The horrors that Nazi Germans inflicted on Polish people in occupied Poland during 1939 to 1945
Warning: This post covers very evil and very disturbing actions of Nazi Germans towards the Polish people during World War II. Readers who don't like reading about such unpleasant matters should skip reading the rest of this post. Note further that this post is a very long one.
I would like to first mention about my very friendly interactions with a few Polish people in Brussels.
In my stay in Brussels, Belgium for around 15 months in 1985-86, I frequented a Polish run pub near to the studio flat (with cleaning service and so somewhat like a hotel) provided by my customer company Wang International Telecommunications Research Centre, on Avenue Louise, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_Louise.
The pub was on one of the side streets off Avenue Louise opposite to my studio flat building. I tried to quickly go through Google Map of the area to spot a similar pub in it but did not get one in my quick search. I guess, in all probability, they would have moved on.
Two Polish guys were the main chaps who ran the pub. I think they may have been brothers and one of them seems to have been married with his wife helping out with some of the pub work. They were very friendly people. The Polish men may have been in their thirties - I was around 23 years old then. I have very happy memories of my many visits to this Polish run pub. It was like a somewhat regular eating place for me (usually non-veg as veg was not really on the menu) and some drink like beer or wine. The Polish men spoke English, if I recall correctly and perhaps not fluently but they could follow my/our English, which made things very convenient for me (and my two colleagues from my Bombay company, Datamatics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datamatics).
That has been my main connection to Polish people. I don't recall doing any software project for any Polish customer or interacting with Polish software engineers during my international software development career (till Aug. 2002) or having extensive interactions with any Polish person after I moved to Puttaparthi (Oct. 2002 and after).
A day or two ago, when I came across a video interview of the son of Hans Frank who governed Nazi occupied Poland from 1939 to 1945 and who (Hans Frank) was judged by the Nuremberg trials to be guilty of war-crimes and crimes against humanity (committed on ***millions*** of Polish people then) and executed, I thought about the friendly Polish people who ran the above mentioned pub in Brussels that I used to frequent, over 3 decades ago. [For more on the Nuremberg judgement on Hans Frank, visit https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nuremberg-trial-judgements-hans-frank.]
There is a good probability that the parents and/or other elder relatives of these friendly Polish people I knew, would have been living in Poland during World War II and probably faced some of the brutality of Nazi (or Soviet) occupation then! That makes this matter much more real to me from a human perspective. So I felt that as a mark of gratitude to those Polish folks who were so friendly to me then, I should dig up about this matter and put up a post on it, and also share the video interview. Sharing such dark periods of history which is less than a century ago, may help in preventing such dark things happening in the future. The latter is the primary intent of this post.
It is also appropriate to draw attention of readers to rise of white and Neo Nazi nationalism in parts of USA and Europe over the past few years. The history of Nazi Germany is vital to understand how evil ethnic and Neo Nazi nationalism can turn out to be.
In Nazi Germany case, the horrific ideology proposed domination of Nazi white Europeans on Slav white non-Jewish Europeans subjugating the latter as low level service providers to the so-called "superior" Nazi Germans (white Europeans). As regards Jewish Poles, the Nazis wanted to simply kill them all! But their attitude towards non-Jewish Polish people was also very bad and evil, even if it was not as horrendously evil as their attitude towards Polish Jews (and Jews from all over Europe).
And the horror is that Nazi Germany implemented its horrific ideology mentioned above in Nazi Germany occupied Poland! So it is not just theory! Nazi Germans carried out that horrific ideology on non-Jewish Polish people (along with the horrific evil done against Polish Jews).
Before I get into Nazi occupation of Poland during WW2 (World War 2), readers may want to note that I have put up two posts covering history of the evil Nazism that arose in first half of 20th century in Germany.
1) Nazism (1920s to mid 1940s) being influenced by Volkisch movement and its back-to-the-land anti-urban populism, http://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2017/01/nazism-1920s-to-mid-1940s-being.html, 23rd Jan. 2017
The above post gives some background to how a rural (and anti-urban) Volkisch populist movement contributed to growth of Nazism in 1920s to mid 1940s Germany.
2) The terrifying extreme nationalism and fanaticism of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, http://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-terrifying-extreme-nationalism-and.html, 24th Jan. 2017
The above post has extracts about the evil and demonic policy of Nazis involving conquest of Central and Eastern Europe and subjugation of its peoples, with an intent to either get rid of them or make them servants of Germans.
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Now to the video that triggered this post:
HARDtalk Niklas Frank Son of Hans Frank, Governor of Nazi Occupied Poland 1939 45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20M1pFOvG7I, 24 min. 15 secs.
The interview is an intense one but very thought-provoking.
Niklas Frank's father, Hans Frank, was boss of Nazi occupied Poland, and was tried, sentenced and hanged to death by the Nuremberg trials.
Some extracts from Hans Frank's wiki page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Frank, are given below:
Hans Michael Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a German war criminal and lawyer who worked for the Nazi Party during the 1920s and 1930s, and later became Adolf Hitler's personal lawyer. After the invasion of Poland, Frank became Nazi Germany's chief jurist in the occupied Poland "General Government" territory. During his tenure throughout World War II (1939–45), he instituted a reign of terror against the civilian population[1] and became directly involved in the mass murder of Jews. At the Nuremberg trials, he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and was executed.
...
In September 1939 Frank was assigned as Chief of Administration to Gerd von Rundstedt in the German military administration in occupied Poland. Beginning 26 October 1939, following the completion of the invasion of Poland, Frank served as Governor-General of the occupied Polish territories (Generalgouverneur für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete), overseeing the General Government, the area of Poland not directly incorporated into Germany (roughly 90,000 km2 out of the 187,000 km2 Germany had gained).
Frank oversaw the segregation of the Jews into ghettos, especially the enormous Warsaw ghetto, and the use of Polish civilians as forced labour.
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On 16 December 1941, Frank spelled out to his senior officials the approaching annihilation of the Jews:
The General Government was the location of four of the six extermination camps, namely, Bełżec, Treblinka, Majdanek and Sobibór. Chełmno and Birkenau fell just outside the borders of the General Government.
Frank later claimed that the extermination of Jews was entirely controlled by Heinrich Himmler and the SS and that he, Frank, was unaware of the extermination camps in the General Government until early 1944, a surprising claim and one found to be untrue by the Nuremberg tribunal.
During his testimony at Nuremberg, Frank claimed he submitted resignation requests to Hitler on 14 occasions, but Hitler would not allow him to resign. Frank fled the General Government in January 1945 as the Soviet Army advanced.
...
Frank was captured by American troops on 3 May 1945, at Tegernsee in southern Bavaria. He attempted suicide twice, but failed both times.[13][citation needed] He was indicted for war crimes and tried before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg from 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946. During the trial he converted, guided by Fr Sixtus O'Connor OFM, to Roman Catholicism, and claimed to have had a series of religious experiences.
Frank voluntarily surrendered 43 volumes of his personal diaries to the Allies, which were then used against him as evidence of his guilt.[3] Frank confessed to some of the charges and expressed remorse on the witness stand, showing penitence for his crimes. On the witness stand, he said,
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Family
======
On 2 April 1925 Frank married 29-year-old secretary Brigitte Herbst (25 December 1895 – 9 March 1959) from Forst (Lausitz). The wedding took place in Munich and the couple honeymooned in Venetia. Hans and Brigitte Frank had five children:
Sigrid Frank (born 13 March 1927, Munich – d. in South Africa)
Norman Frank (born 3 June 1928, Munich – d. 2010)
Brigitte Frank (born 13 January 1935, Munich – d. 1981)
Michael Frank (born 15 February 1937, Munich – d. 1990)
Niklas Frank (born 9 March 1939, Munich)
Brigitte Frank had a reputation for having a more dominant personality than her husband: after 1939 she called herself "a queen of Poland" ("Königin von Polen"). The marriage was unhappy and became colder from year to year. When Frank sought a divorce in 1942, Brigitte gave everything to save their marriage in order to remain the "First Lady in the General Government". One of her most famous comments was "I'd rather be widowed than divorced from a Reichsminister!" Frank answered: "So you are my deadly enemy!"[27]
In 1987, Niklas Frank wrote a book about his father, Der Vater: Eine Abrechnung ("The Father: A Settling of Accounts"), which was published in English in 1991 as In the Shadow of the Reich. The book, which was serialized in the magazine Stern, caused controversy in Germany because of the scathing way in which the younger Frank depicted his father: Niklas referred to him as "a slime-hole of a Hitler fanatic" and questioned his remorse before his execution.[28][29]
Niklas is the sole living child of Hans and Brigitte Frank. Sigrid remained a committed Nazi who emigrated to South Africa during the apartheid regime and died there. Brigitte committed suicide in 1981; Michael and Norman died in 1990 and 2010, respectively.[30]
Quotations
==========
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In the Nuremberg trials:
A thousand years will pass and still Germany's guilt will not have been erased.[33]
[Wiki References
1. "Holocaust Encyclopedia: Hans Frank". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
...
3. Frank's cross-examination during the Nuremberg trial in: "One Hundred And Eleventh Day - Thursday, 18 April 1946". Nuremberg Trial Proceedings. 12. Yale Law School/Lillian Goldman Law Library/The Avalon Project. p. 20. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
...
9. Speech by Frank to his senior officials, 16 Dec 1941, repr. in: Office of Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, OCCPAC, quoted in Polonsky, Antony (2011). The Jews in Poland and Russia. III 1914 to 2008. p. 434.
...
13. Posner, Gerald L (1991). Hitler's children : sons and daughters of leaders of the Third Reich talk about their fathers and themselves. New York: Random House. p. 31.
14. Gilbert, G. M. (1995). Nuremberg Diary. De Capo Press, p. 19; ISBN 978-0-306-80661-2.
15. Smith, Kingsbury (16 October 1946). "The Execution of Nazi War Criminals". Famous World Trials - Nuremberg Trials 1945-1949. Archived from the original on 12 March 2001. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
...
27. "Hans Frank – Pre-war career, Wartime career, Quotation, Fiction and film," in Cambridge Encyclopedia, 32. Retrieved 20 January 2008.
28. Frank, Niklas (1991). In the Shadow of the Reich. Knopf; ISBN 978-0-394-58345-7.
29. Review by Susan Benesch, Washington Monthly, November 1991.
30. Niklas Frank, Hitler's Children (2012 documentary).
...
33. William L. Shirer. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (foreword). Simon and Schuster, New York, 1960.
--- end wiki References]
---- end Hans Frank wiki extracts ---
Here's an interesting review of the book on Hans Frank written by his son Niklas Frank (who is interviewed in the video mentioned at the beginning of this post): https://www.thefreelibrary.com/In+the+Shadow+of+the+Reich.-a011540503
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Some info. about Nazi occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1945 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Poland_(1939%E2%80%931945) is given below:
The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War (1939–1945) began with the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, and it was formally concluded with the defeat of Germany by the Allies in May 1945. Throughout the entire course of the foreign occupation, the territory of Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR) with the intention of eradicating Polish culture and subjugating its people by occupying German and Soviet powers.[1] In summer-autumn of 1941 the lands annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Germany in the course of the initially successful German attack on the USSR. After a few years of fighting, the Red Army drove the German forces out of the USSR and across Poland from the rest of Central and Eastern Europe.
Both occupying powers were equally hostile to the existence of sovereign Poland, Polish people, and the Polish culture aiming at their destruction.[2] Before Operation Barbarossa, Germany and the Soviet Union coordinated their Poland-related policies, 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.[3]
About 6 million Polish citizens—nearly 21.4% of Poland's population—died between 1939 and 1945 as a result of the occupation,[4][5][6] 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.[4] Overall, during German occupation of pre-war Polish territory, 1939–1945, the Germans murdered 5,470,000–5,670,000 Poles, including nearly 3,000,000 Jews.[5][6]
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In September 1939 Poland was invaded and occupied by two powers: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, acting in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[7] Germany acquired 48.4% of the former Polish territory.[8] 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.[9] The size of these annexed territories was approximately 92,500 square kilometres (35,700 sq mi) with approximately 10.5 million inhabitants.[8] The remaining block of territory was placed under a German administration, of about the same size and inhabited by about 11.5 millions,[8] were 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 12 October 1939.[10][11] Most of the administration outside strictly local level was replaced by German officials.[11][12] Non-German population on the occupied lands were subject to forced resettlement, Germanization, economic exploitation, and slow but progressive extermination.[11][12][13]
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From the beginning, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany was intended as fulfilment of the future plan of the German Reich described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf as Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germans in Central and Eastern Europe.[10] The occupation goal was to turn former Poland into ethnically German "living space", by deporting and exterminating the non-German populace, or relegating it to the position of slave labour.[25][26][27] The goal of the German state under Nazi leadership during the war was to destroy the Polish peoples and nation completely[28] and their fate, as well as many other Slavs, was outlined in genocidal[29][30] Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) and a closely related Generalsiedlungsplan (General Plan for Settlement).[31] Over 30 years, approximately 12.5 million Germans were to be resettled into the Slavic areas, including Poland; with some versions planning for a movement of at least 100 million Germans over a century.[31] The Slavic inhabitants of those lands were to be eliminated by genocidal policies;[29][30] and the survivors resettled further east, into less hospitable parts of Eurasia beyond the Ural Mountains, such as Siberia.[31] At the plan's fulfillment, there would be no Slavs or Jews remaining in Central and Eastern Europe.[31] 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, and the Grosse Planung ("Big Plan"), which covered actions to be undertaken after the war was won.[32][33][34] The plan envisaged differing percentages of the various conquered nations undergoing Germanisation, expulsion into the depths of Russia, and other gruesome fates, including purposeful starvation and murder, the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would take on an irrevocably German character.[34][35] Over a longer period, only about 3–4 million Poles, suitable for Germanization, were supposed to be left residing in the former Poland.[36]
Those plans began to be implemented almost immediately after the German troops took control of Poland. As early as October 1939, many Poles were expelled from the annexed lands to make room for German colonizers.[10][37] Only those Poles selected for Germanization, approximately 1.7 million including thousands of children who had been taken from their parents, were permitted to remain,[38] and if they resisted it, they were to be sent to concentration camps, because "German blood must not be utilized in the interest of a foreign nation".[39] By the end of 1940, at least 325,000 Poles from annexed lands were forcibly resettled in the General Government, forced to abandon most of their property.[10] There were numerous fatalities among the very young and elderly, who perished en route or in makeshift transit camps such as those in the towns of Potulice, Smukal, and Toruń.[10] The expulsions continued in 1941, with another 45,000 Poles forced to move eastwards, but following German invasion of the Soviet Union, the expulsions slowed down, as more and more trains were diverted for military logistics, rather than being made available for population transfers.[10] Nonetheless, in late 1942 and in 1943, large-scale expulsions also took place in the General Government, affecting at least 110,000 Poles in the Zamość–Lublin region.[10] Tens of thousands of the expelled, with no place to go, were simply imprisoned in the Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Majdanek concentration camps.[10] By 1942, the number of new German arrivals in pre-war Poland had already reached two million.[40]
The Nazi plans also called for the Poland's 3.3 million Jews to be exterminated, the non-Jewish majority's extermination was planned in the long term and initiated through the mass murder of its political, religious, and intellectual elites at first, which was meant to make the formation of any organized top-down resistance more difficult. Further, the populace of occupied territories was to be relegated to the role of an unskilled labor-force for German-controlled industry and agriculture.[10][41]
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Cultural genocide
==================
Nazi Germany engaged in a concentrated effort to destroy Polish culture. To that end, numerous cultural and educational institutions were closed or destroyed, from schools and universities, through monuments and libraries, to laboratories and museums. Many employees of said institutions were arrested and executed as part wider persecutions of Polish intellectual elite. Schooling of Polish children was curtailed to a few years of elementary education, as outlined by Himmler's 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".[10]
Extermination of elites
=======================
Proscription lists (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen), prepared before the war started, identified more than 61,000 Polish elite and intelligentsia leaders deemed as unfriendly towards Germany.[62] Already during the 1939 German invasion, dedicated units of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen) were tasked with arresting or outright killing of those resisting the Germans.[10][63] They were aided by some regular German army units and "self-defense" forces composed of members of German minority in Poland, the Volksdeutsche.[10] The Nazi regime's policy of murdering or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites was known as Operation Tannenberg".[64] This included not only those resisting actively, but also those simply capable of doing so by the virtue of their social status.[10] As a result, tens of thousands of people found "guilty" of being educated (members of the intelligentsia, from clergymen to government officials, doctors, teachers and journalists) or wealthy (landowners, business owners, and so on) were either executed on spot, sometimes in mass executions, or imprisoned, some destined for the concentration camps.[10] Some of the mass executions were reprisal actions for actions of the Polish resistance, with German officials adhering to the collective guilt principle and holding entire communities responsible for the actions of unidentified perpetrators.[10]
One of the most infamous German operations was the Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion (AB-Aktion in short, German for Special Pacification), a German campaign during World War II aimed at Polish leaders and the intelligentsia, including many university professors, teachers and priests.[65][66] In the spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the German authorities of German-occupied Poland.[10][65] Several thousands were executed outside Warsaw, in the Kampinos forest near Palmiry, and inside the city at the Pawiak prison.[10][66] Most of the remainder were sent to various German concentration camps.[65]
The Nazis also persecuted the Catholic Church in Poland and other, smaller religions.
Nazi policy towards the Church was at its most severe in the territories it annexed to Greater Germany, where they set about systematically dismantling the Church – arresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen and nuns were murdered or sent to concentration and labor camps.[10][67] Already in 1939, 80% of the Catholic clergy of the Warthegau region had been deported to concentration camps.[68] Primate of Poland, Cardinal August Hlond, submitted an official account of the persecutions of the Polish Church to the Vatican.[69] In his final observations for Pope Pius XII, Hlond wrote: "Hitlerism aims at the systematic and total destruction of the Catholic Church in the... territories of Poland which have been incorporated into the Reich...".[68][69] The smaller Evangelical churches of Poland also suffered. The entirety of the Protestant clergy of the Cieszyn region of Silesia were arrested and deported to concentration camps at Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Oranienburg.[68] Protestant clergy leaders who perished in those purges included charity activist Karol Kulisz, theology professor Edmund Bursche, and Bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland, Juliusz Bursche.[68]
Germanization
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In the territories annexed to Nazi Germany, in particular with regards to the westernmost incorporated territories—the so-called Wartheland— the Nazis aimed for a complete "Germanization", i.e. full cultural, political, economic and social assimilation.[10] Polish language was prohibited to be taught even in elementary schools; landmarks from streets to cities were renamed en masse (Łódź became Litzmannstadt, and so on).[10] All manner of Polish enterprises, up to small shops, were taken over, with prior owners rarely compensated.[10] Signs posted in public places prohibited non-Germans from entering these places warning: "Entrance is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs.", or Nur für Deutsche ("Only for Germans"), commonly found on many public utilities and places such as trams, parks, cafes, cinemas, theaters, and others.[10][70][71]
The Nazis kept an eye out for Polish children who possessed Nordic racial characteristics.[72] An estimated total of 50,000 children, majority taken from orphanages and foster homes in the annexed lands, but some separated from their parents, were taken into a special Germanization program.[10][43] Polish women deported to Germany as forced laborers and who bore children were a common victim of this policy, with their infants regularly taken.[10][73] If the child passed the battery of racial, physical and psychological tests, they were sent on to Germany for "Germanization".[74]
At least 4,454 children were given new German names,[75] forbidden to use Polish language,[76] and reeducated in Nazi institutions.[10] Few were ever reunited with their original families.[10] Those deemed as unsuitable for Germanization for being "not Aryan enough" were sent to orphanages or even to concentration camps like Auschwitz, where many perished, often killed by intercardiac injections of phenol.[10] For Polish forced laborers, in some cases if an examination of the parents suggested that the child might not be "racially valuable", the mother was compelled to have an abortion.[10][73] Infants who did not pass muster would be removed to a state orphanage (Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte), where many died from the lack of food.[77]
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Effect on the Polish population
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The Polish civilian population suffered under German occupation in many ways. Large numbers were expelled from land 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, where 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. In all, about 3 million 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.[86][87]
[Wiki References:
1. Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2014). The German Occupation of Poland. Washington, D.C.: Dale Street Books. pp. 10–28. ISBN 9781941656105.
2. Judith Olsak-Glass (January 1999). "Review of Piotrowski's Poland's Holocaust". Sarmatian Review. The prisons, ghettos, internment, transit, labor and extermination camps, roundups, mass deportations, public executions, mobile killing units, death marches, deprivation, hunger, disease, and exposure all testify to the 'inhuman policies of both Hitler and Stalin' and 'were clearly aimed at the total extermination of Polish citizens, both Jews and Christians. Both regimes endorsed a systematic program of genocide.
3. "Terminal horror suffered by so many millions of innocent Jewish, Slavic, and other European peoples as a result of this meeting of evil minds is an indelible stain on the history and integrity of Western civilization, with all of its humanitarian pretensions" (Note: "this meeting" refers to the most famous third (Zakopane) conference).
Conquest, Robert (1991). "Stalin: Breaker of Nations". New York, N.Y.: Viking. ISBN 0-670-84089-0
4. Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... McFarland & Company. p. 295. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. See also review
5. AFP/Expatica, Polish experts lower nation's WWII death toll, expatica.com, 30 August 2009
6. Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami, ed. Tomasz Szarota and Wojciech Materski, Warszawa, IPN 2009, ISBN 978-83-7629-067-6 (Introduction reproduced here Archived 1 February 2013 at the Wayback Machine)
7. Kirsten Sellars (28 February 2013). 'Crimes Against Peace' and International Law. Cambridge University Press. p. 145. ISBN 978-1-107-02884-5.
8. Piotr Eberhardt, http://rcin.org.pl/Content/15652/WA51_13607_r2011-nr12_Monografie.pdf Political Migrations on Polish Territories (1939–1950), Polish Academy of Sciences Stanisław Leszczycki Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Monographies, 12. Pagea 25
9. Piotr Eberhardt, http://rcin.org.pl/Content/15652/WA51_13607_r2011-nr12_Monografie.pdf Political Migrations on Polish Territories (1939–1950), Polish Academy of Sciences Stanisław Leszczycki Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Monographies, 12. Pages 27-29
10. "Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 27 March 2010. Retrieved 1 July 2015.See also: Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era
11. R. F. Leslie (1980). The History of Poland Since 1863. Cambridge University Press. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-521-27501-9.
12. Roy A. Prete; A. Hamish Ion (1984). Armies of Occupation. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. pp. 135–138. ISBN 978-0-88920-156-9.
13. Jerzy Jan Lerski (1996). Historical Dictionary of Poland, 966–1945. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-313-26007-0.
...
25. Jon Huer (26 October 2012). Call From the Cave: Our Cruel Nature and Quest for Power. Hamilton Books. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-7618-6016-7.
26. Stefan Wolff (2003). The German Question Since 1919: An Analysis with Key Documents. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 47–48. ISBN 978-0-275-97269-1.
27. Donald L. Niewyk; Francis R. Nicosia (13 August 2013). The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust. Columbia University Press. p. 276. ISBN 978-0-231-52878-8.
28. https://web.archive.org/web/20120413024247/http://www.atsweb.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe Selections from Janusz Gumkowski and Kazimierz Leszczynski Poland Under Nazi Occupation. The ultimate purpose of Nazi policy was to destroy the Polish nation on the whole of Polish soil, whether that annexed by the Reich or that of the Government General
29. Lucjan Dobroszycki; Jeffrey S. Gurock (1 January 1993). The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945. M.E. Sharpe. p. 36. ISBN 978-1-56324-173-4. General Plan Ost, which provided for the liquidation of the Slav peoples
30. Stephen G. Fritz (13 September 2011). Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East. University Press of Kentucky. p. 158. ISBN 0-8131-4050-1. Since the ultimate destination of those displaced remained unclear, "natural wastage" on a vast scale must have been assumed, so genocide was implicit in Generalplan Ost from the beginning
31. Michael Geyer (2009). Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared. Cambridge University Press. pp. 152–153. ISBN 978-0-521-89796-9.
32. Joseph Poprzeczny (19 February 2004). Odilo Globocnik, Hitler's Man in the East. McFarland. pp. 186–187. ISBN 978-0-7864-8146-0.
33. Joseph Poprzeczny (19 February 2004). Odilo Globocnik, Hitler's Man in the East. McFarland. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-7864-8146-0.
34. Prit Buttar (21 May 2013). Between Giants: The Battle for the Baltics in World War II. Osprey Publishing. pp. 59–60. ISBN 978-1-4728-0288-0.
35. Geoff Eley (29 May 2013). Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany 1930–1945. Routledge. p. 189. ISBN 1-135-04481-3.
36. https://web.archive.org/web/20120413024247/http://www.atsweb.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe Selections from Janusz Gumkowski and Kazimierz Leszczynski Poland Under Nazi Occupation The provisions of the Plan were that 80-85 per cent of the Poles would have to be deported from the German settlement area – to regions in the East. This, according to German calculations, would involve about 20 million people. About 3-4 million – all of them peasants – suitable for Germanization as far as "racial values" were concerned – would be allowed to remain. They would be distributed among German majorities as slaves for labor and Germanized within a single generation(...)
37. Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web p. 204 ISBN 0-679-77663-X
38. Pierre Ayçoberry (2000). The Social History of the Third Reich: 1933–1945. New Press (NY). p. 228. ISBN 978-1-56584-635-7.
39. "Chapter 13. Chapter XIII – Germanization and Spoliation Archived 3 December 2003 at the Wayback Machine"
40. William J. Duiker, Jackson J. Spielvogel, World History, 1997. Page 794: By 1942, two million ethnic Germans had been settled in Poland.
41. "Chapter XIII – Germanization and Spoliation Archived 3 December 2003 at the Wayback Machine"
...
62. Piotr Eberhardt, http://rcin.org.pl/Content/15652/WA51_13607_r2011-nr12_Monografie.pdf Political Migrations on Polish Territories (1939–1950), Polish Academy of Sciences Stanisław Leszczycki Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Monographies, 12. Page 46
63. Stephan Lehnstaedt, Jochen Böhler (editors): Die Berichte der Einsatzgruppen aus Polen 1939. Vollständige Edition (translated: the reports of the Einsatzgruppen from Poland 1939. Complete edition), 2013, ISBN 978-3863311384. Jürgen Matthäus, Jochen Böhler, Klaus-Michael Mallmann: War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939: The Einsatzgruppen in Poland. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2014, ISBN 978-1442231412.
64. Michał Rapta; Wojciech Tupta; Grzegorz Moskal (2009). Mroczne sekrety willi "Tereska": 1939–1945. Historia Rabki. p. 104. ISBN 978-83-60817-33-9.
65. Jan S. Prybyla (2010). When Angels Wept: The Rebirth and Dismemberment of Poland and Her People in the Early Decades of the Twentieth Century. Wheatmark, Inc. pp. 133–136. ISBN 978-1-60494-325-2.
66. Dr Robert Rozett; Dr Shmuel Spector (26 November 2013). Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Routledge. p. 101. ISBN 978-1-135-96950-9.
67. Libionka, Dariusz (2004). "The Catholic Church in Poland and the Holocaust, 1939–1945" (PDF). In Carol Rittner, Stephen D. Smith, Irena Steinfeldt. The Holocaust And The Christian World: Reflections On The Past Challenges For The Future. New Leaf Press. pp. 74–78. ISBN 978-0-89221-591-1.
68. Craughwell, Thomas J. "Library : The Gentile Holocaust". Catholic Culture. Retrieved 25 September 2018.
69. The Nazi War Against the Catholic Church; National Catholic Welfare Conference; Washington D.C.; 1942; pp. 34-51
70. Polish Western Affairs. Instytut Zachodni. 1989. p. 48.
71. Alma Mater (in Polish). Alma Mater, Issue 64. November 2004. p. 46.
72. Lebensraum, Aryanization, Germanization and Judenrein, Judenfrei: concepts in the holocaust or shoah[permanent dead link]
73. "Hitler's War; Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe". 27 May 2012. Archived from the original on 27 May 2012. Retrieved 25 September 2018.
74. Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web p 250 ISBN 0-679-77663-X
75. Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web p. 249 ISBN 0-679-77663-X
76. Melissa Eddy (8 May 2007). "Stolen: The Story of a Polish Child 'Germanized' by the Nazis". StarNewsOnline (Wilmington, NC). Associated Press. Retrieved 16 September 2008. If they met racial guidelines, they were taken; one girl got back home.
77. Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web p. 400-1 ISBN 0-679-77663-X
...
86. Adam Jones (27 September 2006). Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. Routledge. p. 175. ISBN 978-1-134-25980-9.
87. Tadeusz Piotrowski (1998). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947. McFarland. pp. 305–. ISBN 978-0-7864-0371-4.
end-wiki-References]
--- end wiki extracts ---
Ravi: The above wiki page also covers Soviet occupation of Poland during WW2 and the horrors they committed in Poland. But I have chosen to focus on Hans Frank and Nazi Germany's horrific and demonic actions against Poland and its people.
[For those who are interested, this is how 212 Avenue Louise building where our studio flats were located, looks like now on Google View: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Avenue+Louise+212,+1050+Bruxelles,+Belgium While there have been some changes, I do recognize the area from what I recall of it then. Now the building seems to be a hotel called ibis Styles Bruxelles Louise hotel. I don't think that was the name then. Note that our studio flats were serviced by staff (cleaning etc.) and so it was somewhat like a hotel room. But I don't recall it to be a regular hotel like it is now - but I am not sure of my recollections in this regard.
We were three guys sent to Brussels by our Mumbai/Bombay software company, Datamatics and we were provided two studio flats connected to each other, with four beds.
Some pics from its website: The entrance to the building: https://www.hotel-ibisstyles-bruxelles.com/images/galerie-hotel/JPEG/2812-63.jpg.
How the building profile looks: https://www.hotel-ibisstyles-bruxelles.com/images/galerie-hotel/JPEG/3336-37.jpg (this I think is quite the same like then - we could see Avenue Louise from french windows on one side of our connected studio-flats.)]
[I thank wikipedia and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extracts from their website on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
I would like to first mention about my very friendly interactions with a few Polish people in Brussels.
In my stay in Brussels, Belgium for around 15 months in 1985-86, I frequented a Polish run pub near to the studio flat (with cleaning service and so somewhat like a hotel) provided by my customer company Wang International Telecommunications Research Centre, on Avenue Louise, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_Louise.
The pub was on one of the side streets off Avenue Louise opposite to my studio flat building. I tried to quickly go through Google Map of the area to spot a similar pub in it but did not get one in my quick search. I guess, in all probability, they would have moved on.
Two Polish guys were the main chaps who ran the pub. I think they may have been brothers and one of them seems to have been married with his wife helping out with some of the pub work. They were very friendly people. The Polish men may have been in their thirties - I was around 23 years old then. I have very happy memories of my many visits to this Polish run pub. It was like a somewhat regular eating place for me (usually non-veg as veg was not really on the menu) and some drink like beer or wine. The Polish men spoke English, if I recall correctly and perhaps not fluently but they could follow my/our English, which made things very convenient for me (and my two colleagues from my Bombay company, Datamatics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datamatics).
That has been my main connection to Polish people. I don't recall doing any software project for any Polish customer or interacting with Polish software engineers during my international software development career (till Aug. 2002) or having extensive interactions with any Polish person after I moved to Puttaparthi (Oct. 2002 and after).
A day or two ago, when I came across a video interview of the son of Hans Frank who governed Nazi occupied Poland from 1939 to 1945 and who (Hans Frank) was judged by the Nuremberg trials to be guilty of war-crimes and crimes against humanity (committed on ***millions*** of Polish people then) and executed, I thought about the friendly Polish people who ran the above mentioned pub in Brussels that I used to frequent, over 3 decades ago. [For more on the Nuremberg judgement on Hans Frank, visit https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nuremberg-trial-judgements-hans-frank.]
There is a good probability that the parents and/or other elder relatives of these friendly Polish people I knew, would have been living in Poland during World War II and probably faced some of the brutality of Nazi (or Soviet) occupation then! That makes this matter much more real to me from a human perspective. So I felt that as a mark of gratitude to those Polish folks who were so friendly to me then, I should dig up about this matter and put up a post on it, and also share the video interview. Sharing such dark periods of history which is less than a century ago, may help in preventing such dark things happening in the future. The latter is the primary intent of this post.
It is also appropriate to draw attention of readers to rise of white and Neo Nazi nationalism in parts of USA and Europe over the past few years. The history of Nazi Germany is vital to understand how evil ethnic and Neo Nazi nationalism can turn out to be.
In Nazi Germany case, the horrific ideology proposed domination of Nazi white Europeans on Slav white non-Jewish Europeans subjugating the latter as low level service providers to the so-called "superior" Nazi Germans (white Europeans). As regards Jewish Poles, the Nazis wanted to simply kill them all! But their attitude towards non-Jewish Polish people was also very bad and evil, even if it was not as horrendously evil as their attitude towards Polish Jews (and Jews from all over Europe).
And the horror is that Nazi Germany implemented its horrific ideology mentioned above in Nazi Germany occupied Poland! So it is not just theory! Nazi Germans carried out that horrific ideology on non-Jewish Polish people (along with the horrific evil done against Polish Jews).
Before I get into Nazi occupation of Poland during WW2 (World War 2), readers may want to note that I have put up two posts covering history of the evil Nazism that arose in first half of 20th century in Germany.
1) Nazism (1920s to mid 1940s) being influenced by Volkisch movement and its back-to-the-land anti-urban populism, http://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2017/01/nazism-1920s-to-mid-1940s-being.html, 23rd Jan. 2017
The above post gives some background to how a rural (and anti-urban) Volkisch populist movement contributed to growth of Nazism in 1920s to mid 1940s Germany.
2) The terrifying extreme nationalism and fanaticism of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, http://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-terrifying-extreme-nationalism-and.html, 24th Jan. 2017
The above post has extracts about the evil and demonic policy of Nazis involving conquest of Central and Eastern Europe and subjugation of its peoples, with an intent to either get rid of them or make them servants of Germans.
----
Now to the video that triggered this post:
HARDtalk Niklas Frank Son of Hans Frank, Governor of Nazi Occupied Poland 1939 45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20M1pFOvG7I, 24 min. 15 secs.
The interview is an intense one but very thought-provoking.
Niklas Frank's father, Hans Frank, was boss of Nazi occupied Poland, and was tried, sentenced and hanged to death by the Nuremberg trials.
Some extracts from Hans Frank's wiki page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Frank, are given below:
Hans Michael Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a German war criminal and lawyer who worked for the Nazi Party during the 1920s and 1930s, and later became Adolf Hitler's personal lawyer. After the invasion of Poland, Frank became Nazi Germany's chief jurist in the occupied Poland "General Government" territory. During his tenure throughout World War II (1939–45), he instituted a reign of terror against the civilian population[1] and became directly involved in the mass murder of Jews. At the Nuremberg trials, he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and was executed.
...
In September 1939 Frank was assigned as Chief of Administration to Gerd von Rundstedt in the German military administration in occupied Poland. Beginning 26 October 1939, following the completion of the invasion of Poland, Frank served as Governor-General of the occupied Polish territories (Generalgouverneur für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete), overseeing the General Government, the area of Poland not directly incorporated into Germany (roughly 90,000 km2 out of the 187,000 km2 Germany had gained).
Frank oversaw the segregation of the Jews into ghettos, especially the enormous Warsaw ghetto, and the use of Polish civilians as forced labour.
...
On 16 December 1941, Frank spelled out to his senior officials the approaching annihilation of the Jews:
"A great Jewish migration will begin in any case. But what should we do with the Jews? Do you think they will be settled in Ostland, in villages? We were told in Berlin, 'Why all this bother? We can do nothing with them either in Ostland or in the Reichskommissariat. So liquidate them yourselves.' Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feelings of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and whenever it is possible."[9]When this was read to him at the Nuremberg trials he said:
"One has to take the diary as a whole. You can not go through 43 volumes and pick out single sentences and separate them from their context. I would like to say here that I do not want to argue or quibble about individual phrases. It was a wild and stormy period filled with terrible passions, and when a whole country is on fire and a life and death struggle is going on, such words may easily be used... Some of the words are terrible. I myself must admit that I was shocked at many of the words which I had used."[3]...
The General Government was the location of four of the six extermination camps, namely, Bełżec, Treblinka, Majdanek and Sobibór. Chełmno and Birkenau fell just outside the borders of the General Government.
Frank later claimed that the extermination of Jews was entirely controlled by Heinrich Himmler and the SS and that he, Frank, was unaware of the extermination camps in the General Government until early 1944, a surprising claim and one found to be untrue by the Nuremberg tribunal.
During his testimony at Nuremberg, Frank claimed he submitted resignation requests to Hitler on 14 occasions, but Hitler would not allow him to resign. Frank fled the General Government in January 1945 as the Soviet Army advanced.
...
Frank was captured by American troops on 3 May 1945, at Tegernsee in southern Bavaria. He attempted suicide twice, but failed both times.[13][citation needed] He was indicted for war crimes and tried before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg from 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946. During the trial he converted, guided by Fr Sixtus O'Connor OFM, to Roman Catholicism, and claimed to have had a series of religious experiences.
Frank voluntarily surrendered 43 volumes of his personal diaries to the Allies, which were then used against him as evidence of his guilt.[3] Frank confessed to some of the charges and expressed remorse on the witness stand, showing penitence for his crimes. On the witness stand, he said,
"after having heard the testimony of the witness Rudolf Höss, my conscience does not allow me to throw the responsibility solely on these minor people. I myself have never installed an extermination camp for Jews, or promoted the existence of such camps; but if Adolf Hitler personally has laid that dreadful responsibility on his people, then it is mine too, for we have fought against Jewry for years; and we have indulged in the most horrible utterances."[3]He and Albert Speer were allegedly the only defendants to show remorse for their war crimes.[14] At the same time he accused the Allies, especially the Soviets, of their own wartime atrocities. The former German Governor-General of Poland was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity on 1 October 1946, and he was sentenced to death by hanging. The death sentence was carried out at Nuremberg Prison on 16 October by US Army Master Sergeant John C. Woods. Journalist Joseph Kingsbury-Smith wrote of the execution:
"Hans Frank was next in the parade of death. He was the only one of the condemned to enter the chamber with a smile on his countenance. And, although nervous and swallowing frequently, this man, who was converted to Roman Catholicism after his arrest, gave the appearance of being relieved at the prospect of atoning for his evil deeds."[15]He answered to his name quietly and when asked for any last statement, he replied "I am thankful for the kind treatment during my captivity and I ask God to accept me with mercy."[15]
...
Family
======
On 2 April 1925 Frank married 29-year-old secretary Brigitte Herbst (25 December 1895 – 9 March 1959) from Forst (Lausitz). The wedding took place in Munich and the couple honeymooned in Venetia. Hans and Brigitte Frank had five children:
Sigrid Frank (born 13 March 1927, Munich – d. in South Africa)
Norman Frank (born 3 June 1928, Munich – d. 2010)
Brigitte Frank (born 13 January 1935, Munich – d. 1981)
Michael Frank (born 15 February 1937, Munich – d. 1990)
Niklas Frank (born 9 March 1939, Munich)
Brigitte Frank had a reputation for having a more dominant personality than her husband: after 1939 she called herself "a queen of Poland" ("Königin von Polen"). The marriage was unhappy and became colder from year to year. When Frank sought a divorce in 1942, Brigitte gave everything to save their marriage in order to remain the "First Lady in the General Government". One of her most famous comments was "I'd rather be widowed than divorced from a Reichsminister!" Frank answered: "So you are my deadly enemy!"[27]
In 1987, Niklas Frank wrote a book about his father, Der Vater: Eine Abrechnung ("The Father: A Settling of Accounts"), which was published in English in 1991 as In the Shadow of the Reich. The book, which was serialized in the magazine Stern, caused controversy in Germany because of the scathing way in which the younger Frank depicted his father: Niklas referred to him as "a slime-hole of a Hitler fanatic" and questioned his remorse before his execution.[28][29]
Niklas is the sole living child of Hans and Brigitte Frank. Sigrid remained a committed Nazi who emigrated to South Africa during the apartheid regime and died there. Brigitte committed suicide in 1981; Michael and Norman died in 1990 and 2010, respectively.[30]
Quotations
==========
...
In the Nuremberg trials:
A thousand years will pass and still Germany's guilt will not have been erased.[33]
[Wiki References
1. "Holocaust Encyclopedia: Hans Frank". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
...
3. Frank's cross-examination during the Nuremberg trial in: "One Hundred And Eleventh Day - Thursday, 18 April 1946". Nuremberg Trial Proceedings. 12. Yale Law School/Lillian Goldman Law Library/The Avalon Project. p. 20. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
...
9. Speech by Frank to his senior officials, 16 Dec 1941, repr. in: Office of Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, OCCPAC, quoted in Polonsky, Antony (2011). The Jews in Poland and Russia. III 1914 to 2008. p. 434.
...
13. Posner, Gerald L (1991). Hitler's children : sons and daughters of leaders of the Third Reich talk about their fathers and themselves. New York: Random House. p. 31.
14. Gilbert, G. M. (1995). Nuremberg Diary. De Capo Press, p. 19; ISBN 978-0-306-80661-2.
15. Smith, Kingsbury (16 October 1946). "The Execution of Nazi War Criminals". Famous World Trials - Nuremberg Trials 1945-1949. Archived from the original on 12 March 2001. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
...
27. "Hans Frank – Pre-war career, Wartime career, Quotation, Fiction and film," in Cambridge Encyclopedia, 32. Retrieved 20 January 2008.
28. Frank, Niklas (1991). In the Shadow of the Reich. Knopf; ISBN 978-0-394-58345-7.
29. Review by Susan Benesch, Washington Monthly, November 1991.
30. Niklas Frank, Hitler's Children (2012 documentary).
...
33. William L. Shirer. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (foreword). Simon and Schuster, New York, 1960.
--- end wiki References]
---- end Hans Frank wiki extracts ---
Here's an interesting review of the book on Hans Frank written by his son Niklas Frank (who is interviewed in the video mentioned at the beginning of this post): https://www.thefreelibrary.com/In+the+Shadow+of+the+Reich.-a011540503
--------
Some info. about Nazi occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1945 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Poland_(1939%E2%80%931945) is given below:
The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War (1939–1945) began with the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, and it was formally concluded with the defeat of Germany by the Allies in May 1945. Throughout the entire course of the foreign occupation, the territory of Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR) with the intention of eradicating Polish culture and subjugating its people by occupying German and Soviet powers.[1] In summer-autumn of 1941 the lands annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Germany in the course of the initially successful German attack on the USSR. After a few years of fighting, the Red Army drove the German forces out of the USSR and across Poland from the rest of Central and Eastern Europe.
Both occupying powers were equally hostile to the existence of sovereign Poland, Polish people, and the Polish culture aiming at their destruction.[2] Before Operation Barbarossa, Germany and the Soviet Union coordinated their Poland-related policies, 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.[3]
About 6 million Polish citizens—nearly 21.4% of Poland's population—died between 1939 and 1945 as a result of the occupation,[4][5][6] 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.[4] Overall, during German occupation of pre-war Polish territory, 1939–1945, the Germans murdered 5,470,000–5,670,000 Poles, including nearly 3,000,000 Jews.[5][6]
...
In September 1939 Poland was invaded and occupied by two powers: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, acting in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[7] Germany acquired 48.4% of the former Polish territory.[8] 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.[9] The size of these annexed territories was approximately 92,500 square kilometres (35,700 sq mi) with approximately 10.5 million inhabitants.[8] The remaining block of territory was placed under a German administration, of about the same size and inhabited by about 11.5 millions,[8] were 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 12 October 1939.[10][11] Most of the administration outside strictly local level was replaced by German officials.[11][12] Non-German population on the occupied lands were subject to forced resettlement, Germanization, economic exploitation, and slow but progressive extermination.[11][12][13]
...
From the beginning, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany was intended as fulfilment of the future plan of the German Reich described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf as Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germans in Central and Eastern Europe.[10] The occupation goal was to turn former Poland into ethnically German "living space", by deporting and exterminating the non-German populace, or relegating it to the position of slave labour.[25][26][27] The goal of the German state under Nazi leadership during the war was to destroy the Polish peoples and nation completely[28] and their fate, as well as many other Slavs, was outlined in genocidal[29][30] Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) and a closely related Generalsiedlungsplan (General Plan for Settlement).[31] Over 30 years, approximately 12.5 million Germans were to be resettled into the Slavic areas, including Poland; with some versions planning for a movement of at least 100 million Germans over a century.[31] The Slavic inhabitants of those lands were to be eliminated by genocidal policies;[29][30] and the survivors resettled further east, into less hospitable parts of Eurasia beyond the Ural Mountains, such as Siberia.[31] At the plan's fulfillment, there would be no Slavs or Jews remaining in Central and Eastern Europe.[31] 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, and the Grosse Planung ("Big Plan"), which covered actions to be undertaken after the war was won.[32][33][34] The plan envisaged differing percentages of the various conquered nations undergoing Germanisation, expulsion into the depths of Russia, and other gruesome fates, including purposeful starvation and murder, the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would take on an irrevocably German character.[34][35] Over a longer period, only about 3–4 million Poles, suitable for Germanization, were supposed to be left residing in the former Poland.[36]
Those plans began to be implemented almost immediately after the German troops took control of Poland. As early as October 1939, many Poles were expelled from the annexed lands to make room for German colonizers.[10][37] Only those Poles selected for Germanization, approximately 1.7 million including thousands of children who had been taken from their parents, were permitted to remain,[38] and if they resisted it, they were to be sent to concentration camps, because "German blood must not be utilized in the interest of a foreign nation".[39] By the end of 1940, at least 325,000 Poles from annexed lands were forcibly resettled in the General Government, forced to abandon most of their property.[10] There were numerous fatalities among the very young and elderly, who perished en route or in makeshift transit camps such as those in the towns of Potulice, Smukal, and Toruń.[10] The expulsions continued in 1941, with another 45,000 Poles forced to move eastwards, but following German invasion of the Soviet Union, the expulsions slowed down, as more and more trains were diverted for military logistics, rather than being made available for population transfers.[10] Nonetheless, in late 1942 and in 1943, large-scale expulsions also took place in the General Government, affecting at least 110,000 Poles in the Zamość–Lublin region.[10] Tens of thousands of the expelled, with no place to go, were simply imprisoned in the Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Majdanek concentration camps.[10] By 1942, the number of new German arrivals in pre-war Poland had already reached two million.[40]
The Nazi plans also called for the Poland's 3.3 million Jews to be exterminated, the non-Jewish majority's extermination was planned in the long term and initiated through the mass murder of its political, religious, and intellectual elites at first, which was meant to make the formation of any organized top-down resistance more difficult. Further, the populace of occupied territories was to be relegated to the role of an unskilled labor-force for German-controlled industry and agriculture.[10][41]
...
Cultural genocide
==================
Nazi Germany engaged in a concentrated effort to destroy Polish culture. To that end, numerous cultural and educational institutions were closed or destroyed, from schools and universities, through monuments and libraries, to laboratories and museums. Many employees of said institutions were arrested and executed as part wider persecutions of Polish intellectual elite. Schooling of Polish children was curtailed to a few years of elementary education, as outlined by Himmler's 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".[10]
Extermination of elites
=======================
Proscription lists (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen), prepared before the war started, identified more than 61,000 Polish elite and intelligentsia leaders deemed as unfriendly towards Germany.[62] Already during the 1939 German invasion, dedicated units of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen) were tasked with arresting or outright killing of those resisting the Germans.[10][63] They were aided by some regular German army units and "self-defense" forces composed of members of German minority in Poland, the Volksdeutsche.[10] The Nazi regime's policy of murdering or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites was known as Operation Tannenberg".[64] This included not only those resisting actively, but also those simply capable of doing so by the virtue of their social status.[10] As a result, tens of thousands of people found "guilty" of being educated (members of the intelligentsia, from clergymen to government officials, doctors, teachers and journalists) or wealthy (landowners, business owners, and so on) were either executed on spot, sometimes in mass executions, or imprisoned, some destined for the concentration camps.[10] Some of the mass executions were reprisal actions for actions of the Polish resistance, with German officials adhering to the collective guilt principle and holding entire communities responsible for the actions of unidentified perpetrators.[10]
One of the most infamous German operations was the Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion (AB-Aktion in short, German for Special Pacification), a German campaign during World War II aimed at Polish leaders and the intelligentsia, including many university professors, teachers and priests.[65][66] In the spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the German authorities of German-occupied Poland.[10][65] Several thousands were executed outside Warsaw, in the Kampinos forest near Palmiry, and inside the city at the Pawiak prison.[10][66] Most of the remainder were sent to various German concentration camps.[65]
The Nazis also persecuted the Catholic Church in Poland and other, smaller religions.
Nazi policy towards the Church was at its most severe in the territories it annexed to Greater Germany, where they set about systematically dismantling the Church – arresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen and nuns were murdered or sent to concentration and labor camps.[10][67] Already in 1939, 80% of the Catholic clergy of the Warthegau region had been deported to concentration camps.[68] Primate of Poland, Cardinal August Hlond, submitted an official account of the persecutions of the Polish Church to the Vatican.[69] In his final observations for Pope Pius XII, Hlond wrote: "Hitlerism aims at the systematic and total destruction of the Catholic Church in the... territories of Poland which have been incorporated into the Reich...".[68][69] The smaller Evangelical churches of Poland also suffered. The entirety of the Protestant clergy of the Cieszyn region of Silesia were arrested and deported to concentration camps at Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Oranienburg.[68] Protestant clergy leaders who perished in those purges included charity activist Karol Kulisz, theology professor Edmund Bursche, and Bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland, Juliusz Bursche.[68]
Germanization
=============
In the territories annexed to Nazi Germany, in particular with regards to the westernmost incorporated territories—the so-called Wartheland— the Nazis aimed for a complete "Germanization", i.e. full cultural, political, economic and social assimilation.[10] Polish language was prohibited to be taught even in elementary schools; landmarks from streets to cities were renamed en masse (Łódź became Litzmannstadt, and so on).[10] All manner of Polish enterprises, up to small shops, were taken over, with prior owners rarely compensated.[10] Signs posted in public places prohibited non-Germans from entering these places warning: "Entrance is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs.", or Nur für Deutsche ("Only for Germans"), commonly found on many public utilities and places such as trams, parks, cafes, cinemas, theaters, and others.[10][70][71]
The Nazis kept an eye out for Polish children who possessed Nordic racial characteristics.[72] An estimated total of 50,000 children, majority taken from orphanages and foster homes in the annexed lands, but some separated from their parents, were taken into a special Germanization program.[10][43] Polish women deported to Germany as forced laborers and who bore children were a common victim of this policy, with their infants regularly taken.[10][73] If the child passed the battery of racial, physical and psychological tests, they were sent on to Germany for "Germanization".[74]
At least 4,454 children were given new German names,[75] forbidden to use Polish language,[76] and reeducated in Nazi institutions.[10] Few were ever reunited with their original families.[10] Those deemed as unsuitable for Germanization for being "not Aryan enough" were sent to orphanages or even to concentration camps like Auschwitz, where many perished, often killed by intercardiac injections of phenol.[10] For Polish forced laborers, in some cases if an examination of the parents suggested that the child might not be "racially valuable", the mother was compelled to have an abortion.[10][73] Infants who did not pass muster would be removed to a state orphanage (Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte), where many died from the lack of food.[77]
...
Effect on the Polish population
===============================
The Polish civilian population suffered under German occupation in many ways. Large numbers were expelled from land 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, where 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. In all, about 3 million 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.[86][87]
[Wiki References:
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2. Judith Olsak-Glass (January 1999). "Review of Piotrowski's Poland's Holocaust". Sarmatian Review. The prisons, ghettos, internment, transit, labor and extermination camps, roundups, mass deportations, public executions, mobile killing units, death marches, deprivation, hunger, disease, and exposure all testify to the 'inhuman policies of both Hitler and Stalin' and 'were clearly aimed at the total extermination of Polish citizens, both Jews and Christians. Both regimes endorsed a systematic program of genocide.
3. "Terminal horror suffered by so many millions of innocent Jewish, Slavic, and other European peoples as a result of this meeting of evil minds is an indelible stain on the history and integrity of Western civilization, with all of its humanitarian pretensions" (Note: "this meeting" refers to the most famous third (Zakopane) conference).
Conquest, Robert (1991). "Stalin: Breaker of Nations". New York, N.Y.: Viking. ISBN 0-670-84089-0
4. Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... McFarland & Company. p. 295. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. See also review
5. AFP/Expatica, Polish experts lower nation's WWII death toll, expatica.com, 30 August 2009
6. Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami, ed. Tomasz Szarota and Wojciech Materski, Warszawa, IPN 2009, ISBN 978-83-7629-067-6 (Introduction reproduced here Archived 1 February 2013 at the Wayback Machine)
7. Kirsten Sellars (28 February 2013). 'Crimes Against Peace' and International Law. Cambridge University Press. p. 145. ISBN 978-1-107-02884-5.
8. Piotr Eberhardt, http://rcin.org.pl/Content/15652/WA51_13607_r2011-nr12_Monografie.pdf Political Migrations on Polish Territories (1939–1950), Polish Academy of Sciences Stanisław Leszczycki Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Monographies, 12. Pagea 25
9. Piotr Eberhardt, http://rcin.org.pl/Content/15652/WA51_13607_r2011-nr12_Monografie.pdf Political Migrations on Polish Territories (1939–1950), Polish Academy of Sciences Stanisław Leszczycki Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Monographies, 12. Pages 27-29
10. "Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 27 March 2010. Retrieved 1 July 2015.See also: Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era
11. R. F. Leslie (1980). The History of Poland Since 1863. Cambridge University Press. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-521-27501-9.
12. Roy A. Prete; A. Hamish Ion (1984). Armies of Occupation. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. pp. 135–138. ISBN 978-0-88920-156-9.
13. Jerzy Jan Lerski (1996). Historical Dictionary of Poland, 966–1945. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-313-26007-0.
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25. Jon Huer (26 October 2012). Call From the Cave: Our Cruel Nature and Quest for Power. Hamilton Books. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-7618-6016-7.
26. Stefan Wolff (2003). The German Question Since 1919: An Analysis with Key Documents. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 47–48. ISBN 978-0-275-97269-1.
27. Donald L. Niewyk; Francis R. Nicosia (13 August 2013). The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust. Columbia University Press. p. 276. ISBN 978-0-231-52878-8.
28. https://web.archive.org/web/20120413024247/http://www.atsweb.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe Selections from Janusz Gumkowski and Kazimierz Leszczynski Poland Under Nazi Occupation. The ultimate purpose of Nazi policy was to destroy the Polish nation on the whole of Polish soil, whether that annexed by the Reich or that of the Government General
29. Lucjan Dobroszycki; Jeffrey S. Gurock (1 January 1993). The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945. M.E. Sharpe. p. 36. ISBN 978-1-56324-173-4. General Plan Ost, which provided for the liquidation of the Slav peoples
30. Stephen G. Fritz (13 September 2011). Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East. University Press of Kentucky. p. 158. ISBN 0-8131-4050-1. Since the ultimate destination of those displaced remained unclear, "natural wastage" on a vast scale must have been assumed, so genocide was implicit in Generalplan Ost from the beginning
31. Michael Geyer (2009). Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared. Cambridge University Press. pp. 152–153. ISBN 978-0-521-89796-9.
32. Joseph Poprzeczny (19 February 2004). Odilo Globocnik, Hitler's Man in the East. McFarland. pp. 186–187. ISBN 978-0-7864-8146-0.
33. Joseph Poprzeczny (19 February 2004). Odilo Globocnik, Hitler's Man in the East. McFarland. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-7864-8146-0.
34. Prit Buttar (21 May 2013). Between Giants: The Battle for the Baltics in World War II. Osprey Publishing. pp. 59–60. ISBN 978-1-4728-0288-0.
35. Geoff Eley (29 May 2013). Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany 1930–1945. Routledge. p. 189. ISBN 1-135-04481-3.
36. https://web.archive.org/web/20120413024247/http://www.atsweb.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe Selections from Janusz Gumkowski and Kazimierz Leszczynski Poland Under Nazi Occupation The provisions of the Plan were that 80-85 per cent of the Poles would have to be deported from the German settlement area – to regions in the East. This, according to German calculations, would involve about 20 million people. About 3-4 million – all of them peasants – suitable for Germanization as far as "racial values" were concerned – would be allowed to remain. They would be distributed among German majorities as slaves for labor and Germanized within a single generation(...)
37. Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web p. 204 ISBN 0-679-77663-X
38. Pierre Ayçoberry (2000). The Social History of the Third Reich: 1933–1945. New Press (NY). p. 228. ISBN 978-1-56584-635-7.
39. "Chapter 13. Chapter XIII – Germanization and Spoliation Archived 3 December 2003 at the Wayback Machine"
40. William J. Duiker, Jackson J. Spielvogel, World History, 1997. Page 794: By 1942, two million ethnic Germans had been settled in Poland.
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63. Stephan Lehnstaedt, Jochen Böhler (editors): Die Berichte der Einsatzgruppen aus Polen 1939. Vollständige Edition (translated: the reports of the Einsatzgruppen from Poland 1939. Complete edition), 2013, ISBN 978-3863311384. Jürgen Matthäus, Jochen Böhler, Klaus-Michael Mallmann: War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939: The Einsatzgruppen in Poland. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2014, ISBN 978-1442231412.
64. Michał Rapta; Wojciech Tupta; Grzegorz Moskal (2009). Mroczne sekrety willi "Tereska": 1939–1945. Historia Rabki. p. 104. ISBN 978-83-60817-33-9.
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66. Dr Robert Rozett; Dr Shmuel Spector (26 November 2013). Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Routledge. p. 101. ISBN 978-1-135-96950-9.
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75. Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web p. 249 ISBN 0-679-77663-X
76. Melissa Eddy (8 May 2007). "Stolen: The Story of a Polish Child 'Germanized' by the Nazis". StarNewsOnline (Wilmington, NC). Associated Press. Retrieved 16 September 2008. If they met racial guidelines, they were taken; one girl got back home.
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...
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end-wiki-References]
--- end wiki extracts ---
Ravi: The above wiki page also covers Soviet occupation of Poland during WW2 and the horrors they committed in Poland. But I have chosen to focus on Hans Frank and Nazi Germany's horrific and demonic actions against Poland and its people.
[For those who are interested, this is how 212 Avenue Louise building where our studio flats were located, looks like now on Google View: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Avenue+Louise+212,+1050+Bruxelles,+Belgium While there have been some changes, I do recognize the area from what I recall of it then. Now the building seems to be a hotel called ibis Styles Bruxelles Louise hotel. I don't think that was the name then. Note that our studio flats were serviced by staff (cleaning etc.) and so it was somewhat like a hotel room. But I don't recall it to be a regular hotel like it is now - but I am not sure of my recollections in this regard.
We were three guys sent to Brussels by our Mumbai/Bombay software company, Datamatics and we were provided two studio flats connected to each other, with four beds.
Some pics from its website: The entrance to the building: https://www.hotel-ibisstyles-bruxelles.com/images/galerie-hotel/JPEG/2812-63.jpg.
How the building profile looks: https://www.hotel-ibisstyles-bruxelles.com/images/galerie-hotel/JPEG/3336-37.jpg (this I think is quite the same like then - we could see Avenue Louise from french windows on one side of our connected studio-flats.)]
[I thank wikipedia and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extracts from their website on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
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