Polish Jewish troubled neighborhood

[valpomike]

We must keep this a part of history, good or bad.

Mike

[Bonobo]

Author outlines Polish complicity in Holocaust



Author and scholar Jan Gross talks with Holocaust Resource Foundation president Clara Kramer and her husband, Sol, before giving a lecture at Kean University.

Author and scholar Jan Gross talks with Holocaust Resource Foundation president Clara Kramer and her husband, Sol, before giving a lecture at Kean University.

Photo by Harris Saltzburg

by Elaine Durbach
New Jersey Jewish News

December 4, 2008

Jan Gross grew up in postwar Poland with an almost rosy view of how Jews had been treated by their countrymen there. It was only once he began to read accounts of the war, and to conduct his own research, that he discovered how widespread Polish complicity had been in the Nazi victimization of Jews, both during and after the war.

In a talk at Kean University in Union on Dec. 1, the Princeton-based writer and scholar delineated Polish anti-Semitism and how it rose to new levels of murderous violence after World War II. It was inflamed, he suggested, by the experience of Nazi brutality and by the fear of losing Jews' property seized in their absence.

In a time of general lawlessness, and perhaps driven by a reluctance to face their own wartime crimes, Polish civilians assaulted thousands of returning Jewish survivors.

Gross said there were lots of stories of attacks, "and they were framed as odd events — freak stories — but more Jews were killed in pogroms in Poland than anywhere else: between 1,500 and 2,500." Ironically, Jews fled to safe refuge in Germany — to the displaced persons' camps there.

His talk, based on his latest book, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, was part of the annual series sponsored by the Holocaust Resource Foundation and hosted by the Holocaust Resource Center at Kean. Earlier in the day, he conducted a seminar for post-graduate students and teachers taking part in the course offered by the foundation.

Gross drew international attention and aroused fierce controversy in his birth country with the publication in 2001 of his third book, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Jedwabne, Poland.

His first book, Polish Society under German Occupation came out in 1979. His next, in 1988, The Revolution from Abroad, looked at the Soviet Union's impact on the Baltic States from 1939 to 1941. In Neighbors he turned the focus inward. The book, based on painstaking interviews with eyewitnesses, exposed the fact that the 1,600 Jews killed when Nazi forces reached the town of Jedwabne in 1941 were murdered by the townspeople — not the Germans, as Poles had always claimed.

Gross said he faced much anger and repudiation in Poland. But he also experienced great support, much of it from ordinary people. Possibly as a result of the much more open debate that followed the book's publication, he said, Polish academics have been bringing out some excellent books on the subject of discrimination and the Holocaust.

Gross described his upbringing with a non-religious Jewish father and a Catholic mother, whose first husband had also been Jewish. In their circles, much as in prewar Germany, among the progressive intelligentsia, religious identity was almost irrelevant, and people — like his mother — risked their own well-being to oppose discrimination.

The family immigrated to the United States in 1969. Gross earned his doctorate in sociology from Yale six years later. He went on to teach courses on Soviet and Eastern European politics and World War II at New York, Emory, and Yale universities as well as at universities in Paris, Vienna, and Cracow, before taking up his present position at Princeton, as the Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society.
`No sense of closure'

Gross said he first began to register the prejudice endemic in Polish society when he read a book written just after the war by a woman who battled to retrieve children sheltered by Poles to return them to their parents or other Jewish caregivers. She said that many of those courageous sheltering families were afraid to let it be known what they had done, lest they suffer the wrath of their neighbors.

To his horror, he discovered that attitude was widespread. "It didn't make sense to me," Gross told the Kean audience. "It was bizarre."

He began to discover how much ordinary people had colluded in German efforts to identify and isolate their Jewish neighbors, and later — in full view of others — to brutalize and kill them. Gross said that a third to a half of the Polish Jews died that way long before they reached any camps.

After the war, the old blood libels, rooted in medieval tales that Jews used the blood of children to make matza, took on a new form. Rumors spread that these starved people wanted it to drink, to restore their strength.

Those who knew better warned the Jews to leave, for their own safety. "The stories would be hard to take seriously, but the rumors had legs," Gross said. "They would bring people out in a burst of fury time and again."

Asked after the lecture if his books have provided him with a sense of closure about anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, Gross said there could be no such thing. "We can just lay out the facts and reflect on them. The subject is so immense; there can be no sense of closure ever."

[Bonobo]

Polish Church must not accept anti-Semitism
Total Catholic, UK
Wednesday, 03 December 2008

A Polish archbishop said the Catholic Church must not accept anti-
Semitism within its ranks, calling it "irrational behaviour".

Archbishop Jozef Zycinski of Lublin spoke to reporters during a
conference in Jerusalem focusing on the relationships among the
Polish Catholic Church, Jews and Israel.

"In the case of Lublin ... we emphasise that (the Jews) were present in our life, in cultural solidarity. It is part of our cultural
heritage," he said.

Some anti-Semitic incidents show a "generational problem" and a
problem of "social frustration" more than a cultural phenomenon, he
said. He cited as an example the issue of Radio Maryja's
Redemptorist Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, who has been accused of anti- Semitic remarks and insulting the Polish president.

Even the younger generation of Redemptorist priests are sceptical of Radio Maryja's message, said Archbishop Zycinski, noting that the
ideas predate the Second Vatican Council and the followers are a
minute percentage of the population.

An anti-Semitic idea "shouldn't be accepted, but there are groups
where it plays a factor. It is hard to understand a return (to anti-
Semitism), but for the elderly it is a form of psychological support
to defend Polish identity," he said, adding that Fr Rydzyk "is 'anti-
' in general."

He said that today dialogue between Catholics and Jews is a "much
stronger trend." "In a few years there will be a cultural transformation, " said the archbishop. "The younger generation is pro-dialogue. "

In 1939, Poland had the largest population of Jews in Europe – three million people – most of whom were killed by the Nazis. Today an estimated 25,000 Jews live in Poland.

Over the past 20 years there has been a revival of interest in
Poland's Jewish history as Poles seek their own roots, which were
covered up during Soviet control, said Zbigniew Nosowski, a
consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Laity and co-director of
the Polish Council of Christian and Jews.

Young Polish musicians have adopted the traditional Jewish klezmer
music as their own, and many books on Jewish themes are on the best- seller lists, he said.

"The generation of my children is discovering that (the Jews) are a
part of us; it (the Holocaust) was a loss to Polish identity," he
said. "The Poland (which used to have Jews) was much richer. My
daughter is learning Jewish history. When I was in elementary school we didn't know anybody who was not ethnically a Pole or who was not baptised in the Catholic Church."

Despite efforts by dialogue groups, anti-Semitism still exists in
Poland, said Nosowski, but it "has its roots in the past" and
differs from the "new anti-Semitism" around the world, which takes
the form of anti-Israel rhetoric, he said.

[Bonobo]

Communist-era prosecutor Wolinska dies at 89
The Associated Press
Saturday, November 29, 2008

LONDON: Helena Wolinska, a communist-era prosecutor charged in Poland with wrongful prosecution of the nation's World War II heroes, has died in England, her son said Saturday. She was 89.

Tom Brus said his mother contracted pneumonia and died Thursday.

Poland has sought the extradition of Wolinska since 1999, but the
request was rejected because she was a British citizen.

She had been accused of fabricating charges against some of the
country's underground leaders by prosecutors for Poland's state-run Institute of National Remembrance.

Wolinska had lived in England since 1972. She had called the request to extradite and arrest her "a political case" because of her Jewish heritage and said she feared she would be unable to get a fair trial in Poland.

The prosecutors alleged that Wolinska had masterminded the wrongful arrest and execution in the 1950s of Gen. Emil Fieldorf, deputy head of the wartime resistance Home Army, and of Col. Bernard Adamecki, the Home Army's air force commander.

They also charged her with wrongful arrest of 14 others, who were
refusing to recognize the freshly imposed communist rule.

During World War II, Wolinska escaped from the Warsaw ghetto.

After the war she worked in the communist militia, the chief military
prosecutor's office and the communist party Social Sciences Institute.

She left Poland after the 1968 anti-Semitic campaign organized by
communists to silence social unrest and quell an internal power
struggle.

She was married to Wlodzimierz Brus, professor emeritus of modern
Russian and East European studies at Oxford University, who died in 2007. She is survived by her son and a grandson.





General Nil

[Bonobo]

Dec 12, 2008 10:02:50 GMT 1 tufta said:

On December 6th , 1942 in the village of Stary Ciepielów in the South-Eastern part of Mazovia, a family of seven has been burned alive in their wooden house. Their name was Kowalski - father, mother and five children. One of the daughters managed to get out to the yard. She was shot and her corpse was pulled by the plaits back into the burning building.
The fate of Kowalski family was as typical for Poles caught helping the Jews in Poland under German occupation 1939-1945, as their name is.
In the neighbouring village of Rekówka 6-person family of Obuchowicz, 14 persons of family Kosior, married couple Skoczylas were killed on this day for same reason – helping their Jewish compatriots.
In all occupied Poland there are over 1000 well documented murders, actual deaths number much higher.

On the 66th anniversary of this tragic events Institute of National Memory introduces an educational project for teachers of all schools in Poland. The project is entitled

'Poles saving Jews during World War II'

The project includes edition of a folder package for familiarization of the pupils, including means enabling fact-finding, innovatory lesson scenarios, old photos, realtions of the witness and other source materials.
The pupils will learn about the best known histories of Irena Sendler or Henryk Sławik as well as about other Poles involved in an honoured for helping the compatriots of Jewish faith. They will study the motives and ways of operation in the situation when Germans introduced the punishment of death for helping the Jews. It is estimated that over 1 million of Poles were directly involved in the system of assistance.

Internet portal www.zyciezazycie.pl. is an element of the project, which also includes billboards, posters, documentary films and TV spots.

Thank you for this opinion. I hope you won`t mind that I want to develop this discussion here. Saving Jews by Poles was a good thing but it happened in troubled times, that is why I suppose it suits this thread too.

Now, my comments.


There were many cases of Poles who saved Jews. But they are counterbalanced by cases of Poles who murdered Jews during or after the war. So, here, we have a draw.

And in the background there is a mass of millions of Poles who remained indifferent to Jewish tragedy. Yes, helping Jews was punished by Nazi with death in only one country- Poland. But it didn`t excuse Poles who preferred to stay aside. If there were millions of helpers, the Nazi wouldn`t be able to kill all.

The Israel Yad Vashem doesn`t mean much - it is natural that most trees were planted by Poles or in their honour. The Jewish population in Poland was the biggest in Europe and pure statistics requires that such population generates the highest number of survivors. So, here, I tend to disregard the number of Polish trees.

What do you think? Is calling somebody a Jew in today`s Poland a praise or abuse? Why do Poles see Jews everywhere?


Unfortunately, it is an abuse. If maniacs want to humiliate a rival politician, businessman, any person of popularity and influence, they call him/her a Jew. For some maniacs even the Polish Pope was a Jew. They labelled him so when they didn`t agree with some of his teachings. Also all major Polish politicians have been accused of being Jews.


How many Jews were saved by Poles?

Statistics say that from 600 to 3000 Jews were killed by Poles in after-war Poland.

To make it short - Poland wasn`t a loving mother to Jewish people. It was a stepmother. Do you usually love your stepmother?

[Bonobo]

A righteous gentile who was betrayed by his brother
Dec. 23, 2008
Etgar Lefkovits
THE JERUSALEM POST

Genowefa (Genia) Ben-Ezra ...
Genowefa (Genia) Ben-Ezra (second from left), a Jewish child survivor taken in by a Polish couple during World War II, stands with her family in Yad Vashem's Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations yesterday.
One brother was an angel of life. The other was an emissary of death.

The two opposing faces of Poland during the Holocaust were on stark display Tuesday at a Yad Vashem ceremony in Jerusalem posthumously honoring a Polish couple for saving a young Jewish girl during World War II.

The dramatic story of two siblings whose value systems were worlds apart began in 1942, in a forced labor camp northeast of Nazi-occupied Warsaw.

Aided by a local priest, a Jewish couple, Rachel and Moshe Tyrangiel, smuggled their two young daughters - two-year-old Guta and one-year-old Esther - out of the Kopernikus camp and entrusted them to different Polish families.

The two sisters were among a group of 10 Jewish children smuggled out of the camp with the help of Polish resistance fighters and put under the care of Christian families.

Guta was taken in by Jozef and Bronislawa Jaszczuk, a couple with no children of their own, from the village of Minsk-Mazowiecki, some 30 km. northeast of Warsaw. They gave the Jewish child a new name, Genowefa, to hide her true identity, and presented her as their niece.

Soon after the couple had taken the girl in, however, Jozef Jaszczuk's older brother, who lived in the same house, informed the Gestapo that his brother and sister-in-law were concealing a Jewish child.

Just before the Germans raided the house following the tip-off, Bronislawa Jaszczuk hid the girl, and was then arrested.

Her husband, who was at work at the time, managed to collect money from the resistance and bribed the police chief to secure his wife's release three weeks later.

The couple subsequently gathered their belongings and the girl and went to live in a rural area out of sight until the end of the war.

After the war was over, the20couple adopted the Jewish girl, who was by then six years old.
"My adoptive father never forgave his brother for what he did," recounted Genowefa (Genia) Ben-Ezra, 68, at the ceremony honoring her adoptive parents. "We could have all been killed because of him."

However, the saga of the hidden Jewish child did not end there.

"Mine is a complicated story, not an easy one," she said.

Like many other child survivors, her own parents perished in the Holocaust, while the fate of her sister remains unknown to this day.

After the war, Ben-Ezra's blood uncle located her and wanted to take her with him to Palestine. Her adoptive parents refused, and a custody case ensued.

"They wanted me to be with them," she related. "Like other Polish Christians, they wanted the kids to become Christians and not go back to their Jewish roots."

She described her adoptive parents as "normal people - simple people - who [during the war] did not want to give the Germans a little girl."

The traumatized six-year-old told the court that she was happy with her adoptive parents and wanted to stay with them.

"I said that I didn't want to move, I didn't want to be Jewish," she recalled six decades later.
Ben-Ezra would remain in Poland with the couple who adopted her until 1961 when, at age 20, she moved to France.

Despite being raised a Christian from the age of two, Ben-Ezra never forgot her roots ("I knew all the time I was Jewish") and was reconnected to Judaism with the help of the Jewish community in Strasbourg.

Over the years, her uncle remained in contact from Israel, sending trademark Jaffa oranges in the mail, she said.

While in France, the recurring recollection of her biological parents from her earliest years posed "the greatest crisis" for her as she began a new life.

In the meantime, her Polish mother died in 1957, and her adoptive father joined her in France, where he was assisted by the Jewish community until his death in 1971.

She later moved on to Canada, and in 2000, she immigrated to Israel with her two daughters.
The grandmother of five is the only one of the 10 children smuggled out of the camp who is known to have survived the war. Some of the children were handed over to the Germans, while others were possibly never told of their Jewish roots.

Ben-Ezra said she did not want the children of her adoptive father's brother - two of whom are alive - to be at the Jerusalem ceremony.

"My [adoptive] father, until his death, was so hurt by what his brother did, I couldn't give them this medal, even though they were the children," she said. "It was against his wishes."
In all, more than 22,000 non-Jews have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

Speaking of one of her young grandchildren at the ceremony, she said, "He does not know just how much of a miracle it is that he is here."

[Bonobo]

Habima treads on Israeli and Polish truths
By Michael Handelzalts
Ha'aretz
12/23/08

The Habima Theater and the Contemporary Theater of Wroclaw are
putting on "Bat Yam-Tykocin, " two plays about the attitude of Poles
and Israelis regarding the extermination of the overwhelming majority of Polish Jewry, primarily by the Nazis on Polish soil during World War II, and before and after, and the rescue of some by Poles, as well as other things that quite a few Poles did to many Jews, before, during and after the war.

It seems to me that in this convoluted sentence I have managed to
encapsulate most of the topics these two plays loaded on their
shoulders.

The first part describes the trip of an Israeli family from Bat Yam
to Poland. The grandfather is, according to his testimony, the sole
survivor of the massacre of the Jews of Tykocin, now a resort town
with a rich Polish history, which until the war had a community of
some 2,500 Jews. The Poles carried out pogroms against the town's
Jews after the Nazis conquered it from the Russians in 1941 (the
Russians conquered it from Poland in 1939) and afterward the Nazis'
firing squads executed all of the town's Jews. Fourteen of them were hidden by four Poles in cages in the small zoo, but were caught and executed along with their Polish protectors.

The grandfather, who says he does not remember much, comes to Tykocin
with his son, David, and his daughter Nili. The two are second-
generation Holocaust survivors. Nili has felt rejected since she was
a child and is now an extroverted psychologist, not too aware of
herself yet trying to air out her complexes. David built a routine
life, but when his kids got older, he divorced, in order to finally
live for himself. His children are Naama, a young woman searching for
herself who wants to make a film about the family trip while
constantly recalling the Palestinian suffering and the Israelis' use
of the Holocaust as a political tool, and his son, Itamar, a young
Israeli whose father did not let him go on the March of the Living.
Now the father brings the family to Poland in order to reclaim the
family's property in Tykocin, with the help of a local lawyer.

The play was written by Amit Epstein (who was the dramaturge) and
Yael Ronen (who directed) and is performed in Polish by actors from
the Wroclaw Theater. The convention is that when they speak Hebrew
onstage (and their pronunciation is excellent), it is as if they are
speaking Polish. The play airs out all the Jewish-Israeli- Polish
complexes, all of the mutual preconceived notions and reaches its
climax at the end (after two hours without an intermission) , when it
turns out that the grandfather was not only a survivor, but had to
make some terrible choices in order to survive, whereas the woman who
rescued him and now holds his property, who is supposed to be
recognized as a righteous gentile, did save young Jewish girls for a
long time, but she also had to make a terrible choice that casts an
ugly light on her rescue act.

This play reveals Israeli theater, and in a certain respect, Ronen's
work, in all its positive and negative light. She knows how to convey
an effective story, get at all the bitter and ironic aspects of the
painful topic, not be afraid of the emotions and also does not
hesitate to touch on painful subjects. For example, one of the themes
touched on is the use of the "rhetorics of the Holocaust" (I write
this in quotation marks intentionally) for both political purposes
and familial-personal- emotional purposes: We all know it happens and
sometimes we are afraid to say so out loud. Ronen uses the fact that
the daughter is making a film as a means of alienation (a little like
Yehoshua Sobol did in "The Palestinian Woman") and presents a loaded
story, perhaps a little superficial, but it will certainly appeal to
a broad Israeli audience (not necessarily fans of "original" plays
and all that is entailed in the pretentious word "original") who will
be moved and also stimulated. The fact that the play is performed in
Polish and was written and acted in part by Polish actors (notable
among them in my opinion were Katarzyna Bednarz, Naama; Ryszard Ronczewski, the grandfather; and Maciej Tomaszewski, the father; but perhaps I am not one to assess their performance; this was the first time I saw them onstage and so they seemed natural to me) is significant in and of itself.

The second play, which lasted an hour and a half, is the Polish
contribution to the effort. It was written by Pawel Demirsky and
directed by Michal Zadara, who is considered one of the most talented
Polish directors (to a certain extent, much the way Ronen is
considered an Israeli superstar). He also wrote an important essay
published in the program, in which he expounds on the tremendous
difference between Jews and Poles when it comes to do with anything
related to the shared perception of the history of Jews-Israelis-
Poles and about the reciprocity in their perception. He acknowledges
that Poles do not really understand the Jews' trauma after the
Holocaust and that the Israelis could not even imagine that there
even was any kind of Polish trauma during World War II. A truer
sentence on this subject has not been stated for a long time.

Zadara's path in theater dramatically differs from Ronen's: Unlike
Ronen, who is organized and to the point, he is
intentionally "theatrical, " untidy (the untidiness is carefully
staged), as if he is unclear. His story parallels that of Ronen to a
certain extent: It is a story about a group of Israeli actors who
play in Hebrew the roles of Polish journalists who are going to
Tykocin to prevent the awarding of the righteous gentile citation to
a local woman because, according to them, during the time she claims to have saved Jews there were no longer any Jews left in Tykocin to save.

If the first part of the play (the Israeli one, performed in Polish)
is an Israeli-Jewish- Polish soul-searching, the second part is soul-
searching for the Polish. And by the nature of things, perhaps it is
much less unequivocal and blunt. The actors argue among themselves about the play, the characters argue among themselves over the story, everyone argues about the facts and the interests as history and the play roams between extreme caricature-like scenes and moments of theater that reveals its methods (conflicting directions to the electrician and the spotlight operator).

The result is mixed: on the one hand, the difference in theatrical
language stands out, and here it is also a matter of taste and
assessment of effectiveness. I think that for a "common" audience in
Israel or Poland, Ronen's work is more accessible and effective. I
assume that for people looking for a different and non-realistic kind
of theater, Zadara's work is more interesting. Polish theater people
I spoke with felt that the Polish actors were overacting; to me it
seemed like some of the Israeli actors were either exaggerating
(Yigal Sadeh, an actor who I esteem and also like) or playing "too
low key" (Hila Vidor). Dov Reiser managed to maneuver more
successfully in the acting scenario Zadara presented him with,
perhaps because he was also given a text that anchors him back in the Israeli experience.

It is easy to look at Zadara's play and say that basically he is
making an "easy job" of it for himself: the conclusion that arises
ostensibly from his play is that it is impossible to know what
the "truth" is about what happened between some Jews and some Poles
in Poland during World War II. On the other hand, specifically in the
Polish, Zadara's play (with Israeli actors acting in Hebrew) there is
mention of the fact that in Israel trees are planted in honor of
righteous gentiles, and in no place in the world are trees which will
not let anyone forget the Poles who massacred Jews themselves,
betrayed them to the Nazis or ignored their fate.

It is impossible to measure or compare suffering or soul searching.
The only thing that can be done is write plays about it and share the pain.

[Bonobo]

The online publication of a great book: Polish Jewish relations during WW2, written by a Polish Jew, Emmanuel Ringelblum, who lived in occupied Warsaw until discovered by Nazis in 1944 and executed with the whole family.

books.google.com/books?id=42sz6MifjMEC&dq=Polish-Jewish+Relations+During+the+Second+World+War&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA126,M1

Short review: Most Poles were indifferent to the plight of Jews in occupied Poland. Small percentage collaborate with Germans and give away Jews, another small percentage hides Jews from Germans.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Ringelblum



Emanuel Ringelblum (November 21, 1900 – March 7, 1944) was a Polish-Jewish historian, politician and social worker, known for his Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, Notes on the Refugees in Zbąszyn chronicling the deportation of Jews from the town of Zbąszyń, and the so-called Ringelblum's Archives of the Warsaw Ghetto.

During the war Ringelblum and his family were resettled to the Warsaw Ghetto. There he led a secret operation code-named Oyneg Shabbos (Yiddish for "Sabbath delight"). Together with numerous other Jewish writers, scientists and ordinary people, Ringelblum collected diaries, documents, commissioned papers, and preserved the posters and decrees that comprised the memory of the doomed community. Among approximately 25,000 sheets preserved there are also detailed descriptions of destruction of Ghettos in other parts of occupied Poland, Treblinka extermination camp, Chełmno extermination camp and a number of reports made by scientists conducting research on the effects of famine in the ghettos.

He was also one of the most active members of Żydowska Samopomoc Społeczna (Polish for Jewish Social Aid), an organisation established to help the starving people of the Warsaw Ghetto. On the eve of the ghetto's destruction in the spring of 1943, when all seemed lost, the archive was placed in three milk cans and metal boxes. Parts were buried in the cellars of Warsaw buildings.

Shortly before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Ringelblum together with his family was smuggled out of the Ghetto and hidden on the "Aryan" side. However, on March 7, 1944 his refuge was discovered by the Germans; Ringelblum with his family were executed together with the family of Poles who hid them.

The fate of the Ringelblum's Archives is only partially known. In September 1946 ten metal boxes were found in the ruins of Warsaw. In December 1950 in a cellar of another ruined house at 68 Nowolipki Street two additional milk cans were found containing more documents. Among them were copies of several underground newspapers, a narrative of deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto, and public notices by the Judenrat (the council of Jewish leaders), but also documents of ordinary life, concert invitations, milk coupons, and chocolate papers.

Despite repeated searches, the rest of the archive, including the third milk can, was never found. It is rumoured to be located beneath what is now the Chinese Embassy in Warsaw.

[Bonobo]

Aug 24, 2008 23:16:46 GMT 1 Bonobo said:

Polish Investigators Tie Partisans to Massacre

By Marissa Brostoff
Forward, NY
Thu. Aug 07, 2008


HERO?: Daniel Craig stars in a forthcoming film about Polish partisan Tuvia Bielski.


INSIGHT: Coming to Theaters: The subject of a new movie, Tuvia Bielski, left, is pictured here before the war in Poland.

Country split over whether Daniel Craig is film hero or villain
Kamil Tchorek in Warsaw
Times Online, UK
12/31/08

Daniel Craig crouches with his back pressed hard against the white
trunk of a birch tree. Gripping an Erma MP40 submachine gun, he
glares over his shoulder at a target in the forest.

This is not a new James Bond film, but Craig playing the lead role as
Tuvia Bielski, a real life Jewish partisan commander who waged
guerrilla warfare against the Germans in Poland during the Second
World War.

Bielski's and his fighters saved more than 1,200 civilians, mainly
Jews, and their exploits are about to be celebrated in "Defiance", a
$50 million Hollywood film which premieres this week.

Bielski's extraordinary courage is meant to cast a new light on the
Holocaust. After the Nazis murdered Bielski's parents and his first
wife, that he and his brothers Zus, Asael and Aharon decided to fight back rather than accept their fate. The brothers transform fellow Jews from the terrorised, hopeless victims -- familiar in films such as Schinder's List and The Pianist -- into ruthless fighters capable of taking on and beating the Nazis.

But in Poland, the film has raised some uncomfortable questions about Bielski's behaviour in his area of operations around Nowogrodek between 1943 and 1945. Some Poles fear that in telling Bielski's story the Hollywood has airbrushed out some unpleasant episodes from the story.

Historians say Bielski was affiliated with Soviet partisans directed
by the feared NKVD, a forerunner of the KGB. He even named his
unit 'Kalinin', after Stalin's crony Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin.
Towards the end of the War, Soviet partisans terrorised ethnic Poles in Eastern Poland, including the region where Bielski's Kalinin unit operated. Some Poles suspect that Bielski's partisans were not only intent on driving the Germans out but opening the way for Poland to come under Soviet control.

The most serious allegations concerns the events of 8 May 1943 when some 128 unarmed Polish gentiles were slaughtered at Naliboki in the province Nowogrodek. Evidence suggests Soviet partisans were responsible, but there is confusion about specifically which unit undertook the killings - and Bielski's group has not been ruled out.

Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) is investigating the Naliboki case and the culpability of the Bielski partisans has been identified as one possibility. Though the IPN has drawn fire for
alleged bias, its investigation of the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom concluded that Poles rather than Germans were at fault, which led to an official apology from Poland in 2001.

The Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, edited by Adam Michnik, who describes himself as a Pole of Jewish descent, has led the Bielski debate. The daily has claimed the Bielskis tended not to engage in combat with Germans as depicted in the film, but rather spent its energy stealing civilian supplies in order survive.

Ed Zwick, the director of Defiance, has admitted his film, based on a
historical account by Nechama Tec, is not a simple fight between good and evil.

"The Bielskis weren't saints," Zwick said in a statement. "They were
flawed heroes, which is what makes them so real and so fascinating.
They faced any number of difficult moral dilemmas that the movie
seeks to dramatise: Does one have to become a monster to fight
monsters? Does one have to sacrifice his humanity to save humanity?"

But Poles are now taking these questions a step further: was Tuvia
Bielski and his Jewish partisans involved in the 128 deaths at
Naliboki? Was he a Polish Jewish hero or was he a Polish traitor
doing Stalin's dirty work? Or was he both? And is it anti-Semitic for
Poles to even ask these questions?

"I believe it's just a consistent Polish anti-Semitism and the Poles
are sloughing [palming] off their own crimes of being an enemy of the Jews during World War II," said Robert Bielski, Tuvia's son, in
Jewish newspaper The Forward. "The 128 people are in no way close to the millions of people that the Polish people herded towards the Germans so they could be extinguished. " He insisted that the Bielskis were not in Naliboki at the time of the massacre.

The subject of anti-Semitism is fraught with complexity in Poland.
Some commentators claim Polish gentiles were complicit in the
Holocaust. Around 37 Jews were killed by Polish gentiles in the 1946
Kielce pogrom, and over 20,000 Polish Jews were forced by the Soviet- backed regime to emigrate in 1968.

But many Poles argue they are not a generally anti-Semitic nation. No Polish organizations collaborated with the Nazis and more Poles are honoured at Israel's Yad Vashem than any other nation. The Polish Home Army, the largest resistance movement in Europe, saved thousands of Jews through organizations like Zegota, the 'Polish Council to Aid Jews'. Over 2.3 million Polish gentiles were killed by the Nazis, many as a penalty for saving Jewish people.

The last living Bielski brother, Aharon Bielski, who changed his name
to Aron Bell when he emigrated to the US in 1951, was arrested in
Florida last year on suspicion of swindling around $250,000 in life
savings from his Polish Catholic neighbour Janina Zaniewska, who
herself survived Nazi imprisonment during the war.

Several members of the Bielski family served in the Israeli armed
forces, including Zus Bielski's grandson Elan, who recently joined up
to the Israeli Defence Force.

[Bonobo]

Dec 6, 2008 22:58:06 GMT 1 Bonobo said:

Communist-era prosecutor Wolinska dies at 89
The Associated Press
Saturday, November 29, 2008

Helena Wolinska-Brus: 1919-2008
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Nick Hodge
The Krakow Post

For most of her Oxford neighbours, Helena Wolinska-Brus seemed a decidedly uncontroversial figure who was fond of patting children on the head and showering compliments on proud mothers. She had the added respectability of being the wife of an Oxford professor. But a small detail in the manner of her departure hinted that not all was right. When Mrs. Wolinska-Brus passed away last month - at the advanced age of 89 - her children accordingly announced a funeral date. The service was to have been on Friday, 5th December. However, two days beforehand, the widow was buried in a closed ceremony.

Unbeknownst to the local shopkeepers, this lively grandmother, who had lived in England since 1971, had been a notorious military prosecutor in communist Poland. She has been implicated in the arrests - and in some cases deaths - of key figures in Poland's anti-Nazi resistance. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the newly democratic Polish state twice petitioned Britain to deport Mrs. Wolinska-Brus for trial in Poland. Both attempts failed, although a third was pending.

"Anyone, who in the name of these ideologies maltreated people - both physically or spiritually - should be made to pay," said 86-year-old Polish statesman W?adys?aw Bartoszewski, in an interview with Rzeczpospolita newspaper.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Wolinska-Brus, who had herself survived the horrors of the Nazis' Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw, maintained that as a person of Jewish descent, "she would never return to the country of Auschwitz and Birkenau." She argued that she would not be granted a fair trial in Poland, owing to anti-semitism.

To complicate matters, Wolinska-Brus' s signature appears on indictments of figures who actually helped Jews during the war. Chief among these is the aforementioned Mr. Bartoszewski, a key member of the Polish Underground' s Council to Aid Jews (Zegota).

In his interview with Rzceczpospolita, Bartoszewski dismissed as "scandalous" Wolinska-Brus' s claims that she would have been a victim of "Polish anti-Semites: "

"It is I, and not she who has honorary citizenship of Israel. It is she who persecuted a co-founder of Zegota, the organisation that saved Jews during the Second World War."

Helena Wolinska-Brus was born Fajga Mindla Danielak in 1919 into a Jewish family. She came of age at a time when the status of Polish Jews - and indeed of Central European Jewry - was in crisis. Poland's broad-minded inter-war leader Marshal Pi?sudski had acted as a check against the far right. But when the Marshal died in 1935, extremists began to flex their muscles. Jews faced prejudicial treatment in the universities, and far right journalists condemned even assimilated Jewish figures. With few welcoming arms on the right, many of Wolinska-Brus' s background gravitated towards the left. She took an extreme line, joining the illegal Komunistyczny Zwiazek Mlodziezy Polskiej (The Communist Association of Polish Youth). Just before the war, she married Wlodzimerz Brus, a budding academic who shared her background, and who had been educated at the private Wolna Wszechnica Polska (The Free University).

Both Helena Wolinska-Brus and her husband lost virtually their entire families as a result of Hitler's occupation. She personally escaped from the Nazis' Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw. The experience of Hitler's rule hardened her political views, and when the Russian-backed communists took Poland after the war, she joined the militia. From 1949 she was involved in military prosecutions. Veterans of the Home Army - Poland's anti-Nazi resistance - were a major target. As it was, the Home Army had struggled against both Nazi and Communist rule.

Historians have accused Wolinska-Brus, who became a key prosecutor, of unlawfully arresting scores of figures. "What - do you think I sat there and drank coffee?" she told American historian Anne Applebaum in 1998; "We were very busy in those days." The most controversial allegation against her is that she organised the arrest and imprisonment of General "Nil" Fieldorf - a legendary leader of Poland's wartime resistance. He was hanged in 1953, and his family were never shown the body.

After the "Thaw" that followed Stalin's death, Wolinska-Brus was decommissioned from her job as prosecutor. Later, she and her husband were amongst thousands of Poles of Jewish background who were compelled to leave Poland, following a power struggle within the communist party in 1968. A controversial "anti-Zionist" campaign erupted, and Polish Jews - the vast majority of whom were utterly blameless citizens - were given one-way passports out of the country. W?odzimierz Brus, who had begun to move towards a democratic approach to socialism, was granted a professorship at Oxford.

It was not until the fall of the Iron Curtain that moves were made to extradite Mrs. Wolinska-Brus back to Poland. Although two attempts failed, Mr. Bartoszewski stressed that for him, justice did not mean that people "should be simply thrown into prison." Rather, he suggested that there should be "a symbolic compensation for the victims" and "a measure of justice against the perpetrators. "

With the passing of Helena Wolinska-Brus, one extradition process has ended. However, the case continues to spark debate. Film director Ryszard Bugajski, whose Przes?uchanie (Interrogation, 1982), was banned by the communists and later became a cause célèbre at Cannes, has returned to the camera to make Genera? Nil, a feature about the hanged war hero General Fieldorf. The film is due for release in the spring of 2009.

[Bonobo]

Reconciling Memory And Reality In Poland
The pages of

The pages of "The Pages in Between" trace Einhorn's encounters with contemporary Poland.

by Carolyn Slutsky
New York Jewish Week

11/26/08

In "The Pages In Between: A Holocaust Legacy of Two Families" (Touchstone, Simon and Schuster), journalist Erin Einhorn tells two stories: one about her search for the truth about her mother's childhood, the other about the complex nature of Polish-Jewish relations in historical and contemporary Poland.


Einhorn's mother, Irena, was hidden by a Polish family in her native city of Bedzin as a young girl during the Holocaust, and when she finally arrived in America, she never looked back. Her daughter Erin grew up knowing little of her mother's story, and in 2001 she went to Poland to "fact-check folklore," as she put it, to disentangle the truth about her mother from the myths handed down for generations. What she found in Poland comprises this

elegant, well-researched, moving memoir: a messy legal issue surrounding the ownership of the family home left to the Poles who saved Irena, a confrontation with the haunting bond between Poles and Jews and the attempt to reconcile memory and reality. Tragically, Irena died just as her daughter met the family who saved her, and so never had the chance to revisit the home and the truth of her earliest years. Einhorn, a reporter for the New York Daily News, spoke to The Jewish Week from Los Angeles, where she was on one leg of a national book tour, about history, memory and storytelling.

Why did you feel compelled to take this journey, and not your mother, or your brother? Are you the family storyteller?


I had an interest in it from an early age. In writing about it for my high school newspaper I sort of cast myself as the storyteller. My mother never wanted to be the storyteller because she hated the story and spent the bulk of her life trying to escape the story. I sometimes think about what my mother's or grandfather' s memoir would look like. Survivor memoirs are really powerful and really painful — searing accounts of brutality, cruelty and betrayal, and extraordinary tales of survival — but focused on the past. My mother's memoir would have been intensely focused on the future because she didn't want any part of her past; she thought, `Why dwell on the past? What happened before doesn't matter as long as we're focused on the future.' My memoir, in the third generation, is able to reside in the present; it's an exploration of the past with an eye toward the future, learning from the past in order to move into the future to reach reconciliation.

What were you hoping to find in Poland?


I had gone there looking for the past, gone there looking for old stories and a better understanding of my mother. I wanted to know what happened to her and what happened to my family. I went looking for World War II and it never occurred to me that the past would still be there, still demanding things. Not just the legal aspect, but all of the emotional issues that had gone on, for people like my mother and my grandparents, and even people my age, born decades after the war and still coping with what that means — inheriting that legacy at this point in history. Is there enough we can do to remember, to prevent it from happening again, to Jews and other cultures and countries? All these different things are still affecting people, guiding people, intervening in every conversation on so many different levels.

What was most surprising about what you found in Poland, on a Jewish level and in general?
I didn't expect to find anything Jewish there, and in fact I found Jewishness everywhere. [There are small towns] where there's not any kind of [philo-Semitism] but you walk down the street and see Hebrew letters etched into stone and places where mezuzahs used to be; you can always find where the synagogue used to be and find the cemetery, either in good condition or in ruins. Then you have Krakow, this unexpected celebration of Jewishness and Jewish culture, which I wasn't expecting. The country is at once coursing with Jewish life and devoid of it.

How have readers responded to the book?


You're given a certain idea about Poland when you're Jewish in this country. I've been giving speeches, I'm showing them photos of the [Krakow Jewish Culture] Festival with 10,000 people dancing in the street and the Jews in the audience shake their heads and say it isn't true. During the Q&A they'll stand up and say, "You're wrong, anti-Semitism is in their mother's milk." That's hard to answer; you're not likely to have anti-Semitism if you don't have Jews; it's hard to hate somebody you've never seen. If they actually had to interact with Jews it might be a different story, but maybe not. Maybe the next 60 years would have been banner years in Polish-Jewish relations. It's one of those things we'll never know the answer to.

How do you feel about Polish-Jewish relations today?


I never reached a conclusion about it. My Polish friends will often say, "Is it true that the Jews think the Poles are anti-Semitic? " They'll say, "Go tell them that's not true. But I don't think I can say that; I'm not sure it's not true. They cite the fact that Poland was the only country with a death penalty for sheltering Jews, they talk about Righteous Gentiles honored by Yad Vashem. They have this perspective that Poles have wrongly been painted as anti-Semitic. On the other side I have people in my family who say [Poles have] always been, always will be anti-Semitic. I think they're both wrong. It's a lot more nuanced and a lot more subtle than that. It's like making a statement that white people are racist: it's both not true and not untrue. Race in America is a difficult question. My family had nothing to do with it, we weren't even here — but as a white person I have to confront racism just as Poland has to confront anti-Semitism. But I think it's a fascinating landscape and I'm trying to share that with people and broaden that perspective a little bit.

What did you learn about memory in writing this (auto)biography?


One of the more fascinating aspects of the research I did was how much memory didn't align with truth. My mother's only memory of her childhood in Poland turned out to be probably false. The way my grandfather always said my grandmother died may not have been accurate. There are all these places where memory fades, memory fails. People have reasons for not telling the whole truth and that changes everything.


As we talk about not just the Holocaust but other periods of history we're trying to bring to life, it's an important reminder that memory is not the same as truth. The fascinating thing about history and memory and narrative, even, is that it's all kind of subjective. The balance to that is I was astounded by how much I was able to find: I found my mother's child welfare file, dental records. My mother never knew what her mother looked like; she had a void in her life and I was able to change that for her.


That's the most important thing people have to realize, especially as we lose the last of the survivors, as we lose direct memory, there's this extraordinary trove of documents ready to step up and fill that space. Memory is increasingly becoming less available, but at the same time resources and documents are becoming more and more available.

What do you think your mother's reaction would be to the book and the story it tells?


It's impossible to know and I think that's the greatest grief about losing my mother at the time that I did. I came so close to understanding her and getting to know who she was as this more complex and interesting person beyond the authority figure she'd been to me as a child. Just as I was on the verge of cracking the code of my mother, I lost her. On one level she'd just be proud of the book, but she was so private, she might feel violated. She might object and say, "That's not how it happened." It would have been a different book — I'd have struggled to write candidly about my mother if she were still alive. There's a part that thinks she was secretly proud that I was doing this. I think in a lot of ways she had cast me as the storyteller. When I asked her what she thought of my going on this journey, she said, "Well, you're a writer, I can see why you think it's interesting. "

[Bonobo]

German, Polish ambassadors blast comparisons of Gaza campaign to Holocaust
Etgar Lefkovits
THE JERUSALEM POST
Jan. 19, 2009

The ambassadors of Germany and Poland on Monday blasted the recent comparisons to the Holocaust being made at rallies worldwide against the IDF's three-week anti-Hamas operation in Gaza.

"We have to reject such absolutely inappropriate remarks firmly and
strongly," German Ambassador to Israel Dr. Harald Kindermann told The Jerusalem Post during a a cornerstone- laying ceremony at Yad Vashem for a new wing of the Holocaust Memorial's International School for Holocaust Studies.

"It cannot be that in Europe we have such ideas and thoughts, since they pose a threat to us, not only to the Jewish people," he said.

The ambassador said that while one could oppose Israel's attack on
Gaza and feel for the victims and the difficult humanitarian
situation, such comparisons were egregiously false.

"There is always the risk that anti-Israel and anti-Semitic
movements' ideas and behavior are mixed in [with the opposition], " he said.

Separately, Polish Ambassador Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska said that any comparisons between Israel's operation in Gaza and Nazi Germany's extermination of one-third of the Jewish people were "pure anti- Semitism."

"Any comparison to what has happened to the Jewish people in the
Shoah is pure anti-Semitism which cannot be justified, even if we
don't like everything that happens in Gaza," Magdziak-Miszewska said.

She noted that the Jewish state's right to self-defense was paramount to any future peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.

The diplomats' condemnations come not only amid continuing
comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany at anti-Israel rallies
worldwide, but amid a spike in anti-Semitic attacks in Europe,
including synagogue firebombings and vandalism.

"Unfortunately we see a new wave of anti-Semitism brewing in western Europe, which, in contrast to classic anti-Semitism, is being carried out with elements of the European Left, which has a lot of power in the media," Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said. "We are talking about systematic anti-Semitic incitement under the guise of political criticism," he said.

Demonstrations equating Israel to Nazi Germany and the destruction in Gaza to that of the Warsaw Ghetto have become commonplace in anti- Israel protests both in Europe and the United States.

Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies, established in 1993, hosts hundreds of educators from around the world every year for dozens of seminars on Holocaust education, which German ambassador Kindermann called a "firewall against new anti-Semitic ideas."

The school's multi-million dollar wing, which is expected to be ready
in two years, is being built with the support of a Polish-born
Canadian Jewish philanthropist, Joseph Gottdenker, who survived the Holocaust as a child. "Holocaust education is a firewall against new anti-Semitic ideas," Kindermann concluded.

[tomek]

Jeiwish soldiers make Gaza into a ghetto. And then Palestines make a rising and Jeiwish army supress it. It is known for many films about ghetto in Warszaw. Many civils and normal people killed in war, in suppressing.
Isreal makes Holocaust in Palestine. Not so big how Hitler but it happening.

[Bonobo]

3 skinheads who sprayed Nazi grafitti on walls and demolished Jewish cemeteries in the city of Białystok were sentenced from 1 to 1.8 years in prison.
The judge said: the accused, claiming they are patriots, in fact offend all true patriots. They are a disgrace to the city and country.

www.tvn24.pl/-1,1584015,0,1,do-wiezienia-za-swastyki-i-co-z-tego,wiadomosc.html

[Bonobo]

Poles think Jews have too much power, claims survey
Created: 12.02.2009 15:53

Fifty five percent of Poles think that Jews have too much power in international financial markets, according to a new survey by the Anti Defamation League.

The annual survey (pdf) looked at attitudes towards Jewish people in seven countries - Austria, France, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. Sixty three percent of those surveyed in Poland responded that “Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country,” a rise of four percent from a similar report taken in 2007. Fifty five percent think that "Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust," a fall of three percent 12 months ago.

Overall, the findings across Europe were similar to those in 2007, with many Europeans continuing to believe in some of the “most pernicious anti-Semitic stereotypes,” says ADL.

"This poll confirms that anti-Semitism remains alive and well in the minds of many Europeans," claims Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.
The poll was taken from a sample of 3,500, with just 500 from each country.



Survey: European anti-Semitism strong

By PAUL HAVEN – 6 days ago

MADRID (AP) — The Anti-Defamation League said Tuesday that a survey it commissioned found nearly a third of Europeans polled blame Jews for the global economic meltdown and that a greater number think Jews have too much power in the business world.

The organization, which says its aim is "to stop the defamation of Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment to all," says the seven-nation survey confirms that anti-Semitism remains strong.

The poll included interviews with 3,500 people — 500 each in Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain.

It says that in Spain, 74 percent of those asked say they feel it is "probably true" that Jews hold too much sway over the global financial markets. That is the highest percentage in the survey.

Nearly two-thirds of Spanish respondents said Jews were more loyal to Israel than they were to their home countries.

"This poll confirms that anti-Semitism remains alive and well in the minds of many Europeans," said Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL's national director in America. "Clearly, age old anti-Semitic stereotypes die hard."

Foxman said the study's findings were "particularly worrisome" in light of the anger spawned by the global economic meltdown, and following a number of violent acts against Jews or Jewish property after Israel's military action in the Gaza Strip.

Around Europe, several attacks have been reported against Jews and synagogues in France, Sweden and Britain since the Israeli offensive began in late December. Some Gaza protests in Europe have included the use of Nazi imagery, including signs and slogans comparing Israeli soldiers to German troops, the Gaza Strip to the Auschwitz death camp and the Jewish Star of David to the Nazi swastika.

Britain consistently registered the lowest levels of anti-Jewish sentiment, and numbers there have fallen from a similar survey conducted in 2007. Austria also registered a slight drop in the level of anti-Semitism, while in other countries anti-Semitic sentiment either remained the same or deepened, the survey indicated.

Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, who saw the survey before it was published, said he has not seen any rise in anti-Semitism in Poland since the global financial crisis has unfolded. He said an unacceptable level of anti-Jewish sentiment still exists in Poland, but that it is no worse than in other European countries.

The survey showed Polish responses registered a slight rise in all but one area. On the question whether it was "probably true" Jews have too much power in international financial markets, the level was unchanged from 2007.

The survey, conducted by First International Resources Dec. 1, 2008 through Jan. 13, 2009, included interviews with 3,500 people — 500 each in Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain. The margin of error for each country was plus or minus 4 percent.

In total, about 40 percent of those questioned said Jews have too much power in the business world, including more than half of Hungarian, Spanish and Polish respondents. And 44 percent said they believe it is "probably true" that Jews still talk too much about the Holocaust.

[tufta]

Bo, nothing against the material you choose to post here, it's almost all (almost - remember the kitchen stuff?) great, informative and interesting and you will soon make a very well informed young (you listen to me, Mike? young) man out of me.
But Anti Defamation League is not an organization without a programme. They are not an objective polling institution. It is worth to remember that while reading their material. Which is not to say that this specific poll was done unobjectively etc etc etc.

[Bonobo]

Feb 18, 2009 13:26:33 GMT 1 tufta said:

Bo, nothing against the material you choose to post here, it's almost all (almost - remember the kitchen stuff?) great, informative and interesting and you will soon make a very well informed young (you listen to me, Mike? young) man out of me.
But Anti Defamation League is not an organization without a programme. They are not an objective polling institution. It is worth to remember that while reading their material. Which is not to say that this specific poll was done unobjectively etc etc etc.

If I thought it was too distorted or partial, I wouldn`t post it.


Nazi officer who saved Jews honored
The Associated Press
Monday, February 16, 2009

JERUSALEM: The Nazi officer made famous in Roman Polanski's
movie "The Pianist" has been posthumously honored by Israel's
Holocaust memorial.

Yad Vashem spokeswoman Estee Yaari says the museum awarded the honor of "righteous among the nations" to Capt. Wilm Hosenfeld based on testimonies of Holocaust survivors. She says he rescued at least two Jews in Poland from the Nazi genocide.

Hosenfeld joined the Nazi party before World War II, but later wrote
about his "disgust and horror" at the systematic murder of European Jews. After the war, Hosenfeld was arrested and jailed by the Soviets. He died in a Soviet prison in 1952.

The museum says it will award a medal and certificate to Hosenfeld's descendants on his behalf. No date has been set for the ceremony.

[Bonobo]

ejpress.org/article/news/34799



Warsaw ghetto uprising leader looks at love amid terror
WARSAW (AFP)---The last leader of the 1943 Warsaw Jewish ghetto uprising against the Nazis, Marek Edelman, has turned his attention from detailing the fighting to spotlight a little-known side of life in the zone of terror: love.
"No one has ever talked about love in the ghetto," Edelman told AFP after the launch of his new book "I byla milosc w getcie" (And There Was Love in the Ghetto).
"People told me it was too difficult a subject. But it was love, precisely, which enabled people to survive in that hell," he said.
Over some 150 pages, Edelman recounts ghetto memories which differ from the better-known narrative of mass deportations, killings, arrests, starvation, disease and doomed revolt.
Edelman writes of youthful romances but also of love between children and parents, including the sacrifice of a mother who resolved not to abandon her daughter who was being sent to the Treblinka death camp.
"Everything I've written here, I'm telling as an observer," Edelman said.
On the eve of World War II, Poland was Europe's Jewish heartland, home to 3.5 million Jews who made up around a tenth of the country's total population.

After invading in 1939, the Nazis set up ghettos across Poland to isolate and later wipe out the Jews. Half of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust were Polish.

At its height, around 450,000 people were crammed behind the walls of the 307-hectare (758-acre) ghetto centred on Warsaw's traditional Jewish quarter.

About 100,000 died inside and more than 300,000 were sent by train to Treblinka, 100 kilometres (60 miles) to the northeast, mostly in mass deportations in 1942.
In April 1943, the Nazis moved to wipe out the remaining tens of thousands.

That sparked an uprising by hundreds of poorly-armed young Jews who decided to
fight rather than face near-certain death in the "Final Solution".
Among the leaders was Edelman -- whose official age is 89, although he is unsure because he was an orphan and his birth certificate was lost.
Around 7,000 Jews died in the three-week revolt, most of them burned alive, and more than 50,000 were deported to the death camps.
Edelman, who escaped through the sewers with 40 comrades, continued the battle in 1944 during an unsuccessful two-month uprising launched by the wider Polish resistance in Warsaw.
After the war, Edelman became a renowned cardiologist and from the 1970s was an active opponent of Poland's communist regime, helping negotiate its peaceful end in 1989.
He has published several books about the 1943 uprising, stretching back to the 1946 "Getto walczy" (The Ghetto Fights).

[Bonobo]

There were many cases of Poles who saved Jews during WW2. But they are counterbalanced by cases of Poles who murdered Jews during or after the war.
And in the background there is a mass of millions of Poles who remained indifferent to Jewish tragedy. Yes, helping Jews was punished by Nazi with death in only one country- Poland. But it didn`t excuse Poles who preferred to stay aside. If there were millions of helpers, the Nazi wouldn`t be able to kill all.

The Israel Yad Vashem doesn`t mean much - it is natural that most trees were planted for Polihs citizens. The Jewish population in Poland was the biggest in Europe and pure statistics requires that such population generates the highest number of survivors. So, here, I tend to disregard the number of Polish trees.

What do you think? Is calling somebody a Jew in today`s Poland a praise or abuse?

Why do Poles see Jews everywhere?


Unfortunately, it is an abuse. If they want to humiliate a rival politician, businessman, any person of popularity and influence, they call him/her a Jew.

Victims of the most infamous pogrom in Kielce in 1946 when 42 Jews were stoned or clubbed to death by blood thirsty Polish mob.


The Jewish survivors.
They were either Jews who had fought in Polish partisan units during WW2 or Jews from the Polish People`s Army created in the Soviet Union. There were also former prisoners of concentration camps as well as some relatively rich Soviet Jews on their way to Palestine.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom

The Kielce pogrom refers to the events that occurred on July 4, 1946, in the Polish town of Kielce. The outbreak of anti-Jewish violence, sparked by allegations of blood libel, resulted in 37 Polish Jews being murdered out of about 200 Holocaust survivors who had returned home after World War II. Two more Jews in trains passing through Kielce also lost their lives. Two or three Gentile Poles were killed by the Jews defending themselves, while nine were later sentenced to death.

While far from the deadliest pogrom against the Jews, the incident was especially significant in post-war Jewish history, as the attack took place more than a year after the end of World War II in Europe, shocking both the Jews in Poland and the international community.

Killings

By 10:00 a.m., the first shot was fired; it is unclear by whom: a policeman, a soldier, or one of the Jews. Violence broke out and the security forces began killing Jews; Dr. Kahane was among the first to be killed (survivors testified that he was shot in the back of the head by an officer of the Army's Main Directorate of Information while he was trying to call the authorities for help). At least two and possibly three Poles, including a police officer, were killed as the Jews tried to defend themselves (according to the official version at the time, the policeman was killed while trying to defend the Jews). After the attack inside the building, more Jews were then forced outside by the troops and attacked by civilians on the street. Some of the victims were thrown out of windows, including one reportedly thrown onto the bayonets raised by the soldiers.

By noon, the arrival of an estimated 600 to 1,000 workers from the nearby Ludwików steel mill, led by members of the ORMO[clarification needed] reserve police and activists of the Polish Workers' Party's (PPR, Poland's ruling communist party) militia, marked the beginning of the next phase of the pogrom, during which about 20 Jews were killed, mostly with steelworks tools. Neither the military and secret police commanders, nor the local political leaders from the PPR did anything to stop the workers from attacking the Jews, while a unit of police cadets joined in the looting and murdering of the Jews, which continued inside and outside the building.

The killing of the Jews at Planty Street was stopped with the arrival of a new unit of security forces from a nearby Public Security academy sent by Colonel Stanisław Kupsza and additional troops from Warsaw at approximately 6:00 p.m. After firing a few warning shots in the air on the order of Major Kazimierz Konieczny, the new troops quickly restored order, posted guards, and removed all the Jewish survivors from the building.

The violence in Kielce, however, did not stop immediately. Wounded Jews, while being transported to the hospital, were beaten and robbed by soldiers.[3] Trains passing through Kielce's main railway station were searched for Jews by civilians and railway guards, resulting in two passengers being thrown out of the trains and killed. Later, a civilian crowd approached the hospital and demanded that the wounded Jews be handed over to them. The civil disorder ended some nine hours after it started.[4]

To make it short - Poland wasn`t a loving mother to Jewish people. It was a stepmother.


The pogrom would never have happened if not for the climate of anti-Semitism in Poland at the time, where Jews were dehumanised, seen as having been 'punished' in the war, and the myth of the communist Jew, who brought the hated communists to power, was freely spread," said historian Andrzej Paczkowski.


The plaque reads: In memory of the 42 Jews murdered on July 4th in 1946 during anti-semitic riots. One of the founders was Lech Walesa.


Unique photos, not published before















old.echodnia.eu/swietokrzyskie/?cat=44&id=238
old.echodnia.eu/swietokrzyskie/?cat=44&id=238&l=1#galeria

An interview with Gross who wrote a book about the pogrom.
www.znak.org.pl/print.php?t=pktw&id=165&l=en




My attempt to set the background of Polish antisemitism:



In the past it was the same as in the West - religious differences. In the Middle Ages Jews fled to Poland to avoid Western persecution and for 200 or 300 years they were allowed to prosper. Jews lived in their ghettos and were protected by the kings. There happened anti-Jewish tumults but they were isolated cases. After the Reformation, protestants, Catholics and Jews lived in relative harmony. Poland was a country of unheard-of tolerance then.

After the Swedish invasion, Catholicism grew stronger than before, protestantism started to be repressed, Jews were perceived as villains too. Pogroms became more frequent.

Moreover, for centuries Jews were hired by Polish landlords to run economic affairs in the coutryside. The landlords` policy turned peasants into half-slaves and Jews were used in this process. Whenever there were peasant revolts in Poland or in the neighbourhood, the enraged crowd first attacked Jews in the village.


In 19 century, a class of rich Jews originated. They were factory owners perceived by Polish workers as pitiless bloodsuckers. (Early capitalism!).

Also, a class of Jewish skilled workers, craftsmen, shopkeepers, the intelligentsia competed with Poles in various branches of economy and it brought about more conflicts.


But the main reason was always the alienation of Jews. They had a different religion, culture, traditions, language, etc etc. They were totally different and thus alien to most Poles. The mass of Polish society saw Jews as foreigners, strangers. Strangers are always looked on with suspicion as potentially unpredictable and dangerous.

Before and during the WW2r Jews were accused of supporting communism which was perceived as a main threat to Poland`s newly regained independence.

After the war Jewish survivors were considered a threat since they started coming back and reclaiming their property, which Poles had already taken from Germans.

Besides, it is true that there were some Jews in the communist secret police which oppressed Polish patriots who had fought against Germans before and now were against communist rulers.

[Bonobo]

Every nation which has had a Jewish population contains antisemitic element.

But indifference is also guilt. Like those Poles who went to the funfair next to the fighting ghetto. They were having their fun while Jews were fighting for their honour, burnt alive in their shelters by Nazis.







The current director of the Jewish Historical Institute, prof. Feliks Tych, tells about his memories: On the square they installed sort of funfair. Swings, merry-go-round. They were popular. Nearby the fight was going on in the ghetto, one could hear shots and explosions. Those on the swings and merry-go- round seemed undisturbed by it. I could feel it wasn`t their war.

And more:

I hesitated to get on the carriage. I looked behind the corner. There was a German cannon and a group of youngsters helping German soldiers. They shouted Jude, Jude and pointed to obscure human shapes that appeared in the windows of burning ghetto houses. I felt like game. I got on the horse carriage. A man sitting in front of me said: Jews are frying, but nobody picked up the discussion.


Gazeta Wyborcza" wydała z tej okazji specjalny dodatek, w którym opublikowano m.in. tekst napisany przez obecnego dyrektora Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, który wówczas, jako 13-letni chłopiec, ukrywał się po aryjskiej stronie. Prof. Feliks Tych wspomina: "Na placu Krasińskich gościł wtedy rodzaj lunaparku. Stały huśtawki, karuzela, nie pamiętam, czy było coś więcej. Cieszyły się powodzeniem. Było tak, jak to zapamiętał Andrzejewski w 'Wielkim Tygodniu' i Miłosz w 'Campo di Fiori'. (...) Nad placem unosił się dym płonących nieopodal domów, słychać było strzały i wybuchy. Bawiącym się na karuzeli i na huśtawkach najwidoczniej to nie przeszkadzało. Czuło się, że nie była to ich wojna. Nie wsiadłem od razu na platformę konną. Zajrzałem za łuk. Przy rogu Świętojerskiej zobaczyłem działko niemieckie, a wokół niego grupę wyrostków, którzy z okrzykiem 'Jude! Jude!' wskazywali artylerzystom jakieś prawdziwe lub domniemane postacie ukazujące się w oknach domów płonących za murem. Poczułem się zwierzyną łowną. Zawróciłem szybko w kierunku postoju platform konnych i wsiadłem. Kiedy wóz ruszył, jakiś niechlujnie ubrany siedzący naprzeciw mnie mężczyzna powiedział: 'Żydki się smażą', ale nikt nie podjął tematu. Przez resztę podróży wśród pasażerów panowało milczenie".



So, as you can see, there were not only indifferent people but Holocaust enthusiasts too.

There were helpers too.

The Blue Police, more correctly translated as The Navy-Blue Police (Polish: Granatowa policja, name originating from the colour of their uniforms) was the popular name of the collaborationist Polish police in the General Government during the Second World War.

It was created by Nazi-Germany as an auxiliary paramilitary police force in order to keep law and order in the General Government part of occupied Poland. Similar police organizations existed in all of the occupied countries. Initially used to deal with purely criminal activities, the Blue Police was later used to also prevent smuggling, and against the Jewish population in the ghettos.

Their role is dubious. Many of them were members of the Polish resistance. There were cases when blue policemen rescued Jews or refused to shoot them. A few of them have their trees in Jerusalem.

However, on the whole, the blue police activity smells of dirty collaboration. A few rightoeus ones are not enough to excuse this formation.

What were their most hideous duties, among others?:

1. Guarding the exit gates of the ghetto, as well as the walls and fences encircling the Ghettos or Jewish districts.
2. Participating in the "resettlement actions" in the capacity of catchers, escorts, etc.
3. Participating in tracking down Jews who were in hiding after the "resettlement actions."
4. Shooting Jews sentenced to death by the Germans.

Re 4: On 17 November, 1941, eight Warsaw Jews were executed for leaving the ghetto without permission. One witness reported: The execution squad was composed of Polish policemen. After carrying out their orders, they cried bitterly.

Resettlement action


German and Polish policemen - a souvenir group photo


A policeman of Poland's "Blue Police" inspecting the documents of a Jew in Krakow.


www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/krakow/krakow.html



www.muzeum.warszawa1939.pl/strona.php?kod=315
polish-jewish-heritage.org/pol/Feb_04_Karuzela_na_pl_Krasinskich.htm


But defenders too. It was all so mixed up.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zofia_Kossak-Szczucka
Zofia Kossak-Szczucka (10 August 1889[1] – 9 April 1968) was a Polish writer and World War II resistance fighter. She co-founded the wartime Polish organization Żegota, set up to assist Poland's Jews in escaping the Holocaust. In 1943 she was arrested by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp, but survived the war. In the summer of 1942, when the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto began, Kossak-Szczucka published a leaflet entitled "Protest," which was printed in 5,000 copies. In the leaflet she described in graphic terms the conditions in the Ghetto, and the horrific circumstances of the deportations then taking place. "All will perish," she wrote. "Poor and rich, old, women, men, youngsters, infants, Catholics dying with the name of Jesus and Mary together with Jews. Their only guilt is that they were born in to the Jewish nation condemned to extermination by Hitler."
PROTEST
In the Warsaw Ghetto, behind walls separating it from the outside world, several hundred thousand condemned are awaiting death. There is no hope for any rescue, no help comes. Streets are patrolled by executioners, who fire at anyone who dares to leave his house. They also fire at anyone standing by the windows. On pavements rot unburied human corpses.

Daily shipments as ordered by the authorities are set at 8-10 thousand of victims. Jewish policemen are ordered to deliver them into the hands of German executioners. If they fail, they will be killed. Children unable to walk by themselves are loaded on wagons. The loading process is so cruel, that only a small number of them reaches the railway platform alive. Mothers seeing it go insane. The number of the insane from despair and horror equals the number of the shot-down.

There are railcars waiting at the platform. The executioners are forcibly packing over 150 captives in each one. Thick layers of lime and chlorine are put on the floor of railcars and splashed with water. The doors of the railcar are securely bolted. Trains sometimes start immediately after the load, however sometimes wait one or two days on the side rail... No one cares. Of the people packed so densely that the dead cannot fall down and are standing arm to arm with the living, of the people dying of the lime and chlorine gases, without air, a drop of water, without food - noone will survive. These death-trains, whenever and wherever they arrive will bring only dead bodies.

Confronted with such suffering, quick death seems preferable. The executioners have foreseen it. All the drugstores in the ghetto have been closed, to prevent buying of poison. There are no guns. The only solution is to jump down out of the window to the street. Thus many convicts choose to "escape" their executioners in this way.

What happens in the Warsaw Ghetto, has been happening for half a year in hundreds of smaller or larger Polish towns and cities. The total number of murdered has already exceeded one million and the number grows each day. All perish. Poor and rich, old, women, men, youngsters, infants, Catholics dying with the name of Jesus and Mary together with Jews. Their only guilt is that they were born Jewish condemned to extermination by Hitler.

The world is looking at these atrocities, the most horrible throughout the whole history of mankind, and is silent. Slaughter of the millions of people continues in ominous silence. The executioners are silent, they do not boast about their deeds. England is silent, so is America, even the international Jewry is silent, usually so sensitive to all harm to their people. Silent are Poles. Polish political friends of Jews limit themselves to journalistic notes, Polish opponents of Jews show no interest in a matter that is alien to them. Dying Jews are surrounded only by Pilates washing their hands. Silence shouldn't be tolerated anymore. If for no other reason — it is contemptible. Those who are silent in the face of murder - become partners of the killer. Those who do not condemn - approve.

We Catholic Poles, take a stance. Our feelings toward Jews have not changed. We do not stop thinking about them as political, economic and ideological enemies of Poland. Moreover we do realize, that they still hate us more than Germans, that they make us co-responsible for their misfortune. Why? On what basis? It remains the secret of the Jewish soul. Nevertheless, that is a fact that is continuously confirmed. Awareness of those feelings, doesn't relieve us from the duty to condemn the crime.

We don't want to be Pilates. We have no power to actively prevent German murders, we cannot help, we cannot save anyone, but we protest from the bottom of our hearts overwhelmed with mercy, fury and horror. We are required by God to protest. God who forbids us to kill. We are required by out Christian consciousness. Every human being has the right to be loved by his fellowmen. Blood of the defenceless cries to heaven for revenge. Those who oppose our protest - are not Catholics.

Being Polish, we also protest. We do not believe that Poland can benefit from German cruelties. On the contrary. The continuing silence of the international Jewry, the German propaganda that tries, even now, to put the blame for the slaughter of Jews on Lithuanians and... Poles, we sense a plot of the enemy against us. We also know how poisoned is the fruit of the crime. The role of forced observer in the bloody spectacle taking place on the Polish soil, might promote immunity to pain and suffering and what is the most important, conviction that to murder your neighbour without any punishment is permisssible.

Those who do not understand it and want to connect the proud and free future of Poland, with contentment of grief of fellowmen, is neither a Catholic nor a Pole.

Front of National Rebirth of Poland

[Bonobo]

It is the reference to the carousel used by happy Poles next to the burning ghetto.

Do you like Czesław Miłosz? He wrote a poem about the carousel... He wrote it at Easter time 1943 after he saw merry people having fun on Easter Sunday while Jews were being annihilated in the ghetto.


Campo di Fiori

In Rome on the Campo di Fiori
Baskets of olives and lemons,
Cobbles spattered with wine
And the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
With rose-pink fish;
Armfuls of dark grapes
Heaped on peach-down.

On this same square
They burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
Close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
The taverns were full again,
Baskets of olives and lemons
Again on the vendors' shoulders.

I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
In Warsaw by the sky-carousel
One clear spring evening
To the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
The salvos from the ghetto wall,
And couples were flying
High in the cloudless sky.

At times wind from the burning
Would driff dark kites along
And riders on the carousel
Caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
Blew open the skirts of the girls
And the crowds were laughing
On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

Someone will read as moral
That the people of Rome or Warsaw
Haggle, laugh, make love
As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
Of the passing of things human,
Of the oblivion
Born before the flames have died.

But that day I thought only
Of the loneliness of the dying,
Of how, when Giordano
Climbed to his burning
There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.

Already they were back at their wine
Or peddled their white starfish,
Baskets of olives and lemons
They had shouldered to the fair,
And he already distanced
As if centuries had passed
While they paused just a moment
For his flying in the fire.

Those dying here, the lonely
Forgotten by the world,
Our tongue becomes for them
The language of an ancient planet.
Until, when all is legend
And many years have passed,
On a great Campo dci Fiori
Rage will kindle at a poet's word.

It isn`t the best of Miłosz`s poem but nevertheless I find it very moving.


BJK, one more poem by Miłosz.

As the poem is more difficult than the previous one, I submit it combined with a professional analysis.

A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto'.

It is more ambiguous, perhaps more difficult to understand. It opens with the image of destruction:

It has begun: the tearing, the trampling on silks,
It has begun: the breaking of glass, wood, copper, nickel,
silver, foam
Of gypsum, iron sheets, violin strings, trumpets, leaves,
balls, crystals,


And later:

Bees build around the honeycomb of lungs,
Ants build around white bone.
Torn is paper, rubber, linen, leather, flax,
Fiber, fabrics, cellulose, snakeskin, wire.
The roof and the wall collapse in flame and heat seizes
the foundations.
Now there is only the earth, sandy, trodden down,
With one leafless tree.

The city was destroyed, what remained is the earth, full of broken shells and debris. It is also full of human bodies. In this earth, or rather under it:

Slowly, boring a tunnel, a guardian mole makes his way,
With a small red lamp fastened to his forehead.
He touches buried bodies, counts them, pushes on.
He distinguishes human ashes by their luminous vapour,
The ashes of each man by a different part of the spectrum.

Who this mole is, it is difficult to say. Is he a guardian, perhaps a guardian of the buried? He has got a torch, so he can see; better, at any rate, than the dead can see. And the poet himself, he is as if among the buried. He lies there with them. He fears something. He fears the mole. It is a striking, startling image:

I am afraid, so afraid of the guardian mole,
He has swollen eyelids, like a Patriarch
Who has sat much in the light of candles
Reading the great book of the species.

And so this mole has the features of a Jew, poring over the Talmud or the Bible. It seems more likely that it is the Bible, as this alone deserves the name of 'the great book of the species', meaning, of course, the human species.

What will I tell him, I, a Jew of the New Testament,
Waiting two thousand years for the second coming of Jesus?
broken body will deliver me to his sight
And he will count me among the helpers of death:
The uncircumcised.
(translation Cz. Milosz)


It is a terrifying poem; it is full of fear. It is as if two fears co-exist here. The first is the fear of death; more precisely, the fear of being buried alive, which is what happened to many people who were trapped in the cellars and underground passages of the ghetto. But there is also a second fear: the fear of the guardian mole. This mole burrows underground but also underneath our consciousness. This is the feeling of guilt which we do not want to admit. Buried under the rubble, among the bodies of the Jews, the 'uncircumcised' fears that he may be counted among the murderers. So it is the fear of damnation, the fear of hell. The fear of a non-Jew who looks at the ghetto burning down. He imagines that he might accidentally die then and there, and in the eyes of the mole who can read the ashes, he may appear 'a helper of death'. And so, indeed, the poem is entitled: 'A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto'. This Christian feels fearful of the fate of the Jews but also--muffled, hidden even from himself--he feels the fear that he will be condemned. Condemned by whom? By people? No, people have disappeared. It is the mole who condemns him, or rather may condemn him, this mole who sees well and reads 'the book of the species'. It is his own moral conscience which condemns (or may condemn) the poor Christian. And he would like to hide from his mole-conscience, as he does not know what to say to him.

[Bonobo]

Saving a Jewish child was difficult but not impossible. It was easier in a big city where anonymous environment provided more protection.

An interesting site of the Children of the Holocaust:
www.dzieciholocaustu.org.pl/szab51.php?s=index3.php

The membership of the Association "Children of the Holocaust" in Poland presently stands at nearly 800 persons residing in Poland.
Women are in the majority - circumcised boys were more difficult to save. The oldest among us are 77 years of age, the youngest - 59.The purpose of the organisation is to create a community of persons who survived the Holocaust, grant them support, never to let the experiences of the Holocaust be forgotten and to keep in memory the life of the Jewish society of pre-war Poland.

The Association of "Children of the Holocaust" is the ultimate generation of those who survived and the last witnesses of those terrible events. It is our need and duty to bequeath to posterity and consolidate the memory of the life and work of many generations of Jews who lived on Polish territory. The mission of the Jewish children who were saved is to disseminate what we experienced, to tell people of the enormous crime of genocide which the Jewish people were made to suffer.



After dozens of years people discover incredible truth about themselves.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/3261881.stm
Hidden children of the Holocaust
It is hard to believe that Lublin was once home to 40,000 Jewish people, and the city was a centre of Jewish life and learning.
Now there are barely a handful of Jewish families left; and a nearby concentration camp - Majdanek - is a constant reminder of the Holocaust.
But Poland is trying to come to terms with its tragic history, and to reconcile Jewish people and Catholics.
One remarkable man has come to embody the two cultures. His name is Father Romuald Jakub Weksler-Waskinel, a Catholic priest, academic and writer.
But as his name suggests, there is more to his story.
Raised as a Catholic by a Polish couple, he followed his faith into the priesthood. It was only after he had been a priest for 12 years that his ill mother revealed to him that he was not her son, and that he was in fact Jewish.
"It was like being born again," Father Romuald explained, the tears still flowing at the memory.
His Polish mother told him that his true parents were to be transported to the death camps.
His Jewish mother handed her the baby and said, "You are a Christian. You believe Jesus was a Jew. In the name of that Jew, save this child. Bring him up a Catholic. One day", she prophesied, "he will become a priest."
This story of Catholic families saving and raising Jewish children is being repeated many times in Poland, stories which are only now being revealed, as the older generation feels able to unburden themselves of long-held secrets.
With Poland's own suffering in the war, and with its reputation for anti-Semitism, these acts of heroism are a source of pride to Poles.
Today they are called the "hidden children", although most of them are adults in their 60s or 70s.
In 1990, a group was formed in Warsaw to help them, The Association of the Hidden Children of the Holocaust.
When it started there were four members, now there are 800.
No one is quite sure how many Jewish families now live in Poland. It is perhaps 20,000, a quarter of whom are living in Warsaw.









www.projectinposterum.com/docs/zegota.htm

Żegota: The Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland 1942-1945


But by 1942, there was little doubt among the leaders of the Polish Underground and the younger members of the Jewish Underground that the Germans planned nothing less than the extermination of the Jewish people.

That help to Jews had to be coordinated, organized and supported on a larger scale occurred seemingly at once and spontaneously to a number of Polish resisters. They realized that the support of personal friends, or unplanned and unsupported help of strangers, was far from enough. But more help would not be easy. By this time, the Polish population had been pauperized. Working for ridiculously low wages, limited to very small rations, and living in a police state, their ability to help was severely restricted.

The idea of unifying the diverse efforts to help Jews was primarily the result of the efforts of two women, Zofia Kossak and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz. Kossak was a well-known, conservative Catholic writer, a member of the Catholic lay organization, the Front for Reborn Poland, and intensely involved on a personal level in assisting Jews. Krahelska-Filipowicz, who also personally sheltered Jews, was a Catholic Socialist activist of long standing and well connected to important members of the AK.
While Kossak and Krahelska are generally credited with galvanizing a united front in the struggle to help Jews, they and the people they drew together were already deeply involved in this work, either at party levels, in community associations, or as individuals. The aim now was to unite all these forces and link them with the considerable Underground resources of the AK, and, just as important, to get funds from the Government-in-Exile in London and other sources.
Who was Konrad Zegota? There was no such person. In the conspiratorial life of the Polish Underground, virtually everything had a code name – a cryptonym – and the Council for Aid to Jews was no exception. Clearly, no conversations about anything to do with Jews could be risked, and "Zegota" was used not only in discussions, but on all documents, receipts, and memos. In time, "Zegota" came to signify all activities involving help to Jews. Zegota immediately set out to identify the most serious problems in rescue activities, to set up an over-all plan of action, and to recruit the people to implement it. Since all of the members were already in the Underground and active in helping Jews, they brought to Zegota their conspiratorial experience as well as their many contacts and skills.
The Council was divided into sections dealing with clearly identifiable needs: Legalization, Housing, Financial, Child Welfare, Medical, Clothing, Propaganda, and anti-szmalcownik activities. From its Warsaw base, the Zegota network expanded to include relief organizations in Cracow, Lwow, Zamosc, Lublin and the countryside.
As we look at the membership of Zegota we see the same pattern throughout – social and political activists with a wide circle of friends and colleagues. Even the youngest members, Bartoszewski, 21, and couriers Maria Tomaszewska and Wanda Muszynska, 18 and 17, respectively, had a network either as students or as members of the Scout Association. Add to these, the Writers' Union, the Underground Journalists Association, the Democratic Doctors' Committee, and many others such as the railway, tramway and sanitation department workers' organizations that established contacts with Jewish friends either in the ghetto or in hiding, and Zegota had a good base for building an extensive network. Every one of these organizations was already actively involved in aid to Jews. Zegota could not stop the murder campaign of the Nazi government. They could not intercept and help every Jew who escaped from the ghetto. They could not even guarantee the security of those Jews who did come under their wing. Nevertheless, they were able to rescue and succour thousands of people otherwise destined for death.
Miriam Peleg, a Jewish courier from Cracow, now living in Israel, said in a filmed interview that Zegota not only helped materially, but also gave people hope. For the first time in years, those who came in contact with Zegota felt that at last they were not alone . This sentiment was perhaps expressed more dramatically by two escapees, Pawel Rogalski and his wife, who recalled that soon after they came out of the ghetto, they chanced upon a copy of Zofia Kossak's "Protest." They can still recite from memory the words that gave them hope, and it was Zegota that provided them with the means to get them started with life on the Aryan side.
Concealing Jews was punishable in Poland by death for all the persons living in the house where they were discovered. A difficult problem therefore was to find hiding places for persons who looked Jewish. Zegota was on a constant lookout for suitable accommodations. No estimate can be given of the magnitude of this form of aid by Zegota, but it appears to have been great. Children were put in the care of foster families, into public orphanages or similar institutions maintained by convents. The foster families were told that the children were relatives, distant or close, and they were paid by Zegota for the children's maintenance. In Warsaw, Zegota had twenty - five hundred children registered whom it looked after in this way. Medical attention for the Jews in hiding was also made available. Zegota had ties with many ghettos and camps. It also made numerous efforts to induce the Polish government - in - exile and the Delegatura to appeal to the Polish population to help the persecuted Jews.
During the war, Zegota was the only rescue organization that was run jointly by Jews and non -Jews from a wide range of political movements, and the only one that, despite the arrests of some of its members, was able to operate for a considerable length of time and to extend help to Jews in so many different ways.


In the painting, Hirschberger depicts Zegota as a saintly woman, protecting Jews within her cloak from the destruction that surrounds her and them.



Two Zegota members still living



Irena Sendler, Head of the Children Section, rescued or helped to rescue 2500 childre. Below, Władysław Bartoszewski, an organizer and activist.




www.kshs.org/teachers/historyday/uniontown.htm

[Bonobo]

Why didn`t Allies react to Polish underground information about the Holocaust?


First of all, he should have mentioned the reports by the Polish underground movement about the dire situation in Poland. American and British leaders either didn`t believe or didn`t react. Churchill knew nothing about the Holocaust because his advisors kept it secret form him, in fear on "another petitioner who might disturb Churchill`s peace of mind."

Those petitioners were gassed Jews whose ashes Nazi murderers buried or threw into rivers all over Poland. The man who brought the Jewish silent petition to the Western leaders was Jan Karski, a member of the Polish resistance, a spy and finally an envoy.

Unfortunately, his mission was of Cassandric nature - nobody believed him.

British reluctance to act.

Jan Karski, a liaison officer of the Polish underground, came to London in November 1942 and told Cavendish-Bentinck about the mass murder of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Belzec concentration camp. Another Polish witness, Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, reported in December 1943 that 3.3 million Polish Jews had been murdered and that “the Germans used troops, tanks and artillery to liquidate the ghetto in Warsaw.”

Doubt was cast on reports of atrocities by Roger Allen, a high-ranking Foreign Office official who worked closely with Cavendish-Bentinck during the war. Allen didn’t believe stories about the use of gas chambers in Poland. Allen wrote in August 1943 that he could “never understand what the advantage of a gas chamber over a simple machine gun or over starving people would be.” He also questioned the reliability of the reports of gas chambers because they were “very general and tended to come from Jewish sources.”

Cavendish-Bentinck had access to the decrypted German police and SS reports which also mentioned the persecution and genocide of the Jews on the territories held by the Germans. Nevertheless, he said in August 1943, the Poles and Jews were exaggerating the German atrocities to try to stiffen British resolve.

British officials also withheld information about the treatment of the Jews from the War Cabinet and Churchill. When he reported on Karski’s visit, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden deleted all references to Jews being murdered. He also refused to let Karski report personally to Churchill because he felt it was “his duty to protect the elderly and overworked Prime Minister from too many petitioners.”



Americans refused to react too. Why??? They didn`t believe, even Jewish advisors to President Roosevelt couldn`t understand the true nature of the Holocaust.

It cannot have been a coincidence that Ciechanowski brought together three of the Roosevelt administration's most prominent Jews to hear Karski's report in this initial meeting. Presidential adviser Ben Cohen, Assistant Solicitor General Oscar Cox and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter had helped to shape Roosevelt's New Deal policies.

Each man was close to the president and well-connected in Washington. Ciechanowski wanted to get Roosevelt's attention; Karski carried dramatic news that would presumably interest American Jews. Therefore, the ambassador would set his strategy in motion by inviting F.D.R.'s top Jewish advisers to meet Karski.


The dinner meeting with Cohen, Cox and Frankfurter lasted until nearly 1:00 in the morning. Jan held forth on the organization of the Underground and other subjects, while also giving an objective description of the persecution of Jews in Poland. Over dinner, he referred only in passing to what he himself had witnessed-- but the stories were still enough to "make your hair stand on end," as Cox wrote to Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's top aide.

Frankfurter lingered after the other guests left the embassy. Adjourning the gathering to a quiet ballroom, Ciechanowski took a seat to Karski's left. The Supreme Court justice sat opposite Karski, looking into his eyes.

"Mr. Karski," Frankfurter asked, "do you know that I am a Jew?"

Karski nodded.

"There are so many conflicting reports about what is happening to the Jews in your country," Frankfurter said. "Please tell me exactly what you have seen."

Jan spent half an hour patiently explaining how his missions to the Ghetto and the camp had come about and precisely, in gruesome detail, what he had witnessed. When Karski finished, he waited for the visitor to make the next move.

Frankfurter silently got up from his chair. For a few moments, he paced back and forth in front of Karski and the ambassador, who looked on in puzzlement. Then, just as quietly, he took his seat again.

"Mr. Karski," Frankfurter said after a further pause, "a man like me talking to a man like you must be totally frank. So I must say: I am unable to believe you."

Ciechanowski flew from his seat. "Felix, you don't mean it!" he cried. "How can you call him a liar to his face! The authority of my government is behind him. You know who he is!"

Frankfurter replied, in a soft voice filled with resignation, "Mr. Ambassador, I did not say this young man is lying. I said I am unable to believe him. There is a difference."

www.remember.org/karski/kexcrpt4.html


BJK could have written: My God, if American Jews didn`t do anything to stop the Holocaust because they simply refused to believe, what on earth Poles could do in their occupied Nazi terrorised country???

What did Karski report to Western leaders so that they didn`t believe?

E.g., his visit to the Warsaw Ghetto. Jews cooperated with the Polish underground and knew that Poles were going to send a messenger to allies. Karski was invited by Jews to see the ghetto to be able to relate the truth. He went there with a Jewish guide who admonished him to rememebr everything.

Karski and Feiner shuffled down the street with the Jewish underground member at their side. The streets were packed with humanity and its remnants. "There was hardly a square yard of empty space," Karski recalled. "As we picked our way across the mud and rubble, the shadows of what had once been men or women flitted by us in pursuit of someone or something, their eyes blazing with some insane hunger or greed." The cries of the mad and the hungry echoed through the streets, mingled with the voices of residents offering to barter scraps of clothing for morsels of food.

Jan identified the stench in his nostrils just as he discerned the unclothed corpses. Strewn in the gutters were the bodies of the old and young, all as naked in death as they had been in birth.

"What does it mean?" Jan asked under his breath.

"When a Jew dies," Feiner calmly replied, "the family removes his clothing and throws his body in the street. Otherwise they would have to pay a burial tax to the Germans. Besides, this saves clothing."

The visitors reached the Plac Muranowski, a square at the northeast corner of the Ghetto that had once been a park. Mothers crowded the benches, nursing emaciated infants. Stunted children filled the area, some sitting listlessly, others cavorting in the dirt.

"They are playing, you see." Jan thought he heard Feiner's voice break with emotion. "Life goes on. They play before they die."

"These children are not playing," responded Jan. "They only make believe it is play."

On the streets, Feiner relentlessly pointed out every macabre example of the zone's bestial conditions. Over and over the men would come upon human forms crumpled against the sides of buildings, their catatonic stares fixed on nothing, only a slight rustling beneath their rags betraying the fact that they were still breathing. At each instance, Feiner would stop for a moment. "Remember this," he said, over and over. "Remember this."

Karski also visited Belzec, the Nazi death camp.

The Office of Information and Propaganda also received an alarming report from the Home Army headquarters in Lublin of mass executions of Jews in the newly opened Belzec camp. In mid-October 1942, Karski was assigned the task of going to Belzec. He went to the camp dressed in the uniform of an Estonian guard thanks to help from a guide. This action lasted an hour, and Karski learned that the camp commandant was named Gotlieb Hering and that exhaust fumes from engines taken from Soviet tanks were being used to kill people. As he recalled years later, that experience shocked him deeply.


But his sacrifice and effort were wasted by the allies who did nothing to stop the Holocaust. What could have been done?

The allies could bombard Auschwitz and other camps, not only their gas chambers and crematoria, but also railways leading to the camp. It wasn`t done because the Allies prefered to use their resources against military objects. And they weren`t pressed hard enough by Jewish elites in America to help dying Jews.

www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/mod....playstory.html

The Allies had the military resources to bombard Auschwitz, he maintained. The U.S. Air Force "was capable of striking the railroad lines to Auschwitz and the vicinity, but for bombing to be effective it had to be sustained, and for it to be feasible it had to be undertaken by day in good weather and between July and October 1944." The window of opportunity closed in the fall with the onset of chilly and foggy weather.Another reason for the Allies' failure to act, Berenbaum stated, was the lack of pressure from the organized American Jewish community. While some Zionists, recent immigrant groups and Orthodox Jews clamored to rescue Jews at all costs, the "established Jewish leadership was reluctant to press for organized military activity for fear of being too overt and encouraging perceptions within the political leadership that World War II was a 'Jewish war.'"

Even David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency's executive committee and later Israel's first premier, was initially against intervention on behalf of Jews in Poland. Berenbaum quoted Ben-Gurion, who said in June 1944 "that we do not know the truth concerning the entire situation in Poland and it seems that we will be unable to propose anything concerning this matter."

America's refusal to act nagged at Berenbaum throughout his talk. He said that by the summer of 1944 "the gas chambers at Auschwitz were operating around the clock, and the crematoria were so overtaxed that bodies were being burned in open fields with body fat fueling the flames. Any interruption in the killing process might possibly have saved thousands of lives."

Deanna Chase, a third year psychology student, added that Berenbaum "challenged us to think about the United States' role in ending genocide. I think America could've done more."

[Bonobo]

Jedwabne [jɛdˈvabnɛ] is a town in Poland, in the Podlaskie Voivodeship, in Łomża County, with 1,942 inhabitants (2002).
First mentioned in 1455, Jedwabne received its town rights in 1736. During the years 1939-1941 under Soviet occupation, some of local people were arrested or deported to Siberia, a priest Ryszard Marian Szumowski was killed by the Soviets in July 1941. The town was the site of Jedwabne pogrom during World War II.
The Jedwabne synagogue, built in 1770, was an especially fine example of the unique Polish Jewish architectural tradition of building large, domed, Wooden synagogues.[1]
Emigrants from Jedwabne built the synagogue Congregation Anshe Yedwabne at 242 Henry Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City. [2]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedwabne



The Jedwabne pogrom (or Jedwabne massacre) (pronounced [jɛdˈvabnɛ]) was a massacre of Jewish people living in and near the town of Jedwabne in Poland that took place in July 1941 during World War II.

Although responsibility for the massacre had long been laid at the feet of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen (death squad), recent scholarship by historian Jan T. Gross has indicated that the murders were carried out by Polish neighbors of the victims. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance subsequently issued findings in support of Gross' claims.[1][2][3] Whether and how far the occupying German forces were involved remains the subject of dispute among historians.
Following their attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, German forces quickly overran the territory of Poland that the Soviet Union had annexed as part of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact. The Nazis distributed propaganda in the area[4] claiming that Jews, having sided with the communist Soviet occupiers, were responsible for crimes committed by the Soviet Union in eastern Poland; and the SS organized special Einsatzgruppen ("task forces") to murder Jews in these areas. The small town of Wizna, for example, near Jedwabne in the northeast of Poland, saw several dozen Jewish men shot by the invading Germans under Hauptsturmfuehrer Schaper, as did other neighbouring towns.[5]

A number of people collaborating with the Soviets before Operation Barbarossa were killed by local people in the Jedwabne area during the first days of German occupation.

A month later, on the morning of July 10, 1941, by the order of mayor Karolak and German gendarmerie,[6] a group of non-Jewish Poles from Jedwabne and its neighborhood rounded up the local Jews as well as those seeking refuge from nearby towns and villages such as Wizna and Kolno. The Jews were taken to the square in the centre of Jedwabne, where they were ordered to pluck grass, attacked and beaten. A group of about 40 Jews were forced to demolish a statue of Lenin erected by NKWD and then carry it out of town while singing Soviet songs. The local rabbi was forced to lead this procession. The group was taken to a pre-emptied barn,[7] killed and buried along with fragments of the monument, while most of the remaining Jews, estimated at around 250[7] to 400, including many women and children, were led to the same barn later that day, locked inside and burned alive using kerosene from the former Soviet supplies (or German gasoline, by different accounts) in the presence of eight German gendarmes shooting those trying to escape.[7] The remains of both groups were buried in two mass graves in the barn.[7][8] Exhumations led to the discovery not only of the charred bodies of the victims in two mass graves, but also of the bust of Lenin (previously assumed to be buried at a Jewish cemetery) as well as bullets that according to a 2000 statement by Leon Kieres, the chief of the IPN could have been fired from a 1941 Walther P38 type pistols.[7] Two weapons analysis carried out by the IPN in 2001 and 2002, the second one with assistance from the German Federal Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden came to the conclusion that "there is no evidence to support the thesis that the Jews had been fired upon at the scene of the pogrom"[9]

Controversy and investigation

It was generally assumed that the Jedwabne massacre was an atrocity committed by an Einsatzgruppe until 1997–2000, when Agnieszka Arnold's Where is my older brother, Cain? and Neighbours revisionist documentary films were produced.

These were followed by a detailed study of the event in the book Neighbors,[12] by Polish-Jewish-American sociologist and historian Jan T. Gross, who described the massacre not as a pogrom but as a deliberate, cold-blooded, mass-murder. Gross concluded that, contrary to the official accounts, the Jews in Jedwabne had been rounded up and killed by mobs of their own Polish neighbours, without any supervision or assistance from an Einsatzgruppe or other German force. He referred to the number of victims (1,600) presented on a memorial stone in Jedwabne.[13] Nevertheless Gross states that this massacre could be a provocation, considering that two main local leaders inspiring the mob to murder, Zygmunt Laudański and Karol Bardoń, were NKVD agents.[14]

The publication of Neighbors in Poland inspired a good deal of controversy on its release there in 2000. There was a basic agreement in the mainstream Polish press regarding the basic accuracy of Gross's findings, although specific details and questions about Gross's methodology were debated by Polish scholars.[15] Polish historians (such as Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski)[16], questioned its conclusions and its methodology.

Following an intensive investigation the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) released a report in 2002 in which it largely supported Gross's findings, although the IPN's estimated death toll of the massacre (a minimum of 340 Polish Jews murdered)[17][18] was significantly lower than the 1,600 reported by Gross. Since then other estimates have been presented, in the range of 200 to 1000.[19]

Another controversy is related to the extent of German involvement in the massacre.[20] The IPN found that there were 68 Gestapo as well as numerous German policemen present ariving from different local posts, as reported by witness Natalia Gąsiorowska providing a meal.[6] Yet some scholars note that the German involvement is not certain; while many witnesses claim to have seen German soldiers that day in Jedwabne, others had not witnessed Germans in the town at that time.[20] As contemporary court records show, the active involvement of gentile Poles is certain, but the question of extent and nature of possible German participation has not been settled.[20] The IPN concluded that the crime in a broader sense must be ascribed to the Germans, whilst in a stricter sense to gentile Poles, estimated at about 40 men from Jedwabne and a nearby settlements.[21] Jan T. Gross himself praised the conduct of the IPN investigation.[21]

In 2001 the President of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, officially apologized to the Jewish people for the crime on behalf of Poland.[22] This caused a certain criticism, as some considered Jedwabne to be a solely German crime, while others believed that the whole nation was not to bear responsibility for the crimes performed by some. At that time of the apology the IPN investigation was not yet completed. The commemoration service on the 60th anniversary of the pogrom was overshadowed by the boycott of the service by the majority of the citizens of Jedwabne. When the service began, the priest of Jedwabne started to chime the church bells as a sign of protest. The mayor of Jedwabne, Krzysztof Godlewski, emigrated to the USA due to these incidents.[23]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedwabne_pogrom

[Bonobo]

The Truth and the Remembrance

The truth about the participation of Poles in the anti-Jewish actions in the Lomza District and in the Bialystok Region had been for a long time forgotten, and only the recent discussion about "the case of Jedwabne" brought it back to the Polish national conscience, in a very painful way. But nobody can run away from the truth. The remembrance of these [tragic] events is going to face the present inhabitants of Jedwabne, but not only in that town, also in other localities, where Jews were murdered [by Poles] in the summer of 1941. For instance, in Radzilow. There, a mass murder of Jews on the 7th of July 1941 had been performed, on German initiative, by members of the local Citizens' Guard, with an active participation of a group of the inhabitants of the town and the nearby villages. This mass murder [of Jews] has been very well documented. But a commemorating plate on the obelisk erected to the victims of the mass murder [of Jews in Radzilow] still gives a falsified testimony. The inscription on the plate does not properly identify the perpetrators or even the time of the crime. The text reads like this: "In August 1941, the fascists murdered here 800 people of the Jewish nationality, and 500 of them were burned alive in a barn. Peace to their memory."


A note about the author:
Krzysztof Persak (born in 1968) - Historian and research fellow at the Office for Public Education of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) and of the Institute of the Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Science (PAN) in Warsaw, Poland. He is co-editor (together with Pawel Machcewicz) of a two-volume study book, entitled "Wokol Jedwabnego" [All Around Jedwabne].

Jedwabne wasn`t an isolated case. There were more pogroms, about 20, in the area.

Here is a translated article from Tygodnik Powszechny, Common Weekly, a Catholic weekly magazine, edited and printed in Krakow, Poland. It used to be the only legal opposition paper during the Communist period and its editors played an important part in the peaceful transformation of Poland in the 1980's: from the founding of Solidarity Trade Union in 1980 to the democratic change of the regime in 1989. This paper and its publishers and editors are also well-known for their positive relationship toward the Jews and Israel.

www.radzilow.com/tygodnik.htm

In the summer of 1941, after Nazi Germany had attacked the USSR, a wave of pogroms against Jews passed through, from Lithuania to Bessarabia, along the frontlines. Inhabitants of the territories which were occupied by the Soviets after 1939 (Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Romanians) took part in these pogroms. In the Lomza District and in the Bialystok Region, Polish people were also among the perpetrators of the crimes against the Jews. The best known [Polish] crimes against Jews, those in Jedwabne and in nearby Radzilow, were not the only ones, though the number of their victims was the greatest.


The outbreak of the anti-Jewish violence caused by local Poles happened at an exceptional time and place. Due to a lack of the administrative power after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces, in many [Polish] towns and villages, people had organized temporary Polish authorities and so called Citizens' Guards, sometimes armed. In the first weeks of a new, German occupation, these local authorities were tolerated by the German Military Administration. Members of the [Polish] Citizens' Guards often initiated or performed the anti-Jewish pogroms. A good pretext to start them usually took the form of revenge against the real or presumed Soviet collaborators. And all Jews were treated as such.


The plunder of the Jewish property had been, seemingly, the main reason for the aggression against local Jews, apart from a purported "revenge for the Soviet occupation." In many testimonies about the mass murders of Jews, including those from Jedwabne, Jasionowka, Kolno or Suchowola, there is to be found information about peasants, who had been coming to these towns from the nearby villages, in order to plunder the property of the [Jewish] victims. Such participation of the villagers [in the pogroms of Jews] was observed as typical also before the war, in that part of Poland. During a pogrom in Radzilow, in the year 1933, four perpetrators, who had been killed by the rifle shots of the State Police, came from outside of town.




t was the District of Lomza, which occupied a special place on a "map" of the anti-Jewish excesses in Poland, in the second half of the 1930's. This fact should be linked to a high popularity of the National Party ["Stronnictwo Narodowe"]. and its ideology, exposing strong anti-Semitism. In the year 1930, in the communities of Wasosz and Jedwabne, over 70 percent of the voters cast their votes for the National Party. It is interesting to recall that the national leader and the chief ideologist of that party, Roman Dmowski, spent the last years of his life in Drozdowo, just about 10 miles from Jedwabne. The attitude of the local population toward the Jews had been formed by the widespread anti-Semitism [of the National Party]. But the anti-Jewish actions, organized in the summer of 1941, probably could fall short of genocidal murder if not for the permission, instigation or example shown by the Germans. Since the first day of their occupation, the Germans were indicating that the Jews were not protected by any law. The [Polish-organized] pogroms of the Jews were parallel to the executions of Jews, performed by the Germans. In a series of the orders, issued between the 29th of June and the 2nd of July in 1941, the Head of the Chief Security Office of the German "Reich," Reinhard Heydrich, ordered to the commanders of the Special Operations Units of the Security Police: "Make no obstacle to any self-purge activity by anti-communist or anti-Jewish circles on the new occupied territories. On the contrary: instigate this activity, without leaving any traces, and if necessary intensify them and push them into a proper direction."

There were also some cases of spontaneous pogroms, such as in Grajewo, Wasilkow or Rutki, where the arrival of a German military unit resulted in stopping of the violence. One of probably the bloodiest pogroms, that in Szczuczyn, was carried out [by Poles themselves] on the night of 27th June [1941], before Heydrich issued the above quoted orders. That pogrom, taking 300 victims [according to similar German and Jewish records], was organized in the absence of the Germans. Some of the mass murders had a purely criminal origin. One of the cruelest ones occurred in a village of Bzury, where some [Polish] men who had arrived from Szczuczyn murdered 20 Jewish women in a local forest. The Jewish women worked in a nearby farm. The bandits had raped some women, before killing them, and after that, robbed their garments.


More sites about pogroms with translated articles from the Polish press

www.radzilow.com/bbcmonitoring.htm

www.radzilow.com/rzeczpospolita.htm



Hey, there are so many of them, but you can find them all here:
www.radzilow.com/holocaust.htm

And the Institute site:

ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/19/194/Joint....ckob_Baker.html


On February 12th, 2001 the Polish Consulate General in New York hosted a meeting between the President of Poland's Institute of National Remembrance, Professor Leon Kieres and Rabbi Jackob Baker, accompanied by Morlan Ty Rogers, representing the Jedwabne Jews in America.

Professor Kieres disclosed the results of the outgoing investigation of the Jedwabne massacre, where in July 1941 an estimated 1600 Jews were brutally murdered. During the meeting Professor Kieres expressed his personal determination, and the determination of the Institute's investigators and historians to establish all existing documentation which would enable to unveil all facts, and in effects the truth, about Jedwabne.

Professor Kieres indicated that all available evidence undeniably confirms the fact the Jews of Jedwabne were murdered by Poles, their neighbors. There is no evidence proving otherwise.

Professor Kieres acknowledged that while the investigation is still underway, there is the need for contemporary Poland to face the historical truth, as difficult and painful as it may turn out, and to acknowledge that there did also exist dark pages in her past. This process also includes the need to replace the false and misleading inscription on the existing monument in Jedwabne, which places blame solely on the Nazi occupant.


The quote I fully agree with

The Polish debate about Jedwabne has been going on for several months. It is a serious debate, full of sadness and sometimes terror - as if the whole society was suddenly forced to carry the weight of this terrible 60-year-old crime; as if all Poles were made to admit their guilt collectively and ask for forgiveness.

I don't believe in collective guilt or collective responsibility or any other responsibility except the moral one. And therefore I ponder what exactly is my individual responsibility and my own guilt. Certainly I cannot be responsible for that crowd of murderers who set the barn in Jedwabne on fire. Similarly, today's citizens of Jedwabne cannot be blamed for that crime. When I hear a call to admit my Polish guilt, I feel hurt the same way the citizens of today's Jedwabne feel when they are interrogated by reporters from around the world.

But when I hear that Mr. Gross's book, which revealed the truth about the crime, is a lie that was concocted by the international Jewish conspiracy against Poland, that is when I feel guilty. Because these false excuses are in fact nothing else but a rationalization of that crime.

I do not feel guilty for those murdered, but I do feel responsible. Not that they were murdered - I could not have stopped that. I feel guilty that after they died they were murdered again, denied a decent burial, denied tears, denied truth about this hideous crime, and that for decades a lie was repeated.

Who then am I, as I write these words? Thanks to nature, I am a man, and I am responsible to other people for what I do and what I do not do. Thanks to my choice, I am a Pole, and I am responsible to the world for the evil inflicted by my countrymen. I do so out of my free will, by my own choice, and by the deep urging of my conscience.

[Bonobo]

One of the most sickening reports about Polish participation in Holocaust that I found comes from the diary of doctor Klukowski, born to a landlord`s family with strong Polish traditions (don`t be misled by his appearance - he wasn`t Jewish)


During the war he was a director of the local hospital in Szczebrzeszyn in eastern Poland, a member of the underground Home Army, a doctor of partisan units from the area (he treated partisans in his hospital).

After the war he testified at Nurenberg trials. Later he was persecuted by communists, spent a few years in prison. His son was arrested, tried and sentenced to death for underground activity against the new system.

A man of great merits. He witnessed the Holocaust in his town and described it in his diary.

www.geocities.com/shebreshin/extermination.html

"Diary from the Years of Occupation 1939-1944" Excerpts

October 22, 1942
The action against Jews continues. The only difference is that the SS has moved out and the job is now in the hands of our own local gendarmes and the "blue police". They received orders to kill all the Jews, and they are obeying them.
In town some Jewish houses were sealed by the gendarmes, but others were left completly open, so robberies took place. It is a shame to say it but some Polish people took part in that crime. Some people even helped the gendarmes look for hidden Jews.

October 23, 1942
................. While I was gone, the gestapo, local gendarmes, "blue police", and some street people in Szczebrzeszyn again started the hunt for Jews. Particulary active was Matysiak, a policeman from Sulow, and Skorzak, a city janitor. Skorzak had no gun, only an ax, and with the ax he killed several Jews. The whole day people hunted and killed Jews, while others brought corps to the cemetery for burial.

October 24, 1942
In Szczebrzeszyn the hunt for Jews is still on. Additional gestapo agents came from Bilgoraj. With the help of gendarmes, "blue police", and some citizens they looked everywhere for Jews. All cellars, attics, and barns were searched. Most Jews were killed on the spot, but some were taken to the Jewish cemetery for public execution.
I witnessed a group of Jews being forced to march to the cemetery. On both sides of the prisoners marched gendarmes, "blue police", and so-called Polish guards dressed in black uniforms. To speed things up Jews were beaten on their heads and backs with wooden sticks. This was a terrible picture.





Among the bandits (partisans) are many Jews. The peasants, for fear of repressive measures, catch Jews in the villages and bring them into town, or sometimes simply kill them on the spot. Generally, a strange brutalization his taken place regarding the Jews. People have fallen into a kind of psychosis: following the German example, they often do not see in the Jew a human being but instead consider him a kind of obnoxious animal that must be annihilated with every possible means like rabid dogs, rats, etc.

I witnessed how Jews were removed from a hiding place in the rope maker Dym's house. I counted approximately fifty Jews as they were taken to the jail. A crowd looked on, laughing and even beating the Jews; others searched homes for more victims. (...) What happened to dr Bolotny I do not know. Dentist Bronsztajnowa, along with her two young daughters was transported to Belzec. Dr Sztrejcherowa was shot in her own house.

I feel it is correct to give some names of the German gendarmes and members of the "blue police" who were very active in the killing of the Jews. Commandant Frymer, gendarmes Pryczing and Schultz, Polish-speaking gendarmes Mendykowski, Bot, Prestlaw and Syring. "Blue police" - Muranowski, Tatulinski, Hajduczak and Jan Gall. The cruelest of all is Gall, who is even teaching his teenage son how to kill Jews.


All the local scum turned out in the streets of town. Many horse-driven carts from the countryside arrived, and they all waited almost the whole day long for the moment when they could start plundering. News about some Poles behaving shamefully and looting abandoned Jewish flats was heard from different sources. Our locality will not lag behind in this respect

[Bonobo]

There were Polish scumbags but noble people too....

The accounts about righteous Poles who paid with their life for helping Jews
www.zyciezazycie.pl/

History I, Siedliska, near Miechów (1942)

The Germans appeared in the village on March 15th 1942 after having intercepted the letters of Jewish families contacting each other. Searching the village, they found five Jewish tailors from the nearby town of Miechów hidden by the Baranek family. Łucja and Wincenty Baranek were executed in their own barn by a shot in the back of the head. Soon afterwards their sons, 12-year old Tadeusz and 9-year old Henryk were also shot at the same spot.

History II, Pantalowice (1942)

In 1942 the four Dec brothers provided food for Jews hiding in a nearby forest. One of these brothers also concealed a young Jewish woman in his barn. Betrayed by a young girl caught accidentally in the forest, these brothers were murdered. Two couples, the Lewandowskis and Kuszeks, were also murdered alongside them.

History III, Ciepielów (1942)

In the space of two days, the 6th and 7th of December 1942, the Germans murdered 33 Poles in two villages, namely Ciepielów and Rekowiec in the Radom province, for aiding Jews – their friends and neighbours residing in Ciepielów in large numbers before the war. Among those executed was the Kowalski family, numbering seven members, 14 persons from the Kosior family and 6 members of the Obuch family as well as the Skoczylases. These people were either burnt alive or thrown on a fire after being shot.

History IV, Krakow

Franciszka Budziaszek-Resich, the owner of an elegant hairstylist's shop, arrested for trying to give Jews an "Aryan” appearance by dyeing and straightening their hair. She perished in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

History V, Krakow (1943)

Roman, the father of Artur Blum, a member of Stronnictwo Narodowe, a party passing for anti-Semitic, organised false documents for a certain Jewess. This woman broke under interrogation and named the person who had aided her. As a result, Roman Blum was sent to a labour camp, where he worked in the quarry. He was shot when he fainted from exhaustion during this work.


History VI, Boiska (1942, 1943)

On January 1st 1942, the Boryczkas and their child were shot. Ignacy Boryczka's wife, who was Jewish, provided help to her brothers hiding in the forests. Her husband chose to perish alongside her.
A year later, in the same locality Józef Krawczyk, who nursed a wounded Jew, was also murdered. His wife and 9-year-old son were executed with him.



History VII, Wola Przybysławska (1942)

Following the liquidation of the ghettoes in 1942 and 1943, the residents of Wola Przybysławska, amounting to approximately 250 households, provided help to a large number of Jewish families hiding in forest bivouacs. They also helped those desperate souls who left these hideouts and wandered around the village looking for help. In retaliation, the Germans exterminated 19 of Wola's population by various means.


History VIII, Radom / Opoczno (1942)

In the autumn of 1942, Katarzyna Kazimierczak, along with several other residents of Radom, once again smuggled food for Jews from the Opoczno ghetto. She perished in an ambush set by the Germans. She was 7 months pregnant and had two children waiting for her at home. Her father and brother were also the victims of Nazi repressions. Both perished in concentration camps.



History IX, Warsaw. (1944)

Many children from the Warsaw Ghetto survived thanks to the dedication of the Sisters of Mercy, who gave them shelter in care houses maintained by their order. Their house on Nowogrodzka Street always accommodated several Jewish children, hiding among the Polish orphans that were divided up into small groups. On no occasion were these children recognised as Jewish by the Germans, who regularly inspected this establishment.
During of the Warsaw Uprising, 8 Sisters of Mercy lost their lives by voluntarily accompanying individuals under their charge when these were led to their execution.






I can tell you another story the end of which we know.
www.forum-znak.org.pl/?t=ludzie&id=43

1944, village Markowa, south east of Poland.

The family of Ulm were murdered for hiding Jews.

After a denunciation by an Ukrainian policeman, Germans and Polish blue police arrived at the Ulms` farmhouse. First they killed 8 Jews hiding in the attic, later two Polish parents, next their six children. A German gendarme commented to witnesses: Look how Polish swine are dying for hiding Jews.

16 people died.

Ulm children


Soon afterwards the Ukrainian policeman was executed by an assassination squad of the Polish underground. German policemen lived in Germany till 1960. One Polish blue policeman was recognised after the war, tried and sentenced to life. He died in prison in 1980.


Poland was the only country inEurope where helping Jews was legally officially prohibitted and punished with death.



Translation of German Announcement:

Concerning the Sheltering of Escaping Jews

A reminder - in accordance with paragraph 3 of the decree of October 15, 1941, on the Limitation of Residence in General Government (page 595 of the GG Register) Jews leaving the Jewish Quarter without permission will incur the death penalty.
According to this decree, those knowingly helping these Jews by providing shelter, supplying food, or selling them foodstuffs are also subject to the death penalty.

This is a categorical warning to the non-Jewish population against:

1) Providing shelter to Jews
2) Supplying them with Food
3) Selling them Foodstuffs

Dr. Franke
Town Commander
Czestochowa 9/24/42


Another one in Polish




And in German

[Bonobo]

Those Who Paid with Their Lives (704 NAMES)
www.savingjews.org/index.htm

85. CZERSKI, Janina Wanda, 56, living in Warsaw

She sheltered seven (7) Jews in her house in Milanowek: Jadwiga Minski, whose husband had been killed in Katyn, and six (6) others, known only by their assumed names: the Cholewinski couple and their two sons and the Kordonski couple. In the fall of 1943 five of them were arrested and their fate is unknown. Janina Wanda, arrested with them, was transferred from the Pawiak prison to Auschwitz, where she died on Feb. 20, 1944

667. * WOLSKI, Mieczyslaw, living in Warsaw

With his family he built an underground shelter in his backyard on
Grojecka Street. Here from 1942 he gave refuge to 34 Jews, including the well-known historian Emanuel Ringelblum, with wife and son. The shelter was denounced to Germans on Mar. 7, 1944. Wolski, his nephew, Janusz Wysocki and all the fugitives were taken to Pawiak prison. All the Jews were shot soon in the ghetto ruins, while no trace of the Poles was ever found. Posthumously awarded the medal "Righteous Among Nations" (see: 690)



Cases which have not been fully examined yet
www.savingjews.org/annex.htm

E.g.,
GROCHOLSKI, Emil: born 1920 in Przemysl. He took part with his elder brother, Kazimierz, with Adolf and Marian Baran, and with Leon (or Leopold) Jaroszkiewicz, (we have the exact addresses of each of them) in transferring hundreds of Jews from the western part of Poland under German occupation to the eastern part under Soviet Russian occupation. They had to cross the river San in the vicinity of a brewery in Ostrow near Przemysl. Both sides of the river were covered by dense wire entanglements and were patrolled by German and Soviet border guards. The boats had to be dragged through the wire entanglements at night, in complete darkness and silence and guided through a very swift currant to the eastern side. The disembarkation of the passengers, contrary to previous agreements, was as a rule very noisy, which attracted the Soviets attention. The return trip had to be done most often under a heavy Russian fire, as the Soviets did not tolerate anyone crossing to the German side. Emil was shot at the head and died 2 hours later. He was buried at Zasan.


by Chaim Chefer

I hear this title and it makes me think
About the people who saved me.
I ask and ask “Oh, my dear God,
Could I have done the same thing?
In a sea of hate stood my home,
Could I shelter a foreign son in my home?
Would I be willing along with my family
Constantly be threatened by certain evil?
Sleepless dark nights watching out for noise
Hearing footsteps of certain evil.
Would I be able to understand every sign,
Would I be ready for this, could I walk like this
Among those who would betray
Not one day, not one week, but so many years!

There a suspicious neighbor, there a look,
and here a sound –
For that one – warm – brotherly clasping of my hand...
Not having any pension – not having anything for this.
Because a person to person must be a people.
Because a people comes at this time through –
So I ask you and ask you once more –
Could I have done the same if I was in their place?

It was they who went to war every day.
It was they who made the world a place for me.
It was they, the pillars, the Righteous brother,
Who this day this world is founded by.

For your courage, and for your warm extended hand
In front of you the Righteous I bow.

(alternative translation)

Poem's original Hebrew version. Its English translation appears in “Those who Helped” in 1996 and in 1997. Polish version appears in Grynberg, op. cit.


List of approximately 5,400 Poles recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" title bestowed by Yad Vashem of the State of Israel (as of Dec. 31, 1999).

www.savingjews.org/righteous/av.htm

Some stories

ABRAMOW-NEWERLY, Igor Jerzy (1903-1987) writer

He was a friend of Dr. Janusz Korczak, co-editor with him of the "Maly Przeglad", a supplement to the Jewish daily "Nasz Przeglad" (1929-39). He helped Korczak and his Orphanage. He harbored several colleagues from that newspaper, among them Kuba Hersztein and Renia of unknown name. Lejzor Czarnobroda, who escaped from the train to Treblinka and broke his leg, was transported by Igor to Warsaw and placed by him with his friends in the countryside. Unfortunately he was later arrested and never seen again. Igor was also arrested at the beginning of 1943 and went through Pawiak (a notoriously harsh prison in Warsaw) Majdanek, Auschwitz and Oranienburg. He was liberated at Bergen-Belsen. See: Grynberg, Michal: "Ksiega Sprawiedliwych" (Book of the Righteous) Warsaw, PWN, 1993. (ill., ports., 766 pp.)


NAGORZEWSKI, Helena (1886-1976) teacher

Helena taught in Warsaw at a primary school and during the war in the clandestine study groups. She contributed to save from certain death ca. fifteen Jews (15). Benefited from her help: Halina Buchholz, Stefan and Jadwiga Pines, Ada Stezyc with her mother, Dorota, Wladyslaw and their small son Waldemar Zelazo, three persons of the family Catnorski and four persons of the family Zyto. As her two-room apartment was too small to keep them all, she placed some with her sister. Others she put at her nephew, and still others at her daughter and son-in-law, Danuta and Leon Czubczenko (q.v.). The Zelazo family after the deportations from the ghetto (July - September 1942) decided to save by all means their child. Wladyslaw, who every day was conducted from the ghetto for work, transported the child in his rucksack. First the child was hidden in the shoes manufacture of Piotrowski, from where took it one of the engineers; from him took it to her flat Helena. In February 1943 came to her also the child's mother, Dorota Zelazo. Wladyslaw benefited also from her temporary aid. All three Zelazos survived the war. In her apartment hid also a 4 years old Ada Stezyc from where she was taken by the Czubczenkos. This couple in order to avoid suspicions that she is Jewish, moved to Wolomin and there registered her as its daughter. To her "adoptive" father she writes from Israel "My dearest papa". The mother of Leon Czubczenko, a dentist, Elzbieta, (q.v.) was also active in saving Jews. See: Grynberg, op. cit.


A unique black and white film about Jews in Wilno of 1939, in English


The Legacy of Jedwabne, a documentary about modern Jedwabne

[Bonobo]

Relentless terror and anti-Semitic propaganda were also taking their toll. With an ideology that turned every civilized concept of morality upside down, the Germans not only threatened with death all those who defied them but also rewarded those who co-operated with them. The Gestapo had paid informers from all ethnic groups, including Volksdeutsche, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Jews, on its payroll. Some were motivated by racist ideology, some by greed and still others by threats to themselves or their families. Organized crime, a kind of Mafia, also comprising elements from all ethnic groups, fed as it always does on the vulnerability of others. Then there were the marginal elements: the drunks, the punks and the moral and mental degenerates. All of them, collectively known as szmalcowniks-a derogatory term based on the Polish word szmalec meaning lard, were responsible for the deaths of many Jews and of their Polish protectors.
The Jews had to be helped to escape from the ghettos and the cer-tain death that awaited them. But just being on the Aryan side was a crime punishable by death, and the szmalcowniks were poised to exploit this situation for quick profits. Fighting this plague was one of Zegota's greatest challenges.


Translated excerpts from the Polish article


Poles have planted the most trees in Yad Vashem. 5874 righteous ones.
However, if anyone tried to "commemorate" those who gave away Jews for certain death, the number of trees would be equal or higher.
German archives prove that szmalcowniks weren`t a marginal problem. The underground press was also full of warnings and revelations about the new group of extortion experts. It is estimated that in Warsaw alone there were about 3000-4000 szmalcowniks.
Jews who lived on the Aryan side were more afraid of szmalcowniks than Germans. The latter were not clever enough to distinguish Jewish facial features. Poles were such experts.
Poes were also experts in psychology. "You have sad eyes - you must be Jewish. You are in a hurry - you are Jewish. You are looking around - you are Jewish." Also people who wore too many clothes were suspicious.
In the beginning szmalcowniks were satisfied with a few hundred zlotys extortion. After the death penalty was introduced by Germans, the sums rose to several hundred thousands zlotys.
Historians used to believe that szmalcowniks were notorious criminals. However, pre-war criminal records prove that less than 10% of them had been law offenders. The vast majority of them became criminals during the war. Among them were blue-collar workers, students, artists, traders, even a count.
Paradoxically, Germans treated szmalcowniks as criminals and exerted punishments on them. The reason was that szmalcowniks bribed German officials and policemen - after the denunciation of a rich Jew, szmalcowniks and corrupted Germans shared the robbed money.
The Polish underground punished szmalcowniks too, but the resources were too scanty, so most executions were carried out on those criminals who posed a danger to the underground itself.
After the war there were very few trials because most witnesses had already been dead or left the country.
We can assume that the majority of szmalcowniks have peacefully lived with us till old age.





"I know this Jew!"
Blackmailing of the Jews in Warsaw 1939-1945.

The book is based on the records of German courts from the war-time Warsaw. The book deals with the phenomenon of blackmail and extortion targeting Jewish population of Warsaw

From the introduction:

"(...) It is not a secret that in occupied Poland there were people who blackmailed their Jewish co-citizens. Contrary to frequent assertions, "szmalcownictwo" was not a marginal phenomenon but became a source of income to thousands of people. Scores of Warsaw citizens became direct (most often passive) witnesses of the process of extortion, and practically the entire society was aware of the on-going hunt for the hidden Jews. Although it is difficult to estimate the number of Jews betrayed and delivered to the Germans, the murderous activity of blackmailers and informers needs to be seen not only in terms of their immediate victims, but also in terms of deaths of all those who - fearing the "szmalcownicy" - decided to remain in the ghetto and shared the tragic fate of the majority of Warsaw's Jews". The blackmailers' crimes extend also to the victims of the widespread indifference and fear of the citizens of Warsaw. People who, in different circumstances, would have helped the desperate Jews, facing blackmailers and fearing denunciation, closed the door in fromt of those seeking refuge and shelter".

[Bonobo]

Poland embraces new effort to fight anti-Semitism
By VANESSA GERA, Associated Press Writer Vanessa Gera, Associated Press Writer – Thu Mar 5, 1:50 pm ET

WARSAW, Poland – A human rights group and Poland's Education Ministry introduced new teaching materials for Poland's middle schools on Thursday in an effort to combat anti-Semitism.

Poland is the fifth in a group of 12 countries adopting such workbooks, after Germany, Ukraine, Denmark and the Netherlands. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe guided the project as part of an overall effort to fight anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination.

Each country's texts cover similar topics, such as the history of anti-Semitism in Europe from the Middle Ages to World War II, but the books are written in the local language and focus on local issues.

Poland's books, for example, attempt to undermine a long-held assumption in Poland that a person cannot be Jewish and Polish at the same time. The notion has led to the exclusion of Jews from mainstream society and furthered the notion that they are foreign even though Jews first arrived 1,000 years ago.

"This is a problem in Poland — that identity is perceived through your religion or ethnicity," said Piotr Trojanski, a historian and one of the main authors of the project in Poland. "We would like to change this."

Jews made up 10 percent of the country's population before World War II, but most were killed in the Holocaust. Others were driven out during anti-Semitic campaigns sponsored by the former communist regime. But in the two decades since communism's fall, the country's small remaining Jewish community has gained new confidence and the mainly Roman Catholic country has shown a growing interest in remembering and honoring it.

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090305/ap_on_re_eu/eu_poland_anti_semitism