Hello Nicholas,
Jan Mokrzycki (xuegxaw@CSV.WARWICK.AC.UK)
Sat, 23 Nov 1996 11:06:45 GMT
My name is Jan Mokrzycki,you can find out more about my
background and interests at two sites on the web which
are:
www.rmpcl.co.uk/eduweb/sites/chatback/~janm.html
and
http://www.zem.co.uk/polinuk/fed
this second site is a more general one but you may find
quite a bit of information usefull to you. And now to
try and answer your questions:
Which countries were the most succesfull at smuggling
out their Jewish citizens?
I don't think any one knows. Additionally conditions in
all the occupied countries differed and so did their
geographic position. For example a lot of Polish Jews
were able to escape to, or were deported to the Soviet
union when the Soviets attacked Poland in 1939. This
was not a success on the part of the Polish population,
it just happened. After that, very few Jews managed to
escape from Poland because in the East there was the
front with the Germans and Russians fighting, in the
west there was Germany itself and no sane person would
go there of their own free will, in the soth were
Czechoslovakia and Hungary also occupied by the Germans
and in the north was the heavily guarded Baltic sea- so
nowhere to go. A considerable number of Jews were
hidden right through the war in Polish homes, in
convents, monasteries etc.The people who did the hiding
were incredibly brave. Poland was the only occupied
country where the Germans had an automatic death
sentence on THE WHOLE FAMILY of anyone caught hiding
Jews, just think what it must have been like to live
with that hanging over your head for years!
Some Jews were able to escape, one such was Moishe
Zigielbaum who was a Jewish leader in the Warsaw Jewish
community. He managed to escape to London where he
became a member of the Polish governament in exile, he
dedicated all his time to trying to tell the western
leaders and the Jewish communities in the west of what
was happening to Jews in occupied Europe. He tried to
collect money to buy out Jews- the Germans were quite
prepared to let many go for money- but the money was
not forthcoming and he was not believed. When the
Germans destroyed the Warsaw ghetto during the Jewish
uprising there. Moishe Zigielbaum as a final act of
desperation committed suicide- even that did not awaken
the west.
I think Tom answered your question about clothing.
How did the guards choose....................
As the train transports arrived at the concentration
camps, often after many days without food or water,
days spent in the freezing cattletrucks- many prisoners
were already dead. The living were separated, the old,
the ill, the weak and those incapable of work such as
small children were immediately sent to the gas
chambers, for the others hell lasted a little longer.
Tom answered the question on the Nurimberg trials very
well. The only pity there was that the other war
criminals- the Soviets were never brought to trial as
they half way through the war changed sides and ended
up on the winning one. Millions of Poles, Ukrainians,
Germans Russians themselves were murdered by Stalin and
his henchmen. Thousands of Polish prisoners of war
murdered at Katyn and Kozielsks, deportees dying in
hundreds of thousands in the camps in Siberia- those
people were never brought to justice.
What methods ...................
All sorts, the most common one was the International
Red Cross who managed to bring tens of thousands of
people together, then private enterprise as with my own
radio message which just happened to work. Believe it
or not to this day people are still finding relatins-
after all these years. This is especially the case with
people who were deported to Siberia and other parts of
the Soviet union. There are still hundreds of thousands
of ex-Polish citizen living there- a very large
community in Kazachstan for example. Many have married
and settled there now after all these years, but they
have re established links with Poland and long lost
relations are still appearing out of nowhere!
There is perhaps one more thing I ought to mention. It
is absolutly right that we should know about the
diabolical things which were done to the Jews, but we
ought not to forget others who suffered at the hands of
the Natzis. Their approach to the Gipsies and to
Jehova's Witnesses was if anything even worse, they did
their very best to wipe them off the face of the
earth.They were followed closely by the Russians and
then by the Poles where a special effort was made to
wipe out the Polish intelligencia as a start. Most
people forget, or do not know that Aushwitz (Oswiecim)
was originally built as a concentration camp for Poles
and only about 12-18 month later the Jewish transports
begun to arrive.
This does not in any way diminish the horrendous
suffering of the European Jews, but equally we ought
not to forget the others. And there were in fact
representatives of every european nation losing their
lives in German concentration camps, Dutch, French,
Norwegian, Belgian even British.
Well I don't know about you reading, but I am exhausted
writing! Hope this is of some help.
Jan Mokrzycki.