1.
History of the Jews in Poland
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The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over 800 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world, Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the Partitions of Poland which began in 1772, in particular, from the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 through to the early years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe. Known as paradisus Iudaeorum, it became a shelter for persecuted and expelled European Jewish communities, according to some sources, about three-quarters of the worlds Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century. With the weakening of the Commonwealth and growing religious strife, Polands traditional tolerance began to wane from the 17th century onward. Still, as Poland regained independence in the aftermath of World War I, Antisemitism was a growing problem throughout Europe in those years, from both the political establishment and the general population. At the start of World War II, Poland was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, one-fifth of the Polish population perished during World War II, half of them were 3,000,000 Polish Jews murdered in The Holocaust, constituting 90% of Polish Jewry. Although the Holocaust occurred largely in German-occupied Poland, there was collaboration with the Nazis by its citizens. Collaboration by individual Poles has been described as smaller than in other occupied countries, statistics of the Israeli War Crimes Commission indicate that less than 0. 1% of Polish gentiles collaborated with the Nazis. Grouped by nationality, Poles represent the largest number of people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, britain demanded Poland to halt the exodus, but their pressure was largely unsuccessful. Most of the remaining Jews left Poland in late 1968 as the result of the Soviet-sponsored anti-Zionist campaign. After the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, the situation of Polish Jews became normalized, Religious institutions were revived, largely through the activities of Jewish foundations from the United States. The first Jews arrived in the territory of modern Poland in the 10th century, by travelling along the trade routes leading eastwards to Kiev and Bukhara, Jewish merchants, known as Radhanites, crossed the areas of Silesia. In the summer of 965 or 966 Jacob made a trade and diplomatic journey from his native Toledo in Moslem Spain to the Holy Roman Empire, the first actual mention of Jews in Polish chronicles occurs in the 11th century. It appears that Jews were then living in Gniezno, at time the capital of the Polish kingdom of the Piast dynasty. Among the first Jews to arrive in Poland were those banished from Prague, the first permanent Jewish community is mentioned in 1085 by a Jewish scholar Jehuda ha-Kohen in the city of Przemyśl. The first extensive Jewish emigration from Western Europe to Poland occurred at the time of the First Crusade in 1098. Under Bolesław III, the Jews, encouraged by the tolerant regime of this ruler, settled throughout Poland, Bolesław III recognized the utility of Jews in the development of the commercial interests of his country
2.
Warsaw Ghetto
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The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all the Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. There were over 400,000 Jews imprisoned there, at an area of 3.4 km2, with an average of 7.2 persons per room, from the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews were deported to Nazi camps and mass-killing centers. Warsaw was one of the most diverse cities in the Second Polish Republic before the war began, the majority of Polish Jews lived in the merchant districts of Muranów, Powązki, and Stara Praga, while most ethnic Germans and Russians lived in Śródmieście. Over 90% of Catholics lived further away from the commercial and vital centre of the capital. Many Jews left the city during the depression, which was more severe, in 1938 the Jewish population of the Polish capital was estimated at 270,000 people. The Siege of Warsaw continued until September 29,1939, on September 10 alone, the Luftwaffe conducted 17 bombing raids on the city, three days later,50 German planes attacked the city centre, targeting specifically Wola and Żoliborz. In total, some 30,000 people were killed, and 10 percent of the city was destroyed, along with the advancing Wehrmacht, the Einsatzgruppe EG IV and the Einsatzkommandos rolled into town. On November 7,1939, the Reichsführer-SS reorganized them into local security service, meanwhile, the German fifth column members of Selbstschutz were released immediately. The commander of EG IV, SS-Standartenführer Josef Meisinger, was appointed chief of police for the newly formed Distrikt Warschau, after the takeover of Warsaw, the German authorities began the registration of the ethnic Germans who were issued the Kennkarte separate from the rest of the locals. By June 1940 there were 2,500 Reichsdeutsche and 5,500 Volksdeutsche registered in Warsaw, in the next two years their number more than doubled, on top of over 50,000 German military personnel. By the end of the September campaign the number of Jews in and around the capital increased dramatically with thousands of refugees escaping the Polish-German front in anyway possible, in less than a year, the number of refugees in Warsaw exceeded 90,000. The Jewish Council in Warsaw was formed by the Nazis on October 7 and it was composed of 24 prominent individuals led by Adam Czerniaków, personally responsible for carrying out German orders. The persecution of Jews began soon thereafter, on October 26, the imposition of Jewish forced labour was announced, to clear the rubble from bomb damage among similar tasks. One month later, on November 20, the accounts of Polish Jews. On November 23, all Jewish establishments were ordered to display a Jewish star on doors, beginning December 1, all Jews older than ten where compelled to wear a white armband, and on December 11, they were forbidden from using public transit. On January 26,1940, the Jews were banned from holding communal prayers ostensibly due to the risk of spreading epidemics, food stamps were being introduced by the German authorities, and the liquidation of all smaller Jewish communities in the vicinity of Warsaw had intensified. The Jewish population of the capital reached 359,827 before the end of the year, on the orders of Warsaw District Governor, Ludwig Fischer, the Ghetto wall construction started on April 1,1940, circling the area of Warsaw inhabited predominantly by Jews. The work was supervised by the Warsaw Judenrat, the Nazi authorities expelled 113,000 ethnic Poles from the neighbourhood, and ordered the relocation of 138,000 Warsaw Jews from the suburbs into the city centre
3.
Extermination camp
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This genocide of the Jewish people of Europe was the Third Reichs Final Solution to the Jewish question. It is now known as the Holocaust. In 1941, the experience gained in the killing of these hospital patients led to the creation of extermination camps for the implementation of the Final Solution. By then, the Jews were already confined to new ghettos and interned in Nazi concentration camps along with other targeted groups, including Roma, and the Soviet POWs. The Nazi Endlösung der Judenfrage, based on the killing of Europes Jews by gassing, began during Operation Reinhard. Responsibility for the logistics were to be executed by the programme administrator, notably, the order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months, but the gassings at Kulmhof north of Łódź using gas vans began already 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, Auschwitz concentration camp was fitted with brand new gassing bunkers in March 1942. Majdanek had them built in September, todeslagers were designed specifically for the systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains. The executioners did not expect the prisoners to more than a few hours beyond arrival at Belzec, Sobibór. The Jewish men, women and children were delivered from the ghettos for special treatment in an atmosphere of terror by uniformed police battalions from both, Orpo and Schupo. 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 and they dont 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, then, when asked How do you classify the camps Mauthausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald. He replied, They were normal concentration camps, from the point of view of the department of Eichmann, irrespective of round-ups for extermination camps, the Nazis abducted millions of foreigners for slave labour in other types of camps, which provided perfect cover for the extermination programme. Prisoners represented about a quarter of the workforce of the Reich, with mortality rates exceeding 75 percent due to starvation, disease, exhaustion, executions. On top of that, the new death camps outside the borders of the Third Reich proper could be kept secret from the German civil populace. The killing method was based on experience gained by the SS during the secretive Aktion T4 programme of involuntary euthanasia, there were two types of death chambers operating during the Holocaust. The three killing centres of Einsatz Reinhard were constructed predominantly for the extermination of Polands Jews trapped in the Nazi ghettos
4.
Warsaw
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Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It stands on the Vistula River in east-central Poland, roughly 260 kilometres from the Baltic Sea and 300 kilometres from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population is estimated at 1.750 million residents within a metropolitan area of 3.101 million residents. The city limits cover 516.9 square kilometres, while the area covers 6,100.43 square kilometres. Once described as Paris of the East, Warsaw was believed to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world until World War II. On 9 November 1939, the city was awarded Polands highest military decoration for heroism, Warsaw is one of Europe’s most dynamic metropolitan cities. In 2012 the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Warsaw as the 32nd most liveable city in the world, in 2017 the city came 4th in the “Business-friendly” category and 8th in the “Human capital and life style”. It was also ranked as one of the most liveable cities in Central, Warsaw is considered an Alpha– global city, a major international tourist destination and a significant cultural, political and economic hub. The city is a significant centre of research and development, BPO, ITO, the Warsaw Stock Exchange is the largest and most important in Central and Eastern Europe. Frontex, the European Union agency for external security, has its headquarters in Warsaw. Together with Frankfurt, London and Paris, Warsaw is also one of the cities with the highest number of skyscrapers in the European Union, the city is the seat of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and the University of Warsaw. The historic city-centre of Warsaw with its picturesque Old Town in 1980 was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, buildings represent examples of nearly every European architectural style and historical period. Warsaw provides many examples of architecture from the gothic, renaissance, baroque, neoclassical and modern periods, furthermore, the city is positioning itself as Europes chic cultural capital with thriving art and club scenes and renowned restaurants. Folk etymology attributes the city name to a fisherman, Wars, according to legend, Sawa was a mermaid living in the Vistula River with whom Wars fell in love. In actuality, Warsz was a 12th/13th-century nobleman who owned a village located at the site of Mariensztat neighbourhood. See also the Vršovci family which had escaped to Poland, the official city name in full is miasto stołeczne Warszawa. A native or resident of Warsaw is known as a Varsovian – in Polish warszawiak, warszawianin, warszawianka, warszawiacy, other names for Warsaw include Varsovia and Varsóvia, Varsovie, Varsavia, Warschau, װאַרשע /Varshe, Варшава /Varšava /Varshava, Varšuva, Varsó. The first fortified settlements on the site of todays Warsaw were located in Bródno, after Jazdów was raided by nearby clans and dukes, a new similar settlement was established on the site of a small fishing village called Warszowa
5.
Treblinka extermination camp
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Treblinka was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was located in a forest north-east of Warsaw,4 kilometres south of the Treblinka train station in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship, the camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. During this time, it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were killed in its gas chambers, along with 2,000 Romani people, more Jews were killed at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz. Managed by the German SS and Trawnikis, the camp consisted of two separate units, Treblinka I was a forced-labour camp whose prisoners worked in the gravel pit or irrigation area and in the forest, where they cut wood to fuel the crematoria. Between 1941 and 1944, more than half of its 20,000 inmates died from summary executions, hunger, disease, the second camp, Treblinka II, was an extermination camp, or the Vernichtungslager in German, referred to euphemistically as the SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka by the Nazis. A small number of Jewish men who were not killed immediately upon arrival became its Jewish slave-labour units called Sonderkommandos and these bodies were exhumed in 1943 and cremated on large open-air pyres along with the bodies of new victims. Gassing operations at Treblinka II ended in October 1943 following a revolt by the Sonderkommandos in early August, several SS Hiwi guards were killed and 200 prisoners escaped from the camp, almost a hundred survived the subsequent chase. The camp was dismantled ahead of the Soviet advance, a farmhouse for a watchman was built on the site and the ground ploughed over in an attempt to hide the evidence of genocide. In postwar Poland, the government bought most of the land where the camp had stood, in 1964 Treblinka was declared a national monument of Jewish martyrology in a ceremony at the site of the former gas chambers. In the same year the first German trials were held regarding war crimes committed at Treblinka by former SS members, after the end of communism in Poland in 1989, the number of visitors coming to Treblinka from abroad increased. An exhibition centre at the camp opened in 2006 and it was later expanded and made into a branch of the Siedlce Regional Museum. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939 most of the 3.5 million Polish Jews were rounded up, the system was intended to isolate the Jews from the outside world in order to facilitate their exploitation and abuse. The supply of food was inadequate, living conditions were cramped and unsanitary, malnutrition and lack of medicine led to soaring mortality rates. The initial victories of the Wehrmacht over the Soviet Union inspired plans for the German colonisation of occupied Poland, including all territory within the General Government. At the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin on 20 January 1942, new plans were outlined for the genocide of the Jews, Treblinka was one of three secret extermination camps set up for Operation Reinhard, the other two were Bełżec and Sobibór. All three were equipped with gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, for the processing of entire transports of people, the lethal agent was established following a pilot project of mobile killing conducted at Soldau and Chełmno extermination camps that began operating in 1941 and used gas vans. Chełmno was a ground for the establishment of faster methods of killing and incinerating people. It was not a part of Reinhard, which was marked by the construction of facilities for mass murder
6.
Auschwitz concentration camp
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Auschwitz concentration camp was a network of German Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. It consisted of Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II–Birkenau, Auschwitz III–Monowitz, Auschwitz I was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in May 1940. The first extermination of prisoners took place in September 1941, from early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camps gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe, where they were killed with the pesticide Zyklon B. An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to the camp, around 90 percent of those killed were Jewish, approximately 1 in 6 Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp. Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments. In the course of the war, the camp was staffed by 7,000 members of the German Schutzstaffel, some, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss, were executed. The Allied Powers refused to believe reports of the atrocities at the camp. As Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in January 1945, most of its population was sent west on a death march, the prisoners remaining at the camp were liberated on 27 January 1945, a day now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the following decades, survivors, such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel, wrote memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, immediately after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, acts of violence perpetrated against Jews became ubiquitous. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April 1933 excluded most Jews from the legal profession, similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of the right to practise. Harassment and economic pressure were used by the regime to encourage Jews to leave the country voluntarily and their businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden to advertise in newspapers, and deprived of government contracts. German Jews were subjected to violent attacks and boycotts, in September 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were enacted. The Reich Citizenship Law stated that only those of Germanic or related blood were defined as citizens, thus Jews and other minority groups were stripped of their German citizenship. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani people and this supplementary decree defined Gypsies as enemies of the race-based state, the same category as Jews. By the start of World War II in 1939, around 250,000 of Germanys 437,000 Jews had emigrated to the United States, Palestine, the United Kingdom, Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. German dictator Adolf Hitler ordered that the Polish leadership and intelligentsia be destroyed, approximately 65,000 civilians, who were viewed as being inferior to the Aryan master race, were killed by the end of 1939. In addition to leaders of Polish society, the Nazis killed Jews, prostitutes, Romani, sS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, then head of the Gestapo, ordered on 21 September that Polish Jews should be rounded up and concentrated into cities with good rail links
7.
Operation Reinhard
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The operation marked the deadliest phase of the Holocaust with the introduction of extermination camps. As many as two million Jews were sent to Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka, extermination camps set up specifically for Operation Reinhard, the first concentration camps in Nazi Germany were established in 1933 as soon as the National Socialist regime developed. They were used for coercion, forced labour, and imprisonment, the camp system expanded dramatically with the onset of the Second World War, in 1939. The new network of Nazi concentration camps built by SS in Germany, Austria, Poland, some of the most notorious slave labour camps included Mauthausen, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Gross-Rosen, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz, among other locations. The Nazis had decided to undertake the European-wide Final Solution to the Jewish Question in January 1942 during a meeting of German leaders called by Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. The newly drafted Operation Reinhard would be a step in the systematic liquidation of the Jews in occupied Europe. Within months, three top-secret camps were solely to efficiently kill thousands of people each day. These camps differed from the likes of Auschwitz and Majdanek, because the latter operated as forced-labour camps initially, unlike mixed extermination camps, the extermination camps of Operation Reinhard took no prisoners and victims were killed on arrival. A very few survived by successfully escaping, the SS officers responsible for the Aktion T4, including Christian Wirth, Franz Stangl, and Irmfried Eberl, were all given key roles in the implementation of the Final Solution in 1942. The origin of the name is debated by Holocaust researchers. Various German documents spell the name differently, some with t after d, yet a different spelling was used in the Höfle Telegram. Heydrich was attacked by British-trained Czechoslovak agents on 27 May 1942, the earliest memo spelling out Einsatz Reinhard was relayed two months later. However, Höss theory cannot be proven by surviving documents, Heydrich himself had spelled his first name both Reinhard and Reinhardt throughout the 1930s according to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Notably, the order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months, the new camp was operational by March 1942, with leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt. Globocnik was given control over the entire programme. Each death camp was managed by between 20 and 35 officers from the Totenkopfverbände sworn to secrecy, and augmented by the Aktion T4 personnel selected by Globocnik. The extermination program was designed by them based on experience from the forced euthanasia centres. The SS called their volunteer guards Hiwis, an abbreviation of Hilfswillige, according to the testimony of SS-Oberführer Arpad Wigand during his 1981 war crimes trial in Hamburg, only 25 percent of recruited collaborators could speak German
8.
The Holocaust in Poland
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The genocide officially sanctioned and executed by the Third Reich during World War II, collectively known as the Holocaust, took the lives of more than three million Polish Jews. German companies bid for the contracts to build the crematoria in concentration camps run by Nazi Germany in the General Government as well as in parts of occupied Poland and beyond. Throughout the German occupation, at risk to themselves and their families. Grouped by nationality, Polish rescuers represent the biggest number of people who saved Jews during the Holocaust, already recognized by the State of Israel, the Polish Righteous Among the Nations include 6,706 gentiles, more than any other nation. Following the 1939 invasion of Poland in accordance with the protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi Germany. Large areas of western Poland were annexed by Germany, within months, the Polish Jews in the Soviet-occupied zone, who refused to swear an oath of allegiance, were deported to Siberia along with the Catholics. Their number is estimated at about 200,000 men, women and children, both occupying powers were equally hostile to the existence of sovereign Polish state, and endorsed the policy of ethnic cleansing. However, the Soviet rule was short-lived because the terms of the Nazi–Soviet Pact signed earlier in Moscow were broken, from 1941 to 1943 all of Poland was under the control of Nazi Germany. The semi-colonial territory of the General Government, set up in central and south-eastern Poland, prior to World War II, there were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland, living predominantly in the cities, about 10% of the general population. Database of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews provides information on 1926 Jewish communities across the country, following the conquest of Poland, the first German anti-Jewish measures involved the policy of expulsion of Jews from the territories annexed by the Third Reich. Annexed directly to the new Warthegau district, the city of Łódź absorbed the influx of some 40,000 Polish Jews forced out from the surrounding areas, a total of 204,000 Jews passed through the ghetto in Łódź. Initially, they were to be expelled to the Generalgouvernement, however, the ultimate destination of the massive removal of Jews was left open until the Final Solution was set in motion two years later. Persecution of Polish Jews by the German occupation authority began immediately after the invasion, during this period, the Germans ordered Jewish communities to appoint Jewish Councils to administer the ghettos and to be responsible in the strictest sense for carrying out orders. Most ghettos were set up in cities and towns where Jewish life was well organized, for logistical reasons, the Jewish communities in settlements without railway connections in occupied Poland were dissolved. In a massive deportation action involving the use of freight trains, the food aid was completely dependent on the SS. Jews were legally banned from baking bread, they were sealed off from the public in an unsustainable manner. By the end of 1941, most ghettoised Jews had no savings left to pay the SS for further bulk food deliveries, the Warsaw ghetto contained more Jews than all of France, the Łódź Ghetto more Jews than all of the Netherlands. More Jews lived in the city of Kraków than in all of Italy, all of southeast Europe – Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece – had fewer Jews than the original four districts of the General Government
9.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
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A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. German casualties are not known, but were not more than 300 and it was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. In 1939, German occupational authorities began to concentrate Polands population of three million Jews into a number of extremely crowded ghettos located in large Polish cities. The largest of these, the Warsaw Ghetto, concentrated approximately 300, 000–400,000 people into a packed,3.3 km² central area of Warsaw. The SS conducted many of the deportations during the operation code-named Grossaktion Warschau, czerniaków committed suicide once he became aware of the true goal of the resettlement plan. Approximately 254, 000–300,000 Ghetto residents met their deaths at Treblinka during the two-month-long operation, the Grossaktion was directed by SS-Oberführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, the SS and police commander of the Warsaw area since 1941. He was relieved of duty by SS-und-Polizeiführer Jürgen Stroop, sent to Warsaw by Heinrich Himmler on 17 April 1943, Stroop took over from von Sammern-Frankenegg following the failure of the latter to pacify the Ghetto resistance. By the end of 1942, Ghetto inhabitants learned that the deportations were part of an extermination process, many of the remaining Jews decided to revolt. The first armed resistance in the ghetto occurred in January 1943, on 19 April 1943, Passover eve, the Germans entered the ghetto. The remaining Jews knew that the Germans would murder them and they decided to resist to the last, while the uprising was underway, the Bermuda Conference was held from 19–29 April 1943 to discuss the Jewish refugee problem. Discussions included the question of Jewish refugees who had been liberated by Allied forces, hanna Krall, who interviewed the only surviving uprising commander, Marek Edelman, stated that the ŻOB had 220 fighters and each was armed with a handgun, grenades, and Molotov cocktails. His organization had three rifles in each area, as well as two land mines and one gun in the whole Ghetto. The insurgents had little ammunition, more weapons were supplied throughout the uprising, some weapons were handmade by the resistance, sometimes such weapons worked, other times they jammed repeatedly. Shortly before the uprising, Polish-Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum visited a ŻZW armoury hidden in the basement at 7 Muranowska Street, in his notes, which form part of Oyneg Shabbos archives, he reported, They were armed with revolvers stuck in their belts. While I was there, a purchase of arms was made from a former Polish Army officer, amounting to a quarter of a million złoty, two machine guns were bought at 40,000 złoty each, and a large amount of hand grenades and bombs. Polish resistance provided the insurgents with a number of badly needed weapons and ammunitions from its meager stocks. Jewish right-wing resistance in the Jewish Military Union received large quantities of armament, including automatic weapons. AK disseminated information and appeals to help the Jews in the Ghetto, several ŻOB commanders and fighters later escaped through the sewers with assistance from the Poles and joined the Polish underground
