A reader commented on this previous post about something which the article failed to mention, but, nevertheless, it deserves to be expounded so that more people can understand...Thanks to MN-Ray for taking the time to post this!
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It is important to remember that there were more than Jews that died in the Holocaust. The war and mass killings were underway for almost two years before the mass killings of the Jews began when Russia was invaded in June of 1941.
"Sarmatian Review XVIII.2:
Polish Losses in World War IIPolish Losses in World War II
compiled by Witold J. Lukaszewski
Auschwitz was built in 1940 for Poles and, in the end, 140,000 of them died
there. Beginning in Spring 1942, Jews followed Poles into Auschwitz and they
eventually became its most numerous victims, with 1.1 million being the
estimated number ("Liczba ofiar," Franciszek Piper and Walcaw Dlugoborski,
Auschwitz 1940-1945, Wydawnictwo Panstwowego Muzeum 1995, 171-8 ).
Poland's population losses during World War II were proportionately by far the
greatest of any nation participating in the war. Of its 35 million people before
the war, Poland lost 6.5 million. An estimated 664,000 were battlefield deaths
(this figure exceeds combined losses of the United States and Great Britain in
WWII), and the remainder, or 90 percent, were civilians of all ages (Norman
Davies, Europe: A History, Oxford 1996, 1328; Richard Lukas, The Forgotten
Holocaust, U. of Kentucky Press 1986, 39; The 1992 Almanac, Houghton Mifflin
310).
The Nazi German death machine in the Nazi-occupied half of Poland killed:
3 million of the 3.3 million Jews who lived in Poland before World War II, or 90
percent of the Jewish population (S.P. Oliner and P.M. Oliner, The Altruistic
Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe, Free Press 1998, 25-29).
More than 2 million Polish Catholics, with special emphasis on eliminating the
national elites (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control, Scribner's 1993, 7 - 18 ).
One out of four (25 percent) of Catholic clergy (Polish Foreign Minister Wadysaw
Bartoszewski's Speech to the Bundestag in Bonn, Germany, 28 April 1995).
One out of four (25 percent) of all Polish scientists (Bartoszewski, op. cit.).
One out of five (20 percent) of all Polish schoolteachers (Bartoszewski, op.
cit.)
200,000 Polish children were deported to Germany for purposes of Germanization.
150,000, or 75 percent, never returned to their families in Poland
(Bartoszewski, op. cit.).
The Soviet death machine in the Soviet-occupied half of Poland killed:
21,000 Polish officers murdered by the NKVD in the Katyn Forest and elsewhere
(Brzezinski, op. cit.).
Between 1.6 million and 1.25 million Poles (the lowest estimate) were deported
to Siberia and Kazakhstan between 1939-1941 as a result of Soviet 'ethnic
cleansing' (Jan Tomasz Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of
Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia, Princeton 1988, 194). An
estimated four-fifths died either directly or as a result of privations incurred
during the deportations.
State Security in the Soviet-occupied Poland between 1945-1955 murdered tens of
thousands of political, military and intellectual leaders (Teresa Toranska,
"Them," Harper & Row 1987, 139).
Moscow's policies designed to debilitate the Polish nation included, among
others, the following instruction: "While rebuilding the [Polish] industry and
building new industry, make sure that industrial waste is directed to rivers
which will be used as reservoirs of drinking water." (Arnold Beichman, "Soviet
Directives Sought to Keep Poles from Developing Identity," a syndicated column
published, among others, in The Penticton Press, 24 February 1994; the full text
of the Soviet directives can be found in SR, XIV/1, Jan 1994, 211-213).
In the Polish collective memory of World War II, the Nazi occupation is
organically tied to the Soviet occupation. Soviet genocidal policies directed at
Poland were no less devastating than those of the Nazis. A recent study by
French scientists has shown that 'Those very features of Nazism that we find
most repellent have now been proven endemic to communism from its inception.'
(NYT, 22 December 1997; see also Cardinal Wyszynski's comment on the Nazis'
imitation of the Soviet death machine, as summarized by Szyldkraut and Sluszny,
on page 546 of this issue of SR).
The Soviet occupation of Poland lasted nearly ten times as long as that of the
Nazis. Even more ideologically corrosive than the Nazis, the Soviets devastated
the lives of three generations of Poles, whose living conditions were made
wretched, whose religion and culture were attacked with the full power of the
office of state security. As General Wladyslaw Anders remarked to General George
Patton: 'With the Nazis, we [Poles] lose our lives; with the Soviets, we lose
our souls.... If I found my army between the Nazis and the Soviets, I would
attack in both directions.'
Return to April 1998 Issue
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Last updated 05/1/98"
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