This piece was written by Gene Sokolowski
Yours truly, The Twisted Red LadyBug
Generally speaking, we’re taught very little about Polish history, including what Poland endured under Hitler and Stalin during World War II. Outlined below are a number of historical facts.
Hitler & Stalin wanted the destruction of Poland
Many are unaware that, when Hitler and Stalin jointly attacked in September 1939, the destruction of Poland was their main objective and, in the first two years of the war, Poles were the primary target of a coordinated German and Soviet extermination process designed to annihilate them on both sides of the Ribbentrop-Molotov line, which was the border between Hitler’s half and Stalin’s half of the former 2nd Polish Republic. Poland now ceased to exist as a nation state.
Top priority: Annihilation of the Polish people
As the first step of his Lebensraum policy, Hitler attacked Poland not only to annihilate the Poles but also to take over their land and settle it with Germans. A week before attacking, Hitler directed his senior generals to “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 (Lebensraum) we need.” Hitler annexed his occupied half of Poland to Germany, which became Reich District Danzig, Reich District Warta River, Upper Silesia, and the General Government. The General Government was a purely military occupation zone that was ruthlessly administered by the Germans.
What was Stalin’s reason?
Stalin’s reason for attacking Poland was that Russia was “obliged” to come to the aid of its “blood brothers,” the Ukrainians and Byelorussians, who were trapped in territory that had been “illegally annexed” by Poland after the Poles defeated the Soviets in the 1919-20 Polish-Soviet War. In fact, in the 1921 Treaty of Riga, the defeated Soviets agreed to Poland keeping this territory, which was historically Polish before Russia, Prussia, and Austria partitioned Poland and erased it from the map in 1795. Stalin annexed his occupied half of Poland to Soviet-occupied Belarus and Ukraine and transferred the Wilno region to Soviet-occupied Lithuania.
Hitler demands the Polish elites to disappear
As Hitler’s first step in annihilating the Poles, he murdered up to 100,000 Polish elites. When the Germans attacked Poland, they had in hand a list of Polish elites whom they then arrested and summarily executed. This list, called the Special Prosecution Book-Poland (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen), was developed with the help of ethnic Germans who were Polish citizens. The Germans called them “Volksdeutsche”, and many collaborated with the Germans against the Poles.
At the same time, the Germans imprisoned virtually all of Poland’s Jews in German-operated ghettos. Meanwhile, Poles were in a day-to-day struggle for survival because of the brutalities and severe conditions exacted by the occupiers. The Germans imposed near-starvation rations, confiscated crops and livestock, enforced onerous quotas on farmers, conducted daily executions to terrorize the populace, randomly arrested and tortured Poles, and conducted regular round-ups for deportation to concentration and labor camps.
The Red Army and NKVD
For his part, Stalin’s Red Army and NKVD (secret police) arrested and removed over 1 million Poles from Soviet-occupied Poland and deported them to the deep Soviet interior, where many thousand died from the harsh conditions of the gulags and labor camps. A fact not commonly known is that pro-communist Polish Jews greeted the Soviets with welcome banners, formed militias and revolutionary committees to support them, and identified Poles for deportation to Siberia. Another fact not commonly known is Stalin’s earlier murder of about 100,000 Poles who were Soviet citizens and were victims of his Great Terror campaign during 1936-38.
It’s important to understand that the consequence of Hitler’s and Stalin’s coordinated defeat and destruction of Poland was that Hitler was now free to round up Poland’s Jews, imprison them in ghettos across German-occupied Poland, build the death camps in the remote eastern part of German-occupied Poland, and transport Poland’s 3 million Jews, and later 3 million European Jews, to their deaths in these camps.
True Facts – #LestWeForget
Another little-known fact is that only in occupied Poland did the Germans have a standing order that anyone aiding a fugitive Jew in any way would be executed together with immediate family. Despite the Germans’ standing execution order, estimates of Poles who aided fugitive Jews range from 300,000 to 1.2 million, and estimates of those killed for doing so approach 50,000.
About 7,000 Polish rescuers are listed by Israel’s Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, far more than rescuers of any other country. Keep in mind that two Polish institutions were critically instrumental in rescuing Jews.
The first, Żegota, was the only government organization in the German-occupied countries established specifically to rescue Jews. The second was the Catholic Church, which rescued Jewish children on a massive scale by hiding them in convents, orphanages, and rectories. No German-occupied country had such an organizational and logistical infrastructure for rescuing Jews.
Countries during the Holocaust
Finally, it’s important to remember which countries played a prominent role in the Holocaust. Some established collaborationist governments with the Germans that not only helped round up Jews and deport them to concentration and death camps but also killed many of them. Countries that did so include Vichy France’s Petain, Slovakia’s Tiso, Croatia’s Pavelic and his Ustase militia, Hungary’s Worthy, and his Arrow Cross militia, Romania’s Antonescu and his Iron Guard militia, and Holland’s Henneicke Column. In several occupied countries, well-known fascist politicians such as Quisling in Norway, Degrelle in Belgium, and Mussert in Holland, formed Nazi-style political parties and took an active part in deporting Jews.
Ukrainian militias were involved in running Hitler’s extermination camps in occupied Poland and Auxiliary Police Battalions from the Baltic countries took part in the liquidation of the German-operated ghettos. In the case of military collaboration, many countries formed Waffen SS units and operated under German command. These included Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Latvia, Hungary, Estonia, Italy, France, Holland, Albania, Ukraine, and Croatia. It is important to remember that in occupied Poland, no collaborationist government was established, no Polish militias were formed to round up, deport, or murder Jews and no Polish SS units were created.
#LestWeForget
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