Articles from category: German occupation

This crime cannot be compared to any other.    In 1942, in Łódź, at Przemysłowa Street, the Germans established a concentration camp strictly for Polish children. Several-month-old babies were sent there and mistreated there.    Why were the youngest sent to Kinder-KL Litzmannstadt - Auschwitz for children? This camp was called "Little Auschwitz," where Polish children were worked to death.         

Janusz Korczak died with 200 children in a gas chamber. He held the hands of the children as they went in. He dedicated his whole life to the children and would never leave them. 

I often see many in Holocaust groups question why more people didn’t do something to try and tell the world about the Jewish genocide. That somehow the “world” was silent. That is not true. Indeed, the Polish repeatedly tried to warn the world about what they witnessed happening to the Jews; from there, the world was silent.

Maximilian Maria Kolbe, venerated as Saint Maximilian Kolbe, was a Polish Catholic priest and Conventual Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the German death camp of Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II. 

Personal accounts from the worst massacre of World War II. 

Many Western newspapers often ridicule the Poles about how ineptly they defended their country during the German invasion of Poland in September of 1939. They write about Poles on horseback attacking German tanks using ancient sabers and bottles with gasoline. These condescending tales are really just a continuation of German propaganda aiming at humiliating the Poles.  Most westerners have heard about the Battle of Thermopylae. They have watched the movie “300” with Gerard Butler as King Leonidas. They certainly know that Thermopylae has become a symbol of heroism and honor in defending one’s own country at all cost and against an overwhelmingly stronger enemy.  

Only in German-occupied Poland and the differences between other occupied countries

After hearing a message from Karski Frankfurter addressed him: “‚Mr. Karski, a man like me talking to a man like you, has to be completely honest. So I have to say: I can't believe you ". Ciechanowski interrupted him: ′′ Felix, you don't mean that. How can you call him a liar to his face” Frankfurter replied: ′′ Mr. Ambassador, I didn't say this young man was lying. I said I can't believe him. There is a difference ".

Palmiry has become, as Richard C. Lukas puts it, "one of the most notorious places of mass executions" in Poland. It is also one of the most famous sites of Nazi crimes in Poland. Along with the Katyn Forest, it became a symbol of the martyrdom of the Polish intelligentsia during the Second World War. In 2011 Polish president Bronisław Komorowski said, "Palmiry is to some extent the Warsaw Katyn."  

In the end, the Polish troops played a pivotal role in the successful siege but paid a heavy price for their effort. Among the 54,000 Allied troops who lost their lives on the battlefield, about 1,000 were Polish. They later buried in the Polish war cemetery on the slopes of Monte Cassino, which also became the final resting place of their commander, General Władysław Anders, who died decades later.