Today
is the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland. This invasion is said
to have begun WW II (although the Japanese had already invaded China.)
It is
difficult to communicate what WW II did to Poles and Poland.
"Crucifixion" is not too strong a word.
The
Nazi goal was to eliminate Poles and Poland and retain a tiny remnant
population as slaves.
We
were subhuman to them.
In my
book "Bieganski," I try to present, in a few brief paragraphs, what
WW II meant to Poland.
Note:
many of the numbers I cite change. Historians continue to work on accurate
estimates.
From
Bieganski:
Poles
and Poland were victims of the Nazis. Historian Michael C. Steinlauf, the son
of Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors, wrote that Poles, "after the Jews
and the Gypsies [were] the most relentlessly tormented national group in
Hitler's Europe" (x). Auschwitz was built in order to destroy anyone in
Poland who could lead Polish people, for example, teachers and activists. For
almost the first two years of its existence, most of its inmates were arrested
and detained as Poles.
The
best estimates of non-Jewish Poles killed by Nazis run between one and a half
to two million. Approximately three million Polish Jews were murdered; their
vital presence in Polish life was all but erased. One estimate of non-Jewish
Poles enslaved by the Nazis puts that number at two million (Meier). Polish
slave laborers in Germany had to wear a patch emblazoned with the letter
"P."
By
one estimate, 200,000 Polish children were taken from their parents and
relocated to Germany, to be raised as Germans, because their allegedly German
traits revealed German ancestry (Lukaszewski). Nazis killed almost twenty
percent of Polish priests. Nazis erased Polish villages. Men were killed,
leaders sent to concentration camps, houses burned. An incomplete post-war
count put the number of such villages at two hundred and ninety-nine (Davies
Playground II 455).
In accord
with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the Soviets invaded from the east as the
Nazis invaded from the west. By some measures, the initial phase of the Soviet
invasion was worse. "Very conservative estimates show that [between 1939
and 1941] the Soviets killed or drove to their deaths three or four times as
many people as the Nazis from a population half the size of that under German
jurisdiction" (Gross Revolution 229).
The
Armia Krajowa or Home Army is described as the third largest underground army
in Europe. The AK played a vital role in communicating to Britain and the
United States the reality of the Holocaust. AK intelligence provided the Allies
with the location of Nazi V-1 bomb development and V-2 rocket development.
Captured
V-2 rockets were delivered to London. Poles made the first and necessary
contributions to the decoding of Enigma, and the breaking of Nazi encoded
messages. The Allies' ability to read Nazi messages has been cited as central
to victory (Wrobel). In addition to the over six thousand Polish rescuers
honored at Yad Vashem, the largest of any national group, more Poles than will
ever be counted rescued Jews from Nazis, under the most challenging conditions
in Europe.
In
spite of the above-cited facts, in many, high-impact, folk and popular culture,
Holocaust narratives, Poles and Poland are not victims of Nazi crimes, but,
rather, are either their perpetrators or approving witnesses. This motif
remains popular in spite of constant protest and attempts at correction by
prominent historians and activists, Polish, Jewish, and other (see, e.g.,
National Polish American Jewish American Council).
James
Carroll's Constantine's Sword won the 2001 National Jewish Book Award;
Beliefnet named it the best spiritual book of the year. In his back cover
comments, scholar Garry Wills called the book "searingly honest;"
scholar Eugene Kennedy identified it as "an astonishing work of historical
research." Poland is essential to Carroll and his book; Carroll announced
that he would "remain" "at the foot of the cross at
Auschwitz" "throughout the telling of this story," the story of
Catholic anti-Semitism.
The
cross is appropriate because "Polish Catholicism is particularly inclined
to define itself around the idea of its victimhood." Jews, in Carroll's
text, are not "inclined to define themselves around the idea of
victimhood," in Carroll's book, Jews really do suffer. In order to support
his use of a cross erected at Auschwitz as central symbol for his entire book
about the genuine horrors of Catholic anti-Semitism, Carroll played with the
facts of Polish history, Polish self-definition – presenting a skewed reading
of the Polish Messiah image (60) – and Polish suffering.
Through
verbal legerdemain, Carroll lead his readers to believe that only one hundred
and fifty Poles died at Auschwitz, compared to a million and a half Jews who
died there (230). In fact, between 140,000 and 150,000 Poles were imprisoned in
Auschwitz, of whom 70,000 to 75,000 were killed. 960,000 Jews were killed at
Auschwitz.
***
Later
in the book I include various personal stories. Here is the introduction of
just one Polish American:
John
Guzlowski's Polish Catholic grandmother, aunt, and cousin were murdered by
Nazis and Ukrainians. They raped John's Aunt Sophie and broke her teeth; they
stomped his cousin to death. With his bayonet, a Nazi sexually mutilated John's
Aunt Genia. John's parents were Nazi slave laborers; his father was in
Buchenwald. John was born in a displaced persons camp after World War II; his
family immigrated to America.
