Polish-Jewish Relations during the Second World War

Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Hosted by David Thompson.
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szopen
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#31

Post by szopen » 05 Feb 2005, 16:17

The problems with your envisaged scenario are many.

1) Polish anti-semites during war were terrified by German actiosn and were actively risking their lives to help Jews (e.g. Kossak-Szczucka, before war - anti-semite, during war - organisator of Zegota). The main difference betwen catholic's antisemitism and nazis was that physical destruction was simply out of question for any true believing catholic. Beating, robbing, expelling - that COULD happened, but murdering on large scale - just can't see it happen.

2) Polish government must be mad to agree to deal like that: We will give you territory well developed, with majority of Polish population, and in exchange we will join you in invasion of USSR with hope that when we will win, we would get underdeveloped territories with small Polish minority.

3) If Polish government wouild agree, it would fall immedietely. Poland was not the same kind of coutnry as Germany. Such government immedietely would be bashed by free press, would lose majority in parliament and support amongst army.

4) Polish police, as you know, did not participate in holocaust any more that French or for that matter JEWISH police.

5) Polish government, not like that German one, was actively supporting Zionist movement by providing funds, training and weapons. Polish government also was lobbying for removing quotas of emmigration into Palestine and for removing of restriction in emmigration to USA. One of Polish ministers, pardon my poor memory i can't remember which one, was supposed to say that "I personally like Jews. Just like I personally like Danes. But if I had 3 millions Danes in Poland I would call it Danish problem". Will references to www sites of newspapers and online books enough for source, BTW? The difference, quite crucial here, is that Polish anti-semites, unlike Nazis, did consider Jews humans, equal to themselves, even if - in minds of some - with inclination to pornography, dirt, and child-molesting (B. Prus, which was revered Polish authors, described some Jewish customs as barbaric and as ones which can't have place in civilised part of the world: marriages of the underages, ritual slaughter "like in most dark places of India", dirt, etc).

6) There were many Polish Jewish members in goverment structures and army, though proportionally less than it should from the structure of society.

7) The so called "Polish collaboration" was not larger than in other countries, and exxageration of it by many Western people may be result of their complexes and trying to put blame far away form them. That's why: ye, we have official collaborators who cooperated with Nazis to get rid of Jews, but THOSE POLES would have even more collaborators if allowed! The given examples (e.g. Jedwabne) happened in very limited area and in very sepcial circumstances, which would be hard to repeat if Poland would be German ally.

8) During 30s, Polish embassy was defending Polish citizens no matter whether they were Jewish or Polish. During war Polish embassies were saving lives of hundreds of Jews (strange thing, anyone knows who was Raoul Wallenberg, and none knows who was Henryk Slawik, who was doing the same earlier and with much larger danger).

9) In fact it would be easy to argue that IF Poland would be German ally, much more Jews would survive the war.
You could similarly argue that if France would be German ally it would mean French would slaughter their Jewish compatriots. You could actually argue that far more convincibly.

IF - and that is very big IF! - Poland would became German ally (which it historically categorically refused!) - result would not be holocaust. You could argue for expulsion of large chukns of population, forcible assimilation, economic boycott, maybe chaning Jewish status to second class citizens, but Holocaust would be simply impossible. Because Jew, who would abandon Jewish religion and customs, simply would stopped to be Jew in eyes of MOST of Polish anti-semites.

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henryk
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#32

Post by henryk » 05 Feb 2005, 22:51

By Michael Mills:
[My comment: Stachura gives the impression that those 600,000 Jews came to Poland. In fact, Poland came to them. They were inhabitants of Russian Provinces such as Polesie, Volhynia and Podolia that had not formed part of Congress Poland before the First World War, but were annexed by Poland in 1921.]
Congress Poland was a Russian creation; it was only part of Russian occupied Poland. Podolia was part of the Kingdom of Poland from 1370 to 1793 when it was occupied by Russia in the 2nd Partition. The occupation ended in 1921. Polesie and Volhynia became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 14th Century and were in the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania in 1403 TO 1793. During this time Volhynia was transferred by Lithuania to Poland. Both were occupied by Russia in the 2nd Partition in 1793. The occupation ended in 1921.
Go to http://www.euratlas.com/summary.htm
"PERIODICAL HISTORICAL ATLAS OF EUROPE--AN ATLAS DEPICTING IN 21 MAPS THE STATES OF THIS CONTINENT AT THE END OF EACH CENTURY from AD 1 to AD 2000
See the maps for 1400 and 1700.


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henryk
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#33

Post by henryk » 05 Feb 2005, 23:07

This topic is in the wrong forum. It is not on Life in WWII but on the what if topic "Poland replicating the Holocaust as carried out by the Germans". It should be transferred to more properly demonstrate the reality (or rather the unreality) of it.

michael mills
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#34

Post by michael mills » 05 Feb 2005, 23:44

Szopen wrote,
5) Polish government, not like that German one [my emphasis: MM]
, was actively supporting Zionist movement by providing funds, training and weapons. Polish government also was lobbying for removing quotas of emmigration into Palestine and for removing of restriction in emmigration to USA. One of Polish ministers, pardon my poor memory i can't remember which one, was supposed to say that "I personally like Jews. Just like I personally like Danes. But if I had 3 millions Danes in Poland I would call it Danish problem". Will references to www sites of newspapers and online books enough for source, BTW? The difference, quite crucial here, is that Polish anti-semites, unlike Nazis, did consider Jews humans, equal to themselves, even if - in minds of some - with inclination to pornography, dirt, and child-molesting (B. Prus, which was revered Polish authors, described some Jewish customs as barbaric and as ones which can't have place in civilised part of the world: marriages of the underages, ritual slaughter "like in most dark places of India", dirt, etc).
Szopen,

You have been let down by your apparent lack of knowledge of German Government policy toward Zionism during the 1930s.

In fact, the German Government was providing as much support as the Polish Government to the Zionist movement, and for exactly the same reason - by helping to get Jews into Palestine, it was getting them out of Germany.

Quite possibly the German Government was providing even more help to Zionism then the Polish Government, since it was collaborating with the Labour Zionists, who at that time controlled the official Zionist organisation in Palestine, whereas the Polish Government was working with Zhabotinski's Revisionist Zionists, who were out of power and no control over what happened in Palestine.

As an example, the illegal Jewish emigration to Palestine was organised by Eichmann in collaboration with the underground Labour Zionist army, the Haggana.

The German Government also criticised the United States for not allowing any increase in Jewish migration to that country. Hitler often publicly contrasted the criticism by the United States of German policy toward Jews with its failure to allow increased Jewish immigration, and accused it of political hypocrisy.

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kordts
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#35

Post by kordts » 06 Feb 2005, 06:25

Why is that so hard for to imagine? It took place, under German auspices and Polish complicity.

Cheers, Jeff.

Davey Boy
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#36

Post by Davey Boy » 06 Feb 2005, 10:10

kordts wrote:Why is that so hard for to imagine? It took place, under German auspices and Polish complicity.

Cheers, Jeff.

It's hard to imagine because it would've never taken place without German occupation of Poland.

Anyone who thinks otherwise has no understanding of Poland, Polish people and Polish anti-semitism.

szopen
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#37

Post by szopen » 07 Feb 2005, 10:00

kordts wrote:Why is that so hard for to imagine? It took place, under German auspices and Polish complicity.

Cheers, Jeff.
I wqould agree to that sentence if you would add "and with French complicity, Dutch, Italian, Hungarian... and even Jewish".

walterkaschner
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#38

Post by walterkaschner » 12 Feb 2005, 06:23

Mr. Mills,

Thank you for furnishing your extensive source material, which has given me much to chew on over the past several days. I have a few comments in mind, which I will try to restrain myself from making too extensive and will try to fragment into digestible quantities.

As to the comment by Headlam-Morley:
Sir Stuart Samuel had learned wisdom. At the Consistoire conference [at the headquarters of French Jewry], he had not opposed the Jewish Nationalists, but by this point he had shifted ‘to deprecate any Jewish political separatism in Poland’. Peace Conference Diary, 11 April [1919]. So had Headlam-Morley who, in uuter frustration, asked Wolf what Polish Jewish Nationalists actually wanted. When Wolf told him that Jewish extremists were as mad as Polish extremists and that there was nothing to choose between Dmowski and Ussishkin, Headlam-Morley said, ‘Well, they will all be murdered.’ Ibid, 14 April.
I would have to agree that his remark is at least susceptible of your interpretation that he was predicting "that all the Jews of Poland would be murdered". Certainly the remark is ambiguous; c'est le ton qui fait la musique and we shall probably never know exactly what tone Headlam-Morley put on his comment. But in the context it seems to me quite probable that Headlam-Morley, in a moment's outburst of utter frustration, called down upon the extremists of both sides Mercutio's invective of "a plague a' both their houses".

I still feel that is a long stretch to read his remark, as Mr. Mills does, as a thoughtful and considered "prediction that there would a future massacre of the Jews of Eastern Europe, and that the massacre would be caused by their own intransigence." The fact is that, as Headlam-Morley surely knew full well, the real power in Poland at that time was held by Pilsudski, who was busy back at home in Poland trying to solidify the Polish state, and who held little or nothing of the anti-Semitic fervor of Dmowski and his extremist right-wing National Democratic party.

More to come on another day.

Regards, Kaschner

Gumisie
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Just to set the facts straight.

#39

Post by Gumisie » 05 Mar 2005, 21:58

kordts wrote:Why is that so hard for to imagine? It took place, under German auspices and Polish complicity.

Cheers, Jeff.


1. It DID take place, Jews were murdered.
2. NOT under German "auspices", however. "Auspices" are defined in Webster's as "kindly patronage and guidance". So the Germans were only providing guidance to murderous Poles, who, in fact, did the Holocaust? It is a completely novel, revisionist version of history.
3. There was no complicity. Quite opposite: Poland was a unique example of a country, where any help rendered to Jews was punishable by death. It was the official, published policy of the German occupiers. Why such a policy in a country where the population was, supposedly, willing to comply with the extermination plans and just needed some patronage?

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#40

Post by David Thompson » 05 Mar 2005, 22:36

Gumisie -- You wrote:
2. NOT under German "auspices", however. "Auspices" are defined in Webster's as "kindly patronage and guidance". So the Germans were only providing guidance to murderous Poles, who, in fact, did the Holocaust? It is a completely novel, revisionist version of history.
Are you familiar with the concept of "irony"? It appears frequently in English usage.

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#41

Post by Gumisie » 05 Mar 2005, 23:21

David Thompson wrote: Are you familiar with the concept of "irony"? It appears frequently in English usage.

It appeared even in my post. But, unfortunately, I have noticed no irony in the message about the Polish "complicity" and German "patronage" (irony does not result from the context, either). Or I may be completely devoid of any sense of humor. Anyway, here is another relevant post of the same author:
"One of the tragedies of Poland being conquered by the communists is that postwar Poland wasn't forced to look into and admit it's compliancy in the Holocaust and other war crimes, like the western zone of Germany was forced to."
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... ht=#590280

Also irony, David? Or a pattern, maybe?

Cheers,
Greg

michael mills
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#42

Post by michael mills » 05 Aug 2005, 04:04

I am resurrecting this thread in accordance with the webmasters policy that old threads should be used wherever possible in preference to creating new threads.

In past messages I have posted documentary material showing that there was an ongoing socio-political conflict in Eastern Europe between the indigenous peoples, including the Poles, and the large Jewish population living in their midst, and that that conflict had led to wide-spread anti-Jewish feeling among the Eastern European peoples, including the Poles.

I have further contended that it was that wide-spread anti-Jewish animus that provided the context in which it was possible for the physical extermination of the greater part of Eastern European Jewry to be carried out, primarily by the German occupiers, but with the acquiescence of the majority of the occupied populations, including the Poles, and with the enthusiastic co-operation of part of those populations.

The above views seem to stick in the craw of some Forum staff and members, who in spite of all the evidence cling to the false view that strongly anti-Jewish attitudes and the resulting actions were limited to a small number of degenerate individuals, mostly German.

In support of my view, I would now like to quote a passage from the book "Polish Society Under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement 1939-1944" (Princeton University Press, 1979), by the Polish-Jewish historian Jan Tomas Gross, hardly a Nazi apologist.

Pages 184-6:
Unfortunately, it must be recorded that the Ples by and large remained neutral observers of the horrors of life in the Jewish ghettos and of the German atrocities perpetrated against the Jewish population. [Note by Gross to that statement: As with all generalisations, this one is not absolutely precise. Thousands of Poles from all social strata of the Polish society heroically helped their Jewish fellow citizens, paying only too frequently with their own lives.] The commander of the Home Army reported this attitude in a dispatch sent to London in September 1941: "Please accept it as a fact that the overwhelming majority of the country is anti-Semitic. ......Anti-Semitism is widespread now. Even secret organisations remaining under the influence of the prewar activists in the Democratic Club or the Socialist Party adopt the postulate of emigration as a solution of the Jewish problem. This became as much of a truism as, for instance, the necessity to eliminate Germans" (GSHI[General Sikorski Historical Institute], Kolekcja Kota. no. 25/10: doc. no. L. dz. 3763 tj. 41, Nov. 23, 1941, signed: "Kalina 354.25, IX. 41"; also see PRM [Kolekcja Prezydium Rady Ministrow] 45c/41: "Dwa lata okupacji niemieckiej w Polsce", Aug. 1941). [Note by Gross to the preceding quote: Incidentally, the content of this dispatch is not in the recently published edition of documents on the history of the Home Army prepared by the Underground Poland Study Trust in London]. Three years later, after the "final solution" had already been carried out by the Nazis, an emissary of the London government, Celt (Andrzej Chciuk), reported on his return from Poland the Delegate's opinion that various official statements issued by the Government in London stressing sympathy and solidarity with the Jewish cause should be toned down. "The Government exaggerates its love for Jews", said the Delegate. Although, understandably, some of the Government statements are determined by foreing policy requirements, he added, the regime should restrain its pro-Jewish pronouncements because "the country does not like Jews". Undoubtedly, the two heads of the military and civilian underground networks were well informed about the prevailing mood of the country.
In a footnote to the above, Gross writes:
I would hesitate to address myself to the subject of the "Jewish problem" in more detail. Its treatment requires more than a brief chapter in a book devoted to a different subject. However, let me point out three phenomena that surfaced during the occupation and figured prominently among factors rationalising the hostility of the Polish population toward the Jews. First, as a consequence of German economic policies, a large group of Poles had taken over property formerly owned by Jews. When the Polish government issued a proclamation in 1939 declaring that all German laws and decrees promulgated in Poland were invalid, this group favored a definite and swift solution of the "Jewish problem" (GSHI, PRM 45c/41: "Dwa lata okupacji niemieckiej w Polsce", Aug. 1941). Second, until at least 1941 the Polish population generally perceived the Jews as much less the victims of political persecution than the Poles themselves. Poles felt that although the Germans wanted to destroy the Jews economically, they did not interfere greatly with Jewish local administration, that Jews were not being sent for labor in germany, that Jews were not arrested and tortured for the purpose of putting down the Jewish independence movement, etc. In a sense, the Poles argued, the Jews got the better part of the deal: the Germans wanted to exterminate the Poles, or at least make them renounce their Polishness, while Jews were only to be eventually resettled (GSHI, PRM 45c/41: "Informacja: Z placowki rzymsko watykanskiej"). This misconception stemmed from the fact that the Jews were, so to speak, persecuted without discrimination. There was no agenda establishing which Jews should be hit hardest or destroyed first. All were "equal" candidates for extermination. This lack of identified, selected targets may have caused the feeling on the part of Poles that the Jews were not subjected to political persecution. "Looking at each other's situation", observed an anonymous author, "Poles and Jews equally have the typical human inclination to see only advantages in the situation of the other side, and only disadvantages and difficulties in what they experience themselves". They envy each other, and consequently their mutual dislike increases, he concluded (GSHI, PRM 45c/41: "Informacja: Z placowki rzymsko watykanskiej"). Finally, the third element shaping Polish attitudes towards the Jews were reports on the way Jews behaved vis-a-vis Russian as well as German occupiers. Numerous witnesses reported that the Jews were collaborating with the Russians in the eastern parts of Poland. The public picked up this news item because it confirmed stereotypes of Jewish cosmopolitanism, weak loyalty to the Polish state, and "Judeo-communism" (zydo-komuna). Simultaneously, the Jews were perceived as docile, meek, and servile toward the Germans.
Note that in the report of the commander of the Home Army in September 1941, it was stated that the Poles had adopted the twin goals of cleansing Polish territory of two ethnic minorities, the Jews and the Germans. That had been the long-standing policy of Endecja, the party of Dmowski, which had been in opposition to the pre-war Sanacja regime. Now, those policies had been accepted by the Polish population as a whole.

In any case, the above passage demonstrates that anti-Jewish sentiment was wide-spread among the Polish population, and not limited to a fringe element.

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#43

Post by Slavomir » 05 Aug 2005, 14:30

I have found this excellent forum looking for info about military operations during WW2, however from time to time I'm also looking into other parts especially if they concern Poland and Poles.

First of all, I would like to thank you Mr Mills for posting your sources documents as many of them are not known to me. However, I do not always agree with their interpertation, ether done by you or by the other members.

I do not claim that there was no tense relationships between Jews and Poles in Poland before WW2. I do not claim that there were no Poles cooperating with Germans against Jews. But accepting that Holocaust was done with "acquiescence of the majority of the occupied populations" or even with "complicity" is a way too much for me.

During the war Poland suffered 6 million civilian casualties, including 3 million of Polish Jews. How can anyone assume that nation suffering day by day loss of so many lives, would join towards willing cooperation with it's executioner?

As a proof of active participation of Poles was cited the fact that a "large group of Poles had taken over property formerly owned by Jews". But does mr Gross know how many of them were expelled by Germans during the night as they stood from Pomerania, Silesia or Wielkopolska which were incorporated into the Reich? I'm not saying that it is good to move in into somebod's house, but I'm trying to put wider perspective on the complexity of situation under German occupation.

Just to sum it up, I would like to ask whether anyone of those writing about Polish anti-semitism took a chance to visit the Yad Vashem Institute site? There are pretty interesting numbers. Among 20,757 of the Righteous Among the Nations there are 5,874 Poles. Indeed, strange account as for the nation of anti-Semite

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#44

Post by Molobo » 05 Aug 2005, 15:12

Note that in the report of the commander of the Home Army in September 1941, it was stated that the Poles had adopted the twin goals of cleansing Polish territory of two ethnic minorities, the Jews and the Germans.
Post this report.
You are of course forgetting that Home Army executed people turning Jews to Germans and Polish state in exile issued report on genocide of Jewish people in German occupied Poland.
You also make mistake of taking Soviet and German occupied Poland together.

Polish Home Army engaged in several forms of resitance against German genocide:
http://www.polishresistance-ak.org/14%20Article.htm
In 14th June 1940 the Germans entered Paris and that very same day the gates to a German extermination camp were opened at Auschwitz. The first transport of 728 prisoners was made up exclusively of Polish prisoners, predominantly young men who had been caught trying to get to France, where a new Polish Army was being formed.


Later on transports were arriving not only from Poland but from many other countries, so that ultimately the inmates of Auschwitz represented as many as 30 nations. The number of those who were registered and received their individual prisoner numbers exceeded 500 thousand, but many more transports of Jews went straight to the gas chamber unregistered. Over the years 1942, 1943 and 1944 their number reached 1.5 million.


In September 1940 Lt Witold Pilecki arrived at the camp in a transport of prisoners from Warsaw. He was a member of the ‘Secret Polish Army’ (which later became part of the Polish Home Army – AK) who had deliberately allowed himself to be taken in a street roundup and thus be sent to Auschwitz, where he planned to set up an underground organisation. He arrived at the camp with false papers and was known there as Tomasz Serafinski.


In a report he wrote after the war the aims of his mission were summarised as follows:

‘The setting up of a military organisation within the camp for the purposes of:


keeping up the morale among fellow inmates and supplying them with news from the outside


providing extra food and distributing clothing among organization members


preparing our own detachments to take over the camp in the eventuality of the dropping of arms or of a live force [i.e. paratroops]’


Pilecki’s secret organization, which he called the ‘Union of Military Organization’, was composed of cells of five prisoners who were unknown to one another with one man designated to be their commander. These cells were to be found mainly in the camp hospital and camp work allocation office.


Once the first cells were established, contact with Warsaw became essential It so happened that at the time, by exceptionally fortuitous circumstances, a prisoner was released from the camp who was able to take Pilecki’s first report. Later reports were smuggled out by civilian workers employed in the camp. Another means was through prisoners who had decided to escape.


Meanwhile, other Poles were forming their own organizations that had similar aims to Pilecki’s. It was therefore necessary for these to unite, and so on Christmas Eve 1941, when the SS quite extraordinarily left the inmates unattended in their quarters but nonetheless still under great danger, a meeting was held in Block No. 25. The several Polish underground groups represented there included the socialists, nationalists and moderates. The meeting was a success: there were no betrayals and mutual understanding and cooperation were achieved.


Col. Kazimierz Rawicz, known in the camp as Jan Hilkner, became the overall commander of these groups. When in mid 1942 he was transferred to another concentration camp, his place was taken by Group-Captain Juliusz Gilewicz.


Apart from the Poles, other national groups began to set up their own resistance organizations. In January 1942 Pilecki established contact with Jan Stranski, the leader of the Czech group. That same year he also established contact with the Russians and later also with the French and Austrians.


The socialist Józef Cyrankiewicz was brought to the camp in September 1942. Although still relatively young at 31, he had far reaching ambitions. He joined the underground PPS and thus also became a member of Pilecki’s organization. Cyrankiewicz met Pilecki personally on a number of occasions.


In the autumn of 1942 the SS uncovered part of the Polish underground network, arrests followed and around 50 prisoners were executed.

From the very start Pilecki’s principal aim was to take over Auschwitz concentration camp and free all the prisoners. He envisaged achieving this by having Home Army detachments attacking from the outside while cadre members of his Union of Military Organization, numbering around a thousand prisoners, would start a revolt from within. All his reports primarily concerned this matter. However, the Home Army High Command was less optimistic and did not believe such an operation to be viable while the Eastern Front was still far away.

Pilecki therefore felt it necessary to present his plans personally. This meant that he would have to escape from the camp, which he succeeded in doing with two other prisoners on 27th April 1943. Before the breakout Pilecki passed on his position within the camp organization to fellow inmate Henryk Bartoszewicz. However, neither his subsequent report nor the fact that he presented it in person altered the high command’s opinion.


Meantime, in May 1943 the communists set up their own network in Auschwitz. The initiative of uniting all the small groups came from the Austrian [communists], who included barely a hundred prisoners, but usually ones holding good posts in the camp. They established contact with the French and the Polish socialists, who were now led by Cyrankiewicz.


Thus a new organization was formed: the Kampfgruppe Auschwitz, which was headed by an Austrian [communist], but also included in the command structure the extremely ambitious Cyrankiewicz. A very important point in this group’s ideological declaration related to the situation on the Eastern Front and stated that: ‘Friendship with the Soviet Union is the guarantee of victory and peace.’

The Kampfgruppe, however, lacked any real power without broader support from the Poles, who included the vast majority of the main camp’s inmates. Therefore it was essential to reach an understanding with Pilecki’s organisation. Talks ended successfully in the spring of 1944 with the founding of the Camp Military Council, headed by Henryk Bartoszewicz and Bernard Świerszczyna from Pilecki’s organization and Józef Cyrankiewicz and Herman Langbein from the Kampfgruppe. The plan was to take over the camp and the agreement was therefore put at the disposal of the Home Army Silesia District commander.

There was also a strong group of Russian prisoners who maintained contact with the Union of Military Organization and were prepared to fight, but remained independent.


The only circumstance under which the Home Army High Command would agree to an open revolt in Auschwitz was if the SS began murdering all the prisoners, but that eventuality never occurred. And it was only Pilecki’s organization which maintained contact with the Home Army partisans in the area around the camp.


The SS began evacuating Auschwitz on 17th January 1945. They drove most of the prisoners west on foot, while leaving behind several thousand prisoners who were deemed too sick to go. When on 27th January Red Army detachments took over its compound, the 1,680-day history of Auschwitz concentration camp ended.


After many vicissitudes Witold Pilecki found himself in post-war Poland on a mission for the Polish Second Corps stationed in Italy. In 1948 he was arrested by the Polish People’s Republic authorities and charged with being ‘a paid agent of Gen. Anders’s intelligence network’. He was subsequently tried, sentenced to death and executed. Meantime Józef Cyrankiewicz, who had returned to Poland [after his liberation from Mauthausen concentration camp], put the PPS under the control of Bolesław Bierut, Stalin’s appointed leader of Poland, and went on to become Poland’s prime minister, a job he was to hold for 20 years. In those years Cyrankiewicz let it be known in Poland that it was he who founded the resistance movement in Auschwitz.
http://www.warsawuprising.com/zegota.htm
The Network

The Underground movement in Poland arose spontaneously and regionally as soon as the German occupation began. Polish officers and soldiers who had not been put in prisoner-of-war camps buried their uniforms and their arms, then met secretly in their neighbourhoods to plan resistance.

Cells were composed of men and women from established political parties, from former army units, or – simply from their home districts. Eventually, all of these small units, – excluding the Communists on the extreme left and the fascists on the extreme right, united under one command. The military arm later became known as the Home Army – the AK (Armia Krajowa) – one facet of what became in reality an underground state.

Resistance was not new to Poles. From the late 1700s, to 1918, their country had been partitioned and occupied by the Germans, the Russians, and the Austrians. But Poles had never accepted foreign rule, resisting, regardless of the cost. They resisted again, but no one at first expected the perversions and savagery that would be directed against the entire population.

Nor was it immediately apparent that this time Germany was determined to carry out the unprecedented biological destruction of entire nations, most notably the Jews. Even in the context of daily terror, it was not long before the special brutality directed against the Jews was noted. Reports appeared both in the Polish Underground press and in communiques to the West.

After the death sentence was decreed for anyone helping Jews, Poles were exhorted in clandestine publications to defy this "law," but initially, no general strategy to do so was developed.

By the summer of 1942, about a million of the Jews in Poland were dead. They had died of disease, starvation and random massacres, but after the German entry into the Soviet zone, they were systematically killed in mass executions.

For a long time, the leading members of the Jewish community and most of the Jewish population believed that their only hope lay in obeying German edicts until liberated by the Allies. It was hard to believe that the Germans planned the murder of an entire nation. The Germans kept their hopes alive with constant reassurances that those being deported were only being "resettled," and that once the required quota for resettlement was met, further deportations would stop.

To reinforce their belief that they were only being resettled, Jews being transported were given extra rations of food and they were allowed to pack some belongings. The station at Treblinka was built complete with rest rooms and "Arrival" and "Departure" schedules. There were no departures. To further support this fiction, the Germans forced those who had been deported to write cards and letters describing their new and happy life in agrarian communities in the east.

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

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

Relentless terror and anti-Semitic propaganda were also taking their toll. With an ideology that turned every civilized concept of morality upside down, the Germans not only threatened with death all those who defied them but also rewarded those who cooperated with them. The Gestapo had paid informers from all ethnic groups, including Volksdeutsche, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Jews, on its payroll. Some were motivated by racist ideology, some by greed and still others by threats to themselves or their families.

Organized crime, a kind of Mafia, also comprising elements from all ethnic groups, fed as it always does on the vulnerability of others. Then there were the marginal elements: the drunks, the punks and the moral and mental degenerates. All of them, collectively known as szmalcowniki – a derogatory term based on the Polish word szmalec – meaning lard – were responsible for the deaths of many Jews and of their Polish protectors. They also targeted members of the Underground.

The Jews had to be helped to escape from the ghettos and the certain death that awaited them. But just being on the Aryan side was a crime punishable by death, and the szmalcowniki were poised to exploit this situation for quick profits. Fighting this plague was one of Zegota's greatest challenges.

The idea of unifying the diverse efforts to help Jews was primarily the result of the efforts of two women, Zofia Kossak and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz. Kossak was a well-known, conservative Catholic writer, a member of the Catholic lay organization, the Front for Reborn Poland, and intensely involved on a personal level in assisting Jews. Krahelska-Filipowicz, who also personally sheltered Jews, was a Catholic Socialist activist of long standing and well connected to important members of the AK.

While Kossak and Krahelska are generally credited with galvanizing a united front in the struggle to help Jews, they and the people they drew together were already deeply involved in this work, either at party levels, in community associations, or as individuals. The aim now was to unite all these forces and link them with the considerable Underground resources of the AK, and, just as important, to get funds from the Government-in-Exile in London and other sources.

Of vital importance also was to coordinate efforts with the Jewish Underground and thus establish a liaison with the Jewish community. This already existed at a party level, and contacts had already been made with the AK by the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), a resistance group formed by the younger members of the Jewish Underground. Some of the Jewish leaders were already living on the Aryan side and the two most prominent, Dr. Adolf Berman and Dr. Leon Feiner, were invited to join in the first discussions of the Konrad Zegota Committee in Warsaw.

Who was Konrad Zegota? There was no such person. In the conspiratorial life of the Polish Underground, virtually everything had a code name – a cryptonym – and the Council for Aid to Jews was no exception. Clearly, no conversations about anything to do with Jews could be risked, and "Zegota" was used not only in discussions, but on all documents, receipts, and memos. In time, "Zegota" came to signify all activities involving help to Jews.

The first slate of officers of Zegota included Adolf Berman of the Zionist Poale Zion party as secretary; Leon Feiner of the Bund as vice-president (and later president); Julian Grobelny of the Polish Socialist Party as president; Tadeusz Rek of the Peasant Party as his deputy; Ferdynand Arczynski of the Democratic Party as treasurer; and Wladyslaw Bartoszewski and Witold Bienkowski of the Catholic Front for Reborn Poland as liaison directors. Zegota immediately set out to identify the most serious problems in rescue activities, to set up an over-all plan of action, and to recruit the people to implement it. Since all of the members were already in the Underground and active in helping Jews, they brought to Zegota their conspiratorial experience as well as their many contacts and skills.

The Council was divided into sections dealing with clearly identifiable needs: Legalization, Housing, Financial, Child Welfare, Medical, Clothing, Propaganda, and anti-szmalcownik activities. From its Warsaw base, the Zegota network expanded to include relief organizations in Cracow, Lwow, Zamosc, Lublin and the countryside.

The main links with the Polish Underground were through Aleksander Kaminski and Henryk Wolinski, both of the AK. Kaminski was editor of the Biuletyn Informacyjny (BI), the most widely read Underground newspaper. The BI had correspondents in practically every part of Poland, some "foreign correspondents" in other occupied countries including Germany and, most important, a permanent correspondent in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Wolinski was head of the Jewish Section of the Underground Bureau of Information and Propaganda. He was the principal AK contact for Arie Wilner, the Jewish liaison of ZOB, and later for the Jewish leaders in Zegota as well. Also noteworthy was Witold Bienkowski, a representative of the Delegatura (the Home Delegation of the Government-in-Exile). Bienkowski had argued passionately and convincingly that the AK was already equipped with the essentials of conspiratorial activities and should put its resources at the disposal of Zegota.

The Founders

Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz (1886-1968) was not new to Underground resistance activities. In 1906, when Poland was still partitioned among Russia, Germany and Austria, she took part in a bombing attack on the Russian governor-general of Warsaw, Georgii Skalon. The wife of a former ambassador to the United States, an editor of the art magazine Arkady, and a Socialist activist of long standing, she knew many people in the Underground, including members of the Delegatura (the office of the Delegate of the Government-in-Exile) and its military counterpart, the AK.

She used her influence to persuade both of them of the importance of setting up a central organization to help Jews, and to back it up with significant funding. Using the code name "Alicja," she had been in the Underground from the start and had begun hiding Jews in her own home early during the occupation. Among them was the widow of the Jewish historian Szymon Aszkenazy.

Zofia Kossak was, by comparison, a conservative nationalist. A well-known writer, she was a political opponent of most Jewish groups before the war and consequently was considered quite "anti-Semitic." An ardent patriot, Kossak joined the resistance at the very beginning of the occupation and was soon on the Gestapo's most-wanted list.

She changed her name almost as often as she changed addresses. In the Underground, she used the code-name "Weronika." Despite already being a target of an intensive Gestapo manhunt, she exposed herself to the added danger of helping Jews – influencing her children to do the same. Her motivation was moral, humanitarian and patriotic. She regarded the German crimes as an offence against man and God, and their policies an affront to the ideals she espoused for an independent Poland.

In the summer of 1942, when the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto began, Kossak published a leaflet entitled "Protest," which was printed in 5,000 copies. In it, she exhorted Poles, specifically those who might have felt antipathy towards Jews before the war, to come to their assistance. After the war, she stated, Poles and Jews could resume their political and ideological battles. Now, the only issue that mattered was moral. "Whoever remains silent in the face of murder becomes an accomplice of the murder," she wrote. "He who does not condemn, condones."

She despised hypocrisy and demanded of others no more than what she herself was doing. Her scathing attacks on the indifference of the West were also directed against the silence of western Jewry. She stressed that coming to the aid of the most persecuted people in history is an intrinsic part of Polish resistance to Germany, and condemned Catholics who professed their love of God but hated their neighbours.

The first chairman of Zegota was Julian Grobelny, a member of the Polish Socialist Party. Born in 1893, Grobelny had fought for Polish independence and social justice, participating in the Silesian Uprisings, and leading strikes and street demonstrations. After Poland regained independence in 1918, he served on the Lodz city council and continued his social welfare activism. In the 1930s, he contracted tuberculosis and retired to the country, where he and his wife operated a small farm. During his convalescence, he tirelessly organized help for agricultural workers who were unemployed in the winter. When war broke out, Grobelny immediately joined the resistance, resuming his old code name from the days of the Silesian insurrections – "Trojan."

Zegota's deputy chairman was Tadeusz Rek, born in 1906 into a peasant family. He became involved at an early age in politics as a member of the Peasant Party. He earned a law degree at the University of Warsaw and backed his social activism with his work as a writer and editor on many progressive journals. He was arrested in June 1940, sent to Pawiak Prison and then to Auschwitz. Released in November 1941, Rek, code named "Rozycki," returned immediately to his work in the Underground press. He was soon recruited by Zegota.

The treasurer of Zegota was Ferdynand Arczynski, cryptonym "Marek," a member of the Democratic Party and former editor of the Polish Daily in Cracow. Born in 1900, Arczynski was also a veteran of the Silesian Uprisings. He was tireless in his activities for Zegota, serving as treasurer, head of the Legalization Section, liaison with branches of Zegota in Cracow, Lwow and Lublin, and an unofficial, but successful, recruiting officer.

Representing the Catholic Front for Reborn Poland and heading the large and difficult Liaison Section were Ignacy Barski (code-named "Jozef”), a lawyer, and the very young Wladyslaw Bartoszewski ("Ludwik"). Barski personally undertook dangerous delivery missions to outlying areas such as Lwow and Lublin while Bartoszewski, who at 21 had already endured eight months in Auschwitz, directed the network of couriers. Most of the couriers were very young women, many of whom were caught, tortured, sent to concentration camps or killed in the course of their missions. None ever betrayed the organization.

The Jewish Representatives

The Jewish Underground had also organized relief and rescue efforts. Contact between Poles and Jews was maintained from the start of the occupation between people who had professional, political or social contacts before the war. The raising of the ghetto walls and then the sealing of the ghetto made the contacts more difficult. But they were never broken.

A Jewish socialist party, called the Bund, and Polish socialist parties had maintained their links; the Jewish Communists kept contact with their counterparts on the Polish side; the other parties, ranging from the Zionist right and left and assorted centre and right, established contact through their various professional prewar associations. Youth groups, notably the Scouts, were another very important link.

In 1942, Dr. Adolf Berman, code-named "Borowski," was a member of a left-wing Zionist party and a director of CENTOS, a Jewish charitable organization dedicated to the care of children in the ghetto. After the formation of the Jewish National Committee that united six Zionist parties, it was decided that Berman should get out of the ghetto and concentrate on establishing Polish contacts to help Jews escape from the ghetto, and then survive on the Aryan side.

At the same time, Leon Feiner – code named "Mikolaj" – a lawyer and a leading member of the largest Jewish political party, the Bund, left the ghetto with the same objectives as those of Berman. Through his long association with Polish socialists, Feiner made contact not only with the AK, but with members of the Underground in the Delegatura, representing in Poland the Government-in-Exile. Feiner, who looked very much like a typical "Polish country squire" and armed with excellent forgeries bearing a Polish Catholic identity, was able to move around Warsaw with relative ease.

Zegota and the two Jewish groups formed a natural alliance. Both played an extremely active and important role in Zegota and brought to the organization workers from the Jewish Underground.

Zegota created "an organic bond between the Jewish and Polish action of relief for Jews" wrote Adolf Berman. In the most heavily policed, yet totally lawless, country in occupied Europe, Polish men and women risked torture and death to shield others; while Jewish men and women, themselves rescued, gave up their small measure of safety to go out again for those still trapped.

The Network

In October 1942 the Delegatura's official newspaper, Rzeczpospolita Polska, published the following announcement:

We have been asked to make it publicly known that the initiatives of a number of social organizations from Catholic and Democratic quarters have led to the organization of the Civic Assistance Committee, which will provide relief to Jewish people suffering from the results of bestial German persecution. As far as means and opportunities allow, and taking into account the living conditions in an occupied country, the Committee will try to bring relief to the victims of Nazi outrages.33

This was the only public notice of the birth of Zegota. This announcement, revealing nothing except the existence of such a committee, was published at considerable risk. Had this information fallen into German hands, the Gestapo would have arrested and tortured as many people as required to uncover and break the organization. The idea of Zegota came into being because of individual humanitarian impulses, but its realization would not have been possible without an extensive network. Personalities, and they were without exception very strong personalities, were surrendered to principles. Individuals submitted to the collective, reaching out to expand the network horizontally. What little hierarchy there was, existed only to demand obedience to the discipline of the conspiracy. Most of all, the people in Zegota were not just idealists but activists, and activists are, by nature, people who know people.

As mentioned earlier, Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz was well connected to both military and political leaders of the Underground. Aleksander Kaminski had contacts in the ghetto because of his pre-war activities as leader of the Section of Minority Groups in the Polish Scouts' Association. Henryk Wolinski, a lawyer, headed the Jewish Section of the Delegatura and had scores of Jewish friends and colleagues from pre-war days and in the Polish Bar Association. And Zofia Kossak was to prove invaluable in locating homes for women and children because of her close ties to the Catholic clergy as well as to the upper classes, especially the landed gentry. Irena Sendlerowa, one of their first recruits, was an administrator in the Warsaw Welfare Department, who already had an established wide network among medical and social workers.

The Bund, represented by Leon Feiner had long-standing contacts with Polish socialists, and Adolf Berman had extensive professional contacts – he was a noted psychologist – with Poles and with ghetto welfare workers in CENTOS. According to Berman, "The Jewish National Committee (a coalition of Zionist parties) had more than 100 cells involved in the relief and rescue of Jews, the majority of which were made up of Poles. Moreover... (in) the Bund ...the active workers were members of the Bund and Poles ...first and foremost Polish Socialists.34

As we look at the membership of Zegota we see the same pattern throughout – social and political activists with a wide circle of friends and colleagues. Even the youngest members, Bartoszewski, 21, and couriers Maria Tomaszewska and Wanda Muszynska, 18 and 17, respectively, had a network either as students or as members of the Scout Association. Add to these, the Writers' Union, the Underground Journalists Association, the Democratic Doctors' Committee, and many others such as the railway, tramway and sanitation department workers' organizations that established contacts with Jewish friends either in the ghetto or in hiding, and Zegota had a good base for building an extensive network. Every one of these organizations was already actively involved in aid to Jews.

Zegota could not stop the murder campaign of the Nazi government. They could not intercept and help every Jew who escaped from the ghetto. They could not even guarantee the security of those Jews who did come under their wing. Nevertheless, they were able to rescue and succour thousands of people otherwise destined for death.

Miriam Peleg, a Jewish courier from Cracow, now living in Israel, said in a filmed interview that Zegota not only helped materially, but also gave people hope. For the first time in years, those who came in contact with Zegota felt that at last they were not alone .35 This sentiment was perhaps expressed more dramatically by two escapees, Pawel Rogalski and his wife, who recalled that soon after they came out of the ghetto, they chanced upon a copy of Zofia Kossak's "Protest." They can still recite from memory the words that gave them hope, and it was Zegota that provided them with the means to get them started with life on the Aryan side.36

Zegota's headquarters at 24 Zurawia Street was the home of a Polish Socialist, Eugenia Wasowska, who worked closely with the Bund. It also doubled as a temporary shelter. One of the refugees hidden at 24 Zurawia Street was Ignacy Samsonowicz, who later married Wasowska, one of many marriages between rescuer and rescued, and between colleagues in the resistance.

24 Zurawia had "office hours" twice a week, when couriers could drop in to pick up or ask for documents or money, arrange for housing or medical help, get clothing, or arrange for food deliveries to Jews in hiding. They would also find out the date and time of meetings and transmit this information to the members. The office was administered by Janina Raabe, a friend of Zofia Kossak's who had studied book binding in Paris and was co-founder of the Democratic Party's underground press, and by Zofia Rudnicka, a lawyer.

Raabe and Rudnicka looked after funds, meetings, and contacts for Jews with Poles. They prepared reports to be sent to London, and wrote a newsletter to Jews and those hiding them. There were frequent personnel changes as people were arrested, killed, or, warned of danger, forced to lie low for a while. An incredibly large number of people from the AK, the Jewish Fighting Organization, and Zegota knew about Zurawia Street. Miraculously it was never raided, but there were some close calls.

Tadeusz Rek once approached the house when he realized that he was being followed. Without missing a beat, he walked past number 24 and knocked on another door pretending that he was looking for a ro4m to rent. When he emerged, the shadow was still with him. He turned down another street and met Leon Feiner on his way to the same meeting. Rek greeted him loudly and effusively, like a friend he hadn't seen for several years. Then, arm on his friend's shoulder, he guided him to a nearby cafe for a stiff drink.

Meetings were held frequently. Over the course of the years, Grobelny, Arczynski, Berman and Feiner never missed one, except when they were in jail. Rek attended all but a couple, and Bartoszewski and Bienkowski, who alternated attendance between them, never missed. This sense of responsibility and discipline is noted frequently in war memoirs. Even children in clandestine schools rarely missed classes, and complained whenever teaching was temporarily suspended for reasons of security.

Since 24 Zurawia was on occasion under surveillance, other premises were available, including the homes of two seamstresses, an electrician, and various other members. Janina Bucholtz-Bukolska, for example, worked as a translator in a notary public's office during the war. In the midst of constant traffic, she allowed Basia Berman, Adolf Berman's wife, to keep her forged documents and money there, and to dispense them to her "clients." Berman had what was, in effect, an office within an office.

Perhaps the most unusual branch office was a fruit and vegetable kiosk operated by Ewa Brzuska, an old woman known to everybody as "Babcia" (Granny). Babcia hid Leon Feiner's papers and money under the sauerkraut and pickle barrels, and secreted underground books and pamphlets in various nooks and crannies. She always had sacks of potatoes or something ready to cover Jewish children who found themselves running from the police. Two of those little smugglers now live in Canada.

Julian Grobelny, Zegota's first chairman, was actively helping Jews before he joined Zegota. He headed an Underground cell composed mainly of Socialist friends of the Bund. His wife, Halina, worked with him accepting all the risks and responsibilities of their dangerous work. The Grobelny cell eventually had some 40 members, including Wlodzimierz Garlinski, director of a quarantine department on the Public Health Board. Nothing could be safer for Jews than to be under quarantine, and although this could only serve as a temporary respite, it gave Grobelny time to look for other quarters. The mother-daughter team of Drs. Hanna and Zofia Kolodziejska, and some of their colleagues, freely donated their medical skills, while Sister Makryna of the Mariavite convent arranged housing.

Grobelny's long involvement in labour unions also gave him an edge. He prevailed upon his contacts with railway workers to transport some of his charges out of the city. Since virtually every train was checked, this means of travel was particularly dangerous, requiring special precautions.

When the Socialist Party entered the discussions for the formation of Zegota, Grobelny was an invaluable asset, not only for his great organizational skills, but for his ability to enlist help. One of his recruits described him as a great humanist, but he was not a person who asked for help; rather, he delegated assignments. To help a Jew could cost you your life, he used to say, so for the same life, you might as well help several Jews.

Zegota's policy was not to solicit help without revealing for whom it was intended and what the risks were. They agreed that it would be immoral to endanger another's life without consent. However, there were a few instances when this was done – in the case of children and out of desperation.

As chairman of Zegota, Grobelny brought the same qualities to the organization that he had used in his own cell. He expanded the network, organized the operations, and also played a personal role in many activities, especially those involving children.
Jews were saved from concentration camps by Home Army and served in it fighting side by side with Poles against German occupation:
http://www.warsawuprising.com/savejews.htm
The heroes belonged to the 3rd Company of the Battalion 'Zoska', a unit of freedom fighters during the German occupation. The words 'company' and 'battalion' are quite misleading here. The strength of those units was somewhat less than half of the same unit in a regular army and their equipment about a tenth. It should be mentioned that most of their officer corps and a good number of soldiers stemmed from prewar Polish Scouts, a highly idealistic and disciplined movement. Except for a few, most of the soldiers were high school students and working youths from factories, and the officers were generally drawn from university students. A last remark: all names given in the text are surnames used during underground activity. In those days no one knew the identity of any other because in case of an arrest, even when torture was used (a common method), the Germans could not force anyone to reveal the underground network. Today, in historical literature, the identities and true names of those heroes are known.

On the fifth day of the Uprising, captain Jan announced a new objective for the company: to take the concentration camp Gesiówka, erected by the Germans in the vast, empty and wide open space of the burned out Warsaw Ghetto. The name of this labor and annihilation camp stems from the same of the Gesia street, which was parallel to a nearby street, Pawia, on which stood the infamous prison Pawiak, in which the Germans incarcerated Poles for their patriotic stand. My parents and my sister spent over a year there before deportation to concentration camps in May 1944. Because of an approaching front the Germans decided to get rid of most of the prisoners from Pawiak. Several hundred were executed in the nearby ruins and two thousand were sent to Buchenwald and Stutthoff concentration camps. The small Gesiówka camp was kept open, however, with a plan to execute the prisoners before the Germans' flight to Germany. Taking Gesiówka would allow the liberation of its 400 prisoners, the obtaining of arms and the elimination of the German fire from the guard towers overlooking the streets and buildings on the fringes of the ruined ghetto. Two events made this endeavor mandatory and possible. First was a chance arrest, on the first day of fighting, of a Gestapo officer from the Gesiówka Concentration Camp who revealed that all of the prisoners were Jews, the last Jews remaining in Warsaw. The second, was the capture of two German tanks on the third day of the Uprising. Unbelievable as it might seem, two of the most modern and dangerous German Panther tanks wandered beyond German lines and the confused crew surrendered after a rather mild grenade attack against them. Now, the story of how the attack on Gesiówka went.

At 10:30 A.M. on August 5, 1944 the now Polish Panther moved into action. A distance of some 300 meters separated it from the main heavy iron gate of the compound. At first Germans held their fire thinking that it was one of the armors of their relief force. However, when the Panther easily forced open two sizeable barricades erected before the entrance, all hell broke loose from the guard towers. The unruffled Panther approached the large gate and crushed it to the ground. At the same time, two of the tank's shells hit one of the guard towers, then another, and eventually all eight towers were silenced. It should be mentioned that the camp consisted of brick towers connected by a five-meter high brick wall – it was a veritable fortress of rectangular layout. Inside the Germans build various shop buildings, quarters for the inmates and for themselves, including a spacious two-story administration building.

After the first shots demolished the towers near the main entrance, foot soldiers entered into action. Within minutes small groups of Germans started to escape from the towers and to retreat to the administration building and further out beyond the wall of the compound in the direction of Pawiak. Platoon 'Felek' quickly flushed the remaining Germans out of the various areas of the camp. In the administration building they saw a most unusual scene. In the main hall there was a long table covered with a white tablecloth, a tureen filled with still warm soup, bottles of liquor and untouched plates. Only the turned over chairs testified to the hasty retreat of the Germans as an antique grandfather clock in the corner chimed eleven o'clock. The whole action took just 30 minutes of intense fighting. The fleeing black clad SS men were under Polish fire still some distance from the compound.

Before the 1st shots echoed a most moving scene occurred. Gradually, at first hesitant, then jubilant figures emerged from various buildings. All were Jewish slave laborers, 324 men and 24 women, of whom just 89 were of Polish citizenship. The others were of Greek, Romanian, Dutch and Hungarian nationalities. Most of them joined the ranks of the fighting Polish units. Along with their liberators several fell in the nearly two month long struggle that followed. In the surprise attack on the Gesiówka compound, a number of SS men were killed. On the Polish side, one soldier was wounded and one young man and one woman gave their lives.

A few days later, following several successful actions, the tank was abandoned; there was no way to recharge its batteries necessary to power the starter, rotate the turret and activated the internal gear yet, it served so well. The last Jews in Warsaw were saved.
Polish Government in Exile noticed about extermination of Jews in occupied Poland:
http://www.republika.pl/unpack/1/dok03.html
INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The purpose of this publication is to make public the contents of the Note of December 10th, 1942, addressed by the Polish Government to the Governments of the United Nations concerning the mass extermination of Jews in the Polish territories occupied by Germany, and also other documents treating on the same subject.
In the course of the last three years the Polish Government has lodged a number of protests with the Governments of the civilized countries of the world condemning the repeated violations by Germany of International Law and of the fundamental princi-ples of morality since September 1st, 1939, i.e. since Germany's aggression against Poland.

In the Note of May 3rd, 1941, presented to the Governments of the Allied and Neutral Powers the Polish Government gave a comprehensive survey of the acts of violence perpetrated against the population of Poland, of offences against religion and cultural heritage and destruction of property in Poland.
Since then, however, many increasingly brutal acts of violence and terror have been com-mitted by German authorities in Poland.
In recent months these persecutions have been directed with particular violence against the Jewish population, who have been subjected to new methods calculated to bring about the complete extermination of the Jews, in conformity with the public statements made by the leaders of Germany.

In the hope that the civilized world will draw the appropriate conclusions, the Polish Government desire to bring to the notice of the public, by means of the present white Paper, these renewed German efforts at mass extermination, with the employment of fresh horrifying methods.

* Republic of Poland, Ministry of Foreign Affairs: "The German Occupation of Poland," Extract of Note addressed to the Governments of the Allied and Neutral Powers on May 3, 1941, London and New York.





REPUBLIC OF POLAND
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
LONDON,
December 10th, 1942

Your Excellency,

On several occasions the Polish Government have drawn the attention of the civilized world, both in diplomatic documents and official publications, to the conduct of the German Government and of the German authorities of occupation, both military and civilian, and to the methods employed by them "in order to reduce the population to virtual slavery and ultimately to exterminate the Polish nation".
These methods, first introduced in Poland, were subsequently, applied in a varying degree, in other countries occupied by the armed forces of the German Reich.

2. At the Conference held at St. James's Palace on January 13th, 1942, the Governments of the occupied countries placed among their principal war aims the punishment, through the channel of organized justice, of those guilty of, or responsible for, those crimes, whether they have ordered them, perpetrated them, or participated in them".
Despite this solemn warning and the declarations of President Roosevelt, of the Prime Minister, Mr. Winston Churchill, and of the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, M. Molotov, the German Government has not ceased to apply its methods of violence and terror. The Polish Government have received numerous reports from Poland testifying to the constant intensification of German persecu-tion of the subjected populations.

3. Most recent reports present a horrifying picture of the position to which the Jews in Poland have been reduced. The new methods of mass slaughter applied during the last few months confirm the fact that the German authorities aim with systematic deliberation at the total extermination of the Jewish population of Poland and of the many thousands of Jews whom the German authorities have deported to Poland from Western and Central European countries and from the German Reich itself.

The Polish Government consider it their duty to bring to the knowledge of the Governments of all civilized countries the following fully authenticated information received from Poland during recent weeks, which indicates all too plainly the new methods of extermination adopted by the German authorities.

4. The initial steps leading to the present policy of exter-mination of the Jews were taken already in October 1940, when the German authorities established the Warsaw ghetto.
At that time all the Jewish inhabitants of the Capital were ordered to move into the Jewish Quarter assigned to them not later than November 1st, 1940, while all the non-Jews domiciled within the new boundaries of what was to become the ghetto were ordered to move out of that quarter.
The Jews were allowed to take only personal effects with them, while all their remaining property was confiscated.
All Jewish shops and businesses outside the new ghetto boun-daries were closed down and sealed.
The original date for these transfers was subsequently postponed to November 15th, 1940. After that date the ghetto was completely closed and its entire area was surrounded by a brick wall, the right of entry and exit being restricted to the holders of special passes, issued by the German authorities.
All those who left the ghetto without such a pass became liable to sentence of death, and it is known that German courts passed such sentences in a large number of cases.

5. After the isolation of the ghetto, official intercourse with the outside world was maintained through a special German office known as "Transferstelle".
Owing to totally inadequate supplies of food for the inhabitants of the ghetto, smuggling on a large scale was carried on; the Germans themselves participated in this illicit trading, drawing con-siderable incomes from profits and bribes.
The food rations for the inhabitants of the ghetto amounted to about a pound of bread per person weekly, with practically nothing else.
As a result, prices in the ghetto were on an average ten times higher than outside and mortality due to exhaustion, starvation and disease, particularly during the last two winters, increased on an unprecedented scale.
During the winter 1941-1942 the death rate, calculated on an annual base, has risen to 13 per cent, and during the first quarter of 1942 increased still further. Scores of corpses were found in the streets of the ghetto every day.

6. At the time when the ghetto was established the whole population was officially stated to amount to 488,000, and in spite of the appalling death rate it was being main-tained at this figure by the importation of Jews from Germany and from the occupied countries, as well as from other parts of Poland.

7. The outbreak of war between Germany and Soviet Russia and the occupation of the eastern areas of Poland by German troops considerably increased the numbers of Jews in Germany's power.
At the same time the mass murders of Jews reached such dimensions that, at first, people refused to give credence to the reports reaching Warsaw from the Eastern provinces.
The reports, however, were confirmed again and again by reliable witnesses.
During the winter 1941-1942 several tens of thousands of Jews were murdered.
In the city of Wilno over 50,000 Jews were reported to have been massacred and only 12,000 of them remain in the local ghetto.
In the city of Lwow 40,000 were reported murdered; in Rowne 14,000; in Kowel 10,000, and unknown numbers in Stanislawow, Tarnopol, Stryj, Drohobycz and many other smaller towns.
At first the executions were carried out by shooting; subsequently, however, it is reported that the Germans applied new methods, such as poison gas, by means of which the Jewish population was exterminated in Chelm, or electrocution, for which a camp was organized in Belzec, where in the course of March and April, 1942, the Jews from the provinces of Lublin, Lwow and Kielce, amounting to tens of thousands, were exterminated. Of Lublin's 80,000 Jewish inhabitants only 2,500 still survive in the city.

8. It has been reliably reported that on the occasion of his visit to the General Gouvernement of Poland in March, 1942, Himmler issued an order for the extermination of 50 percent of the Jews in Poland by the end of that year Herr Himmler's departure the Germans spread the rumor that the Warsaw ghetto would be liquidated as from April, 1942.
This date was subsequently altered to June. Himmler's second visit to Warsaw in the middle of July 1942, became the signal for the commencement of the process of liquidation, the horror of which surpasses anything known in the annals of history.

9. The liquidation of the ghetto was preceded, on July 17th, 1942, by the registration of all foreign Jews confined there who were then removed to the Pawiak prison.
As from July 20th, 1942, the guarding of the ghetto was en-trusted to special security battalions, formed from the scum of several Eastern European countries, while large forces of German police armed with machine guns and commanded by SS officers were posted at all the gates leading into the ghetto.
Mobile German police detachments patrolled all the boundaries of the ghetto day and night.

10. On July 81st, at 11 a.m., German police ears drove up to the building of the Jewish Council of the ghetto, in Grzybowska Street.
The SS officers ordered the chairman of the Jewish Council, Mr. Czerniakow, to summon the members of the Council, who were all arrested on arrival and removed in police cars to the Pawiak prison.
After a few hours' detention the majority of them were allowed to return to the ghetto. About the same time flying squads of German police entered the ghetto, breaking into the houses in search of Jewish intellectuals.
The better-dressed Jews found were killed on the spot, without the police troubling even to identify them. Among those who were thus killed was a non-Jew, Professor Dr. Raszeja, who was visiting the ghetto in the course of his medical duties and was in possession of an official pass.
Hundreds of educated Jews were killed in this way.

11. On the morning of the following day, July 22nd, 1942, the German police again visited the office of the Jewish Council and summoned all the members, who had been released from the Pawiak prison the previous day.
On their assembly they were informed that an order had been issued for the removal of the entire Jewish population of the Warsaw ghetto and printed instructions to that effect were issued in he form of posters, the contents of which are reproduced in Annex 1 to this Note.
Additional instructions were issued verbally.
The number of people to be removed was first fixed at 6,000 daily.
The persons concerned were to assemble in the hospital wards and grounds in Stawki Street the patients of which were evacuated forthwith. The hospital was close to the railway siding.
Persons subject to deportation were to be delivered by the Jewish police not later than 4 p.m. each day. Members of the Council and other hostages were to answer for the strict fulfillment of the order.
In conformity with German orders, all inmates of Jewish prisons, old-age pensioners and inmates of other charitable institutions were to be included in the first contingent.

12. On July 23rd, 1942, at 7 p.m., two German police officers again visited the offices of the Jewish Council and saw the chairman, Mr. Czerniakow.
After they left him he committed suicide. It is reported that Mr. Czerniakow did so because the Germans increased the contingent of the first day to 10,000 persons, to be followed by 7,000 persons on each subsequent day.
Mr. Czerniakow was succeeded in his office by Mr. Lichtenbaum, and on the following day 10,000 persons were actually assembled for deportation, followed by 7,000 persons on each subsequent day.
The people affected were either rounded up haphazardly in the streets or were taken from their homes.

13. According to the German order of July 22nd, 1942, all Jews employed in German-owned undertakings, together with their families, were to be exempt from deportation.
This produced acute competition among the inhabitants of the ghetto to secure employment in such undertakings, or, failing employment, bogus certificates to that effect.
Large sums of money, running into thousands of Slates, were being paid for such certificates to the German owners. They did not, however, save the purchasers from deportation, which was being carried out without discrimination or identification.

14. The actual process of deportation was carried out with appalling brutality.
At the appointed hour on each day the German police cordoned off a block of houses selected for clearance, entered the back yard and fired their guns at random, as a signal for all to leave their homes and assemble in the yard.
Anyone attempting to escape or to hide was killed on the spot. No attempt was made by the Germans to keep families together. Wives were torn from their husbands and children from their parents.
Those who appeared frail or infirm were carried straight to the Jewish cemetery to be killed and buried there.
On the average 50-100 people were disposed of in this way daily.
After the contingent was assembled, the people were packed forcibly into cattle trucks to the number of 120 in each truck, which had room for forty. The trucks were then locked and sealed. The Jews were suffocating for lack of air. The floors of the trucks were covered with quicklime and chlorine.
As far as is known, the trains were dispatched to three localities -Tremblinka, Belzec and Sobibor, to what the reports describe as "Extermination camps."
The very method of transport was deliberately calculated to cause the largest possible number of casualties among the condemned Jews.
It is reported that on arrival in camp the survivors were stripped naked and killed by various means, including poison gas and electrocution. The dead were interred in mass graves dug by machinery.

15. According to all available information, of the 250,000 Jews deported from the Warsaw ghetto up to September 1st, 1942, only two small transports, numbering about 4,000 people, are known to have been sent eastwards in the direction of Brest-Litovsk and Malachowicze, allegedly to be employed on work behind the front line.
It has not been possible to ascertain whether any of the other Jews deported from the Warsaw ghetto still survive, and it must be feared that they have been all put to death.

16. The Jews deported from the Warsaw ghetto so far included in the first instance all the aged and infirm; a number of the physically strong have escaped so far, because of their utility as labor power.
All the children from Jewish schools, orphanages and children's homes were deported, including those from the orphanage in charge of the celebrated educationist, Dr. Janusz Korczak, who refused to abandon his charges, although he was given the alternative of remaining behind.

17. According to the most recent reports, 120,000 ration cards were distributed in the Warsaw ghetto for the month of September 1942, while the report also mentions that only 40,000 such cards were to be distributed for the month of October 1942.
The latter figure is corroborated by informa-tion emanating from the German Employment Office (Arbeitsamt), which mentioned the number of 40,000 skilled workmen as those who were to be allowed to remain in a part of the ghetto, confined to barracks and employed on German war production.

18. The deportations from the Warsaw ghetto were inter-rupted during five days, between August 2Oth-25th.
The German machinery for the mass slaughter of the Jews was employed during this interval on the liquidation of other ghettoes in Central Poland, including the towns of Falenica, Rembertow, Nowy Dwor, Kaluszyn and Minsk Mazowiecki.

19. It is not possible to estimate the exact numbers of Jews who have been exterminated in Poland since the occupation of the country by the armed forces of the German Reich.
But all the reports agree that the total number of killed runs into many hundreds of thousands of innocent victims - men, women and children - and that of the 3,130,000 Jews in Poland before the outbreak of war, over a third have perished during the last three years.*
[This statement hides the fact that 1,222,000 Polish Jews were absorbed into the Soviet Union as a result of the October 22, 1939 plebiscite held on the eastern Polish territories.]

20. The Polish population, which itself is suffering the most grievous afflictions, and of which many millions have been either deported to Germany as slave labor or evicted from their homes and lands, deprived of so many of their leaders, who have been cruelly murdered by the Germans, have repeatedly expressed, through the underground organizations, their horror of and compassion with the terrible fate which has befallen their Jewish fellow-countrymen.
The Polish Govern-ment are in possession of information concerning the assistance which the Polish population is rendering to the Jews. For obvious reasons no details of these activities can be published at present.

21. The Polish Government as the representatives of the legitimate authority on territories in which the Germans are carrying out the systematic extermination of Polish citizens and of citizens of Jewish origin of many other European countries consider it their duty to address themselves to the Governments of the United Nations, in the confident belief that they will share their opinion as to the necessity not only of condemning the crimes committed by the Germans and punishing the criminals, but also of finding means offering the hope that Germany might be effectively restrained from continuing to apply her methods of mass extermination.

I avail myself of this opportunity to renew to Your Excellency the assurances of my high consideration.

L. S. EDWARD RACZYNSKI.




Annex 1:

JEWISH COUNCIL IN WARSAW
NOTICE

Warsaw, July 22nd, 1942.

1. By order of the German authorities all Jews living in Warsaw, without regard to age or sex, are to be deported to the East.

2. The following are exempted from the deportation order
(a) All Jews employed by the German authorities or German enterprises, who can produce adequate evidence of the fact.
(b) All Jews who are members and employees of the Jewish Council according to their status on the day of publication of this order.
(c) All Jews employed in German-owned firms who can produce adequate evidence of the fact.
(d) All Jews not yet thus employed, but who are capable of work. These are to be barracked in the Jewish quarter.
(e) All Jews belonging to the Jewish civil police.
(f) All Jews belonging to the staffs of Jewish hospitals, or belonging to Jewish disinfection squads.
(g) All Jews who are members of the families of persons covered by (a) to (f). Only wives and children are regarded as members of families.
(h) All Jews who on the day of deportation are patients in one of the Jewish hospitals, unless fit to be discharged. Unfitness for discharge must be attested by a doctor appointed by the Jewish Council.

3. Each Jew to be deported is entitled to take with him on the journey 15 kilogrammes of his personal effects. Anything in excess of 15 kg will be confiscated. All articles of value, such as money, jewelry, gold, etc., may be retained. Sufficient food for three days' journey should be taken.

4. Deportation begins on July 22nd, 1942, at 11 a.m.

5. Punishments:

(a) Any Jew who is not included among persons specified under par. 2 points (a) and (c) and so far not entitled to be so included, who leaves the Jewish quarter after the deportation has begun will be shot.
(b) Any Jew who undertakes activities likely to frustrate or hinder the execution of the deportation orders will be shot.
(c) Any Jew who assists in any activity which might frustrate or hinder the execution of the deportation orders will be shot.
(d) Any Jew found in Warsaw, after the conclusion of the deportation of Jews, who is not included among the persons specified under par. 2 points (a) to (h) will be shot.

Joint Declaration

Announced Simultaneously on December 17th, 1942, in London, Moscow and Washington

"The attention of the Governments of Belgium, Czecho-slovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United States of America, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, and Yugoslavia, and of the French National Com-mittee, has been drawn to numerous reports from Europe that the German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race in all the territories over which their barbarous rule has been extended the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler's oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.

From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported, in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern Europe.
In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the Ghettoes established by the German invaders are being systematically emptied of all Jews, except a few highly skilled workers required for war indus-tries.
None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labor camps.
The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation, or are deliberately massacred in mass executions.
The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women, and children.

"The above-mentioned Governments and the French National Committee condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination.
They declare that such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny.
They reaffirm their solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution, and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end."

Extract of Statement made by the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. St. Mikolajczyk, on behalf of the Polish Government, November 27, 1942, at a special meeting of the Polish National Council; and text of Resolution adopted by the National Council:

The Polish Government, in the fullest understanding of their responsibilities, not neglecting their duty to inform the world of the mass murders and bestialities of the Germans in Poland, have done everything in their power to counteract this terror.
We are fully aware of the fact that the fundamental condition of an effective counter-action against the German programme which, in relation to Poland is best expressed by one slogan - TO DESTROY THE POLISH NATION WIPING OUT THE TRACES OF ITS EXISTENCE - is to shorten the time of suffering and resistance for the Poles in Poland and to defeat the enemy quickly.

THAT is why the previous appeals from Poland to open up a second front and now the appeals to hasten up, at any price, the pace of the war, are considered by us to be the fundamental principles of the policy of the Polish Government.
The persecutions of the Jewish minority now in progress in Poland, constitute, however, a separate page of Polish martyrology.

Himmler's order that 1942 must be the year of liquidation of at least 50 per cent of Polish Jewry is being carried out with utter ruthlessness and a barbarity never before seen in world history. Every one of us knows the details, so I will not go into them again....

From Poland there comes protest against the murders and persecutions. The protest is accompanied by cries of pity, sympathy and utter helplessness of those who have to look on what is happening there....

In the name of the Polish Government I support this protest of Poles in Poland and that of the Polish National Council. The Polish Government defends the interests of all Polish citizens of whatever religion or nationality they may be, and does it both in the interests of the state and in the name of humanity and Christianity....

I can only hope and pray that the protest of the Polish Government and that of the Polish National Council which represents all the groups 6f Polish society, will shake the conscience of the world, will find its way to quarters where decisions speeding up military action are taken, that it will bring about an intensified help for those who are s

Dexx
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#45

Post by Dexx » 05 Aug 2005, 21:37

If you understand German it might of interest for you. The best German weekly news paper "Die Zeit" wrote the article. It is too long to translate it, so I beg your pardon and hope that I don't break any rule.
Die Juden waren der innere Feind

Adam Mickiewicz, Polens größter romantischer Dichter, sah im 19. Jahrhundert sein zerschlagenes Land als »Christus der Völker«. Zugleich nannte er Israel den »älteren Bruder« Polens. Viele seiner Landsleute führte die Vorstellung von der Märtyrerrolle nicht zu dieser brüderlichen Sicht, sondern zur Schuldzuweisung an die Juden. Nach der Aufteilung der alten Adelsrepublik durch die imperiale Triade Preußen, Russland und Österreich Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts hatte sich die Nation ohne Staat auch existenziell bedroht gefühlt. Die Angst vor dem inneren Feind wurde auf die Juden projiziert.

Vor allem die Nationaldemokraten setzten ihre Hoffnung auf einen ethnisch und konfessionell homogenen, mithin polnisch-katholischen Staat. Sie waren es auch, die nach der staatlichen Wiedergeburt 1918 die 3,5 Millionen Juden – zehn Prozent der Bevölkerung – als die größte innenpolitische Gefahr ansahen. Stimmen vom rechten Rand verlangten die Vertreibung der jüdischen Mitbürger »nach Madagaskar«. Schon in den dreißiger Jahren kam es zu Ausschreitungen und Boykottdrohungen gegen jüdische Geschäfte. Der einfache Klerus war vielerorts mit von der Partie, auch die Regierung benachteiligte die Juden mehr und mehr. 1938 beschloss das Parlament, jüdische Schulen nicht länger zu unterstützen. In den Volksschulen mussten sich jüdische Kinder auf die hinteren Bänke setzen.

Im August 1939 schlossen Hitler und Stalin ihren Nichtangriffspakt und teilten sich die Einflusssphären. Jedwabne gehörte zum sowjetischen Besatzungsgebiet, in dem Stalins Kommissare in den folgenden Monaten ihr System mit brutaler Gewalt durchsetzten. Viele polnische Familien wurden nach Sibirien deportiert. So fürchteten die Polen in den Ostgebieten die Russen mehr als die Deutschen. Als diese Ende Juni 1941, nach Hitlers Angriff auf die Sowjetunion, dort einmarschierten, wurden sie in vielen Orten mit Jubel empfangen.

Den Juden hingegen hatte die Rote Armee zumindest die Rettung vor den Deutschen gebracht. Zunächst bot die sowjetische Besatzungsmacht der jüdischen Bevölkerung auch bessere Posten in Verwaltung, Schulwesen und verstaatlichten Betrieben an. Solche Aufstiegsmöglichkeiten hatten ihr die polnischen Behörden erschwert oder verwehrt. Es dauerte allerdings nur kurze Zeit, bis auch die Juden den gleichen Repressionen wie die übrige Bevölkerung unterworfen wurden.

Für viele Polen aber waren sie Kollaborateure. Nach dem Rückzug der Russen 1941, so der polnische Historiker Marek Wierzbicki, verstärkte sich der noch begrenzte Antisemitismus der Vorkriegszeit »im sowjetischen Besatzungsgebiet ohnegleichen. Man identifizierte die Juden mit dem Sowjetsystem und übertrug allen Hass auf sie. Somit wurde, durch die sowjetische Besatzung von 1939 bis 1941, der Antisemitismus in gewissem Sinne zu einem Element des polnischen Patriotismus in den Ostprovinzen.«

Von Dessen ungeachtet retteten viele Polen Juden vor dem Holocaust. In Jad Vaschem werden 5.800 Polen als Gerechte unter den Völkern geführt. Aus keiner anderen Nation sind auch nur annähernd so viele Menschen von Israel ausgezeichnet worden. Andererseits gab es auch nach dem Kriegsende noch Pogrome. Viele Überlebende der Schoah verließen das Land. 1968 bürgerten die Kommunisten während ihrer antisemitischen Kampagne fast 20.000 Juden aus. Das war das eigentliche Ende der jüdischen Gemeinde, die heute noch 10.000 Menschen zählt.
http://www.zeit.de/2005/06/Polen-Kasten

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