Jan Piwnik "Ponury" Nie możemy o Nich zapomnieć!Szczególnie o Tych,co walczyli dalej z czerwonym okupantem.
Bardzo dobry film! znakomita muzyka! Mam pytanie czy by ktoś mógłby zrobic film ku pamięci podpułkownika Jana Wojciecha Kiwerskiego ps."Oliwa" dowódcy 27 Wołyńskiej Dywizji AK, wczesniej wydał on rozkaz do "Akcji pod Arsenałem", poległ prawdopodobnie z rąk NKWD w 1944! ja niestety nie potrafię robić filmów takich z czego żałuje
Witam, zdjęcia pochodzą z książki Cezarego Chlebowskiego. Pozdrawiam.
Nie możemy o Nich zapomnieć!Szczególnie o Tych,co walczyli dalej z czerwonym okupantem.
Akurat "Ponury" nie jest moim przodkiem,lecz w mojej rodzinie uchowały sie jakies zdjecia z okupacji właśnie z Nim i przekazy słowne na temat tamtych czasów i tamtej części Polski.Pozdrawiam.Chwała Im!Niech pamięć nie zaginie!
Bardzo dobry!Podoba mi się.Muzyka świetnie dobrana!
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
A real hero - Witold Pilecki - A Volunteer for Auschwitz
A real hero - Witold Pilecki - A Volunteer for Auschwitz
A real hero - Witold Pilecki - A Volunteer for Auschwitz
Pilecki i Anders
("Let's Reminisce About Witold Pilecki")
Witold Pilecki was born in Poland in 1901. When the German Army invaded the country in September, 1939, Pilecki joined the Tajna Armia Polska, the Secret Polish Army.
When Pilecki discovered the existence of Auschwitz, he suggested a plan to his senior officers. Pilecki argued he should get himself arrested and sent to the concentration camp. He would then send out reports of what was happening in the camp. Pilecki would also explore the possibility of organizing a mass break-out.
Pilecki's colonel eventually agreed and after securing a false identity as Tomasz Serafinski, he arranged to be arrested in September, 1940. As expected he was sent to Auschwitz where he became prisoner 4,859. His work consisted of building more huts to hold the increased numbers of prisoners.
Pilecki soon discovered the brutality of the Schutz Staffeinel (SS) guards. When one man managed to escape on 28th October 1940, all the prisoners were forced to stand at attention on the parade-ground from noon till nine in the evening. Anyone who moved was shot and over 200 prisoners died of exposure. Pilecki was able to send reports back to the Tajna Armia Polska explaining how the Germans were treating their prisoners. This information was then sent to the foreign office in London.
In 1942 Pilecki discovered that new windowless concrete huts were being built with nozzles in their ceilings. Soon afterwards he heard that that prisoners were being herded into these huts and that the nozzles were being used to feed cyanide gas into the building. Afterwards the bodies were taken to the building next door where they were cremated.
Pilecki got this information to the Tajna Armia Polska who passed it onto the British foreign office. This information was then passed on to the governments of other Allied countries. However, most people who saw the reports refused to believe them and dismissed the stories as attempts by the Poles to manipulate the military strategy of the Allies.
In the autumn of 1942, Jozef Cyrankiewicz, a member of the Polish Communist Party, was sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki and Cyrankiewicz worked closely together in organizing a mass breakout. By the end of 1942 they had a group of 500 ready to try and overthrow their guards.
Four of the inmates escaped on their own on 29th December, 1942. One of these men, a dentist called Kuczbara, was caught and interrogated by the Gestapo. Kuczbara was one of the leaders of Pilecki's group and so when he heard the news he realized that it would be only a matter of time before the SS realized that he had been organizing these escape attempts.
Pilecki had already arranged his escape route and after feigning typhus, he escaped from the hospital on 24th April, 1943. After hiding in the local forest, Pilecki reached his unit of the Tajna Armia Polska on 2nd May. He returned to normal duties and fought during the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944. Although captured by the German Army he was eventually released by Allied troops in April, 1945.
After the Second World War Pilecki went to live in Poland.The Polish Secret Police had him executed in 1948. It is believed that this was a result of his anti-communist activities.
Only Ghosts And Echoes -
Posted by Felis in Heroes, History (Sunday February 12, 2006 at 5:03 pm)
I learnt about Witold Pilecki only by accident, when my maternal grandfather dropped his name while talking about his former associate and the then Polish Prime Minister Jozef Cyrankiewicz.
- Cyrankiewicz, he said, could have saved Pilecki but of course his own heroic tale could have been ruined.
I started asking my grandfather additional questions and learnt a few things about this man, Witold Pilecki, who according to my grandfather’s patchy story, volunteered to go to Auschwitz to gather intelligence for the Home Army (Polish Military Underground Organization) operating during the German occupation.
It was, I think, 1967 and Witold Pilecki as far as the communist authorities were concerned, officially never existed.
My grandfather knew Jozef Cyrankiewicz because both of them were members of PPS -Polish Socialist Party before WWII (PPS was a social-democratic party). Cyrankiewicz was captured and sent by the Germans to Auschwitz in 1942 but my grandfather was saved from being captured by his new identity supported by false documents. After the war, most of the members of PPS accepted the communists’ offer to join the Soviet bandwagon in exchange for good positions within the new administration and sometimes because they weren’t sure what might happen to them if they refused.
This move gave the communists more legitimacy among Western countries as well as the desperate Polish nation.
Or so they thought.
The communist party members were mostly imported from the Soviet Union.
These people, officially Polish, very often could not speak the language and like the first President Boleslaw Bierut were full time NKVG (Soviet Security) employees (the real Polish communist who ended up in Russia after 1939 were mostly executed by Stalin in the 40’s).
And so PPS and PPR (Polish Worker’s Party) were amalgamated into PZPR (Polish United Worker’s Party).
My grandpa was one of those scoundrels, who joined the new organization and for the rest of his life tried to convince himself that his decision was morally justified. He never really made it to the “top†and that is probably why he felt resentment towards Cyrankiewicz for not assisting his old comrades a little bit harder.This is how I learnt about Witold Pilecki for the first time. My grandfather made bitter comments about Cyrankiewicz’s duplicity.
I digress.
I started searching for some more information about Pilecki and slowly a picture emerged, which as much as it was depressing, gave me the feeling of faith in certain moral values, which I thought were long time dead.
Witold Pilecki was rehabilitated only in 1991 and so as I was searching a few days ago for some extra materials about him, I discovered this Wikipedia entry.
There are more sources available on line but because most of them are in Polish, I decided to quote and to translate some additional and interesting aspects of Pilecki’s life story to pay a tribute to the man, who I think, deserves much more recognition.
It was 1940 the Secret Polish Army received conflicting reports about this “new facility†being built and expanded by the Germans in Auschwitz (Oswiecim in Polish) near Kraków.The commanders of the underground, secret army were also receiving requests from the Polish Government, in exile in London; to investigate and to report about German activities around Auschwitz as the unconfirmed rumors about atrocities taking place there reached the allied forces. Witold Pilecki, a lieutenant in the underground army, was the man who volunteered to Auschwitz.
Witold Pilecki was born in 1901 in Oluniec in Russia, where his family was exiled for taking part in the 1863 uprising against Russian occupation of Poland. In 1910 his family moved back into the remains of their property (Pilecki family were small gentry-landowners) near Wilno (today Vilnius). In 1918, he volunteered for the Polish Army that was being formed at that time, and then fought in the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1920.
Witold Pilecki in his cavalry uniform
In 1921 Pilecki took leave from the army to pass his High School Certificate exams (Matura). He attempted studying fine arts at the Stefan Batory University for a while.
Finally, he finishes Military school of Cavalry Reserve in Grudziadz and after being transferred to the Army Reserve as a second lieutenant, he takes over the farm management in his family property in Sukurcze in 1926. He lived and worked in Sukurcze until the outbreak of WWII. These were the happiest years of his life.
Witold Pilecki in before WWII
In 1931 Pilecki married Marianna Ostrowska, a teacher from Masovia. They had two children, a son Andrew and daughter Zofia. In the September campaign of 1939, Pilecki fought as a member of the “Prusy†army group. In November after the collapse of Polish defenses, he helped to found the Secret Polish Army, where he served as the Chief of Staff. In August 1940 Pilecki volunteered to infiltrate Germany’s Auschwitz Concentration Camp at Oswiecim
with the following objectives in mind:
Setting up of a secret organization within the camp to:
Provide extra food and distribute clothing among organization members.
Keep up the morale among fellow inmates and supply them with news from the
outside.
Preparing a task force to take over the camp in the eventuality of the
dropping of arms or of a live force (e.g. paratroops).
Report all of the above to the Secret Army headquarters
On September 19, 1940, with the permission of his commanding officers, he intentionally allowed himself to be captured by the Germans during a round-up in Warsaw’s suburb Zoliborz.
He arrived at Auschwitz at 10 P.M. on September 21, 1940, in the “second†Warsaw transport, under the name Tomasz Serafinski. He was registered as number 4859.
Â
Oswiecim - Pilecki’s mug shot
Â
Fragment of Pilecki’s diary (1) translated from Polish:
They made us run straight ahead towards the thicker concentration of lights. Further towards the destination (the SS troopers) ordered one of us to run to the pole on the side of the road and immediately a series from a submachine gun was sent after him.
Dead.
Ten other inmates were pulled out at random from the marching column and shot with pistols while still running to demonstrate to us the idea of “collective reprisal†if an escape was attempted by any one of us (in this case it was all arranged by the SS troopers).
They pulled all eleven corpses by ropes attached to just one leg. Dogs baited the blood soaked bodies.
All of it was done with laughter and jeering.
We were closing to the gate, an opening in the line of fences made of wire.
There was a sign at the top: “Arbeit macht frei†(Through Work To Freedom).
Only later we could fully appreciate its real meaning.
Pilecki survived his first days in Auschwitz and later established the first cell of his secret organization.
Fragment of Pilecki’s diary (2) translated from Polish:
From the darkness, from above the camp’s kitchen, Seidler the butcher spoke to us: †Do not even dream that any one of you will get out of here alive.
Your daily food ratio is intended to keep you alive for 6 weeks; whoever lives longer it’s because he steals and those who steal will be placed in SK, where nobody lives for too long.â€
Wladyslaw Baworowski - the camp’s interpreter translated it to us into Polish.
SK (Straf-Kompanie - Penal Company).
This unit was designated for all Jews, Catholic priests and those Poles whose “offencesâ€
were proven. Ernst Krankemann, the Block Commander, had a duty of finishing off as many prisoners of the unit as he possibly could to make room for new, daily “arrivalsâ€.
This duty suited Krankemann’s character very well.
If someone accidentally moved just little bit too much from the row of prisoners, Krankemann stabbed him with his knife, which he always carried in his right sleeve.
If someone, afraid of making this mistake, positioned himself slightly too far behind, he would be stabbed by the butcher in the kidney.
The sight of a falling human being, kicking his legs and moaning aggravated Krankemann.
He would jump straight away on the victim’s rib cage, kicked his kidneys and genitals, and finished him off as quickly as possible.
In ‘The Polish Underground Movement in Auschwitz’ Garlinski says:.
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.
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.
In his diary Pilecki didn’t give the SS troopers much credit, and was certain that his organization could have taken control of the camp.
He waited for orders from the headquarters but at the same time the Germans started arresting members of Pilecki’s secret organization and he knew his time was up.
He also believed that if he could present “his case†in person some action would be taken.
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 decision.
Fearing the reprisals on the entire Polish population was one of the reasons why such action was not allowed by the high command in London.
Another one was that there was no way to hide or to move such enormous number of people anywhere and with the Eastern Front still far away the whole project was considered unrealistic.
Witold Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz on the Easter Monday 1943, he also survived the Warsaw Uprising an the German POW camp in Germany.
He returned to Poland after the war and started organizing resistance
against the communists.
When he learnt that the Allies would not help to liberate Poland from the Soviets he started demobilizing the military underground organization.
It was then, that the communists arrested him.
Â
Pilecki - communist jail mug shots
Â
He was interrogated and tortured for many months. His finger nails were pulled out and his collarbones broken and he could hardly walk.
He never “talkedâ€.
After his process, which was a simple farce, he was sentenced to death by a firing squad.
There was no firing squad though.
The executioners dragged him the basement of the Security Headquarters building, into the boiler room.
He was gagged and could not walk.
They shot him with a single slug into the back of his head. He was buried somewhere on the rubbish tip next to the Powazki Cemetery.
His body was never found.
A real hero - Witold Pilecki - A Volunteer for Auschwitz
Pilecki i Anders
("Let's Reminisce About Witold Pilecki")
Witold Pilecki was born in Poland in 1901. When the German Army invaded the country in September, 1939, Pilecki joined the Tajna Armia Polska, the Secret Polish Army.
When Pilecki discovered the existence of Auschwitz, he suggested a plan to his senior officers. Pilecki argued he should get himself arrested and sent to the concentration camp. He would then send out reports of what was happening in the camp. Pilecki would also explore the possibility of organizing a mass break-out.
Pilecki's colonel eventually agreed and after securing a false identity as Tomasz Serafinski, he arranged to be arrested in September, 1940. As expected he was sent to Auschwitz where he became prisoner 4,859. His work consisted of building more huts to hold the increased numbers of prisoners.
Pilecki soon discovered the brutality of the Schutz Staffeinel (SS) guards. When one man managed to escape on 28th October 1940, all the prisoners were forced to stand at attention on the parade-ground from noon till nine in the evening. Anyone who moved was shot and over 200 prisoners died of exposure. Pilecki was able to send reports back to the Tajna Armia Polska explaining how the Germans were treating their prisoners. This information was then sent to the foreign office in London.
In 1942 Pilecki discovered that new windowless concrete huts were being built with nozzles in their ceilings. Soon afterwards he heard that that prisoners were being herded into these huts and that the nozzles were being used to feed cyanide gas into the building. Afterwards the bodies were taken to the building next door where they were cremated.
Pilecki got this information to the Tajna Armia Polska who passed it onto the British foreign office. This information was then passed on to the governments of other Allied countries. However, most people who saw the reports refused to believe them and dismissed the stories as attempts by the Poles to manipulate the military strategy of the Allies.
In the autumn of 1942, Jozef Cyrankiewicz, a member of the Polish Communist Party, was sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki and Cyrankiewicz worked closely together in organizing a mass breakout. By the end of 1942 they had a group of 500 ready to try and overthrow their guards.
Four of the inmates escaped on their own on 29th December, 1942. One of these men, a dentist called Kuczbara, was caught and interrogated by the Gestapo. Kuczbara was one of the leaders of Pilecki's group and so when he heard the news he realized that it would be only a matter of time before the SS realized that he had been organizing these escape attempts.
Pilecki had already arranged his escape route and after feigning typhus, he escaped from the hospital on 24th April, 1943. After hiding in the local forest, Pilecki reached his unit of the Tajna Armia Polska on 2nd May. He returned to normal duties and fought during the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944. Although captured by the German Army he was eventually released by Allied troops in April, 1945.
After the Second World War Pilecki went to live in Poland.The Polish Secret Police had him executed in 1948. It is believed that this was a result of his anti-communist activities.
Only Ghosts And Echoes -
Posted by Felis in Heroes, History (Sunday February 12, 2006 at 5:03 pm)
I learnt about Witold Pilecki only by accident, when my maternal grandfather dropped his name while talking about his former associate and the then Polish Prime Minister Jozef Cyrankiewicz.
- Cyrankiewicz, he said, could have saved Pilecki but of course his own heroic tale could have been ruined.
I started asking my grandfather additional questions and learnt a few things about this man, Witold Pilecki, who according to my grandfather’s patchy story, volunteered to go to Auschwitz to gather intelligence for the Home Army (Polish Military Underground Organization) operating during the German occupation.
It was, I think, 1967 and Witold Pilecki as far as the communist authorities were concerned, officially never existed.
My grandfather knew Jozef Cyrankiewicz because both of them were members of PPS -Polish Socialist Party before WWII (PPS was a social-democratic party). Cyrankiewicz was captured and sent by the Germans to Auschwitz in 1942 but my grandfather was saved from being captured by his new identity supported by false documents. After the war, most of the members of PPS accepted the communists’ offer to join the Soviet bandwagon in exchange for good positions within the new administration and sometimes because they weren’t sure what might happen to them if they refused.
This move gave the communists more legitimacy among Western countries as well as the desperate Polish nation.
Or so they thought.
The communist party members were mostly imported from the Soviet Union.
These people, officially Polish, very often could not speak the language and like the first President Boleslaw Bierut were full time NKVG (Soviet Security) employees (the real Polish communist who ended up in Russia after 1939 were mostly executed by Stalin in the 40’s).
And so PPS and PPR (Polish Worker’s Party) were amalgamated into PZPR (Polish United Worker’s Party).
My grandpa was one of those scoundrels, who joined the new organization and for the rest of his life tried to convince himself that his decision was morally justified. He never really made it to the “top†and that is probably why he felt resentment towards Cyrankiewicz for not assisting his old comrades a little bit harder.This is how I learnt about Witold Pilecki for the first time. My grandfather made bitter comments about Cyrankiewicz’s duplicity.
I digress.
I started searching for some more information about Pilecki and slowly a picture emerged, which as much as it was depressing, gave me the feeling of faith in certain moral values, which I thought were long time dead.
Witold Pilecki was rehabilitated only in 1991 and so as I was searching a few days ago for some extra materials about him, I discovered this Wikipedia entry.
There are more sources available on line but because most of them are in Polish, I decided to quote and to translate some additional and interesting aspects of Pilecki’s life story to pay a tribute to the man, who I think, deserves much more recognition.
It was 1940 the Secret Polish Army received conflicting reports about this “new facility†being built and expanded by the Germans in Auschwitz (Oswiecim in Polish) near Kraków.The commanders of the underground, secret army were also receiving requests from the Polish Government, in exile in London; to investigate and to report about German activities around Auschwitz as the unconfirmed rumors about atrocities taking place there reached the allied forces. Witold Pilecki, a lieutenant in the underground army, was the man who volunteered to Auschwitz.
Witold Pilecki was born in 1901 in Oluniec in Russia, where his family was exiled for taking part in the 1863 uprising against Russian occupation of Poland. In 1910 his family moved back into the remains of their property (Pilecki family were small gentry-landowners) near Wilno (today Vilnius). In 1918, he volunteered for the Polish Army that was being formed at that time, and then fought in the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1920.
Witold Pilecki in his cavalry uniform
In 1921 Pilecki took leave from the army to pass his High School Certificate exams (Matura). He attempted studying fine arts at the Stefan Batory University for a while.
Finally, he finishes Military school of Cavalry Reserve in Grudziadz and after being transferred to the Army Reserve as a second lieutenant, he takes over the farm management in his family property in Sukurcze in 1926. He lived and worked in Sukurcze until the outbreak of WWII. These were the happiest years of his life.
Witold Pilecki in before WWII
In 1931 Pilecki married Marianna Ostrowska, a teacher from Masovia. They had two children, a son Andrew and daughter Zofia. In the September campaign of 1939, Pilecki fought as a member of the “Prusy†army group. In November after the collapse of Polish defenses, he helped to found the Secret Polish Army, where he served as the Chief of Staff. In August 1940 Pilecki volunteered to infiltrate Germany’s Auschwitz Concentration Camp at Oswiecim
with the following objectives in mind:
Setting up of a secret organization within the camp to:
Provide extra food and distribute clothing among organization members.
Keep up the morale among fellow inmates and supply them with news from the
outside.
Preparing a task force to take over the camp in the eventuality of the
dropping of arms or of a live force (e.g. paratroops).
Report all of the above to the Secret Army headquarters
On September 19, 1940, with the permission of his commanding officers, he intentionally allowed himself to be captured by the Germans during a round-up in Warsaw’s suburb Zoliborz.
He arrived at Auschwitz at 10 P.M. on September 21, 1940, in the “second†Warsaw transport, under the name Tomasz Serafinski. He was registered as number 4859.
Â
Oswiecim - Pilecki’s mug shot
Â
Fragment of Pilecki’s diary (1) translated from Polish:
They made us run straight ahead towards the thicker concentration of lights. Further towards the destination (the SS troopers) ordered one of us to run to the pole on the side of the road and immediately a series from a submachine gun was sent after him.
Dead.
Ten other inmates were pulled out at random from the marching column and shot with pistols while still running to demonstrate to us the idea of “collective reprisal†if an escape was attempted by any one of us (in this case it was all arranged by the SS troopers).
They pulled all eleven corpses by ropes attached to just one leg. Dogs baited the blood soaked bodies.
All of it was done with laughter and jeering.
We were closing to the gate, an opening in the line of fences made of wire.
There was a sign at the top: “Arbeit macht frei†(Through Work To Freedom).
Only later we could fully appreciate its real meaning.
Pilecki survived his first days in Auschwitz and later established the first cell of his secret organization.
Fragment of Pilecki’s diary (2) translated from Polish:
From the darkness, from above the camp’s kitchen, Seidler the butcher spoke to us: †Do not even dream that any one of you will get out of here alive.
Your daily food ratio is intended to keep you alive for 6 weeks; whoever lives longer it’s because he steals and those who steal will be placed in SK, where nobody lives for too long.â€
Wladyslaw Baworowski - the camp’s interpreter translated it to us into Polish.
SK (Straf-Kompanie - Penal Company).
This unit was designated for all Jews, Catholic priests and those Poles whose “offencesâ€
were proven. Ernst Krankemann, the Block Commander, had a duty of finishing off as many prisoners of the unit as he possibly could to make room for new, daily “arrivalsâ€.
This duty suited Krankemann’s character very well.
If someone accidentally moved just little bit too much from the row of prisoners, Krankemann stabbed him with his knife, which he always carried in his right sleeve.
If someone, afraid of making this mistake, positioned himself slightly too far behind, he would be stabbed by the butcher in the kidney.
The sight of a falling human being, kicking his legs and moaning aggravated Krankemann.
He would jump straight away on the victim’s rib cage, kicked his kidneys and genitals, and finished him off as quickly as possible.
In ‘The Polish Underground Movement in Auschwitz’ Garlinski says:.
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.
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.
In his diary Pilecki didn’t give the SS troopers much credit, and was certain that his organization could have taken control of the camp.
He waited for orders from the headquarters but at the same time the Germans started arresting members of Pilecki’s secret organization and he knew his time was up.
He also believed that if he could present “his case†in person some action would be taken.
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 decision.
Fearing the reprisals on the entire Polish population was one of the reasons why such action was not allowed by the high command in London.
Another one was that there was no way to hide or to move such enormous number of people anywhere and with the Eastern Front still far away the whole project was considered unrealistic.
Witold Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz on the Easter Monday 1943, he also survived the Warsaw Uprising an the German POW camp in Germany.
He returned to Poland after the war and started organizing resistance
against the communists.
When he learnt that the Allies would not help to liberate Poland from the Soviets he started demobilizing the military underground organization.
It was then, that the communists arrested him.
Â
Pilecki - communist jail mug shots
Â
He was interrogated and tortured for many months. His finger nails were pulled out and his collarbones broken and he could hardly walk.
He never “talkedâ€.
After his process, which was a simple farce, he was sentenced to death by a firing squad.
There was no firing squad though.
The executioners dragged him the basement of the Security Headquarters building, into the boiler room.
He was gagged and could not walk.
They shot him with a single slug into the back of his head. He was buried somewhere on the rubbish tip next to the Powazki Cemetery.
His body was never found.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Zamordowano bochatera Polski Gen. August Emil Fieldorf Nil
Zamordowano bochatera Polski Gen. August Emil Fieldorf Nil
Friday, February 29, 2008
Real hero of Poland - Witold Pilecki - A Volunteer for Auschwitz
Real hero of Poland - Witold Pilecki - A Volunteer for Auschwitz
Witold Pilecki (May 13, 1901 – May 25, 1948; pronounced [ˈvitɔld piˈletski]; codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold) was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic, the founder of the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska) Polish resistance group and a member of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa).
During World War II, he became the only known person to volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz concentration camp. While there, he organized the resistance movement in the camp, and as early as 1940, informed the Western Allies of Nazi Germany's Auschwitz atrocities. He escaped in 1943 and took part in the Warsaw Uprising (August–October 1944). Pilecki was executed in 1948 by the communists.
Contents[hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Pilecki's early life
1.2 World War II breaks out
1.3 The Auschwitz campaign: 945 days
1.4 Back outside Auschwitz: the Warsaw Uprising.
1.5 Soviet take over of Poland
2 Summary of Pilecki's Polish Army career
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
//
[edit] Biography
[edit] Pilecki's early life
Witold Pilecki was born May 13, 1901, in Olonets on the shores of Lake Ladoga in Karelia, Russia, where his family had been forcibly resettled by Tsarist Russian authorities after the suppression of Poland's January Uprising of 1863–1864. His grandfather, Józef Pilecki, had spent seven years in exile in Siberia for his part in the uprising. In 1910, Pilecki moved with his family to Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), where he completed Commercial School and joined the secret ZHP Scouts organization. In 1916, he moved to Orel, Russia, where he founded a local ZHP group.[1]
During World War I, in 1918, Pilecki joined Polish self-defense units in the Wilno area, and, under General Władysław Wejtka, helped collect weapons and disarm retreating, demoralized German troops in what became the prelude to the Vilna offensive. He subsequently took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920. Serving under Major Jerzy Dąbrowski, he commanded a ZHP Scout section. When his sector of the front was overrun by the Bolsheviks, his unit for a time conducted partisan warfare behind enemy lines. Pilecki later joined the regular Polish Army and fought in the Polish retreat from Kiev as part of a cavalry unit defending Grodno (in present-day Belarus). On August 5, 1920, he joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the crucial Battle of Warsaw and at Rudniki Forest (Puszcza Rudnicka) and took part in the liberation of Wilno. He was twice awarded the Krzyż Walecznych (Cross of Valor) for gallantry.[1]
After the Polish-Soviet War ended in 1921 with the Peace of Riga, Pilecki passed his high-school graduation exams (matura) in Wilno and in 1926, was demobilized with the rank of cavalry ensign. In the interbellum, he worked on his family's farm in the village of Sukurcze.[1] On April 7, 1931, he married Maria Pilecka (1906 – February 6, 2002), née Ostrowska. They had two children, born in Wilno: Andrzej (January 16, 1932) and Zofia (March 14, 1933).
[edit] World War II breaks out
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, on August 26, 1939, Pilecki was mobilized and joined the 19th Polish Infantry Division of Army Prusy as a cavalry-platoon commander. His unit took part in heavy fighting in the Invasion of Poland against the advancing Germans and was partially destroyed. Pilecki's platoon withdrew southeast toward Lwów (now L'viv, in Ukraine) and the Romanian bridgehead and was incorporated into the recently formed 41st Infantry Division. During the September Campaign, Pilecki and his men destroyed seven German tanks and shot down two aircraft. On September 17, after the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Pilecki's division was disbanded and he returned to Warsaw with his commander, Major Jan Włodarkiewicz.[1]
On November 9, 1939, the two men founded the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP), one of the first underground organizations in Poland. Pilecki became its organizational commander and expanded TAP to cover not only Warsaw but Siedlce, Radom, Lublin and other major cities of central Poland. By 1940, TAP had approximately 8,000 men (more than half of them armed), some 20 machine guns and several anti-tank rifles. Later, the organization was incorporated into the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and became the core of the Wachlarz unit.[1]
[edit] The Auschwitz campaign: 945 days
Street roundup in northern Warsaw's Żoliborz district, 1941
In 1940, Pilecki presented to his superiors a plan to enter Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp at Oświęcim (the Polish name of the locality), gather intelligence on the camp from the inside, and organize inmate resistance. Until then, little had been known about the Germans' running of the camp, and it was thought to be an internment camp or large prison rather than a death camp. His superiors approved the plan and provided him a false identity card in the name of "Tomasz Serafiński." On September 19, 1940, he deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup (łapanka), and was caught by the Germans along with some 2,000 innocent civilians (among them, Władysław Bartoszewski). After two days of torture in Wehrmacht barracks, the survivors were sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki was tattooed on his forearm with the number 4859.[1]
Auschwitz concentration camp photos of Pilecki.
At Auschwitz, while working in various kommandos and surviving pneumonia, Pilecki organized an underground Union of Military Organizations (Związek Organizacji Wojskowych, ZOW). ZOW's tasks were to improve inmate morale, provide news from outside, distribute extra food and clothing to members, set up intelligence networks, and train detachments to take over the camp in the event of a relief attack by the Home Army, arms airdrops, or an airborne landing by the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, based in Britain.[1]
By 1941, ZOW had grown substantially. Members included the famous Polish sculptor Xawery Dunikowski and ski champion Bronisław Czech, and worked in the camp's SS administration office (Mrs. Rachwalowa, Capt. Rodziewicz, Mr. Olszowka, Mr. Jakubski, Mr. Miciukiewicz), the storage magazines (Mr. Czardybun) and the Sonderkommando, which burned human corpses (Mr. Szloma Dragon and Mr. Henryk Mendelbaum). The organization had its own underground court and supply lines to the outside. Thanks to civilians living nearby, the organization regularly received medical supplies.[1]
ZOW provided the Polish underground with priceless information on the camp. Many smaller underground organizations at Auschwitz eventually merged with ZOW. In the autumn of 1941, Colonel Jan Karcz was transferred to the newly-created Birkenau death camp, where he proceeded to organize ZOW structures. By spring of 1942, the organization had over 1,000 members, including women and people of other nationalities, at most of the sub-camps. The inmates constructed a radio receiver and hid it in the camp hospital.[1]
From October 1940, ZOW sent reports to Warsaw, and beginning March 1941, Pilecki's reports were being forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London. These reports were a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. Pilecki hoped that either the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp, or the Home Army would organize an assault on it from outside. By 1943, however, he realized that no such plans existed. Meanwhile the Gestapo redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, succeeding in killing many of them. Pilecki decided to break out of the camp, with the hope of personally convincing Home Army leaders that a rescue attempt was a valid option. When he was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, he and two comrades overpowered a guard, cut the phone line and escaped on the night of April 26–April 27, 1943, taking along documents stolen from the Germans. In the event of capture, they were prepared to swallow cyanide. After several days, with the help of local civilians, they contacted Home Army units. Pilecki submitted another detailed report on conditions at Auschwitz.[1]
[edit] Back outside Auschwitz: the Warsaw Uprising.
On August 25, 1943, Pilecki reached Warsaw and joined the Home Army's intelligence department. The Home Army, after losing several operatives in reconnoitering the vicinity of the camp, including the Cichociemny commando Stefan Jasieński, decided that it lacked sufficient strength to capture the camp without Allied help. Pilecki's detailed report (Raport Witolda—"Witold's Report") was sent to London. The British authorities refused the Home Army air support for an operation to help the inmates escape. An air raid was considered too risky, and Home Army reports on Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz were deemed to be gross exaggerations (Pilecki wrote: "During the first 3 years, at Auschwitz there perished 2 million people; in the next 2 years—3 million"). The Home Army in turn decided that it didn't have enough force to storm the camp by itself.[1]
Pilecki was soon promoted to cavalry captain (rotmistrz) and joined a secret anti-communist organization, NIE ("NO or NIEpodleglosc - independence"), formed as a secret organization within the Home Army with the goal of preparing resistance against a possible Soviet occupation.[1]
When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944, Pilecki volunteered for the Kedyw's Chrobry II group. At first, he fought in the northern city center without revealing his actual rank, as a simple private. Later, he disclosed his true identity and accepted command of the 2nd Company, fighting in the Towarowa and Pańska Streets area. His forces held a fortified area called the "Great Bastion of Warsaw". It was one of the most outlying partisan redoubts and caused considerable difficulties for German supply lines. The bastion held for two weeks in the face of constant attacks by German infantry and armor. On the capitulation of the uprising, Pilecki hid some weapons in a private apartment and went into captivity. He spent the rest of the war in German prisoner-of-war camps at Łambinowice and Murnau.[1]
[edit] Soviet take over of Poland
After July 11, 1945, Pilecki joined the 2nd Polish Corps. He received orders to clandestinely transport a large sum of money to Soviet-occupied Poland, but the operation was called off. In September 1945, he was ordered by General Władysław Anders to return to Poland and gather intelligence to be sent to the Polish Government in Exile.[1]
He went back and proceeded to organize his intelligence network, while also writing a monograph on Auschwitz. In the spring of 1946, however, the Polish Government in Exile decided that the postwar political situation afforded no hope of Poland's liberation and ordered all partisans still in the forests either to return to their normal civilian lives or to escape to the West. Pilecki declined to leave, but proceeded to dismantle the partisan forces in eastern Poland. In April 1947, he began collecting evidence on Soviet atrocities and on the prosecution of Poles (mostly members of the Home Army and the 2nd Polish Corps) and their executions or imprisonment in Soviet gulags.[1]
Photos of Pilecki from Warsaw's Mokotow prison (1947).
On May 8, 1947, he was arrested by the Polish security service (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa). Prior to trial, he was repeatedly tortured but revealed no sensitive information and sought to protect other prisoners. On March 3, 1948, a staged trial took place. Testimony against him was presented by a future Polish prime minister, Józef Cyrankiewicz, himself an Auschwitz survivor. Pilecki was accused of illegal crossing of the borders, use of forged documents, not enlisting with the military, carrying illegal arms, espionage for general Władysław Anders (head of the military of the Polish Government in Exile) and preparing an assassination on several officials from the Ministry of Public Security of Poland. Pilecki denied the assassination charges, as well as espionage (although he admitted to passing information to the II Polish Corps of whom he considered himself an officer and thus claimed that he was not breaking any laws); he pleaded guilty to the other charges. On May 15, with three of his comrades, he was sentenced to death. Ten days later, on May 25, 1948, he was executed at Warsaw's Mokotow Prison on ulica Rakowiecka (Rakowiecka Street).[1]
Pilecki's conviction was part of a prosecution of Home Army members and others connected with the Polish Government in Exile in London. In 2003, the prosecutor and several others involved in the trial were charged with complicity in Pilecki's murder. Cyrankiewicz escaped similar proceedings, having died.[1]
After Poland regained its independence, Witold Pilecki and all others sentenced in the staged trial were rehabilitated on October 1, 1990. In 1995, he received posthumously the Order of Polonia Restituta.
His place of burial has never been found. He is thought to have been buried in a rubbish dump near Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.
Until 1989, information on his exploits and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime.[1]
[edit] Summary of Pilecki's Polish Army career
Ensign (podporucznik) from 1925
First Lieutenant (porucznik) from November 11, 1941 (promoted while at Auschwitz)
Captain (cavalry rotmistrz) from November 11, 1943.
[edit] See also
Scouting Portal
This article is partof the series:Polish Secret State
History of Poland
Jan Karski
List of noteworthy individuals in the Warsaw Uprising
Polish contribution to World War II
Rudolf Vrba
Western betrayal
Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego (Polish Scouting and Guiding Association, ZHP)
Witold Pilecki (May 13, 1901 – May 25, 1948; pronounced [ˈvitɔld piˈletski]; codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold) was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic, the founder of the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska) Polish resistance group and a member of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa).
During World War II, he became the only known person to volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz concentration camp. While there, he organized the resistance movement in the camp, and as early as 1940, informed the Western Allies of Nazi Germany's Auschwitz atrocities. He escaped in 1943 and took part in the Warsaw Uprising (August–October 1944). Pilecki was executed in 1948 by the communists.
Contents[hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Pilecki's early life
1.2 World War II breaks out
1.3 The Auschwitz campaign: 945 days
1.4 Back outside Auschwitz: the Warsaw Uprising.
1.5 Soviet take over of Poland
2 Summary of Pilecki's Polish Army career
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
//
[edit] Biography
[edit] Pilecki's early life
Witold Pilecki was born May 13, 1901, in Olonets on the shores of Lake Ladoga in Karelia, Russia, where his family had been forcibly resettled by Tsarist Russian authorities after the suppression of Poland's January Uprising of 1863–1864. His grandfather, Józef Pilecki, had spent seven years in exile in Siberia for his part in the uprising. In 1910, Pilecki moved with his family to Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), where he completed Commercial School and joined the secret ZHP Scouts organization. In 1916, he moved to Orel, Russia, where he founded a local ZHP group.[1]
During World War I, in 1918, Pilecki joined Polish self-defense units in the Wilno area, and, under General Władysław Wejtka, helped collect weapons and disarm retreating, demoralized German troops in what became the prelude to the Vilna offensive. He subsequently took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920. Serving under Major Jerzy Dąbrowski, he commanded a ZHP Scout section. When his sector of the front was overrun by the Bolsheviks, his unit for a time conducted partisan warfare behind enemy lines. Pilecki later joined the regular Polish Army and fought in the Polish retreat from Kiev as part of a cavalry unit defending Grodno (in present-day Belarus). On August 5, 1920, he joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the crucial Battle of Warsaw and at Rudniki Forest (Puszcza Rudnicka) and took part in the liberation of Wilno. He was twice awarded the Krzyż Walecznych (Cross of Valor) for gallantry.[1]
After the Polish-Soviet War ended in 1921 with the Peace of Riga, Pilecki passed his high-school graduation exams (matura) in Wilno and in 1926, was demobilized with the rank of cavalry ensign. In the interbellum, he worked on his family's farm in the village of Sukurcze.[1] On April 7, 1931, he married Maria Pilecka (1906 – February 6, 2002), née Ostrowska. They had two children, born in Wilno: Andrzej (January 16, 1932) and Zofia (March 14, 1933).
[edit] World War II breaks out
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, on August 26, 1939, Pilecki was mobilized and joined the 19th Polish Infantry Division of Army Prusy as a cavalry-platoon commander. His unit took part in heavy fighting in the Invasion of Poland against the advancing Germans and was partially destroyed. Pilecki's platoon withdrew southeast toward Lwów (now L'viv, in Ukraine) and the Romanian bridgehead and was incorporated into the recently formed 41st Infantry Division. During the September Campaign, Pilecki and his men destroyed seven German tanks and shot down two aircraft. On September 17, after the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Pilecki's division was disbanded and he returned to Warsaw with his commander, Major Jan Włodarkiewicz.[1]
On November 9, 1939, the two men founded the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP), one of the first underground organizations in Poland. Pilecki became its organizational commander and expanded TAP to cover not only Warsaw but Siedlce, Radom, Lublin and other major cities of central Poland. By 1940, TAP had approximately 8,000 men (more than half of them armed), some 20 machine guns and several anti-tank rifles. Later, the organization was incorporated into the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and became the core of the Wachlarz unit.[1]
[edit] The Auschwitz campaign: 945 days
Street roundup in northern Warsaw's Żoliborz district, 1941
In 1940, Pilecki presented to his superiors a plan to enter Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp at Oświęcim (the Polish name of the locality), gather intelligence on the camp from the inside, and organize inmate resistance. Until then, little had been known about the Germans' running of the camp, and it was thought to be an internment camp or large prison rather than a death camp. His superiors approved the plan and provided him a false identity card in the name of "Tomasz Serafiński." On September 19, 1940, he deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup (łapanka), and was caught by the Germans along with some 2,000 innocent civilians (among them, Władysław Bartoszewski). After two days of torture in Wehrmacht barracks, the survivors were sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki was tattooed on his forearm with the number 4859.[1]
Auschwitz concentration camp photos of Pilecki.
At Auschwitz, while working in various kommandos and surviving pneumonia, Pilecki organized an underground Union of Military Organizations (Związek Organizacji Wojskowych, ZOW). ZOW's tasks were to improve inmate morale, provide news from outside, distribute extra food and clothing to members, set up intelligence networks, and train detachments to take over the camp in the event of a relief attack by the Home Army, arms airdrops, or an airborne landing by the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, based in Britain.[1]
By 1941, ZOW had grown substantially. Members included the famous Polish sculptor Xawery Dunikowski and ski champion Bronisław Czech, and worked in the camp's SS administration office (Mrs. Rachwalowa, Capt. Rodziewicz, Mr. Olszowka, Mr. Jakubski, Mr. Miciukiewicz), the storage magazines (Mr. Czardybun) and the Sonderkommando, which burned human corpses (Mr. Szloma Dragon and Mr. Henryk Mendelbaum). The organization had its own underground court and supply lines to the outside. Thanks to civilians living nearby, the organization regularly received medical supplies.[1]
ZOW provided the Polish underground with priceless information on the camp. Many smaller underground organizations at Auschwitz eventually merged with ZOW. In the autumn of 1941, Colonel Jan Karcz was transferred to the newly-created Birkenau death camp, where he proceeded to organize ZOW structures. By spring of 1942, the organization had over 1,000 members, including women and people of other nationalities, at most of the sub-camps. The inmates constructed a radio receiver and hid it in the camp hospital.[1]
From October 1940, ZOW sent reports to Warsaw, and beginning March 1941, Pilecki's reports were being forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London. These reports were a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. Pilecki hoped that either the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp, or the Home Army would organize an assault on it from outside. By 1943, however, he realized that no such plans existed. Meanwhile the Gestapo redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, succeeding in killing many of them. Pilecki decided to break out of the camp, with the hope of personally convincing Home Army leaders that a rescue attempt was a valid option. When he was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, he and two comrades overpowered a guard, cut the phone line and escaped on the night of April 26–April 27, 1943, taking along documents stolen from the Germans. In the event of capture, they were prepared to swallow cyanide. After several days, with the help of local civilians, they contacted Home Army units. Pilecki submitted another detailed report on conditions at Auschwitz.[1]
[edit] Back outside Auschwitz: the Warsaw Uprising.
On August 25, 1943, Pilecki reached Warsaw and joined the Home Army's intelligence department. The Home Army, after losing several operatives in reconnoitering the vicinity of the camp, including the Cichociemny commando Stefan Jasieński, decided that it lacked sufficient strength to capture the camp without Allied help. Pilecki's detailed report (Raport Witolda—"Witold's Report") was sent to London. The British authorities refused the Home Army air support for an operation to help the inmates escape. An air raid was considered too risky, and Home Army reports on Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz were deemed to be gross exaggerations (Pilecki wrote: "During the first 3 years, at Auschwitz there perished 2 million people; in the next 2 years—3 million"). The Home Army in turn decided that it didn't have enough force to storm the camp by itself.[1]
Pilecki was soon promoted to cavalry captain (rotmistrz) and joined a secret anti-communist organization, NIE ("NO or NIEpodleglosc - independence"), formed as a secret organization within the Home Army with the goal of preparing resistance against a possible Soviet occupation.[1]
When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944, Pilecki volunteered for the Kedyw's Chrobry II group. At first, he fought in the northern city center without revealing his actual rank, as a simple private. Later, he disclosed his true identity and accepted command of the 2nd Company, fighting in the Towarowa and Pańska Streets area. His forces held a fortified area called the "Great Bastion of Warsaw". It was one of the most outlying partisan redoubts and caused considerable difficulties for German supply lines. The bastion held for two weeks in the face of constant attacks by German infantry and armor. On the capitulation of the uprising, Pilecki hid some weapons in a private apartment and went into captivity. He spent the rest of the war in German prisoner-of-war camps at Łambinowice and Murnau.[1]
[edit] Soviet take over of Poland
After July 11, 1945, Pilecki joined the 2nd Polish Corps. He received orders to clandestinely transport a large sum of money to Soviet-occupied Poland, but the operation was called off. In September 1945, he was ordered by General Władysław Anders to return to Poland and gather intelligence to be sent to the Polish Government in Exile.[1]
He went back and proceeded to organize his intelligence network, while also writing a monograph on Auschwitz. In the spring of 1946, however, the Polish Government in Exile decided that the postwar political situation afforded no hope of Poland's liberation and ordered all partisans still in the forests either to return to their normal civilian lives or to escape to the West. Pilecki declined to leave, but proceeded to dismantle the partisan forces in eastern Poland. In April 1947, he began collecting evidence on Soviet atrocities and on the prosecution of Poles (mostly members of the Home Army and the 2nd Polish Corps) and their executions or imprisonment in Soviet gulags.[1]
Photos of Pilecki from Warsaw's Mokotow prison (1947).
On May 8, 1947, he was arrested by the Polish security service (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa). Prior to trial, he was repeatedly tortured but revealed no sensitive information and sought to protect other prisoners. On March 3, 1948, a staged trial took place. Testimony against him was presented by a future Polish prime minister, Józef Cyrankiewicz, himself an Auschwitz survivor. Pilecki was accused of illegal crossing of the borders, use of forged documents, not enlisting with the military, carrying illegal arms, espionage for general Władysław Anders (head of the military of the Polish Government in Exile) and preparing an assassination on several officials from the Ministry of Public Security of Poland. Pilecki denied the assassination charges, as well as espionage (although he admitted to passing information to the II Polish Corps of whom he considered himself an officer and thus claimed that he was not breaking any laws); he pleaded guilty to the other charges. On May 15, with three of his comrades, he was sentenced to death. Ten days later, on May 25, 1948, he was executed at Warsaw's Mokotow Prison on ulica Rakowiecka (Rakowiecka Street).[1]
Pilecki's conviction was part of a prosecution of Home Army members and others connected with the Polish Government in Exile in London. In 2003, the prosecutor and several others involved in the trial were charged with complicity in Pilecki's murder. Cyrankiewicz escaped similar proceedings, having died.[1]
After Poland regained its independence, Witold Pilecki and all others sentenced in the staged trial were rehabilitated on October 1, 1990. In 1995, he received posthumously the Order of Polonia Restituta.
His place of burial has never been found. He is thought to have been buried in a rubbish dump near Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.
Until 1989, information on his exploits and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime.[1]
[edit] Summary of Pilecki's Polish Army career
Ensign (podporucznik) from 1925
First Lieutenant (porucznik) from November 11, 1941 (promoted while at Auschwitz)
Captain (cavalry rotmistrz) from November 11, 1943.
[edit] See also
Scouting Portal
This article is partof the series:Polish Secret State
History of Poland
Jan Karski
List of noteworthy individuals in the Warsaw Uprising
Polish contribution to World War II
Rudolf Vrba
Western betrayal
Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego (Polish Scouting and Guiding Association, ZHP)
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Pracodawcy waszyngtońscy Radka Sikorskiego, „American Enterprise Institute” wypuścili jako „próbny balonik” kandydaturę kabały talmudycznej, na wybory
Pracodawcy waszyngtońscy Radka Sikorskiego, „American Enterprise Institute” wypuścili jako „próbny balonik” kandydaturę kabały talmudycznej, na wybory
Pracodawcy waszyngtońscy Radka Sikorskiego, „American Enterprise Institute” wypuścili jako „próbny balonik” kandydaturę kabały talmudycznej, na wybory prezydenta w USA, w osobach John’a McCain’a i wiceprezydenta Joseph’a Lieberman’a: pierwszy to kukła w rękach syjonistów i przemysłu naftowego, a drugi zaciekły talmudysta nawołujący do ataku USA na Iran.
McCain już ogłaszał jego plany okupacji Iraku na następne sto lat, żeby mieć dosyć czasu na rabunek paliwa z irakijskich pól ropy naftowej i gazu ziemnego, a jednocześnie ubezpieczać ekstremistów izraelskich w ich konflikcie z Arabami. Natomiast Lieberman, „demokrata,” stracił poparcie partii demokratycznej z powodu jego nawoływania do nie-kończącej się pacyfikacji Iraku i do ataku na Iran. Wówczas Lieberman stał się „niezależnym” kandydatem na senatora i wygrał dzięki lobby Izraela.
Ben J. Wattenberg, planista z wyżej wymienionego neokonserwatywnego instytutu, wypuścił 22go lutego, 2008, jako „próbny balonik” kandydaturę kabały talmudycznej, na wybory prezydenta w USA, John’a McCain’a i na wiceprezydenta Joseph’a Lieberman’a, w artykule pod tytułem: „Dlaczego nie McCain-Lieberman ‘ticket’ (wyborcza spółka)?” Chodzi o to żeby Lieberman, wierny talmudysta, spełniał rolę „mózgu” McCain’a, oraz znalazł się jako pierwszy w linii następstwa na pozycję prezydenta USA.
Wattenberg twierdzi, że Liebreman już nie jest demokratą, chociaż bierze udział w naradach partii demokratycznej, z której wypędzono go z powodu jego nawoływania do wojny. Natomiast starzy Żydzi słuchających przemówień Lieberman’a przepowiadają, że on będzie prezydentem USA, dzięki poparciu lobby Izraela i religijnych talmudystów, udających, że zależy im na bezpieczeństwie Stanów Zjednoczonych.
Poza tym, jakoby Lieberman przyciągałby demokratów do głosowania na republikanów, zwłaszcza na Florydzie, która może przeważyć szalę na rzecz republikanów mimo tego, że większość Amerykanów jest przeciwna przeciąganiu okupacji Iraku i nowej wojnie przeciwko Iranowi. Narazie Lieberman zaklina się, że nie ubiega się o kandydowanie u boku McCain’a, ale planuje wziąć udział w zjeździe partii republikańskiej w czasie zatwierdzania, kto ma kandydować z ramienia tej partii.
Patriota Izraela, Lieberman twierdzi, że jest patriotą USA, który zaakceptowałby pozycję wice-prezydenta w rządzie McClain’a. Wattenberg przypuszcza, że McCain powinien przynajmniej zaoferować Lieberamnowi stanowisko sekretarza stanu, lub ministra obrony, na wypadek jego zwycięstwa w wyborach. Jednak Wattenberg twierdzi że taki układ wymaga starań, ponieważ jako wpływowy senator Lieberman, może woleć bronić interesów Izraela z pozycji senatora.
Według Wattenberga, jeżeli senator Barack Obama i senator Hilary Clinton będą niszczyć się wzajemnie w walce o głosy demokratów, to na tej walce mogą skorzystać republikanie i dla tego John McCain będzie następnym prezydentem USA. Wattenberg przygotowuje do druku książkę pod tytułem: „Walka na Słowa – Jak Liberałowie Stworzyli Neo-Konserwatyzm.”
Tymczasem wiadomo, że Irving Kristol i Norma Podhoretz, trockiści nawróceni na radykalny syjonizm, są twórcami ideologii neo-konserwatyzmu i głosicielami wojny permanentnej o demokrację (fasadową), tak jak kiedyś Leon Trocky nawoływał do wojny permanentnej o komunizm. Obecnie kandydatami kabały Wattenberga są John McCain i Joseph Lieberman.
Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
Born Sept. 3, 1921
Lwów, Poland
in Dec 1939 left Warsaw. Dec 30, 1939 arrested by Ukrainians serving the Gestapo in Dukla, then transferred to Barwinek, Krosno, Jaslo, Tarnów, Oswiecim, arrived in Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen on Aug. 10, 1940.
April 19, 1945 started on the Death March of Brandenburg from Sachsenhausen; escaped gunfire of SS-guards and arrived to Schwerin and freedom on May 2, 1945.
September 1945 arrived in Brussels, Belgium; obtained admission as a regular student at the Catholic University: Institute Superieur de Commerce, St. Ignace in Antwerp.
in 1954 graduated in Civil Engineering at the top of his class. Was invited to join honorary societies: Tau Beta Pi (general engineering honorary society), Phi Kappa Phi (academic honorary society equivalent to Phi Beta Kappa), Pi Mu (mechanical engineering honorary society), and Chi Epsilon (civil engineering honorary society). Taught descriptive geometry at the University of Tennessee;
in 1955 graduated with M.S. degree in Industrial Engineering.
in 1955 started working for Shell Oil Company in New Orleans. After one year of managerial training was assigned to design of marine structures for drilling and production of petroleum.
in 1960 started working for Texaco Research and Development in Houston, Texas as a Project Engineer. Authored total of 50 American and foreign patents on marine structures for the petroleum industry;
wrote an article: The Rise and Fall of the Polish Commonwealth - A Quest for a Representative Government in Central and Eastern Europe in the 14th to 18th Centuries. Started to work on a Tabular History of Poland.
in 1972 moved to Blacksburg, Virginia. During the following years worked as Consulting Engineer for Texaco, also taught in Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University as Adjunct Professor in the College of Civil Engineering teaching courses on marine structures of the petroleum industry. Designed and supervised the construction of a hill top home for his family, also bought 500 acre ranch (near Thomas Jefferson National Forest) where he restored 200 years old mill house on a mountain stream.
in 1978 prepared Polish-English, English-Polish Dictionary with complete phonetics, published by Hippocrene Books Inc. The dictionary included a Tabular History of Poland, Polish Language, People, and Culture as well as Pogonowski's phonetic symbols for phonetic transcriptions in English and Polish at each dictionary entry; the phonetic explanations were illustrated with cross-sections of speech (organs used to pronounce the sounds unfamiliar to the users). It was the first dictionary with phonetic transcription at each Polish entry for use by English speakers
in 1981 prepared Practical Polish-English Dictionary with complete phonetics, published by Hippocrene Books Inc.
in 1983 prepared Concise Polish-English Dictionary with complete phonetics, published by Hippocrene Books Inc. Wrote an analysis of Michael Ch ci ski's Poland, Communism, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism. Also selected crucial quotations from Norman Davies' God's Playground - A History of Poland on the subject of the Polish indigenous democratic process.
in 1985 prepared Polish-English Standard Dictionary with complete phonetics, published by Hippocrene Books Inc. Also prepared a revised and expanded edition of the Concise Polish-English Dictionary with complete phonetics, also published by Hippocrene Books Inc.
in 1987 prepared Poland: A Historical Atlas on Polish History and Prehistory including 200 maps and graphs as well as Chronology of Poland's Constitutional and Political Development, and the Evolution of Polish Identity - The Milestones. An introductory chapter was entitled Poland the Middle Ground. Aloysius A. Mazewski President of Polish-American Congress wrote an introduction. The Atlas was published by Hippocrene Books Inc. and later by Dorset Press of the Barnes and Noble Co. Inc. which sends some 30 million catalogues to American homes including color reproduction of book covers. Thus, many Americans were exposed to the cover of Pogonowski's Atlas showing the range of borders of Poland during the history - many found out for the firsttime that Poland was an important power in the past. Total of about 30,000 atlases were printed so far.
In 1988 the publication of Poland: A Historical Atlas resulted in a number of invitations extended by several Polonian organizations to Iwo Pogonowski to present Television Programs on Polish History. Pogonowski responded and produced over two year period 220 half-hour video programs in his studio at home (and at his own expense.) These programs formed a serial entitled: Poland, A History of One Thousand Years. Total of over 1000 broadcasts of these programs were transmitted by cable television in Chicago, Detroit-Hamtramck, Cleveland, and Blacksburg.
in 1990-1991 translated from the Russian the Catechism of a Revolutionary of 1869 in which crime has been treated as a normal part of the revolutionary program. Started preparation of the Killing the Best and the Brightest: A Chronology of the USSR-German Attempt to Behead the Polish Nation showing how the USSR became a prototype of modern totalitarian state, how this prototype was adapted in Germany by the Nazis.
in 1991 prepared Polish Phrasebook, Polish Conversations for Americans including picture code for gender and familiarity, published by Hippocrene Books Inc.
in 1991 prepared English Conversations for Poles with Concise Dictionary published by Hippocrene Books Inc. By then a total of over 100,000 Polish-English, English-Polish Dictionaries written by Pogonowski were sold in the United States and abroad.
in 1992 prepared a Dictionary of Polish, Latin, Hebrew, and Yiddish Terms used in Contacts between Poles and Jews. It was prepared for the history of Jews in Poland as well as 115 maps and graphs and 172 illustrations, paintings, drawings, and documents, etc. of Jewish life in Poland. This material was accompanied by proper annotations.
in 1993 prepared Jews in Poland, Rise of the Jews as a Nation from Congressus Judaicus in Poland to the Knesset in Israel, published by Hippocrene Books Inc. in 3000 copies. Foreword was written by Richard Pipes, professor of history at Harvard University, and Pogonowski's school mate in the Keczmar school in Warsaw. Part I included: a Synopsis of 1000 Year History of Jews in Poland; the 1264 Statute of Jewish Liberties in Poland in Latin and English translation; Jewish Autonomy in Poland 1264-1795; German Annihilation of the Jews. In appendixes are documents and illustrations. An Atlas is in the Part III. It is divided as follows: Early Jewish Settlements 966-1264; The Crucial 500 Years, 1264-1795; Competition (between Poles and Jews) Under Foreign Rule, 1795-1918; The Last Blossoming of Jewish Culture in Poland, 1918-1939; German Genocide of the Jews, 1940-1944; Jewish Escape from Europe 1945-1947 - The End of European (Polish) Phase of Jewish History (when most of world's Jewry lived in Europe). Pogonowski began to write a new book starting with the Chronology of the Martyrdom of Polish Intelligentsia during World War II and the Stalinist Terror; the book in preparation was entitled Killing the Best and the Brightest.
in 1995 prepared Dictionary of Polish Business, Legal and Associated Terms for use with the new edition of the Practical Polish-English, English-Polish Dictionary and later to be published as a separate book.
in 1996 Pogonowski's Poland: A Historical Atlas; was translated into Polish; some 130 of the original 200 maps printed in color; the Chronology of Poland was also translated into Polish. The Atlas was published by Wydawnictwo Suszczy ski I Baran in Kraków in 3000 copies; additional publications are expected. Prepared Polish-English, Eglish-Polish Compact Dictionary with complete phonetics, published by Hippocrene Books Inc.
in 1997 finished preparation of the Unabridged Polish-English Dictionary with complete phonetics including over 200,000 entries, in three volumes on total of 4000 pages; it is published by Hippocrene Books Inc; the Polish title is: Uniwesalny S ownik Polsko-Angielski. Besides years of work Pogonowski spent over $50,000 on computers, computer services, typing, and proof reading in order to make the 4000 page dictionary camera ready; assisted in the preparation of second edition of Jews in Poland, Rise of the Jews from Congressus Judaicus in Poland to the Knesset in Israel published in fall of 1997. Prepared computer programs for English-Polish Dictionary to serve as a companion to the Unabridged Polish-English Dictionary printed by the end of May 1997.
in 1998 Pogonowski organized preparation of CD ROM for the Unabridged Polish-English Dictionary, Practical English-Polish Dictionary, Polish Phrasebook for Tourists and Travelers to Poland, all published earlier by Iwo C. Pogonowski. The Phrasebook includes 280 minutes of bilingual audio read by actors. Started preparation for a new edition of Poland: A Historical Atlas. New Appendices are being prepared on such subjects as: Polish contribution to Allied's wartime intelligence: the breaking of the Enigma Codes, Pune Munde rocket production; Poland's contribution to the international law since 1415; Poland's early development of rocket technology such as Polish Rocketry Handbook published in 1650 in which Poles introduced for the first time into the world's literature concepts of multiple warheads, multistage rockets, new controls in rocket flight, etc. Poland's Chronology is being enlarged to reflect the mechanisms of subjugation of Polish people by the Soviet terror apparatus. Continued preparation of the Killing the Best and the Brightest: A Chronology of the USSR-German Attempt to Behead the Polish Nation, including the 1992 revelations from Soviet archives as well as the current research in Poland. Continued preparation of two-volume English Polish Dictionary, a companion to the Unabridged Polish-English Dictionary published in 1997. Reviewed Upiorna Dekada by J. T. Gross.
in 1999 Pogonowski continued writing Poland - An Illustrated History and preparing for it 21 maps and diagrams and 89 illustrations.
in 2000 Pogonowski prepared, in a camera ready form, Poland - An Illustrated History; it was published by Hippocrene Books Inc. NY 2000 and recommended by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor under President Carter, as "An important contribution to the better understanding of Polish history, which demonstrates in a vivid fashion the historical vicissitudes of that major European nation."
Pracodawcy waszyngtońscy Radka Sikorskiego, „American Enterprise Institute” wypuścili jako „próbny balonik” kandydaturę kabały talmudycznej, na wybory prezydenta w USA, w osobach John’a McCain’a i wiceprezydenta Joseph’a Lieberman’a: pierwszy to kukła w rękach syjonistów i przemysłu naftowego, a drugi zaciekły talmudysta nawołujący do ataku USA na Iran.
McCain już ogłaszał jego plany okupacji Iraku na następne sto lat, żeby mieć dosyć czasu na rabunek paliwa z irakijskich pól ropy naftowej i gazu ziemnego, a jednocześnie ubezpieczać ekstremistów izraelskich w ich konflikcie z Arabami. Natomiast Lieberman, „demokrata,” stracił poparcie partii demokratycznej z powodu jego nawoływania do nie-kończącej się pacyfikacji Iraku i do ataku na Iran. Wówczas Lieberman stał się „niezależnym” kandydatem na senatora i wygrał dzięki lobby Izraela.
Ben J. Wattenberg, planista z wyżej wymienionego neokonserwatywnego instytutu, wypuścił 22go lutego, 2008, jako „próbny balonik” kandydaturę kabały talmudycznej, na wybory prezydenta w USA, John’a McCain’a i na wiceprezydenta Joseph’a Lieberman’a, w artykule pod tytułem: „Dlaczego nie McCain-Lieberman ‘ticket’ (wyborcza spółka)?” Chodzi o to żeby Lieberman, wierny talmudysta, spełniał rolę „mózgu” McCain’a, oraz znalazł się jako pierwszy w linii następstwa na pozycję prezydenta USA.
Wattenberg twierdzi, że Liebreman już nie jest demokratą, chociaż bierze udział w naradach partii demokratycznej, z której wypędzono go z powodu jego nawoływania do wojny. Natomiast starzy Żydzi słuchających przemówień Lieberman’a przepowiadają, że on będzie prezydentem USA, dzięki poparciu lobby Izraela i religijnych talmudystów, udających, że zależy im na bezpieczeństwie Stanów Zjednoczonych.
Poza tym, jakoby Lieberman przyciągałby demokratów do głosowania na republikanów, zwłaszcza na Florydzie, która może przeważyć szalę na rzecz republikanów mimo tego, że większość Amerykanów jest przeciwna przeciąganiu okupacji Iraku i nowej wojnie przeciwko Iranowi. Narazie Lieberman zaklina się, że nie ubiega się o kandydowanie u boku McCain’a, ale planuje wziąć udział w zjeździe partii republikańskiej w czasie zatwierdzania, kto ma kandydować z ramienia tej partii.
Patriota Izraela, Lieberman twierdzi, że jest patriotą USA, który zaakceptowałby pozycję wice-prezydenta w rządzie McClain’a. Wattenberg przypuszcza, że McCain powinien przynajmniej zaoferować Lieberamnowi stanowisko sekretarza stanu, lub ministra obrony, na wypadek jego zwycięstwa w wyborach. Jednak Wattenberg twierdzi że taki układ wymaga starań, ponieważ jako wpływowy senator Lieberman, może woleć bronić interesów Izraela z pozycji senatora.
Według Wattenberga, jeżeli senator Barack Obama i senator Hilary Clinton będą niszczyć się wzajemnie w walce o głosy demokratów, to na tej walce mogą skorzystać republikanie i dla tego John McCain będzie następnym prezydentem USA. Wattenberg przygotowuje do druku książkę pod tytułem: „Walka na Słowa – Jak Liberałowie Stworzyli Neo-Konserwatyzm.”
Tymczasem wiadomo, że Irving Kristol i Norma Podhoretz, trockiści nawróceni na radykalny syjonizm, są twórcami ideologii neo-konserwatyzmu i głosicielami wojny permanentnej o demokrację (fasadową), tak jak kiedyś Leon Trocky nawoływał do wojny permanentnej o komunizm. Obecnie kandydatami kabały Wattenberga są John McCain i Joseph Lieberman.
Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
Born Sept. 3, 1921
Lwów, Poland
in Dec 1939 left Warsaw. Dec 30, 1939 arrested by Ukrainians serving the Gestapo in Dukla, then transferred to Barwinek, Krosno, Jaslo, Tarnów, Oswiecim, arrived in Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen on Aug. 10, 1940.
April 19, 1945 started on the Death March of Brandenburg from Sachsenhausen; escaped gunfire of SS-guards and arrived to Schwerin and freedom on May 2, 1945.
September 1945 arrived in Brussels, Belgium; obtained admission as a regular student at the Catholic University: Institute Superieur de Commerce, St. Ignace in Antwerp.
in 1954 graduated in Civil Engineering at the top of his class. Was invited to join honorary societies: Tau Beta Pi (general engineering honorary society), Phi Kappa Phi (academic honorary society equivalent to Phi Beta Kappa), Pi Mu (mechanical engineering honorary society), and Chi Epsilon (civil engineering honorary society). Taught descriptive geometry at the University of Tennessee;
in 1955 graduated with M.S. degree in Industrial Engineering.
in 1955 started working for Shell Oil Company in New Orleans. After one year of managerial training was assigned to design of marine structures for drilling and production of petroleum.
in 1960 started working for Texaco Research and Development in Houston, Texas as a Project Engineer. Authored total of 50 American and foreign patents on marine structures for the petroleum industry;
wrote an article: The Rise and Fall of the Polish Commonwealth - A Quest for a Representative Government in Central and Eastern Europe in the 14th to 18th Centuries. Started to work on a Tabular History of Poland.
in 1972 moved to Blacksburg, Virginia. During the following years worked as Consulting Engineer for Texaco, also taught in Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University as Adjunct Professor in the College of Civil Engineering teaching courses on marine structures of the petroleum industry. Designed and supervised the construction of a hill top home for his family, also bought 500 acre ranch (near Thomas Jefferson National Forest) where he restored 200 years old mill house on a mountain stream.
in 1978 prepared Polish-English, English-Polish Dictionary with complete phonetics, published by Hippocrene Books Inc. The dictionary included a Tabular History of Poland, Polish Language, People, and Culture as well as Pogonowski's phonetic symbols for phonetic transcriptions in English and Polish at each dictionary entry; the phonetic explanations were illustrated with cross-sections of speech (organs used to pronounce the sounds unfamiliar to the users). It was the first dictionary with phonetic transcription at each Polish entry for use by English speakers
in 1981 prepared Practical Polish-English Dictionary with complete phonetics, published by Hippocrene Books Inc.
in 1983 prepared Concise Polish-English Dictionary with complete phonetics, published by Hippocrene Books Inc. Wrote an analysis of Michael Ch ci ski's Poland, Communism, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism. Also selected crucial quotations from Norman Davies' God's Playground - A History of Poland on the subject of the Polish indigenous democratic process.
in 1985 prepared Polish-English Standard Dictionary with complete phonetics, published by Hippocrene Books Inc. Also prepared a revised and expanded edition of the Concise Polish-English Dictionary with complete phonetics, also published by Hippocrene Books Inc.
in 1987 prepared Poland: A Historical Atlas on Polish History and Prehistory including 200 maps and graphs as well as Chronology of Poland's Constitutional and Political Development, and the Evolution of Polish Identity - The Milestones. An introductory chapter was entitled Poland the Middle Ground. Aloysius A. Mazewski President of Polish-American Congress wrote an introduction. The Atlas was published by Hippocrene Books Inc. and later by Dorset Press of the Barnes and Noble Co. Inc. which sends some 30 million catalogues to American homes including color reproduction of book covers. Thus, many Americans were exposed to the cover of Pogonowski's Atlas showing the range of borders of Poland during the history - many found out for the firsttime that Poland was an important power in the past. Total of about 30,000 atlases were printed so far.
In 1988 the publication of Poland: A Historical Atlas resulted in a number of invitations extended by several Polonian organizations to Iwo Pogonowski to present Television Programs on Polish History. Pogonowski responded and produced over two year period 220 half-hour video programs in his studio at home (and at his own expense.) These programs formed a serial entitled: Poland, A History of One Thousand Years. Total of over 1000 broadcasts of these programs were transmitted by cable television in Chicago, Detroit-Hamtramck, Cleveland, and Blacksburg.
in 1990-1991 translated from the Russian the Catechism of a Revolutionary of 1869 in which crime has been treated as a normal part of the revolutionary program. Started preparation of the Killing the Best and the Brightest: A Chronology of the USSR-German Attempt to Behead the Polish Nation showing how the USSR became a prototype of modern totalitarian state, how this prototype was adapted in Germany by the Nazis.
in 1991 prepared Polish Phrasebook, Polish Conversations for Americans including picture code for gender and familiarity, published by Hippocrene Books Inc.
in 1991 prepared English Conversations for Poles with Concise Dictionary published by Hippocrene Books Inc. By then a total of over 100,000 Polish-English, English-Polish Dictionaries written by Pogonowski were sold in the United States and abroad.
in 1992 prepared a Dictionary of Polish, Latin, Hebrew, and Yiddish Terms used in Contacts between Poles and Jews. It was prepared for the history of Jews in Poland as well as 115 maps and graphs and 172 illustrations, paintings, drawings, and documents, etc. of Jewish life in Poland. This material was accompanied by proper annotations.
in 1993 prepared Jews in Poland, Rise of the Jews as a Nation from Congressus Judaicus in Poland to the Knesset in Israel, published by Hippocrene Books Inc. in 3000 copies. Foreword was written by Richard Pipes, professor of history at Harvard University, and Pogonowski's school mate in the Keczmar school in Warsaw. Part I included: a Synopsis of 1000 Year History of Jews in Poland; the 1264 Statute of Jewish Liberties in Poland in Latin and English translation; Jewish Autonomy in Poland 1264-1795; German Annihilation of the Jews. In appendixes are documents and illustrations. An Atlas is in the Part III. It is divided as follows: Early Jewish Settlements 966-1264; The Crucial 500 Years, 1264-1795; Competition (between Poles and Jews) Under Foreign Rule, 1795-1918; The Last Blossoming of Jewish Culture in Poland, 1918-1939; German Genocide of the Jews, 1940-1944; Jewish Escape from Europe 1945-1947 - The End of European (Polish) Phase of Jewish History (when most of world's Jewry lived in Europe). Pogonowski began to write a new book starting with the Chronology of the Martyrdom of Polish Intelligentsia during World War II and the Stalinist Terror; the book in preparation was entitled Killing the Best and the Brightest.
in 1995 prepared Dictionary of Polish Business, Legal and Associated Terms for use with the new edition of the Practical Polish-English, English-Polish Dictionary and later to be published as a separate book.
in 1996 Pogonowski's Poland: A Historical Atlas; was translated into Polish; some 130 of the original 200 maps printed in color; the Chronology of Poland was also translated into Polish. The Atlas was published by Wydawnictwo Suszczy ski I Baran in Kraków in 3000 copies; additional publications are expected. Prepared Polish-English, Eglish-Polish Compact Dictionary with complete phonetics, published by Hippocrene Books Inc.
in 1997 finished preparation of the Unabridged Polish-English Dictionary with complete phonetics including over 200,000 entries, in three volumes on total of 4000 pages; it is published by Hippocrene Books Inc; the Polish title is: Uniwesalny S ownik Polsko-Angielski. Besides years of work Pogonowski spent over $50,000 on computers, computer services, typing, and proof reading in order to make the 4000 page dictionary camera ready; assisted in the preparation of second edition of Jews in Poland, Rise of the Jews from Congressus Judaicus in Poland to the Knesset in Israel published in fall of 1997. Prepared computer programs for English-Polish Dictionary to serve as a companion to the Unabridged Polish-English Dictionary printed by the end of May 1997.
in 1998 Pogonowski organized preparation of CD ROM for the Unabridged Polish-English Dictionary, Practical English-Polish Dictionary, Polish Phrasebook for Tourists and Travelers to Poland, all published earlier by Iwo C. Pogonowski. The Phrasebook includes 280 minutes of bilingual audio read by actors. Started preparation for a new edition of Poland: A Historical Atlas. New Appendices are being prepared on such subjects as: Polish contribution to Allied's wartime intelligence: the breaking of the Enigma Codes, Pune Munde rocket production; Poland's contribution to the international law since 1415; Poland's early development of rocket technology such as Polish Rocketry Handbook published in 1650 in which Poles introduced for the first time into the world's literature concepts of multiple warheads, multistage rockets, new controls in rocket flight, etc. Poland's Chronology is being enlarged to reflect the mechanisms of subjugation of Polish people by the Soviet terror apparatus. Continued preparation of the Killing the Best and the Brightest: A Chronology of the USSR-German Attempt to Behead the Polish Nation, including the 1992 revelations from Soviet archives as well as the current research in Poland. Continued preparation of two-volume English Polish Dictionary, a companion to the Unabridged Polish-English Dictionary published in 1997. Reviewed Upiorna Dekada by J. T. Gross.
in 1999 Pogonowski continued writing Poland - An Illustrated History and preparing for it 21 maps and diagrams and 89 illustrations.
in 2000 Pogonowski prepared, in a camera ready form, Poland - An Illustrated History; it was published by Hippocrene Books Inc. NY 2000 and recommended by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor under President Carter, as "An important contribution to the better understanding of Polish history, which demonstrates in a vivid fashion the historical vicissitudes of that major European nation."
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Article of Mrs. Pilar Rahola of El Pais Spain bashing Poland and Polish Nation.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Protest from Lech Alex Bajan, Washington DC., Polish American
RE: New Article of Mrs. Pilar Rahola of El Pais bashing Poland and Polish Nation.
Yesterday, Spain, EU.
I believe the Media group Prisa, owner of the daily El Pais media, owes an apology to the Polish people for printing an article in which the author refers to them as anti-Semitic.
Mrs. Pilar Rahola must be a complete historical ignorant to write this kind of nonsence about Polish collaboration with the Nazis and the idea of antisemitism in Poland as Mrs. Pilar Rahola did in El Pais.
Do they publish this kind of articles to make profit? How can Mrs. Pilar Rahola of El Pais do this to the Polish people who saved more Jews during the World War II than any other country or nation in the world?
What about 60 thousand Poles who lost their own lives during the war to save the Polish Jews? My grandmother from Krasnik is one of them.
Let me only remind you that during the Nazi occupation, the names of Polish towns and streets were germanized. Speaking Polish in public in the incorporated provinces was prohibited. In the predominantly German-populated area of Gdansk (renamed as Danzig), the public use of Polish language became a capital offence on September 4, 1939.
On August 22, 1939, a week before his attack on Poland, Hitler exhorted his nation: "Kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need." As many as 200,000 Polish children, deemed to have "Germanic" (Aryan) features, were forcibly taken to Germany to be raised as Germans, and had their birth records falsified. Very few of these children were reunited with their families after the war.
More than 500 towns and villages were burned, over 16 thousand persons, mostly Polish Christians, were killed in 714 mass executions, of which 60% were carried out by the Wehrmacht (German army) and 40% by the SS and Gestapo. In Bydgoszcz the first victims were boy scouts from 12 to 16 years old, shot in the marketplace. All this happened in the first eight weeks of the war. See Richard C. Lucas, The Forgotten Holocaust; The Poles under German Occupation. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky [c1986].
In the East, the Russians, collaborating with the Germans (Hitler-Stalin Pact of Aug. 23, 1939) attacked Poland on September 17, 1939, and occupied the eastern part of Poland until June 1941. Massive killings followed, among them 21,857 officers, mostly reserve members of the army, police and frontier guards, whose bodies were found later in Katyn, Miednoye, Kharkov and Tver. Other bodies from these massacres have never been found. About two million Poles, mostly members of the intelligentsia, were deported to Siberia or to Kazakhstan in North and Central Asia. More than half never returned; thousands were killed in the fighting and over 452,000 became POWs in Soviet Russia. Poland disappeared from the European map, divided between Third Reich and the Soviet Union.
Out of its pre-war population of 36 million, Poland lost 22%, the highest percentage than any other country in Europe. The heaviest losses were sustained by educated classes, youth and democratic forces that could challenge totalitarianism later on. See I. C. Pogonowski, Poland: A Historical Atlas. New York, Hippocrene Books, 1987.
According to the German AB Plan, Poles were to become a people without education, slaves for the German overlords. Secondary schools were closed; studying, keeping radios, or weapon of any kind, or practicing any kind of trade were prohibited under the threat of death.
In 1988, the public prosecutor, Waclaw Bielawski, from the Main Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against the Polish Nation, issued a list of 1,181 names of Poles who had been killed for helping Jews during World War II. In 1997, the Main Commission – The Institute of National Memory and The Polish Society for The Righteous Among the Nations in Warsaw, published Part III in the series Those Who Helped: Polish Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. It reduced the list of 1,181 names to only 704, by accepting only those whose accounts could be independently corroborated and verified fifty years later. The publication also included the names of more than 5,400 Poles, who have been recognized by the Israeli Yad Vashem Institute – The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, as “Righteous Among the Nations.” About 17,000 people of 34 nationalities were similarly honored. In Western Europe the automatic death sentence for help rendered to Jews did not exist, and applying it to a whole family or neighbors was unthinkable. The reign of terror that was organized in Poland was completely unique, and unimaginable in the West.
Those who were executed are not usually recognized as “Righteous”. They were generally murdered with the Jews they harbored, so there were no Jewish witnesses, while the Polish witnesses were not taken into consideration. Only in very rare cases (25 that were known in 1999), when a Jew managed to escape death and lived long enough to make the proper deposition in an Israeli consulate or at Yad Vashem (the State Tribunal of Israel) in Jerusalem, could the rescuers be recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations.”
Saving Jews was very difficult, as about 85% of Poland’s Jews either did not speak Polish or spoke a dialect. In many cases, Jews were easily distinguished by their appearance.
Poland, under the Soviet-imposed communist regime that lasted from 1948 until 1989, was cut from the West. Poles lost contact with the Jewish persons they saved, most of whom left the country. Many Polish Jews changed their names, either under the occupation or after settling abroad. Furthermore, it was dangerous to maintain correspondence with the West. Many of the rescuers also changed their addresses, due to the massive migration from the eastern part of the country, incorporated into the Soviet Union, to the western territories that were taken from Germany after the war.
The stories of the rescuers are a shining example of the most selfless sacrifice, surpassing in its heroism that of all the soldiers on the battlefield, whom we commemorate each November. In fact the soldier must fight; he cannot refuse. He is supported by the entire military organization and his efforts are mostly limited to battles that have a clear beginning and an end. He is paid and given the food, supplies and weapons that he needs.
Rescuers of Jews in Poland – on the other hand – were completely alone, often deprived of their pre-war means of livelihood, expelled from their farms, factories, businesses, offices and even homes, most of them living in dire poverty. For ome of them it was virtually impossible to earn a living. They were under no legal obligation to risk their own lives and, even more, the lives of their families and neighbors. Their help most often lasted days and nights, weeks, months, even years, always in secret, and always in the risk of discovery.
And what about the Polish woman, 95-year-old Irena Sendlerowa, who is credited with saving the lives of 2,500 Jews? Sendlerowa led about 20 helpers who smuggled Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto to safety between 1940 and 1943, placing them in Polish families, convents or orphanages.
She wrote the children's names on slips of paper and buried them in jars in a neighbor's yard as a record that could help locate their parents after the war. The Nazis arrested her in 1943, but she refused - despite repeated torture - to reveal their names.
Anyone caught helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland risked being instantaneously shot, along with family members.
Even now, more than half a century after the end of the war, questions are still being asked: What was the Polish nation's response to the unfolding Jewish Tragedy? Did the Poles try to help the Jews? How much help could have been actually offered in view of the rigours imposed by German Occupation? Such questions call for a well-considered response based on historical facts.
Poland was the only country in occupied Europe where - throughout the duration of the war - a secret organisation existed whose express purpose was to help the Jews and find, at least for some of them, a place of safety. Initially coordinated by several committees, in December 1942 this action culminated in the creation of the Relief Council for Jews in Poland, code name 'Zegota'.
'Zegota' (1) organised financial aid and medical care for the Jews hiding on the 'Aryan side', and procured for them forged identity documents. 'Zegota' was successful in providing accommodation for many. This presented an extremely difficult problem as discovery of a person of Jewish origin on the premises resulted in an immediate execution of all the occupants.
E. Ringelblum (2) describes hundreds of such cases.
Some 2500 Jewish children from Warsaw were saved by 'Zegota' by placing them either with catholic Polish foster-families or in orphanages run by convents or local councils. Also, help in the form of money, food and medicines was organised by 'Zegota' for the Jews in several forced-labour camps in Poland.
As soon as the Jewish Tragedy became apparent, the Polish Government-in-Exile, the Underground State and Polish diplomacy embarked on a massive campaign, informing the free world of the plight of the Jews. Efforts were made to obtain help for them from the Allied Governments, the Vatican and from various organisations in the Allied countries. There were countless broadcasts, articles in the press, organised meetings, approaches to Allied leaders and governments in which the Free Polish leaders, ministers, politicians and diplomats over and over again informed that a crime of genocide was being committed by the Germans against the Jews. (3). The full story of the Jewish Tragedy was brought to the Allied countries by special couriers from the Polish Resistance, one of them gaining access to the inside of the Warsaw Ghetto and to a death camp. The couriers tried to persuade the Allies and the Jewish organisations that there was a real danger and urgency to help the Jews. Unfortunately the efforts of the Poles were in vain. The Allies were too busy with the on-going war to consider the plight of the Jews in Poland. The Jewish organisations in the free world could not bring themselves to believe the Polish reports - they thought it was all an exaggeration.
So, where were the rich and influential Jews from New York and London? What did they do to help their folks? And so, one more time the same question appears: HOW DARE Mrs. Pilar Rahola and El Pais atack Polish people and Poland?
The military wing of the Polish Underground State, the Home Army, tried to involve the Jewish organisations in Poland in resistance activities. At first, there was much reluctance on their part to participate. However, in 1942 the Jewish resistance movement began. The Home Army helped by providing military intelligence, communication with the Allies and eventually by providing some weapons, explosives and military expertise for the fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (4).
It is worth noting here that Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes Remembrance Authority, has recently expressed both thanks and appreciation to the special unit of the 'Zoska' Battalion of the Polish Home Army, which in August 1944 captured the Warsaw Concentration Camp, the so-called 'Gesiowka', liberating 348 prisoners, Polish and European Jews.
Now, what about the ordinary Polish people - were they prepared to offer help to the Jews? At the early stage of Poland's occupation the Jews were selected for special treatment by the Occupant. This meant gradual isolation, degradation, starvation and eventual denial of the right to life for all Polish Jews.
Poland was the only country in all of Nazi-occupied Europe with death penalty for sheltering Jews. Germans knew how sympathetic Poles were to Polish Jews and in that way they could get rid of them both. Entire families, sometimes whole towns were murdered for sheltering Jews. Besides, 75% of the Jewish popiulation spoke only Yiddish, which later became a problem for those who wanted to be saved and pretend to be Poles.
The harsh reality of life for the rest of Poland's population was that everybody was preoccupied with the constant struggle for survival. To find work, to obtain enough food and other necessities of life - all these were of utmost importance to very many. Furthermore, there was the constant fear of being arrested and sent to a concentration camp, to forced labour in Germany, or to be taken as a hostage for public execution by a firing squad or hanging.
Three million Poles and three million Polish Jews perished as a result of the German occupation. Poland was the only country in occupied Europe where giving any kind of help to the Jews resulted in a collective execution of the helper and his or her family. Under such circumstances it would require a person of a special kind of courage and love of humanity to offer help to a Jew. How many saints would one find in any given community? How many such people would we find in Western Europe in the times of war? And yet there were Polish people who did help. It has always been difficult to establish the exact number of helpers, but some idea of that number can be gleaned from the Yad Vashem list of the 'Righteous among the Nations' (1). The list, as of 1st January 1997, gives the names of 14,706 persons from 34 nationalities who helped the Jews. 4,954 of them are Polish helpers. Among them are listed 11 catholic clergymen and 18 nuns. Only three organisations are honoured by Yad Vashem, one being the Polish organisation 'Zegota'. It is likely that - as research into the role of the Polish people in the Holocaust continues - the list of Polish names will grow.
Those listed are the helpers who survived and their heroism was verified by those whom they helped. But there were many who paid the ultimate price. In most cases those whom they were trying to help perished with them. The publication 'Those who helped' (1) lists 704 Poles who were killed because they helped the Jews. Places and dates are also given of mass executions by the Germans (the so-called pacifications of villages) of a further 143 Poles who rendered help to the Jews. To obtain and verify the names of those helpers who perished presents an even more difficult problem. Inevitably there will remain a large number of unknown heroes.
One can finally ask: Was the help given to the Jews of some significance? Stewart Steven, who in his book 'The Poles' (5), gives an extensive account of Polish-Jewish relations, offers the following conclusion: 'Maybe Poland could have done more for its Jewish population, but then so could every country of occupied Europe. The record shows that the Poles did more than most'.
So, what can we say about Poles, mostly Roman Catholic, who risked their own lives to save Jews from the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland? But it is fair to say that rescuers came from every religious background: Protestant and Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Muslim.
What about the fact that - despite the overwhelming and deadly idea of antisemitism in the Third Reich - there were a large number of individuals and organizations (such as Zygota in Poland) that risked (and sometimes lost) their lives in the effort to save Jews? They saved thousands of Jewish children from the Nazi, smuggled them out of the Warsaw Getto and hid with Polish families?
What about Jan Karski, a courier for the Polish government-in-exile, who alerted British and American politicians to Nazi plans to murder the Jews? After an unsuccessful attempt in Great Britain, he went to the United States to give all the proof of the Holocaust to the US President and the US Congress.
Finally, what about the Jewish collaborators with the communist regime under Stalin in eastern part of Poland after the 1939 Russia aggression?
Where is your journalistic code of ethics and – at least – common sence? Such articles as the one by Mrs. Pilar Rahola contribute even more to the ever-present anti-Polonism in the American and European media. Besides, it is too difficult to understand when the reader is not provided with wider information and truthful publications.
The double standards are evident by calling an event, such as the one in Jedwabne, an act of anti-Semitism, while burning a synagogue in Worcester, Mass in the United States was called "an act of vandalism", and a shooting in the Jewish Children Center in California - "an act of a mad man". If such acts took place in Poland, surely they would have been called anti-Semitic. American patriotism applied to Poles changes into nationalism.
For 1000 years, Poland had been the spiritual and religious center of Jewish Diaspora and produced one of the greatest world centers of Talmudic studies. 300 papers in Hebrew were published in Warsaw alone. Jews, unlike Blacks in America, were not forced to settle in Poland; they prospered, attended colleges and universities, owned factories, etc.
As early as in 1264, King Boleslav of Poland issued a charter inviting the Jews there. The charter was an amazing document, granting Jews unprecedented rights and privileges. For example, it stated that::
"The testimony of a Christian alone may not be admitted in a matter which concerns the money or property of a Jew. In every such incidence there must be the testimony of both a Christian and a Jew. If a Christian injures a Jew in any which way, the accused shall pay a fine to the royal treasury."
"If a Christian desecrates or defiles a Jewish cemetery in any which way, it is our wish that he be punished severely as demanded by law."
"If a Christian should attack a Jew, the Christian shall be punished as required by the laws of this land. We absolutely forbid anyone to accuse the Jews in our domain of using the blood of human beings."
"We affirm that if any Jew cry out in the night as a result of violence done to him, and if his Christian neighbors fail to respond to his cries and do not bring the necessary help, they shall be fined."
"We also affirm that Jews are free to buy and sell all manner of things just as Christians, and if anyone hampers them, he shall pay a fine."
Polish King Kazimierz was favorably disposed towards Jews. On October 9, 1334, he confirmed the privileges granted to Jewish Poles in 1264 by Boleslav V. Under penalty of death, he prohibited the kidnapping of Jewish children for the purpose of enforced Christian baptism. He inflicted heavy punishment for the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. And although Jews had lived in Poland since before the reign of King Kazimierz, he allowed them to settle in Poland in great numbers and protected them as people of the king.
Another Polish king, Sigmund II Augustus, issued another invitation. Here is an excerpt from his edict, granting the Jews permission to open a yeshiva at Lublin, dated August 23, 1567:
"As a result of the efforts of our advisors and in keeping with the request of the Jews of Lublin we do hereby grant permission to erect a yeshiva and to outfit said yeshiva with all that is required to advance learning. All the learned men and rabbis of Lublin shall come together for among their number they shall choose one to serve as the head of the yeshiva. Let their choice be a man who will magnify Torah and bring it glory."
GOLDEN AGE OF POLISH JEWRY
In Poland, the Jews were allowed to have their own governing body called the Va'ad Arba Artzot, which was composed of various rabbis who oversaw the affairs of the Jews in eastern Europe. The Poles did not interfere with Jewish life and Jewish scholarship flourished.
Some important personalities of this period, which every student of Jewish history should remember, were:
Rabbi Moshe Isserles (1525-1572), from Krakow, also known as the Rema. After the Sephardi rabbi Joseph Karo wrote the Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish Law, Rabbi Isserles annotated it to fill in the rabbinic decisions from Eastern Europe. His commentary was, and continues to be, critically important in everyday Jewish life.
Rabbi Ya'akov Pollack (1455-1530), from Krakow. He opened the first yeshivah in Poland and was later named the chief rabbi of Poland. He developed a method of learning Talmud called pilpul, meaning "fine distinctions." This was a type of dialectical reasoning that became very popular, whereby contradictory facts or ideas were systematically weighed with a view to the resolution of their real or apparent contradictions.
Rabbi Yehudah Loewe, (1526-1609), not from Poland but important to Eastern European Jewry. He was known as the Maharal of Prague and was one of the great mystical scholars of his time. He has been credited with having created the golem, a Frankenstein figure, a living being without a soul.
Along with the growth in Torah scholarship came population growth. In 1500 there were about 50,000 Jews living in Poland. By 1650 there were 500,000 Jews. This means that by the mid 17th century about majority of the Jewish population of the world was living in Poland!
Where did these Jews settle within Poland?
Jews were generally urban people as they were historically not allowed to own land in most of the places they lived. However, they also created their own farm communities called shtetls. Although we tend to think of the shtetl today as a poor farming village (like in Fiddler on the Roof), during the Golden Age of Polish Jewry many of these communities were actually quite prosperous. And there were thousands of them.
The Jews in these independent communities spoke their own language called Yiddish. Original Yiddish was written in Hebrew letters and was a mixture of Hebrew, Slavic, and German. (Note that Yiddish underwent constant development and "modern" Yiddish is not like the "old" Yiddish which first appeared in the 13th century, nor "middle" Yiddish of this period of time.) Overall, the Jews did well, working alongside Polish and Ukrainian Christians
How many African Americans till the 20th century were able to do so?
Jews came to Poland on their own will, to the country of great opportunity. They found shelter from the hostilities of Western Europe, stayed in and prospered, had representatives in the Polish parliament, and had the freedom of expressing their religion and customs. In some towns of Eastern Poland, Jews accounted for more than 50% of the occupants. They were respected citizens. So, how could this be possible if the country was anti-Semitic, as it is widely presented in the book by Jan Tomasz Gross?
Polish Jews enjoyed equal rights and full protection of the law under the Polish government. The laws changed under the rule of Prussia, Russia, and Austria. But we need to keep in mind that it also affected Poles as well. Their situation improved again after WWI when the Polish government was reestablished.
Why, between the wars, was the Jewish population growing 6 times faster than the Christian population, if the alleged anti-Semitism took place?
The only prejudice that you can accuse Polish people of is to be anti-Communist. Marek Edelman, the last leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, who still lives in Poland, said: "It is not a Jew who is the enemy, it is an enemy who is Jewish." I'm sorry to destroy the beautiful image of the peaceful and innocent Jewish people but at the time of the massacre it was well known that there were "informers," "observers," "advisors," or in plain English "Soviet collaborators" among Jews then and through the war and after.
Those did not see the wrong they were doing, the comfort came from accepting a different way of thinking. They considered themselves Poles or Polish Jews before the war, now comfortably became only Jews, so there were no ties of loyalty to Poland or to the Polish people. Collaborators gave away Poles and Jews as well (Jakub Berman as an example).
But this would be too difficult to understand for us who - for decades - were fed on anti-Polish propaganda. The same propaganda that the Nazis and later the Soviets used and which is now being repeated with a nauseating consistency by the American press.
It is the backwardness of American Jews to prefer that stereotype. I was hoping that with the raising of the Iron Curtain, the flow of information about Poland would be available to the average American reader and TV viewer. Unfortunately, that did not happen. We rather prefer to publish such articles as the one in El Pais. Also, hiding Polish accomplishments from the public only adds to the image of the Poles as some primitive tribe. The fact that Poland's economy is one of fastest growing in Europe is a thorn in the eye for some. The anti-Polish sentiment spreads to minimize their success. We already forgot who first faced the Soviet power and fought Communism. And last, but not least, the public does not know that presently Poland and Israel have a very good relationship.
We must not forget that Poland was not only a victim during WWII but only recently freed herself from under Soviet occupation. We should remember that Communism in Poland was FORCED upon its people, that Soviets placed Jews on high positions, which triggered atrocities. There is no perfect nation in the world – there are always honorable citizens and there is scum in all of them. But it seems that we only find the bad in Poles and all the good in Jews. For[AB1] a well-balanced story, the authors should mention what Soviet Jews did to Poles (Koniuchy massacre) and the fact that – out of 34 countries altogether – the Poles are those who have the biggest number of trees at Yad Vashem.
I guess American Jews don't rush to reveal some other information to the American public like: what were the Judenrat and the Jewish Police doing in the ghettos? Who took over the houses of Polish officers and their families in the east of pre-war Poland when they were taken to Siberia?
Do we inform that Poland's government was the only one in Nazi-occupied Europe to sponsor the organization to help Jews escaping the ghettos?
What did American Jews do to help their dying brothers?
In the American consciousness the Holocaust has become synonymous with Jewish history. Historical literature of the Holocaust has focused on the six million Jewish victims with the exclusion of the sixteen to twenty million Gentile (non-Jewish) victims.
We allow speculation on almost every aspect of Polish-Jewish relationship, never asking: "Why don't we speculate how many Jews would save Poles if the roles were reversed?"
For me, to have a different opinion is to risk being called an anti-Semite. An intelligent but objective Jewish person is called a "self-hating Jew". A "bystander" is someone who chose not to give his and his family's life for a strange, Jewish person.
Good things are happening in Poland .We don't rush to tell about the annual Jewish Festival in Krakow or about the opening of yet another Jewish school in Warsaw. Or even about the commemorating of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. We don't rush to tell about "Fiddler on the Roof" in Yiddish at the Jewish Theatre in Warsaw. Instead, we publish misleading stories about a music concert in Auschwitz (!?) and killings in Jedwabne. Why is that? American historians should stop wasting their ink only writing about alleged Polish anti-Semitism. Any atrocities toward Jews either occurred during Nazi or Soviet occupation or were triggered by revenge and greed, not to be mistaken with anti-Semitism. Also, to suggest that all Polish Jews are long gone is wrong, many prospered and became famous: actors (Holoubek, Zapasiewicz, Himilsbach, Rudzki), movie critics (Waldorf), writers (Tuwim), philosophers and editors (Michnik), politicians (Mazowiecki, Suchocka), musicians (Szpilman, Zimmerman), heart surgeons (Marek Edelman), athletes (Kirszenstein a.k.a. Szewinska), singers (Szmeterling a.k.a. Jantar). Some Polish Jews just recently became interested in their religion; Jewish schools are reopening, while the synagogues, museums, and Jewish cultural institutes have always been present in Poland's cultural life. Positive Jewish characters are in every Polish classic; there are streets named after Jewish heroes; monuments accommodate their heroism and their tragedy. All this does not seem like an anti-Semitic country, does it? But it will stay in the American media, as long as we allow it to.
Alex Lech Bajan
Polish American
CEO
RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 703-940-8300
EMAIL: alex@raqport.com
WEB SITE: http://raqport.com
[AB1]
Protest from Lech Alex Bajan, Washington DC., Polish American
RE: New Article of Mrs. Pilar Rahola of El Pais bashing Poland and Polish Nation.
Yesterday, Spain, EU.
I believe the Media group Prisa, owner of the daily El Pais media, owes an apology to the Polish people for printing an article in which the author refers to them as anti-Semitic.
Mrs. Pilar Rahola must be a complete historical ignorant to write this kind of nonsence about Polish collaboration with the Nazis and the idea of antisemitism in Poland as Mrs. Pilar Rahola did in El Pais.
Do they publish this kind of articles to make profit? How can Mrs. Pilar Rahola of El Pais do this to the Polish people who saved more Jews during the World War II than any other country or nation in the world?
What about 60 thousand Poles who lost their own lives during the war to save the Polish Jews? My grandmother from Krasnik is one of them.
Let me only remind you that during the Nazi occupation, the names of Polish towns and streets were germanized. Speaking Polish in public in the incorporated provinces was prohibited. In the predominantly German-populated area of Gdansk (renamed as Danzig), the public use of Polish language became a capital offence on September 4, 1939.
On August 22, 1939, a week before his attack on Poland, Hitler exhorted his nation: "Kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need." As many as 200,000 Polish children, deemed to have "Germanic" (Aryan) features, were forcibly taken to Germany to be raised as Germans, and had their birth records falsified. Very few of these children were reunited with their families after the war.
More than 500 towns and villages were burned, over 16 thousand persons, mostly Polish Christians, were killed in 714 mass executions, of which 60% were carried out by the Wehrmacht (German army) and 40% by the SS and Gestapo. In Bydgoszcz the first victims were boy scouts from 12 to 16 years old, shot in the marketplace. All this happened in the first eight weeks of the war. See Richard C. Lucas, The Forgotten Holocaust; The Poles under German Occupation. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky [c1986].
In the East, the Russians, collaborating with the Germans (Hitler-Stalin Pact of Aug. 23, 1939) attacked Poland on September 17, 1939, and occupied the eastern part of Poland until June 1941. Massive killings followed, among them 21,857 officers, mostly reserve members of the army, police and frontier guards, whose bodies were found later in Katyn, Miednoye, Kharkov and Tver. Other bodies from these massacres have never been found. About two million Poles, mostly members of the intelligentsia, were deported to Siberia or to Kazakhstan in North and Central Asia. More than half never returned; thousands were killed in the fighting and over 452,000 became POWs in Soviet Russia. Poland disappeared from the European map, divided between Third Reich and the Soviet Union.
Out of its pre-war population of 36 million, Poland lost 22%, the highest percentage than any other country in Europe. The heaviest losses were sustained by educated classes, youth and democratic forces that could challenge totalitarianism later on. See I. C. Pogonowski, Poland: A Historical Atlas. New York, Hippocrene Books, 1987.
According to the German AB Plan, Poles were to become a people without education, slaves for the German overlords. Secondary schools were closed; studying, keeping radios, or weapon of any kind, or practicing any kind of trade were prohibited under the threat of death.
In 1988, the public prosecutor, Waclaw Bielawski, from the Main Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against the Polish Nation, issued a list of 1,181 names of Poles who had been killed for helping Jews during World War II. In 1997, the Main Commission – The Institute of National Memory and The Polish Society for The Righteous Among the Nations in Warsaw, published Part III in the series Those Who Helped: Polish Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. It reduced the list of 1,181 names to only 704, by accepting only those whose accounts could be independently corroborated and verified fifty years later. The publication also included the names of more than 5,400 Poles, who have been recognized by the Israeli Yad Vashem Institute – The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, as “Righteous Among the Nations.” About 17,000 people of 34 nationalities were similarly honored. In Western Europe the automatic death sentence for help rendered to Jews did not exist, and applying it to a whole family or neighbors was unthinkable. The reign of terror that was organized in Poland was completely unique, and unimaginable in the West.
Those who were executed are not usually recognized as “Righteous”. They were generally murdered with the Jews they harbored, so there were no Jewish witnesses, while the Polish witnesses were not taken into consideration. Only in very rare cases (25 that were known in 1999), when a Jew managed to escape death and lived long enough to make the proper deposition in an Israeli consulate or at Yad Vashem (the State Tribunal of Israel) in Jerusalem, could the rescuers be recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations.”
Saving Jews was very difficult, as about 85% of Poland’s Jews either did not speak Polish or spoke a dialect. In many cases, Jews were easily distinguished by their appearance.
Poland, under the Soviet-imposed communist regime that lasted from 1948 until 1989, was cut from the West. Poles lost contact with the Jewish persons they saved, most of whom left the country. Many Polish Jews changed their names, either under the occupation or after settling abroad. Furthermore, it was dangerous to maintain correspondence with the West. Many of the rescuers also changed their addresses, due to the massive migration from the eastern part of the country, incorporated into the Soviet Union, to the western territories that were taken from Germany after the war.
The stories of the rescuers are a shining example of the most selfless sacrifice, surpassing in its heroism that of all the soldiers on the battlefield, whom we commemorate each November. In fact the soldier must fight; he cannot refuse. He is supported by the entire military organization and his efforts are mostly limited to battles that have a clear beginning and an end. He is paid and given the food, supplies and weapons that he needs.
Rescuers of Jews in Poland – on the other hand – were completely alone, often deprived of their pre-war means of livelihood, expelled from their farms, factories, businesses, offices and even homes, most of them living in dire poverty. For ome of them it was virtually impossible to earn a living. They were under no legal obligation to risk their own lives and, even more, the lives of their families and neighbors. Their help most often lasted days and nights, weeks, months, even years, always in secret, and always in the risk of discovery.
And what about the Polish woman, 95-year-old Irena Sendlerowa, who is credited with saving the lives of 2,500 Jews? Sendlerowa led about 20 helpers who smuggled Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto to safety between 1940 and 1943, placing them in Polish families, convents or orphanages.
She wrote the children's names on slips of paper and buried them in jars in a neighbor's yard as a record that could help locate their parents after the war. The Nazis arrested her in 1943, but she refused - despite repeated torture - to reveal their names.
Anyone caught helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland risked being instantaneously shot, along with family members.
Even now, more than half a century after the end of the war, questions are still being asked: What was the Polish nation's response to the unfolding Jewish Tragedy? Did the Poles try to help the Jews? How much help could have been actually offered in view of the rigours imposed by German Occupation? Such questions call for a well-considered response based on historical facts.
Poland was the only country in occupied Europe where - throughout the duration of the war - a secret organisation existed whose express purpose was to help the Jews and find, at least for some of them, a place of safety. Initially coordinated by several committees, in December 1942 this action culminated in the creation of the Relief Council for Jews in Poland, code name 'Zegota'.
'Zegota' (1) organised financial aid and medical care for the Jews hiding on the 'Aryan side', and procured for them forged identity documents. 'Zegota' was successful in providing accommodation for many. This presented an extremely difficult problem as discovery of a person of Jewish origin on the premises resulted in an immediate execution of all the occupants.
E. Ringelblum (2) describes hundreds of such cases.
Some 2500 Jewish children from Warsaw were saved by 'Zegota' by placing them either with catholic Polish foster-families or in orphanages run by convents or local councils. Also, help in the form of money, food and medicines was organised by 'Zegota' for the Jews in several forced-labour camps in Poland.
As soon as the Jewish Tragedy became apparent, the Polish Government-in-Exile, the Underground State and Polish diplomacy embarked on a massive campaign, informing the free world of the plight of the Jews. Efforts were made to obtain help for them from the Allied Governments, the Vatican and from various organisations in the Allied countries. There were countless broadcasts, articles in the press, organised meetings, approaches to Allied leaders and governments in which the Free Polish leaders, ministers, politicians and diplomats over and over again informed that a crime of genocide was being committed by the Germans against the Jews. (3). The full story of the Jewish Tragedy was brought to the Allied countries by special couriers from the Polish Resistance, one of them gaining access to the inside of the Warsaw Ghetto and to a death camp. The couriers tried to persuade the Allies and the Jewish organisations that there was a real danger and urgency to help the Jews. Unfortunately the efforts of the Poles were in vain. The Allies were too busy with the on-going war to consider the plight of the Jews in Poland. The Jewish organisations in the free world could not bring themselves to believe the Polish reports - they thought it was all an exaggeration.
So, where were the rich and influential Jews from New York and London? What did they do to help their folks? And so, one more time the same question appears: HOW DARE Mrs. Pilar Rahola and El Pais atack Polish people and Poland?
The military wing of the Polish Underground State, the Home Army, tried to involve the Jewish organisations in Poland in resistance activities. At first, there was much reluctance on their part to participate. However, in 1942 the Jewish resistance movement began. The Home Army helped by providing military intelligence, communication with the Allies and eventually by providing some weapons, explosives and military expertise for the fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (4).
It is worth noting here that Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes Remembrance Authority, has recently expressed both thanks and appreciation to the special unit of the 'Zoska' Battalion of the Polish Home Army, which in August 1944 captured the Warsaw Concentration Camp, the so-called 'Gesiowka', liberating 348 prisoners, Polish and European Jews.
Now, what about the ordinary Polish people - were they prepared to offer help to the Jews? At the early stage of Poland's occupation the Jews were selected for special treatment by the Occupant. This meant gradual isolation, degradation, starvation and eventual denial of the right to life for all Polish Jews.
Poland was the only country in all of Nazi-occupied Europe with death penalty for sheltering Jews. Germans knew how sympathetic Poles were to Polish Jews and in that way they could get rid of them both. Entire families, sometimes whole towns were murdered for sheltering Jews. Besides, 75% of the Jewish popiulation spoke only Yiddish, which later became a problem for those who wanted to be saved and pretend to be Poles.
The harsh reality of life for the rest of Poland's population was that everybody was preoccupied with the constant struggle for survival. To find work, to obtain enough food and other necessities of life - all these were of utmost importance to very many. Furthermore, there was the constant fear of being arrested and sent to a concentration camp, to forced labour in Germany, or to be taken as a hostage for public execution by a firing squad or hanging.
Three million Poles and three million Polish Jews perished as a result of the German occupation. Poland was the only country in occupied Europe where giving any kind of help to the Jews resulted in a collective execution of the helper and his or her family. Under such circumstances it would require a person of a special kind of courage and love of humanity to offer help to a Jew. How many saints would one find in any given community? How many such people would we find in Western Europe in the times of war? And yet there were Polish people who did help. It has always been difficult to establish the exact number of helpers, but some idea of that number can be gleaned from the Yad Vashem list of the 'Righteous among the Nations' (1). The list, as of 1st January 1997, gives the names of 14,706 persons from 34 nationalities who helped the Jews. 4,954 of them are Polish helpers. Among them are listed 11 catholic clergymen and 18 nuns. Only three organisations are honoured by Yad Vashem, one being the Polish organisation 'Zegota'. It is likely that - as research into the role of the Polish people in the Holocaust continues - the list of Polish names will grow.
Those listed are the helpers who survived and their heroism was verified by those whom they helped. But there were many who paid the ultimate price. In most cases those whom they were trying to help perished with them. The publication 'Those who helped' (1) lists 704 Poles who were killed because they helped the Jews. Places and dates are also given of mass executions by the Germans (the so-called pacifications of villages) of a further 143 Poles who rendered help to the Jews. To obtain and verify the names of those helpers who perished presents an even more difficult problem. Inevitably there will remain a large number of unknown heroes.
One can finally ask: Was the help given to the Jews of some significance? Stewart Steven, who in his book 'The Poles' (5), gives an extensive account of Polish-Jewish relations, offers the following conclusion: 'Maybe Poland could have done more for its Jewish population, but then so could every country of occupied Europe. The record shows that the Poles did more than most'.
So, what can we say about Poles, mostly Roman Catholic, who risked their own lives to save Jews from the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland? But it is fair to say that rescuers came from every religious background: Protestant and Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Muslim.
What about the fact that - despite the overwhelming and deadly idea of antisemitism in the Third Reich - there were a large number of individuals and organizations (such as Zygota in Poland) that risked (and sometimes lost) their lives in the effort to save Jews? They saved thousands of Jewish children from the Nazi, smuggled them out of the Warsaw Getto and hid with Polish families?
What about Jan Karski, a courier for the Polish government-in-exile, who alerted British and American politicians to Nazi plans to murder the Jews? After an unsuccessful attempt in Great Britain, he went to the United States to give all the proof of the Holocaust to the US President and the US Congress.
Finally, what about the Jewish collaborators with the communist regime under Stalin in eastern part of Poland after the 1939 Russia aggression?
Where is your journalistic code of ethics and – at least – common sence? Such articles as the one by Mrs. Pilar Rahola contribute even more to the ever-present anti-Polonism in the American and European media. Besides, it is too difficult to understand when the reader is not provided with wider information and truthful publications.
The double standards are evident by calling an event, such as the one in Jedwabne, an act of anti-Semitism, while burning a synagogue in Worcester, Mass in the United States was called "an act of vandalism", and a shooting in the Jewish Children Center in California - "an act of a mad man". If such acts took place in Poland, surely they would have been called anti-Semitic. American patriotism applied to Poles changes into nationalism.
For 1000 years, Poland had been the spiritual and religious center of Jewish Diaspora and produced one of the greatest world centers of Talmudic studies. 300 papers in Hebrew were published in Warsaw alone. Jews, unlike Blacks in America, were not forced to settle in Poland; they prospered, attended colleges and universities, owned factories, etc.
As early as in 1264, King Boleslav of Poland issued a charter inviting the Jews there. The charter was an amazing document, granting Jews unprecedented rights and privileges. For example, it stated that::
"The testimony of a Christian alone may not be admitted in a matter which concerns the money or property of a Jew. In every such incidence there must be the testimony of both a Christian and a Jew. If a Christian injures a Jew in any which way, the accused shall pay a fine to the royal treasury."
"If a Christian desecrates or defiles a Jewish cemetery in any which way, it is our wish that he be punished severely as demanded by law."
"If a Christian should attack a Jew, the Christian shall be punished as required by the laws of this land. We absolutely forbid anyone to accuse the Jews in our domain of using the blood of human beings."
"We affirm that if any Jew cry out in the night as a result of violence done to him, and if his Christian neighbors fail to respond to his cries and do not bring the necessary help, they shall be fined."
"We also affirm that Jews are free to buy and sell all manner of things just as Christians, and if anyone hampers them, he shall pay a fine."
Polish King Kazimierz was favorably disposed towards Jews. On October 9, 1334, he confirmed the privileges granted to Jewish Poles in 1264 by Boleslav V. Under penalty of death, he prohibited the kidnapping of Jewish children for the purpose of enforced Christian baptism. He inflicted heavy punishment for the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. And although Jews had lived in Poland since before the reign of King Kazimierz, he allowed them to settle in Poland in great numbers and protected them as people of the king.
Another Polish king, Sigmund II Augustus, issued another invitation. Here is an excerpt from his edict, granting the Jews permission to open a yeshiva at Lublin, dated August 23, 1567:
"As a result of the efforts of our advisors and in keeping with the request of the Jews of Lublin we do hereby grant permission to erect a yeshiva and to outfit said yeshiva with all that is required to advance learning. All the learned men and rabbis of Lublin shall come together for among their number they shall choose one to serve as the head of the yeshiva. Let their choice be a man who will magnify Torah and bring it glory."
GOLDEN AGE OF POLISH JEWRY
In Poland, the Jews were allowed to have their own governing body called the Va'ad Arba Artzot, which was composed of various rabbis who oversaw the affairs of the Jews in eastern Europe. The Poles did not interfere with Jewish life and Jewish scholarship flourished.
Some important personalities of this period, which every student of Jewish history should remember, were:
Rabbi Moshe Isserles (1525-1572), from Krakow, also known as the Rema. After the Sephardi rabbi Joseph Karo wrote the Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish Law, Rabbi Isserles annotated it to fill in the rabbinic decisions from Eastern Europe. His commentary was, and continues to be, critically important in everyday Jewish life.
Rabbi Ya'akov Pollack (1455-1530), from Krakow. He opened the first yeshivah in Poland and was later named the chief rabbi of Poland. He developed a method of learning Talmud called pilpul, meaning "fine distinctions." This was a type of dialectical reasoning that became very popular, whereby contradictory facts or ideas were systematically weighed with a view to the resolution of their real or apparent contradictions.
Rabbi Yehudah Loewe, (1526-1609), not from Poland but important to Eastern European Jewry. He was known as the Maharal of Prague and was one of the great mystical scholars of his time. He has been credited with having created the golem, a Frankenstein figure, a living being without a soul.
Along with the growth in Torah scholarship came population growth. In 1500 there were about 50,000 Jews living in Poland. By 1650 there were 500,000 Jews. This means that by the mid 17th century about majority of the Jewish population of the world was living in Poland!
Where did these Jews settle within Poland?
Jews were generally urban people as they were historically not allowed to own land in most of the places they lived. However, they also created their own farm communities called shtetls. Although we tend to think of the shtetl today as a poor farming village (like in Fiddler on the Roof), during the Golden Age of Polish Jewry many of these communities were actually quite prosperous. And there were thousands of them.
The Jews in these independent communities spoke their own language called Yiddish. Original Yiddish was written in Hebrew letters and was a mixture of Hebrew, Slavic, and German. (Note that Yiddish underwent constant development and "modern" Yiddish is not like the "old" Yiddish which first appeared in the 13th century, nor "middle" Yiddish of this period of time.) Overall, the Jews did well, working alongside Polish and Ukrainian Christians
How many African Americans till the 20th century were able to do so?
Jews came to Poland on their own will, to the country of great opportunity. They found shelter from the hostilities of Western Europe, stayed in and prospered, had representatives in the Polish parliament, and had the freedom of expressing their religion and customs. In some towns of Eastern Poland, Jews accounted for more than 50% of the occupants. They were respected citizens. So, how could this be possible if the country was anti-Semitic, as it is widely presented in the book by Jan Tomasz Gross?
Polish Jews enjoyed equal rights and full protection of the law under the Polish government. The laws changed under the rule of Prussia, Russia, and Austria. But we need to keep in mind that it also affected Poles as well. Their situation improved again after WWI when the Polish government was reestablished.
Why, between the wars, was the Jewish population growing 6 times faster than the Christian population, if the alleged anti-Semitism took place?
The only prejudice that you can accuse Polish people of is to be anti-Communist. Marek Edelman, the last leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, who still lives in Poland, said: "It is not a Jew who is the enemy, it is an enemy who is Jewish." I'm sorry to destroy the beautiful image of the peaceful and innocent Jewish people but at the time of the massacre it was well known that there were "informers," "observers," "advisors," or in plain English "Soviet collaborators" among Jews then and through the war and after.
Those did not see the wrong they were doing, the comfort came from accepting a different way of thinking. They considered themselves Poles or Polish Jews before the war, now comfortably became only Jews, so there were no ties of loyalty to Poland or to the Polish people. Collaborators gave away Poles and Jews as well (Jakub Berman as an example).
But this would be too difficult to understand for us who - for decades - were fed on anti-Polish propaganda. The same propaganda that the Nazis and later the Soviets used and which is now being repeated with a nauseating consistency by the American press.
It is the backwardness of American Jews to prefer that stereotype. I was hoping that with the raising of the Iron Curtain, the flow of information about Poland would be available to the average American reader and TV viewer. Unfortunately, that did not happen. We rather prefer to publish such articles as the one in El Pais. Also, hiding Polish accomplishments from the public only adds to the image of the Poles as some primitive tribe. The fact that Poland's economy is one of fastest growing in Europe is a thorn in the eye for some. The anti-Polish sentiment spreads to minimize their success. We already forgot who first faced the Soviet power and fought Communism. And last, but not least, the public does not know that presently Poland and Israel have a very good relationship.
We must not forget that Poland was not only a victim during WWII but only recently freed herself from under Soviet occupation. We should remember that Communism in Poland was FORCED upon its people, that Soviets placed Jews on high positions, which triggered atrocities. There is no perfect nation in the world – there are always honorable citizens and there is scum in all of them. But it seems that we only find the bad in Poles and all the good in Jews. For[AB1] a well-balanced story, the authors should mention what Soviet Jews did to Poles (Koniuchy massacre) and the fact that – out of 34 countries altogether – the Poles are those who have the biggest number of trees at Yad Vashem.
I guess American Jews don't rush to reveal some other information to the American public like: what were the Judenrat and the Jewish Police doing in the ghettos? Who took over the houses of Polish officers and their families in the east of pre-war Poland when they were taken to Siberia?
Do we inform that Poland's government was the only one in Nazi-occupied Europe to sponsor the organization to help Jews escaping the ghettos?
What did American Jews do to help their dying brothers?
In the American consciousness the Holocaust has become synonymous with Jewish history. Historical literature of the Holocaust has focused on the six million Jewish victims with the exclusion of the sixteen to twenty million Gentile (non-Jewish) victims.
We allow speculation on almost every aspect of Polish-Jewish relationship, never asking: "Why don't we speculate how many Jews would save Poles if the roles were reversed?"
For me, to have a different opinion is to risk being called an anti-Semite. An intelligent but objective Jewish person is called a "self-hating Jew". A "bystander" is someone who chose not to give his and his family's life for a strange, Jewish person.
Good things are happening in Poland .We don't rush to tell about the annual Jewish Festival in Krakow or about the opening of yet another Jewish school in Warsaw. Or even about the commemorating of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. We don't rush to tell about "Fiddler on the Roof" in Yiddish at the Jewish Theatre in Warsaw. Instead, we publish misleading stories about a music concert in Auschwitz (!?) and killings in Jedwabne. Why is that? American historians should stop wasting their ink only writing about alleged Polish anti-Semitism. Any atrocities toward Jews either occurred during Nazi or Soviet occupation or were triggered by revenge and greed, not to be mistaken with anti-Semitism. Also, to suggest that all Polish Jews are long gone is wrong, many prospered and became famous: actors (Holoubek, Zapasiewicz, Himilsbach, Rudzki), movie critics (Waldorf), writers (Tuwim), philosophers and editors (Michnik), politicians (Mazowiecki, Suchocka), musicians (Szpilman, Zimmerman), heart surgeons (Marek Edelman), athletes (Kirszenstein a.k.a. Szewinska), singers (Szmeterling a.k.a. Jantar). Some Polish Jews just recently became interested in their religion; Jewish schools are reopening, while the synagogues, museums, and Jewish cultural institutes have always been present in Poland's cultural life. Positive Jewish characters are in every Polish classic; there are streets named after Jewish heroes; monuments accommodate their heroism and their tragedy. All this does not seem like an anti-Semitic country, does it? But it will stay in the American media, as long as we allow it to.
Alex Lech Bajan
Polish American
CEO
RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 703-940-8300
EMAIL: alex@raqport.com
WEB SITE: http://raqport.com
[AB1]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)