Subject: What was it like
Jan Mokrzycki (xuegxaw@CSV.WARWICK.AC.UK)
Sat, 1 Feb 1997 10:25:23 GMT
To: Crystal
My name is Jan Mokrzycki. I was born and lived in
Poland right through the II WW and the German
occupation. I was 6yrs. old when the war started.
There were no "rebellions" in Poland during the war.
The Polish army simply went underground, ie. became a
secret "to the occupying power" organisation and
carried on the war against Germany. It became known as
the Home Army, was organised in secret with a chain of
command stretching all the way to the Polish
governament in exile (first in France and then in
Britain). The Home army was about a million strong and
additionally it counted on the support of the whole
population who fed, watered, clothed and hid them
whenever necessary. All that inspite of the most
horrific penalties, death, torture and sendings off to
concentration camps, extracted on anyone suspected of
helping the Home Army. It mainly engaged in acts of
sabotage on railway lines, roads etc. preventing
Germans from easely sending supplies to their troops on
the Eastern front (Russia).
There were some of the more remote and heavily
forrested areas of the country where the Home Army
ruled for periods of time, but because of lack of arms
and ammunition it was rarely able to meet the German
army on equal terms.
As the Rad (Russian) army begun it's offensive
westwards it soon came into Polish territory. The Home
Army units tried to join with them. Horribly, for
political reasons (Poles awre and are predominantly
Roman Catholic and anti communists, whereas the red
army was communist) members of the home army were
arrested and either executed or sent to the labour
camps in Siberia.
As the Russian army approached central Poland the
Governament in exile gave orders for an uprising in
Warsaw to take place- the idea was that the Russians
would be fighting with the Germans engaging a lot of
their forces and the rising would succeed in liberating
the capital of Poland so that the Russians would be
faced with a Polish city in Polish hands. Instead
Stalin gave orders for the Russian offensive to halt,
they waited on the eastern side of the river Vistula
untill the home army with Warsaw totally ruined,
hundreds of thousands of people dead, had to give up.
The Russians would not even give permission for the
allied planes to land and refuel on their landing
fields, when they were bringing arms and medicines to
the fighters in Warsaw, so the plane losses were so
high that the allies had to give up trying to help. As
sooon as the rising was quashed, thr Red Army resumed
their offensive towards Berlin!
How were people treated?
A reign of terror is the nearest description. For any
German killed by the Home Army Germans executed
summarily anything from 10 to100 people whom they
simply either captured in the streets or selectively
arrested from their homes. If you walked along a
pavement you had to stop of it to allw the germans to
walk along , in trams and buses a large compartment was
reserved for Germans only, frequently remaining almost
empty, whereas the rest of the population had to
squeese int the overcrowded remaining space.The
rationing of food was for the Polish population just at
the starvation level everything else being used to feed
Germany. The intellectuals and professionals were
singled out for early arrest and sent off to
concentration camps or hard labour.
Poland had the largest Jewish population in the world
prior to WW II largely because in the middle ages Jews
were persecuted throughout western Europe, they were
welcomed and treated well in Poland. Unfortunately,
most of the Jewish population never really integrated,
they tended to live and work in their own enclaves in
towns and cities, called ghettoes. They dressed
differently, wore typical long beards and sideburns
etc. When the Gerans came they had little difficulty in
distinguishing them from the rest of the population.
They almost immediately herded all the Jewish
population into the ghettoes. Made them wear the star
of David on their sleeves and proceeded to exterminate
them in a very calculating and orderly fashion.At the
same time they announced that if any Pole hides a Jew,
that person and all of his family will be summatily
executed. Inspite of that, many Jews were hidden by
Polish families through those long years, but many,
many more, the vast majority were murdered by the
Germans.As the extermination carried on, there were
occasional bouts of resistance in the Jewish
population, the most famous one the rising in the
Warsaw ghettoe. They were hopeless fights of
desperation, none the less heroic ones. The one rather
shamefull part of this story is that many courriers
coming out of Poland carried the horrific tale of the
extermination of the Jews and of the horror of
concentration camps. The most famous ones were Jan
Karski, a polish courier and Moishe Zigielbaum, a
Jewish leader who managed to escape from Poland and
became a member of the polish governament in exile.
They told their stories to the allied governaments and
Jewish leaders in the west- conveniently they were not
believed. Mr. Zigielbaum eventualy in despair commited
suicide as a last protest, still they were not believed
and nothing was done to help the Jews.
I am happy to say that no one except some of the
Germans who lived in Poland welcomed the Natzis
invasion of Poland, they were universally hated and
fought. Moreover not a single politician was found by
the Germans in Poland to espouse their cause.
I think you have a fairly exhaustive answer there, but
if you want any further details you can either mail me
through memories or direct. I must also now go!
Dr. Jan Mokrzycki.