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Post by valpomike on Apr 26, 2008 17:16:44 GMT 1
We all, must never forget this. Mother Poland now lives on, growing each day, to become the best.
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Post by Bonobo on Apr 26, 2008 20:26:58 GMT 1
Jim, it is a very good idea to start such a thread. Yes, we will propagate this knowledge about the martyrdom of Poles. Polish plight during WW2 wasn`t so horrible as Jews`, who were doomed to anihilation without hope, but Poles suffered multiple losses too. Let`s talk about them. Szpęgawsk is one of a few thousand martyrdom sites which can be found all over Poland. As Jim said, about 7000 people were executed by Nazis there. Mostly Polish patriots and intelligentsia, also patients from nearby psychiatric hospitals. Szpęgawski Forest (Polish: Las Szpęgawski) is a forest located north of the town of Starogard Gdański, Pomeranian Voivodeship, northern Poland.     |
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Post by Bonobo on Apr 26, 2008 20:43:41 GMT 1
What did Nazi plan to do in Poland after conquering it? In short: kill the elite, enslave the rest, then gradually exterminate it or resettle to Siberia. Poland was to be German territory for ever. www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm
For many centuries the urge to expand eastwards has been a part of German history. To start with, the main aim of this Drang Nach Osten was the extension of the German frontiers at the expense of the Slav territories lying in the East. With the rise of modern German imperialism, which accompanied the rapid economic development in the 19th century, the field of ambition was considerably widened.
A relatively insignificant conquest of territory around its eastern borders was not enough for Imperial Germany; it was aiming at economic and political expansion far to the East. These imperialist objectives were taken over and considerably enlarged by Nazi Germany.
Drawing on the pseudo-scientific theory of racism, Nazism created its own version according to which the German people presented the highest virtues of mankind in the world and formed a race of supermen (Übermensch). In the context of this theory it was not difficult to build up a myth about the historical mission of the German nation and its sacred task to impose its authority on the whole of Europe and eventually on the whole world.
Almost from the first moment that Hitler came to power, the leaders of the Third Reich and National Socialist Party began to make preparations for the conquest of Europe and the creation of a "Thousand-Year Reich." In addition to the economic, military and strategic preparations, the expansion of the war industry, the storing of supplies, the training of the future troops, and the drafting of plans for aggression on individual countries, a blueprint was also drawn up for a new order in Europe to follow the successful conclusion of a war that was still to be launched. The rulers of the Third Reich never for a second doubted that this was a war that they could not and would not lose.
In these plans for the future political shape of Europe, the foremost place was occupied by the East, since the western part of the territories lying to the east of Germany were to increase the Lebensraum of the Nazi Herrenvolk [the living space of the Nazi master race]. The vast areas lying further to the East were to become an enormous German sphere of influence reaching deep into the heart of Asia. All these plans for the future organization of Europe were frequently discussed by Hitler and his closest colleagues.
[The Slavic territories lying to the east of Germany were particularly enticing as the Nazis considered their primarily Slavic inhabitants to be subhuman (Untermensch). The Nazis rationalized that the Germans, being a super human (Übermenschlich) race, had a biological right to displace, eliminate and enslave inferior Untermensch.
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Post by Bonobo on Apr 26, 2008 20:57:36 GMT 1
As has already been mentioned, the future of the East had been decided in what was known as Generalplan Ost. It is interesting, and not without significance, that the body responsible for the drafting of this plan was the Reich Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt - RSHA), that is, an agency whose task was to combat all enemies of Nazism and Nazi Germany. It was a strictly confidential document, and its contents were known only to those in the topmost level of the Nazi hierarchy. Unfortunately not a single copy could be found after the war among the documents in German archives. Nevertheless, that such a document existed is beyond doubt. It was confirmed by one of the witnesses in Case VIII before the American Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, SS-Standartenführer, Dr. Hans Ehlich, who as a high official in the RSHA was the man responsible for the drafting of Generalplan Ost. Apart from this, there are several documents which refer to this plan or are supplements to it.
Generalplan Ost presented the Nazi Reich and the German people with gigantic tasks. It called for the gradual preparation of a vast area of Eastern Europe for settlement by Germans and eventual absorption into the great Thousand-Year Reich. This area covered territory stretching from the eastern borders of Germany more or less to a line running from Lake Ladoga in the north to the Black Sea in the region of the Crimea in the south. The Thousand-Year Reich was thus to absorb the whole of Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic countries excepting Finland, (for the moment) and a huge chunk of the Soviet Union - most of Russia, Byelorussia, the Ukraine and the whole of the Crimea. According to the Plan, these areas were to be "germanized" before being incorporated into the Reich.
The provisions of the Plan were that 80-85 per cent of the Poles would have to be deported from the German settlement area - to regions in the East. This, according to German calculations, would involve about 20 million people. About 3-4 million - all of them peasants - suitable for Germanization as far as "racial values" were concerned - would be allowed to remain. They would be distributed among German majorities and Germanized within a single generation.
The 20 million Poles not suitable for Germanization TOP presented greater difficulties. Obviously they would have to be expelled from their native land; but the problem was what to do with them. Wetzel stated in his comments that the Polish question could not be settled in the same way as the Jewish. In his opinion, this might discredit the German nation in the eyes of the world for years to come. It might seem strange that this anxiety about world public opinion was not felt concerning "the final solution of the Jewish problem." Presumably the Nazi leaders thought that the extermination of the Jews would pass almost unnoticed in a world absorbed, as it then was, by a war effort on an unprecedented scale. In the Nazi plans, the final solution of the Jewish problem - that is the annihilation of European Jewry, was to be completed before the end of the war. The other argument used against mass extermination of the Poles was the fear that other nations in the East would feel themselves threatened by the same fate. There is, of course, no need to delude ourselves that humanitarian motives would have led the Nazis to shrink from mass annihilation of the Polish people or any other nation. If they rejected the methods tried out on the Jews, it was purely because of practical considerations - the fear that this threat to their existence might unite the Slav peoples in common opposition to Nazi rule. The Hitlerites reckoned that Germany, though master of vast areas after the triumphant conclusion of the war, would be considerably weakened in numbers.
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Post by Bonobo on Apr 26, 2008 22:42:52 GMT 1
When the German army invaded Poland in September 1939, the Nazis were determinated to transform Poland into a huge reserve of slave labor ready to be used by the German war industry. In order to reach this goal, the Nazis adopted a policy immediately:
* To exterminate the Polish elite (professors, lawyers, scientists, etc...).
* To exterminate any potential opponent.
* To close all places of education (school, college, universities) excepting primary and vocational schools.
* To forbid any cultural or political activities under death sentence.
* To create an exclusively German Zone by confiscating all private property and or simply killing the original Polish population.
In contrast to Nazi genocidal policy that targeted all of Poland's 3.3 million Jewish men, women, and children for destruction, Nazi plans for the Polish Catholic majority focused on the murder or suppression of political, religious, and intellectual leaders. This policy had two aims: first, to prevent Polish elites from organizing resistance or from ever regrouping into a governing class; second, to exploit Poland's leaderless, less educated majority of peasants and workers as unskilled laborers in agriculture and industry.
How was it done?:
We have already mentioned Szpegawsk Forest with 7000 buried victims. There are other such sites.
In Palmiry, near Warsaw, there are the graves of more than 2000 Poles, including many prominent representatives of Polish political and cultural circles.
During the summer of 1940, the SS rounded up members of the intelligentsia in the General Government. In this so-called A-B Aktion (Extraordinary Pacification Operation), several thousand university professors, teachers, priests, politicians, sportstmen, and others were shot.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmiry
Most of the victims were first arrested and tortured in the Pawiak prison in Warsaw, and then transferred to the execution site. Altogether, the remains of at least 2115 men and women were exhumed, but it is probable that not all bodies were found. Among the known victims were:
* Juliusz Dąbrowski, journalist and one of the leaders of Polish Scouting
* Witold Hulewicz, poet and radio journalist
* Stefan Kopeć, biologist and physiologist, professor of the University of Warsaw
* Janusz Kusociński, athlete, winner of 10 000 m at the 1932 Summer Olympics.
* Mieczysław Niedziałkowski, politician of the Polish Socialist Party
* Stanisław Piasecki, journalist, politician and art critic
* Jan Pohoski, politician, former deputy president of Warsaw
* Dawid Przepiórka, chess master
* Maciej Rataj, politician, Marshal of the Sejm
* Kazimierz Zakrzewski, scientist, professor of the University of Warsaw
Preparing to execution, blindfolding victims upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Polish_Hostages_preparing_in_Palmiry_by_Nazi-Germans_for_mass_execution_2.jpgGoing to execution site 
The site today   The plaque reads: 2115 Polish citizens are buried here, murdered by German occupants, they died because they were Polish  Symbolic tomb of Janusz Kusociński, the Olympic winner.   Jews were murdered there too.   .jpg)
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Post by Bonobo on May 12, 2008 0:11:41 GMT 1
The pacification operations in German-occupied Poland
Pacification operations are one example of the extermination policies used against Poland and were of a massive scale, resulting in the murders of approximately 20,000 villagers. They were mainly conducted in the areas of General Government, Pomorze, and in the vicinities of Białystok and Wielkopolska. The number of villages which were an object of pacification in Poland is approximately 825. Collective punishment was used during such operations to discourage both the hiding of Jews or Soviet POWs, and the aiding of any guerilla forces. Pacifications included the extermination of entire villages including women and children, expulsions, the burning of homes, confiscation of private property, and arrests. In many instances these operations were characterized by extreme brutality. An example of such behaviour is the burning alive of 81 civilians and the shooting of 15 others in the village of Jabłoń-Dobki.
Village Killed
Borów 232 (103 children)
Cyców 111
Jamy 147
Kaszyce 117
Kitów 174
Krasowo-Częstki 257 (83 children)
Krusze 148
Kulno 100
Lipniak-Majorat over 370
Łążek 187
Michniów 203 (48 children)
Milejów 150
Mrozy over 100
Olszanka 103
Rajsk over 143
Różaniec circa 200
Skłoby 265
Smoligów circa 200
Sochy 183
Sumin 118
Szczecyn 368 (71 children)
Wanaty 109
Zamość 470
Szczebrzeszyn 208
Łabunie 210
Krasnogród 285
Mokre 304
Nielisz 301
Nowa Osada 195
Radecznica 212
Skierbieszow 335
Stary Zamość 287
Suchowola 324
Sułów 252
Tereszpol 344
Wysokie 203
Zwierzyniec 412
Kitowa 165
Królewiec / Szałas over 100 eachPolish_farmers_killed_by_German_forces,_German-occupied_Poland,_1943 upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Polish_farmers_killed_by_German_forces%2C_German-occupied_Poland%2C_1943.jpg 
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Post by locopolaco on May 12, 2008 22:45:05 GMT 1
what do these "statutes" have to do with this? they are old pagan tokens to keep the devil at bay. hmmm |
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Post by Bonobo on May 12, 2008 23:55:29 GMT 1
what do these "statutes" have to do with this? they are old pagan tokens to keep the devil at bay. hmmm Hmm, don`t you really understand? I wasn`t joking about it. They stand in the village of Jamna. It experienced the brutal pacification in September 1944 , when Nazis burnt the vilage in retaliation for the aid it had given to partisans. 27 people died in flames or were shot. The wooden statues are symbolic representation of the dead. |
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Post by Bonobo on Jul 19, 2008 0:30:55 GMT 1
Parliament pays tribute to victims of 1943 massacre
Polish Radio
11.07.2008
The Polish Parliament has marked with a minute of silence the 65th
anniversary of the massacre of ethnic Poles in Volhynia during World
War II.
An estimated 30,000 to 60,000 Poles, including women, children and
elderly people, were murdered in an act of ethnic cleansing conducted by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The attacks started in November 1942, culminating in a massacre of Poles in three counties on 11 July 1943.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia
The Massacre of Poles in Volhynia (Polish: Rzez wolynska, Volhynian slaughter) was an act of ethnic cleansing against Polish civilians conducted by the Ukrainian nationalist groups in Volhynia (Polish: Wołyń) and eastern part of Galicia during World War II from late 1942 to early 1944.
In the interbellum period, Volhynia and eastern part of Galicia were scene of interethnic tensions between the Poles and the Ukrainians. After the outbreak of World War Two, they grew stronger, and after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the German administration encouraged inter-ethnic violence on the territories it administered. During that time, territories of Volhynia and Galicia became a theater of such inter-ethnic violence between Poles and Ukrainians. As a result an estimated tens of thousands were killed by various militant groups. The bulk of the killings took place in summer and autumn of 1943. The majority of the victims were Polish, massacred by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and other armed Ukrainian groups. In the cycle of violence that continued, Ukrainian, Czech and Jewish civilians were also killed. The numerical estimates vary widely and have become a subject of scholarly as well as political debate.
The decision to ethnically cleanse the area between the Bug river and pre-1939 eastern border of Second Polish Republic was taken by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army early in 1943. In March 1943, according to the claims of one of their rivals, the Banderites (including Mykola Lebed) imposed a collective death sentence of all Poles living in present Western Ukraine and a few months later local units of the UPA were instructed to complete the operation as soon as possible [1] The decision to cleanse the territory of its Polish population determined the course of events in the future [2]. Timothy Snyder writes that the cleansing of the Poles was the work of OUN-Bandera, founded by Stepan Bandera [3]. However, no known documents exist proving that the UPA-OUN made a decision to exterminate Poles in Volhynia.[4]Ukrainian nationalists were extremely cruel. Before killing, they tortured their victims... Yes, Poles were not angels when they had controlled this part of Ukraine before the war but Ukrainian barbarism in 1943 was exceptional. Beasts...
Polish historian Ryszard Szawlowski, to describe events in Volhynia and eastern Galicia, coined term genocidium atrox (wild genocide). According to him, Ukrainian nationalists did not only kill all Poles they encountered, regardless of age and sex, but also in most cases used tortures of the utmost brutality. Furthermore, they destroyed most signs of Polish presence in the area, including houses, churches, sometimes even orchardsMurdered Poles in the village of Lipniki   The village of Połowce  Chobułtowa  and many other...
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Post by franciszek on Dec 12, 2008 23:03:24 GMT 1
This part of our worlds history has and always will disturb and make me feel unwell i will never forget it and when my son is old enough to understand i will show him the suffering his ancestors went through some things in history maybe forgotten but this is far to big just to go away.
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Post by Bonobo on Jan 25, 2009 21:54:47 GMT 1
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum site about Polish martyrology: www.ushmm.org/education/resource/poles/poles.php
During World War II Poland suffered greatly under five years of German occupation. Nazi ideology viewed "Poles"- the predominantly Roman Catholic ethnic majority- as "sub-humans" occupying lands vital to Germany. As part of the policy to destroy the Polish resistance, the Germans killed many of the nation's political, religious, and intellectual leaders. They also kidnapped children judged racially suitable for adoption by Germans and confined Poles in dozens of prisons and concentration and forced labor camps, where many perished.
THE INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF POLAND
German forces invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Polish troops fought valiantly in the face of vastly better equipped forces, with fierce engagements around Warsaw. Exhausted of food and water, the besieged capital surrendered on September 27, and fighting by regular Polish army units ended in early October.
Hitler's pretext for military expansion eastward was the "need" for more Lebensraum, "living space," for the German nation. On the eve of the invasion he reportedly stated in a meeting of high officials:
I have issued the command and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by firing squad-that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness—for the present only in the East— with orders to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space that we need.
In 1939 Germany directly annexed bordering western and northern Poland, disputed lands where many ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) resided. In contrast, the more extensive central and southern areas were formed into a separate "General Government," which was ruled by German civil administrator Hans Frank. Cracow became the capital of the General Government, as the Germans planned to turn the Polish capital of Warsaw into a backwater town. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Germany also seized eastern Poland. (This territory had been invaded and occupied by the Soviets in September 1939, in accordance with the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 1939 that divided Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union.)
One aspect of German policy in conquered Poland aimed to prevent its ethnically diverse population from uniting against Germany. "We need to divide [Poland's many different ethnic groups] up into as many parts and splinter groups as possible," wrote Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, in a top-secret -memorandum, "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East," dated May 25, 1940. According to the 1931 census by language, 69% of the population totaling 35 million inhabitants spoke Polish as their mother tongue. (Most of them were Roman Catholics.) Fifteen per cent were Ukrainians, 8.5% Jews, 4.7% Belorussians, and 2.2% Germans. Nearly three-fourths of the population were peasants or agricultural laborers, and another fifth, industrial workers. Poland had a small middle and upper class of well-educated professionals, entrepreneurs, and landowners.
In contrast to Nazi genocidal policy that targeted all of Poland's 3.3 million Jewish men, women, and children for destruction, Nazi plans for the Polish Catholic majority focused on the murder or suppression of political, religious, and intellectual leaders. This policy had two aims: first, to prevent Polish elites from organizing resistance or from ever regrouping into a governing class; second, to exploit Poland's leaderless, less educated majority of peasants and workers as unskilled laborers in agriculture and industry.
TERROR AGAINST THE INTELLIGENTSIA AND CLERGY
During the 1939 German invasion of Poland, special action squads of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen) were deployed in the rear, arresting or killing those civilians caught resisting the Germans or considered capable of doing so as determined by their position and social status. Tens of thousands of wealthy landowners, clergymen, and members of the intelligentsia—government officials, teachers, doctors, dentists, officers, journalists, and others (both Poles and Jews)—were either murdered in mass executions or sent to prisons and concentration camps. German army units and "self-defense" forces composed of Volksdeutsche also participated in executions of civilians. In many instances, these executions were reprisal actions that held entire communities collectively responsible for the killing of Germans.
During the summer of 1940, the SS rounded up members of the intelligentsia in the General Government. In this so-called A-B Aktion (Extraordinary Pacification Operation), several thousand university professors, teachers, priests, and others were shot. The mass murders occurred outside Warsaw, in the Kampinos forest near Palmiry, and inside the city at the Pawiak prison.
As part of wider efforts to destroy Polish culture, the Germans closed or destroyed universities, schools, museums, libraries, and scientific laboratories. They demolished hundreds of monuments to national heroes. To prevent the birth of a new generation of educated Poles, German officials decreed that Polish children's schooling end after a few years of elementary education. "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. . . . I do not think that reading is desirable," Himmler wrote in his May 1940 memorandum.
In the annexed lands, the Nazis' goal was complete "Germanization" to assimilate the territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich. They applied this policy most rigorously in western incorporated territories—the so-called Wartheland. There, the Germans closed even elementary schools where Polish was the language of instruction. They renamed streets and cities so that Lodz became Litzmannstadt, for example. They also seized tens of thousands of Polish enterprises, from large industrial firms to small shops, without payment to the owners. Signs posted in public places warned: "Entrance is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs."
The Roman Catholic Church was suppressed throughout Poland because historically it had led Polish nationalist forces fighting for Poland's independence from outside domination. The Germans treated the Church most harshly in the annexed regions, as they systematically closed churches there; most priests were either killed, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government. The Germans also closed seminaries and convents, persecuting monks and nuns. Between 1939 and 1945 an estimated 3,000 members of the Polish clergy were killed; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps, 787 of them at Dachau.
EXPULSIONS AND THE KIDNAPPING OF CHILDREN
The Germanization of the annexed lands also included an ambitious program to resettle Germans from the Baltic and other regions on farms and other homes formerly occupied by Poles and Jews. Beginning in October 1939, the SS began to expel Poles and Jews from the Wartheland and the Danzig corridor and transport them to the General Government. By the end of 1940, the SS had expelled 325,000 people without warning and plundered their property and belongings. Many elderly people and children died en route or in makeshift transit camps such as those in the towns of Potulice, Smukal, and Torun. In 1941, the Germans expelled 45,000 more people, but they scaled backed the program after the invasion of the Soviet Union in late June 1941. Trains used for resettlement were more urgently needed to transport soldiers and supplies to the front.
In late 1942 and in 1943, the SS also carried out massive expulsions in the General Government, uprooting 110,000 Poles from 300 villages in the Zamosc-Lublin region. Families were torn apart as able-bodied teens and adults were taken for forced labor and elderly, young, and disabled persons were moved to other localities. Tens of thousands were also imprisoned in Auschwitz or Majdanek concentration camps.
During the Zamosc expulsions the Germans seized many children from their parents to be racially screened for possible adoption by German parents in the SS Lebensborn ("Fount of Life") program. As many as 4,454 children chosen for Germanization were given German names, forbidden to speak Polish, and reeducated in SS or other Nazi institutions, where many died of hunger or disease. Few ever saw their parents again. Many more children were rejected as unsuitable for Germanization after failing to measure up to racial scientists' criteria for establishing "Aryan" ancestry; they were sent to children's homes or killed, some of them at Auschwitz of phenol injections. An estimated total of 50,000 children were kidnapped in Poland, the majority taken from orphanages and foster homes in the annexed lands. Infants born to Polish women deported to Germany as farm and factory laborers were also usually taken from the mothers and subjected to Germanization. (If an examination of the father and mother suggested that a "racially valuable" child might not result from the union, abortion was compulsory.)
The Zamosc expulsions spurred intense resistance as the Poles began to fear they were to suffer the same fate as the Jews—systematic deportation to extermination camps. Attacks on ethnic German settlers by members of the Polish resistance, whose ranks were filled with terrorized peasants, in turn provoked mass executions or other forms of German terror.
Throughout the occupation, the Germans applied a ruthless retaliation policy in an attempt to destroy resistance. As the Polish resistance grew bolder in 1943 after the German defeat at Stalingrad, German reprisal efforts escalated. The Germans destroyed dozens of villages, killing men, women, and children. Public executions by hanging or shooting in Warsaw and other cities occurred daily. During the war the Germans destroyed at least 300 villages in Poland.
FORCED LABOR AND TERROR OF THE CAMPS
Between 1939 and 1945 at least 1.5 million Polish citizens were transported to the Reich for labor, most of them against their will. Many were teenaged boys and girls. Although Germany also used forced laborers from western Europe, Poles, along with other eastern Europeans viewed as inferior, were subject to especially harsh discriminatory measures. They were forced to wear identifying purple P's sewn to their clothing, subjected to a curfew, and banned from public transportation. While the actual treatment accorded factory workers or farm hands often varied depending on the individual employer, Polish laborers as a rule were compelled to work longer hours for lower wages than western Europeans, and in many cities they lived in segregated barracks behind barbed wire. Social relations with Germans outside work were forbidden, and sexual relations with them were considered "racial defilement" punishable by death. During the war hundreds of Polish men were executed for their relations with German women.
Poles were prisoners in nearly every camp in the extensive camp system in German-occupied Poland and the Reich. A major camp complex at Stutthof, east of Danzig, existed from September 2, 1939, to war's end, and an estimated 20,000 Poles died there as a result of executions, hard labor, and harsh conditions. Auschwitz (Oswiecim) became the main concentration camp for Poles after the arrival there on June 14, 1940, of 728 men transported from an overcrowded prison at Tarnow. By March 1941, 10,900 prisoners were registered at the camp, most of them Poles. In September 1941, 200 ill prisoners, most of them Poles, along with 650 Soviet prisoners of war, were killed in the first gassing experiments at Auschwitz. Beginning in 1942, Auschwitz's prisoner population became much more diverse, as Jews and other "enemies of the state" from all over German-occupied Europe were deported to the camp.
The Polish scholar Franciszek Piper, the chief historian of Auschwitz, estimates that 140,000 to 150,000 Poles were brought to that camp between 1940 and 1945, and that 70,000 to 75,000 died there as victims of executions, of cruel medical experiments, and of starvation and disease. Some 100,000 Poles were deported to Majdanek, and tens of thousands of them died there. An estimated 20,000 Poles died at Sachsenhausen, 20,000 at Gross-Rosen, 30,000 at Mauthausen, 17,000 at Neuengamme, 10,000 at Dachau, and 17,000 at Ravensbrueck. In addition, victims in the tens of thousands were executed or died in the thousands of other camps-including special children's camps such as Lodz and its subcamp, Dzierzazn—and in prisons and other places of detention within and outside Poland.
POLISH RESISTANCE
In response to the German occupation, Poles organized one of the largest underground movements in Europe with more than 300 widely supported political and military groups and subgroups. Despite military defeat, the Polish government itself never surrendered. In 1940 a Polish government-in-exile became based in London. Resistance groups inside Poland set up underground courts for trying collaborators and others and clandestine schools in response to the Germans' closing of many educational institutions. The universities of Warsaw, Cracow, and Lvov all operated clandestinely. Officers of the regular Polish army headed an underground armed force, the "Home Army" (Armia Krajowa—AK). After preliminary organizational activities, including the training of fighters and hoarding of weapons, the AK activated partisan units in many parts of Poland in 1943. A Communist underground, the "People's Guard" (Gwardia Ludowa), also formed in 1942, but its military strength and influence were comparatively weak.
With the approach of the Soviet army imminent, the AK launched an uprising in Warsaw against the German army on August 1, 1944. After 63 days of bitter fighting, the Germans quashed the insurrection. The Soviet army provided little assistance to the Poles. Nearly 250,000 Poles, most of them civilians, lost their lives. The Germans deported hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to concentration camps. Many others were transported to the Reich for forced labor. Acting on Hitler's orders, German forces reduced the city to rubble, greatly extending the destruction begun during their suppression of the earlier armed uprising by Jewish fighters resisting deportation from the Warsaw ghetto in April 1943.
CONCLUSION
The Nazi terror was, in scholar Norman Davies's words, "much fiercer and more protracted in Poland than anywhere in Europe." Reliable statistics for the total number of Poles who died as a result of Nazi German policies do not exist. Many others were victims of the 1939-1941 Soviet occupation of eastern Poland and of deportations to Central Asia and Siberia. Records are incomplete, and the Soviet control of Poland for 50 years after the war impeded independent scholarship.
The changing borders and ethnic composition of Poland as well as vast population movements during and after the war also complicated the task of calculating losses.
In the past, many estimates of losses were based on a Polish report of 1947 requesting reparations from the Germans; this often cited document tallied population losses of 6 million for all Polish "nationals" (Poles, Jews, and other minorities). Subtracting 3 million Polish Jewish victims, the report claimed 3 million non-Jewish victims of the Nazi terror, including civilian and military casualties of war.
Documentation remains fragmentary, but today scholars of independent Poland believe that 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish civilians (non-Jews) were victims of German Occupation policies and the war. This approximate total includes Poles killed in executions or who died in prisons, forced labor, and concentration camps. It also includes an estimated 225,000 civilian victims of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, more than 50,000 civilians who died during the 1939 invasion and siege of Warsaw, and a relatively small but unknown number of civilians killed during the Allies' military campaign of 1944—45 to liberate Poland. |
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Post by valpomike on Jan 26, 2009 0:07:47 GMT 1
Let us never forget what happened here, and who did it.
Mike
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Post by Bonobo on Mar 6, 2009 21:19:14 GMT 1
The Forgotten Holocaust A somber look at WWII from a childhood war survivor Carly Cretney and Jesica Eastman Daily Titan Staff Writers
Sitting in her elegant Chino Hills home, Eddy Raymond looks like the grandmother everyone wants to have. With her dog, Coco, jumping on the brown leather couches, Raymond modestly explains that she created most of the art in her home. With the walls decorated in original acrylic paintings, it is difficult to imagine that Raymond’s childhood was horrific.
Her story is one the American public does not know much about, Cora Granata said, a Cal State Fullerton professor of history and the advisor of the European Studies Society. “So many ordinary peoples' lives were dramatically uprooted during the war and this is one of those stories," she said.
Growing up in Poland, in an area now considered Ukraine, 5-year-old Raymond and her family were deported during WWII and suffered through the Holocaust caused by Stalin and Hitler.
"We were all horrified by the (German) holocaust," Raymond said. "I feel there was another holocaust happening in Russia that is never talked about, and it happened at the same time."
Stalin and Hitler had an agreement to divide Poland, Raymond said at a lecture at CSUF late last week.
Raymond's speech was of a larger series by the European Studies Society. "It was designed by the European Studies Society out of the curiosity for the recent past," Jacqueline Alvarino, president of the ESS, said. "We so often read in history books, but never experience the first-hand account".
Targeted by the Russians because her family owned land, Raymond and her family were snatched from their home in the middle of the night and were crammed into cattle train cars with hundreds of people. The walls of the train car were boarded up and froze over. During the six-week journey, the conditions were deplorable. There were no bathrooms, just a hole in the floor. They had to collect snow out of the same hole so they could drink, and as the temperature rose the bugs came out of the walls. Everyone was covered with insect bites and weak from malnutrition, she said.
"The trains would stop between stations so the guards could throw out all the dead. Mothers were forced to throw their babies out into the snow," Raymond said. "One woman passed around a handkerchief and asked if everyone would spit in it so her baby could have something to suck on...of course the baby didn't make it," she said.
When Raymond, her parents, sister and brother arrived at a slave labor camp in Khristoforovo, Archangel’sk, in Siberia, they were near starvation and had developed boils, abscesses, rashes and bleeding gums.
At the slave camp, every person, including children, was assigned heavy labor. Food was rationed to morsels of bread, no medical care was provided and the freezing winter was unbearable.
Because of the cramped conditions, death was inevitable.
“One of the victims was my little brother who died a year after our deportation, and who just turned four years old. His last words were begging for food – ‘Just one little potato,’ he pleaded, but there was none to give him. We all sat by him and watched helplessly as he took his last breath,” Raymond said.
Soon after her brother’s death, Stalin gave the family and other deportees amnesty because he needed soldiers and wanted to cover up the outrage he had committed, Raymond said.
Without food, money or transportation, Raymond’s family joined the hundreds of thousands of other Poles emerging from the prisons all over the Soviet Union streaming to the south, where an army was said to be forming.
The journey started in August or September 1941 and lasted until March 1942, with untold casualties along the way, Raymond said. “By this time my sister and I, like zombies, almost catatonic, needed constant direction to eat and sleep,” she said.
Her father tried to sign up for the army, but was dying of Typhoid and was taken away for treatment. Her mother found him in a pile of dead bodies outside the hospital.
Raymond's mother buried him herself, while very ill with Pellagra, a vitamin deficiency disease causing skin lesions, confusion, paralysis and can lead to dementia, according to Webster's Medical Dictionary. With her mother so ill, Raymond and her sister were taken to an orphanage. The orphans survived by begging, working in collective farms and following the crowds.
Many children died at a spot known as the Valley of Death.
“Here nature conspired against life. The incredible heat would start at the beginning of the year … the land would turn into a desert as the water dried up,” Raymond said. “The orphanage turned into a death camp. A deadly silence descended upon it, uninterrupted by the sound from children."
It is at the Valley of Death, Raymond nearly died from Typhoid. Coffins were in short supply, so bodies were taken out in their underwear and thrown into mass graves in the desert.
Soon after, India offered amnesty for the orphans, separating Raymond from her mother. Her mother joined the Polish army so she could leave as well, Raymond said. As they waited to be put on a ship, stronger people pushed onto the boats while some who barely clung to life crawled within inches of freedom. When inside the boat, suffocating like the cattle cars, the bodies of the dead were thrown overboard.
“They followed the ship for miles in its wake," Raymond said about the corpses.
Arriving on the Persian beaches of the Caspian Sea in summer 1942, the Polish throngs were given some short-lived relief.
“We were inoculated and given a proper diet; dirt was scraped off our bodies, hair was shaved off, lice-infected clothing was burned,” she said.
Approximately 600 people, mostly children, died just after finding freedom. The authorities moved the crowds because of their size and diseases farther south, where Raymond was taken to Tehran, Iran.
"No one knew the state they would be in," Raymond said about the refugees.
Raymond fell ill with Typhoid fever again, while her sister nearly died of Malaria. "Once again the death toll was staggering," Raymond said.
Over 2,000 people died. The cemetery filled up and coffins ran out. Another cemetery had to be made for them. Many of the graves are marked for the "nameless dead," Raymond said.
They were moved to a Persian orphanage with schools. Wealthy Persians lent their summer homes for them. They could not stay for fear that Soviet soldiers would take the children to cover up their atrocities. Great Britain offered up the African colonies. Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada and Mexico also offered refuge. Raymond and her sister set off for Mexico. First they went to India. In Bombay, they boarded a boat with American soldiers who were being sent home. Once in open water, they were hit by a torpedo. They had to sit silent in life jackets for a day while they waited until it was safe.
"Since our presence in the United States was deemed an embarrassment to Stalin, because he was an ally, we were denied a home here," Raymond said.
They were transferred to Central Mexico. At this time they finally got in contact with their mother, who had fled to England and joined the Air Force.
Soon after, the State Department under Truman, granted amnesty to the orphans. Raymond and her sister moved to an orphanage in Buffalo, N.Y.
At the lecture event, Sargeant explained that even now it is hard for the victims to memorialize their suffering. Propaganda and misinformation about what happened keep stories like Raymond's hidden. Sargeant said these victims are, "struggling against attempts to willfully forget the darker past of the Soviet and Russian experience."
The lecture series started as an assignment given by Granata, in which she asked students to interview war survivors. Some of those people became the first speakers in their series. They are sought out now because their generation is passing on, and their voices give an eyewitness version of history. The ESS itself is an interdisciplinary club for anyone interested in Europe, whether it is for travel, international business or history, Granata said.
"The reality of the experience was painful from the very beginning," Sargeant said. "They were constantly under surveillance, constantly under very, very cruel regimes, and they were unable to control anything about their lives. Even those who survived bared the scars forever."
After her horrendous childhood, Raymond because a U.S. Marine and was stationed in El Toro. To her, America became a home to rest her weary hands and heal her war-torn heart.
“I have a difficult time with the mindlessness of war and the way civilians are ignored,” Raymond said. “It’s focused too much on marines and airplanes. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing.”dailytitan.com/news/the_forgotten_holocaust-1.1594229
Eddy Raymond and her parents, brother and sister, began her journey in Kalus, 100 miles southeast of Lvov, which is now Ukraine. The family of five was ransacked in the middle of the night, and forced to board a cattle train car bound for a labor camp in Siberia. Stalin granted amnesty to terrorized Poles, a move considered a way to camouflage the outrage he committed. Her family headed south by foot, with little provisions and no money, traveling through Kirov, Saratov, Kuybyshev, Chelyabinsk, dailytitan.com/polopoly_fs/1.1595535!image/1268493398.jpg  |
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Post by Bonobo on Mar 14, 2009 22:15:51 GMT 1
Read two messages about the anniversary of the massacre of Polish inhabitants of Huta Pieniacka. It seems Ukrainians have great objections to admit the crime was committed by Ukrainian partisans.
1 Polish news
Polish and Ukrainian heads of state commemorate victims of ethnic
cleansing
Polish Radio
28.02.2009
President Lech Kaczyñski and his Ukrainian counterpart are taking
part in today's observances commemorating the 65th anniversary of the murder of Polish residents of the Huta Pieniacka village located in the southeastern parts of the country.
The observances were predominantly of religious character, and were attended by representatives of the Orthdox, Catholic and the Greek Catholic Churches.
Poland and Ukraine hold different views on the responsibility for the
massacres of Poles in Volhynia that took place between 1943 and 1945, with Poland laying the blame on the SS-Galizien division commanded by German and Ukrainian officials and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Meanwhile, Ukraine insists that it was the German Nazis that were responsible for the atrocities.
Head of the Presidential Chancellery, Piotr Kownacki has stated that
the president was not evading difficult issues in the Polish and
Ukrainian relations. He stressed, however, that the relations with
Poland's eastern neighbour must be approached without emotions:
"It is necessary to insist on honouring the memory of Poles killed
during the ethnic cleansing in Volhynia, and at the same time try to
develop the strongest ties possible with Ukraine. And that is exactly
what the president is doing."
2. Ukrainian news
Ukrainian, Polish presidents commemorate victims of tragedy in Lviv
region
The Kyiv Post
3/1/09
Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko and Polish President Lech
Kaczynski have attended the events to commemorate the victims of a tragedy, which took place 65 years ago the village Huta Peniatska, Brody district, on Saturday.
The two presidents laid flowers to the monument to the tragedy
victims, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent has said.
There were many great events in the history of Ukraine and Poland,
Kaczynski said. "But today we are speaking about the most difficult
moments and it is good that we cans speak of them now, as it is what a real friendship between the peoples is," the Polish president said, noting that this crime has broken the trust between Ukrainians and Poles for decades.
In turn, the Ukrainian president said that the two peoples have
rather a complicated common past. "Today I am obliged to be hear side by side with my Polish counterpart. I want to show thus that a
Ukrainian has once and forever offered a hand of friendship and
understanding to a Pole," Yuschenko said.
Besides, Yuschenko and Kaczynski will commemorate the victims of
Bolshevist repressions in the city of Brody.
On February 28 1944, the German police officers have conducted a
punitive operation killing among others several hundreds of Poles
residing at Huta Peniatska following a fight between Soviet partisans and a unit made up of Ukrainians.
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Post by Bonobo on Apr 22, 2009 6:10:34 GMT 1
Notorious SS unit 'traced'
Polish authorities claim to have identified three survivors of an infamous SS unit that garnered a reputation for brutality that shocked even German wartime commanders.
By Matthew Day in Warsaw
telegraph.co. uk
17 Apr 2009
Prosecutors attached to Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), the body charged with investigating crimes committed during the war, have announced that they intend to bring the men to justice for their apparent involvement in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising while serving with the SS Dirlewanger Brigade.
The unit, named after its leader Oscar Dirlewanger, comprised of criminals, the criminally insane and volunteers from Nazi-occupied Europe, and developed a reputation for rape, torture and murder, vicious even by the Nazi's bloody standards.
The three, who live in Germany, were found after the Austrian Red Cross gave a Polish museum a card index containing the names and address of those who served in the unit.
Investigators claim to have tracked them down, but the ex-soldiers refused to speak on the phone about the war.
Boguslaw Czerwinski, a prosecutor with the IPN, said that they had now asked for German assistance in bringing the three men to justice and were awaiting a reply.
"It's too early to say where the case will be prosecuted because none of the ex-soldiers questioned by the German authorities have yet to face charges," Mr Czerwinski added.
But Poland would be eager to bring to justice anybody linked to one of the saddest and bloodiest chapters of the nation's history.
At the start of the uprising in August 1944 the Dirlewanger Brigade joined German units engaged in bitter fighting against Polish forces seeking to regain control of their country's capital.
In the first few days the month, and in an effort to break the will of the resistance, it played a key role in the indiscriminate slaughter of thousands of Polish civilians. British historian Norman Davies estimates that on just August 5 alone some 35,000 men, women and children were killed in cold blood.
Given a free rein by SS commander-in- chief Heinrich Himmler, Dirlewanger' s men also participated in gang rape, torture and the practice of bayoneting babies as a way of striking terror into Poles.
Such was the level of violence that one SS man from another unit described the brigade as "more a group of pigs than soldiers" while General Heinz Guderian wrote in his memoirs that on hearing the "hair-raising news" from Warsaw he asked Hitler to post the Dirlewanger Brigade to the Eastern Front.
Himmler also ordered German police units to stand by in case the brigade, which was at times out of control, turned on regular forces.
Earlier in the war an SS judge and investigator had taken the remarkable step of attempting to prosecute Dirlewanger for war crimes owing to atrocities committed by his brigade while fighting Soviet partisans.  www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/dirlewanger.htmlHis unit was also active in the suppression of the Polish uprising in Warsaw which commenced in August 1944. By the 5 August Dirlewanger had sixteen officers and 865 men in Warsaw. While the fighting was in progress the unit received 2,500 troops of which 1,900 came from the SS Prison Camp at Matzkau near Danzig. At the end of the uprising Dirlewanger had only 648 men left.
On 5 August Dirlewanger’s SS barbarians advanced about 1,000 yards – in every single street in the Wola district of Warsaw. In every single street in Wola recaptured by the Germans, far behind the frontline, the inhabitants were ordered to leave their homes, induced by promises of evacuation.
As soon as large groups of civilians assembled on the streets, they were not taken to evacuation points but were herded together in cemeteries, gardens, back yards, factory forecourts or squares, soldiers then fired machine gun bursts into the human mass until there were no further signs of movement.
On the 5 August no one was spared – everyone perished innocents, old men, women and children, as well as members of the Polish AK - the soldiers piled the corpses in large heaps, poured petrol over them and set them on fire.
Hospitals in the Wola and Ochota areas suffered worst of all that day. The “good fellows” as Himmler called them, with Dirlewanger at their head, stormed into the wards, shot the sick and wounded where they lay. Nurses, nuns, helpers and doctors suffered the same fate. Polish civilians murdered by the Dirlewanger's men in Warsaw, 1944. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Polish_civilians_murdered_by_German-SS-troops_in_Warsaw_Uprising_Warsaw_August_1944.jpgen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Dirlewanger
Later, Dirlewanger's unit was used in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising at the specific request of Himmler, who was so deeply enraged at the continued resistance of the Warsaw Poles that he sought to utilize the unit's penchant for sadistic and bloodthirsty terrorism to quickly break the will of the remaining Polish fighters. By this stage in the unit's history, the brigade's ethos had become so degenerate and indiscriminate that Himmler was forced to detail several companies of military police to protect nearby German units and ensure the Dirlewanger men only targeted the Poles.[3] The unit was encouraged by Himmler to terrorize freely, take no prisoners, and generally indulge their perverse tendencies; favored tactics of the Dirlewanger men during the siege reportedly included the ubiquitous gang rape of female Poles (both women and children), playing "bayonet catch" with live babies, and torturing captives to death by hacking off their arms, dousing them with gasoline, and setting them alight to run armless and flaming down the street. [4][5] The Dirlewanger brigade committed almost nonstop atrocities during this period, (in particular the four-day Wola massacre), for which Dirlewanger and his superior Erich von dem Bach were awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on September 30, 1944.
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Post by valpomike on Apr 22, 2009 20:25:37 GMT 1
If there are any of these RATS, still around, they must be hunted down and dealt with.
Many people, still suffer for what they did to them.
Mike
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Post by Bonobo on May 9, 2009 22:37:36 GMT 1
t takes heroic Poland - and the truth about Katyn - to show us how evil Communism is
Ed West
telegraph.co. uk
May 3, 2009
I'm an unashamed Polonophile. If you grew up in a certain kind of Irish-British Catholic household in the 1980s, Poland was a heroic and tragic fairytale kingdom that, having endured the neo-pagan Nazis, was now held captive by the godless Soviets – and yet maintained its faith, chivarly and honour.
The story of medieval Christian chivalry battling against the monstrous modernists had a Tokeinesque grandeur to it (or Lucasian, you could stay – Star Wars has similar themes) and the election of John Paul II, and the overthrow of the Communists in early 1989, was the end of the hero's journey. The Evil Empire was destroyed.
Katyn tells the truth about Communism
The Soviet Union was certainly evil and one its worst moments was Katyn, the massacre of 12,000 Polish officers, policemen and intellectuals in April 1940. The Nazis discovered the bodies in 1943 but for some reason no one believed them when they said they hadn't done it this time. Our Russians maintained this lie and the West went along with it, as we went along with Stalin's vicious colonisation of our ally.
The massacre, and the subsequent battle for the truth, is the subject of an overwhelming new Polish film, Katyn. I went to a screening last week and, rarely for review screenings, there was total silence afterwards. The audience was stunned
The last 20 minutes is incredibly powerful, certainly the most devastating account of Communism's inhumanity I have ever seen. Without much melodrama we see unarmed men being taken from trains to trucks and down into a bunker and shot. Others are brought to the edge of the mass grave where their now lifeless friends lie in piles, and shot in the back of the head. The men – who have mothers and sisters and wives and daughters back home – say their prayers and clutch their rosaries. Their executioners impassively murder them and then share cigarettes, before burying the bodies and bayonetting the survivors.
The horrors of Nazism are so well known they are part of the cultural landscape. But even the wrongs committed by the West during the Cold War have been endlessly chronicled in cinema, television and theatre. Compare the number of films and plays about Senator McCarthy's victims (who lost their careers) compared to productions about Beria and Stalin's victims (who lost their lives).
It's because Western artists prefer not to tackle Left-wing tyrannies that Communism has always been given an easy ride.
People walk around with CCCP football tops, wear Che T-shirts, or go drinking in vodka bars called Revolution (an especially tasteless idea – would the council allow me to open a Nazi-themed bar called Lebensraum? Admittedly it would become a gay bar pretty soon). When David Beckham turned up one day wearing an Adolf Eichmann T-shirt I thought maybe for one second it was a protest about the casual way mass murderers are turned into icons (what Mark in Peep Show calls the "ironic veneration of tyrants").
We shouldn't forget how bad the Soviet Union was, especially to heroic Poland. Katyn is out on 19 June – watch it, and next time you see someone wearing a Che T-shirt, punch them.--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Witold Rygiel was a 15-year-old Polish Underground Army member when he was taken to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland in 1941.
By Cara Brady - Vernon Morning Star
May 02, 2009
Poles growing up in the 1920s and `30s were patriotic, proud that their country had been free since 1918 for the first time in two centuries.
"In 1939, we again fell into the hands of the Germans," said Witold Rygiel, who was a 13-year-old student in Warsaw at the time. "Now I am 83 and I think this is my last opportunity to tell my story on the 64th anniversary of one of the greatest tragedies at sea where about 7,000 prisoners of concentration camps were killed by RAF planes May 3, 1945. There were only about 50 survivors of the ship where I was, and I was one of the youngest so I think there are not many of us now."
Like many young Poles, he joined the Polish Underground Army, taking on the dangerous job of reporting on the movements of the Gestapo in the city, and interfering with operations by tactics like putting sugar in gas tanks and puncturing tires on vehicles. The Gestapo found out about one of their meetings and took 21 young men prisoner, eventually sending them to Auschwitz concentration camp in southern Poland.
Rygiel recalled that Poland, France and England had had an agreement to provide assistance to each other in case one of the countries was invaded by Germany but England and France did not follow the agreement until England was attacked by Germany. Poland was left on its own against the Germans at first.
A photo taken in 1941 at Auschwitz (concentration camp records were well-kept), shows a 15-year-old Rygiel with no idea of what was to come.
"You were actually not supposed to survive three months at Auschwitz. We did hard physical work, sometimes throwing sand from one place to another for 16 hours a day with minimal food, to exhaust us to death. I was the only one of our group to survive. It was just luck," he said.
The average number of people in the camp was 16,000 with 2,000 to 4,000 new people arriving every day, mainly Jews from all over Europe. Most were sent immediately to the four crematoriums which burned night and day to kill 2,600 people every day. Some of the younger, stronger men were saved to be workers in the camp.
Rygiel was moved to Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, Germany where he was forced to work in a munitions factory.
"There were links to the outside and secret radios. We knew the movements of the armies and could observe the British and American airplanes bombing Hamburg almost every day. Sometimes we were made to go to Hamburg to clear the houses and the burned corpses of the people. The phosphorous bombs reached enormous temperatures. Everyone was just waiting for the end of the war. We knew that the Western Front was moving closer."
But that part of Germany was still under Nazi control. The end of April 1945, Himmler gave orders to destroy all evidence of the existence of concentration camps, that they should be eliminated and no prisoners from the camp should be allowed to fall into the hands of the Allies alive. The rapid advance of the Allies prompted an evacuation of the Neuengamme.
"On the 24th of April 1945, the 14,000 prisoners were formed in columns and we started walking east. We had absolutely no idea what was happening. It was a death march. People who died were left by the roadside. I had acute appendicitis the whole time. We walked 170 kilometres to the port of Lubeck and it took a week. When we arrived, there were about 7,000 people left," said Rygiel.
The prisoners took some comfort in seeing the British planes fly low over them but not harass them. It seemed that help might not be far away.
"We were put on three ships, then two ships, the larger Cap Arcona, which had been a luxury liner, and the smaller freighter Thielbek, where I was with about 2,600 others, mostly Poles. We were anchored five kilometres from shore and we did not know at the time that the ships were going to be sunk by the Germans on the evening of May 3. In the afternoon, we heard shooting on the shore and recognized it was the British. We were quite excited that this was the end of the war. About 3 p.m., several squadrons of British planes flew low and circled the ships, low enough to see we were prisoners by our striped clothes and we waved white flags. They knew who we were. I could even see the face of one pilot in the cockpit."
About 15 minutes later the unthinkable happened.
"Similar planes started bombing us. It was so horribly unexpected and strange. You didn't have time to think. I jumped down between two steel ropes, that's what saved my life. When the bombing was over the ship sank in about 15 minutes. I removed my clothing and started to swim. It took two-and-a-half hours to reach shore."
The Cap Arcona had also been bombed and there were about 300 survivors from both ships. The British were in control on shore by that time and the survivors were taken to hospital and later to a refugee camp.
There are questions about that day that have never been answered.
Rygiel found out later that there was information, most of it was in British top secret files not open to the public for 50 years. When the files came up to be cleared, they were reclassified as top secret for another 50 years. The un-official explanation was that visibility was poor that day and the British thought they were firing on fleeing enemy troops.
Rygiel will never believe it but he can't think of any kind of explanation for what happened that day.
Many count the bombing of the two ships with the loss of more than 7,000 lives, as one of the, if not the world's worst ship disasters. By comparison, the Titanic, which sunk April 15, 1912, left 1,523 dead. There is a memorial to the lives lost May 3, 1945 at Neustadt.
Rygiel was taken to a Red Cross refugee camp in Sweden where he attended a Polish school and worked until he was able to return to Poland in 1947. He was reunited with his parents who had also been in a concentration camp after taking part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. He attended medical school, specializing in pediatric orthopedic surgery.
In 1963, he was invited to share his work at McGill University and met his wife, Wanda, a professor of pediatrics. He stayed in Canada and in 1968 the couple founded a private hospital for children in Hamilton, Ontario which is still in operation. They later both practised in Arizona and retired to Vernon in 1989 where he became a sculptor.
"I felt it's my duty to let people know what happened. It's been hidden away from public knowledge very successfully, " said Rygiel.
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Post by Bonobo on May 19, 2009 21:17:02 GMT 1
Polish memorial desecrated in Lviv
thenews.pl
14.05.2009
"Death to Poles", accompanied by a red swastika, has been scrawled in paint on a memorial to Polish professors shot by Nazis during World War II in Lviv.
Andrzej Przewoznik, the head of the Polish national martyrdom council announced he was going to ask Poland's foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, to send a diplomatic note to Ukraine.
"I will also contact my counterpart in Ukraine and make sure an anti-Polish slogan and a fascist symbol will disappear from the memorial," said Przewoznik.
Before World War II, the Ukrainian city of Lviv belonged to the Second Polish Republic and was one of the main cultural and scientific centres of Europe. In 1941, Lviv was annexed by the Third Reich and German occupation was imposed. In July, Nazis murdered approximately 45 Polish professors from various universities. The memorial to commemorate the murdered professors was erected in 1990s at the place of execution.
  
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Post by Bonobo on Aug 6, 2009 19:43:02 GMT 1
Polish graves discovered in Belarus
thenews.pl
22.07.2009
The remains of murdered Poles have been discovered in an Orthodox church in Hlybokaye, Belarus and are to be exhumed.
The Prosecutor's Office in Belarus claims that the Poles were murdered by the Nazis. But historians are convinced that the Soviet NKVD was responsible for the crime, as they were for the Katyn massacre of 1940 when over 20,000 Polish officers were murdered in cold blood by the Stalinist secret services.
The remains were discovered on the premises of the Birth of Holiest Mother of God church. Next to the bones were bullet shells, which, according to Belarusian opposition activist Yaroslav Bernikovich, came from Soviet guns. A pack of `Progress' cigarettes from a Warsaw tobacco factory was also found.
"We've discovered 20 to 30 bodies. There may be more underneath," the parish priest Sarhey Gramyka told Gazeta Wyborcza. The local Prosecutor's Office ordered that the bones be covered with earth again, because of the smell coming from the open graves.
Local prosecutor Anatol Servyukou said that an investigation has been opened. He refused to explain why the bones were re-buried without first being examined. Servyuko claims that the remains date back to the Great Patriotic War [what Russians call WW II on the Eastern Front] when Hlybokaye was occupied by the Nazis.
"They are probably the remains of Polish officials, intellectuals or officers arrested by the NKVD after Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September 1939," says Belorussian historian Igar Kuzniacou. He claims there is evidence that the NKVD executed Polish prisoners in Hlybokaye in 1940 and 1941.
If true, the murder of Polish citizens in Hlybokaye would become a part of the Katyn massacre. The bodies of 14,736 Polish officers, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war executed by the NKVD were buried in Katyn, Mednoye, and Kharkov. The most mysterious chapter of the Katyn massacre is the death of at least another 7,315 Poles. Some of them were buried in Bykovnia near Kiev and Kuropaty near Minsk. The burial site of still thousands more Poles remains unknown.
************ ********* ********* ********* *********
New NKVD Graves Discovered in Poland's Former East
Andrzej Poczobut
Gazeta Wyborcza
2009-07-22
Remnants of murdered Poles have been discovered in an Orthodox cathedral in Hlybokaye in Belarus. The local prosecutor's office has refused to launch an investigation and blames the Nazis. But historians say it's an NKVD crime.
The remnants of the Poles were discovered by locals a couple of days ago during the tidying up of the grounds of the Orthodox Birth of Holiest Mother of God cathedral. Next to the bones were gun shells (from Soviet weapons, including a Nagan-type gun, claims Jaroslav Bernikovich from a local branch of the opposition movement For Freedom), and in the remnants of the clothes - a pack of cigarettes from the Warsaw-based factory Progress.
'We've discovered 20-30 bodies. There can be more deeper down,' says father Sarhey Gramyka, the parish priest. Father Gramyka explains that because of the smell, the bones have been covered with earth again. Gazeta has learned unofficially that this was demanded by the local prosecutor's office. Father Gramyka has held a service in the intention of the victims.
Hlybokaye district prosecutor Anatol Servyukou has confirmed for Gazeta that his office is investigating the case. He refused to say why the bones had been buried without an examination.
'The remnants date back to the Great Patriotic War period when Hlybokaye was under German occupation. That's all I can day at this point,' Mr Servyukou told Gazeta.
'These are probably the remains of Polish administration officials, intellectuals or officers who were arrested by the NKVD after Poland's eastern territories had been invaded by the Soviets on 17 September 1939,' says Belarussian historian, Igar Kuznyatsou, who has long researched the activities of the Soviet terror apparatus. According to him, there are witness reports about the NKVD executing Polish prisoners in Hlybokaye in spring 1940 and summer 1941, shortly before the town was seized by the Germans.
If this is the case, this would be yet another chapter of what has become known as the Katyn massacre - the execution of 14,736 prisoners whose bodies the NKVD buried in Katyn near Smolensk, Mednoye near Kalinin (today Tver), and Pyatikhatki near Kharkov.
The most mysterious chapter of that massacre was the death of at least 7,315 (according to other sources, over 8,600) Poles who were arrested by the NKVD in Poland's then-eastern territories. Some of them are certainly buried in Bykovnia near Kyiv (where remnants of Polish officers were recently discovered) and in Kurapaty near Minsk. The places were thousands more Poles are buried remain unknown.
The Poles were executed by special NKVD units sent directly from Moscow. Five such units operated in what is now Belarus. One of them, led by Lt Nikolai Kozhevnikov, operated in Vileyka near Hlybokaye.
Mr Kuznyatsou stresses: 'If the authorities don't want to move the bodies, this means that victims of Soviet reprisals have been discovered. In the case of Nazi crimes, exhumations are ordered without delay.'
Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenka is known to be an admirer of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the creator of NKVD, who was born in what is now Belarus, and of Joseph Stalin. Belarus is preparing today for grand celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland, which is to be a great display of the country's unity. In Brest, where the Wehrmacht and the Red Army held a joint parade in September 1939, a monument commemorating the 'bright day of 17 September' is to be unveiled.
Andrzej PrzewoŸnik, head of the Council for the Protection of Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom, for Gazeta:
We will ask the Belarussian authorities to allow our experts to examine the situation. Perhaps bodies of NKVD victims have been discovered. I know there was an NKVD prison nears Hlybokaye. Our collaboration with Belarus has improved in the last couple of years, we're carrying out several joint projects and I hope no one makes things difficult for us in this case.
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Post by Bonobo on Aug 24, 2009 14:03:09 GMT 1
Katyn victims in Kharkov were `limed'
thenews.pl
10.08.2009
Secret NKVD documents reveal that thousands of Katyn massacre victims executed in Kharkov were later covered with lime to conceal traces of mass murder.
A letter, branded `top secret,' has recently been found by the Ukrainian Security Service in post-Soviet archives. It reads: "In a forest about 100 metres from Kharkov-Bilgorod road, within a 50-metre radius, are many spots of collapsed earth. The holes are rectangular, 3x6 metres. One of the holes has been dug out and human bones and skulls can be seen. Some of the bones are scattered on the ground. There are also the remains of foreign-made military boots."
The letter was written by General Vitaliy Nikitchenko to KGB head Yuri Andropov and to Petro Shelest, leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine, on 7 June 1969.
General Nikitchenko, head of the Committee of State Security of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, further reports that the grave has been dug out by three pupils of fifth and sixth grade from Pyatikhatki. They robbed a gold ring engraved with the initials AK and the date 29 June 1924, gold tooth crowns and military buttons with the image of the Polish eagle.
"It has been established that here in 1940 the NKVD from Kharkov region buried several thousands executed officers and generals of bourgeois Poland, whose remnants have been accidentally discovered by children," writes Nikitchenko.
Pyatikhatki, along with Katyn and Miednoye, is the burial place of over 3,700 Polish war prisoners executed by the NKVD in 1940 as ordered by Stalin and other Soviet leaders.
In order to conceal the discovery and truth about the mass murder, Nikitchenko proposed announcing that it was Germans who executed deserters from their own army and the allied armies. The General suggested that people be warned that victims who were buried here died of cholera, typhus, syphilis and other infectious diseases. Andropov decided that that kind of disinformation campaign will not be enough, and, in a letter to General Petro Feshchenko from the Kharkov branch of the NKVD, ordered the site destroyed. The burial place in Pyatikhatki was to be surrounded by barbed-wire fence and guarded by 21 men. The remnants of Polish officers were to be destroyed by being covered with lime and the graves were to be filled in. Andropov gave his subordinates four years and 10,000 rubles (220 euro) to do that.
************ ********* ********* ********* ****
Katyn Victims Near Kharkov Covered with Lime
Wac³aw Radziwinowicz
Gazeta Wyborcza
2009-08-10
'In a woods, some 100 metres from the Kharkov-Belgorod road, within a 50-metre radius, earth has collapsed in many places. The holes are rectangles 3 by 6 metres. One has been dug up. Human bones and skulls can be seen. Some of the bones are scattered on the ground. Remnants of foreign-made military footwear can also be found,' Gen Col Vitaliy Nikitchenko, head of the Committee of State Security of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic wrote on 7 June 1969 to then KGB-head Yuri Andropov and to Petro Shelest, leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
The letter was top secret - 'restricted delivery.' It has recently been posted on the Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU) official website alongside other documents relating to the Katyn massacre found by the agency in the post-Soviet archives.
Unlike the Russians, the Ukrainians publish all documents relating to communist crimes, including the Katyn massacre. In his letter, Gen Col Nikitchenko further reports that the mass grave has been opened by three students of the fifth and sixth grades of the school of Pyatikhatki, who stole from it a gold ring with the initials A.K. and the date 29 June 1924, gold tooth crowns, and military buttons with the image of the Polish eagle.
Pyatikhatki, as we known, is one of the three places, besides Katyn near Smolensk and Mednoye near Tver, where the NKVD buried in mass graves the Polish POWs murdered in spring 1940 on orders from Stalin and the other Soviet leaders. Here, 3,739 victims are buried in a military cemetery built in the 1990s. But there are historians to this day in Russia who claim that the massacre was carried out by the Germans following the invasion of June 1941 rather than by the NKVD. Part of the Russian public believes this.
Gen Col Nikitchenko wrote straightforwardly, 'It has been determined that in 1940 the NKVD of the Kharkov oblast buried here several thousands executed officers and generals of bourgeois Poland, whose remnants have now been accidentally discovered by children.' He goes on to mention the names of former NKVD executives who 'know where the Poles are buried.'
In this situation, the head of the Ukrainian KGB suggested a disinformation campaign. He proposed announcing that the Germans executed here deserters from their own and the allied armies, and warning that the graves could be dangerous because some of the victims died of 'cholera, typhus, syphilis and other infectious diseases.'
But Andropov, the KGB head, thought that was not enough. According to a document, also found by the SBU, signed by Petro Feshchenko, head of the KGB in Kharkov, on 16-18 June 1969 comrade Andropov ordered a 'liquidation of the special facility.' The burial ground in Pyatikhatki was to be surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and guarded by a team of 21 men. The remnants of the Poles were to be destroyed by covering them with lime, the graves then filled in. Andropov gave his people four years and a budget of 10,000 roubles to do this.
'Lying and spreading disinformation, the Soviet secret services have for decades protected those responsible for the Katyn massacre,' Yevgeniy Zakharov, head of the Memorial Association in Kharkov, tells Gazeta.
'But the documents posted on the SBU website show beyond any doubt that their leaders knew very well who murdered the Poles, where and when. This is not the end. The SBU is intensely researching the post-Soviet archives and discovering ever new documents. I hope they will eventually bring us closer to the truth about the 1940 massacre,' says Mr Zakharov.   
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Post by Bonobo on Sept 3, 2009 20:38:32 GMT 1
Losses and repression under two occupations
thenews.pl
Friday, August 28 2009
The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) has published a new report, Poland 1939 – 45: human losses and repression under two occupations which downgrades estimates of the amount of people killed during WW II.
The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) was created a decade after the fall of Poland's communist regime in 1989 to research and prosecute crimes dating from both the war and the communist era.
Its latest publication, Poland 1939-1945. Human losses and victims of repression under two occupations, edited by Tomasz Szarota and Wojciech Materski estimates the number of Polish victims of World War II from 5.5 to 5.8 million, including Polish and Jewish nationals.
"Germans are responsible for the significant majority of those victims. Soviet repression was less focused on direct extermination. To a larger extent they were aiming at total economic exploitation, " says Janusz Kurtyka at the IPN.
Changing estimates
The numbers quoted in the publication are lower than previous estimates. Why?
"As research progresses, these differences change. There's nothing strange about this," says historian Waldemar Grabowski. "Let's remember that these first estimates from just after the war were imperfect, due to the methods used, but also because they could be properly examined only on the territory that was left to Poland after the War. This excluded half of the country, which had been taken away from Poland."
IPN historian £ukasz Kamiñski emphasizes that the current estimated total number of victims is expected to grow, as further archives are searched. There are special problems with German archives, he explains:
"In some categories, we are not yet able to estimate the number of victims. For example, we have a problem with national minorities other than the Jewish one. There were also Ukrainians, Belarusians or Lithuanians among Polish citizens. So the scale of the casualties in these categories is still unknown, while it should be included in the total."
According to Adam Burakowski, political analyst at the Polish Academy of Sciences, the question of victims belonging to national minorities who were citizens of Poland before the war, and were made Soviet citizens after the war, may be brought up again by Russians on the occasion of the 70th World War Two outbreak anniversary, as part of their recent history propaganda campaign.
"Considering the recent Russian attempts to re-write history, for example by suggesting Polish complicity in German aggression, we could expect Russians to publish their own estimates of Soviet war victims shortly," says Burakowski. "Probably, they could count citizens of pre-war Poland (eastern Poland, annexed to the USSR by the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact) as Soviet citizens, and this way enlarge the total amount of their losses. In my opinion, it could be an abuse."
In June, Poland's Institute of National Remembrance began the vast task to create a name-by-name Internet list of Polish war victims.
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Post by Bonobo on Mar 24, 2011 20:03:04 GMT 1
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Lw%C3%B3w_professorsThe murder of the Lviv professors (in Polish Mord profesorów lwowskich) was the organized execution of approximately 25 Polish professors from various tertiary educational establishments in the city of Lviv (Polish: Lwów, German: Lemberg) along with their families and guests. The murder took place in July 1941 while the city was occupied by Nazi Germany during the World War II. The murder was a continuation of the Nazi AB Action, or Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion that was started in early 1940.
Background
Prior to September 1939 and the joint Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland, Lviv, then in the Second Polish Republic had 318,000 inhabitants of different ethnic groups and religions, 60% of whom were Poles, 30% Jews and about 10% Ukrainians and Germans.[1]. The city was one of the most important cultural centers of prewar Poland, housing 5 tertiary educational facilities including Lwów University and Lwów Polytechnic. It was the home for many Polish and Jewish intellectuals, political and cultural activists, scientists and members of Poland's interwar elite.
After Lwów was occupied by the Soviets in September 1939, Lwów University was renamed in honor of Ivan Franko, a Ukrainian hero, and the language of instruction was changed from Polish to Ukrainian.[2] Lwów was captured by German forces on June 30 after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Along with the German Wehrmacht units, a number of Abwehr and SS formations entered the city.
During the Nazi occupation almost all of the 120,000 Jewish inhabitants of the city were killed, within the city's ghetto or in Bełżec extermination camp. At the end of the war only 200-800 Jews survived.
In order to control the population, prominent citizens and intellectuals of all ethnic groups, particularly Jews and Poles, were either closed in ghettos or transported to the execution sites such as the Gestapo prison on Pełczyńska Street, the Brygidki Prison, the former military prison at Zamarstynów and to the fields surrounding the city: in the suburb of Winniki, the Kortumówka hills and the Jewish Cemetery. Many of the people killed were prominent leaders of Polish society: politicians, artists, aristocrats, sportsmen, scientists, priests, rabbis and other intelligentsia. The mass murder of people suspected of potential anti-Nazi activity was seen as a pre-emptive measure to keep the Polish resistance scattered and to prevent the Poles from revolting against Nazi rule. It was a direct continuation of the infamous AB Action and one of the early stages of Generalplan Ost, after the German campaign against the USSR started and the eastern half of prewar Poland fell under German occupation in place of that of the Soviet Union. One of the earliest Nazi crimes in Lviv was the mass murder of Polish professors together with some of their relatives and guests, carried out at the beginning of July 1941.
History
By July 2, 1941, many of the initial terror actions were halted, yet the individual, planned executions continued. At approximately 3 o'clock in the evening Prof. Kazimierz Bartel was arrested by one of the Einsatzgruppen operating in the area.
During the night from 3 to 4 of July, several dozen professors and their families were arrested by German detachments - each one consisting of an officer, several soldiers, Ukrainian guides and interpreters.[3] The lists were prepared by their Ukrainian students associated with OUN.[4][5]. Some of the professors mentioned on the lists were already dead, specifically Adam Bednarski and Roman Leszczyński.[3] Among arrested was professor Roman Rencki, a director of the Clinic for Internal Diseases at Lwów University, who was kept in NKVD prison and whose name was also on the list of Soviet prisoners sentenced to death.[6][7] The detained were transported to the Abrahamowicz's dormitory, where despite the preconceived intention to kill them, they were tortured and interrogated. The head of the department in the Jewish hospital, professor Adam Ruff was shot while having an epileptic attack.[3]
In the early morning of July 4 one of the professors and most of his servants were set free while the rest were either brought to the Wulka hills or shot dead in the courtyard of the Bursa Abrahamowiczów building. The victims were buried on the spot, but several days after the massacre their bodies were exhumed and transported by the Wehrmacht to an unknown place.
According to a Polish historian the victims were not involved in politics in any way.[8] According to a Ukrainian historian, out of approximately 160 Polish professors living in Lviv in June 1941, the professors chosen for execution were specifically those who actively cooperated with the Soviet regime in some way between 1940-1941.[9]
Methodology of the crime
There are accounts of four different methods used by the German troops. The victims were either beaten to death, killed with a bayonet, killed with a hammer, or shot to death.
The professors themselves were shot to death, although it is highly probable that some of them were buried alive.[10]
Responsibility
According to an eyewitness the executions were made by an Einsatzgruppen unit (Einsatzkommando zur besonderen Verwendung) under the command of SS-Brigadeführer Karl Eberhard Schöngarth with the participation of Ukrainians translators, who were dressed in German uniforms.[11]
The decision was taken by the highest level of the Third Reich authorities.[12] The direct decision maker concerning the massacre was the commander of the Sicherheitspolizei (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD- BdS) in Krakau District Generalgouvernement, Brigadeführer Karl Eberhard Schöngarth. The following Gestapo officers also participated: Heinz Heim (Chief of Staff Schöngarth), Hans Krüger, Walter Kutschmann, Kurt Stawizki, and Felix Landau. They were never punished for that crime.[13]
Some sources contend that members of the Ukrainian auxiliaries from the Nachtigall Battalion were responsible for the murders.[14] According to others, this claim originated with the Soviet sources (Soviet propaganda campaign against the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and has been disputed.[15] [16] Memorial has published documents which claim to document the Nachtigall participation in those events as a KGB disinformation.[17] Stanisław Bogaczewicz from the Institute of National Remembrance said that Nachtigall soldiers took part in the arrests, but not in the murders, and that their role in this event needs further investigation.[18] Tadeusz Piotrowski notes that while Nightigall role is disputed, they were present in the town during the events, their activities are not properly documented, and that at the very least they are guilty of the passive collaboration in this event, for not opposing the attrocities.[14]
[edit] Aftermath
After World War II the leadership of the Soviet Union made attempts to diminish the Polish cultural and historic legacy of Lviv. Crimes committed east of the Curzon line could not be prosecuted by Polish courts. Information on the atrocities that took place in Lviv was restricted.
In 1960 Dr. Helena Krukowska, the widow of Prof. Dr. Włodzimierz Krukowski, launched an appeal to the court in Hamburg. After five years the German court closed the judicial proceedings. Public prosecutor von Beelow argued that the people responsible for the crime were already dead. This however was not true since at the same time SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Krüger, commander of the Gestapo unit supervising the massacres in Lviv in 1941, was being held in Hamburg prison (he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the mass murder of Jews and Poles in Stanisławów, committed several weeks after his unit was transferred from Lviv). As a result no person has ever been held responsible for this atrocity.[13]
In the 1970s Abrahamowicz Street in Lviv was renamed Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Street.
Various Polish organisations have made deputations to remember the victims of the atrocity with a monument or a symbolic grave in Lviv. These requests have been so-far rejected.
The case of the murder of the professors is currently under investigation by the Institute of National Remembrance.
In May 2009 the monument to the victims in Lviv was defaced with signs "Deaths to Lachs"(Poles)[19]
"Death to the Poles" - the inscription smeared with red paint on the Monument to Murdered Professors in Lviv, in 1941. A vandalized plaque by unknown vandals on 10/12 May 2009, Lviv, Ukraine
Victims
Abbreviations used:
* UJK = Uniwersytet Jana Kazimierza (Lwów University, now Ivan Franko National University of Lviv)
* PSP = Państwowy Szpital Powszechny (National Public Hospital)
* PL = Politechnika Lwowska (Lwów Polytechnic, now Lviv Polytechic National University)
* AWL = Akademia Weterynaryjna we Lwowie (Academy of Veterinary Sciences in Lwów)
* AHZ = Akademia Handlu Zagranicznego we Lwowie (Academy of Foreign Trade in Lwów)
Murdered on the Wulkeckie (Wulka) hills
1. Prof. Dr. Antoni Cieszyński, Professor of Stomatology UJK
2. Prof. Dr. Władysław Dobrzaniecki, head of the ord. Oddz. Chirurgii PSP
3. Prof. Dr. Jan Grek, Professor of Internal Medicine, UJK
4. Maria Grekowa, wife of Jan Grek
5. Doc. Dr. Jerzy Grzędzielski, head of the Institute of Ophthalmology, UJK
6. Prof. Dr. Edward Hamerski, Chief of Internal Medicine, AWL
7. Prof. Dr. Henryk Hilarowicz, Professor of Surgery, UJK
8. Rev. Dr. Władysław Komornicki, theologian, a relative of the Ostrowski family
9. Eugeniusz Kostecki, husband of Prof. Dobrzaniecki's servant
10. Prof. Dr. Włodzimierz Krukowski, Chief of the Institute of Electrical Measurement, PL
11. Prof. Dr. Roman Longchamps de Bérier, Chief of the Institute of Civil Law, UJK
12. Bronisław Longchamps de Bérier, son of Prof. Longchamps de Bérier
13. Zygmunt Longchamps de Bérier, son of Prof. Longchamps de Bérier
14. Kazimierz Longchamps de Bérier, son of Prof. Longchamps de Bérier
15. Prof. Dr. Antoni Łomnicki, Chief of the Institute of Mathematics, PL
16. Adam Mięsowicz, grandson of Prof. Sołowij
17. Prof. Dr. Witołd Nowicki, Dean of the Faculty of Anatomy and Pathology, UJK
18. Dr. Med. Jerzy Nowicki, assistant at the Institute of Hygiene, UJK, son of Prof. Nowicki
19. Prof. Dr. Tadeusz Ostrowski, Chief of the Institute of Surgery, UJK
20. Jadwiga Ostrowska, wife of Prof. Ostrowski
21. Prof. Dr. Stanisław Pilat, Chief of the Institute of Technology of Petroleum and Natural Gases, PL
22. Prof. Dr. Stanisław Progulski, pediatrician, UJK
23. Andrzej Progulski, son of Prof. Progulski
24. Prof. Dr. Roman Rencki, Chief of the Institute of Internal Medicine, UJK
25. Dr. Med. Stanisław Ruff, Chief of the Department of Surgery of the Jewish Hospital
26. Anna Ruffowa, Dr. Ruff's wife
27. Inż. Adam Ruff, Dr. Ruff's son
28. Prof. Dr. Włodzimierz Sieradzki, Dean of the faculty of Court Medicine, UJK
29. Prof. Dr. Adam Sołowij, former Chief of the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of the PSP
30. Prof. Dr. Włodzimierz Stożek, Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics, PL
31. Inż. Eustachy Stożek, assistant at the Politechnika Lwowska, son of Prof. Stożek
32. Emanuel Stożek, son of Prof. Stożek
33. Dr. Tadeusz Tapkowski, lawyer
34. Prof. Dr. Kazimierz Vetulani, Dean of the Faculty of Theoretical Mechanics, PL
35. Prof. Dr. Kacper Weigel, Chief of the Institute of Measures, PL
36. Mgr Józef Weigel, son of Prof. Weigel
37. Prof. Dr. Roman Witkiewicz, Chief of the Institute of Machinery, PL
38. Prof. Dr. Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, writer and gynaecologist, Chief of the Institute of French Literature
Murdered in the courtyard of Bursa Abrahamowiczów
Bursa Abrahamowiczów is a former school in Lviv, now a hospital.
1. Katarzyna Demko, English language teacher
2. Doc. Dr. Stanisław Mączewski, head of the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of the PSP
3. Maria Reymanowa, nurse
4. Wolisch (name unknown), merchant
[edit] Murdered on July 12
1. Prof. Dr. Henryk Korowicz, Chief of the Institute of Economics, AHZ
2. Prof. Dr. Stanisław Ruziewicz, Chief of the Institute of Mathematics, AHZ
Murdered on July 26 in Brygidki Prison
Brygidki Prison is a prison in Lviv.
1. Prof. Dr. Kazimierz Bartel, former Prime Minister of Poland, former Rector of PL, Chairman of the Department of Geometry, PL
       
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Post by valpomike on Mar 25, 2011 3:25:00 GMT 1
They had a fear, that the Polish were, and are, smarter than them.
Mike
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Post by Bonobo on Apr 1, 2011 21:55:29 GMT 1
New museum highlights Nazi crimes
31.03.2011 15:45
President Bronislaw Komorowski has opened a new Museum of Struggle and Martyrdom today in Palmiry, south of Warsaw, where the German Nazi occupying forces carried out mass executions of Poles during World War II.
The wave of executions focused on the Polish elite, during the so-called AB Action, taking in social activists, politicians, priests, professors and cultural luminaries, including both Catholics and Jews.
Over 2000 victims were exhumed at Palmiry following the war and a cemetery was created. Evidence had been collated by the Polish underground.
The Germans exterminated thousands of other members of the intelligentsia at other locations across Poland.
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a former Auschwitz internee, and a member of Poland's wartime Council to Aid Jews, noted that the plan for the extermination of the Polish elite was drawn up in 1940 by Nazi Governor Hans Frank.
Bartoszewski, who remains politically active in the office of the ruling Civic Platform party, and who served as foreign minister twice since the fall of communism, noted that the victims in Palmiry represented an impediment to Nazi plans.
“[The victims] provide a testament, that the occupants regarded them as a threat to their plans to subordinate Poland.”
Recent research by the state-sponsored Institute of National Remembrance holds that only 10 percent of Polish citizens who had finished university education before 1939 remained on Polish territory in the war's aftermath.
The gaping hole considers citizens who emigrated (Catholic and Jewish), and those who perished as a result of Nazi and Soviet crimes.
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Post by vratislavian on Apr 12, 2011 10:40:17 GMT 1
When I saw the term 'Holocaust' I thought it was about the Roma. I don't hear a lot of talk about that over here.
This is the first time (and I'm a historian who has been working with the history of the Nazi times since 2004) that I've read the word 'Holocaust' to mean Poles.
The word comes from the Greek words 'hólos' and 'kaustós', meaning 'wholly' 'burned'. Most historians take the term to only mean Jews. To avoid confusion I prefer the word 'Shoah' myself (from the Hebrew 'HaShoah' meaning 'calamity').
I am fairly relaxed however in the term 'Holocaust' to mean groups other than Jews. Back in GB the term is applied as part of Holocaust Memorial Day to groups like disabled people, gays and Roma. The word can be however used in an attempt to appropriate the term for itself. This is the age old problem of the competition of the victims. 'Shut up about them, talk about us!' I am not saying that this is what has happened in this thread.
That the Nazis wanted the Poles to die out (with other Slavs) is proven. That the Nazis wanted to destroy Polish identity is also proven.
That being Polish meant having an automatic death sentence, however, is not; unless Poles were Jewish or Roma. While non-Jewish Poles were the only ones to face the death penalty for hiding Jews, being non-Jewish or non-Roma per se did not mean that they were to be sent to ghettos and gas chambers. The term 'extermination' was only once, as far as I known, been applied to Poland, by which the country was meant. The word 'extermination' was part of a Nazi racist ideology which was applied purely to Jews and Roma. They were to be 'exterminated' in the manner of vermin.
Such an ideology about other Poles however was not lacking. There was no propaganda comparing other Poles to vermin, as far as I know.
So what should one call the mass murder of non-Jewish and non-Roma Poles?
I would argue for 'genocide', which means "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group." This could be quite clearly applied to what happened.
I am aware however that the term 'genocide' is used in an official manner only when it has been called as such by various ad hoc tribunals (Rwanda, former Yugoslavia) and now by the International Criminal Court. Proof of intent is key to any judgement.
With the Nazis, we clearly have proof. However, for political reasons the Nazi (and Soviet) crimes in Poland were not brought up in the Nuremberg trials. As the term 'genocide' was used from that time, then would have been a good time to apply the term to what happened to non-Jewish and non-Roma Poles.
When I do my tours, I apply the word 'genocide' to what happened, though with the caveat that the term wasn't used, and highlight the political reasons why that didn't happen.
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Post by Bonobo on Apr 30, 2011 22:19:22 GMT 1
That being Polish meant having an automatic death sentence, however, is not; unless Poles were Jewish or Roma. While non-Jewish Poles were the only ones to face the death penalty for hiding Jews, being non-Jewish or non-Roma per se did not mean that they were to be sent to ghettos and gas chambers. The term 'extermination' was only once, as far as I known, been applied to Poland, by which the country was meant. The word 'extermination' was part of a Nazi racist ideology which was applied purely to Jews and Roma. They were to be 'exterminated' in the manner of vermin. Vrat, you need to know that the term extermination was used more times than once and not only to Jews or gypsies, but also Poles. E.g., what do you know about Hitler and Himmler`s orders after the outbreak of Warsaw Rising? Their immediate result was the massacre in Wola and Ochota districts of about 60.000 civilians within a few days. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wola_massacreen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochota_massacre |
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Post by valpomike on May 1, 2011 2:18:02 GMT 1
It is the job of the Polish, parents, teachers, and family, never let the young forget this, make sure they read this history, and tell them, most of the time, by grandparents, who live with this.
Mike
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uncltim
Just born
I oppose most nonsense.
Posts: 73
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Post by uncltim on May 1, 2011 3:16:59 GMT 1
I always question when people argue too hard over symantics. Holocaust is a Greek term and should apply to all the victims (who were burned). Shoah, IMO would apply to the Jewish only. On second thought, Darwinian Socialism in practice would be the most accurate description but academics would reject it outright because the term Socialist would be sullied. Reminds me of "Newspeak" and "Doublethink". To be fully honest, It angers me because many those who insist on special terminology simply seek to set a hierarchy of victimhood. Oddly, Polish untermenschen never seem to get mentioned. Isn't that odd?
Bo, Is there a list published anywhere of the victims names?
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Post by Bonobo on May 1, 2011 6:36:23 GMT 1
I always question when people argue too hard over symantics. Holocaust is a Greek term and should apply to all the victims (who were burned). Shoah, IMO would apply to the Jewish only. On second thought, Darwinian Socialism in practice would be the most accurate description but academics would reject it outright because the term Socialist would be sullied. Reminds me of "Newspeak" and "Doublethink". To be fully honest, It angers me because many those who insist on special terminology simply seek to set a hierarchy of victimhood. Oddly, Polish untermenschen never seem to get mentioned. Isn't that odd? Bo, Is there a list published anywhere of the victims names? I don`t know about the complete list. If you studied the links, you know that it is hard to give the exact number of civilian victims during Warsaw Rising. It is simply impossible. Some of them can be seen on graves in Warsaw, check this thread: War rememberance in Warsawe.g.,    On 5 August 1944 Germans started a murderous pacification of Wola district. A house by house were emptied and all residents were executed. Here, people from houses 15. 26, 37 in Gorczewska Street.  |
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Post by Bonobo on Jun 20, 2011 14:30:01 GMT 1
Nazi massacre of Polish professors commemorated
20.06.2011
A plaque was unveiled, Sunday, at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Katowice, southern Poland, in tribute to some 25 professors that were murdered by the Nazis in Lwow (now Lviv, Ukraine) sixty years ago.
A plaque was unveiled, Sunday, at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Katowice, southern Poland, in tribute to some 25 professors that were murdered by the Nazis in Lwow (now Lviv, Ukraine) sixty years ago.
The massacre – which endures as one of the most notorious wartime crimes against the Polish intelligentsia - took place on 4 July 1941, just days after Nazi troops drove out the Red Army, which had itself occupied the city since September 1939.
The shootings were carried out at dawn on the fringe of the city. Besides the twenty-five professors, 15 other Poles fell victim during the massacre, including friends and immediate family members of the academics.
Amongst the most prominent Poles to perish was Professor Roman Longchamps de Berier, the last rector of the city's Jan Kazimierz University, who was shot alongside three of his sons.
Another famed victim was Dr Tadeusz Boy-Zelenski, a noted left-leaning columnist, translator, social activist and man of medicine.
The current memorial initiative came about thanks to a newly-created committee in Katowice, composed of academics from the University of Silesia.
Internationally renowned composer Wojciech Kilar, who is himself a Katowice resident but was born in Lviv in 1932, is an honorary member of the committee, and the unveiling ceremony was led by Archbishop of Katowice, Damian Zimon alongside rector of the University of Silesia, Professor Wieslaw Banys.
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