#9. A few tidbits about Poles, Poland, the Holocaust and WW2.
* Jewish Polish Army Reserve officers were killed by the thousands in the Soviet’s massacre of up to 12-15,000 men in the Katyn Forest Massacre. There was not discrimination in who got killed. The Communists killed anyone they thought was a threat to them.
* My late friend Stefan Korbonski, a head of the Polish Free Army, did send arms and other supplies into the Warsaw Ghetto so that Jewish fighters could put up a resistance. He was awarded the Yad Vashem “Righteous Gentile” title by Israel for what he did to help Polish Jews.
To look at Stefan you would have thought that he was a duplicate of the silent screen actor Ben Turpin but underneath, he was a giant of a man.
* I did a newspaper story in 1983 after the Holocaust Survivors Conference in DC with a man I knew from Baltimore. He came from Chelm, which was pretty much wiped out of Jews by the Germans in “aztions” and the fact that the Russian border troops turned back Jewish refugees to a certain death.
Perry survived in the woods with several other relative and friends, living in a pit in the ground, and raiding farms for potatoes. They never contacted the farmers because they had learned that some had turned in Jewish refugees to the Germans. Others, as we learned from others, did not and aided the Jews.
It was a mixed bag of help, ignore, or hurt. It happened in every German occupied country including France where a number of my friends lived, were imprisoned and escaped.
It seems that only Franco’s Spain did not turn Jewish refugees over to the Germans. Say what you will about the Generalissimo, he had a human side to him that is little known to the Western world.
* Another family friend had to live in a largely Catholic city and pose as a Catholic (including going to Church) in order to avoid the Gestapo. Her Polish Christian friends protected her (they literally adopted her into their family), and never gave away her parents who had to live elsewhere.
My grandmother’s family in Lemberg was wiped out during the Holocaust. We figure that they were either shot in the sandpits there or transported to Belzec or Auschwitz for final extermination.
While Goldhagen did some pioneering research into the role of “The Ordinary German” in his work, other Holocaust writers challenged him on it and the issue has never been fully resolved, and maybe never will.
One thing that will need further study is just how many Moslems in Montenegro and other parts of Yugoslavia/Romania?/or Serbia/Croatia? helped save their Jews. A few very brave individuals have finally been able to have their stories told, but two SS Divisions led by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (an arden Nazi sympathizer who met with Hitler on the Jewish “problem”), committed as many massacres and atrocities as did the SS/Gestapo/Ustashi and Lithuanian/Latvian SS troops. (I have friends whose parents survived “death marches in Lithuania/Latvia, the father of one of them was one of two men to survive out of about 1,000 on a forced march).
The Nazis/Germans and allies committed unspeakable crimes against humanity, just as did the Communists of the Soviet Union, Red China, No. Korea, Cambodia/Kampuchea, Cuba and Vietnam. I lost friends in several of those countries and have heard the horror stories from other prisoners of the communists who survived (Avram Shifrin - Russia; Rev. Wurmbrand - Romania; Lt. Cmdr. Harris, USS Pueblo - No. Korea; Wu Shu Ren, former Red Guard, Red China; and Commander/Adm/General Jeremiah Denton, Mike Benge, Bud Day, etc - Hanoi Hilton, among others.
Some of us will NEVER FORGET those victims of the genocidal maniacs who wrecked much of the civilized world in the name of Fascism and Communism.
To those Poles who risked their lives to save their fellow Jews, thank you for being decent and brave human beings.
Excellent, sweeping overview and interesting personal touches.
My father survived a death march from Konzentrationslager Flossenburg and was liberated by the American 3rd Army, by our best estimate on April 24, 1945. He joined the American forces that liberated him and served as a translator taking surrenders from Germans and then, for CIC deNazification work.
“It seems that only Franco’s Spain did not turn Jewish refugees over to the Germans.”
Sweden was neutral like Spain and similarly didn’t turn over its Jewish population; in fact, Raoul Wallenberg saved many Jews with Swedish passports.
Italy never turned over their Jewish population to the Nazis; when Germany occupied Italy (as they switched sides) the Nazis then deported the Jews to the camps. The Italians themselves hadn’t allowed it when they controlled their country. Hungary did the same, IIRC; the Jews were rounded up later when Germany took control of their country (1943?)
Finland fought alongside Germany (only against the USSR) and they refused to hand over their Jewish population.
There were plenty of good Gentiles that stood up to Nazism; just not enough.
Not many could do that.