
could
reach Poland through Jugoslavia and Hungary, and lay the foundations of
a free Central European Federation before the Red Army arrived.
Roosevelt
gave him only vague answers. A few weeks later, in January 1943, the
Soviet
Union informed the Polish government in London that all Poles who had
been
living in the territories seized in 1939 were now Soviet citizens. This
not only deprived the Polish embassy in Moscow of its right to help
Poles
left in the Soviet Union; it revealed beyond all doubt that Stalin
intended
to keep those territories after the war.
But all Sikorski's efforts
to preserve at
least
a working relationship with the Soviet Union were about to be smashed
apart.
On 13 April 1943, German radio announced the discovery of mass graves
near
the village of Katyń, in the district of Smolensk. Katyń was
Soviet
territory, but it had been occupied by the Nazis since the summer of
1941.
In the graves lay the bodies of Polish officers, their hands tied
behind
their backs, their skulls shattered by pistol-shots from behind. The
first
Nazi broadcast claimed there were 10,000 of them. In fact, some 4,300
bodies
were finally dug up.
The Germans proclaimed that the
Polish officers
had been
'murdered by the Bolsheviks'. At first, the Poles hesitated. They
instinctively
rejected murder charges made by mass murderers like the Nazis. They
could
see the deadly diplomatic trap into which Nazi propaganda intended to
push
them. They found it hard to believe that even the Russians could have
committed
a crime so revolting. But the evidence was too strong. Papers found on
the bodies, their condition and the degree of vegetation growth above
them,
left little room for doubt. These were the officers from Kozielsk, one
of the three Soviet camps for officer-prisoners established in 1939,
and
they had been shot between April and early June 1940. Now the Poles
recalled
all their enquiries about the missing 15,000 officers in 1941 and 1942,
whose letters had stopped so suddenly in the spring of 1940. They
remembered
Stalin' s queer, evasive answers to Sikorski and to Anders: 'They
escaped
to Manchuria', or just, 'Things sometimes happen. . .'
Two days later, Radio Moscow
announced that the
Germans
had committed the atrocity in 1941, after capturing Smolensk. Nearly
fifty
years later, this is still the Soviet version of events. Almost nothing
supports it; all the evidence accumulated since points even more
directly
at Soviet guilt. Few Poles, in Poland or abroad, believe anything
different.
There had been about 5,000 officers
in the
Kozielsk 'special
camp'. No trace has ever been found of the 4,000 officers in
Starobielsk
camp or of the 6,500 prisoners at Ostashkov. Both camps were 'wound up'
in Apil l 940. After that, there is only silence and darkness. One
account,
circulating years later in gulags, said that the Poles were
locked
inside barges which were deliberately sunk in the White Sea.
Why? Nobody knows that
either, outside the
Kremlin. It
looks like an act of selective genocide against a part of the Polish
national
elite, closely parallel to Hitler's order to exterminate the Polish
intellectual
class. For Stalin, this act have been a small affair compared to some
of
his other slaughters. Some think it was simply an error by the NKVD
(predecessor
of the KGB), was misunderstood an order to 'liquidate' the special
camps.
The Polish government, in spite of
Churchill' s
warnings
to Sikorski demanded a Katyń enquiry by the International Red Cross.
For
the first time an open split had appeared in the anti-Hitler coalition.
German propaganda rejoiced over its triumph. On 24 April, the Soviet
Union
broke off diplomatic relations with the Polish government in London,
accusing
it of a 'treacherosu blow to the USSR' and of trying to 'please
Hitler's
tyranny'.
Stalin now moved rapidly to set up a
new and
menacing
Polish policy of own. In May, the nucleus of a Polish army
under
Soviet command was formulated by Colonel General- Zygmunt Berling. Its
political guidance from the Union of Polish Patriots (ZPP), a
grouping
of pro-Soviet Poles headed by Wanda Wasilewska. It was not long before
volunteers began to pour into the Berling army's camps. Most of them
were
Poles who had not been able to reach the Anders army in time; they had
no affection for the Soviet Union, but here, at least, was a chance
both
to return home and to fight the Nazis. They had to swear an oath to the
Soviet Union as well as to Poland, but the Polish flag was flown, the
national
anthem sung, and there was even a priest to say Mass. By July 1943,
they
already numbered over 14,000. By early 1944 Berling and his
second-in-command,
General Karol Świerczewski, who had fought as the illustrious 'General
Walter' in the Spanish Civil War, had nearly 44,000 men behind
them.
In the aftermath of the Katyń
affair, while the
British
still reproached the Poles for provoking a breach in the alliance,
Sikorski
flew to the Middle East. He met General Anders and visited his troops,
now in Iraq and about to be formed into the Second Polish Corps to take
part in the invasion of Italy. He set oH home, and made a landing at
Gibraltar.
The next day on 4 July 1943, his aircraft took off from the Gibraltar
airfield,
at once lost height, and crashed into the sea. All but the Czech pilot
died.
Władysław Sikorski's body was
brought back to
Britain
and buried in the Polish mili tary cemetary at Newark, deep in the
English
countryside. A British enquiry found no traces of sabotage in the
aircraft
wreck, concluding that a rudder had probably failed. But in their grief
the Poles fell prey to many suspicions: that Soviet agents or Sikorski'
s political rivals or even Churchill had engineered his death. No
serious
evidence for any of these theories has emerged.
The death of Sikorski was both
tragic and
disastrous.
Upright, austere, not without arrogance, Sikorski possessed a heroic
authority
which had held the exile factions together; only he would have been
capable
of forcing through a policy of alliance with the Soviet Union which
broke
with the Pilsudskian tradition of hostility to Russia and went against
the deep emotional reactions of Poles to the events of 1939. Even after
Katyń, he had been planning to overcome the breach with Stalin. Now the
Polish leadership divided. General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, the restlessly
suspicious officer who mistrusted both the Russian and Anglo-American
intentions
for Poland, took over Sikorski' s post as commander-in-chief. The
office
of prime minister went to Stanisław Mikołajczyk, leader of the Peasant
Party, a stubborn but radical politician who was determined to carry
forward
the ideas of his dead predecessor.
Sosnkowski and Mikołajczyk, never
close, now
become bitter
adversaries. There were periods when the two leaders of Poland refused
even to speak to one another, and diverted their energies into blocking
each other's intentions. On the whole, though, Mikołajczyk prevailed.
In
the east, the Red Army was now on the offensive, heading towards
Poland.
Mikołajczyk knew that some relationship with the Soviet Union must be
rebuilt.
If he did not try to achieve that, he would be abdicating all
responsibility
for his country.
At the end of November 1943,
Churchill, Roosevelt
and
Stalin met at Teheran. Their central purpose was to reach agreement on
how to carry forward the war. Stalin and Roosevelt rejected Churchill'
s argument for an invasion of the Balkans, which might have forestalled
the Soviet liberation and occupation of at least part of eastern
Europe,
and it was agreed instead that the Americans and the British would land
in northern France and fight their way towards Germany.
Near the end of the
conference, there was a
discussion
on the future of eastern Europe. The Big Three accepted that there
would
be predominant Soviet influence in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the
annexed
Baltic states and Jugoslavia. Poland was more complicated. Stalin
repeated
his promise that he would establish a 'strong and independent' Poland,
a promise which in his own way he kept: Polish fears that he intended
to
absorb the whole of Poland as a new republic of the Soviet Union were
groundless.
But the three men at Teheran decided, in secret and without consulting
Mikołajczyk, that the Polish state would be moved bodily several
hundred
miles to the west. The Soviet Union would absorb the old eastern
territories,
in which Poles were a minority, and set its frontier along the 1920
Curzon
Line. In the west, Poland would take over almost the whole of Germany
east
of the rivers Oder and Neisse: Silesia with its mineral wealth and
industries
and the great city of Breslau, Pomerania with a long stretch of Baltic
coast including Danzig, and the southern part of East Prussia.
Churchill thought he could persuade
the Polish
government
in exile to accept an outline of these terms. After all, they offered
Poland
a strong state which would be ethnically much more united - once the
Germans
had been expelled from their lost provinces - and economically
stronger.
Stalin had his doubts, and reserved the right to set up a government
which
would consent to these terms if the London Poles refused. Stalin was
right.
Mikołajczyk's government rebelled. They could hardly reject the offer
of
expansion to the west - an ambition harboured by many Poles before the
war - but would not recognise the new Western Territories as
'compensation'
for lands lost in the east. The Curzon Line was the sticking-point.
There
now followed months of wrangling over the frontier between the London
Poles
and an increasingly exasperated British government. The Poles suggested
in February 1944 that (they could renounce some of the old eastern
lands,
but absolutely refused to give up the ancient Polish centres of Lwów
and
Wilno. Churchill and his foreign secretary Anthony Eden, obliged to
spend
precious hours and days arguing over 'obscure' place-names in eastern
Europe,
came to consider the London Poles as unrealistic and unreasonable.
There was a failure of imagination
here. The
British
could not understand why the Poles seemed unable to divorce the two
issues
of independence and frontiers, which appeared to the pragmatic
Churchill
quite separate.
The problem was history: the history
of the
Partitions.
Every loss of territory inflicted by Poland's neighbours had led at
once
to a reduction of Poland' s independence, and to an internal weakening
of the Polish state. The Polish government in London and the Delegation
and Home Army command in Warsaw were unanimous: a surrender of
territory
to Russia would mean that the future Poland would be a Soviet puppet,
and
'compensation' elsewhere was irrelevant.
Mikołajczyk, however, refused to
give up the
struggle.
He was determined to find a way of renewing relations with the Soviet
Union
which would be acceptable to his more obstinate colleagues in the
Polish
government, who now began to suspect him of 'pro-Soviet' weakness. In
June
1944, he met Roosevelt once more, in the very days that the Allies were
landing on the Normandy beaches. He was welcomed like a great statesman
- Roosevelt had his eye on the Polish vote in the approaching election.
The President, good-natured but evasive, told his guest that he would
see
that Poland kept the city of Lwów and much of Galicia after the war,
but
doubted whether Stalin could be persuaded to give up Wilno. This was a
grass deceit on the part of Roosevelt, who at Teheran had agreed in
secret
talks that Poland' s frontier would be the Curzon Line - granting Lwów
and eastern Galicia to the Soviet Union.
In Poland itself, events were
beginning to slip
out of
Mikolajczyk's contra. The Red Army was closing on Warsaw, accompanied
by
the Berling army which had grown in size and prowess since its first
hard-fought
batde at Lenino in September 1943. 'Operation Tempest', the attempt by
the Home Army to liberate regions of Poland before the Soviet troops
arrived,
was failing. The Communist-dominated Committee of National Liberation
(PKWN)
installed itself at Lublin in late July; if Mikolajczyk was to prevent
the PKWN becoming the provisional government of Poland, he had little
time
left.
Churchill urged him to find some way
of merging
the London
government with the PKWN, accepting a Communist element in the future
Polish
regime as the price for retaining some influence over events. On 29
July,
Mikołajczyk and his foreign minister, Tadeusz Romer, flew to Moscow for
a visit that lasted a fortnight. It was the last hope for the London
government.
Two days after Mikołajczyk's
arrival, the Warsaw
Rising
began. Taken by surprise and suspicious of its motives, Stalin
reproached
Mikołajczyk for not informing him in advance - although Soviet
broadcasts
to Warsaw had been calling for an insurrection for days before it broke
out. He refused to consider any other eastern frontier than the Curzon
Line, which put both Lwów and Wilno on the Soviet side of the border,
and
urged the Polish prime minister to talk to the PKWN. A meeting was
arranged,
and Mikołajczyk found himself facing some of the unknown men and women
who were about to tak e power in his country: Wanda Wasilewska,
Bolesław
Bierut, a loyal supporter of Stalin and a Communist, and Edward
Osóbka-Morawski,
an obscure member of the Polish Socialist Party. They offered him a
coalition
government in which they would have fourteen seats in the Cabinet and
London
would have only four, although Mikołajczyk would become prime minister.
Mikołajczyk, angry and agonised over Soviet reluctance to help the
Warsaw
Rising, turned them down and returned to London on l0 August.
By now, Polish soldiers on all
fronts we re
becoming
aware of the outlines of the Teheran decisions, and of a proposed
change
of frontiers. For many of them, these changes meant that they would
never
see their homes again, unless they chose to become Soviet citizens
after
the war. The men of Berling's army, recruited from those imprisoned or
deported in 1939, came almost entirely from the eastern territories.
But
so, for the same reasons, did the Polish Second Corps under General
Anders,
now fighting in Italy. And a large part of the Polish forces in
Britain,
who crossed the Channel to enter the Normandy baules in August 1944,
were
also easterners who had been with the regiments that took refuge in
Romania
and Hungary in 1939 or had been evacuated from me Soviet Union in 1942.
There was bitter talk, in the
officers' messes
and in
the ranks. But the Poles, loyal to their alliance even when they saw
that
they were losing their country, fought on. In May 1944, the Second
Corps
- at an appalling cost in dead and wounded - succeeded where the
British
and Americans had failed and stormed the Italian monastery of
Monte
Cassino. In France, the Polish First Armoured Division helped to
inflict
on the Germans the disastrous defeat at Falaise; under General Maczek,
the divison drove on through the Low Countries and liberated the Dutch
city of Breda in October. A Polish paratroop brigade commanded by
General
Sosabowski took part in the airborne landings at Arnhem in September
1944,
a noble but avoidable failure.
Given a choice, they would all have
preferred to
be in
Warsaw, fighting and dying with their own people. The Rising, intended
to last only a few days before the Soviet forces arrived, went on for
two
months of desperate street fighting which cost about 200,000 lives and
left most of the capital an uninhabited wilderness of ruins.
General Bór-Komorowski and his
commanders had
some 30,000
men and women in their forces, mostly from the Home Army but including
formations from the NSZ and the Communist People's Army. They had no
heavy
weapons and just over 700 automatic weapons, including machine-pistols.
For an action lasting less than a week, against the rearguard of a
departing
enemy, this might have been enough.
But everything went wrong, not
always through the
mistakes
of the Rising's leaders. In the first days, in glorious festivals of
patriotic
rejoicing, much of the city was liberated. Meanwhile, however, the
German
retreat had stopped, and armoured divisions moved across the Vistula to
inflict a sharp defeat on the Soviet forces approaching the city. The
Red
Army fell back, but even when it had reorganised itself, made no
further
move to come to Warsaw's rescue. The Soviet aircraft which had been
seen
over the city every day now suddenly vanished. German reinforcements
arrived,
closed a ring around Warsaw, and - with the help of units from General
Vlasov' s renegade Russian army - began to fight their way back street
by street.
The temporary setback before Warsaw
does not
explain
the fact that the Soviet forces now sat passively in their trenches,
week
after week, while the Germans crushed the Rising. Stalin cabled
Mikolajczyk
that the Rising was a 'reckless adventure' which he would not assist.
On
12 August, Roosevelt and Churchill asked him to permit Western aircraft
dropping supplies to Warsaw to land on Soviet airfields. Stalin
refused.
Only on 12 September did he allow American bombers to land at Poltava
in
the Ukraine, and order some Soviet airdrops to the insurgents. By then,
Warsaw was hidden by smoke and the insurgents had been driven back into
a small perimeter; most containers of arms and supplies fell into
German
hands. Stalin dismissed the Rising as a 'mindless brawl mounted by
adventurers'.
But in fact he could read all too clearly the minds of those who had
launched
it, and knew that the Rising was intended to confront him with the
accomplished
fact of a free capital city controlled by the representatives of a
non-Communist
government. He had no intention of helping this design to succeed.
So the Poles in Warsaw fought and
died at their
barricades
and cursed the Russians for doing nothing, while the German bombers -
unchallenged
- steadily reduced the town to rubble. A few days after the start of
the
Rising, the Germans counter-attacked with tanks and artillery and cut
the
liberated area into several pieces. As they advanced, they methodically
drove civilians in to the courtyards, machine-gunned them and then set
fire to the buildings. The siege of the Old Town lasted until 1
September,
when the surviving defenders
escaped through the sewers to
another bastion of
resistance
in the modern centre of Warsaw.
The British and Americans had not
been warned of
the
Rising any more than the Soviet Dnion. Six days before it broke out,
General
Bór-Komorowski appealed for the Polish Paratroop Brigade to be dropped
into the city. Nobody had given serious thought to the reinforcement
problems
of a prolonged insurrection, and this idea was completely impractical;
there was no way that an armada of slow-moving gliders and towing
aircraft
could reach Warsaw, even if they we re not shot down on the way. But
the
Allies made efforts to supply the Rising, even without the use of
Soviet
airfields. Polish, British and South African squadrons flew missions
from
Brindisi in Italy, a 1,700-mile return flight. Their losses in men and
aircraft were suicidal, and - counting the later American mission -
only
44 out of 149 parachuted containers reached the insurgents.
On l0 September, the Soviet forces
to the east of
the
Vistula at last mounted an attack and reached the bank of the river in
the Warsaw suburb of Praga. Among them were Polish troops of the
Berling
army, who could now see the burning city across the water and hear the
noise of battle. Some Polish units managed to cross the Vistula, but
the
Germans now held the other shore in strength, and they were forced to
give
up their bridgeheads with heavy losses. The army group commanded by
Marshal
Rokossovsky, to which the Poles belonged, made no attempt at a
full-scale
river crossing.
District by district, the last
pockets held by
the Rising
began to fall. The Germans drove unarmed Polish civilians before their
troops as they advanced, to screen them from fire. The execution
squads,
somb from the SS, some composed of drunken Russian deserters,
slaughtered
their way from house to house. Home Army hospitals, when captured, were
burned with patients, doctors and nurses still inside. Hungry, filthy,
exhausted and almost without ammunition, the defenders felI back from
cellar
to cellar, women and children attacking German tanks with home-made
petrol-bombs,
the dead buried in gardens and bomb craters.
The final surrender did not come
until 2 October
1944.
The Home Army survivors were granted the status of combatants and made
prisoners-of-war; the entire remaining civilian population was marched
out of the city to internment camps. Hitler ordered the complete razing
of Warsaw, so that no settlement would ever arise there again, and
demolition
squads set to work with flame-throwers and dynamite among the silent,
gutted
streets. When they had finished, ninety-three per cent of the city's
buildings
were destroyed or beyond repair.
The Warsaw Rising of 1944 is one of
the supreme
events
of Polish history. It brought to an awful climax the romantic tradition
of armed uprising which stretched back to 1794. It convinced most of
the
generation who took part in it that in modern conditions that tradition
no longer had a place: after another such rising, there would be no
Poland
left. But the Warsaw Rising was also a time of freedom, a 63-day
revelation
of how Poles could act and feel and behave to one another, which left a
hot residue of pride to keep the nation warm through the bleak years
that
followed.
The Rising was not just a military
action, but a
community
of the people with their soldiers, a community with its own songs and
newspapers,
its radio and theatres, its own film unit and cinemas. Even children
took
a full part. All who took part remember with love the laczniczki, the
girls
who ran with messages for the insurgents and died in their hundreds and
the Szare Szeregi (Grey Ranks), the boys and girls of the Scout
movement
who fought to the end. Like many Polish upheavals, the Rising also left
a moral legacy behind it.
Many older citizens of Warsaw today
still try to
measure
their own behaviour by the devotion, purity and generosity which they
remember
from the summer of 1944.
The best historian of the Warsaw
Rising, Jan
Ciechanowski,
concludes that its political motives and its military motives could
never
have been reconciled. 'In view of the total absence of
liaison
with
the Russians, and the lack of reliable data concerning their deployment
and intentions, the Home Army leaders were militarily unjustified in
embarking
on an insurrection against the Germans.' The predicament of Bór-
Komorowski
was this; 'to fight against the Germans successfully he had to
cooperate
with the Russians militarily, yet he was unable to do so wholeheartedly
because he wished to oppose them politically.
The failure of the Rising
was a fatal and
decisive defeat
both for the Home Army and for the Polish government in London. With
its
leadership dead or imprisoned, and the capital destroyed, much of the
fighting
spirit went out of the Home Army. Some units ceased active operations,
allowing many of their men to bury their weapons and return home. A few
prepared for a new armed struggle against Soviet forces and the
Communist
authorities. In the liberated areas, where the PKWN now announced
conscription,
many thousands of ex-Home Army soldiers allowed themselves to be drawn
into the Berling army, which numbered 290,000 by the end of 1944.
Stalin's decision in September to
give the Rising
some
assistance, though too little and too late, inspired Churchill to make
one last effort to solve what he called, in moments of despair, 'the
Polish
imbroglio'. In London, General Sosnkowski had been dismissed from the
post
of commander-in-chief after an outburst in which he accused Britain of
betraying Poland; Churchill hoped that Mikołajczyk, free of his
implacably
anti-Russian rival, might now find it possible to bargain with Stalin.
In October 1944, Churchill and Eden flew to Moscow, and Mikołajczyk
followed
them on 12 October.
There took place in Moscow a tragic,
Shakespearian confrontation.
It was a collision between Churchill and Mikołajczyk, two men who
shared
the same political values of liberty and democracy, whose stubborn
temperaments
were similar, and who at heart regarded one another with real
affection.
Stalin and Molotov scarcely took part. Mikołajczyk brought with him his
Cabinet's final offer: an all-party government for post-war Poland in
which
the Communists would have a fifth of the ministries, and a redrawing of
the eastern frontier which would leave Wilno and Lwów, with the nearby
Galician oilfields, in Poland. Stalin turned this down. When
Mikołajczyk
retorted that Roosevelt had told him that Lwów should stay Polish,
Molotov
revealed to him that the President had agreed to the Curzon Line at
Teheran,
ten months earlier.
Deeply shaken, Mikołajczyk now met
Churchill and
Eden
in private. Churchill reproached him: if he had only agreed to the
Curzon
Line frontier earlier in the year, Stalin would not have set up a rival
'government' in the form of the Lublin Committee - the PKWN.
Mikołajczyk
bitterly reminded him of Britain's pledges to Poland. Churchill shouted
at him that he wanted to start a third world war. 'You're a callous
people
who want to wreck Europe. I shall leave you to your own troubles. You
have
only your miserable, petty, selfish interests in mind!'
He threatened to withdraw
recognition of the
London government,
and added that Mikołajczyk ought to be in a lunatic asylum. Beside
himself
with rage and misery, Mikołajczyk demanded permission to be parachuted
into Poland, so that he could perish in battle with the Home Army. 'I
prefer
to die fighting for the independence of my country, rather than to be
hanged
later by the Russians in fulI view of your British ambassador!'
At this Churchill marched out of the
room. Both
men were
close to tears. After some moments, Churchill returned and put his arm
round the Pole's shoulders. But they had reached the end of a line, and
they knew it. A last suggestion by Mikołajczyk that Poland could give
up
Wilno if Lwów could be saved was put to the Kremlin. Stalin, no doubt
aware
of this highly satisfactory quarrel through well-placed microphones,
placidly
refused.
Stanisław Mikołajczyk went back to
London. There
he told
his colIeagues candidly that there was no longer any room for
manoeuvre.
If they wanted to have any share of the future government, they would
have
to swalIow the Soviet terms and the Curzon Line. He urged them to do
so,
reminding them of the rich new territories promised to Poland in the
west.
But it was too much for most of the London Poles, and on 24 November
Mikołajczyk
resigned.
This was the end of the Polish exile
government
as a
force in international politics. From now on, world statesmen acted as
if it no longer existed. In December, the PKWN proclaimed itself the
provisional
government of Poland, with Osóbka-Morawski as prime minister, Bolesław
Bierut as head of state and Władysław Gomułka as a deputy premier. It
was
recognised by the Soviet Union a few days later.
On 12 January 1945, the Soviet
armies on the
Vistula
resumed the offensive. The German defences broke, and the Red Army
drove
rapidly across central and western Poland towards the German frontier.
The men of the Berling army entered Warsaw on 17 January, stepping in
horrified
silence through a desert of frozen rubble. Behind them, welI wrapped up
against the savage frost, came a group of men whom most Poles had never
heard "of - the new government. After more than five years of Nazi
occupation,
liberation had come at last, but wearing a uniform woven of
irony.
In early February 1945, Churchill,
Roosevelt and
Stalin
met at Yalta in the Crimea. They planned the final phase of the war and
the joint administration of occupied Germany in the interval before the
peace conference. But no peace conference has ever taken place to make
a formal settlement of the Second World War, and in its absence the
agreements
reached by the Big Three at Yalta have been treated as the charter for
the division of Europe into 'zones of influence'. At Yalta, many now
believe,
Britain and the United States betrayed all the principles for which the
war had been fought by handing over Europe east of the river Elbe to
Joseph
Stalin.
Yalta does not really deserve this
bad name. In
the first
place, there was little Churchill and Roosevelt could do to prevent
Soviet
domination of the areas liberated by the Red Army, short of threatening
a fresh war. Secondly, Yalta for the most part only ratified decisions
taken earlier, especially at Teheran. As far as Poland was concerned,
the
West did attempt - in a callous, casual way - to ensure that Poland-
would
not become a Communised puppet of the Soviet Union, and that the
political
will of the Polish people would be freely expressed. The worst that can
be said about Churchill and Roosevelt on this occasion is that they
willingly
deceived themselves about Stalin' s intention to keep his promises.
The three leaders agreed that Poland
would be run
by
a provisional government including 'alI democratic and anti-Nazi
elements',
until free elections could be held. This temporary government was to
include
Poles from the London camp. On frontiers, Yalta again confirmed the
Curzon
Line in the east, but there was no precise agreement on how much of
Germany
would be added to Poland in the west.
Stanisław Mikołajczyk decided to
accept the Yalta
blueprint.
It was a frightening gambIe. The London government in exile had
instantly
denounced Yalta as a new Partition. In March, sixteen leaders of the
resistance
in Poland we re invited to a 'meeting' with Marshal Zhukov, kidnapped
and
imprisoned in the Lubyanka in Moscow to await trial for - among other
grotesque
charges - collaborating with the Germans. In the Polish forests and
villages,
remnants of partisan bands were beginning to clash with Soviet security
forces. But Mikołajczyk felt that if the Soviet assurances at Yalta
meant
anything at all, he stood a chance of rallying the Peasant Party within
Poland and leading a non-Communist block of parties to victory in the
elections.
On 2 May, Berlin fell to Soviet and
Polish
troops. On
8 May, the war in Europe ended.
THE STRUGGLES FOR
POLAND BY NEAL ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
European History Quarterly, Vol. 35, No.
3, 429-464
(2005)
From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West
Africa
Incubated
Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern
Europe Benjamin Madley Yale University, USA
The German terms Lebensraum and Konzentrationslager,
both
widely known
because of their use by the Nazis, were not coined by the Hitler
regime.
These terms were minted many years earlier in reference to German South
West Africa, now Namibia, during the first decade of the twentieth
century,
when Germans colonized the land and committed genocide against the
local
Herero and Nama peoples. Later use of these borrowed words suggests an
important question: did Wilhelmine colonization and genocide in Namibia
influence Nazi plans to conquer and settle Eastern Europe, enslave and
murder millions of Slavs and exterminate Gypsies and Jews? This article
argues that the German experience in Namibia was a crucial precursor to
Nazi colonialism and genocide and that personal connections,
literature,
and public debates served as conduits for communicating colonialist and
genocidal ideas and methods from the colony to Germany.
The Nazi Kultur in Poland by several authors of necessity temporarily anonymous
Written in Warsaw under the German Occupation
and published
for the POLISH MINISTRY OF INFORMATION by HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE LONDON 1945
Chapter VIII MUSEUMS
AND COLLECTIONS
THE PAST
IN Poland, as in all the countries of Western Europe,
the
collector's
spirit was first awakened by the interest which ruling houses and their
courts began to take in works of art about the middle of the sixteenth
century. The last kings of the Jagelllonian dynasty (1386-1572) were
already
the possessors of splendid specimens of Renaissance art like the famous
collection of tapestries known as the Wawel Arrases. .
In the first half of the seventeenth century King Sigismund III and
his successors, Ladislas IV and John Casimir, brought together in
Warsaw
works of art which, by their quality and number, deserved to be
regarded
not merely as part of the castle furnishings, but as an independent
collection
important enough almost to rank as a museum. Ladislas IV owned a great
number of antique sculptures (which were under the care of a special
curator),
and he collected paintings by contemporary artists. We know that during
his foreign travels he made purchases in person from Rubens and Guido
Reni,
and that after the death of Rubens the king's representative bought so
many pictures from the sale of his works that Ladislas figures as the
third
most important purchaser, after the German emperor and the French king.
These collections were dispersed before the century was out. During the
Swedish wars many treasures were looted and carried off; and there were
continual losses to other foreign countries for similar
reasons.
King John Sobieski (1674-96) brought together numerous fine specimens
of decorative art at Wilanow, particularly from the East; and the last
king of Poland, Stanislas Augustus (1764-95) organized a museum on
modern
lines in the Castle of Warsaw. The great families of the nobility
followed
these royal examples and formed their own collections: the
Szydlowieckis
at Opatów and Sandomierz, the Zamoyskis at Zamosc, the Lubomirskis at
Wisnicz,
the Radziwills at Nieswiez, the Potockis at Brzezany and Tulczyn, the
Czartoryskis
at Pulawy, the Ossolinskis in Warsaw, and so on. Besides such private
collections
there came into being in Western Europe towards the end of the
eighteenth
century public collections, created and provided for by the State, as,
for example, the British Museum in England (1759) and the Louvre in
France
(1791). For Poland, at that time in the throes of a political crisis
which
ended in her loss of independence, this period brought a development in
art-collecting wholly different from that in other nations. The duty of
the State rationally to develop and to protect artistic and scientific
collections, now fell to the nation in the persons of its more
enlightened
members. Large classes of the Polish people soon became conscious that
works of art and historic relics carefully assembled by preceding
generations
represent a nation's cultural level as vitally as any other
manifestation
of intellectual life. The specific and most characteristic features of
this new phase for Poland's collectors was the continual need to rescue
the evidence of ancient history and culture from the destructive policy
of the partitioning Powers. This explains the distinctively indigenous
and historical bias of many collections. During the first decades of
the
nineteenth century, collecting was chiefly the privilege of the great
families
of the nobility, the Poniatowskis, Tyszkiewicz, Mniszechs,
Czartoryskis,
Radziwills, Lubomirskis, Dzieduszyckis, Raczynskis, and others, who
formed
the independent class of the nation.
The idea of creating public art collections, which Stanislas Augustus
had been unable to carry out, was taken up in the nineteenth century by
the Warsaw Philomatic Society, founded in the year 1800, and in 1817
enriched
by a substantial legacy from Gen. H. Dąbrowski. About the same time
university
collections came into being, the most important part of which were the
prints and drawings. The richest of these, that of the University of
Warsaw,
had, since 1818, owned the large collection of some 100,000 prints and
drawings bought from the heirs of Stanislas Augustus, and these were
soon
afterwards increased by a gift from Stanislas Potocki, then Minister of
Education. In the year 1817 the Ossolinski Institute (Zaklad Narodowy
im.
Ossolinskich) was founded at Lwow. This Society collected books,
manuscripts
and graphic art, and in 1823 it was united with the Lubomirski art
collection.
In 1818 the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts was founded in
Cracow. The reprisals which followed the defeat of the 1830-31
insurrection
in Tsarist-annexed Polish territory were also visited upon the
collections
of Warsaw University and the Warsaw Philomatic Society, Both of them
were
carried away to Russia. But in the second half of the nineteenth
century
(almost on the eve of a new armed rising) two new important
institutions
for the furthering of art and collecting were formed in Warsaw: the
Society
for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (Towarzystwo Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych)
in 1861, and the Museum of Fine Arts in 1862. The organization of the
Museum,
however, was arrested in its earliest stages by the outbreak of the
insurrection,
and the period of increased oppression which followed it did not favour
the development of the institution. Reprisals from the Tsarist
Government
affected all parts of the "Congress Kingdom" as well as the former
eastern
provinces of the ancient Polish Commonwealth. Both private and public
collections
were confiscated and were taken away to Russia. Since then collectors
have
been most active in the lands under Austrian rule, mainly in Cracow.
Their
work was also much helped by numerous Polish emigres abroad. In France,
the Czartoryski collection from Pulawy was housed in the Hotel Lambert
in 1831, and the Polish Library was founded in Paris in 1838. In
Switzerland
a Polish Museum was founded by WI. Plater at Rapperswil in
1870.
In the second half of the nineteenth century there was a marked
increase
of intellectual activity in all three parts of Poland, whether under
Russian,
Prussian or Austrian rule. This vitality expressed itself in the
founding
of new scientific societies, like the Wilno Archreological Committee
with
the Museum of Antiquities in 1855, the Poznan Philomatic Society in
1857,
the Cracow Academy of Science and Letters, which arose from the old
Philomatic
Society, in 1872, and so on. At the same time municipal authorities in
towns and provinces became aware of and interested in the existence of
these collections. Results of this were the creation of the Municipal
Museum
of Torun in 1861, the Municipal Industrial Museum of Cracow in 1868,
the
Municipal Museum of Applied Art at Lwow in 1874, the municipally-owned
National Museum of Cracow in 1879, the Municipal Historical Museum of
Lwow
in 1892-93, the Provincial Museum (later called the Muzeum
Wielkopolskie)
at Poznań in 1893, which is owned by the Provincial Federation of
Poznania
and the municipality of Poznan, the Town National Gallery at Lwow in
1894
and the Historical Museum at Cracow in 1898. The creation of
institutions
like these was possible only under Prussian and Austrian rule; the
territories
annexed by Tsarist Russia lacked all municipal organization and the few
existing collections were entirely dependent on public
generosity-though
that was never appealed to in vain. It created the Museum of Industry
and
Agriculture in 1875, for instance, the Museum of Crafts and Applied Art
in 1891, and the Majewski Museum of Archeology, also in 1891all of them
in Warsaw. In this part of Poland the first decade of the twentieth
century
stimulated still further a strong instinctive interest in collections
of
an ethnographic and prehistoric character, and these were also fostered
both by scientific associations and by the numerous branches of the
Topographical
Society (Towarzystwo Krajoznawcze) organized throughout the country.
All
these activities were, of course, carried on quite independently of the
ruling authorities. .
A separate group, and one which does not fall under the head of"
collections"
in the strict sense of the word, was that formed by church treasuries,
some of them very rich, particularly those belonging to cathedrals and
monasteries. These were great storehouses of ecclesiastical art, and of
treasures of decorative art destined for liturgical use. In the
nineteenth
century these riches, which were for the most part free gifts, partly
fell
a prey to the church policy of the partitioning Powers. They were
either
confiscated by the Tsarist Government after the Polish risings, along
with
the property of public institutions, or dispersed when the religious
houses
were abolished by the Prussian Government in 1819, and by the Russians
in the "Congress Kingdom" in 1819 and 1864.
More recently hostilities, which in Polish territory lasted without
a break for almost seven years (1914-21), had devastating effects on
collections
and museums. It was only after peace was concluded that a new era of
development
in the restored Polish State could be hoped for. That State's first act
in the matter was the Treaty of Riga, signed with Soviet Russia in
1921,
which contained an article stipulating that the Soviet Government
should
restore to the Republic of Poland all cultural possessions such as
archives,
libraries, works of art, which had been forcibly carried away to Russia
between 1772 and 1920. This article of the treaty was, however, never
fully
carried out. Nevertheless, what Poland regained after 1921 formed the
nucleus
of the State Art Collections, comprising in the main: the furnishings
of
the Warsaw Castle and the Lazienki Palace (some 5,000 items), militaria
originally taken from Government buildings, the Arsenal, Churches and
so
on (housed after their return in the Army Museum and in the castles of
Warsaw and Cracow), well over a hundred Brussels tapestries of the
middle
sixteenth century (Cracow Castle), the Gallery of Modern Polish
Painting
(some 1,000 items, in Warsaw), the numismatic collections (some 22,000
items, in Warsaw), collections of graphic art, bronze pieces,
sculptures,
paintings, and other valuable works of art.
During their short existence of less than a score of years these State
art collections were considerably enlarged, and Government purchases
for
them may be grouped under three main headings: (1) the further
furnishing
of the historic castles of Warsaw and Cracow by works of Gothic,
Renaissance,
and Early Baroque art (including decorative arts); (2) the creation of
a collection of modern Polish painting and graphic art; (3) the
enrichment
of the collection of militaria illustrating the history of Polish arms.
Apart from these collections, which were mostly grouped in Cracow and
Warsaw,
the State also owned a number of others-like the Silesian Museum of
Katowice
(founded in 1928, and in 1934 already in possession of collections
totalling
64,000 items) and the Museum of Archaeology in Warsaw.
According to the data for 1936, which correspond fairly well with the
state of things in 1939, Poland had, inclusive of scientific university
collections, twenty Government museums, thirty-five municipal,
sixty-two
which belonged to public institutions, eight diocesan and eleven
private
museums accessible to the general public-in all 134. Municipal museums
and
those owned by public institutions thus far outnumbered those owned by
the State, this being a natural consequence of the conditions of
development
previously mentioned. Until recently, also, municipal and private
collections
by the sheer quality of their exhibits took first place. For among the
richest museums in Poland, with interests comprising not only the
entire
artistic life of the country but also the cultural achievements of the
whole world, two were municipal institutions, the National Museums of
Warsaw
and Cracow, and two were private property, the Czartoryski Museums at
Goluchów
and Cracow. But the important Government purchases made for the Warsaw
and Cracow Castles somewhat redressed the balance.
The most characteristic feature of museum history in Poland during
the last twenty pre-war years of peace and comparative prosperity was
an
enthusiastic development which found expression in (1) new foundations
and the enlargement of old ones; (2) a tendency to work for the
rational
unification of homogeneous collections; (3) the reorganizing of museum
work on modern scientific lines; (4) training of qualified museum
staffs;
(5) publications and exhibitions. The most visible proof, however, of
the
favourable conditions for museum work in independent Poland is to be
found
in the erection of a number of new modern museum buildings, undertaken
within a few years by four institutions: the National Museum of Warsaw
(1922), the Silesian museum at Katowice (1928), the National Museum of
Cracow (1934), and the Museum of Polish Pomerania at ToruIi (1936). The
National Museum of Warsaw had already achieved its aim and transferred
itself to the new edifice in 1936 ; the others were in process of
building,
and on the eve of completion, when the war broke out.
The history of museums and collections in Poland thus shows that great
efforts were made in this direction by royalty and the great families
of
the nobility in the old days, by the whole people together with the
State
and municipal authorities in modern times; so that if Poland could not
boast collections as rich as those of mightier European States, it was
not for lack of endeavour, but because her possessions were again and
again
looted and destroyed, as has been the case in this war.
THE PRESENT
BOTH Government and private circles had, for several
years
before the
German invasion, devoted much attention to the question of
SAFEGUARDING,
MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS in the event of a war. A plan for the
international
protection of memorials and works of art, which had been drawn up by
the
Office International des Musees, and had in July 1937 been accepted by
the Commission Internationale de Cooperation Intellectuelle, was the
startingpoint
of their considerations. This plan the Assembly of the League of
Nations
had, in August 1938, turned over to the Netherlands Government, which
had
undertaken to conduct negotiations with other governments and to call a
diplomatic conference. The plan was based on the idea that all States
are
equally interested in the preservation of art treasures, and that the
loss
of a work of art, belonging to any nation whatever, is a gap in the
spiritual
heritage of all mankind. The new convention, to be based on The Hague
Conventions
of 1899 and 1907, was made necessary by the altered conditions of
modern
warfare. It was to lay upon all Governments an obligation to ensure
respect
for works of art and memorials by the issue of special instructions to
their troops, by preventing pillage, and so on. The plan provided for
the
creation of special storehouses for works of art and national
treasures,
these storehouses to be under the control of international commissions,
and to be immune from offensive action during hostilities, and from any
other activities of an occupying Power. In particular, the convention
stipulated
that no national treasure or work of art could be made an object of
enemy
reprisals. Unfortunately, this convention was not signed by the year
1939,
so that at the outbreak of war Poland had not been able to form the
intended
special storehouses under international control, since their formation
before the signature of the convention might have meant the dispersal
of
the whole country's most valuable art treasures. Each museum therefore
sought to safeguard its collections individually and in accordance with
local conditions. The Silesian Museum was evacuated to Lublin, at the
outbreak
of war; the Czartoryski Museums of Cracow and Goluchow sent their most
valuable possessions (including pictures by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci,
and Rembrandt, jewels, goldsmiths' work and coins) to Sieniawa in the
voivodship
of Lwow, and there walled them up in previously prepared underground
vaults.
Part of the collection of Kórnik near Poznan (miniatures, illuminated
manuscripts,
and so on) were taken to the Zamoyski Library in Warsaw, some of the
objects
from the Gniezno Cathedral Treasury and Library were entrusted to the
Dominican
Friars at Lublin, a Rubens from the church of St. Nicholas at Kalisz
was
sent to the National Museum in Warsaw. The famous high altar of Our
Lady's
church in Cracow, the work of Veit Stoss (Wit Stwosz), among the city's
most valuable treasures, was taken to pieces - the larger sculptures
were
carried in three barges to Sandomierz and were there deposited in the
cathedral,
while the smaller fragments were hidden in private houses in Cracow.
Many
other collections and works of art were similarly treated. Numerous
private
collections in western and south-western Poland were taken to the
central
provinces; for example, the Tarnowski family's collections from Sucha,
Dzikow and Dukla, the Bninskis' collection from Samostrzele, the
Skorzewski's
from Czerniejewo, the Potockis' from Krzeszowice, and so on. Many
privately
owned objects were entrusted to the National Museum in Warsaw, the
National
Museum in Cracow, and the Lubomirski Museum in Lwow; others were placed
in the houses of related families. No plan was made to send such
objects
abroad, and we know only two cases of such exportation: (1) The
eleventh-century
Coronation sword and the magnificent collection of 125 arrases made for
King Sigismund Augustus in 1556, as well as a number of valuable
historical
relics, all belonging to the Polish State collections, have left the
country,
as also (2) a number of valuable objects from the Sanguszko residence
at
Gumniska. The remaining museums and collections, whether public or
private,
did their best to safeguard their buildings and property on the spot.
The
National Museum in Warsaw packed a great part of its collections in
hundreds
of previously prepared cases and stored them in its cellars. The same
was
done with the collections of the National Museum in Cracow, with the
treasury
of the Cracow Cathedral, the Lubomirski collections at Przeworsk, and
the
Branickis' at Wilanow. Other private collections in country residences
such as Nieborow and Jablonna, were left in their usual places, as also
were some in towns-for instance, those of the Zamoyski, Krasinski and
Przeździecki
families in Warsaw.
• • •
The LOSSES OCCASIONED BY HOSTILITIES are enormous and
irreparable, although
the chief public and private collections were comparatively little
effected.
The losses directly due to hostilities were greatest in Warsaw. At
the ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM fire destroyed practically the whole of a
collection
consisting of several thousand objects brought together in the course
of
decades by scientists and collectors from all corners of Poland, and
truly
representative of the whole nation. It had contained a rich selection
of
all branches of popular art and handicrafts ; dresses and textiles,
embroideries,
pottery, paintings on glass, objects of wood, metal and leather,
musical
instruments, household goods, furniture, ceremonial objects, and so on.
The museum's inventories, with their drawings, water-colours,
photographs,
and manuscript catalogues were also destroyed. The destruction of the
collections
representative of foreign and exotic ethnography must also be accounted
a serious loss. The museum had possessed good Spanish, Rumanian,
Jewish,
and Gipsy sections, not only valuable in themselves, but also because
they
were the fruit of Polish scientists' and collectors' work. Part had
even
been contributed by exiles in Siberia. All this was burnt during the
last
days of the September bombardment, when salvage work was impossible
owing
to lack of water and the- overcrowding of the museum building by
refugees
from the Old Town quarter.
The most serious loss suffered by Polish art and science is the tragic
destruction of the Zamoyski and Przeździecki collections, which also
fell
a prey to fire in the last days of the bombardment. The ZAMOYSKI MUSEUM
with the Zamoyski archives and library not only gave a picture of the
family's
splendid patronage of science and art ever since the middle of the
sixteenth
century, but also bore witness to great pages in the nation's
political,
educational and scientific history. The museum had contained relics of
the Zamoyski family, particularly of Chancellor Jan Zamoyski
(1541-1605),
of the kings: Sigismund Augustus, Stephen Bathory, Sigismund III and
John
Sobieski, of the hetmans: Zolkiewski and Czarniecki, and of the
national
heroes: Kosciuszko and Prince Joseph Poniatowski. In addition to this,
the museum had possessed an armoury comprising a number of rare pieces
and a valuable collection of decorative art, more particularly a
splendid
selection of pottery. In the numismatic section were to be found almost
complete sets of coins of the Piast and Jagellonian dynasties, some of
them unique, a large collection of imprints from antique gems and a
valuable
set of medals. The section of graphic art contained a rich collection
of
art publications and eighteenth century prints.
All this, together with the archives, formed an invaluable source for
the study of four centuries of Polish culture. Only a small part of the
material had hitherto been utilized, so that many pages of that history
will now never be written.
The PRZEZDZIECKI COLLECTION also formed a whole, complete with library
and archives, giving a picture of many aspects of Polish history and
more
particularly of that of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. They contained a
gallery of pictures by Polish and foreign artists, some of which were
saved,
though they are so much damaged that their artistic value has been
almost
entirely destroyed. The fire also destroyed the furnishings; bronzes,
clocks,
chandeliers, furniture, carpets, collections of Dresden, Berlin,
Viennese
and Polish china-mostly museum pieces, as well as a collection of
militaria
and a collection of some 10,000 important prints and
drawings.
The new buildings of the NATIONAL MUSEUM in Warsaw suffered
considerable
damage through incendiary and explosive bombs, as well as through
artillery
action. The bulk of its collections which had been placed in the
cellars
was saved, but losses were nevertheless severe, especially as regards
antique
furniture, Far Eastern art, and Egyptian antiquities.
The building of the Warsaw SOCIETY FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF FINE ARTS
(usually called tbe "Zachęta") was seriously damaged by an explosive
bomb
and by artillery shells. Several score of pictures belonging to the
Society
(nineteenth-century Polish art) and a number of private deposits were
destroyed.
The collections of the Warsaw MUSEUM OF ARTS AND CRAFTS were almost
wholly destroyed by artillery action. They had consisted mainly of a
large
collection of Polish pottery comprising rare and unique specimens. The
antique furniture and the collection of metal-work were also lost and
the
building itself was seriously damaged. .
The collection belonging to COUNT EDWARD RACZYNSKI, Polish Ambassador
in London, was destroyed almost entirely, together with the beautiful
house
which was its home, and with which it had formed a splendidly blended
whole.
It had been, as it were, a memorial of the cultural traditions of
several
eminent Polish families, the Czapskis, the Malachowskis, Krasinskis and
Raczynskis, from the middle of the eighteenth century onward. The
finest
part of the collection was the picture gallery, containing some 300
works
by Holbein, Murillo, Ribera, Guercino, Spagnoletto, Jordaens, Teniers,
Bloomert, Honthorst, Netscher, Bol, G. Metsu, Van Dyck and others.
Unfortunately
it had never been exhaustively catalogued or studied by art
historians.
The collection of DR. BRYNDZA-NACKI, the beginnings of which dated
back to the second half of the eighteenth century, and whose Flemish
and
Dutch pictures were particularly interesting, was totally destroyed by
fire. It contained paintings by F. Mieris, P. Claes, Hondius, Fyt, A.
van
Ostade, Ruysdael, and others. The pictures of EDWARD NATANSON met with
the same fate. It was only a small collection-some ninety paintings,
but
it was graced by the works of Bronzino, Guido Reni, P. Breughel,
Boucher,
a portrait of A. K. Czartoryski by Gainsborough (painted in 1761), and
a number of valuable Polish pictures by Brodowski, Michalowski,
Chelmonski,
Grottger, Siemiradzki, Wyspianski and others.
It is quite impossible to register here all the collections destroyed
in the bombardment of Warsaw. The larger ones are numbered by tens, the
smaller ones by the hundred. We have named only some of the largest and
finest.
Not only lack of space but also the impossibility of securing reliable
information at the present time forbids our making any attempt at
listing
the damage caused by hostilities in the country-in smaller towns, in
country
residences and manor-houses. We will content ourselves with noting the
considerable losses suffered by the museum of the WILNO PHILOMATIC
SOCIETY
during the shelling of the city by the Germans in June 1941.
1. Nazi Policy in the" Generalgouvemement"
That the Germans possessed a detailed plan concerning
Polish
public
and private museums and collections, as well as other art treasures,
was
abundantly proved even during the first months of ENEMY OCCUPATION. The
studies carried on for so many years by German scholars, especially
those
of Breslau and Koenigsberg, appeared in a new light. At Koenigsberg
Professor
Dr. Karl Heinz Clasen had with his university collaborators made a
special
study of Poznanian and Pomeranian art. At Breslau Professor Dr.
Dagobert
Frey had organized a university institute for the study of Eastern
European
art and had shown a particular interest in Silesia, central, southern,
and eastern Poland. Both these scientists had considerable means at
their
disposal and their many journeys to Poland had given them a detailed
knowledge
of the country's art treasures. In the domain of prehistoric research
similar
studies were diligently pursued by a group of scholars headed by
Professor
Dr. Ernst Petersen, Director of the Institute of Prehistoric Studies at
Breslau and recently professor of Rostock University.
It seems that these gentlemen must have been nominated to their war
functions even before the outbreak of hostilities, for they appeared in
Poland immediately on the occupation of her territory. Professor Frey
at
once arrived in Cracow and then toured the "Generalgouvernement"
territory,
giving detailed information on its art possessions, issuing
instructions
for the removal to Germany of such objects, and then collaborating in
the
organization of the Institut fur Deutsche Ostarbeit (Institute for
German
Work in the East) in Cracow, in April 1940. At its inauguration he gave
a lecture on German architecture in Poland. In museums and collections
Professor Frey made no bones about exploiting his pre-war research,
occasionally
demanding the laying before him of objects as yet uncatalogued to which
he had been given access as a student. Professor Clasen took over the
task
of turning Poznan University into a German one and simultaneously
accepted
the duties of State Curator of museums and antiquities for Poznania and
Polish Pomerania. Professor Petersen carried out an inspection of
archaeological
museums and in November 1939 supervised the removal of the collections
of the Warsaw State Museum of Archaeology. Breslau scientists form an
important
proportion of the collaborators in the Office of the" Special
Commissioner
for Requisitioning and Safeguarding Works of Art" (Der
Sonderbeauftragte
fuer Erfassung und Sicherstellung der Kunstgegenstaende). Apart from
those
already named, the most eminent member of that office is Dr. Gustav
Barthel,
Director of the Breslau Museums and editor of the periodical Die Hohe
Strasse
(Schlesische Jahrbuecher fuer deutsche Art und Kunst im Ostraum)
("Silesian
Yearbook of German Life and Art in the Eastern Space”).
The attempt to safeguard collections by evacuation and hiding as Polish
authorities and private owners had done proved on the whole
unsuccessful,
both because of the occupation of the entire territory of the country
and
because of German brutality and a widely developed spy service. At
Sandomierz
the Germans demanded the Veit Stoss altar of Our Lady's church from
Cracow
as early as the middle of September, and they brought with them those
who
had been employed in packing it. At Sieniawa a sworn mason told the
Gestapo
representatives the hiding-places of the Czartoryski collection and the
Goluchow treasures as soon as the first German units appeared. All the
valuables were immediately stolen, and it proved impossible to find out
which units had committed the act, so that later searches gave no
results,
even though they were conducted by the German authorities. This must be
accounted one of the most grievous losses sustained, for the plunder
included
objects of quite exceptional value, such as a set of famous twelfth to
sixteenth-century Limoges enamels and a magnificent collection of
antique,
mediaeval and Renaissance goldsmiths' work, coins, invaluable Polish
historical
relics, and a large number of engravings by Duerer, L. van Leyden, and
others. The pictures and other remaining objects were later brought to
Cracow to be confiscated and stored. The collections of the Silesian
Museum
were fetched from Lublin by Dr. F. Pfutzenreiter, Director of the
Beuthen
(Bytom) Museum, who had in his possession the bills of carriage from
Katowice.
The Tarnowskis at Sucha were forced by threats to disclose the fact
that
their collections were at Kozłówka.
Apart from losses directly due to hostilities, Polish collections
suffered
considerably from depredations committed by German police, military
persons
and administrative officials, both during hostilities and for some
months
after. We mean here such acts of pillage as were done for private
profit,
and which still occur at the moment of writing, although on a more
limited
scale. We shall discuss these at more length when treating of
individual
collections. In addition to this, there were losses arising from wilful
destruction, which we shall also discuss later. Losses by private
pillage
are the more grievous in that probably only a small part of the stolen
objects will be rediscovered in the future. The names of the pillagers
are unknown, and it will not be easy to find out what has become of
their
booty.
The previously mentioned Office, at whose head is der Sonderbeauftragte
fuer Erfassung und Sicherung der Kunst-und Kulturschuetze (Special
Commissioner
for the Requisitioning and Safeguarding of Treasures of Art and
Culture),
is the German Government's official medium for the official pillage of
Polish public and private collections. It forms part of the civil
administration,
and the Commissioner, Staatsekretaer (Secretary of State) Dr. Kai
Muehlmann,
though attached to the Governor-General's office in Cracow, has
autonomous
powers.
His permanent and chief collaborator is Dr. Gustav Barthel, of Breslau,
already mentioned. Others were (or are) Dr. Mayer (Breslau), Dr.
Kuedlich
(Vienna), Dr. Polhammer and Dr. Demmel, both of Vienna; also Dr.
Troschke,
who was at the same time acting as one of the inspectors of the
Oświęcim
concentration camp. The office in Cracow directed activities in
general,
and also carried out the seizure of collections in that town and in the
south of the "Generalgouvernement." For Warsaw and the north, an
assistant
commissioner was nominated, Dr. Josef Muehlmann of Linz, brother of the
Special Commissioner. He was helped by an antique dealer, Dr. Kraus of
Vienna. During the first three months of German occupation (the main
seizures
of public collections having then been already for the most part
effected),
activities in Warsaw and in the immediate vicinity were mainly carried
on by Gestapo officials, one of them being Dr. Paulsen, university
professor
of prehistoric studies and Untersturmfuehrer of the Gestapo. The
methods
of the Gestapo men were marked by particular and systematic brutality
towards
collections, museum staffs, and private owners. There is not the
slightest
doubt that they are utterly devoid of any scruple concerning their
share
in the work of pillaging and plundering Polish museums and collections.
Their actions are flagrantly contrary not only to international law,
but
also to the basic principles of museum theory, so that they can only be
explained (a) by rapacity on behalf of German collections, (b) by
political
instructions aimed at destroying all traces of Polish culture. There is
no similarity between their acts and, let us say, the restoring of the
Van Eyck altar to Ghent by the Versailles Treaty, for the objects
confiscated
in Poland had never been carried off from Germany, and had in most
cases
no connection whatever with that country. A particularly plain instance
of this is the carrying off from Cracow of the Veit Stoss altar, which
had been carved in Cracow for a church in that town.
Pillage and destruction of Polish collections were the obvious
programme
of the German authorities from the very first days of their entry,
often
without any regard to German profit. At first no effort was even made
to
create some semblance of legality. No receipts were given, and protests
of owners or curators against such methods met with the retort that
totalitarian
war is waged in every field. Reprisals were also a frequent
answer.
The creation of a semblance of legality was first attempted by the
issuing of the Governor-General's decree of November 15th, 1939, which
announced the confiscation of the "former Polish State's property"
throughout
the "Generalgouvernement" (Verordnungsblatt des Generalgouverneurs, Nr.
6). This decree included State property in the form of art and national
relics, contrary to the stipulations of clause 56 of The Hague
Convention
of 1906, which regulates the rights and usages of land warfare, and
requires
such objects to be treated like private property, even when they belong
to the State. A month later, on December 16th, 1939, the
Governor-General
issued a decree concerning the confiscation of works of art, including
decorative arts (Verordnung ueber die Beschlagnahme von
Kungstgegenstaenden
im Generalgouvernement). This decree says:
All publicly-owned objects of art in the Generalgouvernement which
are not already subject to the ruling of the decree of November 15th,
1939,
concerning the confiscation of the property of the former Polish State,
are herewith confiscated for purposes conducing to the common
weal.
Apart from “art collections and objects of art which formed the
property
of the former Polish State." the following are also considered
"publicly-owned
objects of art": (1) private collections designated by the Special
Commissioner
fuer die Erfassung und Sicherung der Kunst- und Kulturschaetze ; (2)
all
objects of art owned by churches, with the exception of those needed
for
daily service. (Verordnungsblatt des Generalgouverneurs, Nr. 12). The
decree
further ordered all owners and curators of such objects or collections
to notify their possessions within three months, threatening severe
penalties
for noncompliance. The first executive decision for this decree, dated
January 15th, 1940 (Verordnungsblatt des Generalgouverneurs, Teil H.,
Nr.
6), shortened the time-limit for registration to February 15th, 1940,
and
declared that all objects of artistic value dating before 1850 come
under
its ruling. The following objects were specified more
particularly:
(a) Paintings; (b) sculptures; (c) products of decorative art such
as antique furniture, china, glass, goldsmiths' and silversmiths' work,
tapestries, carpets, needlework, lace, vestments, etc.; (d) drawings,
engravings
and woodcut prints, etc.; (e) rare manuscripts, music manuscripts,
autographs,
hand-painted books, miniatures, prints and books, bookbindings, etc. ;
(f) weapons, pieces of armour, etc.; (g) coins, medals, seals,
etc.
Two later decrees also partly affect museums and collections. They
are: the decree of July 23rd, 1940 (Verordnungsblatt des
Generalgouverneurs,
Teil 1., Nr. 48) concerning societies, and that of August 1st, 1940
(Verordnungsblatt
des Generalgouverneurs, Teil 1., Nr. 50) concerning the law on
foundations.
By these, almost all Polish societies have been dissolved, and an end
has
been put to the activity of foundations. Their large collections are to
become the property of the "Generalgouvernement," which means that they
are exposed to dispersal, or even to destruction.
The decree of December 16th is an even more glaring violation of the
rulings of The Hague Convention than that of November 15th, 1939.
Clause
52 of the Convention expressly limits an occupying Power's
requisitioning
rights to objects needed by the army, thus of course excluding all
works
of art. Clause 46 forbids the confiscation of private property. Clause
56 states; "Municipal, ecclesiastical, charitable, educational,
artistic
and scientific objects shall be treated like private property, even if
they belong to the State" ; that is to say they may not be confiscated.
Furthermore:" Any seizure, destruction, or intentional degradation of
such
institutions, of historical monuments, of works of art or science, is
forbidden
and must be punished." Thus everything is reversed. The Hague
Convention
had granted even State collections the rights of private property in
order
to safeguard cultural values; but the Governor-General's decree treats
even private and Church property as public. Since the Hague Convention
was also signed by Germany, these decrees and the resulting action must
be regarded as wholly lawless.
It must be stressed that the major confiscations were carried out
before
the issuing of these decrees. The National Museum and the Czartoryski
Museum
of Cracow, the National Museum, the Army Museum, the State Museum of
Archaeology,
the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (all of these in
Warsaw),
and many others, were already despoiled between October and December
1939.
The Veit Stoss altar was also carried off at this time. These acts were
not based on any written orders to the owners and curators, nor even on
any specific oral declaration. People were simply informed that such
and
such objects or parts of a collection would be removed. No explanation
was given as to whether this was to be a confiscation or a provisional
seizure. The decrees themselves also contain contradictions and
doubtful
passages. They order confiscation, but the chief of the confiscating
office
bears the title of "Special Commissioner for the Requisition and
Safeguarding
of Works of Art and Culture." There may have existed some vague idea of
providing for a future attempt at justification by representing the
matter,
not as confiscation and pillage within the meaning of international
law,
but as a real safeguarding of works of art and national memorials in
time
of hostilities; but the Cracow collections did not need to be
transferred
from their buildings for such a purpose, since these had not sustained
any damage and the presence of the entire museum staff was sufficient
guarantee
of proper care. As for the Warsaw museum buildings, these had suffered
damage, more or less, but, nevertheless, the collections were best
safeguarded
by their own staffs, who were thoroughly acquainted with them, had
remained
on the spot during the siege, and continued at their posts after the
entry
of the occupying forces. Besides, the buildings had received proper
attention,
and those collections which had survived were in no danger there.
German
methods of packing and transport are proof enough that their actions
were
not dictated by any solicitude for the fate of art treasures and
relics.
Museum pieces were placed in leaky cases and transported in open
lorries
during wet autumn and winter weather. They were packed by inexpert
hands,
which caused much damage. Often objects were heaped in cars unpacked
and
quite unprotected. In many instances no list was made, and reprisals
were
threatened for any attempt to make one. The selection was frequently
made
simply by Gestapo men.
The promulgation of the confiscating decrees had specific and highly
dangerous consequences: Germans in uniform began to visit private
houses
and to carry out "confiscations" on their own and for their personal
profit,
always quoting the published decrees. Mostly they carried away carpets,
sometimes pieces of furniture, more rarely works of art proper. The
plague
of these thefts lasted in Warsaw for about two months.
Despite the duty of registering works of art which the decree sought
to enforce, the office of the Special Commissioner received very few
notifications,
not more than a dozen or so. The owners of some of the requisitioned
collections
lodged protests with the Governor-General, but they never received any
reply. Here, as elsewhere, we find the chaos characteristic of Nazi
organization,
which is the more striking in that its regulations are usually very
detailed
and cover a wide field. The confiscation of works of art and historic
relics
was instituted without any semblance of legal foundation: then decrees
were issued in order to create that semblance; and then their rulings
were
not observed. By these decrees all public collections should be
considered
confiscated in their entirety; yet it was precisely after their
publication
that the extent of confiscations was in general no more enlarged. Nor
was
any action taken to bring about a more complete registration of private
collections, and they were plundered only on the basis of information
supplied
by German historians of art. Then, since approximately the middle of
May,
1940, that is, since the attack on Belgium, Holland and France, German
interest in Polish possessions of this kind began to dwindle
perceptibly
and then almost to cease. The possibility of further" legalised" (as
the
Germans consider it) pillage, of course exists all the time.
+ + +
During the first period, which began with the entry of
German
troops,
as well as during the second, which followed the confiscating degrees,
there was a marked difference in the treatment meted out to the"
Generalgouvernement's"
two chief centres of intellectual life, WARSAW AND CRACOW. This is
undoubtedly
no accident, but the result of explicit instructions. Only Church
property
suffered greater depredations in Cracow than in Warsaw-public
collections
were robbed far less brutally here, and private property (with the
exception
of Jewish belongings) was respected. Not only were there no
confiscations
at private residences and flats, but no inspection was even made.
Warsaw
was treated with far greater severity, probably because of its
determined
resistance in September 1939. The despoiling of museums and public
collections
was here carried out on unusually extensive scale; all the larger
private
collections, and even many small ones in private apartments, were
affected.
According to information spread by officials of the German
administration
during the winter of 1939-40, the confiscations carried out in Warsaw
had
for their purpose the creation of a great central museum of art and
culture
in Cracow. Warsaw was to be punished by being deprived of all its
collections
and reduced to the level of a purely commercial centre. In the spring
of
1940 these plans were given up, and it is known that at that time the
central
German authorities planned to organize in Berlin a great exhibition of
"Polish War Booty," where the plunder was to be divided among German
museums
and collections. The confiscated objects were therefore mostly placed
in
temporary storage centres, in the new building of the University
Library
of Cracow and in the storerooms of the Warsaw National Museum. It was
probably
the beginning of systematic air raids on Germany which brought about
the
postponement of this exhibition till the end of the war, so that the
collections
have hitherto for the most part remained packed in these two stores. In
June 1941, before the outbreak of war with Russia, their contents were
transported (again by the Gestapo) to Maehrisch Truebau, under
scandalous
conditions and not without new thefts. In the autumn of 1941 these
collections
were brought back to Cracow.
+ + +
Conditions of life in Poland under German occupation are
such
that it
is impossible to make a complete inventory of losses caused by
hostilities
or by confiscation. Terrorism is at such a pitch that many private
owners
are afraid even to make a list of their losses, let alone give
information
about them. The fact that no receipts were given and the making of any
notes concerning removal forbidden renders any detailed registration
impossible,
and this is the more mischievous as many private collections and even
some
public ones had never been fully studied. This is a further loss for
Poland,
since history will be deprived of even a description or a copy of some
of these lost and destroyed possessions. We must also expect the making
of any inventory to become more difficult month by month owing to the
huge
losses of the intelligentsia; people are dying of sickness and
exhaustion
in prisons and concentration camps, they have lost their memories, such
materials as photographs, family documents, letters and so on are
dispersed.
+ + +
The description of LOSSES OCCASIONED BY CONFISCATION in Warsaw and
Cracow collections, which follows here, should be read merely as a
sample
of the Occupying Power's conduct.
In CRACOW it was the ecclesiastical collections and treasures which
suffered the most painful losses. They were the richest in Poland and
had
the oldest traditions.
The CATHEDRAL was robbed of the so-called Lance of St. Maurice
presented
to Boleslas the Brave by the Emperor Otto III in A.D. 1000; of a
Sicilian
reliquary of the twelfth century; of the famous fourteenth-century
ivory
box which had been the property of Queen Jadwiga; of numerous gold
crosses,
monstrances, and chalices of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth
centuries;
of a picture of St. George dating back to the beginning of the
seventeenth
century. Furthermore, a priceless sixteenth-century vestment (that of
Piotr
Kmita) was carried off, together with a series of eight Brussels and
nine
Flemish seventeenth century tapestries, a further series of nine
tapestries
bearing the Swan coat of arms (first half of the seventeenth century),
four individual Gobelins, a carpet given by King John Sobieski, and
three
richly-illuminated parchment manuscripts.
The CHURCH OF OUR LADY was deprived of the Veit Stoss triptych of which
we have already spoken. The altar-case itself was not taken away till
April
1940, the church having been closed for a week for that purpose. This
triptych,
on which Veit Stoss worked in Cracow during the years 1477-89, is the
artist's
finest work, and exercised very considerable influence on the
development
of art in Poland, Bohemia and Slovakia at the turn of the fifteenth
century.
Many studies on the subject have been published by Polish art
historians,
and ten years ago the sculpture was thoroughly overhauled at State
expense,
on which occasion the magnificent original Gothic colouring was brought
to light and restored. This had been painted over during earlier
restorations
carried out in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thereupon,
further
studies by Polish scholars were published, such as an album with French
text (Le Retable de Notre Dame a Cracovie, by Professor Tadeusz
Szydlowski,
Paris, 1935). The masterpiece of Veit Stoss was thus not only duly
valued
and safeguarded, but its beauty was also made familiar to the whole
world
in various publications. We do not know what has become of it in
Germany.
In the autumn of 1940 there was an exhibition of photographs of it at
the
Kaiser Friedrich Museum, but no part of the work itself was shown. In
addition
to this, the church also suffered the loss of nine pictures by Hans
Suess
of Kulmbach, an act as unwarranted as the first, since Suess, Duerer's
best pupil, painted them during his stay in Cracow, about A.D. 1515, as
a commission for the Cracow Church. Four fifteenthcentury Gothic
chalices
and eight seventeenth-century Baroque chalices were taken from the
church
treasury.
Four further pictures by Hans Suess of Kulmbach (also painted in and
for Cracow) were taken from the CHURCH OF ST. FLORIAN, together with
the
so called Gruenwald Reliquary (Gruenwald is the usual Polish name for
Tannenberg)
of Commander de Bode, A.D. 1360.
In December 1940, a series of eleven Gothic stained-glass windows,
dating back to the turn of the fourteenth century, were taken from the
DOMINICAN ABBEY. They had once formed part of the cloisters.
The CHURCH OF THE BERNARDINES was robbed of a carving representing
St. Anne with the Virgin and Child by Veit Stoss.
The armoury of the ROYAL CASTLE on Wawel Hill was put in the storerooms
of the new building of the University Library. It is not known whether
this signifies confiscation or whether it was merely done to make room.
The rest of the Castle collections was left untouched, to serve as
furnishings
for the Governor-General's residence. These furnishings were further
supplemented
by objects confiscated elsewhere. It seems that some of the furniture
from
Warsaw Castle found its way here; for instance, a set of Kielce
furniture,
upholstered in Cordovan leather and dating from the second half of the
eighteenth century.
The chief losses suffered by the NATIONAL MUSEUM of Cracow are through
confiscations in the section of Polish mediaeval art. The selection was
made by Professor Frey. The more important items are: a polyptychon of
A.D. J 504 ("St. John the Almoner "), the chief existing work of the
Cracow
school of painting of that time, which had been brought some years
before
from the Cracow church of the Augustine Order. Its donor was Marshal
Lanckoronski.
Then a Gothic polyptychon from the church of St. Giles in Cracow, a
number
of Madonna sculptures of the Veit Stoss school, and many other pictures
and sculptures. The Polish Medireval Art Section of this museum was the
largest and most valuable in Poland. (See Plate 7.)
The Feliks Jasienski branch of the National Museum has ceased to
exist.
In September 1939, immediately on the entry of German troops into the
city, its director was ordered to give up the keys of the building, and
since then none of the museum staff has been admitted inside. As far as
is known, the collection was "semi-privately" pillaged, so that there
is
no hope of ever recovering it. It had consisted of some 15,000 items,
mainly
specimens of Japanese art, and also collections of Polish and other
pictures
and prints, textiles, and so on.
Nothing remains, either, of the Barącz branch of the Museum, the
contents
of which have been used to furnish the Potocki residence at
Krzeszowice,
(See Plate 14.) This has been confiscated and bestowed by Hitler
personally
on the Governor-General, so that presumably the furnishings are also
considered
Dr. Frank's private property. This branch of the National Museum had
consisted
of a rich collection of carpets and other antique textiles, of antique
furniture, armour and decorative art.
The Czapski branch, consisting of a famous collection of coins, the
largest 1n Poland, was sealed up, and nothing is known of its fate. The
inventories and catalogues of the whole of the National Museum were
taken
away.
Apart from these confiscations and private thefts affecting whole
museum
sections, there is an endless, persistent and destructive nibbling at
the
Museum for pictures and objects of decorative art, for the purpose of
decorating
German offices and private lodgings. The Germans treat the museum as a
storage centre of whose contents they dispose at will, not only for
themselves,
but also for their wives, as, to make an instance, for Frau Waechter,
wife
of the Governor of Cracow.
The mind of contemporary Germany and its attitude towards art in Poland
was well summed up in the ejection of the National Museum from its
premises
in the Clothiers' Hall in the autumn of 1940. Since the museum had
already
been deprived of its two other buildings-those of the Barącz and of the
Jasienski branches-the collections were taken from the central rooms
(those
in the Cloth Hall) to the small house of the Czapski branch. Here all
the
rooms were filled up with packing-cases, so crowded that there is no
possibility
of access to anything, and unpacking is out of the question. Part of
the
collections found no room on these premises, and was stored in the
Industrial
Museum. There is of course no possibility of any museum work, nor even
of a simple safeguarding of the collections.
The CZARTORYSKI MUSEUM of Cracow was robbed, not once, but
repeatedly.
We have already mentioned the looting of the inestimable collections
stored at Sieniawa, which must be considered irretrievably lost. From
the
Polish point of view, the dispersal by theft of the large collection of
Polish royal jewels and relics is a particularly grievous loss. Its
gravity
may be realized if we recall that over a hundred years ago the Polish
regalia
were destroyed by the Prussians, who carried them away from the Castle
of Cracow and melted them down, after removing the precious
stones.
Objects such as pictures left behind by the first German thieves were
later taken to Cracow by German officials and there subjected to
successive
waves of confiscation, one of which occurred soon after this return,
others
in June and August 1940. Over a dozen paintings by foreign masters were
seized, and the most famous: Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man,
Leonardo's
Girl With a Weasel, and Rembrandt's Landscape, were taken to Germany,
(See
Plate 13.) The most valuable tapestries, carpets, antique weapons,
sculptures,
illuminated manuscripts, and so on, were also confiscated. Thus was an
institution laid waste which was among the finest private museums in
Europe,
and was undoubtedly the most valuable collection of foreign art
existing
in Poland. The magnificent Czartoryski Museum at Goluchów suffered a
similar
fate.
Seven unusually valuable carpets were confiscated in the INSTITUTE
OF THE HISTORY OF ART of Cracow University. It is said that they have
been
taken to Vienna. Other objects confiscated here include an original
drawing
by Veit Stoss (Wit Stwosz), - probably taken to Breslau, as it was
selected
by Professor Frey and his collaborator, Dr. Sappok - part of the
pictures,
and mediaeval Polish sculptures, all these being taken to Germany. The
rest of the institute's collection was removed to one of the storage
centres
and there thrown on a heap with the rest.
The POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND LETTERS was robbed of part of its
prehistoric collection, but part was left untouched. A German curator
was,
however, appointed, and the Polish staff were given subordinate
functions.
The famous and unique Balthasar Behem Codex (known as the Codex
pictoratus),
dating back to the beginning of the sixteenth century, of which the
numerous
miniatures illustrate Cracow's contemporary life, has been seized from
the UNIVERSITY LIBRARY and carried off to Germany.
The plundering of the Cracow ACADEMY OF FINE ARTs - whose professors
had there deposited their private collections - lasted
throughout
December 1939. The building was closed and the pictures were used for
the
decoration of offices or stolen for private profit.
At Cracow, collections in private apartments were in general neither
confiscated nor even inspected. Nevertheless, one picture - The
Massacre
of the Innocents (School of Cranach) - was taken away from a private
owner
in August 1940, and the numerous collections owned by Jews were, of
course,
plundered wholesale.
In WARSAW the comparatively few works of art confiscated
from
church
property were taken from thr CATHEDRAL and the DIOCESAN MUSEUM. This is
perhaps due to the fact that the Warsaw churches possess few specimens
of mediaeval decorative art, and the majority of their
treasures
dates from the Baroque period and after, whereas the Office of the
Special
Commissioner
devotes its attention more particularly to the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. probably under the influence of Professor Frey, who
specializes
in mediaeval studies.
The painted ceilings of the WARSAW ROYAL CASTLE were stupidly and
barbarously
destroyed. With the exception of that in the ballroom, representing
Chaos,
by Bacciarelli, all of them had survived fire and shelling unharmed,
but
they were smashed to pieces during the demolition of the Castle
interior
between December 1939 and February 1940. A separate chapter is devoted
to this monstrous proceeding. The State Collections in the Castle bad
suffered
proportionately little loss during hostilities. The most valuable
pieces
were taken to the National Museum during the fire, and between October
and December 1939 the Germans took many of them away to Cracow. But the
greater part of the collections had not been moved to the National
Museum
and had remained in their place. There were hundreds of pictures, much
antique furniture (seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries), many
objects
of decorative art, pottery, glass and the like. The plundering of it
all
began with the first days of the occupation of Warsaw, and became
systematic
from October 18th onwards - that is, from the day on which the
Governor-General,
Dr. Frank. appeared at the Castle with his retinue. More details will
be
given in the chapter devoted to the Castle. This much may be said here,
in order to show the extent of the pillage: that even table-sets,
table-linen
and kitchen utensils were divided up between various German
offices.
The store rooms of the Management of the POLISH STATE COLLECTIONS OF
ART, which had been housed in the library wing of the Castle were
systematically
plundered all through October and November 1939 by the Feldgendarmerie
quartered in the Castle and by various German officials - they were
finally
cleaned out in December of that year. Not a thing remains of several
thousand
Polish and foreign pictures (including a large part of the Krosnowski
Gallery),
of engravings, sculptures, manuscripts, archives and the rest. Since
the
winter of 1939-40 many pictures and antiques from these collections
have
appeared in the hands of antique dealers and private traders who have
acquired
them from German functionaries of the lower ranks.
The collections at the LAZIENKI PALACE were, during the siege of
Warsaw.
mostly transferred to the National Museum, and thence the Germans have
taken them to Cracow. Among them were well over a hundred of the most
valuable
pictures of King Stanislas Augustus, including works by Fr. Bol., B.
van
der Helst, Fr. Pourbus and others; sculptures, clocks,
eighteenth-century
furniture, pottery and the like. It is said that Rembrandt's Portrait
of
a Young Man has been offered as a present to Dr. Frank - nothing is
known
of the rest. It may well be feared that the collection has been at
least
in part dispersed, for objects belonging to it are known to be now in
private
hands at Cracow, having allegedly been bought from antique dealers.
Part
of the antique furniture of the Palace was parcelled out among German
officers'
messes and offices, in the autumn of 1939. The chandeliers were taken
to
the Governor-General's Warsaw residence in the building of the former
Czechoslovak
Legation.
The works of art in the building of the SEYM and SENATE were in part
destroyed, in part stolen, after the German police had taken
possession.
They had included Matejko's well-known picture, The Constitution of the
Third of May.
A collection of plaster casts belonging to the UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW
had survived the siege unscathed, but when German police units occupied
the university buildings in the first days of October 1939, it suffered
much damage, because beds, cupboards and other furniture from a
military
hospital were stored in the rooms in which it was displayed. In the
summer
of 1940 this collection was transferred to the main university building
and further damaged in the process, quite apart from the damage caused
by conditions in its new quarters, which had been rootless since the
fire
in September 1939. The collection, which had included unusually
valuable
casts, some of them once owned by King Stanis1as Augustus, must be
regarded
as wholly destroyed.
The university library's COLLECTION OF PRINTS AND DRAWINGS was in great
part taken to Cracow in December 1939. It had been the largest of its
kind
in Poland, and its importance rivalled that of other European
collections.
The core of it was the splendid collection of drawings, engravings and
architectural designs brought together by Stanislas Augustus, and added
to later by such collections as that of the Warsaw Philomatic Society
and
others.
Confiscations at the Warsaw NATIONAL MUSEUM were far more extensive
than at that of Cracow. They were effected between October and December
1939, and the confiscated objects were then sent to Cracow. Nothing
certain
is known about their further fate. They seem to have been deposited for
a time in the building of the University Library, and some of them
appear
to have been used later for decorating the residence at Krzeszowice.
The
"legal" side of the matter has not been made clear, for there has been
no official decree of confiscation, nor have any receipts been
issued.
The collection of Polish mediaeval art, consisting of some scores of
pictures and painting, was removed almost without exception.
In the foreign section, about a hundred valuable pictures were carried
off. The section of decorative art was despoiled of many thousands of
pieces,
including fine collections of Italian, Dresden and Polish pottery, or
seventeenth
century glass-ware, tapestries, textiles, furniture, clocks,
snuff-boxes,
and so on.
The entire numismatic collection of Polish and foreign coins was
carried
off.
The foreign section, the finest of its type in Poland, had been one
of world-wide importance, and had included Byzantine and Roman coins,
as
well as Byzantine seals. The Polish section had numbered over twelve
thousand
specimens, and had been the second most important in Poland, the
Czapski
collection ranking first. The major part of the prehistoric collection,
and all the ethnographic exhibits, were also seized.
In the spring of 1940 the ARMY MUSEUM and the National Museum were
fused under the new name of a Warsaw City Museum. Before this, however,
in the autumn and winter of 1939, the Army Museum had been deprived of
all its antiques, from the oldest up to those of the seventeenth
century.
These included numerous coats and pieces of armour, firearms and other
weapons, many thousand pieces in all. Much was also taken from the
Museum
Library. Nothing is known of the further fate of these collections.
Unfortunately
they seem to have been dispersed, part sent to Munich, part to a museum
in Bohemia, part left in Cracow. This dispersal renders the possibility
of any future reassembling very doubtful.
The STATE MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY was in October 1939 partly occupied
by soldiers. At the beginning of November 1939, there appeared
Professor
Dr. Ernst Petersen of Rostock, formerly curator of the prehistoric
collections
at Breslau, in company with Herr Schleif, Director of the Olympia
Expedition,
and closed the museum doors to the Polish staff. In the course of
November
these two gentlemen removed several thousand exhibits, such as numerous
specimens of the Stone Age, a large number of others in iron, copper
and
bronze, ivory and amber work, pottery, a collection of Roman, Arabic
and
mediaeval European coins, also the museum cases, the museum and office
furniture, the whole library of special literature, comprising some ten
thousand volumes, all the museum catalogues, reports, and so on and so
on. In addition, they took away the museum archives and all the private
scientific materials of the staff. In September 1940 the museum was
ejected
from its quarters and the remainder of its collections was transferred
to the National Museum.
The Museum of the KRASINSKI LIBRARY was, in the winter of 1939-40,
robbed of several score pieces, including two valuable pictures and
many
works of decorative art in gold, silver, ivory, and other media. In the
autumn of 1941 the museum was turned out of the library
building.
Unknown German authorities, who did not disclose their identity and
failed to give any receipt, in the winter of 1939-40 took away from the
salvaged remainder of the ZAMOYSKI LIBRARY some fifty illuminated
mediaeval
manuscripts, the finest of the collection. After a year they were
returned.
Over a score of other manuscripts were confiscated.
About the middle of October 1939, the Gestapo took away from the WARSAW
SOCIETY FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE FINE ARTS (the" Zachęta") several
hundred pictures, the greater part of its collection, and transferred
them
to the National Museum. Part was left behind, including the biggest
pictures,
which were rolled up. Many other pictures from the collection were
taken
away for the purpose of decorating German offices and private lodgings,
no receipt ever being given. The pictures were carried to the museum
under
the worst conditions imaginable, in open lorries, without any lists or
minutes of the proceedings. The purpose of the action is hard to
understand,
for these pictures were neither packed nor sent away, but simply left
on
the spot. Probably this was part of some plan not fully considered and
later relinquished-there were many such-but the pictures have not been
returned to their owners. In the winter of 1939-40 all the Society's
original
drawings by foreign artists were confiscated. There were several
hundred
of them, by French, Italian and Dutch masters. The Society was first
closed
and then declared to be dissolved.
The MUSEUM OF PHILATELY was confiscated and carried away in its
entirety.
As far as we know, this was done by the German postal
authorities.
The STATE NUMISMATIC COLLECTION, which numbered many thousand pieces,
was confiscated and carried off, after having previously suffered
individual
acts of pillage.
The whole collection of the CENTRAL INVENTORY OFFICE of the Ministry
of Education was taken away. It consisted of twenty to thirty thousand
photographic plates, several thousand photographs, many thousand plans
of Polish architectural monuments, a card index of all antique
immovables
in Poland, and a great wealth of material for the study of the history
of art in the country. This was in part the collection of the Society
for
the Protection of Antiquities, in part the twenty years' work of all
the
Polish curators of antiquities and of many other Polish specialists,
commissioned
by the Ministry of Education. Only a small part of this great mass of
material,
accumulated by Polish research work and scientific studies, had been
published
up to the outbreak of war. It seems that this collection was taken to
Cracow.
Its materials are utilized for publications by German scientists, the
source
being naturally not named.
Polish circles have no influence whatever on the fate of works of art
in public buildings. It is known that these are frequently moved from
place
to place, often used to decorate private lodgings, at times later taken
away entirely as constituting private property.
Contrary to the state of things in Cracow and other larger towns, in
Warsaw and its vicinity many private collections also were confiscated.
In some cases receipts were given; often, however, even the regularly
constituted
official confiscating authorities gave no such receipts, to say nothing
of cases of wilful individual robbery. For reasons easily understood,
it
is not possible to enumerate here the losses thus suffered by private
individuals,
but they number many thousand items.
Private collections owned by Jews and persons of Jewish origin must
for the most part also be considered as having ceased to exist, for
only
a fraction can have been hidden or transferred to the ghetto-where
their
tenure IS also extremely uncertain.
+ + +
Under present conditions a registration of COL L E C T I
O N
S
plundered or confiscated OUTSIDE WARSAW AND CRACOW is very difficult,
and
it is only possible to mention the most notorious facts.
Ecclesiastical property has suffered most at Plock and Sandomierz,
where goldsmiths' work of the late Gothic and early Renaissance period
has been taken away, as also have a number of pictures by Cranach, Hans
Suess of Kulmbach, and others. The parish church of Bodzentyn
(voivodship
of Kielce) has been robbed of its monumental triptych, dated 1510,
which
showed the figure of its donor, Bishop Konarski. This is perhaps the
most
important piece of Polish painting of that date extant. Moreover, many
provincial churches have been deprived of their most valuable mediaeval
and Renaissance relics.
King John Sobieski's ancient residence of Wilanow probably ranks first
among private sufferers. Here some 400 objects were confiscated,
including
a hundred pictures from the picture-gallery, a large collection of
porcelain,
Dresden vases, Limoges enamels, and so on. All the relics of King John
Sobieski were also confiscated, including the magnificent inlaid
escritoire
presented to him by Pope Innocent IX after the victory of Vienna in
1683.
Amongst other collections which have also suffered are those of Prince
RadziwiU at Nieborow, Count M. Potocki at Jablonna, Prince A.
Lubomirski
at Przeworsk, Prince Czartoryski at Pelkinia, Count J. Tarnowski at
Dzikow,
and Count H. Tarnowski at Dukla.
Shortly after the occupation of Lwow by the Germans in 1941, Dr. Kai
Miihlmann arrived there with his helpers, including Dr. Behrens of the
History of Art Section of the Cracow Institut fuer Deutsche Ostarbeit,
and robbed the Ossoliński Institute of the whole of its fine collection
of original Duerer drawings, which had been published in reproduction
some
years before the war. At the demand of the local German authorities, it
is proposed to organize a private exhibition of all the most valuable
objects
in the city's museums, ostensibly for their benefit, but it is to be
feared
that this has no other purpose than to facilitate the selection of
items
for further confiscation.
2. Nazi Policy in "Territories Incorporated in the
Reich”
Museum collections in the territory "incorporated in the
Reich" seem
in general to have been left undisturbed, but the Polish staff have
been
dismissed and Germans employed in their stead. In several cases the
Polish
directors were arrested. As far as we know, at Poznań in the Muzeum
Wielkopolskie,
the largest piece of Polish monumental sculpture only was
destroyed
- the Wawel Procession by Waclaw Szymanowski. The most valuable part of
the Goluchow collection was plundered at Sieniawa, as already
described.
It is reported that the German Frontier Guard (Grenzschutz) destroyed
many
works by Polish artists which they found on the spot, and carried off
the
rest; but this information has not yet been checked. In numerous
private
collections at country residences great losses have been caused by the
Germans installed there in lieu of the rightful owners, for they
relegate
family relics and Polish works of art to the attics, or simply destroy
them. An estate near Wloclawek may serve as an illustration of their
proceedings.
Here the pictures were cut out of their frames and taken away, antique
furniture was used for firewood, and the family archives (which
comprised
valuable collections from the rising of 1863) were turned to household
use. Another instance is to be found in an estate near Inowroclaw,
whence
a valuable special library (history of art) was taken away to be sold
as
waste paper.
• • •
Our description has been devoted mainly to the losses
suffered
by the
largest collections, but those of PROVINCIAL MUSEUMS have also been
-considerable.
About a hundred of them, created by public effort, and belonging to
educational
and topographical societies, have not only been deprived of all .care
and
attention, but also partly destroyed by dispersal. The former Polish
staff
is denied access ; they are turned out of their own premises, their
possessions
are at the mercy of German administrative officials and
police.
We should add here that even those Polish museums which have not been
wholly destroyed or confiscated by the Germans are not accessible to
the
public. The only exception known to us is the. Tatra Museum at
Zakopane.
It was never closed for a single day, even during hostilities, and it
continues
to function unhampered; possibly because it is mainly devoted to the
folklore
and art of the Polish mountaineers, whom the Germans are endeavouring
to
credit with a separate nationality.
.. ....
In S U M M I NG UP the losses caused by hostilities and by German
action
during occupation, attention must be drawn to several
features.
The DAMAGE TO BUILDINGS for housing collections is very considerable,
and is the more painful in that Poland had during the twenty years
before
1939 sought passionately to remedy the shortage and neglect occasioned
by the period of foreign rule. The great building of the National
Museum
in Warsaw, which had been opened in 1938, was much damaged and in part
destroyed. In the year 1941 some of it was occupied by troops. The
eighteenth-century
building of the Ethnographical Museum was burnt down, as was also "The
Blue House" which had housed the Zamoyski Library and Museum. The
building
of the Przeździecki Museum and Library was also wholly destroyed by
fire,
and the Raczynski residence, which had been devoted entirely to that
family's
fine collections, suffered the same fate. Then there are the losses
suffered
by the stoppage of work on museums in process of building, such as the
National Museum in Cracow and the Pomeranian Museum at Torun. The
existing
walls and fittings are subjected to the effects of the weather and arc
being gradually ruined.
We have already shown how museum collections have suffered not only
through hostilities, but by the barbarous methods of the German
authorities.
The expulsion of museums from their premises, and the enforced
transference
to other quarters by the most primitive means of transport, at short
notice
and under quite unsuitable conditions, occasion a certain proportion of
loss in the .collections, so that we must consider that even those
which
have not suffered any confiscation have yet sustained damage if they
have
had to be moved from their usual place. Such is the case with the
Pilsudski
Museum, turned out of the Warsaw Belvedere in December 1939, with the
National
Museum in Cracow, the Ethnographical Museum there, the State Museum of
Archaeology in Warsaw, and a number others. Those collections, which
have
been confiscated, arc bound also to suffer a diminution of their value,
even if they are rescued and returned to their owners, for they have
been
transported carelessly and inexpertly under bad weather conditions, and
later often kept in unsuitable places, without proper expert care, so
that
their state of preservation is likely to deteriorate rapidly. Such
treatment
lowers the value of works of art, sometimes very
considerably.
It is scarcely possible to stress sufficiently the extent of the loss
suffered by the destruction of such magnificent museum units as the
Warsaw
Castle. the Zamoyski and Przeździecki Museums and Libraries, which were
of paramount importance in the history of Polish civilization. In them,
whole pages of that history have been destroyed, and sources of
knowledge
closed for ever to students of the past. Many other collections have
been
broken up by confiscation, which not only means the loss of individual
works of art but also causes irreparable damage to collections as such
.
......
The full extent of LOSSES SUFFERED BY POLISH PAINTING can be measured
by
a short summary of the devastation wrought among the monumental
paintings
so characteristic of Warsaw. We will mention only the two Bacciarelli
ceilings
in the Ball-room and the Audience Chamber of Warsaw Castle, the ceiling
of the Marble Closet painted by Bacciarelli in collaboration with
Plersch,
the painting by Siemiradzki and Strzalecki in the Warsaw Philharmonic
Hall,
those by Ch. Carelli and J. Glowacki in the Pac Mansion in Miodowa
Street..
The paintings by BacciareIli and Plersch in the Łazienki Palace, those
by Zebrowski in the Church of the Bernardine Order, and by K. Marconi
in
the house of the Warsaw Land Credit Society, all suffered
damage.
We have not hitherto mentioned damage caused to church paintings during
hostilities. One by Eleterius Siemiginowski in the Church of the Holy
Rood
can be quoted as an instance, as well as a number of pictures in the
Church
of All Saints. The losses in nineteenth and twentieth-century paintings
are very great. Several large paintings by Matejko have disappeared,
his
Constitution of the Third of May has probably been destroyed, a number
of smaller pictures has been burnt. Many other pictures by eminent
Polish
artists have been burnt or ruined, including works by Michalowski,
Kossak,
the Gierymski brothers, and so on.
.• .• .•
Art collections and relics at manor-houses and country
residences have
doubtless been in great part destroyed, particularly in territory"
incorporated
in the Reich."
The confiscation of collections belonging to persons of Jewish origin
would need a chapter to itself.
Lastly, it is necessary to state that museums and collections are all
closed, and that any Polish care for them is rendered impossible, so
that
further damage and loss must be expected.
The museum staffs have from the very first been helpless and at the
tender mercies of the Gestapo. We will only mention the case of Dr.
Pajzderski.
Director of the Muzeum Wielkopolskie of Poznan, who was arrested in
November
1939, held prisoner for several months in the Poznan fort, and at last
taken to a concentration camp, where he died. He had never played any
part
in political life, nor had he ever undertaken any anti-German
activities.
We refrain from mentioning others, for reasons easily
understood.
The German attitude towards Polish culture in general, and museums
in particular, is shown by the latest decisions concerning the museum
buildings
of Cracow and Katowice. The new building of the National Museum at
Cracow,
which was being erected from funds given by all classes of the people.
has been sold by the Cracow municipality (naturally directed by Germans
at present) to Dr. Frank, the Governor-General, for the sum of three
million
zlotys, and turned into a club for German officials and employees. This
building was nearing completion when the war broke out. At Katowice,
the
new building of the Silesian Museum, already far advanced, is to be
demolished
as the work of a Jewish architect! On its site a German public building
is to be erected.
In order to grasp this attitude-unprecedented in modern times-of the
Germans towards Polish museums and collections, historic relics and
works
of art, scientific studies and even scientists, it is necessary once
again
to emphasize the undoubted fact that the foremost task they have set
themselves
is the utter destruction of Polish culture and the disorganization of
its
centres. The intention to profit at Poland's expense ranks second in
their
plans, and that explains many seemingly incomprehensible actions and
apparently
senseless orders which cannot result in any immediate gain to the
Germans.
Another important characteristic of the present-day German mind is
this: that whatever part national interests may play in ordering their
actions, they are very much alive to the possibilities of personal
profit.
The Governor-General himself sets the example, for his "private"
residence
at Krzeszowice has been furnished and decorated with works of art
officially
stolen from museums and private owners, which are now considered his
"property"
Other dignitaries, and even officials of the lower ranks, follow
suit.
And it is
unfortunately impossible to claim
that only
the Hitler gang is responsible. We have shown that it is not Gestapo
officials
and the highest German authorities alone, who take part in pillaging
Polish
museums and collections, in their wilful and deliberate destruction.
The
work is directed and carried out by German scholars, university
professors
and museum specialists.
Judgment
of the
International Military
Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals
Judgement
: War Crimes
and Crimes
Against Humanity
Judge
PARKER:
(...)
One
of the most notorious
means
of terrorising the people in occupied territories was the use of
concentration
camps. They were first established in Germany at the moment of the
seizure
of power by the Nazi Government. Their original purpose was to imprison
without trial all those persons who were opposed to the Government, or
who were in any way obnoxious to German authority. With the aid of a
secret
police force, this practice was widely extended and in course of time
concentration
camps became places of organised and systematic murder, where millions
of people were destroyed.
In
the administration of
the occupied
territories the concentration camps were used to destroy all opposition
groups. The persons arrested by the Gestapo were as a rule sent to
concentration
camps. They were conveyed to the camps in many cases without any care
whatever
being taken for them, and great numbers died on the way. Those who
arrived
at the camp were subject to systematic cruelty. They were given hard
physical
labour, inadequate food, clothes and shelter, and were subject at all
times
to the rigours of a soulless regime, and the private whims of
individual
guards. In the report of the War Crimes Branch of the Judge Advocate's
Section of the 3rd U.S. Army, under date 21st June, 1945, the
conditions
at the Flossenburg concentration camp were investigated, and one
passage
may be quoted:
" Flossenburg
concentration
camp can be described as a factory dealing in death. Although this camp
had in view the primary object of putting to work the mass slave
labour,
another of its primary objects was the elimination of human lives by
the
methods employed in handling the prisoners. Hunger and starvation
rations
sadism, inadequate clothing, medical neglect, disease, beatings,
hangings,
freezing, forced suicides, shooting, etc., all played a major role in
obtaining
their object. Prisoners were murdered at random, spite killings against
Jews were common, injections of poison and shooting in the neck were
everyday
occurrences; epidemics of typhus and spotted fever were permitted to
run
rampant as a means of eliminating prisoners, life in this camp meant
nothing.
Killing became a common thing, so common that a quick death was
welcomed
by the unfortunate ones."
A
certain number of the
concentration
camps were equipped with gas chambers for the wholesale destruction of
the inmates, and with furnaces for the burning of the bodies. Some of
them
were in fact used for the extermination of Jews as part of the " final
solution " of the Jewish problem. Most of the non-Jewish inmates were
used
for labour, although the conditions under which they worked made labour
and death almost synonymous terms. Those inmates who became ill and
were
unable to work were either destroyed in the gas chambers or sent to
special
infirmaries, where they were given entirely inadequate medical
treatment,
worse food if possible than the working inmates, and left to die.
The
murder and
ill-treatment of
civilian populations reached its height in the treatment of the
citizens
of the Soviet Union and Poland. Some four weeks before the invasion of
Russia began, special task forces of the SIPO and SD, called Einsatz
Groups,
were formed on the orders of Himmler for the purpose of following the
German
armies into Russia, combating partisans and members of Resistance
Groups,
and exterminating the Jews and communist leaders and other sections of
the population. In the beginning, four such Einsatz Groups were formed,
one operating in the Baltic States, one towards Moscow, one towards
Kiev,
and one operating in the south of Russia. Ohlendorf, former chief of
Amt
III of the RSHA, who led the fourth group, stated in his affidavit:
" When the
German army
invaded Russia, I was leader of Einsatzgruppe D, in the southern
sector,
and in the course of the year during which I was leader of the
Einsatzgruppe
D it liquidated approximately 90,000 men, women and children. The
majority
of those liquidated were Jews, but there were also among them some
communist
functionaries."
In
an order issued by the
defendant
Keitel on the 23rd July, 1941, and drafted by the defendant Jodl, it
was
stated that:
" in view of
the vast size
of the occupied areas in the East the forces available for establishing
security in these areas will be sufficient only if all resistance is
punished,
not by legal prosecution of the guilty, but by the spreading of such
terror
by the armed forces as is alone appropriate to eradicate every
inclination
to resist among the population . . . Commanders must find the means of
keeping order by applying suitable draconian measures."
The
evidence has shown that
this order
was ruthlessly carried out in the territory of the Soviet Union and in
Poland. A significant illustration of the measures actually applied
occurs
in the document which was sent in 1943 to the defendant Rosenberg by
the
Reich Commissar for Eastern Territories, who wrote:
" It should be
possible
to avoid atrocities and to bury those who have been liquidated. To lock
men, women and children into barns and set fire to them does not appear
to be a suitable method of combating bands, even if it is desired to
exterminate
the population. This method is not worthy of the German cause, and
hurts
our reputation severely."
The
Tribunal has before it
an affidavit
of one Hermann Graebe, dated 10th November, 1945, describing the
immense
mass murders which he witnessed. He was the manager and engineer in
charge
of the branch of the Solingen firm of Josef Jung in Spolbunow, Ukraine,
from September, 1941, to January, 1944. He first of all described the
attack
upon the Jewish ghetto at Rowno:
". . . Then the
electric
floodlights which had been erected all round the ghetto were switched
on.
SS and militia details of four to six members entered or at least tried
to enter the houses. Where the doors and windows were closed, and the
inhabitants
did not open upon the knocking, the SS men and militia broke the
windows,
forced the doors with beams and crowbars, and entered the dwelling. The
owners were driven on to the street just as they were, regardless of
whether
they were dressed or whether they had been in bed.... Car after car was
filled. Over it hung the screaming of women and children, the cracking
of whips and rifle shots."
Graebe
then described how a
mass execution
at Dubno, which he witnessed on the 5th October, 1942, was carried out:
". . . Now we
heard shots
in quick succession from behind one of the earth mounds. The people who
had got off the trucks, men, women and children of all ages, had to
undress
upon the orders of an SS man, who carried a riding or dog whip....
Without
screaming or crying, these people undressed, stood around by families,
kissed each other, said farewells, and waited for the command of
another
SS man, who stood near the excavation, also with a whip in his hand....
At that moment the SS man at the excavation called something to his
comrade.
The latter counted off about 20 persons, and instructed them to walk
behind
the earth mound.... I walked around the mound and stood in front of a
tremendous
grave; closely pressed together, the people were lying on top of each
other
so that only their heads were visible. The excavation was already
two-thirds
full; I estimated that it contained about a thousand people.... Now
already
the next group approached, descended into the excavation, lined
themselves
up against the previous victims and were shot."
The
foregoing crimes
against the civilian
population are sufficiently appalling, and yet the evidence shows that
at any rate in the East, the mass murders and cruelties were not
committed
solely for the purpose of stamping out opposition or resistance to the
German occupying forces. In Poland and the Soviet Union these crimes
were
part of a plan to get rid of whole native populations by expulsion and
annihilation, in order that their territory could be used for
colonisation
by Germans. Hitler had written in " Mein Kampf " on these lines, and
the
plan was clearly stated by Himmler in July, 1942, when he wrote:
" It is not our
task to
Germanise the East in the old sense, that is to teach the people there
the German language and the German law, but to see to it that only
people
of purely Germanic blood live in the East."
In
August, 1942, the policy
for the
Eastern Territories as laid down by Bormann was summarised by a
subordinate
of Rosenberg as follows:
" The Slavs are
to work
for us. In so far as we do not need them, they may die. Therefore,
compulsory
vaccination and Germanic health services are superfluous. The fertility
of the Slavs is undesirable."
It
was Himmler again who
stated in
October, 1943:
" What happens
to a Russian,
a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can
offer
in the way of good blood of our type, we will take. If necessary, by
kidnapping
their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in
prosperity
or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as
slaves
for our Kultur, otherwise it is of no interest to me."
In
Poland the
intelligentsia had been
marked down for extermination as early as September, 1939, and in May,
1940, the defendant Frank wrote in his diary of " taking advantage of
the
focusing of world interest on the Western Front, by wholesale
liquidation
of thousands of Poles, first leading representatives of the Polish
intelligentsia."
Earlier, Frank had been directed to reduce the " entire Polish economy
to absolute minimum necessary for bare existence. The Poles shall be
the
slaves of the Greater - German World Empire." In January, 1940, he
recorded
in his diary that "cheap labour must be removed from the General
Government
by hundreds of thousands. This will hamper the native biological
propagation."
So successfully did the Germans carry out this policy in Poland that by
the end of the war one third of the population had been killed, and the
whole of the country devastated.
It
was the same story in
the occupied
area of the Soviet Union. At the time of the launching of the German
attack
in June, 1941, Rosenberg told his collaborators:
" The object of
feeding
the German people stands this year without a doubt at the top of the
list
of Germany's claims on the East, and here the southern territories and
the northern Caucasus will have to serve as a balance for the feeding
of
the German people.... A very extensive evacuation will be necessary,
without
any doubt, and it is sure that the future will how very hard years in
store
for the Russians."
Three
or four weeks later
Hitler discussed
with Rosenberg, Goering, Keitel and others his plan for the
exploitation
of the Soviet population and territory, which included among other
things
the evacuation of the inhabitants of the Crimea and its settlement by
Germans.
A
somewhat similar fate
was planned
for Czechoslovakia by the defendant von Neurath, in August, 1940; the
intelligentsia
were to be "expelled," but the rest of the population was to be
Germanised
rather than expelled or exterminated, since there was a shortage of
Germans
to replace them.
In
the West the
population of Alsace
were the victims of a German " expulsion action." Between July and
December,
1940, 105,000 Alsatians were either deported from their homes or
prevented
from returning to them.
A
captured German report
dated 7th
August, 1942, with regard to Alsace states that:
" The problem
of race will
be given first consideration, and this in such a manner that persons of
racial value will be deported to Germany proper, and racially inferior
persons to France."
THE
PRESIDENT: The Tribunal
will adjourn
for ten minutes.
(A
recess was taken.)
THE
PRESIDENT: I now ask
General
Nikitochenko to continue the reading of the judgment.
General
NIKTOCHENKO:
Article 49
of the Hague Convention provides that an occupying power may levy a
contribution
of money from the occupied territory to pay for the needs of the army
of
occupation, and for the administration of the territory in question.
Article
52 of the Hague Convention provides that an occupying power may make
requisitions
in kind only for the needs of the army of occupation, and that these
requisitions
shall be in proportion to the resources of the country. These Articles,
together with Article 48, dealing with the expenditure of money
collected
in taxes, and Articles 53, 55 and 56, dealing with public property,
make
it clear that under the rules of war, the economy of an occupied
country
can only be required to bear the expenses of the occupation, and these
should not be greater than ,the economy of the country can reasonably
be
expected to bear. Article 56 reads as follows:
" The property
of municipalities,
of religious, charitable, educational, artistic and scientific
institutions,
although belonging to the State, is to be accorded the same standing as
private property. All pre-meditated seizure, destruction. or damage of
such institutions historical monuments, works of art and science, is
prohibited
and should be prosecuted."
The
evidence in this case
has established,
however, that the territories occupied by Germany were exploited for
the
German war effort in the most ruthless way, without consideration of
the
local economy, and in 53 consequence of a deliberate design and policy.
There was in truth a systematic " plunder of public or private property
", which was criminal under Article 6 (b) of the Charter. The German
occupation
policy was clearly stated in a speech made by the defendant Goering on
the 6th August, 1942, to the various German authorities in charge of
occupied
territories:
" God knows,
you are not
sent out there to work for the welfare of the people in your charge,
but
to get the utmost out of them, so that the German people can live. That
is what I expect of your exertions. This everlasting concern about
foreign
people must cease now, once and for all. I have here before me reports
on what you are expected to deliver. It is nothing at all, when I
consider
your territories. It makes no difference to me in this connection if
you
say that your people will starve."
The
methods employed to
exploit the
resources of the occupied territories to the full varied from country
to
country. In some of the occupied countries in the East and the West,
this
exploitation was carried out within the framework of the existing
economic
structure. The local industries were put under German supervision, and
the distribution of war materials was rigidly controlled. The
industries
thought to be of value to the German war effort were compelled to
continue,
and most of the rest were closed down altogether. Raw materials and the
finished products alike were confiscated for the needs of the Germany
industry.
As early as the 19th October, 1939, the defendant Goering had issued a
directive giving detailed instructions for the administration of the
occupied
territories, it provided:
" The task for
the economic
treatment of the various administrative regions is different, depending
on whether the country is involved which will be incorporated
politically
into the German Reich, or whether we will deal with the
Government-General,
which in all probability will not be made a part of Germany. In the
first
mentioned territories, the . . . safeguarding of all their productive
facilities
and supplies must be aimed at, as well s a complete incorporation into
the Greater German economic system, at the earliest possible time. On
the
other hand, there must be removed from the territories of the
Government-General
all raw materials, scrap materials, machines, etc., which are of use
for
the German war economy. Enterprises which are not absolutely necessary
for the meagre maintenance of the naked existence of the population
must
be transferred to Germany, unless such transfer would require an
unreasonably
long period of time, and would make it more practicable to exploit
those
enterprises by giving them German orders, to be executed at their
present
location."
As
a consequence of this
order, agricultural
products, raw materials needed by German factories, machine tools,
transportation
equipment, other finished products and even foreign securities and
holdings
of foreign exchange were all requisitioned and sent to Germany. These
resources
were requisitioned in a manner out of all proportion to the economic
resources
of those countries, and resulted in famine, inflation and an active
black
market. At first the German occupation authorities attempted to
suppress
the black market, because it was a channel of distribution keeping
local
products out of German hands. When attempts at suppression failed, a
German
purchasing agency was organised to make purchases for Germany on the
black
market, thus carrying out the assurance made by the defendant Goering
that
,it was " necessary that all should know that if there is to be famine
anywhere, it shall in no case be in Germany."
In
many of the occupied
countries
of the East and the West, the authorities maintained the presence of
paying
for all the property which they seized. This elaborate presence of
payment
merely disguised the fact that the goods sent to Germany from these
occupied
countries were paid for by the occupied countries themselves, either by
the device of excessive occupation costs only forced loans in return
for
a credit balance on a " clearing account " which was an account merely
in name.
In
most of the occupied
countries
of the East even this presence of legality was not maintained, economic
exploitation became deliberate plunder. This policy was first put into
effect in the administration of the Government-General in Poland. The
main
exploitation of the raw materials in the East was centred on
agricultural
products and very large amounts of food were shipped from the
Government-General
to Germany.
The
evidence of the
widespread starvation
among the Polish ,people in the Government-General indicates the
ruthlessness
and the severity with which the policy of exploitation was carried out.
The
occupation of the
territories
of the U.S.S.R., was characterised by premeditated and systematic
looting.
Before the attack on the U.S.S.R., an economic staff -Oldenburg- was
organised
to ensure the most efficient exploitation of Soviet territories. The
German
armies were to be fed out of Soviet territory, even if "many millions
of
people will be starved to death." An OKW directive issued before the
attack
said:
" To obtain the
greatest
possible quantity of food and crude oil for Germany- that is the main
economic
purpose of the campaign."
Similarly,
a declaration by
the defendant
Rosenberg of the 20th June, 1941, had advocated the use of the produce
from Southern Russia and of the Northern Caucasus to feed the German
people,
saying:
" We see
absolutely no
reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people
with
the products of that surplus territory. We know that this is a harsh
necessity,
bare of any feelings."
When
the Soviet territory
was occupied,
this policy was put into effect; there was a large scale confiscation
of
agricultural supplies, with complete disregard of the needs of the
inhabitants
of the occupied territory.
In
addition to the
seizure of raw
materials and manufactured articles, a wholesale seizure was made of
art
treasures, furniture, textiles and similar articles in all the invaded
countries.
The
defendant Rosenberg
was designated
by Hitler on the 29th January 1940, Head of the Centre for National
Socialist
Ideological and Educational Research, and thereafter the organisation
known
as the " Einsatzstab Rosenberg" conducted its operations on a very
great
scale. Originally designed for the establishment of a research library,
it developed into a project for the seizure of cultural treasures. On
the
1st March, 1942, Hitler issued a further decree, authorising Rosenberg
to search libraries lodges and cultural establishments, to seize
material
from these establishments, as well as culture treasures owned by Jews.
Similar directions were given where the ownership could not be clearly
established. The decree directed the cooperation of the Wehrmacht High
Command, and indicated that Rosenberg's activities in the West were to
be conducted in his capacity as Reichsleiter, and in the East in his
capacity
as Reichsminister. Thereafter, Rosenberg's activities were extended to
the occupied countries. The report of Robert Scholz, Chief of the
special
staff for Pictorial Art, stated:
"During the
period from
March, 1941, to July, 1944, the special staff for Pictorial Art brought
into the Reich 29 large shipments, including 137 freight cars with
4,174
cases of art works."
The
report of Scholz refers
to 25 portfolios
of pictures of the most valuable works of the art collection seized in
the West, which portfolios were presented to the Fuehrer. Thirty-nine
volumes,
prepared by the Einsatzstab, contained photographs of paintings,
textiles,
furniture, candelabra and numerous other objects of art, and
illustrated
the value and magnitude of the collection which had been made. In many
of the occupied countries private collections were robbed, libraries
were
plundered, and private houses were pillaged.
Museums,
palaces and
libraries in
the occupied territories of the U.S.S.R. were systematically looted.
Rosenberg's
Einsatzstab, Ribbentrop's special " Battalion ", the Reichscommissars
and
representatives of the Military Command seized objects of cultural and
historical value belonging to the people of the Soviet Union, which
were
sent to Germany. Thus, the Reichscommissar of the Ukraine removed
paintings
and objects of art from Kiev and Kharkov and sent them to East Prussia.
Rare volumes and objects of art from the palaces of Peterhof, Tsarskeye
Selo, and Pavlovsk were shipped to Germany. In his letter to Rosenberg
of the 3rd October, 1941, Reichscommissar Kube stated that the value of
the objects of art taken from Byelorussia ran into millions of roubles.
The scale of this plundering can also be seen in the letter sent from
Rosenberg's
department to von Milde-Schreden in which it is stated that during the
month of October, 1943, alone, about 40 box-cars loaded with objects of
cultural value were transported to the Reich.
With
regard to the
suggestion that
the purpose of the seizure of art treasures was protective and meant
for
their preservation, it is necessary to say a few words. On the 1st
December,
1939, Himmler, as the Reich Commissioner for the " strengthening of
Germanism
", issued a decree to the regional officers of the secret police in the
annexed eastern territories, and to the commanders of the security
service
in Radom, Warsaw and Lublin. This decree contained administrative
directions
for carrying out the art seizure programme, and in Clause 1 it is
stated:
" To strengthen
Germanism
in the defence of the Reich, all articles mentioned in Section 2 of
this
decree are hereby confiscated.... They are confiscated for the benefit
of the German Reich, and are at the disposal of the Reich Commissioner
for the strengthening of Germanism."
The
intention to enrich
Germany by
the seizures, rather than to protect the seized objects, is indicated
in
an undated report by Dr. Hans Posse, director of the Dresden State
Picture
Gallery:
" I was able to
gain some
knowledge on the public and private collections, as well as clerical
property,
in Cracow and Warsaw. It is true that we cannot hope too much to enrich
ourselves from the acquisition of great art works of paintings and
sculptures,
with the exception of the Veit-Stoss altar, and the plates of Hans von
Kulnback in the Church of Maria in Cracow . . . and several other works
from the national museum in Warsaw "
SLAVE
LABOUR POLICY
Article
6 (b) of the
Charter provides
that the " ill-treatment ,or deportation to slave labour or for any
other
purpose, of civilian population of or in occupied territory" shall be a
war crime. The laws relating to forced labour by the inhabitants of
occupied
territories are found in Article 52 of The Hague Convention, which
provides:-
" Requisition
in kind and
services shall not be demanded from municipalities or inhabitants
except
for the needs of the army of occupation. They shall be in proportion to
the resources of the country, and of such a nature as not to involve
the
inhabitants in the obligation of taking part in military operations
against
their own country."
The
policy of the German
occupation
authorities was in flagrant violation of the terms of this Convention.
Some idea of this policy may be gathered from the statement made by
Hitler
in a speech on 9th November, 1941:-
" The territory
which now
works for us contains more than 250,000,000 men, but the territory
which
works indirectly for us includes now more than 350,000,000. In the
measure
in which it concerns German territory, the domain which we have taken
under
our administration, it is not doubtful that we shall succeed in
harnessing
the very last man to this work."
The
actual results achieved
were not
so complete as this, but the German occupation authorities did succeed
in forcing many of the inhabitants of the occupied territories to work
for the German war effort, and in deporting at least 5,000,000 persons
to Germany to serve German industry and agriculture.
In
the early stages of
the war,
manpower in the occupied territories was under the control of various
occupation
authorities, and the procedure varied from country to country. In all
the
occupied territories compulsory labour service was promptly instituted.
Inhabitants of the occupied countries were conscripted and compelled to
work in local occupations, to assist the German war economy. In many
cases
they were forced to work on German fortifications and military
installations.
As local supplies of raw materials and local industrial capacity
became'
inadequate to meet the German requirements, the system of deporting
labourers
to Germany was put into force. By the middle of April, 1940, compulsory
deportation of labourers to Germany had been ordered in the Government
General; and a similar procedure was followed in other eastern
territories
as they were occupied. A description of this compulsory deportation
from
Poland was given by Himmler. In an address to SS officers he recalled
how
in weather 40 degrees below zero they had to " haul away thousands,
tens
of thousands, hundreds of thousands." On a later occasion Himmler
stated:-
" Whether ten
thousand
Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank
ditch
interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is
finished....
We must realise that we have 6-7 million foreigners in Germany.... They
are none of them dangerous so long as we take severe measures at the
merest
trifles."
During
the first two years
of the German
occupation of France, Belgium, Holland and Norway, however, an attempt
was made to obtain the necessary workers on a voluntary basis. How
unsuccessful
this was may be seen from the report of the meeting of the Central
Planning
Board on the 1st March, 1944. The representative of the defendant
Speer,
one Koehrl, speaking of the situation in France, said:-
" During all
this time
a great number of Frenchmen were recruited, and voluntarily went to
Germany."
He
was interrupted by the
defendant
Sauckel:
" Not only
voluntary, some
were recruited forcibly."
To
which Koehrl replied:
" The calling
up started
after the recruitment no longer yielded enough results."
To
which the defendant
Sauckel replied:
" Out of the
five million
workers who arrived in Germany, not even 200,000 came voluntarily,"
and
Koehrl rejoined:-
" Let us forget
for the
moment whether or not some slight pressure was used. Formally, at
least,
they were volunteers."
Committees
were set up to
encourage
recruiting, and a vigorous propaganda campaign was begun to induce
workers
to volunteer for service in Germany. This propaganda campaign included,
for example, the promise that a prisoner of war would be returned for
every
labourer who volunteered to go to Germany. In some cases it was
supplemented
by withdrawing the ration cards of labourers who refused to go to
Germany,
or by discharging them from their jobs and denying them unemployment
benefit
or an opportunity to work elsewhere. In some cases workers and their
families
were threatened with reprisals by the police if they refused to go to
Germany.
It was on the 21st March, 1942, that the defendant Sauckel was
appointed
Plenipotentiary-General for the Utilisation of Labour, with authority
over
" all available manpower, including that of workers recruited abroad,
and
of prisoners of war."
The
defendant Sauckel
was directly
under the defendant Goering as Commissioner of the Four Year Plan, and
a Goering decree of the 27th March, 1942, transferred all his authority
over manpower to Sauckel. Sauckel's instructions, too, were that
foreign
labour should be recruited on a voluntary basis, but also provided that
" where, however, in the occupied territories the appeal for volunteers
does not suffice, obligatory service and drafting must under all
circumstances
be resorted to. " Rules requiring labour service in Germany were
published
in all the occupied territories. The number of labourers to be supplied
was fixed by Sauckel, and the local authorities were instructed to meet
these requirements by conscription if necessary. That conscription was
the rule rather than the exception is shown by the statement of Sauckel
already quoted, on the 1st March, 1944.
The
defendant Sauckel
frequently
asserted that the workers belonging to foreign nations were treated
humanely,
and that the conditions in which they lived were good. But whatever the
intention of Sauckel may have been, and however much he may have
desired
that foreign labourers should be treated humanely, the evidence before
the Tribunal establishes the fact that the conscription of labour was
accomplished
in many cases by drastic and violent methods. The " mistakes and
blunders
" were on a very great scale. Man-hunts took place in the streets, at
motion
picture houses, even at churches and at night in private houses. Houses
were sometimes burnt down, and the families taken as hostages,
practices
which were described by the defendant Rosenberg as having their origin
" in the blackest periods of the slave trade." The methods used in
obtaining
forced labour from the Ukraine appear from an order issued to SD
officers
which stated:
" It will not
be possible
always to refrain from using force.... When searching villages,
especially
when it has been necessary to burn down a village, the whole population
will be put at the disposal of the Commissioner by force.... As a rule
no more children will be shot.... If we limit harsh measures through
the
above orders for the time being, it is only done for the following
reason....
The most important thing is the recruitment of workers."
The
resources and needs of
the occupied
countries were completely disregarded in carrying out this policy. The
treatment of the labourers was governed by Sauckel's instructions of
the
20th April. 1942. to the effect that:
" All the men
must be fed,
sheltered and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest
possible
extent, at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure."
The
evidence showed that
workers destined
for the Reich were sent under guard to Germany, often packed in trains
without adequate heat, food, clothing or sanitary facilities. The
evidence
further showed that the treatment of the labourers in Germany in many
cases
was brutal and degrading. The evidence relating to the Krupp Works at
Essen
showed that punishments of the most cruel kind were inflicted on the
workers.
Theoretically at least the workers were paid, housed and fed by the DAF
and even permitted to transfer their savings and to send mail and
parcels
back to their native country; but restrictive regulations took a
proportion
of the pay; the camps in which they were housed were insanitary; and
the
food was very often less than the minimum necessary to give the workers
strength to do their jobs. In the case of Poles employed on farms in
Germany,
the employers were given authority to inflict corporal punishment and
were
ordered, if possible, to house them in stables, not in their own homes.
They were subject to constant supervision by the Gestapo and the SS,
and
if they attempted to leave their jobs they were sent to correction
camps
or concentration camps. The concentration camps were also used to
increase
the supply of labour. Concentration camp commanders were ordered to
work
their prisoners to the limits of their physical power. During the
latter
stages of the war the concentration camps were so productive in certain
types of work that the Gestapo was actually instructed to arrest
certain
classes of labourers so that they could be used in this way. Allied
prisoners
of war were also regarded as a possible source of labour. Pressure was
exercised on non-commissioned officers to force them to consent to
work,
by transferring to disciplinary camps those who did not consent. Many
of
the prisoners of war were assigned to work directly related to military
operations, in violation of Article 31 of the Geneva Convention. They
were
put to work in munition factories and even made to load bombers, to
carry
ammunition and to dig trenches, often under the most hazardous
conditions.
This condition applied particularly to the Soviet prisoners of war. On
the 16th February, 1943, at a meeting of the Central Planning Board, at
which the defendants Sauckel and Speer were present, Milch said:
" We have made
a request
for an order that a certain percentage of men in the Ack-Ack artillery
must be Russians; 50,000 will be taken altogether. 30,000 are already
employed
as gunners. This is an amusing thing, that Russians must work the guns."
And
on the 4th October,
1943, at Posen,
Himmler, speaking of the Russian prisoners, captured in the early days
of the war, said:
"At that time
we did not
value the mass of humanity as we value it to-day, as raw material, as
labour.
What after all thinking in terms of generations, is not to be
regretted,
but is now deplorable by reason of the loss of labour, is that the
prisoners
- died in tens and hundreds of thousands of exhaustion and hunger."
The
general policy
underlying the mobilisation
of slave labour was stated by Sauckel on the 20th April, 1942. He said:
" The aim of
this new gigantic
labour mobilisation is to use all the rich and tremendous sources
conquered
and secured for us by our fighting armed forces under the leadership of
Adolf Hitler, for the armament of the armed forces, and also for the
nutrition
of the Homeland. The raw materials, as well as the fertility of the
conquered
territories and their human labour power, are to be used completely and
conscientiously to the profit of Germany and her Allies.... All
prisoners
of war from the territories of the West, as well as the East, actually
in Germany, must be completely incorporated into the German armament
and
nutrition industries.... Consequently it is an immediate necessity to
use
the human reserves of the conquered Soviet territory to the fullest
extent.
Should we not succeed in obtaining the necessary amount of labour on a
voluntary basis, we must immediately institute conscription or forced
labour....
The complete employment of all prisoners of war, as well as the use of
a gigantic number of new foreign civilian workers, men and women, has
become
an indisputable necessity for the solution of the mobilisation of the
labour
programme in this war."
Reference
should also be
made to the
policy which was in existence in Germany by the summer of 1940, under
which
all aged, insane, and incurable people, " useless eaters," were
transferred
to special institutions where they were killed, and their relatives
informed
that they had died from natural causes. The victims were not confined
to
German citizens, but included foreign labourers, who were no longer
able
to work, and were therefore useless to the German war machine. It has
been
estimated that at least some 275,000 people were killed in this manner
in nursing homes, hospitals and asylums, which were under the
jurisdiction
of the defendant Frick, in his capacity as Minister of the Interior.
How
many foreign workers were included in this total it has been quite
impossible
to determine.
PERSECUTION
OF THE JEWS
The
persecution of the Jews
at
the hands of the Nazi Government has been proved in the greatest detail
before the Tribunal. It is a record of consistent and systematic
inhumanity
on the greatest scale. Ohlendorf, chief of Amt III in the RSHA from
1939
to 1943, and who was in command of one of the Einsatz groups in the
campaign
against the Soviet Union testified as to the methods employed in the
extermination
of the Jews. He said that he employed firing squads to shoot the
victims
in order to lessen the sense of individual guilt on the part of his
men;
and the 90,000 men, women and children who were murdered in one year by
his particular group were mostly Jews.
When
the witness Bach
Zelewski was
asked how Ohlendorf could admit the murder of 90,000 people, he replied:
"I am of the
opinion that
when, for years, for decades, the doctrine is preached that the Slav
race
is an inferior race, and Jews not even human, then such an outcome is
inevitable."
But
the defendant Frank
spoke the final
words of this chapter of Nazi history when he testified in this court:
" We have
fought against
Jewry, we have fought against it for years: and we have allowed
ourselves
to make utterances and my own diary has become a witness against me in
this connection- utterances which are terrible.... A thousand years
will
pass and this guilt of Germany will not be erased."
The
anti-Jewish policy was
formulated
in Point 4 of the Party Programme which declared " Only a member of the
race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of
German
blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently, no Jew can be a
member
of the race." Other points of the programme declared that Jews should
be
treated as foreigners, that they should not be permitted to hold public
office, that they should be expelled from the Reich if it were
impossible
to nourish the entire population of the State, that they should be
denied
any further immigration into Germany, and that they should be
prohibited
from publishing German newspapers. The Nazi Party preached these
doctrines
throughout its history. " Der Stuermer" and other publications were
allowed
to disseminate hatred of the Jews, and in the speeches and public
declarations
of the Nazi leaders, the Jews were held up to public ridicule and
contempt.
With
the seizure of
power, the persecution
of the Jews was intensified. A series of discriminatory laws were
passed,
which limited the offices and professions permitted to Jews; and
restrictions
were placed on their family life and their rights of citizenship. By
the
autumn of 1938, the Nazi policy towards the Jews had reached the stage
where it was directed towards the complete exclusion of Jews from
German
life. Pogroms were organised which included the burning and demolishing
of synagogues, the looting of Jewish businesses, and the arrest of
prominent
Jewish business men. A collective fine of one billion marks was imposed
on the Jews, the seizure of Jewish assets was authorised, and the
movement
of Jews was restricted by regulations to certain specified districts
and
hours. The creation of ghettoes was carried out on an extensive scale,
and by an order of the Security Police Jews were compelled to wear a
yellow
star to be worn on the breast and back.
It
was contended for the
Prosecution
that certain aspects of this anti-Semitic policy were connected with
the
plans for aggressive war. The violent measures taken against the Jews
in
November, 1938, were nominally in retaliation for the killing of an
official
of the German Embassy in Paris. But the decision to seize Austria and
Czechoslovakia
had been made a year before. The imposition of a fine of one billion
marks
was made, and the confiscation of the financial holdings of the Jews
was
decreed, at a time when German armament expenditure had put the German
treasury in difficulties, and when the reduction of expenditure on
armaments
was being considered. These steps were taken, moreover, with the
approval
of the defendant Goering, who had been given responsibility for
economic
matters of this kind, and who was the strongest advocate of an
extensive
rearmament programme notwithstanding the financial difficulties.
It
was further said that
the connection
of the anti-Semitic policy with aggressive war was not limited to
economic
matters. The German Foreign Office circular, in an article of 25th
January,
1939, entitled " Jewish question as a factor in German Foreign Policy
in
the year 1938", described the new phase in the Nazi anti-Semitic policy
in these words:
" It is
certainly no coincidence
that the fateful year 1938 has brought nearer the solution of the
Jewish
question simultaneously with the realisation of the idea of Greater
Germany,
since the Jewish policy was both the basis and consequence of the
events
of the year 1938. The advance made by Jewish influence and the
destructive
Jewish spirit in politics, economy, and culture paralysed the power and
the will of the German people to rise again, more perhaps even than the
power policy opposition of the former enemy Allied powers of the first
World War. The healing of this sickness among the people was therefore
certainly one of the most important requirements for exerting the force
which, in the year 1938, resulted in the joining together of Greater
Germany
in defiance of the world."
The
Nazi persecution of
Jews in Germany
before the war, severe and repressive as it was, cannot compare,
however,
with the policy pursued during the war in the occupied territories.
Originally
the policy was similar to that which had been in force inside Germany.
Jews were required to register, were forced to live in ghettoes, to
wear
the yellow star, and were used as slave labourers. In the summer of
1941,
however, plans were made for the " final solution" of the Jewish
question
in all of Europe. This " final solution " meant the extermination of
the
Jews, which early in 1939 Hitler had threatened would be one of the
consequences
of an outbreak of war, and a special section in the Gestapo under Adolf
Eichmann, as head of Section B4 of the Gestapo, was formed to carry out
the policy.
The
plan for
exterminating the Jews
was developed shortly after the attack on the Soviet Union.
Einsatzgruppen
of the Security Police and SD, formed for the purpose of breaking the
resistance
of the population of the areas lying behind the German armies in the
East,
were given the duty of exterminating the Jews in those areas. The
effectiveness
of the work of the Einsatzgruppen is shown by the fact that in
February,
1942, Heydrich was able to report that Estonia had already been cleared
of Jews and that in Riga the number of Jews had been reduced from
29,500
to 2,500. Altogether the Einsatzgruppen operating in the occupied
Baltic
States killed over 135,000 Jews in three months.
Nor
did these special
units operate
completely independently of the German Armed Forces. There is clear
evidence
that leaders of the Einsatzgruppen obtained the co-operation of Army
Commanders.
In one case the relations between an Einsatzgruppe and the military
authorities
was described at the time as being "very close, almost cordial "; in
another
case the smoothness of an Einsatz-commando's operation was attributed
to
the " understanding for this procedure " shown by the army authorities.
Units
of the Security
Police and
SD in the occupied territories of the East, which were under civil
administration,
were given a similar task. The planned and systematic character of the
Jewish persecutions is best illustrated by the original report of the
SS
Brigadier-General Stroop, who was in charge of the destruction of the
ghetto
in Warsaw, which took place in 1943. The Tribunal received in evidence
that report, illustrated with photographs, bearing on its title page:
"The
Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw no longer exists." The volume records a series
of reports sent by Stroop to the Higher SS and Police Fuehrer East. In
April and May, 1943, in one report, Stroop wrote:
" The
resistance put up
by the Jews and bandits could only be suppressed by energetic actions
of
our troops day and night. The Reichsfuehrer SS ordered therefore on the
23rd April, 1943 the cleaning out of the ghetto with utter ruthlessness
and merciless tenacity. I therefore decided to destroy and burn down
the
entire ghetto, without regard to the armament factories. These
factories
were systematically dismantled and then burnt. Jews usually left their
hideouts, but frequently remained in the burning buildings, and jumped
out of the windows only when the heat became unbearable. They then
tried
to crawl with broken bones across the street into buildings which were
not afire.... Life in the sewers was not pleasant after the first week.
Many times we could hear loud voices in the sewers.... Tear gas bombs
were
thrown into the manholes, and the Jews driven out of the sewers and
captured.
Countless numbers of Jews were liquidated in sewers and bunkers through
blasting. The longer the resistance continued, the tougher became the
members
of the Waffen SS, Police and Wehrmacht, who always discharged their
duties
in an exemplary manner."
Stroop
recorded that his
action at
Warsaw eliminated "a proved total of 56,065 people. To that we have to
add the number of those killed through blasting, fire, etc., which
cannot
be counted." Grim evidence of mass murders of Jews was also presented
to
the Tribunal in cinematograph films depicting the communal graves of
hundreds
of victims which were subsequently discovered by the Allies.
These
atrocities were
all part and
parcel of the policy inaugurated in 1941, and it is not surprising that
there should be evidence that one or two German officials entered vain
protests against the brutal manner in which the killings were carried
out.
But the methods employed never conformed to a single pattern. The
massacres
of Rowno and Dubno, of which the German engineer Graebe spoke, were
examples
of one method, the systematic extermination of Jews in concentration
camps,
was another Part of the " final solution " was the gathering of Jews
from
all German occupied Europe in concentration camps. Their physical
condition
was the test of life or death. All who were fit to work were used as
slave
labourers in the concentration camps; all who were not fit to work were
destroyed in gas chambers and their bodies burnt. Certain concentration
camps such as Treblinka and Auschwitz were set aside for this main
purpose.
With regard to Auschwitz, the Tribunal heard the evidence of Hoess, the
Commandant of the camp from 1st May, 1940, to 1st December, 1943. He
estimated
that in the camp of Auschwitz alone in that time 2,500,000 persons were
exterminated, and that a further 500,000 died from disease and
starvation.
Hoess described the screening for extermination by stating in evidence:
" We had two SS
doctors
on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners.
The
prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot
decisions
as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp.
Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of
tender
years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they
were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka
was
that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be
exterminated
and at Auschwitz we endeavoured to fool the victims into thinking that
they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they
realised our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and
difficulties
due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under
their clothes, but of course when we found them we would send the
children
in to be exterminated."
He
described the actual
killing by
stating:
" It took from
three to
fifteen minutes to kill the people in the death chamber, depending upon
climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their
screaming
stopped. We usually waited about one half-hour before we opened the
doors
and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special
commandos
took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the
corpses."
Beating,
starvation,
torture, and killing
were general. The inmates were subjected to cruel experiments at Dachau
in August, 1942, victims were immersed in cold water until their body
temperature
was reduced to 28 Centigrade, when they died immediately. Other
experiments
included high altitude experiments in pressure chambers, experiments to
determine how long human beings could survive in freezing water,
experiments
with poison bullets, experiments with contagious diseases, and
experiments
dealing with sterilisation of men and women by X-rays and other methods.
Evidence
was given of
the treatment
of the inmates before and after their extermination. There was
testimony
that the hair of women victims was cut off before they were killed, and
shipped to Germany, there to be used in the manufacture of mattresses.
The clothes, money and valuables of the inmates were also salvaged and
sent to the appropriate agencies for disposition. After the
extermination
the gold teeth and fillings were taken from the heads of the corpses
and
sent to the Reichsbank.
After
cremation the
ashes were used
for fertilizer, and in some instances attempts were made to utilise the
fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufacture of
soap.
Special groups travelled through Europe to find Jews and subject them
to
the " final solution." German missions were sent to such satellite
countries
as Hungary and Bulgaria, to arrange for the shipment of Jews to
extermination
camps and it is known that by the end of 1944, 400,000 Jews from
Hungary
had been murdered at Auschwitz. Evidence has also been given of the
evacuation
of 110,000 Jews from part of Roumania for "liquidation." Adolf
Eichmann,
who had been put in charge of this programme by Hitler, has estimated
that
the policy pursued resulted in the killing of 6,000,000 Jews, of which
4.000.000 were killed in the extermination institutions.
On 5 July , Britain and the United
States
recognised
the new provisional government as the legal authority in Poland. Out of
twenty-five members, sixteen came from the Soviet-sponsored 'Lublin
Committee',
including Osóbka-Morawski, now prime minister, and Bierut as head of
state.
But much of the real strength lay with Władysław Gomułka; he was a
deputy
premier but also, far more importantly, secretary of the Polish
Workers'
Party (PPR), the Communists.
The other deputy premier was
Mikołajczyk, who
also became
minister of agriculture. Huge crowds welcomed Mikołajczyk when he flew
back to Warsaw, and, with Bierut scowling anxiously in the background,
he made a brave speech promising to heal all wounds and restore 'a
truly
free, independent and sovereign Polish Republic'.
Poland in the summer of 1945 was a
land in which
everyone
was on the move. The cities were mostly in ruins, except for Kraków
which
became for a while the intelIectual centre of the nation. From the east
came much of the by train, cart or on foot towards new homes in the
west.
From Britain and Germany came return ing soldiers and tattered,
emaciated
thousands freed from the concentration camps, factories and farms of
the
Third Reich. From what had been Pomerania, Silesia and East Prussia,
about
three million Germans had already fled. Now, the first of over three
million
who remained were being driven out of their homes, most of them to land
up in the British zone of Germany; the cities of Breslau and Danzig,
both
smashed to rubble in the last months of war, became Wrocław and Gdańsk.
The surviving railway lines were clogged with Soviet trains crawling
eastwards,
carrying not only an incredible assortment of personal booty but the
machinery
and stock of German factories in the new Western Territories which were
by right Polish property. It was three years before the great
'resettlements'
came to rest.
Wroclaw,
Poland: the capital of Polish Silesia
proud of its Roman - Catholic past, present and
future silesian.eu
The war had cost Poland the death of
a fifth of
its population,
and the destruction of over a third of the national wealth. As if that
blood-letting had not been enough, Poles were killing each other as
remnants
of the resistance fought on against the new regime. And yet these first
post-war years were also a time of irrepressible energy, even of
optimism.
Much of the energy was spontaneous, as the Poles threw themselves into
the business of building what was almost a new country. The Western
Territories,
taken from the Germans, were at first a 'Wild West' where the incoming
Polish settlers seized what had been left behind, pulled ploughs
themselves
where there were no horses and organised their own communities long
before
official authority became effective. Workers took over factories and
started
production on their own, without waiting for a manager to arrive. The
people
of Warsaw went back to the ruins and piled bricks together to make
shelters;
the legend tells that the first shop to open was a boutique for ladies'
hats.
The English novelist Storm Jameson
visited Warsaw
in
September 1945. She saw 'narrow lanes tracing the lines of vanished
streets
between the scorched shells of houses, each vomiting its dust-choked
torrent
of rubble. With only spades and bare hands, men and a few women working
headlong to clear them.
After all the half-measures
of the years
before 1939,
a sweeping and radical land reform was carried through. The estates
were
broken up and distributed to the peasants; only in the Western
Territories
did the government keep the big Prussian estates intact, to be used as
state farms. It is one of the ironies of Polish history that it was
Communist-inspired
policy that turned most of Poland into a patchwork of little private
strip-fields,
owned by peasants whose fierce independence and primitive methods have
hampered the planned economy ever since. Basic industries were
nationalised,
and by 1946 the state sector controlled over ninety per cent of
industrial
production.
Poland in 1945 was ready, even
impatient, for
swift and
revolutionary social change. The radical mood which had arisen during
the
Nazi occupation still prevailed; not only workers and peasants but the
surviving intellectuals wanted to create a new, strong, socially just
and
egalitarian nation, to overcome all the weaknesses which had
contributed
to the loss of independence in 1939. In another country, this mood
would
have given a Communist Party its historie opportunity to take the
leadership
of this hunger for change. But in Poland, where the Communists had been
escorted to power by Soviet bayonets, it was a different matter.
As party leader, Władysław Gomułka
saw this very
clearly.
He was unlike most of his colleagues in the PPR leadership in two ways:
he was a worker rather than an intellectual, and he had spent the war
in
the underground in Poland rather than in the Soviet Union. His two
predecessors,
both parachuted in from Moscow, had died in the war: Marceli Nowotko
was
murdered in a still-mysterious feud in 1942, and his successor Pawel
Finder
had been arrested by the Gestapo the following year. Gomułka had led
the
PPR side in the unsuccessful negotiations for a common military and
political
platform with the Home Army. As the new secretary of the PPR, he had
taken
an independent line, helped by an accidental but convenient breakdown
in
radio contact with Moscow when he took office.
Gomułka was a harsh intolerant
personality with a
violent
temper. His grim, bony skulI, eyes peering at the world through
steel-rimmed
spectacles, encouraged his opponents to regard him as a pitiless
Marxist
fanatic. But although he was a convinced Communist, he was never a
'Comintern
man' who took orders unquestioningly from the Great Socialist
Motherland.
The fact that he was in prison at the time probably saved him from the
fate of his comrades in the old KPP, who were summoned to Moscow and
for
the most part murdered in 1938.
This was a crime which Gomulka never
forgot. He
accepted
the need for close alliance between Poland and the Soviet Union, and
the
Soviet military and political support without which - given the
strength
of the non-Communist parties in the first years - the Communists would
neither have acquired the main share of power nor kept it for more than
a few weeks. But he intended to find a 'Polish Road to Socialism' which
would avoid the mistakes of the Soviet Union and find gradual
acceptance
in a Catholic nation whose patriotic tradition was anti-Russian.
In this up hill task, he faced three
main
problems. The
first was Soviet behaviour within Poland, where Soviet 'advisers' had
taken
command of the security police and where Russian soldiers we re running
wild, looting and frequently killing. The second was his own party. The
PPR membership had risen from 30,000 at the beginning of 1945 to some
300,000
by April, swamping the party with careerists, half-baked
revolutionaries
and mere brigands who in some places were threatening to collectivise
the
land and even announcing that Poland was to become a republic of the
Soviet
Union.
The third problem, which became
dangerous the
moment
that Mikolajczyk returned to Poland, was the huge revival of
non-Communist
politics, headed by the Peasant Party. Gomulka might wish to give a
democratic
appearance as he moved cautiously along his 'Polish Road' but, unless
he
could smash or cripple these political rivals before the 'free
elections'
prescribed by Yalta, the PPR would be swept away.
Gomulka made some progress. He
ensured that the
new government
behaved with ostentatious respect towards the Church, and Bierut, as
head
of state, walked with Catholic bishops in religious processions. The
Soviet
Union made a faint show of goodwill by imposing only light sentences on
the kidnapped resistance leaders in Moscow. More important for Poland's
stability was the final Big Three meeting at Potsdam in July 1945, at
which
Stalin - against British and American doubts - insisted on the
demarcation
of Poland' s new western border along the rivers Oder and Neisse,
including
the city of Stettin (Szczecin) on the west bank of the Oder estuary.
Final
recognition of the Oder-Neisse frontier was deferred to a future peace
conference. As for Gomulka's problems with the PPR, the bubble burst
soon
after Mikolajczyk's return; party membership collapsed to about 65,000
in the summer of 1945 as masses of Poles defected to the Peasant Party
and the other revolving groups.
But the bloodshed went on. Although
Bór-
Komorowski's
successor as head of the Home Army, General Leopold Okulicki, had
dissolved
the AK in January, some Home Army units and many NSZ bands carried on
the
struggle, raiding towns and villages to murder PPR members and
ambushing
Soviet convoys on the roads. In return, Polish security troops aided by
Soviet regulars carried out their own repressions and atrocities. An
amnesty
in August 1945 brought 42,000 men and women out of the underground, but
Okulicki's successor, Colonel Jan Rzepecki, then organised a new
Freedom
and lndependence Resistance (WiN), in touch with the exile government
in
London, and fought on. A separate problem was a desperate and
determined
army of Ukrainian partisans in the foothills of the Carpathians, whose
final success before dissolving and escaping to the West was to ambush
and kill General Karol Świerczewski ('General Walter' of the Spanish
Civil
War) in March 1947.
The fighting - almost a Polish Civil
war - cost
tens
of thousands of lives and poisoned political life with hatred, as
Gomułka
and Bierut accused Mikołajczyk and his allies of secret contact with
the
underground. It petered out only in early 1947, when another amnesty
brought
most of the surviving guerrillas out of the forests. The Ukrainian
population
of south-eastern Poland suffered savage punishment. Their villages were
destroyed; some Ukrainian groups were resettled in the Western
Territories
and the rest deported to summary execution or labour camps in the
Soviet
Union.
In June 1946, there was a first
trial of strength
between
the political parties of the new Poland. The Communists needed public
evidence
that the 'programme of the left' had popular support; ingeniously, they
proposed a referendum on three questions to which they knew that most
Poles
- whatever their politics - would be inclined to answer
'Yes'.
The
referendum asked the electors whether they approved of the abolition of
the Senate (the upper house of parliament), of land reform and the
nationalisation
of basic industries, and of the new frontiers on the Oder-Neisse line.
These questions put Mikołajczyk in a
trap - as
they were
meant to. His party had supported all three changes. Yet he could not
miss
this chance to show the world the strength of the PSL. Rather
unconvincingly,
he launched a campaign for a 'Yes' to the last two points but a 'No' to
the abolition of the Senate. The PPR, supported by most of the Polish
Socialist
Party (PPS), toured the country calling for 'Three Times Yes'.
The question on the Senate had
become a vote of
confidence
in the government's domination by the Communists, and the campaign was
a chaos of abuse and intimidation. The polling took place on 30 June.
Ten
days later, the government announced the results: on the vital first
question,
sixty-eight per cent had voted 'Yes' and only thirty-two per cent 'No'.
Jerzy Morawski, then one of the younger Communist leaders, today admits
with bitter candour: 'I found out afterwards that the results had been
faked. In reality, the situation was probably just the reverse:
two-thirds
had voted for what Mikołajczyk was asking.' For the inner circle of the
PPR (the Communists), who knew the real totals, the referendum was an
ugly
shock. Morawski recalls: 'It was a warning which showed how strong the
influence of Mikołajczyk's opposition was in Poland. It showed how much
effort to pressurise, destroy, intimidate and discredit Mikołajczyk's
opposition
was still needed in order to win the elections.'
It was an effort which
Gomułka and Bierut now
proceeded
to make. The Yalta 'free' elections did not take place until January
1947,
but the six months that followed the 'Three Times Yes' referendum
brought
an onslaught of official terror against the Peasant Party. Meetings of
the PSL were broken up by mobs, party buildings were destroyed, PSL
members
were threatened with the loss of their jobs, and there was astring of
arrests,
kidnappings and murders. In the midst of this violence, a horrific
incident
took place at Kielce in July 1946, when a building sheltering Jews on
their
way from the USSR to Palestine was attacked and forty of them were
killed.
At the time, everybody blamed everyone else for the 'Kielce Pogrom'.
Mikołajczyk
claimed it was a Communist police provocation, while others saw it as a
spontaneous explosion of the anti-Semitism which was, undeniably, a
part
of the hysterical mood of Poland in the first years after the war. The
Communists said the pogrom was the work of right-wing nationalists. The
right-wingers and several Catholic bishops retorted by pointing out
that
many of the Communist leaders who had spent the war in the Soviet Union
were Jews, especially in the secret police: a propaganda point which
has
festered in Polish consciousness ever since.
In the teeth of the storm,
Mikołajczyk fought an
erratic
campaign. He appealed for international supervision of the elections,
but
Britain and the United States, now preoccupied with their confrontation
with the Soviet Union in occupied Germany, paid no attention. For a
time,
the key to his victory seemed to lie with the PPS, the Polish
socialists,
now in tragic disorder. One fraction in the PPS wanted an open struggle
against the Communists; even the pliable Osóbka-Morawski, the prime
minister,
was now rebelling against Gomułka's domineering style. Others, some
from
a genuine belief that the left must hold together and put through a
socialist
programme, some because they were fellow travellers planted in the PPS
by the Communists or by Soviet intelligence, stood by the government
and
looked forward to an eventual fusion with the PPR. But when the Polish
socialists approached the Peasant Party and asked them to join the
(democratic
bloc', hoping to keep Communist influence in the next government to a
minimum,
Mikołajczyk turned them down, refusing a secret offer of a quarter of
the
Sejm seats which would have made a mockery of the elections before they
were even held.
Another body-blow to Mikołajczyk
followed in
September.
Under President Truman, the United States was growing increasingly
nervous
about Soviet intentions in Europe. The Communist parties in France and
Italy were powerful and militant; the western zones of Germany were
sinking
into a mire of hunger and hopelessness which looked like a
breeding-ground
for revolution. Conditions might soon be ripe for Stalin to advance his
ideology and power to the Atlantic, if he so wished. In this situation,
American aims rapidly changed from the hope of keeping Europe united to
a policy of drawing a fire-break across the continent which Communism
could
not surrnount.The first requirement of the new policy was to show the
Germans
that the United States was not a hostile occupying power but a
potential
friend.
THE STRUGGLES FOR
POLAND BY NEAL ASCHERSON excerpts of
the First American Edition Random House Inc. New York 1988
As long as acts
of hatred against
Polish
people go unpunished, some
wrongdoers plan,
encourage, and
advocate hate
crimes and biased
policies against
Poles and Poland.
In the 21st century anti-Polish
hatred and
anti-Polonism must
be treated as
a crime against
humanity
just like anti-Jewish
hatred and
anti-Semitism.
Those in doubt should
finally realize
that all
people are created
equal.
