Józef Piłsudski
Józef Klemens Piłsudski, was a Polish statesman who served as the Chief of State and First Marshal of Poland. He was considered the de facto leader of the Second Polish Republic as the Minister of Military Affairs. From World War I he had great power in Polish politics and was a distinguished figure on the international scene, he is viewed as a father of the Second Polish Republic re-established in 1918, 123 years after the 1795 Partitions of Poland by Austria and Russia. Deeming himself a descendant of the culture and traditions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Piłsudski believed in a multi-ethnic Poland—"a home of nations" including indigenous ethnic and religious minorities that he hoped would establish a robust union with the independent states of Lithuania and Ukraine, his principal political antagonist, Roman Dmowski, leader of the National Democrat party, by contrast, called for a Poland limited to the pre-Partitions Polish Crown and based on a homogeneous ethnically Polish population and Roman Catholic identity.
Early in his political career, Piłsudski became a leader of the Polish Socialist Party. Concluding that Poland's independence would have to be won militarily, he formed the Polish Legions. In 1914 he predicted that a new major war would defeat the Russian Empire and the Central Powers; when World War I began in 1914, Piłsudski's Legions fought alongside Austria-Hungary against Russia. In 1917, with Imperalist Russia faring poorly in the war, he withdrew his support for the Central Powers and was imprisoned in Magdeburg by the Germans. From November 1918, when Poland regained its independence, until 1922, Piłsudski was Poland's Chief of State. In 1919 -- 21 he commanded Polish forces in six border wars. On the verge of defeat in the Polish–Soviet War his forces, in the August 1920 Battle of Warsaw, threw back the invading Soviet Russians. In 1923, with the government dominated by his opponents, in particular the National Democrats, Piłsudski retired from active politics. Three years he returned to power in the May 1926 coup d'état and became Poland's strongman.
From on until his death in 1935, he concerned himself with military and foreign affairs. It was during this period that he developed a cult of personality that has survived into the 21st century. In international affairs, Piłsudski pursued two complementary strategies meant to secure Poland's independence and to enhance national security: "Prometheism", aimed at achieving the disintegration of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union into their constituent nations. Historian Piotr Wandycz characterizes Piłsudski as "an ardent Polish patriot who on occasion would castigate the Poles for their stupidity, cowardice, or servility, he described himself as a Polish-Lithuanian, was stubborn and reserved, loath to show his emotions." Some aspects of Piłsudski's administration, such as establishing Bereza Kartuska prison, described by many as a concentration camp, remain controversial. Yet he is esteemed in Polish memory and is regarded, together with his chief antagonist Roman Dmowski, as a founder of the modern independent Poland.
He was born 5 December 1867 to the noble family Piłsudski, at their manor named Zułów, near the village of Zułowo, in the Russian Empire since 1795 on the territory of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The estate was part of the dowry brought by his mother, Maria, a member of the wealthy Billewicz family; the Piłsudski family, although pauperized, cherished Polish patriotic traditions and has been characterized either as Polish or as Polonized-Lithuanian. Józef was the second son born to the family. Józef, when he attended the Russian gymnasium in Wilno, was not an diligent student. One of the younger Polish students at this gymnasium was the future Russian communist leader Feliks Dzierżyński, who would become Piłsudski's arch-enemy. Along with his brothers Bronisław, Adam and Jan, Józef was introduced by his mother Maria, née Billewicz, to Polish history and literature, which were suppressed by the Russian authorities, his father named Józef, had fought in the January 1863 Uprising against Russian rule of Poland.
The family resented the Russian government's Russification policies. Young Józef profoundly disliked having to attend Russian Orthodox Church service and left school with an aversion not only for the Russian Tsar and the Russian Empire, but for the culture, which he knew well. In 1885 Piłsudski started medical studies at Kharkov University, where he became involved with Narodnaya Volya, part of the Russian Narodniki revolutionary movement. In 1886, he was suspended for participating in student demonstrations, he was rejected by the University of Dorpat, whose authorities had been informed of his political affiliation. On 22 March 1887, he was arrested by Tsarist authorities on a charge of plotting with Vilnius socialists to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. In fact, Piłsudski's main connection to the plot was the involvement of his elder brother Bronisław, sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in eastern Siberia. Józef received a milder sentence: five years' exile in Siberia, first at Kirensk on the Lena River at Tunka.
While being transported in a prisoners' convoy to Siberia, Piłsudski was held for several weeks at a prison in Irkutsk. There, he took part in what the authorities viewed as a
Zofiówka Sanatorium
Zofiówka Sanatorium is a defunct mental health facility in the town of Otwock in Poland, built at the beginning of the 20th century. In the Second Polish Republic, the sanatorium complex was expanded with staff. Zofiówka had 95 beds, but this number had increased to 275 by 1935; the Jewish history of Zofiówka came to its end in the course of the Holocaust following the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. The history of the old Jewish sanatorium starts at the beginning of the 20th century. Back the institutionalized treatment of mental disorders was in its infancy. In 1906, Polish-Jewish neurologists Adam Wizel, Samuel Goldflam, Ludwik Bregman and Adolf Weisblat formed the "Society for Poor Jews with Nervous and Mental Illnesses"; the sanatorium's director was Dr. Stefan Miller. A year a donation by the philanthropist Sophia Endelman enabled the purchase of 17 hectares of land and in 1908 the first building of a new sanatorium was built by the association there. An important part of the treatment was restoring patients to society by enabling them to practice employment.
In its isolation ward, the mother of famous Polish poet, Julian Tuwim, Adela Tuwim was placed before World War II. In late 1940, may the asylum fell within the so-called ‘medical zone’ formed by the Germans in the newly established Jewish ghetto of Otwock; the institution was still working during the early stages of the occupation of Poland, but the conditions worsened. 400 patients were sentenced to a slow and torturous death by starvation as part of the Nazi extermination Aktionen. Zofiówka ended its existence at the same time as ghetto in Otwock. On the morning of 19 August 1942, the Ukrainian Trawnikis supervised by the Germans, gathered the patients and the hospital crew in the first pavilion; some 100-140 victims were shot on the spot, the rest were put on the Holocaust train to Treblinka along with Otwock’s Jewish population of 7,000. Only a few doctors, who managed to escape to Warsaw by ambulance, survived; some of the staff people committed suicide. In 1943 Zofiówka served Germans as the institution of charity care.
The facility dealt with the Germanization of Polish children, bringing them up for adoption to families in Germany. Zofiówka returned to his original medical purposes after the Soviet takeover, but the patients were children and young people. Between 1985 and the mid-1990s, the facilities were used to treat neuropsychiatric disorders associated with drug addiction; this continued until the decision was made to close it. In 2015, the viral video called 11B-X-1371 was found filmed in the abandoned facility, but who did it and when it was not known until an individual named Parker Warner Wright claimed to have created the video, he told The Daily Dot that it was supposed to be an art project, he released a sequel video, 11B-3-1369
Poland
Poland the Republic of Poland, is a country located in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, covering an area of 312,696 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With a population of 38.5 million people, Poland is the sixth most populous member state of the European Union. Poland's capital and largest metropolis is Warsaw. Other major cities include Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk, Szczecin. Poland is bordered by the Baltic Sea, Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast and Lithuania to the north and Ukraine to the east and Czech Republic, to the south, Germany to the west; the establishment of the Polish state can be traced back to AD 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of the realm coextensive with the territory of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, in 1569 it cemented its longstanding political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin; this union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, with a uniquely liberal political system which adopted Europe's first written national constitution, the Constitution of 3 May 1791.
More than a century after the Partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, Poland regained its independence in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Germany, followed by the Soviet Union invading Poland in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. More than six million Polish citizens, including 90% of the country's Jews, perished in the war. In 1947, the Polish People's Republic was established as a satellite state under Soviet influence. In the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1989, most notably through the emergence of the Solidarity movement, Poland reestablished itself as a presidential democratic republic. Poland is regional power, it has the fifth largest economy by GDP in the European Union and one of the most dynamic economies in the world achieving a high rank on the Human Development Index. Additionally, the Polish Stock Exchange in Warsaw is the largest and most important in Central Europe. Poland is a developed country, which maintains a high-income economy along with high standards of living, life quality, safety and economic freedom.
Having a developed school educational system, the country provides free university education, state-funded social security, a universal health care system for all citizens. Poland has 15 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Poland is a member state of the European Union, the Schengen Area, the United Nations, NATO, the OECD, the Three Seas Initiative, the Visegrád Group; the origin of the name "Poland" derives from the West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta river basin of the historic Greater Poland region starting in the 6th century. The origin of the name "Polanie" itself derives from the early Slavic word "pole". In some languages, such as Hungarian, Lithuanian and Turkish, the exonym for Poland is Lechites, which derives from the name of a semi-legendary ruler of Polans, Lech I. Early Bronze Age in Poland begun around 2400 BC, while the Iron Age commenced in 750 BC. During this time, the Lusatian culture, spanning both the Bronze and Iron Ages, became prominent; the most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, around 700 BC.
Throughout the Antiquity period, many distinct ancient ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland in an era that dates from about 400 BC to 500 AD. These groups are identified as Celtic, Slavic and Germanic tribes. Recent archeological findings in the Kujawy region, confirmed the presence of the Roman Legions on the territory of Poland; these were most expeditionary missions sent out to protect the amber trade. The exact time and routes of the original migration and settlement of Slavic peoples lacks written records and can only be defined as fragmented; the Slavic tribes who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. Up until the creation of Mieszko's state and his subsequent conversion to Christianity in 966 AD, the main religion of Slavic tribes that inhabited the geographical area of present-day Poland was Slavic paganism. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the religious authority of the Roman Church.
However, the transition from paganism was not a smooth and instantaneous process for the rest of the population as evident from the pagan reaction of the 1030s. Poland began to form into a recognizable unitary and territorial entity around the middle of the 10th century under the Piast dynasty. Poland's first documented ruler, Mieszko I, accepted Christianity with the Baptism of Poland in 966, as the new official religion of his subjects; the bulk of the population converted in the course of the next few centuries. In 1000, Boleslaw the Brave, continuing the policy of his father Mieszko, held a Congress of Gniezno and created the metropolis of Gniezno and the dioceses of Kraków, Kołobrzeg, Wrocław. However, the pagan unrest led to the transfer of the capital to Kraków in 1038 by Casimir I the Restorer. In 1109, Prince Bolesław III Wrymouth defeated the King of Germany Henry V at the Battle of Hundsfeld, stopping the Ge
Voivodeships of Poland
A województwo is the highest-level administrative subdivision of Poland, corresponding to a "province" in many other countries. The term "województwo" has been in use since the 14th century, is translated in English as "province". Województwo is rendered in English by "voivodeship" or a variant spelling; the Polish local government reforms adopted in 1998, which went into effect on 1 January 1999, created sixteen new voivodeships. These replaced the 49 former voivodeships that had existed from 1 July 1975, bear greater resemblance to the voivodeships that existed between 1950 and 1975. Today's voivodeships are named after historical and geographical regions, while those prior to 1998 took their names from the cities on which they were centered; the new units range in area from under 10,000 km2 to over 35,000 km2, in population from one million to over five million. Administrative authority at the voivodeship level is shared between a government-appointed governor called a voivode, an elected assembly called a sejmik, an executive board chosen by that assembly, headed by a voivodeship marshal.
Voivodeships are further divided into powiats and gminas: see Administrative divisions of Poland. This is a list of Polish voivodeships by gross regional product per capita, based on purchasing power standards and shown in euros. Statistics shown are for 2017 levels; this is a list of Polish voivodeships by nominal gross regional product shown in billion euros. Statistics shown are for 2017 levels. Competences and powers at voivodeship level are shared between the voivode, the sejmik and the marshal. In most cases these institutions are all based in one city, but in Kuyavian-Pomeranian and Lubusz Voivodeship the voivode's offices are in a different city from those of the executive and the sejmik. Voivodeship capitals are listed in the table below; the voivode is appointed by the Prime Minister and is the regional representative of the central government. The voivode acts as the head of central government institutions at regional level, manages central government property in the region, oversees the functioning of local government, coordinates actions in the field of public safety and environment protection, exercises special powers in emergencies.
The voivode's offices collectively are known as the urząd wojewódzki. The sejmik is elected every five years, at the same time as the local authorities at powiat and gmina level, it passes bylaws, including budget. It elects the marszałek and other members of the executive, holds them to account; the executive, headed by the marszałek drafts the budget and development strategies, implements the resolutions of the sejmik, manages the voivodeship's property, deals with many aspects of regional policy, including management of European Union funding. The marshal's offices are collectively known as the urząd marszałkowski. According to 2014 Eurostat data, the GDP per capita of Polish voivodeships varies notably and there is a large gap between the richest per capita voivodeship and the poorest per capita. Poznań Voivodeship Kalisz Voivodeship Gniezno Voivodeship from 1768 Sieradz Voivodeship Łęczyca Voivodeship Brześć Kujawski Voivodeship Inowrocław Voivodeship Chełmno Voivodeship Malbork Voivodeship Pomeranian Voivodeship Duchy of Warmia Duchy of Prussia Płock Voivodeship Rawa Voivodeship Masovian Voivodeship Kraków Voivodeship Sandomierz Voivodeship Lublin Voivodeship Podlaskie Voivodeship Ruthenian Voivodeship Bełz Voivodeship Volhynian Voivodeship Podole Voivodeship Bracław Voivodeship Kijów Voivodeship Czernihów Voivodeship Wilno Voivodship Troki Voivodship Nowogrodek Voivodship Brest-Litovsk Voivodship Minsk Voivodship Mscislaw Voivodship Smolensk Voivodship Vitebsk Voivodship Polock Voivodship Duchy of Samogita Wenden Voivodship since 1598 till the 1620s Dorpat Voivodship since 1598 till the 1620
Masovian Voivodeship
Mazovian Voivodeship or Mazovia Province is the largest and most populous of the 16 Polish provinces, or voivodeships, created in 1999. It occupies 35,579 square kilometres of east-central Poland, has 5,324,500 inhabitants, its principal cities are Warsaw in the centre of the Warsaw metropolitan area, Radom in the south, Płock in the west, Siedlce in the east, Ostrołęka in the north. The capital of the voivodeship is Warsaw; the province was created on January 1, 1999, out of the former Warsaw, Płock, Ciechanów, Ostrołęka, Siedlce and Radom Voivodeships, pursuant to the Polish local government reforms adopted in 1998. The province's name recalls the traditional name of the region, with which it is coterminous. However, southern part of the voivodeship, with Radom belongs to Lesser Poland, while Łomża and its surroundings though part of Mazovia, now is part of Podlaskie Voivodeship, it is bordered by six other voivodeships: Warmian-Masurian to the north, Podlaskie to the north-east, Lublin to the south-east, Świętokrzyskie to the south, Łódź to the south-west, Kuyavian-Pomeranian to the north-west.
Mazovia is the centre of science, education and infrastructure in the country. It has the lowest unemployment rate in Poland and is classified as a high income province. Moreover, it is popular among holidaymakers due to the number of historical monuments and greenery. Additionally, the Kampinos National Park located within Masovia is a UNESCO-designated biosphere reserve. Masovian Voivodeship is divided into 42 counties: 5 city counties and 37 "land counties"; these are subdivided into 314 gminas, which include 85 "urban gminas". The counties, shown on the numbered map, are described in the table below; the voivodeship contains 85 towns. These are listed below in descending order of population: Protected areas in Masovian Voivodeship include one National Park and nine Landscape Parks; these are listed below. Kampinos National Park Bolimów Landscape Park Brudzeń Landscape Park Bug Landscape Park Chojnów Landscape Park Górzno-Lidzbark Landscape Park Gostynin-Włocławek Landscape Park Kozienice Landscape Park Masovian Landscape Park Podlaskie Bug Gorge Landscape Park Kowalski: 26,270 Wiśniewski: 21,940 Kowalczyk: 21,586 Lukasik: 15,562 Mazurkiewicz: Founding of Masovia Name.
Masovia Voivodeship, 1526–1795 was an administrative region of the Kingdom of Poland, of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, from the 15th century until the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Together with Płock and Rawa Voivodeships, it formed the province of Masovia. Masovian Voivodeship was one of the voivodeships of Congress Poland, it was formed from Warsaw Department, transformed into Masovia Governorate. There are three main road routes that pass through the voivodeship: Cork–Berlin–Poznań–Warszawa–Minsk–Moscow–Omsk, Prague–Wrocław–Warsaw–Białystok–Helsinki and Pskov–Gdańsk–Warsaw–Kraków–Budapest. There are various stretches of autostrada in the area, with the A2 autostrada connecting the region, therefore the capital city, with the rest of Europe; the autostrada passes directly through the voivodship from west to east, connecting it with Belarus and Germany. However, the A2 is yet to be built east of Warsaw to connect Poland with Belarus; the S8 expressway connects Warsaw with Białystok in the neighboring eastern province, along with the S17 being built to connect Warsaw with Lublin.
The railroad system is based on PKP Intercity. The main international airport in the region is Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport. Mazovian Voivodeship is the wealthiest province in Poland, it produces 22% of Polish GDP, GDP per capita is 160% of country average. The unemployment rate stood at 4.8% in 2017 and was higher than the national and the european average. Second Polish Republic's Warsaw Voivodeship Official website Things to do in Warsaw
Powiat
A powiat is the second-level unit of local government and administration in Poland, equivalent to a county, district or prefecture in other countries. The term "powiat" is most translated into English as "county" or "district". A powiat is part of the voivodeship or province. A powiat is subdivided into gminas. Major towns and cities, function as separate counties in their own right, without subdivision into gminas, they are termed "city counties" and have the same status as former county boroughs in the UK. The other type of powiats are termed "land counties"; as of 2018, there were 380 powiat-level entities: 314 land counties, 66 city counties. For a complete alphabetical listing, see "List of Polish counties". For tables of counties by voivodeship, see the articles on the individual voivodeships; the history of Polish powiats goes back to the second half of the 14th century. They remained the basic unit of territorial organization in Poland in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, until the latter's partitioning in 1795.
In the 19th century, the powiats continued to function in the part of Poland, incorporated into the Russian Empire —the equivalent of the Russian "uyezd" and the Ukrainian "povit"—and, in the German-governed Grand Duchy of Poznań, as the Polish equivalent of the German "Kreis". After Poland regained independence in 1918, the powiats were again the second-level territorial units. Powiats were abolished in 1975 in favor of a larger number of voivodeships, but were reintroduced on 1 January 1999; this reform created 16 larger voivodeships. Legislative power within a powiat is vested in an elected council, while local executive power is vested in an executive board headed by the starosta, elected by the council; the administrative offices headed by the starosta are called the starostwo. However, in city counties these institutions do not exist separately – their powers and functions are exercised by the city council, the directly elected mayor, the city offices. In some cases a powiat has its seat outside its own territory.
For example, Poznań County has its offices in Poznań, although Poznań is itself a city county, is therefore not part of Poznań County. Powiats have limited powers, since many local and regional matters are dealt with either at gmina or voivodeship level; some of the main areas in which the powiat authorities have decision-making powers and competences include: education at high-school level healthcare public transport maintenance of certain designated roads land surveying issuing of work permits to foreigners vehicle registration. The Polish the name of a county, in the administrative sense, consists of the word powiat followed by a masculine-gender adjective. In most cases, this is the adjective formed from the name of the town or city where the county has its seat, thus the county with its seat at the town of Kutno is named powiat kutnowski. If the name of the seat comprises a noun followed by an adjective, as in Maków Mazowiecki, the adjective will be formed from the noun only. There are a few counties whose names are derived from the names of two towns, from the name of a city and a geographical adjective, or a mountain range.
There is more than one way to render such names into English. A common method is to translate the names as "", as in the examples above, thus in most cases the English name for a powiat consists of the name of the city or town, its seat, followed by the word County. Note that different counties sometimes have the same name in Polish, since the names of different towns may have the same derived adjective. For example, the counties with their seats at Grodzisk Wielkopolski and Grodzisk Mazowiecki are both called powiat grodziski, those with seats at Brzeg and Brzesko are both called powiat brzeski. In English this ambiguity either does not occur or can be avoided by using the complete name of the seat. Bankauskaite, V. et al. Patterns of decentralization across European health systems, in R. B. Saltman, V. Bankauskaite and K. Vrangbæk, "Decentralization in health care", London: Open University Press/McGraw-Hill. County. Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Uyezd
Extermination camp
Nazi Germany built extermination camps during the Holocaust in World War II, to systematically kill millions of Jews, Poles, Soviet POWs, political opponents and others whom the Nazis considered "Untermenschen". The victims of death camps were killed by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans; some Nazi camps, such as Auschwitz and Majdanek, served a dual purpose before the end of the war in 1945: extermination by poison gas, but through extreme work under starvation conditions. The idea of mass extermination with the use of stationary facilities to which the victims were taken by train, was the result of earlier Nazi experimentation with chemically manufactured poison gas during the secretive Aktion T4 euthanasia programme against hospital patients with mental and physical disabilities; the technology was adapted and applied in wartime to unsuspecting victims of many ethnic and national groups. The genocide of the Jewish people of Europe was the Third Reich's "Final Solution to the Jewish question".
It is now collectively known as the Holocaust, in which 11 million others were murdered during the Holocaust. Extermination camps were set up by the fascist Ustaše regime of the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state of Germany, which carried out genocide between 1941 and 1945 against Serbs, Jews and its Croat and Bosniak Muslim political opponents. After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the secret Aktion T4 euthanasia programme – the systematic murder of German and Polish hospital patients with mental or physical disabilities – was initiated by the SS in order to eliminate "life unworthy of life", a Nazi designation for people who had no right to life. In 1941, the experience gained in the secretive killing of these hospital patients led to the creation of extermination camps for the implementation of the Final Solution. By the Jews were confined to new ghettos and interned in Nazi concentration camps along with other targeted groups, including Roma, the Soviet POWs; the Nazi Endlösung der Judenfrage, based on the systematic killing of Europe's Jews by gassing, began during Operation Reinhard, after the onset of the Nazi-Soviet war of June 1941.
The adoption of the gassing technology by Nazi Germany was preceded by a wave of hands-on killings carried out by the SS Einsatzgruppen, who followed the Wehrmacht army during Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern Front. The camps designed for the mass gassings of Jews were established in the months following the Wannsee Conference chaired by Reinhard Heydrich in January 1942 in which the principle was made clear that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated. Responsibility for the logistics were to be executed by Adolf Eichmann. On 13 October 1941, the SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik stationing in Lublin received an oral order from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler – anticipating the fall of Moscow – to start immediate construction work on the killing centre at Bełżec in the General Government territory of occupied Poland. Notably, the order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months, but the gassings at Kulmhof north of Łódź using gas vans began in December, under Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange.
The camp at Bełżec was operational by March 1942, with leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt. By mid-1942, two more death camps had been built on Polish lands for Operation Reinhard: Sobibór under the command of Hauptsturmführer Franz Stangl, Treblinka under Obersturmführer Irmfried Eberl from T4, the only doctor to have served in such a capacity. Auschwitz concentration camp was fitted with brand new gassing bunkers in March 1942. Majdanek had them built in September; the Nazis distinguished between extermination and concentration camps, although the terms extermination camp and death camp were interchangeable, each referring to camps whose primary function was genocide. Todeslagers were designed for the systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains; the executioners did not expect the prisoners to survive more than a few hours beyond arrival at Belzec, Sobibór, Treblinka. The Reinhard extermination camps were under Globocnik's direct command.
The Jewish men and children were delivered from the ghettos for "special treatment" in an atmosphere of terror by uniformed police battalions from both and Schupo. Death camps differed from concentration camps located in Germany proper, such as Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, which were prison camps set up prior to World War II for people defined as'undesirable'. From March 1936, all Nazi concentration camps were managed by the SS-Totenkopfverbände, who operated extermination camps from 1941 as well. An SS anatomist, Dr. Johann Kremer, after witnessing the gassing of victims at Birkenau, wrote in his diary on 2 September 1942: "Dante's Inferno seems to me a comedy compared to this, they don't call Auschwitz the camp of annihilation for nothing!" The distinction was evident during the Nuremberg trials, when Dieter Wisliceny was asked to name the extermination camps, h
Poland
Masovian
listen) is a town in central Poland, some 23 kilometres (14 mi) southeast of Warsaw, with 42,765 inhabitants (2004). Otwock is a part of the Warsaw Agglomeration, it is situated on the right bank of Vistula River below the mouth of Swider River. Otwock is home to a unique architectural style called Swidermajer.
Lennestadt, Germany
Saint-Amand-Montrond, France
