True People and chaotic Animals
Poland at the time of the outbreak of planet War II was the largest aggregate of Jews in the world. About 3.5 million Poles of judaic origin (Moses confession) accounted for more than 10% of the full population of the country. The number of Jews who have been rescued in the territory of the Polish state occupied by German troops is estimated by judaic historians to vary from 40 – 50 1000 (Filip Friedman) to 100 – 120 1000 (Józef Kermish), though 1 of the calculations of the Polish underground raises this number to 200 thousand. Most of the Jews who survived the German business were saved by Poles who had no connection, neither with Żegota nor with the Council of Aid to Jews at the Government Delegate to the Country, but below that.
Tadeusz Bednarczyk, who worked in the Polish underground and had close contacts in the Warsaw ghetto, judged that German business in Poland, thanks to the aid of Poles, 300 1000 Jews survived in Poland. Władysław Żarski - Zajdler claimed that in 1 period of German business even up to 450 1000 Jews were sheltered by Poles, but not all of them survived the war. His estimates are akin to those represented by the erstwhile minister of abroad affairs in exile, hr. Edward Raczyński, after the war. However, it is hard to draw close conclusions about the number of Poles actively active in helping Jews. Emanuel Ringelblum (a judaic historian, a prominent investigator of the Warsaw ghetto) estimated that about 50,000 Poles were active in hiding Jews in Warsaw itself. The historian Teresa Prekerov defines the number of Polish citizens who helped Jews for 360 thousand.
Perhaps the estimates are besides conservative. Even if we accept the lowest scope of saved Jews (40-50 000), the preserved testimonies indicate that it represented about 50 percent of those who found shelter and survived the war. It means that at least 80 – 100 1000 Jews were hiding. Existing certificates besides indicate that 10 – 12 people, including children, were active in direct or indirect assistance for each Jew. In any event, the registry of aid to the Jews is much wider than in another countries of east Europe under German business and violence. According to judaic historian Walter Laqueur, “a comparison with France would not be detrimental to Poland.” individual said, "to be or not to be" never meant as much as during the German business in Poland. People of Żegota belonged to those Poles who responded to the challenge of their times, risking their own lives and their loved ones to bring aid to another people. They are indeed giants of their time erstwhile it comes to moral attitudes.
Only a tiny part of the Jews survived until the end of the war in any German concentration camps, labour camps, or POW camps. The remainder survived in the guerrilla, or hidden in the Polish environment and with its help. The current methods of dealing with Jews in the occupied areas were already established in Berlin on 21 September 1939, before the run in Poland ended. Hismler's order of 30 October 1939 ordered that all Jews from Pomerania, Poznań and advanced Silesia be relocated within 4 months to the General Gubernian, along with a crucial number of “especially hostile Polish people”. He entrusted Heydrich Adolf Eichmann with these tasks. About 200 1000 Poles and about 100 1000 Jews were deported in the winter 1939/1940. Mainly to Łódź, Lublin, Kielce and Kraków voivodships. Transports were sent in untanned cattle cars, and death was taking dense toll. About 160,000 people were crowded in the Łódź ghetto.
After the war crimes and the “Sonderaction Krakau”, the German-Ukrainian battalion “Nachtigall” murdered 45 professors of Lviv universities on 4 July 1941 in Lviv on the slopes of Kadecka Mountain in the Wulecki Hills. Earlier, in May 1940, German occupiers began implementing a broad biological plan to destruct Polish intelligence, the alleged Action A – B (Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaction).
The Polish underground press informed many times in 1940 and 1941 about the tragic conditions for surviving in the Warsaw Ghetto. Hans Frank’s basic decree of October 15, 1941, states that “Jews who leave their border without authority are subject to the death penalty. The same punishment is imposed on those who knowingly give specified Jews a hiding place, and "instigators and helpers are subject to the same punishment as the perpetrator, the attempted act will be punished as the deed accomplished." The Warsaw territory politician Fischer informs in a announcement of November 10, 1941, that the death punishment is subject to any who “have knowingly sheltered or otherwise assisted the Jews”. Following these warnings there are executions on Jews captured outside the ghetto and simultaneous arrests, sending to concentration camps and losing Poles helping them.
On July 22, 1942, the SS and German police squad began to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto. Within 2 months, more than 310,000 inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto were transported to the Treblinka gas chambers or murdered at the site. Hitler
"Vernichtungskommando" carried out this bloody task with the aid of Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Latvian collaborations supported by the judaic Order Police (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) alleged "odmans", subordinate to Judenrats, collaborating with Nazi Germans, judaic police units inside ghettos, labour camps and concentration camps. Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst Germans utilized for props, grabs, escorts of displaced persons and deportation actions.
Tragic events in the Warsaw ghetto echoed widely in Polish public opinion. News coming from behind the ghetto walls published in the secret press and given from mouth to mouth by eyewitnesses of events – railwaymen, firefighters and public utility workers with passes – caused horror and compassion for the persecuted. In the circles of people with anti-Semitic attitudes, too, the voices of outrage were raised, and in this environment there were besides acts of aid to refugees. The Catholic organization of the Polish Revival Front (FOP) issued a peculiar leaflet entitled "Protest". Its author was a prominent Polish novelist, a associate in the opposition movement of the organization Żegota Zofia Kossak. It appealed to the hearts and consciences of all Poles who believed in God – besides to those who have so far taken a reluctant stance towards Jews with an active attitude towards the crime: “who is silent in the face of the execution – becomes an accomplice of the murderer, who does not condemn, he approves”. The FOP protest obtained crucial social resonance. civilian Combat management issued a peculiar message on Nazi extermination action on Polish lands. This statement, published in many underground writings and transmitted by radio to London in order to make the extermination of Jews as widely public as possible in the world, ended with the words: “...the leadership of the civilian conflict on behalf of the full Polish society is protesting against the judaic crime. This protest brings together all Polish political and social groups. As in the case of Polish victims, physical work for these crimes will fall on executioners and their partners." Meanwhile, the German authorities cried out the order of SS and police commanders threatening the death of those who “will knowingly assist the Jews, all Pole who receives a hebrew becomes guilty, in all cases these Poles are subject to the death penalty.”
On the walls of occupied Polish cities and towns, Germany has spread announcements:
‘COMMENT’
Subject matter
Holding Hidden Jews
It is essential to remind you that according to & 3 of the Regulation on restrictions of stay in Gen. Gub. dated 15.X.1941 (Journal of Laws for GG. Page 595, Jews, leaving the judaic territory without permission, are subject to the death penalty.
According to this regulation, people who knowingly give their homes to specified Jews supply them with food or sale food are besides facing the death penalty.
The non-Jewish population is hereby warned against:
1/ giving the Jews a shelter,
2/ d o st ar c o n i e m i m i m u n i a
3/ selling food to them
Czestochowa, 24.09. 42
Der Stadthauptmann
Dr. Franke
In the face of inevitable destruction, thousands of Jews broke out from behind the ghetto walls and sought refuge in the “Aryan” districts of cities or villages, despite all the dangers involved. Most of the refugees were deprived of work and livelihood. These were frequently sick people, extorting physically, usually without documents, money, drawing attention to the incorrect people. The support in private acquaintances among Polish families was no longer sufficient. Needs were expanding and there was a request to undertake a wider, structured action of assistance to the persecuted, which would cover the full area of Guberni as planned and comprehensively as possible. many secret press statements have prepared adequate ground to give this kind of activity to certain permanent organizational forms. This thought matured simultaneously in respective different environments of the Polish underground.
Perhaps the best example of the reaction to the destiny of the Jews was the Polish anti-Semites who, according to Emanuel Ringelblum's records, "concluded that Poles and Jews have a common enemy and that Jews are a perfect ally who will do everything possible to destruct their top enemy." Even those anti-Semites who did not change their views, but had judaic relatives, helped them. "Polish anti-Semites did not apply the racial criterion erstwhile it came to relatives or friends," said Ringelblum, and further, "many Polish anti-Semites were characterized by dislike of Jews as a certain abstraction. erstwhile they met concrete Jews, they felt no hostility toward them, even real friendships. This was confirmed by the old saying: “Every Pole has a Jew.”
Polish aid despite the threat of death punishment developed. Apart from Warsaw, Małopolska and Kraków deserve a peculiar discrimination in this activity. Kraków was the center of the German administration in the General Governorate, and the Krakovians hid Jews from Germany besides from those not “recommended” or from fresh friendships, or for “not tiny money”. They saved as much as they could, and they had quite a few opportunities. Most often, after attics and basements, they rescued many Jews, without “Aryan papers”, refugees from the Kraków ghetto, or from the Plaszowski camp until 18 January 1945. The mystery of Schindler's Letter is apparent here. In fact, Schindler's "List" is simply a movie fiction created for circumstantial purposes of the message of the "good SS, good German Schindler" rescuers Jews before Polish moneymakers, previously sentenced by Germans to death.
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In Krakow, about 150 safe houses were organized for persons wanted by SD (Security Service), which was a feat in the city filled with SS, SD, Sipo and Gestapo. The same was actual for another cities in Małopolska. In Nowy Sącz 1 of Poles claimed that thanks to Polish aid, 1,200 Jews survived German terror; in Przemyśl, a hebrew Dr. Józef Blech declared that 160 Jews, adults and orphans were rescued by Poles. Even 1 of the critical witnesses to Poles admitted that in distant areas of Galicia Polish aid to Jews was so crucial that Germany p p a c y f i k o in a l and 2 villages for supporting Jews and guerrillas. Of course and in another parts of the country Poles reacted to their fate, especially in the Lublin and Chełm region. In Poznań, as Ringelblum noted, Poles, crying, led Jews expelled from the city by Germans.
During planet War II Poles who saved the lives of Jews had to show their heroic attitude and extraordinary courage. At the National Theatre, 70 specified people Maria Kaczyńska, the wife of the president of the Republic of Poland, decorated with Commander's Crosses of the Order of Polonia Restituta. Polish president Lech Kaczyński honored unknown or forgotten heroes of the conflict for freedom and sovereignty of Poland as part of the “Restore of Memory”. These include Poles saving Jews during the Holocaust, whose actions for decades after the war did not be in our consciousness. Unfortunately, all period there are less and less of us.
After the liquidation of the Lvov ghetto and the removal of the remnants of Jews to the Janov camp called the "university of thugs", Lviv was declared a Jewish-free city (Judenfrei, Judenrein) by the Germans. This was not true, due to the fact that many Lviv Jews were saved by Poles, lions.
Reports and more extended reports on the situation of Jews in Poland were besides received by the London government. However, both these and further efforts did not produce the desired result. It was incomprehensible for activists of the Polish and judaic undergrounds in the occupied country to almost completely neglect to respond to the large powers of the West, no action to the degree of the moment. The arrival in London in November 1942 of the peculiar courier of the AK Jan Kozielewski acting as Jan Karski caused a lively stir to the opinion there. The London Ministry of abroad Affairs made an appropriate note to the allied nations, considering that Jan Karski was an eyewitness to the crimes of Nazi Germans and represented the Polish and judaic underground at the same time.
The Council of Aid to Jews at the Delegation of the Government of the Republic of Poland to the Country started its activity – a Polish underground organization operating from 1942 to 1945, as an organ of the Polish government in exile, whose task was to organize assistance for Jews in and outside ghettos. The council acted under the conspiracy code name of Żegota. The Council assisted in hiding Jews in various places in private individuals in cities and villages. The margot provided refugees with false, alleged "Aryan papers", including Christian baptism metrics—the originals, issued by heroic priests.
Irrespective of “Żegota” an unorganised aid action in Poland was operating To Jews given by private individuals, frequently utilizing the slogans “from mouth to mouth”. In Krakow, there was a network of owners of accommodation houses on the streets of Starowiślna, Zamenhof, Curie Skłodowska, Pijarska, Strzeleckia, St. Gertrude, or in the immense eleventh cage of PKO at Zyblikiewicza Street 5. The Jews applied at the command of any “Kowalski” to the porter's booth at the entrance to the building asking the caretaker about the accommodation house. Unfortunately, you had to have money for accommodation. The Jews were helped by the caretakers, Kucharczyk, Grandpa and Crow. After ‘Aryan papers’, they were reported to ‘Żegota’. So many have survived. A well-known figure of the Polish underground providing assistance to Jews was the apocalyt, the pre-war officer of Major Marian Erhard, working as commandant of the Polish (granatowa) police in Krakow at Franciszkańska Street during the occupation. At 2 Gertrudy Street in Krakow Erhard ran a home for the Jews, which was managed by Mr. Korpakov. It is worth that these characters should be curious in the Main Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish National Institute of National Memory. The author of the survey can supply full information.
Most of the Jews who survived the German business in Poland were saved by Poles who had no ties to Żegota. American historian Richard C. Lukas gives a list of 704 specified heroes, frequently full families who were murdered by Germans for helping Jews, or hiding them.
Thanks to specified and another nameless people, the actual meaning of Signorita will not be lost. They were real people.
The text was published in the “WARSZAWSKI GAZETA” on 22 November 2012
Literature, studies, sources of quotes:
- Zofia Lewinówna, Władysław Bartoszewski “This is from my homeland” Poles from
aid to Jews “Znak” Kraków 1966,
- Richard C. Lukas "Forgotten Holocaust" "Rebis Publishing House" Poznań 2012
- “The Voice of Poland” Toronto No. 45 – 46 November 2011 Aleksander Szumański “The Way to Independence”
