MASTERIMATION OF POLISH PEOPLE
...it is not past that repeats itself, but people repeat themselves, just with all the evil (Włodzimierz Odojewski)
The mass extermination of the Polish population, carried out by Ukrainian nationalists during planet War II, must be described as genocide. The first investigator to point out that only this word corresponds to the size of the crimes committed by Ukrainians was Prof. Ryszard Szawłowski. He included the explanation and justification in Przedmow in the book Genocide by Ukrainian nationalists on the Polish population of Volyn 1939-1945, developing it in subsequent works and demonstrating that the Volyn-Małopol crime was the 3rd genocide in the Polish nation, after the German and russian crimes committed during the last war. The same classification of CNS-UPA crimes was accepted by prosecutors from the Main Crime Investigation Commission against the Polish National Institute of National Memory investigating the case. In the criminal assessment of the respective IPN crimes, he utilized the Convention on the Prevention and punishment of Genocide Crimes and Article 118(1) of the 1997 Polish Criminal Code. specified an approach seems to be full justified, since the actions of the Ukrainian OUN-UPA nationalists and their local helpers in the name of building their own country deserve to be full named. The perpetrators utilized strict racial and cultural segregation – they killed their victims only due to the fact that they were Poles.
The vast majority of victims, the number of whom was determined in subsequent studies of historians approaching 200 thousand, were Polish peasants, most frequently multi-children families. Women (even pregnant women), children and old people were not spared during the murders. For murderers, it didn't substance what the social or property position of the victims was. It was not crucial what their profession and their beliefs were. Both Catholic, Greek Catholic and Orthodox religions have been killed for generations, on the same basis as those who hoped that by changing their religion and making a declaration of allegiance to the Ukrainian state they would save their lives. They had no chance due to the fact that Poles were considered by Ukrainian racists to be different, alien, doomed to extinction, a species. Therefore, Polish-Ukrainian mixed families were murdered. Ukrainian nationalists felt that specified a matrimony meant that blood was “contaminated”. They utilized a contemptible name for specified families, and for children born in them – contractions. Sometimes only the Polish spouse and children of his sex were killed – due to the fact that according to the old tradition the religion and the determination of her nationality passed from Polish father to sons, and from Polish parent to daughters.
It did not substance whether Poles were good or bad towards their Ukrainian neighbours. Interestingly, but besides alarming, the best chances of endurance were those Poles whose relations with Ukrainians were bad due to the fact that they left their homes and fled to larger cities for the first signal of danger. However, the vast majority of Poles did not anticipate an attack and did not feel threatened. People who have lived among their Russian neighbors for years, frequently associated with their friendships and household ties, together working and celebrating, had to break in a very short time the stereotype of a cooperative fellow or a kinship and see the enemy bring about inevitable destruction. In many cases, as confirmed by hundreds of survivors, specified a change did not occur. People deceived themselves that terrible news coming from another villages concerns Poles who mistreated Ukrainian neighbors. There were besides frequent cases where Ukrainian nationalists utilized the naivety of Poles, "guaranteeing their safety" only to prevent them from leaving the village, while the death conviction on them was already issued. This intellectual origin was the main origin of the advanced losses and defencelessness of the Polish population towards this mass genocide.
The Poles died in the end astounded and terrified that martyrdom met them at the hands of a good friend or relative. Counting household ties proved to be unreliable, as nationalists murdered not only Poles, but besides Ukrainians refusing to kill their Polish spouses and children. Ukrainian families were besides exterminated to aid Poles, and even Ukrainians, including clergymen, who were critical of crimes and their performers.
Cruelty and ruthlessness with which the victims were attacked, abused, and subjected to sophisticated torture deserve to be peculiarly condemned. Therefore, this genocide should be referred to as genocidum atrox – or cruel (terrible) genocide.
The extermination action of the Polish population began in September 1939, but it was not until the second half of 1942 that the number of people killed began to increase avalanchely – from Volyn, Polesia to east Małopolska. In the spring of 1943, the destroyed agrarian population of Volynia began to defend itself to close towns and towns. In the summertime and autumn of that year, Ukrainian panic reached extraordinary sizes, many Polish villages burned, and people were murdered in a beastly way. The genocidal action apogee in Volyn occurred on 11 July 1943, on the day of the Ukrainian feast of Peter and Paul. Ukrainian nationalists and local population attacked Polish residents simultaneously in almost a 100 towns. Poles had no chance due to the fact that they were only a twelve percent of the inhabitants in Volyn. Part of her search for endurance focused in selected villages, where she created self-defense and resisted attacks by attackers. But not all of them saved. Most of the self-defense was defeated, and the population gathered there was murdered. Although it is uncomfortable, if the Russian front had not arrived, no self-defense would have survived, and the destiny of Volyn and Malopolska Poles would have been foregone – Ukrainians would have slaughtered without pity everyone they could have managed to get.
A description of the typical assault on Polish villages can be found in many accounts, reports of underground organizations and reports of the branch operating in the General Governorate of the Main Care Council. Here the groups armed with device weapons and handguns surrounded the village and lit it with rockets, and the Ukrainian population, armed with economical tools, attacked individual houses and murdered sleeping residents. After killing, housing and economical buildings were set on fire. The assaults were almost always accompanied by looting of property seized. This was mainly done by women and young people.
The bloody Ukrainian action was so extended that almost no Volyn household remained in the set. It should besides be stressed that the Polish peasants held on to their possession until the last minute and left it only erstwhile it was besides late for any meaningful and organized evacuation. The Ukrainians thought out extermination did not give the victims much chance of survival. Crimes were committed at night and in the early hours of the morning, so those who managed to escape were even without clothing or footwear. It was called soul escape. Even erstwhile the survivors saved anything, the remnants of property had to give up, or they wouldn't have survived a long road in an area occupied by organized groups of attackers who cornered and harassed people moving. Therefore, the regulation was that Volyn refugees coming to the cities were complete paupers. There was hunger and illness in the cities, due to the fact that the Nationalists of the CNS - UPA murdered anyone who wanted to return to their farm for food, and they themselves banned from selling it to Poles under penalty.
That is why thousands of Poles, on ft and in carts, were moving in 2 directions: towards the west, Chełm, Lublin and Warsaw, dispersing in central Poland, and towards the south, Lviv and Przemyśl, towards Małopolska. Most were in a disastrous position. Shocking descriptions of the condition of refugees were preserved, among which were many wounded and sick, half-naked and barefooted, orphans and parents looking for their lost children. Many died on the way. Only in large cities of Małopolska or central Poland could they number on aid from residents who took many of them under their roof, but in war they were incapable to feed, heal or dress them. The problem was orphans who were given goodwill to raise.
Since autumn 1943, Ukrainian murders have moved to the territory of the General Governorate (the east Malopolska Province). The Trembowel and Sobilian districts went on fire first. In any villages Poles were killed immediately, orally, or by means of leaflets, they threatened the Polish population with death if they did not leave their homes (e.g. in Sokal) within 24 hours. Our countrymen were terrorized and intimidated. They felt threatened even in Lviv, where Ukrainian nationalists at night marked with crosses of Poles' dwellings, which they planned to destroy.
Since the second half of October 1943 the position of the Polish population in subsequent districts has deteriorated. Many Ukrainian police officers with guns fled to UPA troops, but even those who remained in the ranks straight interacted with her. The most dangerous thing happened in Brzeżańszczyz (Podhajce, Rohatyn) and in the sub-mountain areas of Stanisławów and Stryja. It was not much better in the northern part of Lviv Voivodeship. As a consequence of the murders and their unique beastism among the Polish population, fear grew. In specified a situation, many people chose to flee, even erstwhile it active the failure of their full achievements and uncertain future. In the abandoned homes, there was immediately looting and then burning them to prevent the owners from returning.
The tragic location of Volynów, and then of Małopolska Poles benefited not only Ukrainians, but besides Germany. On the 1 hand, the east areas were "cleaned" from the unwanted Polish population, and on the another hand, the desperate, destitute Poles were easy transported to Germany. They based, so for escapees the evacuation trains, simultaneously issuing a message that they are not liable for the safety of those who do not decide to leave the endangered area. The transhipment stations were Equal and Dębno. In Plain there was besides a alleged gathering station (Sammellager). In turn, transitional camps were organized in Lviv and Przemyśl, which resembled concentration camps alternatively than rescue camps. 1 of the phase points on the way of refugees exported to Germany was a large transitional camp in Przemyśl - Bafinice. It remained under the management of the German Labour Office. As of May 1943, the transports of the Polish population “voluntarily” applying to the Reich were passing through the camp. Polish aid organizations determined that only by the end of July 1943 they had passed through Bafinice about 25 transports of various sizes. The number of people transported in them was estimated at between 10,000 and 13,000 people. From 1 August to 1 October 1943, 21 more transports of refugees passed through Przemyśl, including 13,000 adults and 6308 children. These were primarily family-affected, with children accounting for about 30% of the total. In Przemyśl, they were segregated into capable and incapable to work. The percent considered capable was 90%. Even 10 - year - old children were assigned to work in Germany. These Volyn residents, who wanted to avoid forced departure, crossed the GG border illegally, but were frequently turned back by Ukrainian police, and even shot at by Ukrainian-controlled border posts.
Some of the transports sent to the Reich were turned around as unfit for work. These people Germany (possibly behind Ukrainian whisper) sent back to Volyn, where they were immediately murdered by Ukrainian nationalists from the CNS and UPA. They awaited their destiny at the camp “Rückerlager” Przekopań. The hygiene and food conditions in this place were tragic. There was dirt, vermin, and people were starving. In September 1943, the transitional camp in Przemyśl was temporarily closed. Transports were sent to Lviv – to the camp at Pierackie Street. In the early days of September, a transport involving 1,200 people from Silicone, Zdołbunów, Mohylan, Korca, Ostrog, Equal, Klewana arrived. The transport was dominated by agrarian populations from around these cities. As stated in the document: "a valuable cultural settlement element". There were 380 children in this transport. 4 of them died after being transported to the hospital. Many adults and children arrived injured in a cruel way (one boy – 8 bayonet wounds to the head).
Only those with relatives in the General Governorate were allowed to settle, but only outside zones reserved by Ukrainians and Germans for themselves. However, we gotta wait for detailed investigation and determination of the size and failure of human beings resulting from the expulsions caused by this genocide, and no historian has taken these issues in detail. It can be assumed that these losses were very high.
Since the spring of 1944, despite the continued murders in the east districts of the Republic, the gangs consisting of members of the CNS and UPA, Ukrainian police, deserters from SS Galizien and the local Ukrainian population began rallies on the left bank of the Bug. The extermination of the Polish population in the south-eastern part of Lublin began. The cruelest crimes occurred in the districts of Chełm and Hrubieszów – which Ukrainians announced the territory of "Great Ukraine". According to the data of the Polish Welfare Committee from Hrubieszów, only in March 1944 about 70% of the village in this territory was burned and the Polish population was murdered or dispersed. Gradually the full municipalities were depopulated. The remainder of Polish residents fled for fear of Ukrainian cruelty. They were tens of thousands of people. According to Janina Kiełboń estimates, the number of refugees only from the districts of Hrubieszów and Zamość during this period was around 82 700 people.
When Ukrainian panic arrived in the vicinity of Rawa Ruska and Lubaczów (Galicia District), the AK troops stationed there, remembering the Volyn massacre, conducted a spectacular, life-saving evacuation from the most endangered places to the districts of Tomaszów and Krasnystaw. It must be said that only in these areas the upers encountered opposition from the Polish armed underground. Their losses began to increase, as it was not just a "fight" with defenseless women and children coming down to murdering them at night in their own homes.
As the Russians approached, the danger of Ukrainian nationalists did not decrease, and in Lviv: “Over the period of February [...], young people, Poles, are mostly shot, and this list besides reaches about 50 people. You take individual IDs from murdered people. The perpetrators committed the theft of papers for a reason, due to the fact that with these papers Ukrainian criminals continued to flee to the West. “In the city of Lviv itself, Ukrainian police shoot at Poles in the evening hours, utilizing the dark so far that appearing on the streets in the evening hours is connected especially for young people with large danger. The number of murdered people surely varies between 7-9 1000 people, due to the fact that it is hard to accurately list especially the individual murders that prevail everywhere." The cathedral in Lviv was covered with hourglasses: "he died after short and dense sufferings." Interventions by the Head of the Board of Care (RGO) in Gouvernement in Starosta Grodzki, SD and appeals to the Greek Catholic clergy did not have any effect.
Among the victims of genocide raging in the border regions were many Catholic priests who were killed in a peculiarly cruel and sophisticated way. The Polish side besides had no hope of any aid and knowing from the Greek Catholic Archbishop Andrei Szeptycki: “There is nothing to compose to the Archbishop of Szeptycki, due to the fact that he stands in the position that Ukrainians do not, but Bolshevik bands do. It is, of course, hiding your head in the sand, so as not to see the truth.”
Leopold Tesznar's reports may be a good illustration of the bloody months in east Małopolska. It can be read that "The Ukrainian Mords made on the Polish population took on the same strength in any areas as in Volyn at the time... and that "...in the Kamionetsky, Złoczowski, Lviv, Coast, Czortkowski, Stanislawowski were swept from the surface of the earth full villages and Polish settlements "[...] victims on this area can already be counted for respective tens of thousands".
A crucial decrease in the number of Polish victims at the hands of the CNS - UPA took place in east Małopolska only in 1945. However, this did not apply to 2 areas in which the number of murders increased dramatically this year. These were east districts of Tarnopolskie Voivodeship and western districts of Lwów Voivodeship, namely those which have been within the fresh borders of Poland since August 1945. In the confederate and east lands of the present Republic, the attacks on Poles continued until 1947, and their course was as cruel as in Volyn and the same goal: the demolition and expulsion of Poles surviving there.
The genocidal action carried out by nationalist Ukrainians, as a political action, was planned and implemented with an iron consequence. The aim was that at the end of the war there should be no Poles in the Borderlands. Then you wouldn't gotta do the plebiscite, the sharing of land, like after planet War I. In his many works, Wiktor Poliszczuk stressed that if OUN Bandery and UPA wanted to usage the German-Russian conflict to build a Ukrainian state, then in 1944, erstwhile the failure of Germany was only a substance of time, and the hope of even a substitute for state autonomy had fallen, mass execution of the Polish population had lost any political sense. Continuing this operation on the eve of the Red Army entering and continuing it under russian business revealed that the real intent of Ukrainians was to physically annihilate and get free of Poles from east provinces.
The implementation of the genocide operation undertaken from the lowest motives under the cover of lofty national slogans exhausts all the signs of an untimely crime carried out according to the principles of criminal ideology of Ukrainian nationalism. We know that acts of genocide were besides accompanied by unimaginable private property plundering and equally immense losses in Polish national property. The cultural goods of immense value, sacred and secular objects were destroyed. People were robbed of agricultural equipment, livestock, equipment and equipment of homes, crops – there is besides a deficiency of Polish investigation and economical estimates. Only the sub-groups of individual districts remained. In 1 monastery in the Understone of St. Brody the losses estimated by Prior Mark Kras were $718 450. So far, no of the publications I know contain these facts.
Historians have besides not noticed the crucial impact of the expulsion of the crowds of agrarian people of Kresów (whose livelihood, including farms and livestock, was destroyed and families decimated) on the course of later repatriation negotiations. As can be said of the "free choice", since by mid-1944 the Polish population had been forced to leave the native land against their will and under the threat of death – and even if they could, they did not have anything to return to after destroying farms and robbing possessions. That's why most Polish peasants left in the unknown, not from their homestead, but from the railway stations they were waiting for their fate. There were another people dying... The list of victims grew.
Since the tragedy, more than 70 years have passed, but we have not received comprehensive investigation on individual and material losses resulting from Ukrainian genocide. Only in the investigation division of the Institute of National Memory, i.e. the Office of Education and Research, since 2007 the implementation of the programme entitled “The individual losses of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict between 1939 and 1947”, which unfortunately was limited to postwar Poland, which present serves only to escalate claims from the Ukrainian side – peculiarly displaced in “Operation Wisła”.
The full number of victims of the border genocide can scope as many as 200 000 people, as in the case of this kind of mass crime we are dealing with both those murdered during a peculiar attack and the alleged later victims, i.e. those who died later, already as refugees, as a consequence of wounds suffered, diseases, including intellectual diseases, hunger and cold suffered during wandering, orphanhood, diseases, epidemics created in transition camps for refugees. People, especially older people and children, died in hiding, in transport, or in cities. The number of unborn children who died in the wombs of mothers is unknown, for many of the women murdered by the bander were pregnant, as is shown in the list of victims. besides carried out by Germans to the robots, refugees were subjected to extermination and exploitation, starving and dying in factories and cities under bombings of Allied raids. Information about these facts was received from Germany to the RGO office in Krakow. We besides know that any of the transports described were sent to Lower Silesia, where refugees were utilized to build a network of underground shelters for Nazis in the Prince and the mountains of Sowi. It is known that fewer of the workers there survived because, after completing their work, due to their strict secrecy, slaves were murdered. These sufferings and deaths would not have happened if it had not been for the Ukrainian genocide.
Poland about these crimes is silent, universities do not address topics related to this terrible genocide. Politicians besides effort to avoid it.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine there was a revival of flagism. Ukrainian researchers with nationalistic views effort to cover at all costs the traces of crimes, their today's "heroes", and, if it is impossible, to maximise the number of Polish victims and to level them with Ukrainian victims. More and more Ukrainian authors in general deny murder. In the latest work of the well-known Ukrainian historian Volodymir Windywiec, the author calls genocide "Polish-Ukrainian War" and practically negates it. But it was not a “war” due to the fact that there are no wars against the civilian population with women, children and old people. What army gives orders to its “soldiers” to execution their Polish wives and children? Unfortunately, the "hero" UPA directed 90% of its actions against the innocent, god of spirit to the people who died for only being Poles.
When present the “combatants” of UPA awarded and honored march together with Ukrainian youth and members of “Svobody” in multi-thousand marches, in honor of Stepan Bandera and Roman Szuchewycz, erstwhile the executioners of Poles insert monuments in all almost city of Western Ukraine, and in honor of the SS Galizien Division, concerts are held, nationalist politicians officially request 19 districts of present Poland.
New investigation on the past of the Holocaust shows that German women who followed the Nazis to east Europe frequently surpassed them in cruelty.
Many of us say that the more women in power, the better - automatically - our planet becomes. Chromosome XX is simply a safeguard against macho cruelty and abuse. If Lehman Brothers had been named Lehman Sisters, there would never have been a crisis. Are they right? Further reading this test will likely shake their convictions.
Wendy Lower's book "Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Filelds" ("Furie Hitler" was released on the publishing market. German women on Nazi death fields"). The work completely changes our ideas that women are naturally more moral, mild and caring.
We mostly consider the participation of women in the Holocaust to be limited to individual cases of sadistic kapo in concentration camps. This kind of utmost sadism is usually opposed to the story of average German women who had no thought of the atrocities of that time. A veil of silence has been set aside for the actions of the rest.
Until today. Wendy Lower is simply a tiny and mild-voiced American historian and longtime worker of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. She spent the last 2 decades researching the archives of Ukraine and east Europe made available after the collapse of communism. Lower speaks Russian, German and Ukrainian. Her husband is German. The author went to quite a few problem to exposure the examples of the sadism and brutality of women at the time and their work for what happened in the German - Nazi fields of death in the east of the continent.
Lower describes how German women went to ghettos for "purchase performances", during which they simply plundered the valuables of murdered judaic families. He writes about mothers smashing heads of judaic children and nurses who, for the "common good", kill disabled children.
Let us add that not specified shocking accounts were expected by the author herself. She went to Ukraine to find evidence in the archives of direct links between Hitler's orders and actions, Himmler's, and German officers in the Żytomierz region, where there were large groups of judaic people before the war. In any cities Jews accounted for 70-80% of the full population. Hundreds of thousands of Jews disappeared erstwhile the daggers were removed.
Wendy Lower analysed papers discussing the exchange of views and opinions between the Führer and German command in the area. At any point, to her overwhelming surprise, she "stepped upon the woman's name lists". She decided to follow that lead. According to her research, half a million Germans left east as wives, secretaries, teachers, and nurses. They were tempted by the anticipation of individual and professional promotion.
The spirit of fresh times and ambition among these women are what origin specified large anxiety and fear today. In fulfilling their dreams, they became willing partners in genocide crimes.
One of the most frightening stories quoted by the author concerns young Ernie Petri, an intelligent girl from a mediocre German farm who has been strained by German - Nazi hierarchy. She married SS officer Horst Petri before. In 1942, together with him and their three-year-old son, she lived in a immense Polish property recruited by the Nazis in the village of Grzęda.
One day Petri came home in a carriage from close Lviv. In the woods, she spotted six bare judaic children. (The Jews were transported to camps without clothes so that in the event of escape they could be rapidly recognized.) Petri took the frightened kids home. "She fed them, comforted them, and then drove them to her fields and killed them all in turn with a shot in the back of the head" - she writes in her book Lower.
After the war, Petri had to attest in the presence of agents of the notorious Stasi. She explained that 1 day she had heard German officers talking about how to kill Jews with coffee and cake. She knew it was a shot in the back. But the thing that scares the hell out of this full communicative is that she didn't gotta kill those kids. She did it of her own free will, says Lower.
Petri was a parent herself. How, then, could she kill six innocent children and hug her own child? She said she was under her husband's influence and wanted to be credible to him.
Show her she's faithful to the origin he's fighting for. individual who crosses the tracks. She felt this was the right thing to do for a good SS wife. She besides asked not to forget that she was raised in times of tremendous ideological pressure, writes Wendy Lower.
For the purposes of the written book, the author met with the household of the deceased Petri. She was amazed to see that there was a photograph of the residence where Erna’s grandma lived during the war. household members were very respectful in mentioning God’s wonderful and early grandmother’s life.
This rewriting of fact is inactive happening in Germany today. Those who last the war age and evidence their memories. Lower describes how she learned to talk to women who were in the east during the war. At first, they denied everything, but they opened up erstwhile she started talking to them and later - correspond. They told her how German soldiers warned them with words: "Do not be afraid of the sound of gunshots, we just kill Jews." They talked about the sight of starving at the railway tracks traveling to the camp of women, children and men. specified stories lie to the story that German women have no thought what truly happened during the war.
Wanda Lower besides had the chance to get acquainted with Liesel Willhaus, the wife of another SS officer. This female utilized to show off her shooting skills, killing with shots from the balcony of judaic prisoners of camps utilized as servants in German homes. The parent was accompanied by applause for her small girl!
Before the war, Gertrude Landau and Josefine Block worked in Vienna as a secretary. They besides married SS officers. The first husband, Felix Landau, was called a "Jewish general". But not due to the fact that he had a peculiar love for this nation, but due to the fact that he effectively helped to reduce its numbers in Drohobych. There are respective 100 remaining judaic groups of 15,000 in this city. Those who survived testified before the court that Gertude Landau personally issued orders to kill 3 maids working in the property and trampled a judaic kid to death. Josefine Block was to urge the militia to kill 200 "Cygans" who were in town. 4 judaic girls were killed in front of her, who were besides weak to work for her.
Lower learned about the horrors and crimes, reading in Ukrainian microfilm archives and old dusty documents. She describes her own horror with what she learned. At any point erstwhile I was reading about Ernie Petri, my heart started beating so hard that I had to halt reading for a while. I remember breathing with relief that I didn't should be there myself at the time... I couldn't get distant from that relationship. I read them all the time. I've been thinking. I knew I had to compose all about it, Lower says.
However, crimes were not only committed by the SS' wives. Thousands of ambitious young Germans who became nurses or teachers during the war are besides to blame. The erstwhile euthanized thousands of disabled or weak children. Teachers were obliged to inform the authorities about epileptics or small boys and girls who could not button their clothes. specified children were immediately removed to preserve the "purity" of Aryan blood.
Writing her book, Wendy Lower lived in Germany for 5 years. He admits that he is anxiously waiting to respond to the announcement of its publication in the country next January. - It's their story. Germany is so very critical of abroad historians. I presented fragments of the book at respective technological conferences in Germany alone.
Outside German scientists keep calm and restraint. But in private conversations, they began to ask questions. They said they didn't believe that what I said was true. I don't blame that attitude. I compose about their grandmothers and relationships.
It's another part of past that they don't want to expose, adds Lower. Where evil gains the rank of the strategy and luxuriantly promotes sadistic attitudes, it is impossible to trust that women can keep moral standards. erstwhile it comes to the Holocaust, we begin to discover that they were as liable as men.
Alexander Szumański "Kurier" Chicago
