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)
Friday, February 29, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Singer stated on April 19, 1996 that if Poland does not satisfy Jewish claims, it will be "publicly attacked and humiliated".
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.
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.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Warszawskie dzieci, Rota.Powstanie Warszawskie
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 ?
Henry Ekstein, one of the Children of Tehran,Iran stood as a beacon of freedom
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
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
Thursday, February 21, 2008
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