Gość: XYZ
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15.07.01, 17:46
Jedwabne and the Soviet Occupation.
On September 17, 1939, the Soviet Union came to aid the Nazis, whose campaign
against the Poles was running out of steam. The Soviets captured 46.5% of the
Polish territories and stopped the Polish military from regrouping and
continuing their struggle, especially in the North where Polish troops had
successfully arrested Nazi advances.
On September 28, the Nazis and Soviet Russia partitioned Poland. Each began to
organize the territory to its political advantage.
Hitler divided his acquisition into three parts. One section, the northern
sector, was absorbed into the Reich and cleared of any Poles immediately. The
second part was converted into three protectorates for the Polish population
and its two major ethnic groups representing at least 10% of the total
population:
1) General Government, with its capital, Krakow, is designated for Poles,
2) Judenland, with its capital, Zamosc, for European and Polish Jews, and
3) Ukrainian Reserve for Polish Ukrainians.
Lastly, the Zakopane territory was given to Slovakia for its assistance in the
attack on Poland.
The third ethnic group in Poland, which also composed 10% of the total
population, was the Polish Germans. This group, like the Jews, began to
collaborate with Hitler almost immediately, and by 1935 Hitler decorated its
representatives with Iron Crosses, a military award for valor. Hitler referred
to them as Volksdeutsche.
Jews collaborated with the Nazi invader through the Nazi approved Councils,
Jewish Police and spy networks, such as the infamous Department 13 run by
Nossig.
In the years 1939-1943, the Nazis set up 108 camps for the Polish--not Jewish--
population.
During the initial years, Auschwitz was for Poles, not Jews.
Polish men, women, priests, nuns, children under 12 and children 12 to 16 were
placed in specific camps to serve the "needs" of their new master--chief among
them the murder of the leaders and deportation of Polish children who were
endowed with Aryan features to the Reich.
The Jews organized themselves in ghettos led by Nazi-approved leaders such as
Czernikow and others. The Ukrainians formed SS-Units such as the Galizien-SS or
guard units like the "Trawnikimanner" to assist the Nazis in various
operations. The Volksdeutsche, the Polish Germans, received their German
citizenship upon signing a document and joined all levels of the Nazi killing
machine. Some of the smaller ethic groups in occupied Poland such as
Lithuanians and Latvians joined their national counterparts in servicing Nazi
needs.
Despite all the pressure, Poles did not collaborate!
They organized themselves under the leadership of the Polish Government-in-
Exile in London and fought their invaders--Nazis and Soviets, only to be
betrayed by the British, French, Americans and in their own country
their "neighbors" Jews, Ukrainians, Polish Germans and a host of smaller ethnic
communities.
In the Soviet partition, immediately after September 17, 1939, one ethnic group
began to collaborate with the Soviet invader--the Polish Jews. Of the 3.1
million Polish Jews, 1,222,000 lived in the territories taken over by Soviet
Russia. Between September 17 and October 22, 1939, they helped the Soviets
identify Polish civilian and military leaders and intellectuals and assisted
with deportations of about 1.5 million Poles into the Soviet Union's Siberia as
well as helped in the murder of at least 100,000 Poles on the spot.
Mr. Will does not dare to mention Jewish collaboration of the Jedwabne Jews or
any other eastern community with Stalinist forces, but nevertheless this factor
is the main cause of the Nazi action in that town.
Jewish collaborators, along with identifying their neighbors, Poles, for
deportation or murder helped the Soviets organize and conduct a plebiscite. On
October 22, 1939 the Soviets rammed through a plebiscite which overwhelmingly
favored the annexation of Soviet-occupied Polish territories into the Soviet
Union. A week later, the Soviets annexed 46.5% of Poland into the Soviet
republics of Belarus and Ukraine. British journalists, who were present in the
territories of Soviet occupation, in their reports to their respective journals
confirmed the betrayal of Poles by their "neighbors"--the Polish Jews.
All inhabitants of the annexed territories instantaneously became citizens of
the Soviet Union, the Polish currency, the Zloty, was declared worthless and
all of the administrative jobs in the new Soviet territories were given to the
collaborators. The persecution of ethnic Poles under the new administration
intensified. After killing all of the Polish administrators and military men,
the blood-thirsty collaborators started murdering old men, veterans of World
War I and the Polish-Soviet War of 1921-22 in which Poland was victorious.
Families of those killed were deported to Siberia.
However, Hitler was running out of resources after his escapades in Western
Europe, and the Soviet Union seemed to be the only easy target left for him.
Rich in badly needed natural resources, it had to be taken immediately and he
attacked it on June 22, 1941.
Plans were drawn up and on June 6, the organization of four Einsatztruppen
(Security Troops) A, B, C, and D was approved. These units followed the
military forces purging the German occupied territories of Soviet Commissars
and other "apparatchiks."
Jedwabne was one of the towns which was occupied by the Soviet Union in
September 1939. In October, after the plebiscite, the Jewish collaborators
purged the Polish administration, killing or deporting all of its leaders and
were given their jobs as a reward.
As an expression of devotion to their Soviet masters, the Jewish collaborators
erected a statue of Lenin in the town.
After the Nazi military machine rolled through the territories, the
Einsatztruppen arrived. They gathered local communists and their sympathizers
and began to destroy them in the manner they saw fit. They also demolished the
Lenin monument.
Their crime, committed against the Jewish Soviet collaborators in 1941 was not
any different than those which took place from September through December of
1939 and were previously committed exclusively against Poles. In many towns,
Bydgoszcz and Leszno being chief among them, the German troops killed over
5,000 Poles.
In the same period, another 384 Polish towns and villages were completely
destroyed--inhabitants and property.
Lastly, the documentation examined by scholars in Ludwigsburg, Germany, Warsaw,
Poland and Stanford University in California show that the Einsatztruppen
action taken against the Jewish collaborators was a Nazi responsibility. The
Nuremberg Trial records, which contain the testimony of 22 Einsatztruppen
commanders, clearly show a German pattern of murderous behavior.
Further, Hitler's order of September 1, 1939 is key in refuting the unfortunate
claim by Mr. Gross and Mr. Will. No Nazi would disobey the Fuehrer.
On the other hand, a crime was committed by Mr. Will in his column. However, no
punishment will erase what he did. He casually dismissed the suffering and
martyrdom of 26 million Poles at the hands of Hitler and Stalin to
sensationalize the tragedy that befell less than 100 collaborators.