The history of the Jews in Poland and Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)
24/05/2013 16:55
The history of the Jews in Poland and Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium.[4] For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy.
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This ended with the Partitions of Poland, in particular, with the discrimination and persecution of Jews in the Russian Empire. During World War II there was a nearly complete genocidal destruction of the Polish Jewish community by Nazi Germany, during the 1939–1945 German occupation of Poland and the ensuing Holocaust. Since the fall of communism there has been a Jewish revival in Poland,
Acer Aspire 7520G Keyboard characterized by the annual Jewish Culture Festival, new study programmes at Polish high schools and universities, the work of synagogues such as the Nozyk, and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Acer Aspire 7745Z Keyboard
From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 through to the early years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe.[5
] Known as paradisus Iudaeorum (Latin for "Paradise for the Jews"), it became a shelter for persecuted and expelled European Jewish communities and the home to the world's largest Jewish community of the time. According to some sources, about three-quarters of all Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century.[6][
Acer Aspire 7740 Keyboard7][8] With the weakening of the Commonwealth and growing religious strife (due to the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation), Poland’s traditional tolerance[9] began to wane from the 17th century onward.[10] After the partitions of Poland in 1795 and the destruction of Poland as a sovereign state, Polish Jews were subject to the laws of the partitioning powers,
Acer Aspire 7736 Keyboard the increasingly antisemitic Russian Empire,[11] as well as Austro-Hungary and Kingdom of Prussia (later a part of the German Empire). Still, as Poland regained independence in the aftermath of World War I, it was the center of the European Jewish world with one of world's largest Jewish communities of over 3 million. Antisemitism, Acer Aspire 7745G Keyboard
however, from both the political establishment and from the general population, common throughout Europe, was a growing problem.[12] Acer Aspire 7741G Keyboard
At the start of World War II, Poland was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (see: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). The war resulted in the death of one-fifth of the Polish population, with 90% or about 3 million of Polish Jewry killed along with approximately 3 million Polish non-Jews.[13]
Although the Holocaust occurred largely in German occupied Poland there was little collaboration with the Nazis by her citizens. Collaboration by individual Poles has been described as smaller than in other occupied countries.[14][15]
Acer Aspire 7750 KeyboardStatistics of the Israeli War Crimes Commission indicate that less than 0.1% of Polish gentiles collaborated with the Nazis.[16] Examples of Polish gentile attitudes to German atrocities varied widely, from actively risking death in order to save Jewish lives,[17] and passive refusal to inform on them;
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to indifference, blackmail,[18] and in extreme cases, participation in pogroms such as the Jedwabne massacre. Grouped by nationality, Poles represent the largest number of people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.[19][20] Acer Aspire 7540G Keyboard
In the postwar period, many of the approximately 200,000 Jewish survivors registered at CKŻP (of whom 136,000 arrived from the Soviet Union)[20]
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[21][22] left the communist People's Republic of Poland for the nascent State of Israel and North or South America. Their departure was hastened by the destruction of Jewish institutions, post-war violence and the hostility of the Communist Party to both religion and private enterprise, but also because in 1946–1947 Poland was the only Eastern Block country to allow free Jewish aliyah to Israel,[23] Acer Aspire 7750Z Keyboardwithout visas or exit permits.[24][25] Britain demanded from Poland to halt the exodus, but their pressure was largely unsuccessful.[26] Most of the remaining Jews left Poland in late 1968 as the result of the Soviet-sponsored "anti-Zionist" campaign. After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, Acer Aspire 5742G Keyboard
the situation of Polish Jews became normalized and those who were Polish citizens before World War II were allowed to renew Polish citizenship. Religious institutions were revived, largely through the activities of Jewish foundations from the United States. The contemporary Polish Jewish community is estimated to have approximately 20,000 members,[27Acer Aspire 7220 Keyboard
Acer Aspire 7720Z Keyboard] though the actual number of Jews, including those who are not actively connected to Judaism or Jewish culture, may be several times larger.
The first Jews arrived in the territory of modern Poland in the 10th century. By travelling along the trade routes leading eastwards to Kiev and Bukhara, Jewish merchants (known as Radhanites) crossed the areas of Silesia. Acer Aspire 7720G Keyboard One of them, a diplomat and merchant from the Moorish town of Tortosa in Spanish Al-Andalus, known under his Arabic name of Ibrahim ibn Jakub, was the first chronicler to mention the Polish state under the rule of prince Mieszko I. The first actual mention of Jews in Polish chronicles occurs in the 11th century. Acer Aspire 7720 Keyboard
It appears that Jews were then living in Gniezno, at that time the capital of the Polish kingdom of the Piast dynasty. The first permanent Jewish community is mentioned in 1085 by a Jewish scholar Jehuda ha-Kohen in the city of Przemyśl.[28] Acer Aspire 7700 Keyboard
Early medieval Polish coins with Hebrew inscriptions
The first extensive Jewish emigration from Western Europe to Poland occurred at the time of the First Crusade in 1098. Under Bolesław III (1102–1139), Asus K53TA Keyboard
the Jews, encouraged by the tolerant regime of this ruler, settled throughout Poland, including over the border in Lithuanian territory as far as Kiev. Bolesław III for his part recognized the utility of the Jews in the development of the commercial interests of his country. Asus K53U Keyboard
The Jews came to form the backbone of the Polish economy and the coins minted by Mieszko III even bear Hebraic markings.
Asus U80V Keyboard Jews enjoyed undisturbed peace and prosperity in the many principalities into which the country was then divided; they formed the middle class in a country where the general population consisted of landlords (developing into szlachta, the unique Polish nobility) and peasants,
and they were instrumental in promoting the commercial interests of the land.
Gesta principum Polonorum states that Princess Judith of Bohemia, wife of Polish Prince Władysław I Herman ransomed many Christians with her own money from the bondage of the Jews.[29]
The tolerant situation was gradually altered by the Roman Catholic Church on the one hand, and by the neighboring German states on the other.[30] There were, however, among the reigning princes some determined protectors of the Jewish inhabitants, Asus K73T Keyboard
who considered the presence of the latter most desirable as far as the economic development of the country was concerned. Prominent among such rulers was Bolesław the Pious of Kalisz, Prince of Great Poland.
Asus X53E Keyboard With the consent of the class representatives and higher officials, in 1264 he issued a General Charter of Jewish Liberties, the Statute of Kalisz, which granted all Jews the freedom of worship, trade and travel. During the next hundred years, the Church pushed for the persecution of the Jews while the rulers of Poland usually protected them.[31] Asus K73TA Keyboard
Wojciech Gerson, Reception of Jews, Casimir the Great and Jews
In 1332, King Casimir III the Great (1303–1370) amplified and expanded Bolesław's old charter with the Wiślicki Statute. Casimir, who according to a legend had a Jewish lover named Esterka from Opoczno[32]
was especially friendly to the Jews, and his reign is regarded as an era of great prosperity for Polish Jewry, and was nicknamed by his contemporaries "King of the serfs and Jews." Under penalty of death,
Asus X53U Keyboard he prohibited the kidnapping of Jewish children for the purpose of enforced Christian baptism. He inflicted heavy punishment for the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. Nevertheless, while for the greater part of Casimir’s reign the Jews of Poland enjoyed tranquility,
Asus X53SV Keyboard toward its close they were subjected to persecution on account of the Black Death. In 1348, the first blood libel accusation against Jews in Poland was recorded, and in 1367 the first pogrom took place in Poznań (Posen). Asus K73BY Keyboard
[33] Compared with the pitiless destruction of their co-religionists in Western Europe, however, the Polish Jews did not fare badly; and the Jewish masses of Germany fled to the more hospitable cities in Poland.
[edit]The early Jagiellon era: 1385–1505
Main article: History of Poland (1385-1569)
As a result of the marriage of Wladislaus II (Jagiełło) to Jadwiga, daughter of Louis I of Hungary, Lithuania was united with the kingdom of Poland. In 1388–1389, broad privileges were extended to Lithuanian Jews including freedom of religion and commerce on equal terms with the Christians.[34]
Asus K73 Keyboard Under the rule of Wladislaus II, Polish Jews had increased in numbers and attained prosperity. However, religious persecution gradually increased, as the dogmatic clergy pushed for less official tolerance, pressured by the Synod of Constance. There were accusations of blood libel by the priests,
Asus X54U Keyboard and new riots against the Jews in Poznan in 1399. Accusations of blood libel by another fanatic priest led to the riots in Kraków in 1407, although the royal guard hastened to the rescue.[
Asus X53 Keyboard 34] Hysteria caused by Black Death led to additional 14th-century outbreaks of violence against the Jews in Kalisz, Kraków and Bochnia. Traders and artisans jealous of Jewish prosperity, and fearing their rivalry, supported the harassment.
Kazimierz IV Jagiellończyk confirmed and extended Jewish charters in the second half of the 15th century
The decline in the status of the Jews was briefly checked by Casimir IV the Jagiellonian (1447–1492),
Asus X53H Keyboard but soon the nobility forced him to issue the Statute of Nieszawa.[35] Among other things it abolished the ancient privileges of the Jews "as contrary to divine right and the law of the land." Nevertheless, the king continued to offer his protection to the Jews. Two years later Casimir issued another document announcing that he could not deprive the Jews of his benevolence on the basis of "the principle of tolerance which in conformity with God's laws obliged him to protect them".
Asus X53T Keyboard 36] The policy of the government toward the Jews of Poland oscillated under Casimir's sons and successors, John I Olbracht (1492–1501) and Alexander the Jagiellonian (1501–1506). [Asus X73B Keyboard The latter expelled the Jews from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1495 when he was the Grand Duke of Lithuania but reversed the law in 1503 shortly after becoming King of Poland. A year later he issued a proclamation in which he stated that a policy of tolerance befitted "kings and rulers".[36] Levono Ideapad G560 Keyboard
[edit]Center of the Jewish world: 1505–72
Alexander became more tolerant just as the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, as well as from Austria, Hungary and Germany, thus stimulating Jewish immigration to the much more tolerant Poland. Indeed,
Levono Ideapad Y570D Keyboardwith the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Poland became the recognized haven for exiles from Western Europe; and the resulting accession to the ranks of Polish Jewry made it the cultural and spiritual center of the Jewish people. Levono Ideapad Z570 Keyboard
The most prosperous period for Polish Jews began following this new influx of Jews with the reign of Zygmunt I (1506–1548), who protected the Jews in his realm. His son, Zygmunt II August (1548–1572), mainly followed in the tolerant policy of his father and also granted autonomy to the Jews in the matter of communal administration and laid the foundation for the power of the Qahal,
Levono Ideapad Z575 Keyboard or autonomous Jewish community. This period led to the creation of a proverb about Poland being a "heaven for the Jews". According to some sources, about three-quarters of all Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century.[6][7][8] In the middle of the 16th century,
Levono Ideapad Z565 KeyboardPoland welcomed the Jewish newcomers from Italy and Turkey, mostly of Sephardi origin. However, some of the immigrants from the Ottoman Empire are still considered Mizrahim.
Levono Ideapad Y570 Keyboard Jewish religious life thrived in many Polish communities. In 1503, the Polish monarchy appointed Rabbi Jacob Polak, the official Rabbi of Poland, marking the emergence of the Chief Rabbinate. By 1551,
Levono Ideapad V570A Keyboard Jews were given permission to choose their own Chief Rabbi. The Chief Rabbinate held power over law and finance, appointing judges and other officials. Some power was shared with local councils.
Levono Ideapad G575 KeyboardThe Polish government permitted the Rabbinate to grow in power, to use it for tax collection purposes. Only 30% of the money raised by the Rabbinate served Jewish causes, the rest went to the Crown for protection. In this period Poland-Lithuania became the main center for Ashkenazi Jewry and its yeshivot achieved fame from the early 16th century.
Moses Isserles (1520–1572),
Levono Ideapad B570G Keyboard an eminent Talmudist of the 16th century, established his yeshiva in Kraków. In addition to being a renowned Talmudic and legal scholar, Isserles was also learned in Kabbalah, and studied history, astronomy, and philosophy. Levono Ideapad Z560 Keyboard
Following the childless death of Zygmunt II, the last king of the Jagiellon dynasty, Polish and Lithuanian nobles (szlachta) gathered at Warsaw in 1573 and signed a document of limited toleration in which representatives of all the major religions pledged each other mutual support and tolerance.
Levono Ideapad B570A Keyboard The edict did not include the Polish Brethren, an anti-Trinitarian that would later become known as Socinians, who formed roots for the modern Unitarian church in the US.
[edit]The Cossack uprising and the Deluge
In 1648 the Commonwealth was devastated by several conflicts, in which the Commonwealth lost over a third of its population (over three million people), and Jewish losses were counted in the hundreds of thousands.
Levono Ideapad B570 Keyboard The first of these large-scale riots was the Chmielnicki Uprising, in which Bohdan Khmelnytsky's Cossacks massacred tens of thousands of Jews and Catholic Poles in the eastern and southern areas he controlled (today's Ukraine). Levono Ideapad Y560P Keyboard
Khmelnytsky riled up the people by telling them that the Poles had sold them as slaves "into the hands of the accursed Jews".[
Levono Ideapad V570C Keyboard37] The precise number of dead may never be known, but the decrease of the Jewish population during that period is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, which also includes emigration, deaths from diseases and jasyr (captivity in the Ottoman Empire). The Jewish community suffered greatly during the 1648 Cossack uprising which had been directed primarily against the Polish nobility.
Levono Ideapad V570 Keyboard The Jews, perceived as allies of the nobles, were also victims of the revolt, during which about 20% of them were killed. Levono Ideapad Y560 Keyboard
Then the incompetent politics of the elected kings of the House of Vasa brought the weakened state to its knees, as it was invaded by the Swedish Empire in what became known as The Deluge. The kingdom of Poland proper, which had hitherto suffered but little either from the Chmielnicki Uprising or from the recurring invasion of the Russians, Crimean Tatars and Ottomans, now became the scene of terrible disturbances (1655–1658). Levono Ideapad V570A Keyboard
Charles X of Sweden, at the head of his victorious army, overran Poland; and soon the whole country, including the cities of Kraków and Warsaw, was in his hands. The Jews of Great and Little Poland found themselves torn between two sides: those of them who were spared by the Swedes were attacked by the Poles, HP Pavilion dm4 Keyboard
who accused them of aiding the enemy. The Polish general Stefan Czarniecki, in his flight from the Swedes, devastated the whole country through which he passed and treated the Jews without mercy. The Polish partisan detachments treated the non-Polish inhabitants with equal severity. Moreover,
the horrors of the war were aggravated by pestilence, and the Jews and townsfolk of the districts of Kalisz, Kraków, Poznań, Piotrków, and Lublin perished en masse by the sword of the besieging armies and the plague.
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As soon as the disturbances had ceased, the Jews began to return and to rebuild their destroyed homes; and while it is true that the Jewish population of Poland had decreased and become impoverished,
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it still was more numerous than that of the Jewish colonies in Western Europe; and Poland remained as the spiritual center of Judaism, and through 1698, the Polish kings generally remained supportive of the Jews,
HP Pavilion Dm4t-1100 Keyboard despite a hostile clergy and nobility. It also should be noted that while Jewish losses in those events were high, estimated by some historians to be close to 500,000, the Commonwealth lost one third of its population — approximately three million of its citizens.
[edit]Decline under the Saxon dynasty
With the accession to the throne of the Saxon dynasty the Jews completely lost the support of the government.
HP Pavilion dm4t-1000 CTO KeyboardThe szlachta and the townsfolk were increasingly hostile to the Jews, as the religious tolerance that dominated the mentality of the previous generations of Commonwealth citizens was slowly forgotten. In their intolerance, the citizens of the Commonwealth now approached the "standards" that dominated most of the contemporary European countries,
HP Pavilion dm4-2000ea keyboard and many Jews felt betrayed by the country they once viewed as their haven. In the larger cities, like Poznań and Kraków, quarrels between the Satins[citation needed] and the Jewish inhabitants were of frequent occurrence. Attacks on the Jews by students, the so-called Schüler-Gelauf,
HP Pavilion dm4-2000 keyboard became everyday occurrences in the large cities, the police regarding such scholastic riots with indifference. In the 16th and 17th centuries Jews were expelled from a number of Polish cities, and victimized by pogroms usually organized by local merchants and artisans.[38]
HP Pavilion dm4-2100 keyboardBy 1764, there were about 750,000 Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The worldwide Jewish population was estimated at 1.2 million.[39]
[edit]The partitions
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Jewish dress in the 17th (top) and the 18th century (bottom).
Disorder and anarchy reigned supreme in Poland during the second half of the 18th century, from the accession to the throne of its last king, Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski (1764–1795). In 1772, HP Pavilion dm4-1000 Keyboard
in the aftermath of the Confederation of Bar, the outlying provinces of Poland were divided among the three neighboring nations, Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Jews were most numerous in the territories that fell to the lot of Austria and Russia.
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Berek Joselewicz (1764–1809)
The permanent council established at the instance of the Russian government (1773–1788) served as the highest administrative tribunal, and occupied itself with the elaboration of a plan that would make practicable the reorganization of Poland on a more rational basis.
HP Pavilion dm4-2101ea keyboard The progressive elements in Polish society recognized the urgency of popular education as the very first step toward reform. The famous Komisja Edukacji Narodowej ("Commission of National Education"),
HP Pavilion dm4-3000 keyboardthe first ministry of education in the world, was established in 1773 and founded numerous new schools and remodeled the old ones. One of the members of the commission, kanclerz Andrzej Zamoyski, along with others, demanded that the inviolability of their persons and property should be guaranteed and that religious toleration should be to a certain extent granted them;
HP Pavilion dm4-3000ea keyboard but he insisted that Jews living in the cities should be separated from the Christians, that those of them having no definite occupation should be banished from the kingdom, and that even those engaged in agriculture should not be allowed to possess land. On the other hand,
HP Pavilion dm4-3000sa keyboard some szlachta and intellectuals proposed a national system of government, of the civil and political equality of the Jews. This was the only example in modern Europe before the French Revolution of tolerance and broadmindedness in dealing with the Jewish question.
HP Pavilion dm4-3002sa keyboardBut all these reforms were too late: a Russian army soon invaded Poland, and soon after a Prussian one followed.
A second partition of Poland was made on July 17, 1793. Jews, in a Jewish regiment led by Berek Joselewicz, took part in the Kościuszko Uprising the following year, when the Poles tried to again achieve independence,
HP Pavilion dm4-3002ea keyboardbut were brutally put down. Following the revolt, the third and final partition of Poland took place in 1795. The great bulk of the Jewish population was transferred to Russia, and thus became subjects of that empire, although in the first half of the 19th century some semblance of a vastly smaller Polish state was preserved, especially in the form of the Congress Poland (1815–1831).
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Jews were represented in the November Insurrection (1830–1831), the January Insurrection (1863), as well as in the revolutionary movement of 1905. Many Polish Jews were enlisted in the Legions, which fought for the Polish independence finally achieved in 1918.
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[edit]The development of Judaism in Poland and the Commonwealth
A Jewish couple, Poland, c. 1765
The culture and intellectual output of the Jewish community in Poland had a profound impact on Judaism as a whole. Some Jewish historians have recounted that the word Poland is pronounced as Polania or Polin in Hebrew,
HP Pavilion dm4-1150ea Keyboard and as transliterated into Hebrew, these names for Poland were interpreted as "good omens" because Polania can be broken down into three Hebrew words: po ("here"), lan ("dwells"), ya ("God"), and Polin into two words of: po ("here") lin ("[you should] dwell").
HP Pavilion dm4-1150ca Keyboard The "message" was that Poland was meant to be a good place for the Jews. During the time from the rule of Sigismund I the Old until the Nazi Holocaust, Poland would be at the center of Jewish religious life.
[edit]Jewish learning
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Late renaissance synagogue in Zamość (1610–1620).
Yeshivot were established, under the direction of the rabbis, in the more prominent communities. Such schools were officially known as gymnasiums, and their rabbi principals as rectors. Important yeshivot existed in Kraków, Poznań,
HP Pavilion dm4-1140sa Keyboard
and other cities. Jewish printing establishments came into existence in the first quarter of the 16th century. In 1530 a Hebrew Pentateuch (Torah) was printed in Kraków; and at the end of the century the Jewish printing houses of that city and Lublin issued a large number of Jewish books, mainly of a religious character. HP Pavilion dm4-1080ea Keyboard
The growth of Talmudic scholarship in Poland was coincident with the greater prosperity of the Polish Jews; and because of their communal autonomy educational development was wholly one-sided and along Talmudic lines.
HP Pavilion dm4-1101ea Keyboard Exceptions are recorded, however, where Jewish youth sought secular instruction in the European universities. The learned rabbis became not merely expounders of the Law, but also spiritual advisers, teachers, judges, and legislators; and their authority compelled the communal leaders to make themselves familiar with the abstruse questions of Jewish law.
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Polish Jewry found its views of life shaped by the spirit of Talmudic and rabbinical literature, whose influence was felt in the home, in school, and in the synagogue.
In the first half of the 16th century the seeds of Talmudic learning had been transplanted to Poland from Bohemia, particularly from the school of Jacob Pollak, the creator of Pilpul ("sharp reasoning"). Shalom Shachna (c. 1500–1558),
HP Pavilion dm4-1100eg Keyboard a pupil of Pollak, is counted among the pioneers of Talmudic learning in Poland. He lived and died in Lublin, where he was the head of the yeshivah which produced the rabbinical celebrities of the following century. Shachna's son Israel became rabbi of Lublin on the death of his father, HP Pavilion dm4-1100 Keyboard and Shachna's pupil Moses Isserles (known as the ReMA) (1520–1572) achieved an international reputation among the Jews as the co-author of the Shulkhan Arukh, (the "Code of Jewish Law"). His contemporary and correspondent Solomon Luria (1510–1573) of Lublin also enjoyed a wide reputation among his co-religionists; HP Probook 4411S Keyboard
and the authority of both was recognized by the Jews throughout Europe. Heated religious disputations were common, and Jewish scholars participated in them. At the same time, the Kabbalah
HP Probook 5330M Keyboard had become entrenched under the protection of Rabbinism; and such scholars as Mordecai Jaffe and Yoel Sirkis devoted themselves to its study. This period of great Rabbinical scholarship was interrupted by the Chmielnicki Uprising and The Deluge.
Israel ben Eliezer, founder of Hasidism.
[edit]The rise of Hasidism
Main article: Hasidim
The decade from the Cossacks' uprising until after the Swedish war (1648–1658) left a deep and lasting impression not only on the social life of the Polish-Lithuanian Jews, but on their spiritual life as well.
HP Probook 5320M Keyboard The intellectual output of the Jews of Poland was reduced. The Talmudic learning which up to that period had been the common possession of the majority of the people became accessible to a limited number of students only. What religious study there was became overly formalized,
HP Probook 5310M Keyboardsome rabbis busied themselves with quibbles concerning religious laws; others wrote commentaries on different parts of the Talmud in which hair-splitting arguments were raised and discussed;
HP Probook 4730S Keyboard and at times these arguments dealt with matters which were of no practical importance. At the same time, many miracle workers made their appearance among the Jews of Poland, culminating in a series of false "Messianic" movements, most famously as Sabbatianism was succeeded by Frankism. HP Probook 4414S Keyboard
In this time of mysticism and overly formal rabbinism came the teachings of Israel ben Eliezer, known as the Baal Shem Tov, or BeShT, (1698–1760), which had a profound effect on the Jews of Eastern Europe and Poland in particular.
HP Probook 4725S Keyboard His disciples taught and encouraged the new fervent brand of Judaism based on Kabbalah known as Hasidism. The rise of Hasidic Judaism within Poland's borders and beyond had a great influence on the rise of Haredi Judaism all over the world, with a continuous
HP Probook 4720S Keyboard influence through its many Hasidic dynasties including those of Chabad-Lubavitch, Aleksander, Bobov, Ger, Nadvorna, among others. More recent rebbes of Polish origin include Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn (1880–1950), the sixth head of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic movement,
HP Probook 4715S Keyboardwho lived in Warsaw until 1940 when he moved Lubavitch from Warsaw to the United States. See also: List of Polish RabbisHP Probook 4416S Keyboard
Jewish merchants in 19th-century Warsaw
Official Russian policy would eventually prove to be substantially harsher to the Jews than that under independent Polish rule. The lands that had once been Poland were to remain the home of many Jews, as, in 1772,
HP Probook 4535S Keyboard Catherine II, the Tzarina of Russia, instituted the Pale of Settlement, restricting Jews to the western parts of the empire, which would eventually include much of Poland, although it excluded some areas in which Jews had previously lived. By the late 19th century, over four million Jews would live in the Pale. HP Probook 4510S Keyboard
Map of the Pale of Settlement, the highest Jewish populations were located in parts of present day Poland and Belarus
Tsarist policy towards the Jews of Poland alternated between harsh rules, and inducements meant to break the resistance to large-scale conversion. In 1804, Alexander I of Russia issued a "Statute Concerning Jews",[
HP Probook 4530S Keyboard0] meant to accelerate the process of assimilation of the Empire's new Jewish population. The Polish Jews were allowed to establish schools with Russian, German or Polish curriculum. They could own land in the territories annexed from Poland. However, they were also restricted from leasing of property, 4HP Probook 4525S Keyboardteaching in Yiddish, or from entering Russia. They were banned from the brewing industry. The harshest measures designed to compel Jews to merge into society at large called for their expulsion from small villages into towns. Once the resettlement began, thousands of Jews lost their only source of income and turned to Kahal for support.
Their living conditions in the Pale began to dramatically worsen.[40]
During the reign of Tsar Nicolas I, known by the Jews as "Haman the Second", hundreds of brand new anti-Jewish measures were enacted.[41] IBM Thinkpad SL310 Keyboard
The 1827 decree by Nicolas – while lifting the traditional double taxation on Jews in lieu of army service – made Jews subject to general military recruitment laws that required Jewish communities to provide 7 recruits per each 1000 "souls" every 4 years. IBM Thinkpad SL510 Keyboard
IBM Thinkpad L512 Keyboard Unlike the general population that had to provide recruits between the ages of 18 and 35, Jews had to provide recruits between the ages of 12 and 25, at the qahal's discretion. Thus between 1827 and 1857 over 30,000 children were placed in the so-called Cantonist schools, where they were pressured to convert.[42] IBM Thinkpad SL500 Keyboard
[43] "Many children were smuggled to Poland, where the conscription of Jews did not take effect until 1844."[41]
For more details on the Garrison schools for male children, see Cantonist.
Although the Jews were accorded slightly more rights with the Emancipation reform of 1861 by Alexander II,
IBM Thinkpad R61 Keyboard they were still restricted to the Pale of Settlement and subject to restrictions on ownership and profession. The existing status quo was shattered with the assassination of Alexander in 1881 – an act falsely blamed upon the Jews. IBM Thinkpad SL400 Keyboard
[edit]Pogroms within the Russian Empire
1906 Białystok pogrom.
The assassination prompted a large-scale wave of anti-Jewish riots, called pogroms, throughout 1881–1884. In the 1881 outbreak, pogroms were primarily limited to Russia, although in a riot in Warsaw two Jews were killed, 24 others were wounded, women were raped and over two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.[44
IBM Thinkpad R61E Keyboard [45] The new czar, Alexander III, blamed the Jews for the riots and issued a series of harsh restrictions on Jewish movements. Pogroms continued until 1884, with at least tacit government approval. ]
They proved a turning point in the history of the Jews in partitioned Poland and throughout the world. As a result of the pogroms and the waves of antisemitism, 36 Jewish Zionist delegates met in Katowice, in 1884, IBM Thinkpad SL300 Keyboard forming the Hovevei Zion movement. The pogroms prompted a great flood of Jewish immigration to the United States. Nearly two million Jews left the Pale by the late 1920s, setting the stage for the Zionist movement.
An even bloodier wave of pogroms broke out from 1903 to 1906, and at least some of the pogroms are believed to have been organized or supported by the Tsarist Russian secret police, the Okhrana.
IBM Thinkpad E220 KeyboardSome of the worst of these occurred on Russia-occupied Polish territory, where the majority of Jews lived, and included the Białystok pogrom of 1906, in which up to a 100 Jews were murdered and many more wounded.
1906 Białystok pogrom caricature
[edit]Haskalah and Halakha
Main article: Haskalah
The Jewish Enlightenment, Haskalah, began to take hold in Poland during the 19th century, stressing secular ideas and values. Champions of Haskalah, the Maskilim, pushed for assimilation and integration into Russian culture.
IBM Thinkpad E220S Keyboard At the same time, there was another school of Jewish thought that emphasized traditional study and a Jewish response to the ethical problems of antisemitism and persecution, one form of which was the Musar movement. Polish Jews generally were less influenced by Haskalah,
IBM Thinkpad E120 Keyboardrather focusing on a strong continuation of their religious lives based on Halakha ("rabbis's law") following primarily Orthodox Judaism, Hasidic Judaism, and also adapting to the new Religious Zionism of the Mizrachi movement later in the 19th century. IBM Thinkpad E525 Keyboard
[edit]Politics in Polish territory
A Bundist demonstration, 1917
By the late 19th century, Haskalah and the debates it caused created a growing number of political movements within the Jewish community itself, covering a wide range of views and vying for votes in local and regional elections.
IBM Thinkpad E420S Keyboard Zionism became very popular with the advent of the Poale Zion socialist party as well as the religious Polish Mizrahi, and the increasingly popular General Zionists. Jews also took up socialism, forming the Bund labor union which supported assimilation and the rights of labor.
IBM Thinkpad E420 Keyboard The Folkspartei (People's Party) advocated, for its part, cultural autonomy and resistance to assimilation. In 1912, Agudat Israel, a religious party, came into existence.
Many Jews took part in the Polish insurrections, particularly against Russia (since the Tsars discriminated heavily against the Jews).
IBM Thinkpad E425 Keyboard The Kościuszko Insurrection, January Insurrection (1863) and Revolutionary Movement of 1905 all saw significant Jewish involvement in the cause of Polish independence.
By the end of the 19th century, 14% of Polish citizens were Jewish. Jews participated in their religious communities, as well as local and federal government. There were several prominent Jewish politicians in the Polish Sejm, IBM Thinkpad E520S Keyboardsuch as Apolinary Hartglass and Yitzhak Gruenbaum. Many Jewish political parties were active, representing a wide ideological spectrum, from the Zionists, to the socialists to the anti-Zionists. One of the largest of these parties was the Bund, which was strongest in Warsaw and Lodz.
TOSHIBA Satellite L515 Keyboard
In addition to the socialists, Zionist parties were also popular, in particular, the Marxist Poale Zion and the orthodox religious Polish Mizrahi. The General Zionist party became the most prominent Jewish party in the interwar period and in the 1919 elections to the first Polish Sejm since the partitions, gained 50% of the Jewish vote. TOSHIBA Satellite L770 Keyboard
In 1914, the German Zionist Max Bodenheimer founded the short-lived German Committee for Freeing of Russian Jews, TOSHIBA Satellite L770D Keyboard
with the goal of establishing a buffer state (Pufferstaat) within the Jewish Pale of Settlement, composed of the former Polish provinces annexed by Russia, being de facto protectorate of the German Empire that would free Jews in the region from Russian oppression. TOSHIBA Satellite L775D Keyboard
The plan, known as Judeopolonia, soon proved unpopular with both German officials and Bodenheimer's colleagues, and was dead by the following year.[46][47] TOSHIBA Satellite L775 Keyboard
Hasidic schoolchildren in Łódź, circa 1910s under Partitions
While many other non-Polish minorities were ambivalent or neutral to the idea of a Polish state, Jews played a role in the fight for Poland's independence in 1918, a significant number joining Józef Piłsudski.[4
TOSHIBA Satellite L550 Keyboard 8] In the wake of World War I and the ensuing conflicts that engulfed Eastern Europe — the Russian Civil War, Polish-Ukrainian War, and Polish-Soviet War — many pogroms were launched against the Jews by all sides. As a substantial number of Jews were perceived to have supported the Bolsheviks in Russia, they came under frequent attack by those opposed to the Bolshevik regime.[4
TOSHIBA Satellite L555D Keyboard 9] Just after the end of World War I, the West became alarmed by reports about alleged massive pogroms in Poland against Jews. Pressure for government action reached the point where U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sent an official commission to investigate the matter.
TOSHIBA Satellite L555 Keyboard The commission, led by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., concluded in its report that the reports of pogroms were exaggerated, but also noted that the violence against Jews had been produced by a "widespread anti-semitic prejudice against Jews" (see: Morgenthau Report).[50]
TOSHIBA Satellite L730 Keyboard It identified eight major incidents in the years 1918–1919, and estimated the number of victims at 280. Four of these were attributed to the actions of deserters and undisciplined individual soldiers; none was blamed on official government policy.
TOSHIBA Satellite L745 Keyboard Among the incidents, in Pińsk a commander of a local Polish military garrison accused a group of Jewish civilians of plotting against the Poles (a claim the Morgenthau report found "devoid of foundation") and ordered the execution of thirty-five Jewish men, women and children.
TOSHIBA Satellite L740 Keyboard
In Lviv (then Lemberg) in 1918, after the Polish Army captured the city, the report concluded that 64 Jews had been killed (other accounts put the number at seventy-two Jews who were killed by officers and soldiers of the Blue Army).[51
TOSHIBA Satellite L735D Keyboard ][52] In Warsaw, soldiers of Blue Army assaulted Jews in the streets, but were punished by military authorities. Many other events in Poland were later found to have been exaggerated, especially by contemporary newspapers such as The New York Times, although serious abuses against the Jews, including pogroms, continued elsewhere, especially in Ukraine.[53]
TOSHIBA Satellite L745D Keyboard The above-mentioned atrocities committed by the young Polish army and its allies in 1919 during their Kiev operation against the Bolsheviks had a profound impact on the foreign perception of the re-emerging Polish state.[5
TOSHIBA Satellite L735 Keyboard 4] The result of the concerns over the fate of Poland's Jews was a series of explicit clauses in the Versailles Treaty signed by the Western powers, and President Paderewski,[55]
TOSHIBA Satellite L775 Keyboard
protecting the rights of minorities in new Poland including Germans. In 1921, Poland's March Constitution gave the Jews the same legal rights as other citizens and guaranteed them religious tolerance and freedom of religious holidays.[56] TOSHIBA Satellite L750D Keyboard
Jewish population in the area of the Congress of Poland increased sevenfold between 1816 and 1921, from around 213,000 to roughly 1,500,000.[5TOSHIBA Satellite L775D Keyboard
7] The number of Jews migrating to Poland from Ukraine and the Soviet Russia during the interwar period grew rapidly. According to the Polish national census of 1921, there were 2,845,
364 Jews living in the Second Polish Republic; but, by late 1938 that number had grown by over 16% to approximately 3,310,000. The average rate of permanent settlement was about 30,000 per annum. Acer Aspire 7739ZG Keyboard
At the same time, every year around 100,000 Jews were passing through Poland in unofficial emigration overseas. Between the end of the Polish–Soviet War and late 1938, the Jewish population of the Republic has grown by over 464,000.[58] Acer Aspire 7751 Keyboard
The newly independent Second Polish Republic had a large and vibrant Jewish minority – by the time World War II began, Poland had the largest concentration of Jews in Europe although many Polish Jews had a separate culture and ethnic identity from Catholic Poles. Acer Aspire 7751G Keyboard
Acer Aspire 7735ZG Keyboard Some authors have stated that only about 10% of Polish Jews during the interwar period could be considered "assimilated" while more than 80% could be readily recognized as Jews.[59]
According to the 1931 National Census there were 3,130,581 Polish Jews measured by the declaration of their religion. Estimating the population increase and the emigration from Poland between 1931 and 1939,
Acer Aspire 7735G Keyboard there were probably 3,474,000 Jews in Poland as of September 1, 1939 (approximately 10% of the total population) primarily centered in large and smaller cities: 77% lived in cities and 23% in the villages. They made up about 50%, and in some cases even 70% of the population of smaller towns,
especially in Eastern Poland.[60] Prior to World War II, the Jewish population of Łódź numbered about 233,000, roughly one-third of the city’s population.[61] The city of Lwów (now in Ukraine) had the third largest Jewish population in Poland, numbering 110,000 in 1939
Acer Aspire 7750G Keyboard42%). Wilno (now in Lithuania) had a Jewish community of nearly 100,000, about 45% of the city's total.[62 (
] In 1938, Krakow's Jewish population numbered over 60,000, or about 25% of the city's total population.[63] In 1939 there were 375,000 Jews in Warsaw or one third of the city's population. Only New York City had more Jewish residents than Warsaw. Acer Aspire 7730 Keyboard
The major industries in which Polish Jews were employed were manufacturing and commerce. In many areas of the country the majority of retail businesses were owned by Jews who were sometimes among the wealthiest members of their communities.[6Acer Aspire 7745 Keyboard
4] Many Jews also worked as shoemakers and tailors, as well as in the liberal professions; doctors (56% of all doctors in Poland), teachers (43%), journalists (22%) and lawyers (33%).[65]
Hanna Rovina as Leah'le in The Dybbuk
Jewish youth and religious groups, diverse political parties and Zionist organizations, newspapers and theatre flourished. Jews owned land and real estate, participated in retail and manufacturing and in the export industry. The religious beliefs spanned the range from Orthodox Hasidic Judaism to Progressive Judaism. Sony 148792611 Keyboard
Polish language instead of Yiddish was increasingly used by the young Warsaw Jews who did not have a problem in identifying themselves fully as Jews, Warsavians and Poles. Jews such as Bruno Schulz, were entering the mainstream of Polish society, though many thought of themselves as a separate nationality within Poland. Sony 148088721 Keyboard
Children were mainly enrolled in religious Jewish schools which limited their ability to speak Polish. As a result, according to the 1931 census, 79% of Jews gave Yiddish as their first language and only 12% listed Polish,
Sony 148778711 keyboard with the remaining 9% being Hebrew. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of German-born Jews of this period spoke German as their first language. During the school year of 1937–1938 there were 226 elementary schools [6Sony 141780221 Keyboard
6] and twelve high schools as well as fourteen vocational schools with either Yiddish or Hebrew as the instructional language. The YIVO (Jidiszer Wissenszaftlecher Institute) Scientific Institute was based in Wilno before transferring to New York during the war. Jewish political parties, both the Socialist General Jewish Labour Bund (The Bund),[6Sony 148084521 Keyboard
Sony 141780221 keyboard7] as well as parties of the Zionist right and left wing and religious conservative movements, were represented in the Sejm (the Polish Parliament) as well as in the regional councils.
Bolesław Leśmian
The Jewish cultural scene [68] was particularly vibrant in pre–World War II Poland with numerous Jewish publications and more than one hundred periodicals. Yiddish authors, most notably Isaac Bashevis Singer, went on to achieve international acclaim as classic Jewish writers, and in Singer's case, win the 1978 Nobel Prize.
Sony 148088721 keyboardOther Jewish authors of the period, like, Bruno Schulz, Julian Tuwim, Marian Hemar, Emanuel Schlechter, Jan Brzechwa (a favorite poet of Polish children) and Bolesław Leśmian, as well as Konrad Tom and Jerzy Jurandot were less well-known internationally, but made important
contributions to Polish literature. Singer Jan Kiepura, born of a Jewish mother and Polish father, was one of the most popular artist of that era and pre-war songs of Jewish composers like Henryk Wars, Jerzy Petersburski,
Sony 148793411 keyboardArtur Gold, Henryk Gold, Zygmunt Białostocki, Zygmunt Karasiński, Szymon Kataszek or Jakub Kagan are still widely known in Poland today. Painters became known as well for their depictions of Jewish life, like Maurycy Gottlieb Artur Markowicz, Maurycy Trebacz and younger ones like Chaim Goldberg were coming up in the ranks. Sony 148084721 Keyboard
Scientist Leopold Infeld, mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, Alfred Tarski, and professor Adam Ulam contributed to the world of science. Others are Moses Schorr, Ludwik Zamenhof – the creator of Esperanto, Georges Charpak,
Sony 148768711 keyboardSamuel Eilenberg, Emanuel Ringelblum, Artur Rubinstein just to name a few from the long list of Polish Jews who are known internationally. The term "genocide" was coined by Rafał Lemkin (1900–1959),
Sony 148968911 Keyboard a Polish-Jewish legal scholar. Leonid Hurwicz was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics. The Scientific Institute YIVO was first organized in Wilno. In Warsaw, important centers of Judaic scholarship, such the Main Judaic Library and the Institute of Judaic Studies were located,
along with numerous Talmudic Schools (Jeszybots), religious centers and synagogues, many of which were of great architectural quality. Yiddish theatre also flourished; Poland had fifteen Yiddish theatres and theatrical groups. Sony 148084811 Keyboard
Warsaw was home to the most important Yiddish theater troupe of the time, the Vilna Troupe, which staged the first performance of The Dybbuk in 1920 at the Elyseum Theatre. Some future Israeli leaders studied at University of Warsaw including Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. Sony 148084212 Keyboard
There also were several Jewish sports clubs, with some of them, such as Hasmonea Lwow and Jutrzenka Kraków, winning promotion to the Polish First Football League. A Polish-Jewish footballer, Józef Klotz, scored the first ever goal for the Poland national football team. Another athlete, Alojzy Ehrlich, won several medals in the table-tennis tournaments. Sony Vaio PCG-41111M Keyboard
[edit]Growing antisemitism
An ever-increasing proportion of Jews in interwar Poland lived separate lives from the Polish majority. In 1921, 74.2% of Polish Jews listed Yiddish or Hebrew as their native language; the number rose to 87% by 1931, Sony Vaio PCG-41112M Keyboard
resulting in growing tensions between Jews and Poles.[69] Jews were often not identified as Polish nationals; a problem caused not only by the reversal of assimilation shown in national censuses between 1921 and 1931, but also by the influx of Russian Jews escaping persecution especially in Ukraine,
where up to 2,000 pogroms took place during the Civil War and an estimated 30,000 Jews were massacred directly and a total of 150,000 died.[70][7Sony Vaio PCG-81111M Keyboard
Sony Vaio PCG-7181M Keyboard
1] A large number of Russian Jews emigrated to Poland, as they were entitled by the Peace treaty of Riga to choose the country they preferred. Several hundred thousand refugees joined the already numerous Jewish minority of the Polish Second Republic. Sony Vaio PCG-81112M Keyboard
Sony Vaio PCG-7161M Keyboard The resulting economic instability was mirrored by anti-Jewish sentiment in some of the media, discrimination, exclusion, and violence at the universities, and the appearance of "anti-Jewish squads" associated with some of the right-wing political parties. These developments contributed to a greater support among the Jewish community for Zionist and socialist ideas,[72HP Pavilion DV6-6005EA Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6006EA Battery
Sony Vaio PCG-7151M Keyboard [73] coupled with attempts at further migration, curtailed only by the British government. Notably, the "campaign for Jewish emigration was predicated not on antisemitism but on objective social and economic factors".[74] However, regardless of these changing economic and social conditions, ] Sony Vaio PCG-51512M Keyboard
the increase in antisemitic activity in prewar Poland was also typical of antisemitism found in other parts of Europe at that time, developing within a broader, continent-wide pattern with counterparts in every other European country.[75] Sony Vaio PCG-51212M Keyboard
The matters improved for a time under the rule of Józef Piłsudski (1926–1935), who opposed antisemitism. Piłsudski countered Endecja's 'ethnic assimilation' with the 'state assimilation' policy: citizens were judged by their loyalty to the state, not by their nationality.[76] The years 1926–1935 were favourably viewed by many Polish Jews, Sony Vaio PCG-51111M Keyboard
Sony Vaio PCG-7143M Keyboard whose situation improved especially under the cabinet of Pilsudski’s appointee Kazimierz Bartel.[77] However a combination of various reasons, including the Great Depression,[76] meant that the situation of Jewish Poles was never too satisfactory, HP Pavilion DV6-6051EA Battery and it deteriorated again after Piłsudski's death in May 1935, which many Jews regarded as a tragedy.[78]
The student's book of the Jewish student of medicine Marek Szapiro at the Warsaw University with "Ghetto benches" (odd-numbered seats) stamp
With the influence of the Endecja party growing, Sony Vaio PCG-51112M Keyboard
antisemitism gathered new momentum in Poland and was most felt in smaller towns and spheres in which Jews came into direct contact with Poles, such as in Polish schools or on the sports field. Further academic harassment,
Sony Vaio PCG-7154M Keyboardsuch as the introduction of ghetto benches, which forced Jewish students to sit in section of the lecture halls reserved exclusively for them, anti-Jewish riots, and semi-official or unofficial quotas (Numerus clausus) introduced in 1937 in some universities
Sony Vaio PCG-7153M Keyboard halved the number of Jews in Polish universities between independence and the late 1930s. The restrictions were so inclusive that, while Jews made up 20.4% of the student population in 1928, by 1937 their share was down to only 7.5%.[79]
Although many Jews were educated, they were excluded from most of the relevant occupations, including the government bureaucracy. A good number therefore turned to the liberal professions, particularly medicine and law.
Sony Vaio PCG-7141M Keyboard In 1937 the Catholic trade unions of Polish doctors and lawyers restricted their new members to Christian Poles (in a similar manner the Jewish trade unions excluded non-Jewish professionals from their ranks after 1918). A series of professional and trade unions, including those for lawyers and physicians, enacted "Aryan clauses" expelling Polish Jews from their ranks.[80]
Sony Vaio PCG-7144M Keyboard The bulk of Jewish workers were organized in Jewish trade unions under the influence of the Jewish Labor Bund, which recognized the special cultural needs of the Jewish population,
Sony Vaio PCG-7192M Keyboardas well as special conditions arising from official discrimination against Jews in certain professions.[81] Jews were virtually excluded from Polish government jobs during this period.[82]
Sony Vaio PCG-7194M Keyboard
Complex and long history shaped Polish attitudes towards the Jews and Jewish attitudes towards the Poles, but the anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland had reached its zenith in the years leading to the Second World War.[83] Between 1935 and 1937 seventy-nine Jews were killed and 500 injured in anti-Jewish incidents.[84
Sony Vaio PCG-7196M Keyboard] National policy was such that jobless Jews, who largely worked at home or in small shops due to discrimination in employment, were excluded from welfare benefits.[85]
Sony Vaio PCG-7195M Keyboard
Demonstration of Polish students demanding implementation of "ghetto benches" at Lwów Polytechnic (1937).
The national boycott of Jewish businesses and advocacy for their confiscation was promoted by the Endecja party, which introduced the term "Christian shop". A national movement to prevent the Jews from kosher slaughter of animals, with animal rights as the stated motivation, was also organized.[86]
Sony Vaio PCG-3C2M KeyboardViolence was also frequently aimed at Jewish stores, and many of them were looted. At the same time, persistent economic boycotts and harassment, including property-destroying riots,
Sony Vaio PCG-7171M Keyboard combined with the effects of the Great Depression that had been very severe on agricultural countries like Poland, reduced the standard of living of Poles and Polish Jews alike to the extent that by the end of the 1930s, a substantial portion of Polish Jews lived in grinding poverty.
Sony Vaio PCG-5N2M Keyboard [87] As a result, on the eve of the Second World War, the Jewish community in Poland was large and vibrant internally, yet (with the exception of a few professionals) also substantially poorer and less integrated than the Jews in most of Western Europe.[citation needed]
Sony Vaio PCG-5P1M Keyboard
The main strain of antisemitism in Poland during this time was motivated by Catholic religious beliefs and centuries-old myths such as the blood libel. This religious-based antisemitism was sometimes joined with an ultra-nationalistic stereotype of Jews as disloyal to the Polish nation.[88]
Sony Vaio PCG-5S1M Keyboard On the eve of World War II, many typical Polish Christians believed that there were far too many Jews in the country and the Polish government became increasingly concerned with the "Jewish Question". Some politicians were in favor of mass Jewish emigration from Poland. Sony Vaio PCG-51211M Keyboard
By the time of the German invasion in 1939, antisemitism was escalating, and hostility towards Jews was a mainstay of the right-wing political forces post-Piłsudski regime and also the Catholic Church. Discrimination and violence against Jews had rendered the Polish Jewish population increasingly destitute,
Sony PCG-5T2M Keyboard as was the case throughout much of Central and Eastern Europe. Despite the impending threat to the Polish Republic from Nazi Germany, there was little effort seen in the way of reconciliation with Poland's Jewish population. In July 1939 the pro-government Gazeta Polska wrote,
Sony PCG-5T1M Keyboard "The fact that our relations with the Reich are worsening does not in the least deactivate our program in the Jewish question—there is not and cannot be any common ground between our internal Jewish problem and Poland's relations with the Hitlerite Reich."[89][90]
Sony PCG-5R2M KeyboardEscalating hostility towards Polish Jews and an official Polish government desire to remove Jews from Poland continued until the German invasion of Poland.[91] Sony Vaio PCG-3F1M Keyboard
Graves of Jewish soldiers who died in September Campaign
The number of Jews in Poland on September 1, 1939 amounted to about 3,474,000 people.[92] One hundred thirty thousand soldiers of Jewish descent served in the Polish Army at the outbreak of the Second World War,[9
Sony PCG-5P2m Keyboard3] thus being among the first to launch armed resistance against the Nazi Germany.[94] It is estimated that during the entirety of World War II as many as 32,216 Polish-Jewish soldiers and officers died and 61,000 were taken prisoner by the Germans; the majority did not survive.
Sony PCG-61212M KeyboardThe soldiers and non-commissioned officers who were released ultimately found themselves in the Nazi ghettos and labor camps and suffered the same fate as other Jewish civilians in the ensuing Holocaust in Poland.
In 1939 Jews constituted 30% of Warsaw's population.[95] With the coming of the war, Jewish and Polish citizens of Warsaw jointly defended the city, putting their differences aside.[95] Polish Jews later served in almost all Polish formations during the entire World War II, Sony Vaio PCG-3H1M Keyboard
many were killed or wounded and very many were decorated for their combat skills and exceptional service. Jews fought with the Polish Armed Forces in the West, in the Soviet formed Polish People's Army as well as in several underground organizations and as part of Polish partisan units or Jewish partisan formations.[96] Sony Vaio PCG-3J1M Keyboard
[edit]Territories annexed by the USSR (1939–1941)
Main article: Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union
On August 23,
1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany entered into a Nonaggression Pact, the so-called Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact with a secret protocol providing the partition of Poland. Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939 and the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939. In the newly-partitioned Poland,
Sony Vaio PCG-71312M Keyboard 61.2% of Polish Jews found themselves under German occupation while 38.8% were in the Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union. Based on population migration from West to East during and after the Invasion of Poland the percentage of Jews in the Soviet-occupied areas was probably higher than that of the 1931 census. Sony Vaio PCG-3C1M Keyboard
The Soviet annexation was accompanied by the widespread arrests of government officials, police, military personnel, border guards, teachers, priests, judges etc., followed by executions and massive deportation to the Soviet interior or forced labour camps where, as a result of the harsh conditions, many people died.
Sony Vaio PCG-71212M KeyboardOf the approximately 1.450 million Polish citizens living in the region deported by the Soviets, 63.1% were ethnic Poles but Jews represented 7.4% of all the prisoners.
Jewish refugees from Western Poland who registered for repatriation back to the German zone (people in the Soviet occupation zone had little knowledge of what was going on in the German occupation zone since the Soviet media did not report on their Nazi ally's misdeeds), wealthy Jewish capitalists,
Sony Vaio PCG-71211M Keyboard prewar political and social activists were labelled "class enemies" and deported for that reason. Jews caught for illegal border crossings or engaged in illicit trade and other "illegal" activities were also arrested and deported. Several thousand, mostly captured Polish soldiers, were executed on the spot; some of them were Jewish. Sony Vaio PCG-3E1M Keyboard
All private property and, crucial to Jewish economic life, private businesses were nationalized, political activity was illegal and thousands of people were jailed, many of whom were later executed. Zionism,
Sony Vaio PCG-61211M Keyboardwhich was designated by the Soviets as counter-revolutionary was also forbidden. Within one day all Polish and Jewish media was shut down and replaced by the new Soviet press, which conducted mainly political propaganda but also was attacking religion, including the Jewish faith. Sony Vaio PCG-3G2M Keyboard Synagogues and Churches were not yet closed but heavily taxed. The Soviet ruble of little value was immediately equalized to the much higher Polish zloty and by the end of 1939, zloty was abolished.[97] Sony PCG-7181M Keyboard
Most economic activity was subject to central planning and restrictions and a lot of private property nationalized. Because Jewish communities tended to rely on commerce and small scale businesses,
Sony PCG-7171M Keyboardthe nationalization affected some of them to a greater degree than the general populace. The Soviet system resulted in different economic arrangements which were characterized by low wages and frequent shortages of goods and materials. As a result, Jews, like many other inhabitants of the region, saw a fall in their living standards.[98] Sony PCG-7182M Keyboard
Under Soviet policy, Poles were denied access to positions in the civil service and former Polish senior officials and notable members of the community were arrested and exiled to remote regions of Russia together with their families.[99]
Sony PCG-7186M Keyboard [100] At the same time the Soviet authorities encouraged Jews to fill in the newly emptied government and civil service jobs.[98] Sony PCG-7183M Keyboard
While most Poles of all ethnicities had anti-Soviet and anti-communist sentiments, a portion of the Jewish population, along with ethnic Belorussians, Ukrainians and few communist Poles had initially welcomed invading Soviet forces.[101]
Sony PCG-7185M Keyboard [102][103] The general feeling amongst Polish Jews was a sense of relief in having escaped the dangers of falling under Nazi rule, as well as from the overt policies of discrimination against Jews which had existed in the Polish state, including discrimination in education, employment and commerce, as well as antisemitic violence that in some cases reached pogrom levels.[104][105] Sony PCG-7184M Keyboard The Polish poet and former communist Aleksander Wat has stated that Jews were more inclined to cooperate with the Soviets [106][107] Norman Davies claimed that among the informers and collaborators, the percentage of Jews was striking, and they prepared lists of Polish "class enemies",[106] Sony VGN-NR11M/S Keyboard
while other historians have indicated that the level of Jewish collaboration could well have been less than that of ethnic Poles.[108] Holocaust scholar Martin Dean has written that "few local Jews obtained positions of power under Soviet rule."[109] Sony VGN-NR11S/S Keyboard
Sony VPCF23S1E Keyboard
The issue of Jewish collaboration with the Soviet occupation remains controversial. Some scholars note that while not pro-communist, many Jews saw the Soviets as the lesser threat compared to the German Nazis. Sony VGN-NR11Z/S Keyboard
Sony VPCF231S1E Keyboard They stress that stories of Jews welcoming the Soviets on the streets, vividly remembered by many Poles from eastern part of the country are impressionistic and not reliable indicators of the level of Jewish support for the Soviets. Additionally, Sony VGN-NR11Z/T Keyboard
it has been noted that some ethnic Poles were as prominent as Jews in filling civil and police positions in the occupation administration, and that Jews, both civilians and in the Polish military, suffered equally at the hands of the Soviet occupiers.[110] Whatever initial enthusiasm for the Soviet occupation
Sony VPCF23Q1E Keyboard Jews might have felt was soon dissipated upon feeling the impact of the suppression of Jewish societal modes of life by the occupiers.[11Sony VGN-NR21E/S Keyboard
Sony VPCF23M1E Keyboard1] The tensions between ethnic Poles and Jews as a result of this period has, according to some historians, taken a toll on relations between Poles and Jews throughout the war, creating until this day, an impasse to Polish-Jewish rapprochement.[103] Sony VGN-NR21J/S Keyboard
Even though only a small percentage of the Jewish community had been members of the Communist Party of Poland during the interwar era, they had occupied an influential and conspicuous place in the party's leadership and in the rank and file in major centres, such as Warsaw,
Sony VPCF22S8E KeyboardLodz and Lwow. A larger number of younger Jews, often through the pro-Marxist Bund or some Zionist groups, were sympathetic to Communism and Soviet Russia, both of which had been enemies of the Polish Second Republic. Sony VGN-NR21S/S Keyboard
As a result of these factors they found it easy after 1939 to participate in the Soviet occupation administration in Eastern Poland, and briefly occupied prominent positions in industry, schools, local government, police and other Soviet-installed institutions. The concept of "Judeo-communism" was reinforced during the period of the Soviet occupation (see Żydokomuna).[112][113]
Sony VPCF22S1E Keyboard
There were also Jews who demonstrated loyalty toward Poland, assisting Poles during brutal Soviet occupation. Among thousands Polish officers killed by the Soviet NKVD in the Katyń massacre there were 500–600 Jews.
Sony VPCF22M1E Keyboard From 1939 to 1941 between 100,000 and 300,000 Polish Jews were deported from Soviet-occupied Polish territory into the Soviet Union. Some of them, especially Polish Communists (e.g. Jakub Berman),
Sony VPCF22L1E Keyboardmoved voluntarily; however, most of them were forcibly deported or imprisoned in Gulag. Small numbers of Polish Jews (about 6,000) were able to leave the Soviet Union in 1942 with the Władysław Anders army, among them the future Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin.
Sony VPCF22J1E KeyboardDuring the Polish army's II Corps' stay in the British Mandate of Palestine, 67% (2,972) of the Jewish soldiers deserted to settle in Palestine, and many joined the Irgun. General Anders decided not to prosecute the deserters and emphasized that the Jewish soldiers who remained in the Force fought bravely.[
Sony VPC-F21Z1E Keyboard114] Cemetery of Polish soldiers who died during the Battle of Monte Cassino contains also headstones bearing a Star of David. Sony VGN-NR21S/T Keyboard
The Polish Jewish community suffered the most in the Holocaust. About six million Polish citizens perished during the war,[115] half of them (three million) Polish Jews—all but about 300,000 of the Jewish population—who were killed at the German Nazi extermination camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec,
Sony VPC-F2 KeyboardSobibór, Chełmno or died of starvation in ghettos.[116]
Poland was where the German Nazi program for the extermination of Jews, the "Final Solution" was implemented, since this was where the majority of Europe's Jews lived at the time (excluding the Soviet Union).[117]
Sony VPC-F115FG/B Keyboard
In 1939 several hundred synagogues were blown up or burnt by the Germans who sometimes forced the Jews to do it themselves.[
Sony VPCF11S1E/B Keyboard2] In many cases Germans turned the synagogues into factories, places of entertainment, swimming-pools or prisons.[92] By the end of the war, almost all of the synagogues in Poland have been destroyed.[118] rabbis were ordered to dance and sing in public with their beards cut or torn. Some rabbis were set on fire or hanged.[92]
Jewish children in the Ghetto
Germans ordered registration of all Jews and a word “Jude” was stamped in their identity cards.[119] Numerous restrictions and prohibitions targeting Jews were introduced and brutally enforced.[120
Sony VPCF11D4E Keyboard] For example, Jews were forbidden to walk on the sidewalks, use public transport, enter places of leisure, sports arenas, theaters, museums and libraries.[121] On the street, Jews had to lift their hat to passing Germans.[122] By the end of 1941 all Jews in German-occupied Poland, except the children, had to wear an identifying badge with a blue Star of David.[123]
Sony VPCF11C5E Keyboard The Germans made almost no attempt to set up a collaborationist government in Poland,[124][125][126] Sony VPCF11C4E/B Keyboard "disappointed that Poles refused to collaborate",[127] nevertheless, Polish language rags run by them routinely published antisemitic articles that urged local people to adopt an attitude of indifference towards the Jews.[128] Sony VPCF11S1E Keyboard
Following Operation Barbarossa, many Jews in what was then Eastern Poland fell victim to Nazi death squads called Einsatzgruppen, which massacred Jews, especially in 1941. Some of these German-inspired massacres were carried out with help from, or active participation of Poles themselves: for example, Sony VPCF11C4E/B Keyboard
the massacre in Jedwabne, in which between 300 (Institute of National Remembrance's Final Findings[129]) and 1,600 Jews (Jan T. Gross) were tortured and beaten to death by members of the local population.
Sony VPCF13M0E/B KeyboardThe full extent of Polish participation in the massacres of the Polish Jewish community remains a controversial subject, in part due to Jewish leaders' refusal to allow the remains of the Jewish victims to be exhumed and their cause of death to be properly established.
Sony VPCF13Z0E/B Keyboard The Polish Institute for National Remembrance identified twenty-two other towns that had pogroms similar to Jedwabne.[130] The reasons for these massacres are still debated,
Sony VPCF13M8E/B Keyboard but they included antisemitism, resentment over alleged cooperation with the Soviet invaders in the Polish-Soviet War and during the 1939 invasion of the Kresy regions, greed for the possessions of the Jews, and of course coercion by the Nazis to participate in such massacres. Sony VPCF11Z1E/BI Keyboard
Some historians have written of the negative attitudes of some Poles towards persecuted Jews during the Holocaust.[131] While members of Catholic clergy risked their lives to assist Jews, these efforts were made in the face of strong antisemitic attitudes from the Polish Catholic Church hierarchy.[132][13
Sony VPCF12M0E/B Keyboard3] Anti-Jewish attitudes also existed in the London-based Polish Government in Exile.[134]
Holocaust survivors's views of Polish behavior during the War span a wide range, depending on the personal experiences of the person. Some are very negative, based on the view of Christian Poles as passive witnesses who failed to act and aid the Jews as they were being persecuted or liquidated by the Nazi Germans.[135Sony VPCF12E1E/H Keyboard
Sony VPCF12S1E/B Keyboard] Poles, who were also victims of Nazi crimes,[136] were often afraid for their and their family's lives themselves and this fear prevented many of them from giving aid and assistance, even if some of them felt sympathy for the Jews. Emanuel Ringelblum, a Polish-Jewish historian of the Warsaw Ghetto, Sony VPCF12F4E/H Keyboard
wrote in 1944 in his Polish-Jewish Relations during the Second World War of the indifferent and sometimes joyful responses in Warsaw to the destruction of Polish Jews in the Ghetto.[137] However despite that, as another scholar (Gunnar S. Paulsson) Sony VPCF12M1E/H Keyboard
Sony VPCF13E4E Keyboard
Sony VPCF12Z1E Keyboard in his work on the Jews of Warsaw has demonstrated, Polish citizens of Warsaw managed to support and hide the same percentage of Jews as did the citizens of cities in Western European countries.[15] Sony VPCF13E8E Keyboard
[edit]Ghettos and death camps
The German Nazis established six extermination camps throughout Poland by 1942. All of these – at Chelmno (Kulmhof), Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz (Oswiecim) – were located on the rail network so that the victims could be easily transported to them. The system of camps was expanded over the course of the German occupation of Poland and their purposes were diversified; Sony VPCF13J0E/H Keyboard
Sony VPCF13S0E/B Keyboard some served as transit camps, some as forced labor camps and some as death camps. While in the death camps, the victims were usually killed shortly after arrival, in the other camps able-bodied Jews were worked and beaten to death.[138] Sony VPCF1318E/H Keyboard
The operation of concentration camps depended on Kapos, collaborator-prisoners. Some of these Kapos were Jewish themselves, and their prosecution after the war created an ethical dilemma.[139] Sony VPCF13M1E/B Keyboard
Jewish Ghettos in German occupied Poland and Eastern Europe
Between October 1939 and July 1942 a system of ghettos was imposed for the confinement of Jews.
Sony VPCF13S1E/B KeyboardThe Warsaw Ghetto was the largest in all of World War II, with 380,000 people crammed into an area of 1.3 square miles. The Łódź Ghetto was the second largest, holding about 160,000. Other Polish cities with large Jewish ghettos included Białystok (Białystok Ghetto), Częstochowa,
Sony VPCF22M0E Keyboard Kielce, Kraków (Kraków Ghetto), Lublin, Lwów (Lviv Ghetto), and Radom. Ghettos were also established in hundreds of smaller settlements. Living conditions in the Ghettos, most hermetically sealed and without ability to leave, were terrible. Overcrowding, dirt, lice, lethal epidemics such as typhoid and hunger resulted in countless deaths. Sony VPCF11C4E/B Keyboard
Further information: Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
Announcement of death penalty for Jews captured outside the Ghetto and for Poles helping Jews, November 1941
Many Jews tried to escape from the ghetto in the hope of finding a place to hide outside of it, or of joining the partisan units. When this proved difficult escapees often returned to the ghetto on their own. If caught,
Sony VPCY21S1E/G KeyboardGermans would murder the escapees and leave their bodies in plain view as a warning to others. Despite these terror tactics attempts at escape from ghettos continued up until their liquidation.[140]
Sony VPCY21S1E/L Keyboard
Since Nazi terror reigned throughout the Aryan districts, the chances of remaining successfully hidden undoubtedly depended on a fluent knowledge of the language and on having close ties with the community.
Sony VPCF23N1E Keyboard Many Poles were not willing to hide Jews who might have escaped the ghettos or who might have been in hiding due to fear for their own life and that of their family. The Germans would often murder non-Jewish Poles for small misdemeanors and execution for help rendered to Jews,
Sony VPCF23P1E Keyboard even the most basic kinds, was automatic. Poles often refused to help, but the general reason for that was that they feared for their own lives since in any apartment block or area where Jews were found to be harboured, everybody in the house would be immediately shot by the Germans.
Sony VPCF24Q1E KeyboardWhile the German policy towards Jews was ruthless and criminal, their policy towards Christian Poles who helped Jews was very much the same. Thousands of non-Jewish Poles were executed for helping Jews.[141] Sony VPCF13Z8E Keyboard
Hiding in a Christian society to which the Jews were only partially assimilated was a daunting task.[142] They needed to quickly acquire not only a new identity, but a new body of knowledge.[14
Sony VPCF21Z1E/BI Keyboard2] Many Jews spoke Polish with an accent, used different nonverbal language, different gestures and facial expressions. Jews with the specific physical characteristics were particularly vulnerable.[142]
Sony VPCF13M1E/H Keyboard
Some individuals took advantage of a hiding person's desperation by collecting money, then reneging on their promise of aid — or worse, turning them over to the Germans for an additional reward. Individuals who turned in Jews in hiding to the Gestapo received a standard payment consisting of some cash, liquor, sugar and cigarettes. Sony VPCF13Z8E/BI Keyboard
Many Jews were robbed and handed over to the Germans by "szmalcownik"s many of whom practiced blackmail as an "occupation". Those criminals were condemned by the Polish Underground State and Sony VPCF12S1E/B Keyboard
a fight against these informers was organized by Armia Krajowa (Underground State's military arm), with the death sentence being meted out on a scale unknown in the occupied countries of Western Europe.[143]
Janusz Korczak's orphanage
The belief that the experienced suffering was preordained and that it would result in the coming of the Messiah also existed among some religious Jews.[144] Sony Vaio PCG-41112L Keyboard
To discourage Poles from giving shelter to Jews, the Germans often searched houses and introduced ruthless penalties. Poland was the only occupied country during World War II where the Nazis formally imposed the death penalty[145] for anybody found sheltering and helping Jews.[146][147] Sony Vaio PCG-51311L Keyboard
The penalty applied not only to the person who did the helping, but also extended to his or her family, neighbors and sometimes to an entire village.[14Sony Vaio PCG-51312L Keyboard
8] In this way Germans applied the principle of collective responsibility whose purpose was to encourage neighbors to inform on each other in order to avoid punishment. The nature of these policies was widely known and visibly publicized by the Nazis who sought to terrorize the Polish population. Sony Vaio PCG-51411L Keyboard
Food rations for Poles were very small (669 kcal per day in 1941) and black market prices of food were high, factors which made it difficult to hide people and almost impossible to hide entire families, especially in the cities. Despite these draconian measures imposed by the Nazis, Poland has the highest number of Righteous Among The Nations awards at the Yad Vashem Museum (6,339).[149]
The Polish Government in Exile was the first (in November 1942) to reveal the existence of Nazi-run concentration camps and the systematic extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, through its courier Jan Karski[
Sony Vaio PCG-71315L Keyboard 150] and through the activities of Witold Pilecki, a member of Armia Krajowa who was the only person to volunteer for imprisonment in Auschwitz and who organized a resistance movement inside the camp itself.[151] Sony Vaio PCG-51412L Keyboard
One of the Jewish members of the National Council of the Polish government in exile, Szmul Zygielbojm, committed suicide to protest the indifference of the Allied governments in the face of the Holocaust in Poland. The Polish government in exile was also the only government to set up an organization (Żegota) specifically aimed at helping the Jews in Poland. Sony Vaio PCG-51111L Keyboard
Deportation to Treblinka at the Umschlagplatz
The Warsaw Ghetto[152] and its 1943 Uprising represents what is likely the most known episode of the wartime history of the Polish Jews. The ghetto was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, Sony Vaio PCG-51113L Keyboard
1940. Initially, almost 140,000 Jews were moved into the ghetto from all parts of Warsaw. At the same time approximately 110,000 Poles had been forcibly evicted from the area. The Germans selected Adam Czerniakow to take charge of the Jewish Council called Judenrat made up of 24 Jewish men ordered to organize Jewish labor battalions as well as Jewish Ghetto Police which would be responsible for maintaining order within the Ghetto walls.[153]
Sony Vaio PCG-71314L Keyboard 154] A number of Jewish policemen were corrupt and immoral. Soon the Nazis demanded even more from the Judenrat and the demands were much more cruel. Death was the punishment for the slightest indication of noncompliance by the Judenrat.
Sony Vaio PCG-71313L Keyboard Sometimes the Judenrat refused to collaborate in which case its members were consequently executed and replaced by the new group of people. Adam Czerniakow
Sony Vaio PCG-71312L Keyboard who was the head of the Warsaw Judenrat committed suicide [155] when he was forced to collect daily lists of Jews to be deported to Treblinka extermination camp at the onset of Grossaktion Warsaw. Sony Vaio PCG-51211L Keyboard
The population of the ghetto reached 380,000 people by the end of 1940, about 30% of the population of Warsaw.
Sony Vaio PCG-71213L Keyboard However, the size of the Ghetto was only about 2.4% of the size of the city. The Germans closed off the Ghetto from the outside world, building a wall around it on November 16, 1940.
Sony Vaio PCG-71212L Keyboard During the next year and a half, Jews from smaller cities and villages were brought into the Warsaw Ghetto, while diseases (especially typhoid) and starvation kept the inhabitants at about the same number. Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw were limited to 253 kcal,
Sony Vaio PCG-71211L Keyboard and 669 kcal for Poles, as opposed to 2,613 kcal for Germans. On July 22, 1942, the mass deportation of the Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants began. During the next fifty-two days (until September 12, 1942) about 300,000 people were transported by freight train to the Treblinka extermination camp.
Sony Vaio PCG-61313L Keyboard The deportations were carried out by fifty German SS soldiers, 200 soldiers of the Latvian Schutzmannschaften Battalions, 200 Ukrainian Police,[156] and 2,500 Jewish Ghetto Police. Employees of the Judenrat, including the Ghetto Police,[157] along with their families and relatives,
were spared from deportations until September 1942 in return for their cooperation. Jewish Ghetto policemen were ordered to personally "deliver" ghetto inhabitants to the Umschlagplatz train station, but afterwards shared their fate. On January 18, 1943, a group of Ghetto militants led by the right leaning ŻZW,
Sony Vaio PCG-61311L Keyboard including some members of the left leaning ŻOB rose up in a first Warsaw uprising. Both organizations resisted, with arms, German attempts for additional deportations to Auschwitz and Treblinka.[158] The final destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto came four months later after the crushing of one of the most heroic and tragic battles of the war, the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 saw the destruction of what remained of the Ghetto
Ghetto fighters memorial in Warsaw build in 1948, sculpturer: Natan Rappaport
When we invaded the Ghetto for the first time – wrote SS commander Jürgen Stroop – the Jews and the Polish bandits succeeded in repelling the participating units, including tanks and armored cars, by a well-prepared concentration of fire.
Sony Vaio PCG-61511L Keyboard (...) The main Jewish battle group, mixed with Polish bandits, had already retired during the first and second day to the so-called Muranowski Square. There, it was reinforced by a considerable number of Polish bandits. Its plan was to hold the Ghetto by every means in order to prevent us from invading it. — Jürgen Stroop, Stroop Report, 1943.[159][160][161]
The Uprising was led by ŻOB (Jewish Combat Organization) and the ŻZW.[158][162] The ŻZW (Jewish Military Union) was the better supplied in arms.[158] The ŻOB had more than 750 fighters, but lacked weapons:
Sony Vaio PCG-81411L Keyboard they had only 9 rifles, 59 pistols and several grenades.[144] A developed network of bunkers and fortifications were formed. The Jewish fighters also received support from the Polish Underground (Armia Krajowa). Sony Vaio PCG-51511L Keyboard
The German forces, which included 2,842 Nazi soldiers and 7,000 security personnel, were not capable of crushing the Jewish resistance in open street combat and after several days,
Sony Vaio PCG-81312L Keyboard decided to switch strategy by setting buildings on fire in which the Jewish fighters hid. The commander of the ŻOB, Mordechai Anielewicz died fighting on May 8, 1943 at the organization's command centre on 18 Mila Street. Sony Vaio PCG-51513L Keyboard
It took the Germans twenty-seven days to put down the uprising, after some very heavy fighting. The German general Jürgen Stroop, in his report, stated that his troops had killed 6,065 Jewish fighters during the battle.
After the uprising was already over, Heinrich Himmler had the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Square (outside the ghetto) destroyed as a celebration of German victory and a symbol that the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw was no longer. Sony Vaio PCG-81113L Keyboard
A group of fighters escaped from the ghetto through the sewers and reached the Lomianki forest. About 50 ghetto fighters were saved by the Polish "People's Guard" and later formed their own partisan group, named after Anielewicz.
Sony Vaio PCG-81214L Keyboard Even after the end of the uprising there were still several hundreds of Jews who continued living in the ruined ghetto. Many of them survived thanks to the contacts they managed to establish with Poles outside the ghetto. Sony Vaio PCG-81114L Keyboard
34 Mordechaj Anielewicz Street, Warsaw, Poland
The Uprising inspired Jews throughout Poland. Many Jewish leaders who survived the liquidation continued underground work outside the ghetto. They hid other Jews, forged necessary documents and were active in the Polish underground in other parts of Warsaw and surrounding area. Sony Vaio PCG-81115L Keyboard
Freed prisoners of Gęsiówka and the Szare Szeregi fighters after the liberation of the camp in August 1944
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, was followed by other Ghetto uprisings in many smaller towns and cities across German occupied Poland. Many Jews were found alive in the ruins of the former Warsaw Ghetto during the 1944 general Warsaw Uprising when the Poles themselves rose up against the Germans. Sony Vaio PCG-5J1L Keyboard
Some of the survivors of 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, still held in camps at or near Warsaw, were freed during 1944 Warsaw Uprising, led by the Polish resistance movement Armia Krajowa, and immediately joined Polish fighters. Only a few of them survived. The Polish commander of one Jewish unit,
Sony Vaio PCG-5T4L Keyboard Waclaw Micuta, described them as some of the best fighters, always at the front line. It is estimated that over 2,000 Polish Jews, some as well known as Marek Edelman or Icchak Cukierman, and several dozen Greek,[163] Hungarian or even German Jews freed by Armia Krajowa from
Sony Vaio PCG-5T3L Keyboard Gesiowka concentration camp in Warsaw, men and women, took part in combat against Nazis during 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Some 166,000 people lost their lives in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, including perhaps as many as 17,000 Polish Jews who had either fought with the AK
Sony Vaio PCG-5T2L Keyboard or had been discovered in hiding (see: Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński and Stanisław Aronson). Warsaw was razed to the ground by the Germans and more than 150,000 Poles were sent to labor or concentration camps. On January 17, 1945, the Soviet Army entered destroyed and nearly uninhabited Warsaw. Some 300 Jews were found hiding in the ruins in the Polish part
Sony Vaio PCG-5T1L Keyboard of the city (see: Wladyslaw Szpilman).
The fate of the Warsaw Ghetto was similar to that of the other ghettos in which Jews were concentrated.
Sony Vaio PCG-5S3L Keyboard With the decision of Nazi Germany to begin the Final Solution, the destruction of the Jews of Europe, Aktion Reinhard began in 1942, with the opening of the extermination camps of Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka, followed by Auschwitz-Birkenau where people were killed in gas chambers and mass executions (death wall).[164] Many died from hunger, starvation,
Sony Vaio PCG-5S2L Keyboard disease, torture or by pseudo-medical experiments. The mass deportation of Jews from ghettos to these camps, such as happened at the Warsaw Ghetto, soon followed, and more than 1.7 million Jews were killed at the Aktion Reinhard camps by October 1943 alone.
[edit]Białystok Ghetto and uprising
Main article: Białystok Ghetto
Further information: Białystok Ghetto Uprising
In August 1941,
Sony Vaio PCG-5R2L Keyboard the Germans ordered the establishment of a ghetto in Białystok. About 50,000 Jews from the city and the surrounding region were confined in a small area of Białystok. The ghetto had two sections, divided by the Biala River. Most Jews in the Białystok ghetto worked in forced-labor projects, primarily in large textile factories located within the ghetto boundaries.
Sony Vaio PCG-5R1L Keyboard The Germans also sometimes used Jews in forced-labor projects outside the ghetto.
In February 1943, approximately 10,000 Białystok Jews were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. During the deportations, hundreds of Jews, mainly those deemed too weak or sick to travel, were killed.
In August 1943, the Germans mounted an operation to destroy the Białystok ghetto. German forces and local police auxiliaries surrounded the ghetto and began to round up Jews systematically for deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp. Approximately 7,600 Jews were held in a central transit camp in the city before deportation to Treblinka. Those deemed fit to work were sent to the Majdanek camp. In Majdanek, Sony Vaio PCG-5J2L Keyboard
after another screening for ability to work, they were transported to the Poniatowa, Blizyn, or Auschwitz camps. Those deemed too weak to work were murdered at Majdanek. More than 1,000 Jewish children were sent first to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Bohemia, and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were killed.
On August 15, 1943, the Białystok Ghetto Uprising began, and several hundred Polish Jews and members of the Anti-Fascist Military Organisation (Polish: Antyfaszystowska Organizacja Bojowa) started an armed struggle against the German troops who were carrying out the planned liquidation
Sony Vaio PCG-5N2L Keyboard and deportation of the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp.[165][166] The guerrillas were armed with only one machine gun, several dozen pistols, Molotov cocktails and bottles filled with acid. The fighting in isolated pockets of resistance lasted for several days,
Sony Vaio PCG-5G3L Keyboard but the defence was broken almost instantly. As with the earlier Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943, the Białystok uprising had no chances for military success, but it was the second largest ghetto uprising, after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Several dozen guerrillas managed
Sony Vaio PCG-5G2L Keyboard to break through to the forests surrounding Białystok where they joined the partisan units of Armia Krajowa and other organisations and survived the war.
Between 40,000 and 100,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust in Poland by hiding or by joining the Polish or Soviet partisan units.
Sony Vaio PCG-5G1L Keyboard Another 50,000–170,000 were repatriated from the Soviet Union and 20,000–40,000 from Germany and other countries. At its postwar peak, there were 180,000–240,000 Jews in Poland mostly in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, Wrocław and Lower Silesia, e.g., Legnica, Dzierżoniów and Bielawa.[167] Sony Vaio PCG-5K1L Keyboard
The character of Poland had changed however. In spite of the major Polish contribution to World War II, Poland was placed under direct Soviet control due to British and US dependence on the Soviet
Sony Vaio PCG-5L3L Keyboard military commitment to the defeat of Hitler and Franklin D. Roosevelt's unwillingness to confront Stalin over his future plans for Poland. Soviet style communism was established and the borders of Poland were moved west. Sony Vaio PCG-5K2L Keyboard
Sony Vaio PCG-5L2L Keyboard The Soviet Union annexed the eastern regions, which had many ethnic minorities including Jewish shtetl communities.
The Jewish survivors found it practically impossible to reconstruct their earlier lives as they were before in pre-war Poland.[168]
Sony Vaio PCG-7133L Keyboard Jewish communities and rich Jewish life ceased to exist. People who somehow survived the Holocaust and who returned to their town or villages often discovered that their homes had been looted or destroyed. Some homes had new repatriated inhabitants who at times were very unhappy to see returning Jewish survivors.
Jewish Holocaust survivors awaiting transportation to the British Mandate of Palestine
Polish Jews began to leave Poland soon after the Second World War ended for a variety of reasons.[169
] Many left because Poland became a communist country they did not want to live in, or because all private property had been confiscated by the new communist government. Some left because they did not want to live where their family members were murdered and instead chose to live
Sony Vaio PCG-7113L Keyboard with relatives in different countries. Many wanted to go to British Mandate of Palestine, soon to be the new state of Israel, especially after Gen. Spychalski signed a decree allowing Jews to leave Poland without visas or exit permits.[24Sony Vaio PCG-7192L Keyboard
Sony Vaio PCG-7112L Keyboard ] Yet others left because many Poles viewed Jews with hostility due to antisemitic prejudice.
Anti-Jewish riots broke out in several Polish cities and hundreds of Jews were murdered in anti-Jewish violence (see: Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944-1946).[170] The best-known case is the Kielce pogrom of 1946,
Sony Vaio PCG-7111L Keyboard [171] in which thirty-seven Jews were brutally murdered. Kielce antisemitic riot, amidst the raging civil war in postwar Poland,[172] discouraged many survivors from rebuilding their lives there and convinced them to emigrate. Sony Vaio PCG-7173L Keyboard
Irrespective of their status, the communist government's response to the Kielce atrocities was rapid.[173] Special investigators were dispatched and military tribunals formed.[173] Acitivities of the local authorities were investigated.[173
] However, only the local commander of Milicja Obywatelska was found guilty of inaction.[173] Nine direct participants of the pogrom were sentenced to death; three were given lengthy prison sentences.[173] Debate in Poland continues today whether the murderers were leftists or rightists. Who inspired the killings is not agreed upon or known. Sony Vaio PCG-7172L Keyboard
Between 1945 and 1948, 100,000–120,000 Jews left Poland. Their departure was largely organized by the Zionist activists in Poland such as Adolf Berman and Icchak Cukierman under the umbrella of a semi-clandestine organization Berihah ("Flight").[1
Sony Vaio PCG-7154L Keyboard 74] Berihah was also responsible for the organized emigration of Jews from Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia totaling 250,000 (including Poland) Holocaust survivors.
A second wave of Jewish emigration (50,000) took place during the liberalization of the communist regime between 1957 and 1959. After 1967's Six Day War, in which the Soviet Union supported the Arab side, the Polish communist party adopted an anti-Jewish course of action which in the years 1968–69 provoked the last mass migration of Jews from Poland.[169] Sony Vaio PCG-7174L Keyboard
The Bund took part in the post-war elections of 1947 on a common ticket with the (non-communist) Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and gained its first and only parliamentary seat in its Polish history, plus several seats in municipal councils. Under pressure from Soviet-installed communist authorities,
Sony Vaio PCG-7152L Keyboard the Bund's leaders 'voluntarily' disbanded the party in 1948–1949 against the opposition of many activists. Stalinist Poland was basically governed by the Soviet NKVD which was against the renewal of Jewish religious and even cultural life. Sony Vaio PCG-7181L Keyboard
In the years 1948–49 all remaining Jewish schools were nationalized by the communists and Yiddish was replaced with Polish as a language of teaching.
For those Polish Jews who remained,
Sony Vaio PCG-7171L Keyboard the rebuilding of Jewish life in Poland was carried out between October 1944 and 1950 by the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów Polskich, CKŻP) which provided legal, educational, social care, cultural, and propaganda services. A countrywide Jewish Religious Community, led by Dawid Kahane, who served as chief rabbi of the Polish Armed Forces,
Sony Vaio PCG-7185L Keyboard functioned between 1945 and 1948 until it was absorbed by the CKŻP. Eleven independent political Jewish parties, of which eight were legal, existed until their dissolution during 1949–50.
Sony Vaio PCG-7184L Keyboard Hospitals and schools were opened in Poland by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and ORT to provide service to Jewish communities.[175] Some Jewish cultural institutions were established including the Yiddish State Theater founded in 1950 and directed by Ida Kaminska, Sony Vaio PCG-7182L Keyboard
Sony Vaio PCG-7183L Keyboard the Jewish Historical Institute, an academic institution specializing in the research of the history and culture of the Jews in Poland, and the Yiddish newspaper Folks-Shtime ("People's Voice").Sony Vaio PCG-3G1L Keyboard
Following liberalization after Joseph Stalin's death, in this 1958–59 period, 50,000 Jews emigrated to Israel.[8] A significant number of Polish communists were of Jewish descent and actively participated in the establishment of the communist regime in the People's Republic of Poland. Between 1944 and 1956,
Sony Vaio PCG-3D4L Keyboard they held, among others, prominent posts in the Politburo of the Polish United Worker's Party (e.g., Jakub Berman, Hilary Minc– responsible for establishing a Communist-style economy), and the security apparatus Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (UB) and in diplomacy/intelligence.
Sony Vaio PCG-3D3L Keyboard After 1956, during the process of destalinisation in Poland under Władysław Gomułka's regime, some Urząd Bezpieczeństwa officials including Roman Romkowski (born Natan Grunsapau-Kikiel), Jacek Różański (born Jozef Goldberg), and Anatol Fejgin were prosecuted for "power abuses" including the torture of Polish anti-communists (among them, Witold Pilecki),
Sony Vaio PCG-3B4L Keyboard and sentenced to long prison terms. A UB official, Józef Światło, (born Izaak Fleichfarb), after escaping in 1953 to the West, exposed through Radio Free Europe the methods of the UB which led to its dissolution in 1954. Sony Vaio PCG-3G3L Keyboard
Solomon Morel a member of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland and commandant of the Stalinist era Zgoda labour camp, fled Poland for Israel to escape prosecution for genocide. Helena Wolińska-Brus (born Fajga Mindla Danielak), Sony Vaio PCG-3G5L Keyboard
a former Stalinist prosecutor, who emigrated to England in the late '60s, was fighting being extradited to Poland on charges related to the execution of a Second World War resistance hero Emil Fieldorf. Wolinska died in London in 2008. Sony Vaio PCG-3C2L Keyboard
[edit]1967–1989
In 1967, following the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states, Poland's communist government, following the Soviet lead, broke off diplomatic relations with Israel and launched an antisemitic campaign under the guise of "anti-Zionism". However, the campaign did not resonate well with the Polish public,
Sony Vaio PCG-3B2L Keyboard as most Poles saw similarities between Israel's fight for survival and Poland's past struggles for independence. Many Poles also felt pride in the success of the Israeli military, which was dominated by Polish Jews. The slogan "our Jews beat the Soviet Arabs" (Nasi Żydzi pobili ruskich Arabów) became popular in Poland.[176][177] Sony Vaio PCG-3E3L Keyboard
The vast majority of the 40,000 Jews in Poland by the late 1960s were completely assimilated into the broader society.[citation needed] However, this did not prevent them from becoming victims of a campaign, centrally organized by the Polish Communist Party, Sony Vaio PCG-3C3L Keyboard
Sony Vaio PCG-3J1L Keyboard with Soviet backing, which equated Jewish origins with "Zionism" and disloyalty to a Socialist Poland.[citation needed]
In March 1968 student-led demonstrations in Warsaw (see Polish 1968 political crisis) gave Gomułka's government an excuse to try and channel public anti-government sentiment into another avenue. Thus his security chief,
Sony Vaio PCG-3H4L Keyboard Mieczysław Moczar, used the situation as a pretext to launch an antisemitic press campaign (although the expression "Zionist" was officially used). The state-sponsored "anti-Zionist" campaign resulted in the removal of Jews from the Polish United Worker's Party and from teaching positions in schools and universities. In 1967–1971 under economic, political and
Sony Vaio PCG-3H3L Keyboard secret police pressure, over 14,000 Polish Jews were forced to leave Poland and relinquish their Polish citizenship .[178] Officially, they were expelled to Israel. However, only about 4,000 actually went there; most settled throughout Europe and in the United States.
Sony Vaio PCG-3H2L Keyboard The leaders of the communist party tried to stifle the ongoing protests and unrest by scapegoating the Jews. At the same time there was an ongoing power struggle within the party itself and the antisemitic campaign was used by one faction against another. The so-called "Partisan"
Sony Vaio PCG-3H1L Keyboard faction blamed the Jews who had held office during the Stalinist period for the excesses that had occurred, but the end result was that most of the remaining Polish Jews, regardless of their background or political affiliation, were targeted by the communist authorities.[179]
There were several outcomes of the March 1968 events. The campaign damaged Poland's reputation abroad, particularly in the U.S. Many Polish intellectuals, however, were disgusted at the promotion of official
Sony Vaio PCG-3F3L Keyboard antisemitism and opposed the campaign. Some of the people who emigrated to the West at this time founded organizations which encouraged anti-communist opposition inside Poland.
First attempts to improve Polish-Israeli relations began in the mid-1970s. Poland was the first of the Eastern Bloc countries to restore diplomatic relations with Israel after these have been broken off right after the Six Day's War.[8] In 1986 partial diplomatic relations with Israel were restored,[8] and full relations were restored in 1990 as soon as communism fell. Sony Vaio PCG-9Z2L Keyboard
During the late 1970s some Jewish activists were engaged in the anti-communist opposition groups. Most prominent among them, Adam Michnik (founder of Gazeta Wyborcza) was one of the founders of the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR). By the time of the fall of communism in Poland in 1989, only 5,000–10,000 Jews remained in the country, many of them preferring to conceal their Jewish origin.
[edit]Since 1989
Main article: History of Poland (1989–present)
For more details on this topic, see Jewish Polish history (1989–present).
With the fall of communism in Poland, Jewish cultural, social, and religious life has been undergoing a revival. Sony Vaio PCG-9Z1L Keyboard
Sony Vaio PCG-3B1L Keyboard Many historical issues, especially related to World War II and the 1944–89 period, suppressed by communist censorship have been re-evaluated and publicly discussed (like the Massacre in Jedwabne, the Koniuchy Massacre, the Kielce pogrom, the Auschwitz cross, and Polish-Jewish wartime relations in general).
Chief Rabbi of Poland – Michael Schudrich
According to a 2005 survey by ADL, the portion of the population holding antisemitic views in Poland is not higher than those in some other countries surveyed.[180] According to a Polish survey carried out by CBOS,[
Sony VPCS12V9E/B Keyboard181] and published in January 2005, in which Poles were asked to assess their attitudes toward other nationalities representing different European and non-European countries, 45% claimed to feel antipathy towards Jews (steadily decreasing), 18% to feel sympathy (fluctuating by up to 10 percentage points annually; Sony vaio VPC EL series Keyboard
Sony VPCS13X9E/B Keyboard in 1997 it was 28%), while 29% felt impartial and 8% were undecided. Those surveyed were asked to express their feeling on the scale from −3 (strong antipathy) to +3 (strong sympathy).
Sony VPCS13L9E/B Keyboard The average score for attitude towards Jews was −0.67 in that year. In the CBOS survey from 2010,[182] antipathy decreased to 27%, and sympathy rose to 31% (down from 34% in 2008). The average score for attitude was +0.05 at that time. Sony vaio VPCEL3S1E Keyboard
bi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, said in a BBC interview: it's ... false and painful stereotype that all Poles are antisemitic. This is something I want to clearly state: this is a false stereotype. Today there is antisemitism in Poland, as unfortunately the rest of Europe; it is more or less at the same level as the rest of Europe. More important is that you have a growing number of Poles who oppose antisemitism.[183]
The Chief Rab
Lesko Synagogue, Poland
Reform Beit Warszawa Synagogue
Poland has many legal provisions to combat antisemitism, neo-fascism, extremism and has ratified all the major international conventions pertaining to human rights protection and anti-discrimination.
Jewish religious life has been revived with the help of the Ronald Lauder Foundation and the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture. There are two rabbis serving the Polish Jewish community,
Sony vaio VPCEL2S1E Keyboardseveral Jewish schools and associated summer camps as well as several periodical and book series sponsored by the above foundations. Jewish studies programs are offered at major universities, such as Warsaw University and the Jagiellonian University. The Union of Jewish Religious
Sony vaio VPCEL3S1E/W KeyboardCommunities in Poland was founded in 1993. Its purpose is the promotion and organization of Jewish religious and cultural activities in Polish communities. Sony vaio VPCEL2S1E/B Keyboard
A large number of cities with synagogues include Warsaw, Kraków, Zamość, Tykocin, Rzeszów, Kielce, or Góra Kalwaria although not many of them are still active in their original religious role. Stara Synagoga ("Old Synagogue") in Kraków, which hosts a Jewish museum, was built in the early 1400s and is the oldest synagogue in Poland. Sony vaio VPCEL2S1E/W Keyboard
Before the war, the Yeshiva Chachmei in Lublin was Europe's largest. In 2007 it was renovated, dedicated and reopened thanks to the efforts and endowments by Polish Jewry. Warsaw has an active synagogue, Beit Warszawa, affiliated with the Liberal/Progressive stream of Judaism. Sony Vaio VPCS11B7E Keyboard
There are also several Jewish publications although most of them are in Polish. These include Midrasz, Dos Jidische Wort (which is bilingual), as well as a youth journal Jidele and "Sztendlach" for young children. Active institutions include the Jewish Historical Institute, the E.R. Kaminska State Yiddish
Sony Vaio VPCS12E7E Keyboard Theater in Warsaw, and the Jewish Cultural Center. The Judaica Foundation in Krakow has sponsored a wide range of cultural and educational programs on Jewish themes for a predominantly Polish audience. With funds from the city of Warsaw and the Polish government (26$ million total)
Sony Vaio VPCS12D7E Keyboard a Museum of the History of Polish Jews is being built in Warsaw. The building was designed by the Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamaecki.[175]
2005 March of the Living
Former extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and Treblinka are open to visitors. At Auschwitz the Oswiecim State Museum currently houses exhibitions on Nazi crimes with a special section (Block Number 27)
Sony Vaio VPCS12C5E Keyboard specifically focused on Jewish victims and martyrs. At Treblinka there is a monument built out of many shards of broken stone, as well as a mausoluem dedicated to those who perished there.
Sony Vaio VPCS12B7E KeyboardA small mound of human ashes commemorates the 350,000 victims of the Majdanek camp who were killed there by the Nazis. In Łódz there is the largest Jewish burial ground in Europe, and preserved historic sites include those located in Góra Kalwaria and Leżajsk.[184]
Young Jews in the Auschwitz museum, 2008
The Great Synagogue in Oświęcim was excavated after testimony by a Holocaust survivor suggested that many Jewish relics and ritual objects had been buried there, just before Nazis took over the town. Candelabras, chandeliers, a menorah and a ner tamid were found and can now be seen at the Auschwitz Jewish Center.[184]
The Warsaw Ghetto Memorial was unveiled on April 19, 1948—the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw ghetto Uprising. It was constructed out of bronze and granite that the Nazis used for a monument honoring German victory over Poland and it was designed by Natan Rappaport.
Sony Vaio VPCS11V9E/B Keyboard The Memorial is located where the Warsaw Ghetto used to be, at the site of one command bunker of the Jewish Combat Organization.
President of the Republic of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, 26 June 2007
A memorial to the victims of the Kielce Pogrom of 1946, where a mob murdered more than 40 Jews who returned to the city after the Holocaust, was unveiled in 2006. The funds for the memorial came from the city itself and from the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad.
Sony Vaio VPCS11M1E/W Keyboard
Sony Vaio VPCS11M9R/B Keyboard
In modern Poland, interest in learning about and preserving the artifacts of Jewish culture is quite strong, especially among the younger generations. Many works devoted to the Holocaust have been published. Notable among them are the Polish Academy of Sciences's journal Zaglada (first issue, 2005) as well as other publications from the Institute of National Remembrance.
"Shalom in Szeroka Street", the final concert of the 15th Jewish Festival
There have been a number of Holocaust remembrance activities in Poland in recent years. The United States Department of State documents that:
In September 2000, dignitaries from Poland, Israel, the United States, and other countries (including Prince Hassan of Jordan)
Sony Vaio VPCS11G7E Keyboard gathered in the city of Oświęcim (Auschwitz) to commemorate the opening of the refurbished Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot synagogue and the Auschwitz Jewish Center. The synagogue, the sole synagogue in Oświęcim to survive World War II and an adjacent Jewish cultural and educational center,
Sony Vaio VPCS11F7E Keyboardprovide visitors a place to pray and to learn about the active pre–World War II Jewish community that existed in Oświęcim. The synagogue was the first communal property in the country to be returned to the Jewish community under the 1997 law allowing for restitution of Jewish communal property.[185] Sony Vaio VPCS11C5E Keyboard
The March of the Living is an event held each year in April to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. It takes place from Auschwitz to Birkenau and is attended by many people from Israel, Poland and other countries. The marchers honor Holocaust Remembrance Day as well as Israel Independence Day. Sony Vaio VPCS11D7E Keyboard
An annual festival of Jewish culture, which is one of the biggest festivals of Jewish culture in the world, takes place in Kraków.[186]
In 2006, Poland's Jewish population was estimated to be approximately 20,000;[27] most living in Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, and Bielsko-Biała, though there are no census figures that would give an exact number. Sony Vaio VPCS11E7E Keyboard
According to the Polish Moses Schorr Centre and other Polish sources, however, this may represent an undercount of the actual number of Jews living in Poland, since many are not religious.[187]
Sony VAIO VPCEB2S1R Keyboard The Centre estimates that there are approximately 100,000 Jews in Poland, of which 30,000 to 40,000 have some sort of direct connection to the Jewish community, either religiously or culturally.[citation needed] There are also people with Jewish roots who do not possess adequate documentation to confirm it, Sony Vaio VPCS13S9E/B Keyboard
Sony VAIO VPCEB2M1R Keyboard due to various historical and family complications.[187] A special program of introduction to Judaism is offered to them by a progressive Jewish Community Beit Kraków.[187][188]
Poland is currently easing the way for Jews who left Poland during the Communist organized massive expulsion of 1968 to re-obtain their citizenship.[189] Some 15,000 Polish Jews were deprived of their citizenship in the 1968 Polish political crisis.[190] Sony Vaio VPCS13S9E Keyboard
Sony VAIO VPCEB2M0E Keyboard On June 17, 2009 the future Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw launched a bilingual Polish-English website called "The Virtual Shtetl",[191] providing information about Jewish life in Poland. Sony Vaio VPCS13V9E/B Keyboard
According to an ADL report released in 2012, based on telephone survey of 500 adults in Poland (out of the total number of 5,000 adults polled by Ipsos-Reid in 10 European countries), 54% of Poles continue to believe in some anti-Semitic stereotypes. The percentage is down from similar survey conducted in 2009. Sony Vaio VPCS11H7E Keyboard
For instance, with regard to a question of whether "Jews have too much power in the business world", Poles surveyed ranked the third-highest after Hungary (73%) and Spain (60%). On another question regarding loyalty of their Jewish citizens, the surveyed Poles answered at par with Italians at 61% (overall, more than half of all European respondents gave the same answer). Sony Vaio VPCS11X9E Keyboard
Sony VAIO VPCEB2G4E KeyboardADL currently ranks Poland after Hungary and Spain as the third-highest in the surveyed countries for people holding some anti-Semitic attitudes.[192]
The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War (1939–1945) began with invasion of Poland in September 1939, and formally concluded with the defeat of Nazism by the Four Powers in May 1945. Sony VAIO VPCEB1B4E Keyboard
Sony VAIO VPCEB2F4E KeyboardThroughout the entire course of foreign occupation the territory of Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR). In summer-autumn of 1941 the lands annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Nazi Germany in the course of the initially successful German attack on the USSR. Sony VAIO VPCEB1C5E Keyboard
Sony VAIO VPCEB2E9R KeyboardAfter a few years of fighting, the Red Army was able to repel the invaders and drive the Nazi forces out of the USSR and across Poland from the rest of Eastern and Central Europe.
Both occupying powers were equally hostile to the existence of sovereign Poland, her culture and the Polish people, aiming at their destruction.[1] Before Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union coordinated their Poland-related policies, Sony VAIO VPCEB1E0E Keyboard
Sony VAIO VPCEB2E4E Keyboard most visibly in the four Gestapo-NKVD Conferences, where the occupants discussed plans for dealing with the Polish resistance movement and future destruction of Poland.[2]
About 6 million Polish citizens—nearly 21.4% of Poland's population—died between 1939 and 1945 as a result of the occupation,[3][4] Sony VAIO VPCEB1E8E Keyboard
Sony VAIO VPCEB2E1R Keyboard [5] half of whom were Polish Jews. Over 90% of the death toll came through non-military losses, as most of the civilians were targeted by various deliberate actions by Germans and the Soviets.[3] Sony VAIO VPCEB1E9E Keyboard
After Germany and the Soviet Union had partitioned Poland in 1939, most of the ethnically Polish territory ended up under the control of Germany while the areas annexed by the Soviet Union contained ethnically diverse peoples, Sony VAIO VPCEB1E9J Keyboard
Sony VAIO VPCEB2C4E Keyboardwith the territory split into bilingual provinces, some of which had a significant non-Polish majority (Ukrainians in the south and Belarusians in the north).[
Sony VAIO VPCEB2B4E Keyboard6] Many of them welcomed the Soviets, alienated in the interwar Poland. Nonetheless Poles comprised the largest single ethnic group in all territories annexed by the Soviet Union.[7]
Further information: Administrative division of Polish territories during World War II
[edit]Areas annexed by Germany
Under the terms of two decrees by Hitler, with Stalin's agreement (8 and 12 October 1939), large areas of western Poland were annexed by Germany. Sony VAIO VPCEB1E9R Keyboard
Sony VAIO VPCEB2A4E Keyboard The size of these annexed territories was approximately 94,000 square kilometres with a population of about 10 million, the great majority of whom were Polish. Nearly 1 million Poles were expelled further east from this Nazi-controlled area. Soon, 600,000 Germans from Eastern Europe and 400,000 from the Third Reich were settled there.[8] Sony VAIO VPCEB1J8E Keyboard
Sony VAIO VPCEB1Z1E KeyboardThe Nazis kept in place 1.7 million Poles deemed Germanizable, including between one and two hundred thousand children who had been taken from their parents.[9] Duiker and Spielvogel note that by 1942, the number of new German arrivals in pre-war Poland had already reached two million.[10] Sony VAIO VPCEB1M0E Keyboard
For more details on this topic, see Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany.
[edit]Creation of General Government
The remaining block of territory was placed under a German administration called the General Government (in German: Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete), with its capital at Kraków. A German lawyer and prominent Nazi, Hans Frank, was appointed Governor-General of this occupied area on 26 October 1939. Sony VAIO VPCEB1M1R Keyboard
Sony VAIO VPCEB1S8E KeyboardFrank oversaw the segregation of the Jews into ghettos in the largest cities, particularly Warsaw, and the use of Polish civilians as forced and compulsory labour in German war industries. In April 1940 Frank made the morbid announcement that Kraków should become racially "cleanest" of all cities under his rule.[11] Sony VAIO VPCEB1S0E Keyboard
Significant border changes were made after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, and again in late 1944 and 1945, when the Soviet Union regained control of those lands and moved further west, eventually taking over all Polish territories. Dell RX221 keyboard
For more details on this topic, see General Government.
[edit]Soviet administration zone
By the end of the Polish Defensive War against the two invaders, the Soviet Union had taken over 52.1% of the territory of Poland (~200,000 km²), Dell P0XM3 keyboard
Dell NSK-DB101 keyboardwith over 13,700,000 people. The ethnic composition of these areas, according to Elżbieta Trela-Mazur, were as follows: 38% Poles (~5.1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees who fled from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews (198,000).[7
Dell NSK-DB00U keyboard] All territory invaded by the Red Army was annexed to the Soviet Union (after a rigged election), with the exception of Wilno area, which was transferred to sovereign Lithuania. A small strip of land that was part of Hungary before 1914, Dell ORX221 keyboard
Dell V082025AS1 keyboardwas also given to Slovakia.
Further information: Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union
[edit]Treatment of Polish citizens under Nazi German occupation
See also: Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles
From the beginning, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany was intended as fulfillment of the plan described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf as the Lebensraum. The occupation goal was to turn former Poland into ethnically German "living space",Dell UK723UK keyboard
Dell V081325AS1 keyboardas well as to exploit the material resources of the country and to maximise the use of Polish manpower as a reservoir of slave labour. The Polish nation was to be effectively reduced to the status of Serfdom, Dell 0FM760 keyboard
Dell PK1303I0600 keyboardits political, religious and intellectual leadership destroyed. One aspect of German policy in conquered Poland aimed to prevent its ethnically diverse population from uniting against Germany. In a top-secret memorandum, "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East", dated 25 May 1940, Dell PTP49 keyboard
Dell PK130AF2B00 keyboardHeinrich Himmler, head of the SS, wrote: "We need to divide Poland's many different ethnic groups up into as many parts and splinter groups as possible".[12] Historians, J. Grabowski and Z.R. Grabowski wrote in 2004: Dell 0UK717 keyboard
The Germanisation of Polish territories occurred by deporting and exterminating the Jews, depriving Poles of their rights and supporting the local Germans and the ethnic Germans resettled from the East.
Dell NSK-DB001 keyboard The German minority living in this ethnically mixed region was required to adhere to strict codes of behaviour and was held accountable for all unauthorised contacts with their Polish and, even more so, their Jewish neighbours. The system of control and repression strove to isolate the various ethnic (‘racial’) groups, Dell HT517 keyboard
Dell HT514 keyboard encouraging denunciations and thus instilling fear in the populace.[13]
According to the 1931 Polish census, 66% of the prewar population of the country totaling 35 million inhabitants spoke Polish as their mother tongue. Most of them were Roman Catholics. Fifteen per cent were Ukrainians, 8.5% Jews, Dell P0XM3 keyboard
Dell 0WX4JF keyboard 4.7% Belarusians, and 2.2% Germans.[14] Poland had a small middle and upper class of well-educated professionals, entrepreneurs, and landowners. Nearly 75% of the population were peasants or agricultural laborers, and another fifth, industrial workers. Dell FM760 keyboard
In contrast to the Nazi policy of genocide targeting all of Poland's 3.3 million Jewish men, women, and children for elimination, Nazi plans for the Polish Catholic majority focused on the elimination or suppression of political, Dell Latitude E4310 Keyboard
religious, and intellectual leaders. This policy had two aims: first, to prevent Polish elites from organizing resistance or from ever regrouping into a governing class; second, to exploit the less educated majority of peasants and workers as unskilled laborers in agriculture and industry.[15Dell Latitude E4200 Keyboard
Dell Latitude E6430-XFR Keyboard ] This was in spite of racial theory that regarded most Polish leaders as actually being of German blood,[16] and partly because of it, on the grounds that German blood must not be used the service of a foreign nation.[15] Dell Latitude E4300 Keyboard
From 1939–1941, the Germans deported en masse about 1,600,000 Poles, including 400,000 Jews. About 700,000 Poles were sent to Germany for forced labor, many to die there. And the most infamous German death camps had been located in Poland. Overall, during German occupation of pre-war Polish territory, 1939–1945, Dell Latitude E5400 Keyboard
Dell Latitude E6430-ATG Keyboard the Germans murdered 5,470,000–5,670,000 Poles, including nearly 3,000,000 Jews.[4][5] Altogether, 2,500,000 Poles were subjected to expulsions, while 7.3% of the Polish population served as slave labor. Dell Latitude E5410 Keyboard
[edit]Generalplan Ost and expulsion of Poles
Main article: Generalplan Ost
Main article: Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany
The fate of Poles in German-occupied Poland was decided in Generalplan Ost. Generalplan Ost, essentially a grand plan for ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts, the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan"), which covered actions which were to be taken during the war, Dell Latitude E5510 Keyboard
Dell Latitude E6430 Keyboard and the Grosse Planung ("Big Plan"), which covered actions to be undertaken after the war was won. The plan envisaged differing percentages of the various conquered nations undergoing Germanisation, Dell Latitude E5420 Keyboard
Dell Latitude E6420-ATG Keyboard expulsion into the depths of Russia, and other gruesome fates, the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would take on an irrevocably German character.
In 10 years' time, the plan called for the extermination, expulsion, enslavement or Germanisation of most or all Poles and East Slavs still living behind the front line. Instead, 250 million Germans would live in an extended Lebensraum ("living space") of the 1000-Year Reich (Tausendjähriges Reich / 1000-Year empire) .
Fifty years after the war, under the Große Planung, Generalplan Ost foresaw the eventual expulsion and extermination of more than 50 million Slavs beyond the Ural Mountains.
By 1952, only about 3–4 million Poles were supposed to be left residing in the former Poland, and then only to serve as slaves for German settlers. Dell Latitude E5520 Keyboard
Dell Latitude E6220 Keyboard They were to be forbidden to marry, the existing ban on any medical help to Poles in Germany would be extended, and eventually Poles would cease to exist.
[edit]Operation Tannenberg
Main article: Operation Tannenberg
During the 1939 German invasion of Poland, special action squads of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen) were deployed in the rear, arresting or killing those civilians caught resisting the Germans or considered capable of doing so as determined by their position and social status. Tens of thousands of wealthy landowners, Dell Latitude E6420 Keyboard
clergymen, and members of the intelligentsia – government officials, teachers, doctors, dentists, officers, journalists, and others (both Poles and Jews) — were either murdered in mass executions or sent to prisons and concentration camps. Dell Latitude E6520 Keyboard
Dell Latitude E6120 Keyboard German army units and "self-defense" forces composed of Volksdeutsche also participated in executions of civilians. In many instances, these executions were reprisal actions that held entire communities collectively responsible for the killing of Germans. Dell Latitude E6520N Keyboard
In an action codenamed "Operation Tannenberg" ("Unternehmen Tannenberg") in September and October 1939, an estimated 760 mass executions were carried out by Einsatzkommandos, resulting in the deaths of at least 20,000 of the most prominent Polish citizens. Expulsion and murder became commonplace. Dell Latitude E6530 Keyboard
Proscription lists (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen) identified more than 61,000 Polish activists, intelligentsia, actors, former officers, etc. who were to be interned or shot. Members of the German minority living in Poland assisted in preparing the lists. Dell Latitude E5220 Keyboard
The first part of the action started in August 1939 with the arrest and execution of about 2,000 activists of Polish minority organisations in Germany. The second part of the action started on 1 September 1939 and ended in October resulting in at least 20,000 murdered in 760 mass executions by special units,
Dell Precision M6400 Keyboard Einsatzgruppen, in addition to regular Wehrmacht units. In addition to these, a special formation was created out of the German minority living in Poland called Selbstschutz, whose members trained in Germany prior to the war in diversion and guerilla fighting.
Dell Precision M4500 Keyboard The formation was responsible for many massacres and due to its bad reputation was dissolved by the Nazi authorities after the September Campaign.
[edit]A-B Aktion
Main article: Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion
The Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion (AB-Aktion in short, German for Special Pacification) was a German campaign during World War II aimed at Polish leaders and the intelligentsia. In the spring and summer of 1940,
Dell Precision M6600 Keyboard more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the German authorities of German-occupied Poland. Several thousand university professors, teachers, priests, and others were shot outside Warsaw, in the Kampinos forest near Palmiry, and inside the city at the Pawiak prison.[citation needed] Most of the remainder were sent to various German concentration camps. Dell Latitude E5420M Keyboard
[edit]Suppression of the Roman Catholic Church and other religions
The Catholic Church in Poland was especially hard hit by the Nazis. The Roman Catholic Church was suppressed throughout Poland because historically it had been one of the primary supporters of Polish nationalist forces fighting for Poland's independence from outside domination.
Throughout the country, monasteries, convents, seminaries, schools and other religious institutions were shut down.
The Germans treated the Church most harshly in the annexed regions, as they systematically closed churches there; most priests were either killed, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government. Between 1939 and 1945, Dell Latitude E6400 Keyboard
Dell Precision M2400 Keyboard an estimated 3,000 members of the Catholic clergy in Poland were killed; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps, 787 of them at Dachau, including bishop Michał Kozal.
No exception was made for Poland's higher clergy. Bishop Michael Kozal of Wladislava died in Dachau; Bishop Nowowiejski of Płock and his suffragan Bishop Wetmanski both died in prison in Poland; Bishop Fulman of Lublin and his suffragan Bishop Goral were sent to a concentration camp in Germany.
Dell Latitude E6410-ATG Keyboard
In 1939, 80% of the Catholic clergy and five of the bishops of the Warthegau region had been deported to concentration camps. In Wrocław, 49.2% of the clergy were dead; in Chełmno, 47.8%; in Łódź, 36.8%; in Poznań, 31.1%.
Dell Latitude E6410 Keyboard In the Warsaw diocese, 212 priests were killed; 92 were murdered in Wilno, 81 in Lwów, 30 in Kraków, 13 in Kielce. Seminarians who were not killed were shipped off to Germany as forced labor.
Dell Latitude E6400-XFR Keyboard
Of 690 priests in the Polish province of West Prussia, at least 460 were arrested. The remaining priests of the region fled their parishes. Of the arrested priests, 214 were executed, including the entire cathedral chapter of Pelplin. Dell Latitude E6500 Keyboard
Dell Latitude E6400-ATG Keyboard The rest were deported to the newly created General Government district in Central Poland. By 1940, only 20 priests were still serving their parishes in West Prussia.
Many nuns shared the same fate as priests. Some 400 nuns were imprisoned at Bojanowo concentration camp. Many were later sent to Germany as slave labor. Dell Latitude E4310 Battery
Of the city of Poznań's 30 churches and 47 chapels, the Nazis left two open to serve some 200,000 souls. Thirteen churches were simply locked and abandoned; six became warehouses; four, including the cathedral, were used as furniture storage centers. In Łódź, only four churches were allowed to remain open to serve 700,000 Catholics. Dell Latitude E4320 Battery
Nor were the small Evangelical churches of Poland spared. All the Protestant clergy of the Cieszyn region of Silesia were arrested and sent to the death camps at Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Oranienburg.
Among the Protestant martyrs were Karol Kulisz, director of the Evangelical Church's largest charitable organization, who died in Buchenwald in November 1939; Professor Edmund Bursche, a member of the Evangelical Faculty of Theology at the University of Warsaw, Dell Latitude E4200 Battery
Dell Latitude E6120 Battery who died in the stone quarries of Mauthausen; and the 79-year-old Bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland, Juliusz Bursche, who died in solitary confinement in Berlin.
[edit]Abolition of secondary and higher education
As part of wider efforts to destroy Polish culture, the Germans closed or destroyed universities, schools, museums, libraries, and scientific laboratories. Many university professors, along with teachers, lawyers,
intellectuals and other members of the Polish elite, were arrested and executed. They demolished hundreds of monuments to national heroes. To prevent the birth of a new generation of educated Poles, German officials decreed that Polish children's schooling end after a few years of elementary education.[17]
Himmler wrote in a May 1940 memorandum, "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. . . . I do not think that reading is desirable".[17] Dell Latitude E4300 Battery
[edit]Germanization and expulsion of Poles
Main article: Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
Main article: Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany (1939-1944)
See also: Germanization
In the territories which were annexed to Nazi Germany, the Nazis' goal was to achieve complete "Germanization" which would assimilate the territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich.[18] Dell Latitude E6500 Battery
Dell Latitude E5420 Battery They applied this policy most rigorously in western incorporated territories—the so-called Wartheland. There, the Germans closed even elementary schools where Polish was the language of instruction. They renamed streets and cities so that Łódź became Litzmannstadt, for example.
Dell Latitude E5510 BatteryThey also seized tens of thousands of Polish enterprises, from large industrial firms to small shops, without payment to the owners. Signs posted in public places warned: "Entrance is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs." Dell Latitude E5400 Battery
Ethnic cleansing of western Poland, with Poles led to the trains under German army escort, 1939.
The Germanization of the annexed lands also included an ambitious program to resettle Germans from the Baltic and other regions on farms and other homes formerly occupied by Poles and Jews.[19Dell Latitude E5500 Battery
] Only those Poles selected for Germanization were permitted to remain,[20] and if they resisted Germanization, they were to be sent to concentration camps, because "German blood must not be utilized in the interest of a foreign nation".[21Dell Latitude E6420-ATG Battery
Dell Precision M4400 Battery] Beginning in October 1939, the SS began to expel Poles and Jews from the Wartheland and the Polish Corridor and transport them to the General Government. By the end of 1940, the SS had expelled 325,000 people without warning and plundered their property and belongings.
Dell Precision M6500 Battery Many elderly people and children died en route or in makeshift transit camps such as those in the towns of Potulice, Smukal, and Toruń. In 1941, the Germans expelled 45,000 more people, but they scaled back the program after the invasion of the Soviet Union in late June 1941. Trains used for resettlement were more urgently needed to transport soldiers and supplies to the front. Dell Latitude E6430 Battery
During the German occupation of Poland in World War II attempts to divide (Divide and rule) the Polish nation by the new rulers led to the postulation of a separate ethnicity called "Goralenvolk". In 1941, the German Nazis also started forceful enrollment of Kashubians onto the Deutsche Volksliste due to losses in the Wehrmacht.[22] Dell Latitude E6430-ATG Battery
In late 1942 and in 1943, the SS also carried out massive expulsions in the General Government, uprooting 110,000 Poles from 300 villages in the Zamość–Lublin region. Families were torn apart as able-bodied teens and adults were taken for forced labor and elderly, Dell Latitude E6430S Battery
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Dell Precision M4500 Batteryyoung, and disabled persons were moved to other localities. Tens of thousands were also imprisoned in the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps.
[edit]Kidnapping of children
Kinder KZ for Polish children inside Litzmannstadt Ghetto in Łódź map signed with number 15.
Main articles: Kidnapping of Polish children by Nazi Germany and Kinder KZ
The Nazis kept an eye out for Polish children who possessed Aryan racial characteristics.[
Dell Precision M6600 Battery23] Promising children were separated from their parents and sent to Łódź for further examination.[24] If they passed the battery of racial, physical and psychological tests, they were sent on to Germany for "Germanization".[25] As many as 4,454 children chosen for Germanization were given German names,[26Dell Latitude E6520N Battery
Dell Precision M4600 Battery] forbidden to speak Polish,[27] and reeducated in SS or other Nazi institutions. Few ever saw their parents again. Many more children were rejected as unsuitable for Germanization after failing to measure up to racial scientists' criteria for establishing "Aryan"
Dell Precision M2400 Batteryancestry. These children were shipped to orphanages or to Auschwitz, where they were killed, most often by intercardiac injections of phenol.[citation needed]
An estimated total of 50,000 children were kidnapped in Poland, the majority taken from orphanages and foster homes in the annexed lands. Infants born to Polish women deported to Germany as farm and factory laborers, Dell Latitude E5220 Battery
Dell Latitude E6410-ATG Battery if deemed "racially valuable", were also usually taken from the mothers and subjected to Germanization.[28] If an examination of the father and mother suggested that a "racially valuable" child might not result from the union, the mother was compelled to have an abortion.[28]
Dell Latitude E6410 Battery And if a child was born who did not pass muster, they would be removed to an Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte, where many died from the lack of food.[29]
[edit]German People's List
Main article: Deutsche Volksliste
The German People's List (Deutsche Volksliste) classified Polish citizens into four groups.[24]
Group 1 included so-called ethnic Germans who had taken an active part in the struggle for the Germanization of Poland;
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Group 2 included those ethnic Germans who had not taken such an active part, but had "preserved" their German characteristics;
Group 3 included individuals of alleged German stock who had become "Polonized", but whom it was believed, could be won back to Germany. Dell Latitude E6500 Battery
Dell Latitude E6400-ATG BatteryThis group also included persons of non-German descent married to Germans or members of non-Polish groups who were considered desirable for their political attitude and racial characteristics; Dell Latitude E5420M Battery
Group 4 consisted of persons of German stock who had become politically merged with the Poles.
After registration in the List, individuals from Groups 1 and 2 automatically became German citizens. Those from Group 3 acquired German citizenship subject to revocation. Dell XPS 14 Battery
Those from Group 4 received German citizenship through naturalization proceedings; resistance to Germanization constituted treason because "German blood must not be utilized in the interest of a foreign nation," and such people were sent to concentration camps.[24] Persons ineligible for the List were classified as stateless, Dell XPS 14D Battery
Dell XPS L701X Battery and all Poles from the occupied territory, that is from the Government General of Poland, as distinct from the incorporated territory, were classified as non-protected.[24]
[edit]Concentration camps
Main article: German camps in occupied Poland during World War II
Camps such as Auschwitz in Poland and Buchenwald in central Germany became administrative centers of huge networks of forced-labor camps. In addition to SS-owned enterprises (the German Armament Works,
for example), private German firms – such as Messerschmitt, Junkers, Siemens, and IG Farben — increasingly relied on forced laborers to boost war production. One of the most infamous of these camps was Auschwitz III,
Dell XPS 17-L702X Battery or Monowitz, which supplied forced laborers to a synthetic rubber plant owned by IG Farben. Prisoners in all the concentration camps were literally worked to death.
Auschwitz (Oświęcim) became the main concentration camp for Poles after the arrival there on 14 June 1940, of 728 men transported from an overcrowded prison at Tarnów. By March 1941, 10,900 prisoners were registered at the camp, most of them Poles. In September 1941, 200 ill prisoners, most of them Poles,
Dell XPS L702X Battery along with 650 Soviet prisoners of war, were killed in the first gassing experiments at Auschwitz. Beginning in 1942, Auschwitz's prisoner population became much more diverse, as Jews and other "enemies of the state" from all over German-occupied Europe were deported to the camp.
The Polish scholar Franciszek Piper, the chief historian of Auschwitz, has estimated that 140,000–150,000 Poles were brought to that camp between 1940 and 1945, and that 70,000–75,000 died there as victims of executions, of cruel medical experiments, and of starvation and disease. Some 100,000 Poles were deported to Majdanek, and tens of thousands of them died there.
An estimated 20,000 Poles died at Sachsenhausen, 20,000 at Gross-Rosen, 30,000 at Mauthausen, 17,000 at Neuengamme, 10,000 at Dachau, and 17,000 at Ravensbrueck. In addition, tens of thousands were executed or died in other camps and prisons.
[edit]Forced labor
German notice from 30 september 1939 in occupied Poland with warning of death penalty for refuse work durning harvest.
Main article: Forced labor in Germany during World War II
Labor shortages in the German war economy became critical especially after German defeat in the battle of Stalingrad in 1942–1943.
Dell XPS 15-L501X Battery This led to the increased use of prisoners as forced laborers in German industries. Especially in 1943 and 1944, hundreds of camps were established in or near industrial plants.
Between 1939 and 1945, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens were transported to the Reich for labor, most of them against their will. Many were teenaged boys and girls. Although Germany also used forced laborers from Western Europe, Poles, along with other Eastern Europeans viewed as inferior, Dell XPS 14D-L401X Battery
Dell XPS 15 Battery were subject to especially harsh discriminatory measures. They were forced to wear identifying purple P's sewn to their clothing, subjected to a curfew, and banned from public transportation. While the actual treatment accorded factory workers or farm hands often varied depending on the individual employer, Sony VPCSA2Z9E Battery
Sony VPCSE2S1E BatteryPolish laborers as a rule were compelled to work longer hours for lower wages than Western Europeans, and in many cities they lived in segregated barracks behind barbed wire.
[edit]Polish identity cards Sony VPCSA3M9E Battery
Polish identity cards were replaced by the "Kennkarte" (identifying card). Those who applied for it had to fill out an affidavit that they were not Jews. Ultimately, the Nazis' "New Order" in Poland would result in the death of 20% of the population, some 6 million people, half of them Jewish.
[edit]Resistance Sony VPCSA3N9E Battery
Main article: Polish resistance movement in World War II
First partisan unit of the World War II under command of Henryk Dobrzański "Hubal" – winter 1939
Captured German Panther tank during Warsaw Uprising 1944 – armored platoon of batalion Zośka under command of Wacław Micuta
In response to the German occupation, Poles organized the largest underground movement in Europe[30] with more than 300 widely supported political and military groups and subgroups. Despite military defeat, the Polish government itself never surrendered. In 1940, the Polish government in Exile was established in London. Sony VPCSA3S9E Battery
The Polish resistance movement fought against the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany during World War II. Resistance to the Nazi German occupation began almost at once, although there is little terrain in Poland suitable for guerilla operations. Sony VPCSA3X9E Battery
Sony VPCSE2J9E BatteryThe Home Army (in Polish Armia Krajowa or AK), loyal to the Polish government in exile in London and a military arm of the Polish Secret State, was formed from a number of smaller groups in 1942. From 1943 the AK was in competition with the People's Army (Polish Armia Ludowa or AL), Sony VPCSA3Z9E Battery
Sony VPCSE2E1E Batterybacked by the Soviet Union and controlled by the Polish Workers' Party (Polish Polska Partia Robotnicza or PPR). By 1944 the AK had some 380,000 men, although few arms: the AL was much smaller, numbering around 30,000 [3] Sony VPCSA4W9E Battery
Sony VPCSE1Z9E Battery. By the summer of 1944 Polish underground forces numbered more than 300,000 [4].The Polish partisan groups (Leśni) killed about 150,000 Axis during the occupation. Sony VPCSB Battery
In August 1943 and March 1944, Polish Secret State announced their long-term plan, partially designed to counter attractiveness of some of communists' proposals. That plan promised a land reform, nationalisation of industrial base, demands for territorial compensation from Germany as well as re-establishment of pre-1939 eastern border. Thus the main difference between the Underground State and the communists, Sony VPCSB1A7E Battery
Sony VPCSE1L1E Batteryin terms of politics, amounted not to radical economic and social reforms, which were advocated by both sides, but to their attitudes towards national sovereignty, borders and Polish-Soviet relations.[31] Sony VPCSB1A9E Battery
Resistance groups inside Poland set up underground courts for trying collaborators and others deemed to be traitors to Poland. The resistance groups also set up clandestine schools in response to the Germans' closing of many educational institutions. For example, the universities of Warsaw, Cracow, and Lvov all operated clandestinely. Sony VPCSB1B7E Battery
Officers of the regular Polish army formed an underground armed force, the "Home Army" (Armia Krajowa—AK). After preliminary organizational activities, including the training of fighters and stockpiling of weapons,
Sony VPCSB3T9E Batterythe AK activated partisan units in many parts of Poland in 1943. A Communist underground resistance group, the "People's Guard" (Gwardia Ludowa), also formed in 1942, but its military strength and influence were relatively weak compared to the Armia Krajowa.
When the arrival of the Soviet army seemed imminent, the AK launched an uprising in Warsaw against the German army on 1 August 1944. After 63 days of bitter fighting, the Germans quashed the insurrection.
Sony VPCSB3N9E BatteryThe Polish resistance received little or no assistance from the Soviet army. The Soviet army had reached a point within a few hundred meters across the Vistula River from the city on 16 September,
Sony VPCSB2M9E Batterybut failed to make further headway in the course of the Uprising, leading to accusations that they had deliberately stopped their advance because Joseph Stalin did not want the Uprising to succeed. Sony VPCSB1B9E Battery
The reasoning behind the allegation was that Stalin preferred to have the Polish resistance suppressed by the Nazis so as to weaken any forces that might resist Soviet domination after the war.
Nearly 250,000 Poles, most of them civilians, lost their lives in the Warsaw Uprising. The Germans deported hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to concentration camps. Many others were transported to the Reich for forced labor. Acting on Hitler's orders, German forces reduced the city to rubble,
Sony VPCSB1Z9E Battery greatly extending the destruction begun during their suppression of the earlier armed uprising by Jewish fighters resisting deportation from the Warsaw ghetto in April 1943.
[edit]Impact on the Polish population
The Polish civilian population suffered under German occupation in several ways. Large numbers were expelled from areas intended for German colonisation, and forced to resettle in the General-Government area. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported to Germany for forced labour in industry and agriculture,
Sony VPCSB1V9R Batterywhere many thousands died. Poles were also conscripted for labour in Poland, and were held in labour camps all over the country, again with a high death rate. There was a general shortage of food, fuel for heating and medical supplies, and there was a high death rate among the Polish population as a result. Finally, thousands of Poles were killed as reprisals for resistance attacks on German forces or for other reasons. Sony VPCSB1C7E Battery
In all, about 3 million (non-Jewish) Poles died as a result of the German occupation, more than 10% of the pre-war population. When this is added to the 3 million Polish Jews who were killed as a matter of policy by the Germans, Poland lost about 22% of its population, the highest proportion of any European country in World War II [5]. Sony VPCSB1D7E Battery
Some three million non-Jewish Polish citizens perished during the course of the war, over two million of whom were ethnic Poles (the remainder being mostly Ukrainians and Belarusians). The vast majority of those killed were civilians, mostly killed by the actions of Nazi Germany.[32][33]
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Rather than being sent to concentration camps, most non-Jewish Poles died through in mass executions, starvation, singled out murder cases, ill health or forced labour. Apart from Auschwitz, the main six "extermination camps" in Poland were used almost exclusively to kill Jews.[citation needed] There was also camp Stutthof concentration camp used for mass extermination of Poles. HP Pavilion DV7-1105EA Battery
HP Pavilion DV7-3115EA BatteryThere was a number of civilian labour camps (Gemeinschaftslager) for Poles (Polenlager) on the territory of Poland. Many Poles did die in German camps. The first non-German prisoners at Auschwitz were Poles, who were the majority of inmates there until 1942, when the systematic killing of the Jews began. HP Pavilion DV7-1210EA Battery
HP Pavilion DV7-3112EA BatteryThe first killing by poison gas at Auschwitz involved 300 Poles and 700 Soviet prisoners of war, among them ethnic Ukrainians, Russians and others. Many Poles and other Eastern Europeans were also sent to concentration camps in Germany: HP Pavilion DV7-1135EA Battery
HP Pavilion DV7-3110EA Battery over 35,000 to Dachau, 33,000 to the camp for women at Ravensbrück, 30,000 to Mauthausen and 20,000 to Sachsenhausen, for example.
The population in the General Government's territory was initially about 12 million in an area of 94,000 square kilometres, but this increased as about 860,000 Poles and Jews were expelled from the German-annexed areas and "resettled" in the General Government. HP Pavilion DV7-1130EA Battery
HP Pavilion DV7-3105EA Battery Offsetting this was the German campaign of extermination of the Polish intelligentsia and other elements thought likely to resist (e.g. Operation Tannenberg). From 1941, disease and hunger also began to reduce the population. Poles were also deported in large numbers to work as forced labour in Germany: eventually about a million were deported, and many died in Germany.
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About one fifth of Polish citizens lost their lives in the war [6], most of the civilians targeted by various deliberate actions.
[edit]Treatment of Polish citizens under Soviet occupation
Main article: Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946)
Further information: Soviet annexation of Western Ukraine, 1939–1940
HP Pavilion DV7-1125EA Battery
1939, Residents of a small town in Western Belarus attend a meeting to greet the arrival of the Red Army. The Russian text reads "Long Live the great theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin-Stalin" and contains a spelling error. Such manifestations were not spontaneous, but usually organized by activists of Communist Party of Poland.[34] HP Pavilion DV7-1213EA Battery
Sovietization propaganda poster addressed towards the "Western Ukrainian" population. The Ukrainian text reads "Electors of the working people! Vote for joining of Western Ukraine into the Soviet Ukraine, for the united, free and thriving Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Let's forever eliminate the border between Western and Soviet Ukraine. Long Live the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic!"
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A Soviet propaganda poster depicting the Red Army's advance into Poland as a liberation of the Ukrainians. The Ukrainian text reads: "We stretched our hand to our brothers so that they could straighten their backs and throw off the despised rule of the whips that lasted for centuries."
HP Pavilion DV7-3001EA BatteryThe person thrown off the peasants' backs, shown wearing a Polish military uniform and holding the whip, could be interpreted as a caricature of Piłsudski. HP Pavilion DV7-1211EA Battery
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By the end of Polish Defensive War the Soviet Union took over 52.1% of territory of Poland (~200,000 km²), with over 13,700,000 people. The estimates vary; Elżbieta Trela-Mazur gives the following numbers in regards to ethnic composition of these areas: 38% Poles (ca. 5,1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14,5% Belarusians, HP Pavilion DV7-1212EA Battery
HP Pavilion DV7-2230SA Battery 8,4% Jews, 0,9% Russians and 0,6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews (198,000).[7] Areas occupied by USSR were annexed to Soviet territory, with the exception of area of Wilno, which was transferred to Lithuania, although soon attached to USSR, when Lithuania became a Soviet republic.
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Initially the Soviet occupation gained support among some members the non-Polish population who had chafed under the nationalist policies of the Second Polish Republic. Much of the Ukrainian population[citation needed] HP Pavilion DV7-1214EA Battery
HP Pavilion DV7-2110SA Battery initially welcomed the unification with the rest of Ukraine which Ukrainians had failed to achieve in 1919 when their attempt for self-determination was crushed by Poland and Soviet Union.[35] HP Pavilion DV7-1105EA Keyboard
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There were large groups of pre-war Polish citizens, notably Jewish youth and, to a lesser extent, the Ukrainian peasants, who saw the Soviet power as an opportunity to start political or social activity outside of their traditional ethnic or cultural groups. HP Pavilion DV7-1210EA Keyboard
HP Pavilion DV7-3115EA KeyboardTheir enthusiasm however faded with time as it became clear that the Soviet repressions were aimed at all groups equally, regardless of their political stance.[36]
British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore states that Soviet terror in the occupied eastern Polish lands was as cruel and tragic as Nazi in the west. Soviet authorities brutally treated those who might oppose their rule, deporting by 10 November 1940, around 10% of total population of Kresy, with 30% of those deported dead by 1941.[3HP Pavilion DV7-1135EA Keyboard
HP Pavilion DV7-3112EA Keyboard7] They arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Poles during 1939–1941, including former officials, officers, and natural "enemies of the people", like the clergy, but also noblemen and intellectuals. HP Pavilion DV7-1130EA Keyboard
HP Pavilion DV7-3110EA Keyboard The Soviets also executed about 65,000 Poles. Soldiers of the Red Army and their officers behaved like conquerors, looting and stealing Polish treasures. When Stalin was told about it, he answered: "If there is no ill will, they [the soldiers] can be pardoned".[38]
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In one notorious massacre, the NKVD-the Soviet secret police—systematically executed 21,768 Poles, among them 14,471 former Polish officers, including political leaders, government officials, and intellectuals. Some 4,254 of these were uncovered in mass graves in Katyn Forest by the Nazis in 1943, HP Pavilion DV7-1125EA Keyboard
HP Pavilion DV7-3101SA Keyboardwho then invited an international group of neutral representatives and doctors to study the corpses and confirm Soviet guilt, but the findings from the study were denounced by the Allies as "Nazi propaganda".HP Pavilion DV7-1213EA Keyboard
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The Soviet Union had ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion.[39][40] As a result, the two governments never officially declared war on each other. The Soviets therefore did not classify Polish military prisoners as prisoners of war but as rebels against the new legal government of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia.[nHP Pavilion DV7-1212EA Keyboard
] The Soviets killed tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war. Some, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński, who was captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were executed during the campaign itself.[41][42] On 24 September, the Soviets killed 42 staff and patients of a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec, near Zamość.[ HP Pavilion DV7-1214EA Keyboard
HP Pavilion DV7-3020EA Keyboard43] The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack, on 28 September.[44] Over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre.[45][46] HP Pavilion DV7-2110SA Keyboard
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The Poles and the Soviets re-established diplomatic relations in 1941, following the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement; but the Soviets broke them off again in 1943 after the Polish government demanded an independent examination of the recently discovered Katyn burial pits.[47]
HP Pavilion DV7-3000 Keyboard The Soviets then lobbied the Western Allies to recognize the pro-Soviet Polish puppet government of Wanda Wasilewska in Moscow.[48]
On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany had changed the secret terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. They moved Lithuania into the Soviet sphere of influence and shifted the border in Poland to the east, HP Pavilion DV7-2120SA Keyboard
HP Pavilion DV7-2230SA Keyboardgiving Germany more territory.[49] By this arrangement, often described as a fourth partition of Poland,[46] the Soviet Union secured almost all Polish territory east of the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, HP Pavilion dv6-6000 Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6B60EA Battery Western Bug and San. This amounted to about 200,000 square kilometres of land, inhabited by 13.5 million Polish citizens.[6]
The Red Army had originally sowed confusion among the locals by claiming that they were arriving to save Poland from the Nazis.[5HP Pavilion DV6-6B06SA Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6B59EA Battery 0] Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who had not been advised how to respond to a Bolshevik invasion. Polish and Jewish citizens may at first have preferred a Soviet regime to a German one,[51] but the Soviets soon proved as hostile and destructive towards the Polish people and their culture as the Nazis.[52][ HP Pavilion DV6-6B08SA Battery
53] They began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property.[54] During the two years following the annexation, they arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens[55] and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 150,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians.[b][4][5][56] HP Pavilion DV6-6B09SA Battery
[edit]Land reform and collectivisation
The Soviet base of support was even strengthened by a land reform program initiated by the Soviets in which most of the owners of large lots of land were labeled "kulaks" and dispossessed of their land which was then divided among poorer peasants. HP Pavilion DV6-6B26SA Battery
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However, the Soviet authorities then started a campaign of forced collectivisation, which largely nullified the earlier gains from the land reform as the peasants generally did not want to join the Kolkhoz farms, nor to give away their crops for free to fulfill the state-imposed quotas. HP Pavilion DV6-6B50SA Battery
[edit]Restructuring of Polish governmental and social institutions
While Germans enforced their policies based on racism, the Soviet administration justified their Stalinist policies by appealing to the Soviet ideology,[57] which in reality meant the thorough Sovietization of the area. Immediately after their conquest of eastern Poland, the Soviet authorities started a campaign of sovietization[58][5HP Pavilion DV6-6B51SA Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6B51EA Battery 9] of the newly-acquired areas. No later than several weeks after the last Polish units surrendered, on 22 October 1939, the Soviets organized staged elections to the Moscow-controlled Supreme Soviets (legislative body) HP Pavilion DV6-6B57SA Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6B50EA Battery of Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine.[60] The result of the staged voting was to become a legitimization of Soviet annexation of eastern Poland.[61]
Subsequently, all institutions of the dismantled Polish state were being closed down and reopened under the Soviet appointed supervisors. Lviv University and many other schools were reopened soon but they were restarted anew as Soviet institutions rather than continue their old legacy.
HP Pavilion DV6-6B07EA Battery Lviv University was reorganized in accordance with the Statute Books for Soviet Higher Schools. The tuition, that along with the institution's Polonophile traditions, kept the university inaccessible to most of the rural Ukrainophone population, was abolished and several new chairs were opened, HP Pavilion DV6-6B58SA Battery
particularly the chairs of Russian language and literature. The chairs of Marxism-Leninism, Dialectical and Historical Materialism aimed at strengthening of the Soviet ideology were opened as well.
HP Pavilion DV6-6052SA Battery [7] Polish literature and language studies ware dissolved by Soviet authorities. Forty-five new faculty members were assigned to it and transferred from other institutions of Soviet Ukraine, mainly the Kharkiv and Kiev universities. On 15 January 1940 the Lviv University was reopened and started to teach in accordance with Soviet curricula.[62]
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Simultaneously, Soviet authorities attempted to remove the traces of Polish history of the area by eliminating much of what had any connection to the Polish state or even Polish culture in general.[7
HP Pavilion DV6-6002SA Battery ] On 21 December 1939, the Polish currency was withdrawn from circulation without any exchange to the newly-introduced rouble, which meant that the entire population of the area lost all of their life savings overnight.[63] HP Pavilion DV6-6C11EA Battery
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All the media became controlled by Moscow. Soviet authorities implemented a political regime similar to police state,[64][65][66][67] based on terror. All Polish parties and organizations were disbanded. Only the Communist Party was allowed to exist with organizations subordinated to it.
All organized religions were persecuted. HP Pavilion DV6-6C12EA Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6C57EA Battery All enterprises were taken over by the state, while agriculture was made collective.[68]
[edit]Rule of Terror
An inherent part of the Sovietization was a rule of terror started by the NKVD and other Soviet agencies. The first victims of the new order were approximately 250,000 Polish prisoners of war captured by the USSR during and after the Polish Defensive War (see Polish prisoners of war in Soviet Union (after 1939)).[69HP Pavilion DV6-6C56EA Battery
] As the Soviet Union did not sign any international convention on rules of war, they were denied the status of prisoners of war and instead almost all of the captured officers and a large number of ordinary soldiers[70] were then murdered (see Katyn massacre) or sent to Gulag.[71] Thousands of others would fall victim to NKVD massacres of prisoners in mid-1941, after Germany invaded the Soviet Union. HP Pavilion DV6-6C01EA Battery
Similar policies were applied to the civilian population as well. The Soviet authorities regarded service for the pre-war Polish state as a "crime against revolution"[72] and "counter-revolutionary activity",[73] and subsequently started arresting large numbers of Polish intelligentsia, politicians, civil servants and scientists, HP Pavilion DV6-6C01SA Battery
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HP Pavilion DV6-6156EA Battery but also ordinary people suspected of posing a threat to the Soviet rule. Among the arrested members of the Polish intelligentsia were former prime ministers Leon Kozłowski and Aleksander Prystor, as well as Stanisław Grabski, Stanisław Głąbiński and the Baczewski family. Initially aimed primarily at possible political opponents, HP Pavilion DV6-6C04EA Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6155EA Battery by January 1940 the NKVD aimed its campaign also at its potential allies, including the Polish communists and socialists. Among the arrested were Władysław Broniewski, Aleksander Wat, Tadeusz Peiper, Leopold Lewin, Anatol Stern, Teodor Parnicki, Marian Czuchnowski and many others.[74] HP Pavilion DV6-6C05SA Battery
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[edit]Deportation
During 1942–1945, nearly 30,000 Poles were deported by the Soviet Union to Karachi (then under British rule). This photo shows a memorial to the refugees who died in Karachi and were buried at the Karachi graveyard. HP Pavilion DV6-6C11SA Battery
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In 1940 and the first half of 1941, the Soviets deported more than 1,200,000 Poles, most in four mass deportations. The first deportation took place 10 February 1940, with more than 220,000 sent to northern European Russia; the second on 13 April 1940, HP Pavilion DV6-6C11SA Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6153EA Battery sending 320,000 primarily to Kazakhstan; a third wave in June–July 1940 totaled more than 240,000; the fourth occurred in June 1941, deporting 300,000. Upon resumption of Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations in 1941, HP Pavilion DV6-6C40SA Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6152EA Battery it was determined based on Soviet information that more than 760,000 of the deportees had died – a large part of those dead being children, who had comprised about a third of deportees.[75] HP Pavilion DV6-6C41SA Battery
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Approximately 100,000 former Polish citizens were arrested during the two years of Soviet occupation.[55] The prisons soon got severely overcrowded.[36] with detainees suspected of anti-Soviet activities and the NKVD had to open dozens of ad-hoc prison sites in almost all towns of the region[61]
HP Pavilion DV6-6104EA Battery The wave of arrests led to forced resettlement of large categories of people (kulaks, Polish civil servants, forest workers, university professors or osadniks, for instance) to the Gulag labour camps and exile settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union.[59
HP Pavilion DV6-6103SA Battery ] Altogether roughly a million people were sent to the east in four major waves of deportations.[76] According to Norman Davies,[77] almost half of them were dead by the time the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement had been signed in 1941.[78]
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According to the Soviet law, all residents of the annexed area, dubbed by the Soviets as citizens of former Poland,[79] automatically acquired the Soviet citizenship. However, since actual conferral of citizenship still required the individual consent and the residents were strongly pressured for such consent.[80] HP Pavilion DV6-6C51SA Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6077SA Battery The refugees who opted out were threatened with repatriation to Nazi controlled territories of Poland.[3][81][82]
[edit]Exploitation of ethnic tensions
In addition, the Soviets exploited past ethnic tension between Poles and other ethnic groups, inciting and encouraging violence against Poles calling the minorities to "rectify the wrongs they had suffered during twenty years of Polish rule".[HP Pavilion DV6-6C56SA Battery
83] Pre-war Poland was portrayed as a capitalist state based on exploitation of the working people and ethnic minorities. Soviet propaganda claimed that unfair treatment of non-Poles by the Second Polish Republic was a justification of its dismemberment. HP Pavilion DV6-6C75SA Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6060SA Battery Soviet officials openly incited mobs to perform killings and robberies[84] The death toll of the initial Soviet-inspired terror campaign remains unknown.
[edit]Restoration of Polish sovereignty
Over 600,000 Soviet soldiers died fighting Nazi troops in Poland.[85] HP Pavilion DV6-6C77SA Battery
HP Pavilion DV6-6055EA Battery While formal Polish sovereignty was almost immediately restored when the forces of Nazi Germany were expelled in 1945, in reality the country remained under firm Soviet control as it remained occupied by the Soviet Army Northern Group of Forces until 1956.
HP Pavilion DV6-6053EA Battery To this day the events of those and the following years are one of the stumbling blocks in Polish-Russian foreign relations. Polish requests for the return of property looted during the war or any demand for an apology for Soviet-era crimes are either ignored or prompt a brusque restatement of history as seen by the Kremlin, along the lines of "we freed you from Nazism: be grateful."[86] HP Pavilion DV6-6000EA Battery
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