Polish Victims Always Ignored

The injustices to Polish victims and Poland.

79 years ago on 15 March 1940, Reichsfuehrer SS, Heinrich Himmler gave a speech stating:
“All skilled workers of Polish origin are to be utilized in our war industry; then all Poles will disappear from the face of the earth.”
“In fulfilling this very responsible task, you must, within the prescribed limits of time, exterminate the Poles. I give this directive to all the [concentration] camp commanders.”
“The hour is drawing closer when every German will have to stand the test. For that reason, the great German nation should understand that its most important task right now is to exterminate all the Poles.”

Some months earlier on 22 August 1939 in Obersalzberg, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler gave a speech which included: “Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need.”

A day after the German invasion Stutthof, often described as the first concentration camp outside Germany, was established on 2 September 1939. The first transport had 150 prisoners. Polish.

The first inmates to the German concentration camp Auschwitz arrived on 14 June 1940. There were 728 Poles and 20 Polish Jews.

Almost 2 years later, the “Aktion Reinhardt” transports of Jews to German camps commenced on 17^th March 1942.

The USHMM has a page about Polish victims. It starts with: “The German occupation of Poland was exceptionally brutal.” And ends with: “Between 1939 and 1945, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens were deported to German territory for forced labor. Hundreds of thousands were also imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.
[…] It is estimated that the Germans killed between 1.8 and 1.9 million [3 million] non-Jewish Polish civilians during World War II. In addition, the Germans murdered at least 3 million Jewish citizens of Poland.”

Germany’s Operation Tannenberg was followed by Intelligenzaktion and then AB-Aktion. Polish intellectuals and leaders such as academics, teachers, lawyers and priests were targeted. The German objective was to terrorise the population, to remove leadership for any resistance and to destroy Polish culture. There were many other massacres and genocide operations and there is a long list of German war crimes against Poles. Mass executions of hostages took place in what the Germans called “collective retribution”.

SO, why is it that Polish victims such as 14 year old girl Czesława Kwoka (Prisoner Number 26947) who was murdered on 12 March 1943 in Auschwitz with a phenol injection into the heart are never mentioned as victims? Her only supposed “crime” was being Polish. She was taken from her home in Zamość so that Germany could create “living space” (Lebensraum) for the German people. The young Polish girl was categorised by her German Nazis captors and executioners as “political”.

“Political” was the category the German Nazis used for their non-Jewish Polish prisoners and the contemporary use of that “political” category could be considered a furtherance of Nazi propaganda. The word “political” as applied to the Polish prisoners with their red triangles initialled with the letter P, literally for Pole, is a complete misnomer. It confuses people and editors to this day. No-one stops to think how a 14 year old girl such as Czesława or catholic priests could be considered “political” when they are victimised by a brutal invader from a DIFFERENT country. A political prisoner is usually considered someone who has been jailed for their beliefs or dissent by their OWN government. “Political” should NOT be used when describing Polish victims since it is completely misleading.

Just in Auschwitz the Germans killed 75,000 Poles. These Polish victims outnumber all the other non-Jewish categories added together. 149 Polish priests and other clergy were murdered in Auschwitz. 868 Polish priests were killed in the German camp Dachau where there were special priest barracks (Priesterblock). Overall a fifth (approx. 2,000) of all Polish parish priests were killed during the war. Four Polish bishops were killed in the German camps, and nearly half of the Roman Catholic dioceses were deprived of diocesan bishops. Nuns and monks were also imprisoned and killed under the misleading category of “political”.

The Washington Post last month [inaccurately and initially] described Auschwitz as a “memorial to Jews killed at the former extermination camp”.

The inscription at the Holocaust Memorial in Ohio (US) provides a topical and slightly nonsensical example of Polish victims being ignored.
IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE SIX MILLION JEWS WHO PERISHED IN THE HOLOCAUST AND MILLIONS MORE INCLUDING PRISONERS OF WAR, ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS MINORITIES, HOMOSEXUALS, THE MENTALLY ILL, THE DISABLED, AND POLITICAL DISSIDENTS WHO SUFFERED UNDER NAZI GERMANY.

Were Poles an “ethnic and religious minority” in their own country? Were they “political dissidents”? Answer to both questions is obviously: NO! Poles are just ignored victims. Homosexuals are mentioned although the number of victims killed is probably in the low 100s. Majority were German men.

The proposed UK Holocaust Memorial falls into the same trap. Originally their commemoration was going to be:
“However, it would be an injustice to the memory of those other victims not to reflect upon their tragic experiences too. Amongst these victims were members of the Roma community, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political dissidents, homosexuals and people with mental and physical disabilities.”

An even greater injustice is done to the vastly more numerous Polish victims who are wilfully ignored and apparently unworthy of mention.

USHMM: “The number of Jehovah’s Witnesses who died in concentration camps and prisons during the Nazi era is estimated at 1,000 Germans and 400 from other countries, including about 90 Austrians and 120 Dutch.”

The “design value” was later amended to: “Appropriately represent the fate of all other victims of Nazi persecutions, Roma, disabled people, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and all other political opponents of the Nazi regime”

Slavs? Political opponents of the Nazi Regime? No mention of Poles who vastly outnumber all the other categories added together that are mentioned!

Sometimes the press will mention LGBT (and even LGBTQ+) victims of the Nazis apparently oblivious to the factual mosaic of victims. In effect, victims are invented to suit contemporary discrimination categories and misguided political correctness. This ignorance or confusion about victims was revealed in a UCL survey (of school children) a few years ago. Polish victims are barely mentioned. There is a revealing graph on page 108.

The word “homosexual” appears 116 times in that “What do Students know…” document. The word “Poles” appears 14 times. The word Polish appears just 4 times including where “Polish” was considered a WRONG answer with reference to victims (Q30).

A PMI survey also revealed a sliding scale of knowledge through different age groups about the Holocaust. Younger generations know less.

The situation is compounded by educational visits to Auschwitz Memorial, by the UK’s Holocaust Education Trust and other organisations, which are often reported in the media as students visiting a “Polish concentration camp” or a “death camp in Poland”. AS IF Poland was responsible for the camp(s) or that the concentration/death camp is extant. Many of these articles have a “Never Again” theme and “never again” mention the actual GERMAN perpetrators which could leave their readers with the mistaken impression that the camp was Polish. If the perpetrators are mentioned they are inevitably referred to as (just) Nazis which could cause a false conflation with Poland in peoples’ heads. Some media incorrectly use the word Polish to describe the [German] concentration/extermination camps but they cannot use the word German and instead regularly opt for the word Nazi when “correcting” their mistake(s). Polish can be incorrectly used but German is verboten! It is a mystery

A lot of countries are signatories to the Stockholm Declaration. Some extracts:

1. The terrible suffering of the many millions of other victims of the Nazis has left an indelible scar across Europe as well.
2. The selfless sacrifices of those who defied the Nazis, and sometimes gave their own lives to protect or rescue the Holocaust’s victims, must also be inscribed in our hearts.
3. We share a commitment to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and to honour those who stood against it.
4. Our commitment must be to remember the victims who perished, respect the survivors still with us, and reaffirm humanity’s common aspiration for mutual understanding and justice.

Instead, people can read FAKE NEWS about Poland trying to rewrite Holocaust history. There is also a new school of thought trying to whitewash German responsibility and instead transfer culpability onto Poland. History is being revised and victims and opponents of the German Nazis are being transformed into perpetrators. This seems a clear contravention of the Stockholm Declaration and the IHRA’s definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion but there is no condemnation about this historical revisionism.

Polish victims are never mentioned. Poland the country that fought Nazi Germany for the longest time. The country that suffered the greatest losses and destruction. The country that did the most to try and save Jews. Poland, the only German-occupied country where the German occupiers imposed a death sentence on any person and their family (i.e. Poles) for helping Jews. Tens of thousands of Poles were executed for trying to provide such assistance or sanctuary. The world ignored Poland’s reports about the genocide. And now the world ignores Polish victims.

In September 1939, Poland was also invaded by the Soviet Union who were then a partner of Nazi Germany under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviet NKVD also targeted Polish leaders. In the Spring of 1940, nearly 22,000 Polish Army and Police officers were massacred at Katyń. The Soviet NKVD also deported (in an “ethnic cleansing”) approx. 1.5 million Polish citizens using railway cattle trucks to slave labour camps (gulags) in Siberia and Kazakhstan. Hundreds of thousands of Poles perished in the brutal conditions. The story of these victims was suppressed during the post war communist occupation of Poland and these victims are still also ignored in the “West”.

One of the Polish priest murdered in Auschwitz was Maximilian Kolbe. He became a saint. His statue, as a modern day martyr, stands above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey.
St Maximilian Kolbe is one of the patron saints of “political prisoners” and journalists. Journalists and their editors who never mention Polish victims but sometimes confuse them with “political prisoners”. It is also a peculiar malady that afflicts most Holocaust Memorials.

Chris Jezewski