Wspomnienia Ks. Aleksandra Romana Konopki z obozu koncentracyjnego w Dachau (cz. 2)

Author(s): Jan Związek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 10/2010

W chwili przywiezienia nas do obozu księża niemieccy mieli kaplicę w bloku 26, ale była ona zarezerwowana tylko dla nich. Niewielu z nas i nieczęsto mogło z niej korzystać i przyjmować Komunię św. Czasem księża niemieccy podali jeden komunikant przez okno. Dzieliliśmy go wówczas na drobne cząsteczki i przyjmowaliśmy. Na Mszę św. nie mogliśmy uczęszczać. W niedziele, ale także w inne dni, kiedy odprawiano Msze św. na bloku 26, chodziliśmy pod oknem, w ten sposób w nich uczestniczyliśmy. Bóg nieskończenie doskonały i człowiek sponiewierany przez drugiego człowieka – to były najczęstsze refleksje. Dopiero w 1945 r., kiedy zezwolono nam odprawiać nabo- żeństwa, korzystaliśmy z tej możliwości. W kaplicy mógł odprawiać tylko jeden kapłan. Ale odprawialiśmy na stołkach między łóżkami, jednak ktoś musiał czuwać, bo było to zakazane. Wino i komunikanty przekazywali nam księża niemieccy. Ja miałem szczęście jeden raz odprawiać mszę w kaplicy, w warunkach obozowych. Trudno jednak wyobrazić sobie tamte przeżycia. Po wielu latach sponiewierania godności ludzkiej i kapłańskiej oraz narodowej można było przyjąć do serca Ciało i Krew Boskiego Zbawiciela. Milkły usta, serce przestawało bić. Zjednoczenie z Panem przenikało każdy nerw. Nie wiem czy byłbym w stanie ocknąć się, gdyby nawet przyszedł esesman. Cisnęło się pytanie, czy zasłużyłem na takie szczęście?

Wspomnienia ks. Józefa Kubicy o pracy duszpasterskiej w powiecie Wieluńskim w okresie okupacji Hitlerowskiej

Author(s): Jan Związek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 7/2007

Wszelkie dokumenty o losach Polaków w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej poupływie ponad sześćdziesięciu lat posiadają nadal doniosłą wartość historyczną.Pozostają świadectwem bohaterskiej i patriotycznej postawy mieszkańcówmiast, miasteczek oraz wsi, dla których zachowanie polskości było największąwartością. To samo odnosi się do wyznawców wiary katolickiej w zwykłychplacówkach parafialnych. Takie środowisko stanowiły tereny prastarej ziemiwieluńskiej, włączone do okupacyjnego powiatu wieluńskiego (Kreis Velun),należącego według administracji hitlerowskiej do Kraju Warty (Wartheland).Był to obszar przedwojennego powiatu wieluńskiego oraz dołączone częścipowiatów piotrkowskiego i radomszczańskiego. Dla katolików narodowościpolskiej, których liczba wynosiła ok. 250 tysięcy, Niemcy pozostawili jedyniedwóch polskich duchownych. Mieli oni prowadzić pracę duszpasterską w koś-ciele w Rudzie k. Wielunia, podczas gdy w pozostałych 61 parafiach i kościo-łach, jakakolwiek działalność kościelna, została całkowicie zakazana.

Egy megíratlan emlékirat krónikája Janusz Korczak: Gettónaplójáról

Author(s): Norbert Haklik / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2018

Bezpečnostní situace v Generálním gouvernementu. Pokus o kvantitativní analýzu na základě německých policejních statistik

Author(s): Piotr M. Majewski,Jan Vajskebr / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

The study presents an analysis of German police reports from the General Government which are unknown to historians and are held at the National Archives in Prague. The statistical data contained in the documents present a relatively complex picture of public order in this part of occupied Polish territory seen from the perspective of the German security service. The most important issues include the number of armed incidents, which between January 1942 and April 1944 increased 45 times, reaching 263 “assaults” a day. From the beginning of 1940 to the spring of 1944 there were over 100,000 armed incidents, with as many as 42% of them in the Lublin district, while the quietest districts were Cracow (6%) and Galicia (9%). It can be estimated that only around 10% of those incidents were political in nature; the rest were robberies. The analysed documents also include the level of losses sustained by the occupiers. Specifically, in the General Government between early 1940 and the end of November 1944 at least 1,384 Germans and 990 functionaries of the Polish and Ukrainian auxiliary police service were killed. (The data, however, do not include the losses suffered by the Germans while suppressing the Warsaw Uprising or Wehrmacht losses in police operations from March 1943 on.) A substantial majority of the Germans were killed after 1942, while in the first three years of the occupation they sustained relatively minor losses in the General Government. On the basis of the analysed reports it is also possible to estimate the number of victims of German retaliatory operations. From July 1942 to the end of November 1944 they had at least 43,545 victims, excluding people killed during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising and Jews murdered during anti-partisan operations. Around 40% of them were civilians. In addition, almost 60,000 people were arrested and over 40,000 deported to do forced labour.

The Fighting and the Propaganda: The Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto from the Perspective of ‘Polish London’

Author(s): Dariusz Libionka / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

The text talks about the reaction of the Polish government in London to the outbreak of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and Szmul Zygielbojm’s suicide. The author analyses stenographic records of the sessions of the Polish government in exile, daily logs of the president’s and PM’s activity, stenographic records of the National Council sessions, correspondence sent by the government to Warsaw, the content of official declarations of the government, and the Polish press between April and June 1943. The author reconstructs the government’s state of knowledge regarding the situation in Warsaw and presents the chronology of its popularisation. He also wonders what influence the-then political crisis (the German propaganda’s revelation of the massacre of Polish officers in Katyń and Stalin’s severance of diplomatic relations with the Polish government) had on the government’s approach to the situation in the occupied country, particularly with regard to the fighting in the Warsaw ghetto.

Labyrinths and Tangled Paths. The Story of a Righteous One

Author(s): Barbara Engelking / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

The article tells the story of Henryk Ryszewski, who provided hiding to about a dozen Jews in his flat in the Warsaw district of Mariensztat. Accused after the war of blackmailing Jews (as I think, wrongly), he was convicted and spent several years in prison. His prosecutor fell victim of the ‘paper industry affair’ show trial and also spent a few years in prison.

“A young boy attacked us once and started shooting; we didn’t even run any more.” Murders committed on Jews from the village of Strzegom by AK and BCh members

Author(s): Anna Bikont / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

A group of more than 30 Jews was hiding in a dugout in a forest near Strzegom, a small village on the edge of a forest in the Świętokrzyskie Province. Attacked and robbed by the villagers who were members of the Home Army and Peasants’ Battalions, the Jews continued to hide in the forest in smaller groups. The same group of partisans that had attacked the Jews in the dugout continued to capture and murder them, including women and children. There were eight survivors: children and adolescents plus one adult. The article reconstructs the six-month period of hiding basing on a touching testimony of one of the surviving girls, Dora Zoberman, who gave it at the age of eleven, materials from the post war August Decree trials, and recent conversations with the survivors and Strzegom inhabitants. It also reconstructs the actions of the judiciary with regard to the crimes committed against the Jews. Sentenced to death, the murderers were pardoned and released after 1956. One of them received compensation in the 1990s for having been repressed because of his pro-independence activity.

‘Turning Jews Over’ – the Participation of ‘Blue’ Policemen in Deportations of Jews Illustrated with the Example of the Radomsko County

Author(s): Ewa Wiatr / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

Based on previously unknown archival documents, the author discusses the Polish Police functionaries’ participation in deportations of the Jewish population from Radomsko County to the ghetto in Radomsko or to death centres. The ‘blue’ policemen participated in the “Jewish campaigns” not only as guards, but they also took a direct part in both the loading of Jews and Jewish possessions and in the stamping of Jewish property. The policemen delegated from the local police stations to assist at the deportations were paid stipends from the budget of the Union of Communities in Radomsko.

The Auschwitz Virus

Author(s): Przemysław Czapliński / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

The article presents – based on a review of Sławomir Buryła’s book Tematy (nie) opisane – a polemic with the approach to the Holocaust as an element of the historical process, an element, which can be isolated from modernity and to which loftiness can be assigned. Czapliński contrasts it with the conception of the ‘Auschwitz virus’, according to which morality, economy, and science after the Holocaust shall never be able to separate themselves from it.

The Golden Mean Principle. A Handful of Comments on the Currently Dominant Discourse on ‘Polish-Jewish Relations’

Author(s): Piotr Forecki,Anna Zawadzka / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

The article attempts to deconstruct the dominant Polish discourse regarding the ‘Polish-Jewish relations’. Its central figures are: the logic of the golden mean as a tool to reach historical truth, symmetrisation of Polish and Jewish wrongs and faults, and hospitality as the prevalent attitude of Poles towards Jews. The authors show its opinion forming power using three examples: a review of Paweł Pawlikowski’s film Ida, the reception of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and a discussion on the Righteous monuments, which were to be erected in Warsaw.

Critical History and its ‘Shadow Cabinet’. Polish Historiography and the Holocaust during 2003–2013

Author(s): Bartłomiej Krupa / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

The author discusses the most important phenomena in Polish historiography and the selected publications about the Holocaust released during 2003–2013. Similarly to ‘narrativists’, Krupa is interested in the shape, the language, the storytelling manner, and the metaphors used. Having indicated the most important scholarly centres and publications of sources, the author concentrates on the camp monographs, syntheses and regional studies produced during that period, and then concludes that most of them are written in a very traditional way. The year 2000, when [the Polish edition] of Jan Tomasz Gross’s book Neighbours was released, proved to be a breakthrough year for [Polish] historiography. Before analysing the far-reaching consequences of this publication, Krupa briefly discusses the polemics surrounding the other books by that author. On the one hand, they led to the birth of the historiographical ‘shadow cabinet’ – a mobilisation of the milieu concentrated mostly around the IPN and directed at disparaging the significance of Gross’s publications. On the other hand, the most important consequence of Gross’s critical thinking about the Polish stances was the birth of the ‘peasant trend’ in [Polish] historiography. The books by Andrzej Żbikowski, Barbara Engelking, Jan Grabowski, as well as the collective works such as Prowincja noc and Zarys krajobrazu described, in a committed and interdisciplinary way, the shameful stances of the rural community – the denunciations, rapes, and even murders of Jews, with Tadeusz Markiel’s shocking testimony holding a special place among these publications. The works that acclaim the Polish stances and stress the Polish engagement in the rescuing of Jews (particularly those published within the framework of the IPN project „INDEX – In memory of Poles murdered or prosecuted by the Nazis because of their assistance to Jews”) are to constitute a counteroffer to the critical “peasant trend” within the framework of the “shadow cabinet.” At the end of the article Krupa discusses the books that regard the unknown pages of the Holocaust history in Warsaw written by Agnieszka Haska, Barbara Engelking, Dariusz Libionka, or Libionka’s collaboration with Laurence Weinbaum, which are not revolutionary in the sphere of language but nonetheless broaden the knowledge on the Holocaust. The author ends his discussion with a reference to the monumental work Jewish Presence in Absence. The Aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland, 1944–2010, without which, just as without reflecting on the consequences of the Holocaust in general, it is impossible to understand Poles and the situation in Poland.

“That load of Jews is finally dead.” Extermination of Jews as presented in 1942 letters of German soldiers

Author(s): Marcin Zaremba / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

The Home Army intelligence intercepted letters written by German officers and clerks to their families as well as those sent from Germany to friends and relatives on the front line. On the basis of that correspondence the Polish underground drafted special intelligence reports, which were sent to London. The selection of letters devoted to the Holocaust presented in this article can make it easier to describe and understand the stances and opinions of “ordinary Germans” regarding the “final solution.”

Reports on the Jews Apprehended in Warsaw During May–July 1943 Submitted by the ‘Praga’ District of the Polish Police

Author(s): Jan Grabowski,Dariusz Libionka / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

The article presents a selection of documents from the files of several precincts of the Warsaw ‘blue’ police, which illustrate the involvement of Polish officers in the search for the Jews in hiding, during the 1942–1944 period.

The Jewish Biblia Pauperum

Author(s): Nawojka Cieślińska-Lobkowicz / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

On the Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Author(s): Małgorzata Szpakowska / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

The Holocaust in a “Museum of life” (the Polin Museum and its trouble with the genius loci of the Muranów district)

Author(s): Jacek Leociak / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

POLIN Museum’s Core Exhibition: A Response

Author(s): Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

Visitors’ Reactions to the Holocaust Gallery: From the guide’s notes

Author(s): Natalia Sineaeva-Pankowska / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

The Righteous are among us

Author(s): Agnieszka Haska / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

The Omnipresence of the Righteous

Author(s): Justyna Kowalska-Leder / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017