My wife and I visited a new WWII museum two summers ago. The museum was dedicated to the Polish Uprising in Warsaw. Our Polish guide was very emotionally involved with the presentation. He was upset that history has ignored the Polish people who were sent to the death camps when Russian and Germany divided up Poland. The intent was to destroy all the intelligent and educated people so that the Poles could be used as slaves.
The only story told now is of the Jews who were sent to those same death camps, but they were built for the Poles.
One of the college students visiting the museum with us said that his Grandfather and Grandmother fled Warsaw with his Uncle as the Germans invaded from Gdansk on the Baltic coast. Unfortunately, they arrived on the Russian border at the same time that Russian troops were arriving by train to invade from the east. His relatives took a return train to Warsaw. His uncle was captured and forced into slave labor on a German farm. The German farmer treated him reasonably and let him loose when the allies invaded Germany.
These people have not forgotten! That’s one reason they stand with us in Iraq.
Eastern European ping.
If it were not for the Russians/Soviets, there might have been no Auschwitz.
one of the most powerful memories of our trip this past
week to germany was the day we visited a camp in eastern
bavaria. our kids have studied ww2 and have been to the
museum in d.c. to actually stand on the very grounds of
a camp and read through what actually took place on those
grounds was truly chilling.