Monte Cassino

Poland and Georgia fight for freedom

2008-04-04T03:16:00.001-07:00

Poland and Georgia fight for freedom

Poland and Georgia fight for freedom
Georgian Officers Fighting for Poland
by Gia Kandashvili

See
http://www.tvpolonia.com/player/index.php?path=58&mov=87367586.wmv&play=1

W rogatywce i tygrysiej skórze - film dokumentalny - TV Polonia ...Losy gruzińskich oficerów, którzy w czasie II wojny światowej znaleźli się w AK. W Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego ma powstać ich pomnik.

Originally Published in Georgia Today Newspaper

Last week, Georgia Today learned about a unique work that Jerzy Lubach, a renowned Polish documentary director, friend of Georgia and expert of the Caucasus had taken over. This is a documentary about Georgian officers who fought in the Polish army against the fascist and communist invaders. In the interview, Lubach disclosed a touching story of a Georgian noble diaspora having left a glorious trace in Polish history. Jerzy Lubach, along with his Georgian colleagues, discovered many interesting facts in the recently opened archives of Poland, Georgia and Russia. Since it sounds so interesting, we decided to narrate a bit about the basic story that laid the ground to the idea for the film. First of all, how did Georgian officers find themselves in Poland? Jerzy Lubach willingly answered this and other questions.
Jerzy Lubach

When Georgia gained independence from the Russian Empire, Georgia and Poland launched extensive diplomatic, political and military exchanges। The Polish state envoy, Waclaw Ostrowski, was dispatched to Georgia to set up a Polish diplomatic mission in the fledgling democratic republic. Poland firmly adhered to the policy of establishing close diplomatic relations with the states of the South Caucasus, which had escaped the shadow of Russian rule. Marshal and leader of Poland, Jozef Pilsudski, attached great importance to that strategy. Soon Georgia became a pivotal state as the way to Azerbaijan was cut off because of Bolshevic upheaval there. However, all the plans of fast development of Polish-Georgian relations collapsed with intrusion of the Soviet Red Army in independent Georgia on February 1921. After two weeks of merciless fighting, the tiny Georgian corps was crushed and the Soviet flag was raised in Tbilisi. The state was annexed, and the remainder of the leading Georgian military personnel as well as the temporary government fled to Europe via Batumi and Constantinople. Poland did not recognize the annexation of Georgia and kept close relations with the Georgian political and military authorities in exile. Moreover, in autumn 1921 Marshal Pilsudski’s military attaché in Constantinople, Colonel Babicki, addressed an offer to the chief of the Georgian military headquarters, General Alexander Zakariadze, that Poland was willing to accept Georgian officers in the Polish army. Georgian officers – six generals among them – came to Poland and it was to become their second motherland. According to historical data, they quickly grasped the specifics of the Polish military, perfected their Polish and established close relations with their Polish colleagues. “Although Germany announced free passage from Poland for any foreigners, none of the Georgian officer left the country in September 1939, when the fascist army invaded Polish lands. They heroically battled against the fascist occupants as well as Stalin’s Soviet army,” stressed Jerzy Lubach. Some Georgian officers held high military positions in the Polish army. Colonel Valerian Tevzadze led the northern defense of Warsaw. He later was awarded with the Silver Cross for Military Valor. After the Red Army took over Poland, Valerian Tevzadze joined the Polish underground against the communists until his death 1987. “Many Poles knew about Tevzadze who was just a ‘tidbit’ for both Soviet and Polish KGB, but no one gave him in,” underlined the film director in his talk with Georgia Today. As we learned, the current defense minister of Georgia, David Tevzadze, is a close descendent of Valerian Tevzadze. The minister pledged support to the film crew. “There are many other figures from the ranks of Georgian officers who gained fame in the battle for Poland,” Jerzy Lubach narrated. Major Artemi Aronishidze led the 360th infantry battalion in the defense of Warsaw. “He did not retreat until the surrender of the capital to the fascists.” Aronishidze was soon captured by the Germans, and later handed over to the Soviet KGB. Overall amnesty saved him from capital punishment. The major, who was also awarded the Silver Cross, died at 58, in 1950. Giorgi Tumanishvili was born in Poland, to a family of a Georgian officer in exile. In his youth he joined the Polish army in 1939 and had time for taking part in a number of Polish military campaigns against the fascists. Having gained the rank of captain, he was twice awarded with the Silver Cross for Military Valor. Dimitri Shalikashvili gained the rank of major in Poland. After the fall of Warsaw he escaped to America where his sons managed to reach the highest military positions. John Malkhaz Shalikashvili, the eldest son, was the chief of the united military headquarters of the U.S. for years in the early 90s. The younger brother is now taking active part in the Train and Equip Program conducted by the U.S. government in Georgia. “But, such success stories are very rare. A number of Georgian officers fighting in the Polish army died in Gestapo dungeons or Soviet camps,” the film director sighed. Thus, it is obvious that Jerzy Lubach has got a lot to say about the history of the military fraternity between the two nations. Tamara Dularidze, a lecturer at a Moscow cinematography institute and friend of the Polish director is working along with him. Dularidze and Lubach have a good experience in working together on Georgian-Polish history. The film “Seeking the White Angel”, about Grigol Peradze, a Georgian priest and scientist working in Poland, having been killed by the fascists for treating Polish Jews, deserved a high honor. The documentary about Georgian officers in Poland is to be shot in Georgia, Poland, Great Britain and Russia. The Georgian film studio Grifon Film Productions, under Irakli Metreveli, expressed its willingness to work in partnership with Jerzy Lubach on the film. “I hope to invite John Malkhaz Shalikashvili to work in Warsaw as well,” Jerzy Lubach told Georgia Today. The director is going to re-scrutinize the archive of the first Georgian republic of 1918-1921, which should provide a great deal of material for the film.
Georgian emigration in Poland
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The documented ties between Georgia and Poland reach back to the XV century, when the Georgian (Kartlian) King Konstantin sent a diplomatic mission to the Polish King Alexander Jagellon. Later, Polish King Jan III Sobiesky tried to establish contacts with Georgia. Many Georgians participated in military campaigns led by Poland in XVII century. Bohdan Grudziecki, a Georgian, was the greatest authority on all things Persian working in the Polish king's diplomatic service, made frequent diplomatic trips to Persia, on which he obtained, among other things, guarantees upholding earlier privileges for missionaries. Already during the rule of King Jan Kazimierz was he sent on missions to Isfahan, and King Jan III Sobieski availed himself of Gurdziecki's talents in like manner (in 1668, 1671, 1676-1678, in 1682-1684, and in 1687). Gurdziecki remained at the court of the shah for several years in the capacity of special resident and representative of the Polish king; it was him who delivered to the shah Suleiman news about the victory of the Christian forces at Vienna (1683).
Several Georgian politicians, intellectuals and military officers left Georgia for Poland after the Soviet armies invaded the Democratic Republic of Georgia (DRG) in February 1921, taking over the government and establishing the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in the same March. Although not very numerous and consisting of a few hundred members, the Georgian community of Poland was very active politically and culturally. The best remembered are, however, the Georgian military personnel who served in the Polish ranks from the early 1920s until the end of the World War II.

[edit] Georgian Prometheism
Active diplomatic contacts developed between the short-lived DRG and Poland was part of Józef Piłsudski’s well-known political concept known as Prometheism. Its aim was to greatly reduce the power of Tsarist Russia and subsequently, the Soviet Union, by supporting nationalist independence movements of the major non-Russian peoples that lived within the borders of Russia or the Soviet Union.

Polish and Georgian officers serving in the Polish Army, 1925
The Georgian Promethean groups were one of the most active within the movement. This was not overlooked by the Bolsheviks, who in 1930 organized the assassination of Noe Ramishvili, a prominent Georgian political leader and a major promoter of Prometheism.
The 1932 Polish-Soviet mutual nonaggression pact precipitated the downfall of the Promethean movement though the Georgians continued their activities in various cultural and social organizations. The most important was the Committee of Georgia founded as early as 1921 by several Georgian intellectuals led by Sergo Qurulashvili. They had close contacts with the centers of Georgian political emigration across Europe, primarily in Paris. The Committee organized various meetings and social activities and provided material support for the Georgian émigrés. It also published its own publications, ProGeorgia (1922), and Propartia (1923). From 1923 to 1924, Qurulashvili also directed the journal Schlos Wschodu pertaining to the Georgian problems. The Georgians organized also the Union of Georgian Students and the Polish-Georgian Society led by Prince Pavle Tumanishvili. The activities of these organizations were limited, however, due to financial difficulties.

[edit] Georgians in the Polish military service

Major Giorgi Mamaladze, later murdered in the 1940 Katyn massacre
Immediately after the fall of the DRG, Noe Zhordania, the head of the Georgian government-in-exile, addressed the friendly nations, particularly France, Greece and Poland, to help in maintaining the professional military cadres. The government of Poland promptly responded, and from 1922 to 1924, hundreds of Georgian Junkers and officers, recommended by Zhordania’s government, were accepted in the Polish military schools. Several professional officers of the former DRG attended military training courses at the Polish army centers. Although not obligated to do so, virtually all of them were subsequently enrolled in the Polish army as contract officers. In the subsequent decade, the total number of Georgian military servicemen reached 1,000.
At the outbreak of the World War II, most of the Georgian officers took part in the 1939 Defensive War, and several of them commanded their own regiments composed of Polish soldiers. The most notable officers were:
Zakaria Bakradze, generał dywizji, deputy commander of Polish 15th Infantry Division.
Aleksandre Chkheidze, generał brygady, deputy commander of Polish 16th Infantry Division.
Ivane Kazbegi, generał brygady.
Aleksandre Koniashvili, generał brygady.
Kirile Kutateladze, generał brygady.
Aleksandre Zakariadze, generał brygady.
Viktor Lomidze, the commander of ORP Gryf.
Giorgi Tumanishvili, captain of the navy, who was awarded Virtuti Militari.
Valerian Tevzadze, podpułkownik, the commander of the northern sector of the Polish defences during the siege of Warsaw.
Mikheil Kvaliashvili, major, the commander of a cavalry battalion within the 15th Uhlans Regiment.
Several Georgian officers were captured by the Soviet forces during the 1939 campaign. General Chkheidze, Major Mamaladze, Captain Skhirtladze and Captain Rusiashvili were killed during the infamous Katyn Massacre, from 1940 to 1941. Many others spent several years in the gulag camps.

St. Grigol Peradze
During the occupation of Poland, the Germans reorganized the Warsaw-based Committee of Georgia and placed it under their tight control. The occupation administration encouraged the Georgian soldiers in the Polish service to join the Georgian Legion of the Wehrmacht. Some of them responded to the Nazi request, but subsequently joined the Polish resistance movement. The notable Georgian Orthodox priest and Professor Grigol Peradze of Warsaw University ended his life in the Auschwitz concentration camp (1942), when he deliberately entered a gas-chamber instead of a Jewish prisoner who had a large family.
John Malchase David Shalikashvili, general of the United States Army who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997, was born in Warsaw, Poland where his father also served in the army.
After the war, most Georgians either left for Western Europe or were deported to the Soviet camps though some of them (e.g., General V. Tevzadze) remained in the Polish anti-Communist underground for several decades.

Patrick J. Buchanan The Betrayal of Poland 1939-1945

2008-03-11T00:32:00.000-07:00

Patrick J. Buchanan The Betrayal of Poland 1939-1945

With Poland’s membership in NATO at issue, a question has arisen as to whether America owes a debt to the Polish people for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s having “betrayed” the Polish nation to Joseph Stalin at Yalta.

Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat has lately raised the issue of a moral debt to Poland for the 1945 summit where FDR accepted Stalin’s assurances of free elections. Eizenstat was taken to task by columnist Lars-Erik Nelson for repeating a “50-year-old right-wing slander.” Robert Novak defended the “betrayed” thesis.

Nelson’s point: By 1945 Stalin had 12 million troops in Eastern Europe, and Dwight Eisenhower only 4 million in the West. Conservatives who condemn FDR for Poland’s fate, says Nelson, are joining the “Blame America First” crowd. We couldn’t save Poland!

But, in truth, Yalta was only the final betrayal of Poland, and not only FDR but Winston Churchill bears moral responsibility for a half-century of communist enslavement of the Polish people.

The first betrayal came with the British guarantee to Poland, after Neville Chamberlain was exposed as a dupe when Adolf Hitler tore up his Munich pact and marched into Prague. As Hitler pressed Poland for the return of Danzig, stripped from Germany after World War I, and demanded rail and road transit to the city across a “Polish Corridor” also taken from Germany, Warsaw, encouraged by British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, refused even to negotiate. The Poles were assured that if war came, Britain would be at their side.

But when Hitler invaded Poland from the west and Stalin invaded from the east, Britain declared war on Germany alone. Then, the British sat behind the Maginot Line while Poland was crucified. The British had goaded the Poles into standing up to Hitler though they had no plans to save or rescue Poland. Six million Poles would die as a result of having trusted in a British alliance.

The second betrayal occurred at Teheran in 1943, when FDR moved into the Soviet embassy compound and assured Stalin he would not object to his keeping the half of Poland and the Baltic states Hitler had ceded to Stalin in their infamous pact. As Robert Nisbet wrote in “Roosevelt and Stalin: The Failed Courtship,” FDR asked only that word of his concession not leak out before the 1944 elections, so Polish Americans would not react in rage. FDR told one visitor to Hyde Park he was “sick and tired” of East Europeans and their constant clamoring about boundaries and sovereignties.

The third betrayal occurred in the summer of ‘44. The Polish Home Army in German-occupied Warsaw, heeding appeals from Radio Moscow, rose up against the Nazis. As the Home Army was loyal to the free Polish government in London, which was demanding an investigation of Stalin’s murder of Polish officers at Katyn, Stalin halted his own Red Army outside Warsaw to give the Nazis a free hand in crushing the Polish uprising.

British and Americans sought to aid the Poles with air drops of food and munitions. But Stalin refused to let the allies use air fields behind his lines to refuel for the return flight to England. Churchill drafted a strong letter to Stalin, asking that the allies be allowed to use the air fields assigned them, but to appease Stalin, FDR cravenly refused to sign the letter. The Home Army was butchered.

By February 1945, Poland had been overrun by a Red Army that could not be dislodged short of a new war. Yalta, writes Nisbet, “is not the source of the Soviet possessions in Eastern Europe … Teheran is. But Yalta performed a service that was almost as important to Stalin. … This was the invaluable service of giving moral legitimation to what Stalin had acquired by sheer force.”

Britain had gone to war and lost 400,000 men and an empire for Poland’s independence. Yet, as Poland receded into the darkness, not once did Churchill vent upon Stalin the oratory he used so often on Hitler. The rape of Poland by Hitler and Stalin was the moral cause that precipitated the war. Yet, Churchill and FDR, to appease Stalin, meekly acquiesced in the betrayal of that moral cause.

“Of one thing I am sure,” FDR said at Yalta, “Stalin is not an imperialist.” How explain his naivete about Stalin, to whom he gave everything, including a third of the Italian fleet and recognition of his puppet government in Poland? “Puerility,” writes George F. Kennan. FDR once told his friend, ambassador William Bullitt: “I think if I give him (Stalin) everything I possibly can, and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of peace and democracy.”

And thus was Poland betrayed.

Grajewo, Poland

2008-03-01T22:20:00.001-08:00

Grajewo, Poland

Dr. Longin Pastusiak Speaks at USC Polish American History

2008-03-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

Dr. Longin Pastusiak Speaks at USC Polish American History
The title of his speech was “Is Poland America’s ‘Trojan Horse’ in the EU?” The whole idea of his speech was to shed some light on the current missile defense base that the United States has proposed to install in Poland. Poland has seemed somewhat reluctant in recent months to go along with this plan. Therefore, to try to get things moving again, talks between the two countries started yesterday and according to the International Herald, things preceded smoothly. However, in his speech, Dr. Pastusiak pointed out several reasons why the US might run into problems with Poland cooperating completely.

Before Dr. Pastusiak listed some of the reasons tensions are forming between our two countries, he gave a lbried history of Polish/US relations and why Poles seem to have such a strong liking for the United States. He contributed several things to why we are on such good terms. One of the reasons is that Poles have had such a long history with our country, going back to having colonists at Jamestown. Poles were also present during our Revolutionary War and played and important part training some of our forces.

He even stated that in more recent times, the United States has always helped Poland. At the end of WWI, Woodrow Wilson established an independent nation of Poland with his Fourteen Points. American aid programs were also there helping the Poles reconstruct their country after the war. Another reason for our good relationship can be contributed to the fact that we have never had a war with Poland. This might not seem like a lot but when you consider that the rest of Europe has some deep seeded animosity because of past wars, our peaceful relationship helps a lot.

After stating all these reason why Poles like Americans, he stated some issues that are presently straining our relationship. One problem is that despite the good relationship in politics between our two countries, the economical relationship isn’t there. According to Dr. Pastusiak, Poland is currently our 11th largest trading partner. Another issue that is straining our relationship is the unfullfillment of our promise to help Poland’s army modernize. Dr. Pastusiak pointed out that our current promised aid is only $20 million. This is minuscule compared to the billions that we have given to Israel and Egypt.

Finally, the missile defense base that the US wants to install in Poland is straining our relationship. Poland had an assessment taken and the risk currently outweigh the benefits for installing a defense base. Combine this with the fact that 52% of Poles don’t want the base there and you get some tension forming between our two countries. This is why the talks mentioned above are taking place; the US is trying to negotiate some way to make sure the benefits outweigh the risks to the country. According to Dr. Pastusiak, some of the issues on the table are things like installing patriot missile systems to defend this base along with demanding the necessary funding to successfully modernize the Polish Army

Dr. Longin Pastusiak Speaks at USC (Part 2)

waiting for the Part 3
Dr. Longin Pastusiak Speaks at USC (Part 4)

Real hero of Poland - Witold Pilecki - A Volunteer for Auschwitz

2008-02-29T11:46:00.001-08:00

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)

Singer stated on April 19, 1996 that if Poland does not satisfy Jewish claims, it will be "publicly attacked and humiliated".

2008-02-25T11:09:00.001-08:00

Singer stated on April 19, 1996 that if Poland does not satisfy Jewish claims, it will be "publicly attacked and humiliated".

The Conference didn't pay the survivors: They said there weren't any victims anymore -- now they claim all these needy Holocaust victims have languished in poverty all these years. . .

Restitutionist meeting
1. ON February 27, 2007, twenty leaders of Jewish restitution groups will convene in Warsaw, to advance their US$ 65 billion claim against Poland. Israel Singer, the general secretary of the World Jewish Congress, will be there. Jerzy Robert Nowak, a Polish professor of history, writes today in one of the independent papers that Singer's participation is an "extraordinary scandal" absent from most of the media.[i] Singer stated on April 19, 1996 that if Poland does not satisfy Jewish claims, it will be "publicly attacked and humiliated". A Polish publicist, Stanislaw Michalkiewicz has called Singer's declaration a "declaration of war against Poland".
Even a Jewish publicist in Poland, Antoni Marianowicz, has objected to Singer's demands in the April 23, 1996 entry in his book:
"This is simply preposterous; we in Poland have to reckon with the law and wait for suitable laws, and they demand everything right away. Often they are those who lived comfortably in the US, while their families were perishing here in the Holocaust. It's hard to imagine a more effective incitement of anti-Semitism."[ii]
In a recent interview in a Polish main paper, Singer said: "Nobody who lost their house wants to get just a piece of roof, a couple of windows and doors, but the whole house!".[iii]
The Poles are justifiably furious, for example, Nowak:
"As if the Nazi occupier has not methodically destroyed Poland -- Jews have received from Germany more than US$100 billion in compensations -- the Poles themsellves were awarded only meagre handfulls of Deutschmarks for slave labourers".
Nowak pointed out that in the first years after WW2, Jews could recover posessions in Poland fast, owing to sympathy of predominantly Jewish authorities, but the Jews usually sold the properties and left Poland. A few hundred thousand Jews mainly from the USSR immediately received apartments free of charge at the same time.
The US government has intervened on behalf of world Jewry's restitutions. Stuart Eizenstat, left, former special representative of US president and secretary of state for Holocaust-era issues, outlines how the US Jewish community achieved it:
"The Jewish community, considering its small size - only two to three percent of the population depending on who one defines as a Jew - has a remarkable impact on issues relevant to it in the American political system. Various interest groups influence the latter by accessing the Congress, the executive branch, and state and local governments on subjects important to their constituency."
The 1967 Six-Day War marked the coming of age of the Jewish community. Since then, "the entire organized Jewish community has been Zionistic."[iv]
Eizenstat's involvement in the restitution process in Eastern Europe started in 1995 when he was the US ambassador in Europe, and became US special envoy for that purpose: "At that time, Edgar Bronfman, Israel Singer, the WJC and the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) had already been trying to obtain Eastern European property restitution -- they had the critically important wisdom and knowledge to use the media and political system -- The WJC and the WJRO knew that only American intervention in the former communist countries could lead to achievements. Bronfman had already obtained Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's support." Later prime ministers Netanyahu (right) and Barak didn't give as much support to Eizenstat, presumably out of concern for
"bi-lateral relationship with the new post-communist countries. Perhaps in their hearts they also wanted their Jewish communities to come to Israel rather than spend their lives in Eastern Europe."[v]
Singer indicated in 2003 that shows the restitutionism is also retributionism: "Yitzhak Shamir, who has a great distaste for Poland, told me he would support the WJC claims against eastern European countries."[vi] Singer recognized the strategic issues for the restitutionists to tackle:
"The eastern European property restitution issue from which the restitution process of the 1990s started has remained a big failure -- First, these are poor countries. Second, they are used to being victims. Third, restitution would require them to admit all the other wrongs they inflicted on the Jews during and after the Holocaust. Their governments try to deal with the local Jewish communities which - except for Hungary - are extremely small and powerless and thus easier partners than the international Jewish organizations."
So far the restitutionists disregarded the poverty of the target nation, Poland. Clinging to "victimhood" by Poles was solved with lies by "history professor" Gross on the Jedwabne crime and the Kielce "pogrom". Pliable "Polish" statesmen admitted Polish guilt for both crimes committed by others, including Communist Jews in the case of Kielce.
In the beginning, writes Eizenstat, restitution efforts focused on "communal assets such as synagogues and other buildings". The process in Poland "will eventually lead to the return of thousands of pieces of communal property" but has been slowed by "a lengthy dispute we helped mediate - between the small Polish Jewish community and the WJRO -- which questioned the local community's capacity to manage the restituted property. The international and local Jewish community will share control."
Marianowicz above indicated the local Jews' outrage with the claim. According to Eizenstat, WJRO also demanded at least some control over the restituted properties. While this should be an internal Jewish matter, WJRO's move means control over a sizeable part of Polish real estate by one institution that has proven extremely hostile to Poles, like the rest of the Jewish restitution movement. Also, the Jewish restitution organizations have been accused of keeping the awards for themselves, rather than distributing them to the needy and eligible Jews.
Some ineligible Jews "had falsified their papers". Germany paid about USD 50 billion, and until 1965 also gave to the Conference a billion dollars in present value, but the victims received only 15 percent:
"The large chunk of the rest of it, according to Ronald Zweig, an expert on the subject, went to Jewish communities in the Arab world, such as Iraq, and institutions such as Yad Vashem in Israel."
The Conference didn't pay the survivors: "They said there weren't any victims anymore -- now they claim all these needy Holocaust victims have languished in poverty all these years, because the Germans gave them no money." Some unjustly treated Shoah survivors said they "trust the German government more than they do the Jewish organizations".[vii]
Israeli banks deny payments from accounts of Shoah victims, too. In January 2005, a Knesset committee slammed Israeli banks for "severe negligence" in handling some 9,000 accounts totaling NIS 1 billion and locating the heirs. In the first years of WW2, the banks managed to ride out mass withdrawals thanks to the funds deposited by thousands of European Jews. Some of the banks misappropriated the funds and destroyed documents. A bill proposed that a government corporation would handle the restitution of bank accounts, real estate, stocks and other assets. Money without heirs would go to humanitarian causes.[viii]
Nowak's worst predictions come true. In 1999, he warned about an "anti-Polish alliance" of polonophobic Jewish, German and Russian groups: "The most threatening to us may prove an alliance of very influential Jewish and German factions."[ix]
Nowak wrote today, alluding to German restitution claims filed around Christmas 2006 against Poland:
"We see a clear synchronization of Jewish and German claims. Both are based on a common lie that seeks to paint WW2 Poles as executioners, instead of the factual victims we have been. Some influential Ukrainian groups suddenly added their indemnity claims for Operation Wisla, which was predictable when some time ago miscellaneous Polish "apologizers" showed up."
In Operation Wisla (1.5.1947 - 16.8.1947) that aimed at fragmentation of a minority religion, the new Communist government of Poland transported some 140,000 pre-war Polish citizens of Orthodox Christian faith, from the eastern part of the new state to former Eastern Germany.[x]
They were mainly Ukrainians and followed millions of Poles re-settled from former Eastern Poland, which the victorius Allies gave to Stalin "in exchange" for the Eastern German lands. It is unclear why Ukraine would advance claims on behalf of Ukrainians in Poland.
Copyright Piotr Bein 2007
[i] Jerzy Robert Nowak, Nasz Dziennik, 17-18.2.2007, Nr 41 (2754)
[ii] Antoni Marianowicz, Polska, (Zydzi i cykli) sci, Warszawa, 1999, p 86.
[iii] An interview with Israel Singer (in Polish), Rzeczpospolita, 3-4.2.2007.
[iv] Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Restitution Issues and the Activism of American Jews: An Interview with Stuart Eizenstat, Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, No. 18, 1.3.2004
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Restitution: The Second Round: An Interview with Israel Singer, Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, No. 14, 2.11.2003
[vii] Viktor Frölke, Salon Magazine, 30.8.2000
[viii] Amiram Barkat, Haaretz, 19.1.2005; Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, 23.1.2005.
[ix] Interview with Nowak, Nasz Dziennik, 21-22.8.1999.
[x] Anna Radziukiewicz, Orthodox Christianity in Poland, Wydawnictwo Arka: Bialystok, 2001, p 70.

Warszawskie dzieci, Rota.Powstanie Warszawskie

2008-02-22T10:17:00.000-08:00

Jews were invated to Poland in the Middle Ages, when they were persecuted in the most of Western Europe, they even got special rights, which other people didn't have, sure that wasn't pure love, but Poland was losing many people in countless wars, so simply needed more people, but anyway facts matter. Without that Jews If survived would be something like native Americans today.

It got worse in 19th century, when Poland lost independence and Poles realized that minorities, especially Jews didn't really care abou that. That's when the whole Polish nationalism was born, before people in Poland were first of all divided into nobelmen and peasants, not into nationalities. Jews not only weren't patriotic, usually they didn't even bother to learn the language and assimilate.

During WW2 not so many people were helping Jews, but very few collaborated (Poland was the only country without collaboration government or any other serious collaboration forces) and most were just trying to survive, 3 million Polish "goys" (non Jews) were killed and they couldn't help themselves, so how they could help someone else ?

If you ask If there was anti-semitism in Poland, the answer can't be other than yes, but Poland and Poles generally did more good than bad for Jews and anti-Semitism in 19th and early 20th century was maybe not justified but let's say not surprising in that situation.

Unfortunately many Jews (especially American) today is spreading anti-Polish propaganda, which especially in case of WW2 and a country, which lost the most and a nation, which suffered less than only Jews and Gypsies is shocking and simply disgusting.

Let's take a look at this from your first post:
"Post war only 4 of the 700 survived. He returns to his home after the war to find it occupied by 3 families who denied him access and berated him for wanting it back."

For a western reader, who has little idea about situation in Poland during and after WW2 that's of course "Polish antisemitism", the author knows that, so of course he "forgot" to add that about 50% of buildings in Poland were destroyed or seriously damaged (in Warsaw over 90%), so people were moving to whatever was still standing. What these 3 families should have done ? Got frozen looking at the empty house, whose owners were probably dead ? Or take their children and leave to the forest, when mr. owner came back and wanted to have a large house only for himself ?

Marek Grechuta - Ojczyzna

2008-02-22T10:14:00.001-08:00

Marek Grechuta - Ojczyzna

Henry Ekstein, one of the Children of Tehran,Iran stood as a beacon of freedom

2008-02-22T08:06:00.001-08:00

Henry Ekstein, one of the Children of Tehran,Iran stood as a beacon of freedom

Henry C. Ekstein of Teaneck has built up a fine reputation as a shrewd, original thinker among management consultants. One of his special insights is that you should try to wrest your solutions from the employees themselves, then let them share the credit for these solutions. "Interactive consulting" is what he calls it.

Henry Ekstein, one of the Children of Tehran, now lives in Teaneck.
For example, when you present a book of recommendations to the CEO, Ekstein suggests, the names of the employees who helped should be listed first as authors.

In short, get on the good side of the people responsible for carrying out your proposals.

Something less well known about Ekstein is that he is one of the remaining Children of Tehran, the 800 or so children who fled Poland in 1939— 65 years ago next week.

Today, Ekstein is still a consultant to a few companies and remains sharp as a tack. "How old are you?" "Do you mean my biological age? Psychological age? Intellectual age? Or how old I feel? I’m 38." A pause. "That’s how old I feel. Chronological age has no bearing on it." (He’s 81.)

He’s been in business as a private consultant since 1975, and his clients have included Fortune 500 companies as well as a lot of smaller companies. He and his wife, Livia, live in a modest but well-appointed Cape Cod, with paintings by Jewish artists on the walls.

He’s full of practical advice:

"We don’t know ourselves — until people tell us, we may not even know what we’re good at. I tell people what they’re good at. Most people underestimate themselves. They have low expectations. Fifty percent of what I do is help executives get more confidence. Everyone thinks that they’re worse than they are."

A book he’s written, "Change Without Stress for Business Success," has many more insights — such as:

• "Most probably, more people are laid off for personal or political reasons than for lack of ability."

• "[B]y some estimates, 95% of the things we worry about never happen, and another 4% will happen no matter what we do. Thus, we could eliminate 99% of our worries."

The book also contains practical advice on how to arrive at decisions, how to evaluate employees, and so forth. And some delicious quotes from various sources:

"I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone." (That’s a quote from computer science expert Bjarne Stroustrup.)

And memorable jokes, such as: A Polish woman’s husband had left and hadn’t returned for two weeks. She went to a priest for guidance. The priest said he would consult holy books, then give her his answer. His conclusion: Her husband would come back soon. On her way out of the church, the woman encountered the church’s sexton, and asked him if her husband would ever return. His answer: Never.

The priest, hearing this, was enraged and demanded to know why the sexton had contradicted him. The sexton’s reply: "You looked at holy books. I took a good look at the woman."

In other words, to quote Ekstein’s book, "There is no substitute for looking at a problem with your own eyes."

The book is available from the Judaica House on Cedar Lane in Teaneck or from Ekstein himself.

After arriving in Palestine in 1943, Ekstein, age 16, went to a school for teachers, and spent three years teaching teachers. But he wanted to be an engineer, so he attended the Technion in Haifa, which he calls "Israel’s MIT."

He fought in the War of Independence, and tells of being summoned to the front one day and exposing himself to bombs fired by Jordanians. A 52-year-old soldier had declined to join Ekstein and his 20 companions, and as they hid behind rocks to avoid getting killed, they told themselves how smart that 52-year-old had been. But Ekstein survived, and so did his companions; the 52-year-old was killed when his home was struck by a bomb.

Deciding to become a management engineer rather than a mechanical and industrial engineer, Ekstein came to the United States and studied at City College, getting a master’s degree, and then a doctorate from Columbia.

He worked for various corporations, then opened his own firm. He’s lived in Teaneck for 43 years.

One day, visiting Jerusalem, he passed a bookstore and saw a book by someone named M. Ekstein. Curious, he looked through it and discovered that the author was a great-uncle of his. He bought copies for his own children — and decided to write a book that his own grandchildren could someday read.

Ekstein is active in Cong. Bnai Yeshurun, a few blocks from his home. "There’s so much wisdom and warmth in Jewish sources," he says.

He and his wife have three children: Meir, a rabbi who has a doctorate in psychology and has founded two schools in Israel; Barda, a lawyer in Jerusalem; and Elane, who has a doctorate in biotechnology and works at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot.
A Chapter of Forgotten History -- Polish people
By Ryszard Antolak, Summer 2002

Iran stood as a beacon of freedom and hope for almost a
million Polish citizens.
"Exhausted by hard labour, disease and starvation - barely recognizable as
human beings - we disembarked at the port of Pahlevi (Anzali), on the Caspian shore of Northern Iran. There, we knelt down together in our thousands along the sandy shoreline to kiss the soil of Persia. We had escaped Siberia, and were free at last. We had reached our longed-for "Promised Land"." Helena Woloch

In Tehran's Dulab cemetery, situated in a rundown area of the city, are the
graves of thousands of Polish men, women and children. It is not the only
such cemetery in Iran, but it is the largest and most well-known. All of the
gravestones, row upon row of them, bear the same date: 1942.

In that year, Iran stood as a beacon of freedom and hope for almost a
million Polish citizens released from the Soviet labor camps of Siberia and
Kazakhstan. After enduring terrible conditions travelling across Russia,
115,000 of them were eventually allowed to enter Iran. Most of them went on
to join the allied armies in the Middle East. The rest (mostly women and
children) remained guests of Iran for up to three years, their lives totally
transformed in the process. They never forgot the debt they owed to the
country that had so generously opened its doors to them. Their
reminiscences, as well as the many graves left behind in Tehran, Anzali and
Ahvaz, are testimony to a chapter of Iranian history almost erased from the
public memory.

From Poland to Iran
(http://www.rozanehmagazine.com/JanFeb2005/apoilishiniran.html)

In 1939, the Soviet Union had participated with Nazi Germany in the invasion
and partition of Poland. In the months that followed, the Soviets began a
policy of ethnic cleansing in the area to weed out what they called
"socially dangerous and anti-soviet elements". As a result, an estimated 1.5
million civilians were forcibly expelled from their homes in the course of
four mass deportations. Thrust at gunpoint into cattle trucks, they were
transported to remote labour camps all over Siberia and Kazakhstan. [1]

Their fate was completely changed in June 1941 when Germany unexpectedly
attacked Russia. In need of as many allies it could find, Russia agreed to
release all the Polish citizens it held in captivity. [2] Shortly
afterwards, provision was also made for the creation of an army from these
newly-freed prisoners. It was to be commanded by General Wladyslaw Anders,
recently released from the Lubyanka prison in Moscow. Stalin intended to
mobilize this new army immediately against the Germans in the West; but
Anders persuaded him to hold back until the Poles had recovered their health
and strength after two years of exhaustion in the labour camps.

Swept onwards by the rumours that Stalin was about to allow some of them to
leave his "Soviet Paradise", these former prisoners of the Gulag system
began a desperate journey southwards, some of them on foot, to reach the
reception camps set up for them on the borders of Iran and Afghanistan. They
travelled thousands of miles from their places of exile in the most distant
regions of the Soviet Union. It was an exodus of biblical proportions in
terrible conditions. Many froze to death on the journey or starved. Others
kept themselves alive by selling whatever personal objects they had been
fortunate enough to have brought with them. Exhausted mothers, unable to
walk any further, placed their children into the arms of strangers to save
them from certain death. [3]

Arrived at the army reception camps in Tashkent, Kermine, Samarkand and
Ashkhabad, the refugees attempted to enlist in the Polish army, for which
the Soviets had allocated some food and provisions. There was nothing,
however, for the hundreds of thousands of hungry civilians, mostly women and
children, who were camped outside the military bases. Instead of increasing
provisions to the camps, the Soviets actually cut them. In response, the
Polish army enlisted as many of the civilians as they could into its ranks,
even children (regardless of age or sex) to save them from starvation. In
the baking heat, dysentery, typhus, and scarlet fever became rampant.
Communal graves in Uzbekistan could not keep up with the numbers who were
dying. By 1942, only half of the 1.7 million Polish citizens arrested by the
Soviets at the start of the war were still alive.

Their salvation finally came when Stalin was persuaded to evacuate a
fraction of the Polish forces to Iran. A small number of civilians were
allowed to accompany them. The rest had no option but to remain behind and
face their fate as Soviet citizens.

Port of Pahlevi

The evacuation of Polish nationals from the Soviet Union took place by sea
from Krasnovodsk to Pahlevi (Anzali), and (to a lesser extent) overland from
Ashkabad to Mashhad. It was conducted in two phases: between 24 March and 5
April; and between the 10th and 30th of August 1942. In all, 115,000 people
were evacuated, 37,000 of them civilians, 18,000 children (7% of the number
of Polish citizens originally exiled to the Soviet Union).

A makeshift city comprising over 2000 tents (provided by the Iranian army)
was hastily erected along the shoreline of Pahlevi to accommodate the
refugees. It stretched for several miles on either side of the lagoon: a
vast complex of bathhouses, latrines, disinfection booths, laundries,
sleeping quarters, bakeries and a hospital. Every unoccupied house in the
city was requisitioned, every chair appropriated from local cinemas.
Nevertheless, the facilities were still inadequate.

The Iranian and British officials who first watched the Soviet oil tankers
and coal ships list into the harbour at Pahlevi on the 25th March 1942 had
little idea how many people to expect or what physical state they might be
in. Only a few days earlier, they had been alarmed to hear that civilians,
women and children, were to be included among the evacuees, something for
which they were totally unprepared. [4] The ships from Krasnovodsk were
grossly overcrowded. Every available space on board was filled with
passengers. Some of them were little more than walking skeletons covered in
rags and lice. Holding fiercely to their precious bundles of possessions,
they disembarked in their thousands at Pahlevi and kissed the soil of
Persia. Many of them sat down on the shoreline and prayed, or wept for joy.
They were free at last!

They had not quite escaped, however. Weakened by two years of starvation,
hard labour and disease, they were suffering from a variety of conditions
including exhaustion, dysentery, malaria, typhus, skin infections, chicken
blindness and itching scabs. General Esfandiari, appointed by the Iranians
to oversee the evacuation, met with his Polish and British counterparts to
discuss how to tackle the spread of Typhus, the most serious issue facing
them.

It was decided to divide the reception area into two parts: an "infected"
area and a "clean" area, separated from each other by a barbed wire fence.
On arrival, those who were suspected of having infectious diseases were
quarantined in the closed section for four days, or else sent to the camp
hospital. 40% of patients admitted to the hospital were suffering from
typhus. Most of these died within a month or two of arriving. At this time
there were only 10 doctors and 25 nurses in the whole of Pahlevi.

In the clean area, the arrivals were channelled into a series of tents where
their clothes were collected and burned. They were then showered, deloused,
and some of them had their heads shaved in the interests of hygiene. As a
result, women began to wear headscarves to conceal their baldness. Finally,
they were given sheets, blankets and fresh clothes by the Red Cross and
directed to living quarters.

Food provision was inappropriate. Corned beef, fatty soup and lamb,
distributed by the British soldiers, caused havoc with digestions accustomed
only to small pieces of dry bread. They could not tolerate the rich food,
and a large number died purely from the results of over-eating.

Beggarly, unwell and dishevelled, the Polish refugees were nourished more by
the smiles and generosity of the Iranian people than by the food dished out
by British and Indian soldiers. Iran at that time was going through one of
the unhappier episodes of her history. Occupied by the Russians and the
British, her relations with the soldiers of these two countries were
understandably strained and difficult. With the Poles, however, there was an
immediate affinity which was evident from the moment they arrived and which
extended from the lowest to the highest levels of society.

On 11th April 1942 Josef Zajac, chief of Polish forces in the Middle East,
noted in his diary on a visit to Tehran that the Persian population were
better disposed to them than either the British or the White Russian emigres
(who were distinctly hostile). His relationship with the Iranian Minister of
War, Aminollah Jahanbani (released a year earlier from prison for plotting
against Shah Reza Pahlavi), was genuinely friendly and cordial. During the
course of their discussions together on 13th April 1942, they discovered
that they had been students together at the same French military academy.
[5] Personal friendships such as these further smoothed relations between
the two populations. Contacts between Polish and Persian soldiers were
equally cordial. The custom of Polish soldiers saluting Persian officers on
the streets sprang up spontaneously, and did not go unnoticed by the
Iranians

Isfahan: The City Of Polish Children

Washed up in the detritus of evacuees arriving at Pahlevi had been over
18,000 children of all ages and sexes (mostly girls). [6] Not all of them
were orphans. Some had been separated from their families during the long
journey through Russia. Their condition was especially desperate. Many were
painfully emaciated and malnourished. Orphanages were set up in immediately
in Pahlevi, Tehran and Ahvaz to deal with them as a matter of urgency.

The first major orphanage to be opened was situated in Mashhad, and was run
by an order of Christian nuns. It opened its doors on March 12 1942. The
children at this home were predominantly those transported over the border
from Ashkabad by trucks.

Eventually, however, Isfahan was chosen as the main centre for the care of
Polish orphans, particularly those who were under the age of seven. They
began arriving there on 10th April 1942. It was believed that in the
pleasant surroundings and salutary air of this beautiful city, they would
have a better chance of recovering their physical and mental health.

Iranian civil authorities and certain private individuals vacated premises
to accommodate the children. Schools, hospitals and social organizations
sprang up quickly all over the city to cater for the growing colony. The
young Shah, Mohamed Reza Pahlavi took especial interest in the Polish
children of Isfahan. He allowed them the use of his swimming pool, and
invited groups of them to his palace for dinner. In time, some of the
children began to learn Farsi and were able to recite Persian poems to a
delegation of Iranian officials who visited the city. At its peak,
twenty-four areas of
the city were allocated to the orphans. As a result, Isfahan became known
ever after in Polish emigre circles as "The City of Polish Children".

Exile in Iran

The refugees remained in Pahlevi for a period of a few days to several
months before being transferred to other, more permanent camps in Tehran,
Mashhad, and Ahvaz. Tehran possessed the greatest number of camps. A
constant stream of trucks transported the exiles by awkward twisted roads
from the Caspian to Quazvin, where they were put up for the night on school
floors, before continuing their journey next morning to the capital.

Tehran's five transit camps, one army and four civilian, were situated in
various parts of the metropolitan area. Once again, certain Iranian
authorities and individuals volunteered buildings (even sports stadiums and
swimming baths) for the exclusive use of the refugees. Camp No.2, however,
(the largest) was nothing more than a collection of tents outside the city.
Camp No. 4, was a deserted munitions factory. No. 3 was situated in the
Shah's own garden, surrounded by flowing water and beautiful trees There was
also a Polish hospital in the city, a hostel for the elderly, an orphanage
(run by the Sisters of Nazareth) and a convalescent home for sick children
(Camp No. 5) situated in Shemiran.

Most able-bodied men (and women) of military age enlisted forthwith in the
army and were assigned to military camps. Their stay in Iran was a short
one. The army was quickly evacuated to Lebanon and included in the Polish
forces being reformed there. Their route to Lebanon was either overland from
Kermanshah (6 rest stations were set up for them along the way to Latrun),
or by ship from the southern port of Ahvaz. The remainder - women, children
and men over the age of military service - remained behind in Iran, some of
them for periods up to three years.

Something more than food and clothing are necessary for the human spirit to
survive and grow. Art and Culture are antibodies to feelings of despondency
and decay, and within a few months of their arrival, the exiles had set up
their own theatres, art galleries, study circles, and radio stations all
over the city. Artists and craftsmen began to give exhibitions. Polish
newspapers began to spring up; and restaurants began to display Polish flags
on the streets.

Among the organizations formed to care for the educational and cultural
needs of the exiles was the influential "Institute of Iranian Studies" begun
by a small group of Polish academicians. [7] In three years from 1943 to
1945 this group published three scholarly volumes and scores of other
articles on Polish-Iranian affairs. Most of the material was later
translated into Farsi and published under the title "Lahestan". By 1944,
however, Iran was already emptying of Poles. They were leaving for other D.P
camps in places such as Tanganyika, Mexico, India, New Zealand and the UK.
Their main exit route was Ahvaz, where an area of the city still called
Campolu today, is a distant echo of its original name "Camp Polonia".
Mashhad's last children left on the 10 June 1944. Ahvaz finally closed its
camp doors in June 1945. The last transport of orphans left Isfahan for
Lebanon on the 12 October 1945.

What Remains

The deepest imprint of the Polish sojourn in Iran can be found in the
memoirs and narratives of those who lived through it. The debt and gratitude
felt by the exiles towards their host country echoes warmly throughout all
the literature. The kindness and sympathy of the ordinary Iranian population
towards the Poles is everywhere spoken of. [8]

The Poles took away with them a lasting memory of freedom and friendliness,
something most of them would not know again for a very long time. For few of
the evacuees who passed through Iran during the years 1942 - 1945 would ever
to see their homeland again. By a cruel twist of fate, their political
destiny was sealed in Tehran in 1943. In November of that year, the leaders
of Russia, Britain and the USA met in the Iranian capital to decide the fate
of Post-war Europe. During their discussions (which were held in secret), it
was decided to assign Poland to the zone of influence of the Soviet Union
after the war. It would lose both its independence and its territorial
integrity. The eastern part of the country, from which the exiles to Iran
had been originally expelled, would be incorporated wholesale into the
Soviet Union. The Polish government was not informed of the decision until
years later, and felt understandably betrayed. 48,000 Polish soldiers would
lose their lives fighting for the freedom of the very nations whose
governments had secretly betrayed them in Tehran, and later (in 1945) in
Yalta. [9]

NOTES

1. There were four mass deportations of the civilian population of eastern
Poland in 1940/41 alone:
a) 10 Feb 1940. 250,000 from rural areas sent to Siberia in 110 cattle
trains.
b) 13 April 1940. 300,000, mostly women & children 160 trains) mostly to
Kazakhstan and Altai Kraj.
c) June/July 1940. 400,000 to Archangielsk, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk etc.
d) June 1941. 280,000 to various part of USSR. Some 500,000 Poles had also
been arrested by the Soviets between 1939 and 1941, mostly the government
officials, judges teachers lawyers, intellectuals, writers etc. So the total
of 1.7 million Poles were in captivity in the Soviet Union.
2. Under an agreement signed on 30th July 1941 by the Polish premier,
General Sikorski and the Russian representative I. Mayski, Russia agreed to
release all the Poles who had been arrested under what was termed an
"amnesty". The word "amnesty" was extremely ill-chosen. The amnesty was
signed in London in the presence of Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden.
3. Although the "amnesty" was announced in July, the news did not filter
through to many of the remoter camps of eastern Siberia until December. For
others, the news never reached them at all, and they remained in Russia.
4. General Anders himself took the responsibility to evacuate the civilians
before he had even discussed it with the British.
5. They had studied at the Ecole Superieure de Guerre in Paris. General
Anders, who visited Jahanbani in Teheran a few months later, was also a
graduate of this school.
6. On Jan 6 1943, the Polish embassy was told to close all 400 of its
welfare agencies on Russian soil (including orphanages and hospitals). Two
months later, all Polish citizens remaining on Russian soil were deemed to
be Soviet citizens.
7. The president was Stanislaw Koscialkowski
8 The word "kish-mish" passed into the vocabulary of the survivors. Many
Polish boys were named Dariusz, still extremely popular as a boy's name in
Poland today.
9. Polish soldiers were not even allowed to participate in the Victory
parade in London in 1945

References:
Faruqi, Anwar. Forgotten Polish Exodus to Iran. Washington Post. 23 Nov 2000
Kunert, Andrzej. K., Polacy w Iranie 1942-45. Vol I. R.O.P.W.i M. Warsawa.
2002
Mironowicz, Anna, Od Hajnowki do Pahlewi. Editions Spotkania. Paris 1986
Woloch, Helena, Moje Wspomnienia. Sovest. Kotlas 1998

The Battle For Monte Cassino - 6/6

2008-02-21T11:16:00.000-08:00

The Battle For Monte Cassino - 6/6

Recent German Claims Against Poland

2007-05-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

Recent German Claims Against Poland
Krzysztof Rak and Mariusz Muszyński

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Poland is probably the only country in which large fractions of the national elites permit
unreasonable demands from abroad to be made against the nation, and question the necessity of structuring one’s responses to the world in terms of national interest. Members of such elites thus undermine the most self-evident principle of foreign policy: the defense of the interests of one’s country. The reasons for assuming such attitudes are numerous and include naivete, intellectual besserwissenschaft, party fractionalism, and the habit of servility born during centuries of forfeited sovereignty. The most recent example is the situation that resulted from the demand by some German groups for financial reparations from Poland to partially compensate for Germans’ territorial losses after the Second World War.

In 2006, the Prussian Trust, an organization representing German postwar expellees from Central and Eastern Europe, submitted a claim against Poland to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, alleging that Poland committed crimes during the forced evacuation of Germans to Germany in 1945. [1] While Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga pointed out that “the resettlement of the German population was decided by the governments of the United States, Great Britain, and the USSR” and “the World War II . . . began with the German attack on Poland and caused irreparable losses and sufferings to the Polish state and nation,”[2] the German government said nothing. Given the fact that in 1945 the entire territory of Poland was occupied by the Soviets, the only sensible policy regarding such demands is for the German government to step in and make them an internal German problem. The Polish government proposed such a solution, but even in Poland some opposition leaders protested. One of the leaders of the Civic Platform Party [one of the opposition parties] proposed a similar solution somewhat earlier. However, other members of the political elites disagreed-even though their financial or ideological interests trumped national interest in this case.

Several arguments have been used by such political circles to justify their stance. The first is that such demands have been raised by marginal German groups and therefore should not be taken seriously. However, the so-called Vertriebene and their descendants constitute a well-disciplined electorate consisting of several million people. Before each election the political forces in Germany compete for this electorate. It was the fear of losing it that in 1990 made Chancellor Helmut Kohl resist the signing of the treaty with Poland that confirmed the present borders. It is because of this electorate that the chancellors and presidents of Germany grace with their presence the congresses of the “expellees,” not to speak of the fact that in the coalition agreement between CDU and SPD the government promised not to forget them. [3] J. K. Fromme, head of the expellees’ caucus in the CDU/CSU fraction of the Bundestag, has stated that the burden of guilt for the outcome of the Second World War is shared by Adolf Hitler and Poland, and that the Potsdam agreements [confirming the present borders of Poland] were merely “the minutes of certain negotiations” rather than an international agreement on which the present order of Europe rests.[4] Ms. Erika Steinbach, head of the Prussian Trust and a Bundestag member, has compared the deportations of Germans to the Holocaust, and ridiculed the Warsaw Uprising.[5] Do these people represent the margins of German society? We doubt it. Has any Parliament member in Poland compared the massacre of Poles in Volhynia during the Second World War to the genocide of Jews engineered by the Germans? Has any member of the Polish Parliament ever made claims against the Ukrainians because Poles lost their properties in Ukraine? Has anyone in Poland ever compared the Ukrainian misdeeds against Poles to the crimes of Hitler or Stalin? Of course not. Why don’t we ask our western neighbor to react to the trashing of standards of political decency by some of their compatriots?

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Given the fact that in 1945 the entire territory of Poland was occupied by the Soviets, the only sensible policy regarding restitution demands is for the German government to step in and make them an internal German problem.

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The second argument in favor of doing nothing about such German demands is that any Polish attempt to close the issue of Polish-German war damages once and for all would legitimize German demands that have no legal value at present. To this we say that such claims should not be directed at the Polish state, period. If the claims are indeed of no consequence, the German government would not have argued that it cannot dismiss them because in such a case the expellees would have made claims against the German government itself. It is incomprehensible why certain parts of the Polish political elite accept this argument of the German government. Do those who accept it prefer that the claims be directed at Poland rather than Germany? Apparently the Poles are considered incredibly naive by the German government if it continues to maintain that the Prussian Trust’s claims have no legal value while at the same time accepting international norms concerning the property of private persons, norms that will be tested in the Strasbourg court as a result of the Prussian Trust’s actions. One can, of course, take the position that such claims are not justified. However, once legal procedures are initiated against Poland, the decision will not be in the hands of the respective governments but in the hands of an international court. Furthermore, it should be remembered that with regard to “expulsions and expropriations,” the German legal doctrine accepts no statute of limitations.[6] In practice, this means that the German side could wait for generations for a favorable evolution of the political situation, or for an international law that would open the door to the possibility of pursuing such claims against a weaker neighbor.

It could be argued that such an evolution has already begun. The doctrine of the rights of individuals has trumped national sovereignty on a number of occasions. The argument about restitution of German property is another step in this process. The evolution of the legal system in Europe has bestowed genuine rights on the individual. It is now possible to sue a sovereign country before an international tribunal. The Prussian Trust knows well that by ratifying the European Convention of Human Rights, Poland accepted that standard and the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Tribunal.

It should also be remembered that, in this case, the argument that laws cannot be introduced retroactively may not work. The Strasbourg Tribunal operates according to the rule of “continuous consequences” (naruszenie ciągłe): if an act deemed illegal took place before the country ratified the Convention on Human Rights and the consequences of that act are still in operation today, the tribunal may intervene. This happened in 1996 when the state of Turkey lost the case against a Cypriot Greek even though the property dispute took place before Turkey ratified the convention. It is significant that the Prussian Trust refers to that particular case (Loizidou vs. Turkey) in its actions against Poland. A German proverb says: “In the court of law and at sea only God decides.” In contrast, in Poland such demands have been perceived through the lens of the law of absolute primacy of the state over the citizen, which prevailed in Soviet-occupied Poland for two generations.

Few people in Poland or elsewhere know that in Germany there exists a vast literature justifying German property claims in territories that had been granted to Poland through international agreements after the Second World War (the same agreements deprived Poland of eastern territories from which hundreds of thousands of Poles were expelled without any restitution of property whatsoever). In present-day Germany there is hardly a single international law specialist that does not have in his curriculum vitae at least one article dedicated to the postwar fate of the expellees. The conclusions of such articles are generally anti-Polish. The vocabulary used in German public life-the key concepts of “expulsion” (Vertreibung) and “dispossession” (Enteignung)-contain legally detrimental connotations. Poles and others have also forgotten that one of the most respected authorities in international law, Professor Alfred Verdross, introduced (in collaboration with Professor Bruno Simma, now a judge in the International Tribunal in the Hague) into international law the institution of territorial supervision. This annulled the finality of Polish rights regarding post-German territories given to Poland after the Second World War[7] while at the same time cutting off eastern territories from the Polish state, thus initiating the painful and costly (to Poles) relocation of the Polish population from present-day Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine to western territories, from which Germans were relocated to Germany.

The third argument minimizing the claims of the Prussian Trust has to do with the allegedly radically changed nature of German patriotism. The argument claims that the German national consciousness has been radically changed, and therefore a danger of Germans engaging in any form of aggression against their eastern neighbor is thus simply moot. It is true that Germany went though a period of soul-searching after the Second World War, especially regarding the Jews and the Holocaust. However, such a soul-searching has never taken place regarding the Catholic Poles. It also appears that not only ordinary Germans but also German historians harbor an idealized picture of their actions in Poland in 1939-45, and the catastrophic destruction of Polish lives and property in the second world war. What is more, for a quarter-century now the historical debate in Germany (Historikerstret) has involved a number of serious historians who have posited that the crimes Germans committed in the Second World War were not exceptional, given that the twentieth century was a century of genocides such as that of the Armenians, the Ukrainians, and so on. If so, then the German nation is no more responsible for the history of that century than any other nation. In this context it can hardly be surprising that some segment of the expellees group accuses the victims of being the executioners, and is close to accusing Poles of genocide of the Germans before an international tribunal.[8] If such people as Rudi Pawelka [the founder of the Prussian Trust], Steinbach, and Fromme are representative of German public opinion at least in part, then the concerns expressed in this article are far from being groundless. Finally, some Polish specialists in German affairs reach for geopolitical arguments and maintain that arguing with the Germans about the Prussian Trust destroys the chances of a successful Polish presence in European politics. They maintain that these arguments are moot, and that they have to do with historical interpretations rather than with contemporary politics. However, the postulate of “choosing the future” while abstracting from the past is impossible to put to practice. A collective brainwashing that would lead to historical amnesia, even if it occurred with full consent of the Poles, cannot be accomplished. All previous attempts to amputate memory have failed, not only in Poland but everywhere else. The most recent attempt, that of the Soviets, ended in a spectacular failure. We therefore maintain that an attempt to excise the memory of past events would have negative results for European identity.

The process of European integration is not an abstract construct, but is related to the future vitality and viability of the continent. Its roots go back to the problem Europe faced between 1871 and 1945: how to arrange the continent in such a way as to accommodate Germany in Europe. Germany is stronger than other European countries, but it is too weak to become an international superpower. President Francois Mitterrand’s policy regarding German reunification exemplified the dilemma facing Germany’s neighbors. Germany’s strength naturally pushes it toward attempts at domination, but these attempts ended with German defeat in the two world wars. Thus European integration was conceived as a means to enable Germany to peacefully coexist with other European nations and to rein in its dominating tendencies. A fundamental condition of such a solution was the Germans’ assumption of historical guilt, owing to which Germany assumed such a nobly responsible role concerning the rest of Europe in the second part of the twentieth century. It was this double burden the Germans carried-an admission of guilt and the weight of leadership-that is a major reason for the successes of European integration so far. Today we observe a reversal of this historical policy, and attempts to relativize German guilt on the one hand, and a general European disinterest in long-term consequences of political passivity on the other. It is not an accident that the Germany of Gerhard Schröder, Erika Steinbach, and Rudi Pawelka backed off from the process of deepening European integration.

The arguments raised by some Poles and others concerning the issue of German demands thus amount to saying that it is imprudent of Poles to display politically aggressive behavior toward the Germans. Such a stance shows full disregard for facts: it is not Poles but Germans who are asking for reparations, while common sense tells us that the situation ought to be reversed. In 1945 Poland was nominally one of the victorious members of the anti-Nazi coalition, but in practice it lost the war because it was occupied by the USSR. Poles got no restitution from the Germans for the unspeakable losses of life and property. The argument that the so-called “western” (post-German) territories allotted to Poland by the Great Powers constituted such restitution is flawed. Before the Poles assumed jurisdiction over these territories, the Red Army plundered everything that was worth plundering, dispatching entire factories to the USSR by train and truck and destroying such cities as Danzig/Gdańsk. The Polish victims of Nazi terror received no financial reparations. The minuscule payments of 1991-2006 cannot be treated as reparations: even the German side admitted that they were given de gratia, as a kind of charity donation to the destitute. The government of Soviet-occupied Poland extracted 100 million DM from the pockets of the “western revanchists”; these monies then disappeared, allegedly into the state treasury, some of it into the pockets of the apparatchiks; they have never been properly accounted for. In the 1990s the post-Round Table Polish governments took the line of least resistance and did not raise the issue of reparations. It is thus justifiable to say that Poles and the descendants of Polish victims of the Nazis never received any reparations whatsoever.

The history of Polish-German relations during the last half-century is the history of one-sided Polish relinquishments of the right to demand reparations. In 1953 Bolesław Bierut, president of Soviet-occupied Poland, renounced any war reparation claims against DDR [East Germany]. Even though the documentation is missing, it has been assumed that in 1970 the government of Soviet-controlled Poland confirmed this renunciation in a treaty that normalized Polish-German relations. In 1991 Prime Minister Krzysztof Bielecki’s government renounced support for any individual claims by non-Jewish Polish victims of the Nazis. In 1994 Prime Minister Marek Belka confirmed this stance. Thus the Polish side had long ago renounced all claims to the restitution of property and compensation for life and hardship incurred during the Second World War. Yet today, some members of the Polish political elites accept German claims to property restitution from Poland! Moreover, these politicians accuse of radicalism all those who try to point out these facts.Professor Alfons Klafkowski, who specializes in Polish-German relations between 1945-89, has estimated that Polish claims against Germans concerning Polish property lost or destroyed amounted to half a trillion dollars (in 1980 dollars).[9] He suggested raising this issue with the government of Germany. What happened instead was a decision by the German authorities to extend pitifully small alms to a few thousand survivors who experienced health-destroying slave labor in Germany during the war, or otherwise were mistreated, imprisoned, or tortured by the German Nazis.

In view of the above, the accusations of radicalism that are sometimes extended toward Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński by those who oppose progress in Poland are absurd. On many occasions, the Polish prime minister has proposed the signing of a Polish-German treaty that irrevocably and finally denounces all claims by either side concerning losses in the Second World War (see his interview in this issue of Sarmatian Review, or the October 2006 article in the German Bild). In Germany such a proposal should be considered minimalist, and should be welcome. Kaczyński took a bold step renouncing mutual claims once and for all. Will the German side respond?

Over the last fifteen years, the consecutive governments of Poland acted as if the former communists could become model Europeans in the nick of time, and the Polish foreign policy was often conducted in defiance of the Polish national interest. Claims of the importance of national interest were ridiculed as backward and reactionary. The government of Prime Minister Kaczyński is trying to reverse this trend. There are serious issues in Polish-German relations that need discussing: the issue of the Prussian Trust, the issue of the version of history actively promoted in Germany today, the issue of the Szczecin Bay rights, the issue of the status of the Polish language in Germany and of the Polish minority in Germany. We will be able to solve these issues if the Germans begin to treat Poland as a partner, and not as a country that can be disingenuously excluded from the process of mutual recognition.

Translated by the Sarmatian Review staff.

NOTES
1. Piotr Jędroszczyk, “Wysiedleni žądają zwrotu mienia w Polsce,” Rzeczpospolita, 19 December 2006.
2. Website of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, , as of 30 January 2007.
3. Deputy Hans-Joachim Otto’s query (FDP) published in Bundestag Drucksache 16/2584, questions 21 and 22: “What specific step has the federal government taken to redress the injustices of the expulsion, as promised in the coalition agreement between CDU, CSU, and SPD signed 11 November 2005, p. 114?” Polish Foreign Ministry site, , as of 30 January 2007.
4. An interview with CDU MP J. K. Fromme, Rzeczpospolita, 12 December 2006.
5. Erika Steinbach, “Das Gewissen is gegen Vertreibungen sensibiliziert,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26 August 1999; Deutsche Radio, ; .
6. D. Blumenwitz, Das Offenhalten der Vermoegensfragen in deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen (Bonn, 1992); “Konwencja o nie stosowaniu przedawnienia wobec zbrodni wojennych i zbrodni przeciwko ludzkosci,” Dziennik Ustaw, 26 November 1968 (Dz. U. 70.26.208).
7. A. Verdross, B. Simma, R. Geiger, Territoriale Souveränität und Gebietshoheit. Zur völkerrechtlichen Lage der Oder-Neisse Gebiete (Bonn, 1980).
8. In Die Geschichte der Oder-Neisse-Linie (München: Olzog, 2006), author Michael A. Hartenstein claims that the reason for changing the Polish-German borders in 1945 was Polish nationalism.
9. Alfons Klafkowski, The Problems of War Compensation Connected With World War II (Poznań, 1991); n.a., “Sprawozdanie Biura Odszkodowań Wojennych - Straty wojenne Polski,” January

Monte Cassino

2007-05-20T13:13:00.000-07:00

PRZECHODNIU, POWIEDZ POLSCE, ZESMY POLEGLI WIERNI
W JEJ SLUZBIE, ZA WOLNOSC NASZA I WASZA, MY ZOLNIERZE
POLSCY ODDALISMY-BOGU DUCHA, ZIEMI WLOSKIEJ CIALO, A SERCA, POLSCE
Passerby, tell Poland that we fell faithfully in her service,
for our freedom and yours, we Polish soldiers gave our souls to
God, our bodies to the soil of Italy, and our hearts to Poland।

On September 1st, 1939, 1.8 million German troops invaded Poland on three fronts; East Prussia in the north, Germany in the west and Slovakia in the south. They had 2600 tanks against the Polish 180, and over 2000 aircraft against the Polish 420. Their "Blitzkrieg" tactics, coupled with their bombing of defenseless towns and refugees, had never been seen before and, at first, caught the Poles off-guard. By September 14th. Warsaw was surrounded. At this stage the poles reacted, holding off the Germans at Kutno and regrouping behind the Wisla (Vistula) and Bzura rivers. Although Britain and France declared war on September 3rd. the Poles received no help - yet it had been agreed that the Poles should fight a defensive campaign for only 2 weeks during which time the Allies could get their forces together and attack from the west.
On September 17th. Soviet forces invaded from the east. Warsaw surrendered 2 weeks later, the garrison on the Hel peninsula surrendered on October 2nd., and the Polesie Defense group, after fighting on two fronts against both German and Soviet forces, surrendered on October 5th. The Poles had held on for twice as long as had been expected and had done more damage to the Germans than the combined British and French forces were to do in 1940. The Germans lost 50,000 men, 697 planes and 993 tanks and armored cars.
In the Soviet zone 1.5 million Poles (including women and children) were transported to labor camps in Siberia and other areas. Many thousands of captured Polish officers were shot at several secret forest sites; the first to be discovered being Katyn, near Smolensk.
The Germans declared their intention of eliminating the Polish race (a task to be completed by 1975) alongside the Jews. This process of elimination, the "Holocaust", was carried out systematically. All members of the "intelligentsia" were hunted down in order to destroy Polish culture and leadership (many were originally exterminated at Oswiencim - better known by its German name, Auschwitz.
The Polish Jews were herded into Ghettos where they were slowly starved and cruelly offered hopes of survival but, in fact, ended up being shot or gassed. In the end they were transported, alongside non-Jewish Poles, Gypsies and Soviet POWs, to extermination camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka; at Auschwitz over 4 million were exterminated. 2000 concentration camps were built in Poland, which became the major site of the extermination program, since this was where most of the intended victims lived.
Many non-Jewish Poles were either transported to Germany and used as slave labor or simply executed. In the cities the Germans would round-up and kill indiscriminately as a punishment for any underground or anti-German or pro-Jewish activity. In the countryside they kept prominent citizens as hostages who would be executed if necessary. Sometimes they liquidated whole villages; at least 300 villages were destroyed. Hans Frank said, "If I wanted to put up a poster for every seven Poles shot, the forests of Poland would not suffice to produce the paper for such posters."
Despite such horror the Poles refused to give in or cooperate (there were no Polish collaborators as in other occupied countries). The Polish Underground or AK (Armia Krajowa or Home Army) was the largest in Europe with 400,000 men. The Jewish resistance movement was set up separately because of the problem of being imprisoned within the ghettos. Both these organizations caused great damage to the Nazi military machine. Many non-Jewish Poles saved the lives of thousands of Jews despite the fact that the penalty, if caught, was death (in fact, Poland was the only occupied nation where aiding Jews was punishable by death).
In early part of 1940 over 1 million poles were send by Soviets to Siberia with help very often by Stalin’s Jewish collaborators.
Poland had the largest underground army in occupied Europe. About 450 000 poles were active in underground army against Nazi. Polish Army was in all fronts World WarII from Tobruk, Monte Casino, Africa, Middle East, Battle of England, and Eastern Front.
The Polish pilots stood out during the campaign of 1939 and highlighted during the campaign in France. But the most distinguished role they played in 1940 when the decisive for the fate of the England and the coalition Battle of Britain took place (August 8 – October 31, 1940). During the Battle of Britain the Poles shot down 203 Luftwaffe aircraft which stood for 12% of total German losses in this battle.
From 1940 to 1945 the Polish squadrons and the Polish pilots serving in British units achieved 621 confirmed kills, and together with campaigns of 1939 and France– 900 confirmed and 189 probable. In the end of the world betrayed by alia
What about the braking of the Enigma Code and giving several days before the war Enigma Code, information how it works and polish build decryption machine to French
Poland Intelligence.
Polish people did not received from Germany over 100 billion dollars and billions from Switzerland like Jewish community did.
Fighting on all Fronts:
The Polish Army, Navy and Air Force reorganized abroad and continued to fight the Germans. In fact they have the distinction of being the only nation to fight on every front in the War. In 1940 they fought in France, in the Norwegian campaign they earned a reputation for bravery at Narvik, and in Africa the Carpathian Brigade fought at Tobruk.
Polish Squadrons played an important role in the Battle of Britain, accounting for 12% of all German aircraft destroyed at the cost of 33 lives. By the end of the war they had flown a total of 86,527 sorties, lost 1669 men and shot down 500 German planes and 190 V1 rockets.

The Polish Navy, which had escaped intact, consisted of 60 vessels, including 2 cruisers, 9 destroyers and 5 submarines (one of which was the famous "Orzel") which were involved in 665 actions at sea. The first German ship sunk in the war was sunk by Polish ships. The Navy also took part in the D-Day landings.
When the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany, in June 1941, Polish POWs were released from prison camps and set up an army headed by General Anders. Many civilians were taken under the protection of this army which was allowed to make its way to Persia (modern-day Iran) and then on to Egypt. This army, the Polish Second Corps, fought with distinction in Italy, their most notable victory being that at Monte Cassino, in May 1944, and which opened up the road to Rome for the Allies as a whole. One of the "heroes" of the Polish Second Corps was Wojtek, a brown bear adopted in Iran as their mascot; at Monte Cassino Wojtek actually helped in the fighting by carrying ammunition for the guns. He died, famous and well-loved, in Edinburgh Zoo in 1964, aged 22.
All the Polish forces took part in the Allied invasion of Europe and liberation of France, playing a particularly crucial role in the significant Battle of the Falaise Gap. The Polish Parachute Brigade took part in the disastrous Battle of Arnhem in Holland. In 1945, the Poles captured the German port of Wilhelmshaven.
In 1943 a division of Polish soldiers was formed in Russia under Soviet control and fought on the Eastern Front. They fought loyally alongside the Soviet troops, despite the suffering they had experienced in Soviet hands, and they distinguished themselves in breaking through the last German lines of defense, the "Pomeranian Rampart", in the fighting in Saxony and in the capture of Berlin.

The "Home Army", under the command of General Stefan Roweki (code-named "Grot"), and after his capture in 1943 (he was later murdered), by General Tadeusz Komorowski (code-named "Bor"), fought a very varied war; at times in open combat in brigade or division strength, at times involved in sabotage, often acting as execution squads eliminating German officials, and often fighting a psychological campaign against German military and civilians. It was a costly war since the Germans always took reprisals.
The Intelligence Service of the Home Army captured and sent parts of the V1 to London for examination, providing information on German military movements (giving advanced warning of the German plan to invade Russia), and gave the RAF full information about Peenemunde, where the Germans were producing V2 rockets.
Betrayal:
The crime of Katyn was discovered in 1943 and created a rift in Polish-Soviet relations. From now on the Home Army was attacked by Soviet propaganda as collaborating with the Germans and being called on to rise against the Germans once the Red Army reached the outskirts of Warsaw.
Secretly, at Teheran, the British and Americans agreed to letting the Russians profit from their invasion of Poland in 1939 and allowing them to keep the lands that had been absorbed. The "accidental" death of General Sikorski at this time helped keep protests at a minimum.

When the Russians crossed into Poland the Home Army cooperated in the fight against the Germans and contributed greatly to the victories at Lwow, Wilno and Lublin only to find themselves surrounded and disarmed by their "comrades-in-arms" and deported to labor camps in Siberia.
On August 1, 1944, with the Russian forces on the right bank of the Vistula, the Home Army rose in Warsaw; the Warsaw Rising. Heroic street-fighting involving the whole population, using the sewers as lines of communication and escape, under heavy bombardment, lasted for 63 days. The city was completely destroyed. Not only did the Russians cease to advance but they also refused to allow Allied planes to land on Russian airfields after dropping supplies. After surrendering many civilians and soldiers were executed or sent to concentration camps to be exterminated and Warsaw was razed to the ground.
The defeat in Warsaw destroyed the political and military institutions of the Polish underground and left the way open for a Soviet take-over.
With the liberation of Lublin in July 1944 a Russian-sponsored Polish Committee for National Liberation (a Communist Government in all but name) had been set up and the British had put great pressure, mostly unsuccessful, on the Government-in-exile to accept this status quo. At Yalta, in February 1945, the Allies put Poland within the Russian zone of influence in a post-war Europe. To most Poles the meaning of these two events was perfectly clear; Poland had been betrayed. At one stage the Polish Army, still fighting in Italy and Germany, was prepared to withdraw from the front lines in protest; after all, they were supposed to be fighting for Polish liberation. It is a reflection on Polish honor that no such withdrawal took place since it could leave large gaps in the front lines and so was considered too dangerous for their Allied comrades-in-arms.
The war ended on May 8th, 1945.
The Cost:
The Poles are the people who really lost the war.
Over half a million fighting men and women, and 6 million civilians (or 22% of the total population) died. About 50% of these were Polish Christians and 50% were Polish Jews. Approximately 5,384,000 or 89.9% of Polish war losses (Jews and Gentiles) were the victims of prisons, death camps, raids, and executions, annihilation of ghettos, epidemics, starvation, excessive work and ill treatment. So many Poles were sent to concentration camps that virtually every family had someone close to them who had been tortured or murdered there.
There were one million war orphans and over half a million invalids.
The country lost 38% of its national assets (Britain lost 0.8%, France lost 1.5%). Half the country was swallowed up by the Soviet Union including the two great cultural centers of Lwow and Wilno.
Many Poles could not return to the country for which they has fought because they belonged to the "wrong" political group or came from eastern Poland and had thus become Soviet citizens. Others were arrested, tortured and imprisoned by the Soviet authorities for belonging to the Home Army.
Although "victors" they were not allowed to partake in victory celebrations.

Through fighting "For Our Freedom and Yours" they had exchanged one master for another and were, for many years to come, treated as "the enemy" by the very Allies who had betrayed them at Teheran and Yalta।
ITALIAN CAMPAIGN AND THE BATTLE OF MONTE CASSINO

At the beginning of 1944, after moving from Iraq to Palestine, the 2ND Polish Corps moved to Egypt and then on to southern Italy. After a few smaller engagements in southern Italy, the Corps was moved to the vicinity of the Monte Cassino monastery. Because of its commanding location, the massif overlooked and controlled the Naples-Rome road and railway line. The Germans, realizing its strategic value, had fortified and connected it to their Gustav Line fortifications stretching across the Italian "boot" and manned it with the crack 1ST Parachute Division. Three attempts to take the monastery had already been made by the Allies, but without success. The first attempt was made by the units of the American Fifth Army, an Algerian formation of the French Corps and units of the British Eighth Army. The following two attempts by the New Zealand Corps were also unsuccessful. On March 24, 1944, General Leese, commander of the British Eighth Army, asked General Anders if the 2ND Polish Corps would undertake a capturing of the monastery. He received an affirmative reply.

The attack, at 1:00 A.M. on May 12, 1944, was preceded by a two-hour, 800-gun artillery barrage along the entire front. Two Polish divisions advanced, ascending rocky 30 to 45-degree inclines and enduring the constant fire of well-positioned, fortified German artillery and machine guns. The fighting continued throughout the night and until the following afternoon. There was no chance of bringing reinforcements, as all paths and roads were covered by German fire. Yet, despite the enormous fire power, the Allied artillery did not succeed in silencing the German artillery; and, in the evening of May 12, General Anders gave the order to withdraw to the original departure points. The withdrawal ended on May 13. At 7:00 A.M. on May 17, fresh battalions of the two Polish divisions began the attack. This time, despite the terrain, Polish tanks were sent up the mountain. Those which broke down or were damaged by mines were pushed into the precipice to make room for those behind. Also, weighing two and a half tons each, anti-tank canons were disassembled below, dragged up the mountain piece by piece under the cover of darkness, reassembled and, at the time of the attack, opened up on the Germans at point-blank range.
In the late afternoon of May 17, the critical point was reached; it was impossible to gain any more ground. Exhausted soldiers laid hidden behind the rocks. The Germans were equally as exhausted.

Victory depended on the strength of will of each side. The 2ND Polish Corps did not have any reserves, but General Anders decided to throw everything he had into the final attack: bloodied battalions from the first engagement, commandos, drivers, and mechanics. On the morning of May 18, renewed attack was launched; but, during the night, the crack German paratroopers had had enough and withdrew, leaving only a token defense behind. Thus, at 10:20 A.M. on May 18, 1944, a patrol of the 12TH Cavalry Regiment hoisted the Polish flag upon the ruins of the monastery. The road to Rome was open. On June 4, 1944, the American Fifth Army entered the Eternal City.
Not long afterwards, the 2ND Polish Corps fought a victorious eight-day battle for Loreto; moving north along the Adriatic, they captured Ancona, broke through the Gothic Line, and took Faenza. On April 21, 1945, the Italian Campaign ended with the 2ND Polish Corps' liberation of Bologna.
Battle of Monte Cassino
- the fifth greatest battle of World War II

The pact signed in Moscow at the end of August between Hitler and Stalin gave a green light for war against Poland.

September 1,1939 Wehrmacht launched its Blitzkrieg, and a couple weeks later, the Red Army stabbed the overwhelmed Polish Army in the back, splitting Poland in half along a prearranged line.

Less then two years later, Hitler’s surprise attack on Russia forced Stalin to turn to the West for help. This gave the Polish government-in-exile in London a chance to negotiate the release of Polish prisoners held in the Gulag. Out of almost two million held there, only less then 75,000 prisoners were released from prisons and labor camps. They joined the recruiting centers and waited - sick and hungry — for the arms that Stalin has promised their prime minister in London, but few only were delivered. General Wladyslaw Anders, just released from the notorious Lubyanka prison, knowing the Russians well, was very apprehensive and suspicious about Stalin's designs on Poland. Being aware of his plans to control newly organized army militarily as well as politically, Anders worked out a plan of evacuation to Iran Under pressure of Wehrmacht advance to the gates of Moscow in late 1941, Stalin panicked and dropped his guard, allowing several divisions of Polish volunteers to join the British 10th Army in the Middle East.

Welcome there, they were fed, dressed, armed and trained. By mid 1943 the 2nd Polish Corps was ready for action .just in time to help with a stalled advance at the Gustav Line barring advance to Rome during five month of heavy Allied fighting. The Gustav Line crossing Apennine peninsula was anchored on towering Monte Cassino, with its thousand year old Benedictine monastery on top.

As in ancient times, the mountain was vital to the German's defenses. It was providing a perfect observation point to which the Germans added an elaborate system of bunkers and tunnels. From this fortified vantage point, the Germans commanded the valley of the river Liri, and the road to Rome. Built by Romans, now Highway 6, ancient Via Casillina was originally constructed to facilitate the movement of Roman troops in their march North to expand the Roman Empire. Now, twenty-five centuries later, troops of the allied forces, including the Polish Free Army, used the same road on their way to victory.

Before the 2nd Corps took positions, the Allies in preparation for storming the Monte Cassino attempted to eliminate town of Cassino, located at its foot. Now being in ruins, and almost totally destroyed on surface, it was still representing a formidable obstruction with its underground bunkers.

Town of Cassino, originally known as Cassimum, was regarded as a sacred place and was revered by the Romans. Two centuries before the birth of Christ, emperor Markus Aurelius Antonius — had his villa there.

Town of Cassino, in the three month prior to May 1944, has been devastated in the offensives led by the American 5th and British 8th armies.

After the New Zealanders under gen. Friberg suffered huge losses, frustrated general called for destruction of monastery from the air. In one of the most tragic miscalculations of the war, 500 American bombers pulverized the ancient abbey with its priceless medieval treasures — some saved, were evacuated to Rome by Abbot Diamare.

"The Lord willed it, and it was good thing for the salvation ion of Rome , - the old abbot told his Benedictine monks after bombardment.

The New Zealanders, supported by Indian troops, attacked once more, and again were driven off by Germans, who had taker advantage of the rubble to create new defense positions.

Meanwhile, the Allied invasion at Anzio launched in February to circumvent the Gustav Line , was still cornered or the beach by Germans.

The debacle at Anzio and the ruins of monastery, still defended, were symbolic of Allied failure to achieve victory in Italy.

Beginning of April , the Polish 2nd Corps was deployed to the front at Monte Cassino. The offensive started one hour before midnight on May 11, 1944. In his Order of the Day, gen. Anders addressed his apprehensive troops: "Soldiers, the time to defeat our ancient enemy has come. With faith in God's justice, tonight at 11 o'clock, we are going into battle beginning our last march to victory and on to our country, Poland."

The campaign in Italy , was difficult one. The mountainous terrain with some peaks reaching 6,000 feet, many fast flowing rivers and deep valleys were limiting use o armor in its classic concept of a quick action, so the major burden was on infantry, sustaining the heaviest losses.

Against all odds, during the battle which lasted a week, with infantry battalions decimated, the Poles beat the Germans into submission, and in the morning of May 18th. Polish flag was finally hoisted over the ruins of the monastery -

One of the greatest confrontation with the enemy during WW II was ended, the road to Rome opened and Americans and Anzio bridgehead relieved- With this dainge breakthrough victory in Italy was assured

The Poles paid their share of victory at Monte Cassino: over on thousand killed, and three thousand wounded.

Gen. Anders, commander of the 2nd Corps, before he died in London in 1972, expressed his wish to be laid to rest with his fallen soldiers near the monastery. After the war a cemetery was built at the foot of the Abbey by surviving soldiers of the 2nd Corps.

At its entrance, the engraved epitaph depicts their bravery and dedication to Poland.