Uprising, Holocaust and Remembrance

Holocaust

The best-kept secret about the Holocaust is that Poland lost six million citizens or about one-fifth of its population: three million of the dead were Polish Christians, predominantly Catholic, and the other three million were Polish Jews. The second best-kept secret of the Holocaust is that the greatest number of Gentile rescuers of Jews were Poles, despite the fact that Poland was the only country where people were immediately executed if caught trying to save Jews. The Yad Vashem museum in Israel honors "the Righteous Among the Nations" and Poland ranks first among 40 nations with 5,503 men and women, almost one-third of the total, honored for their "compassion, courage and morality" and who "risked their lives to save the lives of Jews."   Edward Lucaire

During their occupation of Poland (1939-1945), Nazi Germany built a varied system of camps throughout the country, including extermination camps, concentration camps, labor and POW camps.  In short, occupied Poland was like a prison territory.  In total there were 430 camp complexes.  Some camps, such as Auschwitz and Stutthof, consisted of dozens of subsidiary camps.  
Six death camps were constructed in Poland.  Between 1941-42 they were used for mass extermination.  None lasted longer than eighteen months.  However, it was only after the majority of Jews from all the ghettos were exterminated that the gas chambers and crematoria were blown up to conceal evidence.

Jews, Romani peoples, Poles, along with all other Slavic people and anyone else who was not an “Aryan” according to Nazi race terminology were classified as Untermenschen (subhuman).   The Nazis rationalized that they had a biological right to displace, eliminate or enslave inferiors.    The “Big Plan,” Generalplan Ost, as it was called by the Nazis was to expel more than 50 million Eastern European Slavs and the adjacent Baltic peoples to Siberia.  Part of the way of initiating the plan was to starve tens of millions of Slavs, not only to assure their deaths, but to ensure a steady food supply for the German people and troops.

End of the Beginning

Children being liberated from the Auschwitz camp. About 700 people were liberated.

End of the Beginning

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

Again we’ll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.

From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass which has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out,
blade of grass in his mouth,
gazing at the clouds.

~ Wislawa Szymborska
(translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)

Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish poet who writes about ordinary and extraordinary moments, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

Posting a Directive

Historical Photograph

Installing plaque in the Krakow Ghetto. Ghettos lasted for a few months to several years. 1,000 ghettos in German occupied Poland and the Soviet Union were established.

Prisoners arrive at Auschwitz

Historic Photograph

Leaving the train before selection at Auschwitz. 1.1 million Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Also  220,000 non-Jewish Poles were sent to the camp.

Prisoners Going through the Selection Process

Historic Photograph

110,000 Hungarian Jews were forced into labor.

Most arrivals coming into the camp were sent immediately to the gas chambers.

Arbeit Macht Frei (Arbeit Macht Frei)

Sign over the entrance to Auschwitz.

This same sign appears at the entrance of many other Nazi camps.

Stop!  Stand!

The sign stood between the housing blocks and double electric fence.

Buildings at Auschwitz were predominantly  brick while the other camps in the Auschwitz system and Majdanek were made of wood.

Auschwitz gas chamber

The blue tint on the walls is residue from the poisonous gas, Zyklon B.

Gas was a cheaper method to execute prisoners than bullets. It also was more “efficient” as many more prisoners could be executed.

Toilets at Auschwitz

Long concrete seats with holes. Prisoners kept the facilities clean.

Soldiers did not want to go near the toilets, thus the lives of cleaners were often spared a little longer.

Personal Effects

Piles of shoes on display at Auschwitz.

Buildings full of luggage, prayer shawls, glasses exist.

Human hair was collected and later spun into cloth used for uniforms.

Birkeneau

Entrance gate to Birkenau Concentration Camp.

Birkenau was a satellite camp to Auschwitz.

Both camps are located in Oswiecim, Poland.

The Nazis annexed the town of Oswiecim and renamed it Auschwitz.

Majdanek Extermination Camp

Guard tower near the camp entrance.

Majdanek was located within the city limits of Lublin. Initially, the camp received transports of POWs.

The first prisoners were Russian Prisoners of War.

Majdanek Crematorium

Just 4 km. from town, a trolley ran alongside the camp. Its passengers could see the crematorium.

Historical Photograph

Auschwitz Guards

7,000 guards worked at Auschwitz, including 170 female staff.

Historical photograph
Auschwitz Guards

Auschwitz Gathering

An accordionist leads a sing-a-long with SS Officers.

Picture taken at Solahutte outside Auschwitz.

Historical  Photograph

Burning Pit at Auschwitz

Bodies were burnt by other prisoners.

Prior to the construction of the crematorium, bodies were burned in  an open pit.

Historical Photograph

The Gallows

The gallows at Auschwitz were located on the roll-call ground.

Death by hanging took several painful minutes.

Hanging was used to intimidate the prisoners not to undertake attempts to flee, as well as to show the consequence of disobedience.

The Poems of Avrom Sutzkever

The Sutzkever Family

Avrom Sutzkever, the Yiddish-language poet died January 20, 2010 at the age of 96, lived the tragedies and glories of modern Eastern European Jewish culture. Born in what today is Bielrus, he had his start as part of the Young Vilna literary movement and melted lead type into bullets in the Vilna Ghetto, from which he helped save Jewish cultural treasures, including his own manuscripts. His mother and young son were killed in the Holocaust. After the war, he was a witness at Nuremberg, and later—already a world-renowned poet—he went to Israel, where he was at the center of the Yiddish literary community and founded and edited the greatest Yiddish literary journal, Di Goldene Keyt, until its final issue, in 1995.

Sutzkever with his son Samuel

How?

How will you fill your goblet
On the day of liberation? And with what?
Are you prepared, in your joy, to endure
The dark keening you have heard
Where skulls of days glitter
In a bottomless pit?

You will search for a key to fit
You jammed locks. You will bite
The sidewalks like bread,
Thinking: It used to be better.
And time will gnaw at you like a cricket
Caught in a fist.

Then your memory will resemble
An ancient buried town
And your estranged eyes will burrow down
Like a mole, a mole….

Vilna Ghetto, February 14, 1943
Translated by Chana Bloch

The Lead Plates at the Rom Press

Arrayed at night, like fingers stretch through bars
To clutch the lit air of freedom,
We made for the press plates, to seize
The lead plates at the Rom printing works.
We were dreamers, we had to be soliders,
And melt down, for our bullets, the spirit of the lead.

At some timeless native lair
We unlocked the seal once more.
Shrouded in shadow, by the glow of a lamp,
Like Temple ancients dipping oil
Into candelabrums of festal gold,
So, pouring out line after lettered line, did we.

Letter by melting letter the lead,
Liquefied bullets, gleamed with thoughts:
A verse from Babylon, a verse from Poland,
Seething, flowing into the one mold.
Now must Jewish grit, long concealed in words,
Detonate the world in a shot!

Who in Vilna Ghetto has beheld the hands
Of Jewish heroes clasping weapons
Has beheld Jerusalem in its throes,
The crumbling of those granite walls;
Grasping the words smelted into lead,
Conning their sounds by heart.

Vilna Ghetto, September 12, 1943
Translated by Neal Kozodoy

1981

A letter arrived from the town of my birth
from one still sustained by the grace of her youth.
Enclosed between torment and fondness she pressed
a blade of grass from Ponar.

This grass and moribund cloud with its flicker
once kindled the alphabet, letter by letter.
And on the face of the letters, in murmuring ash,
the blade of grass from Ponar.

The grass is my doll’s house, my snug little world
where children play fiddles in rows as they burn.
The maestro’s a legend, they lift up their bows
for the blade of grass from Ponar.

I won’t part with this stemlet that yields up my home.
The good earth I long for makes room for us both.
And I’ll bring to the Lord my oblation at last:
the blade of grass from Ponar.

Translated by Cynthia Ozick

Yiddish 

Shall I start from the beginning?
Shall I, a brother,
Like Abraham
Smash all the idols?
Shall I let myself be translated alive?
Shall I plant my tongue
And wait
Till it transforms
Into our forefathers’
Raisins and almonds?
What kind of joke
Preaches
My poetry brother with whiskers,
That soon, my mother tongue will set forever?
A hundred years from now, we still may sit here
On the Jordan, and carry on this argument.
For a question
Gnaws and paws at me:
If he knows exactly in what regions
Levi Yitzhok’s prayer,
Yehoash’s poem,
Kulbak’s song,
Are straying
To their sunset –
Could he please show me
Where the language will go down?
Maybe at the Wailing Wall?
If so, I shall come there, come,
Open my mouth,
And like a lion
Garbed in fiery scarlet,
I shall swallow the tongue as it sets.
And wake all the generations with my roar!

Podgorze Gate to the Jewish Ghetto, historical photograph

Stories from Inside the Krakow Ghetto

Until this morning, what I still had was confidence in the Poles; now I don’t even have that. I have been to Krzemionki today, where I was passing by bricklayers, and they took some lime and sprayed me with it [...]. I had plenty of lime in my hair, on my dress, all over my head, arms and legs, and that lime burnt my skin. And those bricklayers laughed.  It’s really bad to be a Jew.

Renia Knoll, aged 14

The ghetto has four huge gates. And through these gates we are not allowed.  It is strictly prohibited. The no. 3 tram passes up and down the main street. We are not allowed on the tram. It is strictly prohibited. That is why the tram  never stops in the ghetto [...]. Once a boy tossed a few loaves of bread through a tram window to our feet.

Roma Liebling (Ligocka)

[...] right across the wall, across the gate, it is a different world. That world is also tormented by war, yet in a way it is also free. Out there children go to school, and adults work, stroll along the lighted streets or the Planty, visit exhibitions, listen to the bugle call sounded from the tower of St. Mary’s Church. 

Halina Nelken, aged 17

Ania occasionally managed to get hold of some milk, cheese, eggs--the products we were slowly beginning to forget [...]. Ania would not say how she made it through to the other side of the ghetto, past the armed German posts and the Jewish and Polish policemen. We knew what awaited those caught escaping or smuggling. Yet how can one raise children, Ania would ask, without a single glass of milk?

Maniusia Weinfeld

Historical Photograph

Transport to and from the Ghetto

Trolley coming through the Ghetto gate.

German authorities created the Krakow ghetto in 1941.

Gentiles living in the area were expelled to accommodate 17,000 Jews.

Historical Photograph

Forced Leaving

The Ghetto was roughly 20 hectares.

65,000 Jews were relocated out of the area to smaller cities, towns and villages.

Historical Photograph

Inspection of Identity Cards

Identity cards being inspected.

The enforcement officer is a Jewish policeman.

Everyday matters of the Ghetto were managed by the Jewish Council, or Judenrat.

Historical Photograph

Selling Smuggled Goods

Smuggled potatoes became sustenance for some families.

Over two years several thousand Ghetto Jews died of starvation.

Historical Photograph

Buying Food at the Market

Initially the Black Market flourished in the Ghetto.

The Ghetto was overcrowded, four families were forced to live in each flat.

Krakow Ghetto Authority

The borders of the Ghetto were guarded by Polish and German police from the outside, and by Jewish police from the inside. Since October 15, 1941, the Jews who were staying outside the Ghetto without a permit, and the people providing them with any assistance whatsoever were subject to capital punishment.

The administrative functions in the district were fulfilled by the Jewish Council (Judenrat), set up by order of the Gestapo in September 1939.  The main duty of the Council was to duly fulfill the orders of the occupying authorities. 

Work assignments were distributed by the Employment Service (Arbeitsamt). The Jewish workers were not protected by any laws. At first they received minimum wages; later they worked unpaid.

The Krakow Ghetto consisted of fifteen different streets, contained 320 buildings comprising 3,200 rooms. The Ghetto was sealed off, a high wall was erected around it, and there were four gates. Access by Ghetto inhabitants to the rest of Krakow was restricted to an absolute minimum. Even windows looking outwards were bricked up.

Historical photograph

Jewish Workers at the Barbican

Jewish workers at the Barbican escorted by German soldiers.

Jews were forced to contribute to the war effort by working in local factories.

Historical photograph

Eldery Jewish Worker

For two years Jews worked in the ghetto.

From November 1942 the Nazis transferred Jewish laborers from the Ghetto to Plaszow camp.

Historical Photograph

Smuggling

Young Boy going through a barbed-wire barrier.

Smuggling was often the only source of subsistence in the Ghetto.

Illegal workshops were started to make goods that would be sold on the outside. Raw goods were smuggled into the Ghetto by children.

Historical Photograph

Youth in Prayer

Thousands of children studied the Torah in underground hadarim and yeshiva.

Historical Photograph

Orphans

Every day children became orphaned in the ghetto.

Many young children were forced to care for even younger ones.

Orphans often lived on the streets, begging for bits of bread from others who had little or nothing to share.

Historical Photograph

Starvation

Starvation increased and worsened in the Ghetto.

When being moved to the Ghetto, Jews could bring very little.

Germans employed brutal measures against smugglers, including public and private executions.

Historical Photograph

Work and Prayer

Brush manufacturing. Ghetto workshop.

May 1942, 4000 Jews without identity cards were rounded up and sent to Belzec death camp.

The workshop is equipped with a board or table with a screw attached to it; the screw is used to hook the wire for binding the bristles.  The job is dirty, dull and tedious, done [...] under dreadful sanitary conditions [...]. The wire bit into my fingers, all sticky and dirty from the revolting bristles I was fixing ineptly and in disgust to a plank.

Halina Nelken

The devout Jews were meeting for everyday prayers at the three synagogues that existed in the Ghetto. The services on the occasion of the major Jewish holidays were held in larger halls, e.g., at the orphanage. People in almost every apartment in the Ghetto would say Kaddish (a prayer for the dead). A hundred or so boys, the followers of the tzaddik from Gora Kalwaria (Gerer Chasidim), studied the Talmud on an ongoing basis.

Confident that the offering of blood was not futile, they would daringly stare death in the face, walk presumptuously in their long bekishes [...], put up passive resistance by ignoring the German orders [...].

Rabbi Menasze Lewertow

Historical Photograph

Religious Observance

Cultural activities, community documentation and clandestine religious observances were all examples of spiritual resistance.

Historical  Photograph

No Entry for Jews

No Entry sign for people unauthorized to enter the Ghetto.

Other ghettos arose in Frankfurt, Rome and Prague in 16-17th centuries.

The term “ghetto” originated from the name of the Jewish quarter of Venice, established in 1516 to keep Jews segregated. 

I am constantly surrounded by a crowd of people: at home, in the dirty cramped kitchen, where women cook and quarrel over the stove, and in the large dark room, where my grandma sits calmly at her sewing machine working, and where my cot is too, in that room that we share with strangers. A different family lives in every corner of the room. There is no bathroom. Everyone keeps using the clogged toilet in the staircase.

Roma Liebling 

Wasn’t that easy to say--escape the displacement! And how were you supposed to cross the barbed wire fence lined with policemen?  How were you to make the first step in a free street? Once they noticed the armband, they would put a bullet through your head. Drop the armband? Once they noticed the white symbol slipping down your arm, they would hand you over to the police right away. Even if you hid in the darkest of gates [...] someone would always see you enter that gate as a Jew and walk out of it as--as who? Well, who?  For even if you had dropped your armband a hundred times, you would still be yourself. You would still be a Jew--yet without an armband. Your Jewishness came out with every anxious move, with every hesitant step, whenever you hunched your back, as if burdened with the yoke of bondage, whenever you gave that look of a baited animal; it was evident in your whole figure, your face, your eyes, all bearing the stamp of the ghetto.

Gusta Dranger, teacher, fighter of the ZOB (Jewish Resistance Group)

Polish Society and the Holocaust

Remembrance

At the beginning of the war Jews were pulled out of Polish society, taken from their homes and shut up in closed-off ghettos. Until 1941, they were murdered in indirect ways through the effects of forced labor, hunger and disease. After 1941, Jews were transferred to the death camps: Auschwitz with one and a half million victims; Treblinka with one million victims; Belzec with 430,000 victims; Chelmno (Kulmhof) with 360,000 victims, Sobibor with 260,000 victims, Majdanek with 230,000 victims. Majdanek was unique among the death camps in that the Jewish victims were not an overwhelming majority.

The camps were places of death not only for Polish Jews but also for Jews sent there by the Nazis from all over Europe. Many Jews never made it to camps but were killed on the spot — especially in the Soviet Union. During the invasion of the Soviet Union, over 3,000 special killing units (Einsatzgruppen) followed the German troops and conducted mass killings of Communist officials and of the Jewish population that lived on Soviet territory. Entire communities were wiped out.

The attitudes of Poles towards the tragedy of Jews varied. The majority was terrorized by Nazis — we should remember that during World War Two, the Nazis killed three millions Poles. They were unable to help Jews in the closed-off ghettos. It is important to remember too that in Poland the Nazis ordered the automatic death sentence for anyone caught trying to help Jews, and the penalty was extended to the family and even neighbors of any rescuer—a penalty that only existed in Poland. Probably a few thousand Poles were killed by the Nazis for helping the Jews.

Against all the odds a few hundred thousand Poles helped with different forms of relief for the Jews. The Polish people are, in fact, the biggest ethnic group among the “Righteous Among the Nations,” that is the rescuers of Jews under the Nazis rule. Only a small group of Poles—extreme nationalists and criminals—supported and actively helped the Nazis in their persecution of the Jews. Blackmailers, who lived on the money of Jews in hiding, were an especially big problem.

A courier of the Polish émigré government in London, Jan Karski, was the first person to inform US President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill about the mass extermination of Jews in Poland. However, as we know, the Western allies did not even bomb the rail lines going to the Auschwitz camp.

The attitude of Poles towards the Jewish tragedy depended in large part on their political outlook. A section of Jewish refugees who had escaped from the ghettos joined the Communist guerrilla “resistance.”  Inside the ranks of the Polish Communists there were 17 guerrilla units with a large number of Jews. At the same time, extreme Polish nationalists, mainly from the National Armed Forces, were responsible for more than 120 cases of killing Jewish refugees (individuals and groups) in the Polish forests. The arrival of the Red Army ended the slaughter of Jews in Poland. By then 88 per cent of Polish Jews had been wiped out in the Holocaust.

Adapted from Poland and the Holocaust by August Grabski

A Family Searches for Its History

Teatr NN. PL  (Grodzk Gate--NN Theatre). A museum and research center dedicated to Lublin’s Jews. In 1939, there were 120,000 people in Lublin, of which 43,000 were Jewish. The Teatr NN. Pl is a place of mourning and healing. Magda Pokrzycka who “truly” opened the door to a recovered history. The primary goal of Teatr NN. is to document all aspects of Jewish life and death leading up to and following WW II.

At the end of 1997, Fay Krokower set out to discover the particulars of what happened to her mother’s family during World War II. She already knew that her grandparents and four other relatives perished at the hands of the Nazis, in what she expected to have been Majdanek, the concentration camp that was contained within the city limits of her family’s hometown, Lublin, in Poland. Fay’s mother was able to leave Lublin before the war, and emigrated as a young teen to Canada, to begin a new life with a distant relative.

Fay’s initial attempts to research the past had begun with her contacting the Red Cross. Over a period of nearly two years, bits and pieces of information made their way from Poland to the States. Full names, ages, trades of family members were submitted and validated. The Polish Red Cross Society confirmed the family’s original residence as well as the apartment to which they were relocated prior to their last journey to an extermination camp.

The pages that follow link past efforts of research with new avenues of possibility to fill in the missing pages of the family’s history, thus making it clear that possibilities can become reality. The first step to recovering history started at Teatr NN (housed and named for the Jewish Theater in which it exists). Teatr NN has been about the business of documenting every aspect of Jewish life during the war years, collecting testimonies and data, reconstructing maps and models of the original Jewish quarter, maintaining a museum resulting from its research, and hosting workshops and major events to commemorate the Holocaust as it happened in Lublin, Poland.

A “Regret to Inform You” letter

An original request was made to the Red Cross in June, 1997. Notification that the case was open and information would be forwarded when it was received.  Another reply came nearly two years after the first request. Addresses for the family were verified. The Rabinovitch/Rosenberg family was moved from its residence on Lubartowska Street to 21 Towarowa Street, Apartment 1, Lublin before they were taken to a camp.

Tracking the Majdanak Camp Database

Tadwusz, chief researcher at Teatr NN. with Fay Krokower. Going through the data base of prisoners sent to Majdanek. The Krokower's learned that the family was not on the list, meaning that more than likely, they perished in Belzec camp. Jews from the Lublin Ghetto were sent to Majdanek, Belzec and Sobibor camps.

The Teatr NN keeps a booklet for each street address that was part of the Jewish Ghetto. Any information about residents of a street number and corresponding information are retained in the book.

Pulling Together Information

Pictures are linked with residency. A booklet is created for each person identified thru research. Birth dates and other pertinent information are linked together to help build a case study on each person who lived in the Lublin Ghetto. Case studies are developed. Booklets are constantly being updated as new data is found. Interviews with survivors and witnesses are recorded and matched to the story of a prisoner.

Creating Maps

Maps of destroyed areas are reconstructed from found data. The “heart” of Lublin’s Jewish quarter was the main synagogue. Before the war Lublin had 12 synagogues, 100 prayer homes, 3 cemeteries, hospital, orphanage and two Yiddish newspapers.

Recreating a Model of the Jewish Quarter of Lublin

The Lublin Ghetto was the first ghetto in Europe to be liquidated. Research, data collection, cartography is conducted by staff, volunteers and university students at the Teatr NN.

Expanse of the Lublin Jewish Quarter

Germans troops entered the town September 18, 1939. Most buildings were destroyed, and inhabitants were relocated.

Lubartowska Street

The above picture shows the home and business of Fay’s maternal grandparents on Lubartowska Street, a street of trades. Tradesmen were call tandeciarze, a derisive term for craftsmen who did not belong to a guild, such as Fay’s grandfather.

Relocation Home of the Family

Relocation home of the Rosenberg family, 21 Towarowa Street, Apartment 1, as it appears today. Apartment 1 is to the right of the main door and is boarded up due to the recent death of the tenant.

Visiting Towarowa Street

A visit to Towarowa Street. The three story complex is in need of significant repair. The building continues to be inhabited today and is owned by the Polish government. 

Acknowledgements for Poland: Uprising, Holocaust and Remembrance

This on-line exhibition is a collection of pictures, poetry and narrative to commemorate the journey of Fay Krokower, Ben Krokower and Marilyn Turkovich to Poland 2010. Primary cities visited during the trip were: Warsaw, Łódź, Wrocław, Kraków and Lublin. 

The picture above features Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory, Krakow. The administrative building of the factory is now a Holocaust museum. The factory had been seized from a Jewish owner, Nathan Wurzel and renamed Deutsche Emaillewaren-Fabrik. It was in Schindler’s office that the idea of rescuing Jews began, and the collective of names called Schindler’s list.

Historical photographs used in this book were taken from displays at the Oskar Schindler Museum in Krakow.

Our introduction to Poland, and all of the sites visited, including our introduction to research was carefully designed by Marta Chmielowska and Czeslaw Chmielowski. 

Maciej Martyniuk, a writer and true observer of history, originally from Lublin helped us with our visit to Warsaw.

Beata Paprocka, literature professor was our interpreter to Kraków.

Magda Pokrzycka, writer and journalist introduced us to the people of Teatr NN and helped us locate all important places in Lublin.

Photos in this section were taken from a temporary public mural located on the edge of  the “Old Town” in Warsaw, June 2010

The Reason for the Exhibition

This exhibition is a remembrance of a trip made to Poland the summer of 2010 by three individuals. Each of the three had personal reasons for traveling to Poland. Much of what was done and seen, apart from being tourists for a portion of the time, was to travel back in time to World War II. Though more than a thousand pictures were taken during the trip, only several dozen appear in this exhibit.

Some were converted to black and white since it seemed a travesty to show them in color. The on-line exhibit is divided into three parts: Uprising, Holocaust and Remembrance, with a special part documenting one family's search for its roots. 

Half of all Jews, 6,000,000, exterminated during World War II had their lives ended in Poland. Added to that 3 million, another 3 million non-Jewish Poles were killed. Poland had the highest European percentage of dead when the war ended, close to 20% of its entire population. 

Uprising

Essentially there were two major uprisings in Poland during World War II. The first took place in the Warsaw ghetto beginning on January 13, 1943, with the most active portion of the insurgency occurring between April 19 through May 16. The intent of the rebellion was to stop Nazi Germany’s continued transport of Jews to the extermination camp Treblinka. The Uprising ended when poorly armed and insufficiently supplied fighters were crushed by German troops under the command of Juergen Stroop. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest single revolt by Jews during the Holocaust.

The second uprising, a nationwide struggle against the Nazis, was waged by the Polish Resistance Movement and began on August 1, 1944. Named Operation Tempest, it was intended to last only a few days until the Soviet Army reached Warsaw. However, the Soviet advance stopped short while Polish resistance against the German forces continued for sixty-three days. The Poles surrendered on October 2, 1944.

Initially, the resistant Poles seized large areas of Warsaw, but because the Soviet Army did not make it to the city as planned, the uprising failed. Allegations point to the theory that Josef Stalin stalled his troops so that later Soviet occupation of Poland would not be contested.

With both uprisings, it is estimated that by January 1945, 85% of Warsaw was destroyed. Although no exact number of casualties is known, it is estimated that 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and another 6,000 wounded. Nearly 200,000 civilians died, many as a result of mass murders conducted by the Nazis. During the uprisings 16,000 German soldiers lost their lives.

Tragic Land

Here we stand over so tragic a land
The battlefield is smoldering –
a brew of fractured memories and dreams. 

Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski, ‘Miserere’ spring 1940

They Wake Up Crying

And then ... they wake up crying, 
for shots are heard from afar 
and they dreamt that they had conceived
a child as red as fresh blood

Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski, Untiltled poem (last poem written, three weeks before his death)

Our Own Shadows Which We Left Behind

And so, leaning over the waters,
we will float away to oblivion
and on earth there will cry for us only
our own shadows which we left behind

"A Little Song" (‘Pioseneczka’), written for Krzystof's wife, Basia, on January 16, 1942.

City of Menace

City of menace, like a coffin lid
thrown down an abyss as if
by a tempest's blow –
yet proud 
as a black lion who takes long to die 

wrote Baczynski on February 10, 1943 in a poem entitled ‘Warsaw’. Finally, after 63 days of super-human struggle, on October 2, 1944, the Poles agree to surrender under honorable conditions thus assuring to the insurgents the rules of the Geneva Convention. Three days later decimated units of the Home Army march out of Warsaw – into captivity.

One Charge

Thus ends the story of the most heroic Polish upsurge. Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski did not witness it .., he came to rest among the ruins of his own native city just as he prophesied in his verse:

For us, one charge 
– straight up to heaven 
one medal only, 
– a cross on our grave. 

The war ended. Slowly Warsaw raised itself out of its shambles. Buildings, squares, streets, were re-built. Over the Old City King Sigismund reigns again as before from his lofty column. In January 1947 Baczynski's body was dug out of the ruins of the City Hall and Krzysztof and Basia were finally laid to rest together in one grave at the Insurgents' cemetery at Powazki.

What Can We Do?

Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski is no more – left is the memory of his sacrifice and the fruits of his work. "Admirable is the scope of this work and its maturity," wrote of him Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz. "It often happens that lives which are predestined to end prematurely are filled with such intensive work, blossom out so quickly, that during a very short span of time they seem to achieve completeness."

And a Polish writer and critic; Stanislaw Pigon, had this to say at the news of Baczynski's death: "What can we do? We belong to a nation whose lot it is to shoot at the enemy with diamonds."

Elegy on a Polish Boy

* Elegy on . . . (a Polish boy)

They kept you, little son, from dreams like trembling butterflies,
they wove you, little son, in dark red blood two mournful eyes,
they painted landscapes with the yellow stitch of conflagrations,
they decorated all with hangmen’s trees the flowing oceans.

They Taught You

They taught you, little son, to know by heart your land of birth
as you were carving out with tears of iron its many paths.
They reared you in the darkness and fed you on terror’s bread;
you traveled gropingly that shamefulest of human roads.

Was it a Bullet that Killed You?

And then you left, my lovely son, with your black gun at midnight,
and felt the evil prickling in the sound of each new minute.
Before you fell, over the land you raised your hand in blessing.
Was it a bullet killed you, son, or was it your heart bursting?

March 20, 1944
From Baczynski, Krzysztof Kamil. White Magic and Other Poems. 
Bill Johnston translator. Green Integer, 2004.

We, Warsaw Children

We, Warsaw Children
We,Warsaw children will fight for you
for every stone of yours
our City, we’ll shed blood.

We, Warsaw children will fight for you
at each command of yours
the foe will get his due.

Heart in a Knapsack
This one song, this one and only I will sing for you, my lonely,
Maybe your heart too is crying full of longing and of sighing.
Maybe secretly you’re loving and your nights are spent in sobbing.

This one song, this one and only I will sing for you, my lonely.

~ Two songs from the Polish resistance movement

Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski

He was only 23. His name was Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski. He was one of many whose lot it was to live through the tragic days of September, 1939, and not see liberation. He experienced – what he himself envisioned – a shower of bullets, grenades, hitting the dirt, and ‘one charge only, straight up to heaven’. From this supreme sacrifice of countless such young daredevils was supposed to be born a mighty Poland free as a bird: ‘... We'll raise a house of iron – for nations, storms, and dreams’, he wrote in January, 1943. Yet poets are often wrong, and so was Baczynski. Warsaw fell ... a different Poland emerged. But whatever one may now say about the Warsaw Uprising, nothing can erase the sacrifice and heroism of the insurgents.

Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski was born in Warsaw on January 22, 1921. His father was a literary critic, his mother, Stefania Zielenczyk, the sister of the well-known philosopher, Adam Zielenczyk. Krzysztof was an only child. He attended the excellent Stefan Batory gymnasium , but was not a good student. His dream was to become a graphic artist or a book illustrator. He belonged to the generation born and raised in a free and independent Poland, a generation which did not know foreign rule. He started to write poetry very early. In 1936, at the age of 15, his first poem was published. But it was the shocks, the uncertainties, the cruelties of war which brought his true talent to the fare. He became the poet of fighting Warsaw.

Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski's cover for his book of poetry. Jan Bugaj was Baszynski's underground name.

September of 1939 marks the beginning of the annihilation of Baczynski's generation. First the onslaught on Poland and the siege of Warsaw, then the years of occupation – the darkness of Hitlerian terror and bestiality. Finally Warsaw starts to prepare for the Uprising. In 1943 Krzysztof joins the Polish Scouting Attack Groups and after some military training is assigned to the famed Scout Battalion ‘Zoska’ (Sophie). It is then that the young poet's talent really blossoms out and reaches its peak. He achieves poetic maturity in record time and his poetry of this period is full and complete. In June 1944 he receives some more field training and in the rank of assistant platoon leader is assigned a post at ‘Starowka’ (Old Town). He was killed in action during the first days of the Uprising.

Generation, by Baczynski

Zbigniew Czajkowski-Dabczynski, in his book Dziennik Powstanca (Diary of an Insurgent), gives a detailed report of his death: "It was then that I saw Krzysztof for the last time, because they left for a new position at Palac Blanka without me. That day I heard from a buddy that he was hunting Germans with great success from the ruins of the Opera House. The next day a call came for a first-aid patrol to come help a wounded in the Palac Blanka. Not having much to do I joined them. At his post, in a corner room, we found Krzysztof lying on a Persian rug with a huge wound in his head. He was dead. Nurses carried the body over to the City Hall (next door). That same evening the funeral was held. It was rather solemn. The grave was dug in the City Hall courtyard. Some sixty people, soldiers, officers, civilians, were present. Someone said a few words. The body was lowered to the grave. We all sang the National Anthem, then the grave was filled."

t was only the fourth day of the Uprising, August 4, 1944. On August 24, the poet's beloved wife Basia is wounded. She dies on September first, not knowing of her Krzysztof's death.

Source: Edward Dusza, Poet of Flaming Warsaw, Warsaw Uprising 1944.