Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

 

Occupation


German Occupation  of Europe Timeline

What the Allies knew

 

Jews of the Channel Islands

 

-

 

The Polish Fortnightly  Review

[The Occupied Nations]

 

 Poland

The Stroop Report

  Austria 

  Belgium

  Bulgaria

  Denmark

  France

  Germany

  Greece 

  Hungary

  Italy

  Luxembourg

  The Netherlands

  Norway

  Romania

  Slovakia

  Soviet Union

  Sudetenland

 

 

POLISH FORT-NIGHTLY REVIEW

London, Saturday, November 15th 1941, Issue No. 32

"The Real New Order - Terror "

Part 1

The German-Soviet War has not brought any change in the attitude of the German occupants to the Poles. When yet ,another attempt to persuade Poles to cooperate with the Germans failed, the Germans abandoned their intentions of, lightening the oppression, Numerous arrests were made of men who had been prominent in Polish public life, on the ground that they had refused to co-operate.

The course which the occupants intended to pursue in future was clearly indicated in the speech which Governor-General Frank made when the territory of South Eastern Poland, conquered from the Soviets, was incorporated with the, General ,Gouvernement. In this speech Frank said: " For the first time in history almost the entire territory inhabited by Poles is now subject to German direction.


For the first time it. has. become possible to settle the Polish question in a purely German sense, and that settlement must be based on the following conceptions:


1. The Polish nation must be freed from bearing the responsibility "for its own political destiny, because in its attempts to achieve. its expansionist great power designs it· has again sacrificed the peace of other nations.


2. The Polish nation must be restricted to a small area of settlement, since by the numerical size of its population it belongs to the secondary nations. of Europe.


3. The Polish nation has no right to put forward any demand for equal claims to Self-government; the strict and unequivocal demarcation bet~ what is German and what is Polish is the right of the German nation.

 

Germanizing Activities

 

There has been no modification in the general tendency to Germanize Polish inhabitants especially of the incorporated areas. Besides the more direct ethnic approach to the question, the German occupant authorities are steadily proceeding with the Germanization of the country by the systematic destruction of everything Polish in the political and economic system, in society, in the family, and even local customs.


At every step the superiority of Germanism is emphasized. The Germans intend to base their domination of the country upon the Reichsdeutsche who have been introduced, who chiefly. supply the Treuhänders, the directors of economic, and commercial life, and who are also entrusted with the leadership of the Nazi Party in their area. All the types of party organizations which have existed for years in Germany have been setup in the incorporated areas, and even in the General Gouvernement.

 

German party houses, soldiers' houses, leaders' training schools, children's, homes and nurseries, amusements, celebrations, frequent old pagan German festivals, while Catholic festivals are ignored and religious processions prohibited, all these are exploited as instruments of Germanization.

 

Germanizing tendencies in the cultural and educational sphere find expression in the opening of German theatres (the one in Poznan was opened by Goebbels himself), German concert halls, as in Cracow, opened by Frank.· and the showing of propaganda films exclusively for Germans.
To quicken the interest of the Volksdeutsche National Socialist instructors have been brought in specially from the Reich. In 1941 there are 980 male instructors and 250 female instructors at' work in the incorporated areas of Pomerania, Poznan, Silesia and the area of Ciechanow.

 

Germanisation Polish names of the streets in Warsaw 1940 - 3 names of 3 Maja street.

There are 450 girls spending their vacation in Polish areas, 800 technical students, 630 students sent to S.S. settlement detachments; and 3,000 girls from the bunde deutscher Madel . The Nazi Party has organized 76 agricultural service camps and 26 labor service camps, where a National Socialist programme on approved Reich German lines is carried out.

 

In addition, in the incorporated areas a policy of direct Germanization is being applied, on the ground that the inhabitants of these areas are either. former Germans, or have German connections, or are living in a German milieu. The legal economic situation of the Germans brought into Polish areas from the Reich has been defined in the words of the leader of the German labor front, Dr. Ley.

 

When visiting Governor-General Frank in his capacity as Reichsorganizationsleiter, Ley said:
 

The fact that you are German requires that you, should have larger dwellings and greater living possibilities than the Pole or the Jew. By what law? By the law of our blood, the law of self-preservation."


This cynical law is legal warrant for economic pillage, violence and theft, if it is in German interests. The process of separating out the German nation is also being applied in the sphere of civil laws. A decree on civil law, dated December 14th, 1940, dissolves mixed marriages, and even German marriages can only be celebrated at a German registry office.

 

The judiciary, which is organized on the principle of colonial capitulations, removes Germans from the jurisdiction of Polish courts even for the most common of crimes, while the German courts regard such crimes as a kind of heroism.


This is the practical application of the German slogan:

 

"We are not like others, who force their way into colonies and foreign countries, plundering them and living on dividends extracted from them, for every German works honestly. The party's job is to arouse idealism, the sense of a certain mission to be fulfilled, in which the basis of existence is to be inspired by self-devotion in service for the Fuhrer."


The occupant authorities attach considerable importance to giving the Germans confidence in the permanence of the present lawless and arbitrary government. Since November 1st, 1940, the Krakauer Zeitung has been printed in 90,000 copies and the Warschauer Zeitung has been printed in 15,000 copies.

 

There are also German illustrated journals, trade and technical journals, and special publications for agriculturalists and the youth. The Ost-Deutscher Beobachter has published in Poznan and the Litzmannstiidter Zeitung in Lodz. The parasitic press is continually discussing problems of settlement, the part played by German colonists in Polish history, attempts to trace Polish names etymologically back to a German origin, etc. And of course everything Polish is sneered at, while the great Polish scientists, and artists, such as Copernicus, Wit Stwosz, Matejko and Moniuko, are given the stamp of Germanism.

 

The execution of 56 Polish citizens in Bochnia, near Krakow,, during German occupation of Poland, December 18, 1939

Rule of Terror

 

In the incorporated areas and in the General Gouvernement the German oppression of the Polish people grew even more severe and was applied mare systematically during 1941. The occupant authorities are extending their control over the entire population, resorting to various measures in order to achieve that control. For, instance, several annual categories of young men have been called up to do forced labor in the Polnischer Baudienst (Polish Building Service).

 

Estimates give the number of such forced laborers as some 70,000, Also the round-ups of both men and women for work in Germany bring large numbers directly under German control. Finally, there is the registration of young people and the enrolment of large sections of the population by the issue of labor cards. In consequence, it is becoming increasingly difficult for people' to escape from the network of controls. In certain of the more densely populated urban areas the German police force has been enlarged and strengthened, especially in Warsaw.

  • In the incorporated areas

There is universal German terror in the areas incorporated with the Reich. Thousands of Poles are sent every month to prison and to concentration camps; a large number succumb. to the terror and violence. In Poznan the German guillotine accounts for some ninety persons of Polish nationality each month; in January, 92 were thus executed, and in February, 85.

 

Death sentences are frequent ill other centers also. The persecutions in these areas embrace, all sections of the population, but primarily 'the intellectual classes and the clergy. The people held in the prisons are frequently Inhumanly mal11'eated and torture.


In addition to the secret police murders, there are numerous ostensibly legal death sentences passed on Poles on any and every pretext by special courts. The German Press of Poznan and Lodz contains many reports of sentences on such charges as violence against Germans, the possession of arms, etc. The special courts also sentence Poles to long terms of imprisonment for such' alleged crimes as insulting the German State and nation and German officials, for listening to and spreading foreign wireless news, for petty offences against the German economic regulations, and so on.


According to reports in the German Press itself, undoubtedly covering only a small proportion of the cases brought before the special courts from February to April last these courts pronounced sixteen death sentences for possession of arms, and 24 death sentences and 25 sentences of imprisonment, aggregating 122 years, for alleged terror against Germans in September, 1939.

 

At Poznan a trial was conducted of twenty members of a battalion of Polish National Defense, the 57th Infantry Regiment, and two other Poles, accused of murdering 40 Germans in September, 1939. Thirteen of the accused were condemned to death, including Captain Cichon and Lieutenant Kitka. In March Lieutenant Nieciengiewicz, who had been brought from an officer prisoners of war camp for trial, was· charged in Poznan with killing two German spies in September, 1939, and was beheaded.

 

Execution of Poles by German Einsatzkomanndo October,1939

Five death sentences and four prison sentences aggregating 34 years were passed on Poles for attacking or attempting to attack a German. Five prison sentences, each of about twelve. months, were passed for listening to foreign broadcasts; six sentences, ranging from six months to two years, were passed for singing the Polish national hymn; and a large number of smaller sentences were passed for even lesser activities against Germans before the outbreak of war and at the beginning of the war and for failure to submit to German economic regulations.


Sentences passed on Poles for common crime are far heavier than those passed on Germans. Such sentences are made public. Recently a death sentence was passed for an incident concerning a drunken German, at Jarocin, and another for an attack on a German innkeeper in a, quarrel. In this latter case the following comment was attached to the sentence:


" Poles must be treated so that they know beyond any doubt that a Pole who provokes a  German is deserving of death."


At Wiskifno, near Lodz, fourteen Poles were shot in May for killing a German policeman. The execution was carried .out ptJ.blicly in the village. The sentence was posted up, the only signature to the sentence being that of a police sergeant. A case is known in' which a Pole was beaten ,up and sentenced to three months' imprisonment for reporting a theft committed by a German.


Apart from what may be termed the official German terror, having its sanction in court sentences or in police regulations, cases of individual terrorism, both in the incorporated areas and in. the General Gouvernement, are reported every day. Germans ,can do as they like on Polish soil and are neither punished nor even called to account before 'a court for torturing and even murdering Poles.


 

Besides the terrorism to which they are subject in the Polish incorporated areas, Poles are subjected to universal humiliation and are systematically reduced to the role of people deprived of all civic and human rights. There has been a ruthless confiscation of all the large landed estates and industrial, commercial and handicraft enterprises, as well as many medium-sized and small farms and enterprises.

 

Polish may not bespoken in the streets and public places, nor even at places of work. In. many towns, such as Poznan, the Polish inhabitants are deprived of their homes and are crowded into the poorer class dwellings on the outskirts. They are subjected to malicious restrictions on their food supplies, being granted much lower rations than Germans receive.

 

They also receive lower wages and salary than Germans, while they are more highly taxed. There are extensive restrictions on their rights to dine in dining rooms and restaurants, and to travel in' trams. Certain articles of food may not be sold to Poles at all, while at Poznan, Lodz and elsewhere they can purchase at shops, only during restricted periods of the day.

  • In the General Gouvernment

In the General Gouvernement the situation in some regards is not so serious as in the Western Provinces. But here also the Polish people are the continual victims  of petty 'persecution, torments, and other arbitrary activities on the part of the occupant authorities.


During 1,941 mass arrests and deportations to concentration camps have continued on a mass scale. In January some 500 persons were arrested in Kielce, Radom and Czestochowa, while in the same month there' were mass arrests at Starachowice, Pionki, Jedlnia and Zwolen.

 

Expulsion of thousands of Poles from the Wartheland

Dozens of the arrested people were shot and the rest are in prisons and concentration camps. In February several' hundred persons were arrested at Lublin, Zamosc, Pulawy and Chelm, and suffered a similar fate. In March some 300 persons were arrested in Warsaw at the time of the Igo Sym affair, seventeen of them being shot: 15 persons were arrested at Lowicz and 300 at Siedlce during the same month. April and May brought further extensive arrests in Warsaw, Cracow, Lublin, Pulawy and a number of other Polish towns. During this year there has been an average of 1,000 arrests monthly in Warsaw.

 

Many of the people arrested are subjected to torture in the prisons and concentration camps in which they are confined. The arrests and deportations chiefly affect the intellectual classes, who are still being mercilessly crushed, but workers and peasants are also included. A certain proportion of the prisoners are regularly sentenced to death by the Gestapo courts, which consist of two persons. Many of them are tortured during investigation, and the majority are sent to concentration camps. The conditions of existence in the prisons and even more in the concentration camps are unimaginable.


Both prisons and camps are crowded., petty persecutions are the order of the day, the hygienic conditions are disgusting, the prisoners receive starvation rations, they are frequently tortured, and finally they, are compelled to do very exhausting physical labor. All these conditions turn the prisons, and even more the camps, into hell, a hell in which thousands die of hunger, exhaustion, and disease. Those few who are fortunate enough to get out of Oswiecim and other concentration camps return home. in a state of extreme exhaustion, frequently seriously ill, after incarcerations lasting only a few months.

  • The Igo Sym Affair

In January:, 1941, there was a spate of' arrests in Warsaw, which died down by the middle of February, though of course sporadic arrests still continued. But at the beginning of March an. event occurred, which led to further wholesale arrests.

 

On March 7 the actor Igo Sym, who had collaborated with the Germans from the first days of their occupation, was shot in his. home in Mazowiecka street by an unknown assailant. In reprisal, the German authorities immediately ordered the curfew hour to be changed from 11 to 8 p.m., prohibited all public performances for a month, and arrested a large number of hostages, who were to be shot if the name of the assailant was not made known to the German authorities within two days.

 

These regulations were at once made known publicly through street loud-speakers, the Press,' and by posters. On March 8th arrests were mad~ in various, parts of the city, and all attempts to intervene on behalf of individuals arrested were fruitless.


On March 10th a paragraph appeared in the Press, stating categorically that the assailant was a Pole, and that the murder had a political motive. On March 11th a special commission from the Governor-General's office in Cracow was to arrive in Warsaw to investigate the case.

 

On that same day white posters were posted up in the city with the wording in Polish and German:


"Command of the police of the Warsaw Region. As atonement for the infamous murder of the German Igo Sym, a certain number of arrested persons have been shot this morning. Warsaw, March 11th, 1941. 
(Signed) Dr. Moder: Gruppenfuhrer."


This poster was pasted partly over the first poster announcing repressive measures and the intention to shoot hostages in the event Of the assailant not being found. Yet rumors circulated through the city that other persons who had been arrested and imprisoned prior to the assassination, had' also been shot.

 

These rumors were later completely confirmed, for seventeen persons who had suffered earlier arrest were shot. They included Professor Kopec, his son Stanislaw, and Professor Zakrzewski. On March 14th proclamations announcing that Dobieslaw Damiecki and Janina Gorska were wanted as suspected of the murder were printed in the Press and posted up in the streets.

 

A Polish family living in the rubble of Warsaw

It is interesting to note that the change of the curfew hour had been expected and had been foretold by the German authorities before the assassination of Igo Sym. On March 7th and 8th there were arrests of selected persons in various parts of the city. over 200 being taken, though the actual figures were not announced. Among those arrested were a number of doctors, including the staff of the Evangelical Hospital, and eight actors and actresses. A large number were women.

 

The District Chief Fischer stated that the necessity for drastic repressive steps arose from the fact that nine Germans and collaborators with the Germans had been assassinated in the area under his charge in the course of a week.
 

The placards announcing the shooting of the hostages were not allowed to remain unadorned. During the night all the posters in the City were altered with colored pencil and even rubber stamps, the name Moder being altered to read Mörder, the German for murderer.

 

In consequence the Germans had to scratch out the signature or paste it over. The walls of Warsaw were also covered with chalked inscriptions, "Oswiecim," and "Remember Oswiecim," just as in December, 1940, the walls had been covered with inscriptions on the anniversary of the Wawer massacre on December 27th, 1939.

  • Further Arrests

On April 5th, 960 prisoners were removed from the Pawiak prison in Warsaw and taken to an unknown destination, probably to Oswiecim. After a brief falling off in arrests, in the middle of May some 28 persons who had been associated with the National Democratic Party ,before the war were arrested in a single day. They included Professor Roman Rybarski, of the Warsaw University and a leader of the party, Professor Staniszkis, Mr. Trajdos and Mr. Siedlaczek.

 

Arrests were also frequently made 'on the street, for no obvious reason, by Gestapo men in civilian clothes. These people were held in the German police headquarters for a time, though no investigation was made, and were then taken with a number of others in cars to a secret destination. Even then no explanation was forthcoming as to the offences they had committed, nor was the purpose of the journey disclosed. On the other hand, at the end of April some 1,,500 persons, both men and women, were brought to Warsaw and put in the Pawiak prison.


On May 24th a proclamation by District Chief Fischer was posted up throughout the city, announcing that even the smallest damage done to military objects would be punished with 'the death sentence. In the event of the offender . going undiscovered the proclamation stated that hostages would be taken. That same day a number of persons were arrested as hostages. From time to time a number of them were shot, in fulfillment of the, announcement in the proclamation.


The situation was no better in other towns of the General Gouvernement. In February there were mass arrests at Radom, some 560 persons drawn from all walks ,of life (priests, doctors, lawyers, workers) being taken. Among others Mr. Heydel, the owner of the Brzoza estate near Radom, was arrested, as well as his brother, Professor Adam Heydel, who as a professor of the Cracow University had already experienced the horror of the concentration camp at Oranienburg.

 

The arrest of Poles in the General Gouvernment

All the prisoners were taken to Skarzysko, where they were kept for some time in the school building. Here, with the aid of rubber truncheons, they were questioned on the subject of the illegal journals now being published in large numbers in Poland. Some of them collapsed under the beatings, but their behavior generally was heroic.

 

During their confinement in the school they were not allowed to walk about, talk, or even move. The Gestapo employed Ukrainians of the auxiliary police as guards and torturers of the prisoners. After a long stay in the school several dozen were released and the others transferred to Oswiecim. Within a fortnight news began to trickle through that various of the prisoners had died. Among others whose deaths were reported were both the Heydels, apparently on the same day.


On March 4th an unknown assailant lopped off the ears of a drunken German soldier at Lowicz. This was immediately followed by mass arrests among the intellectual classes. Nearly two hundred persons were detained, including priests, lawyers, doctors, the deputy mayor Rybicki, and four women. The Germans resorted to various methods to intensify the psychological terror; prisoners streaming with blood were conducted in broad daylight through the streets of the town from the Gestapo building to the prison; loud-speakers set up on cars announced further proposed arrests, and placards were posted stating that some of the prisoners had already been shot.


In Suchowola district of Radzyn county at the end of March 28 persons were arrested, including three priests and the three princes Czetwertynski, Severyn and Ludwik and the latter's son Stanislaw, all of them outstanding Polish citizens. The arrests were made at night and the prisoners were handled very brutally. While being arrested one priest was seriously beaten up. Next day thirty to forty more persons were arrested in the town of Radzyn itself. Altogether 97 persons were deported from the county.

 

The prisoners were first held in Ladzyn, then in Lublin, and later removed to unknown places of incarceration. But not long after news was received that Prince Ludwik Czetwertynski had died in Oranienburg Concentration Camp.


At Siedlce there have been many cases of excesses committed by drunken German soldiers, such as assailing passers-by and robbing them, and throwing bombs, especially since the beginning of the year. Jewish pogroms have begun, houses being demolished, and mutilated corpses and injured persons being thrown indiscriminately into the street. Altogether eleven Jews were killed, some 50 seriously injured, and nearly two hundred suffered minor injuries, exclusive of those with superficial abrasions and contusions.

 

There have .also been many arrests among the Polish population, 86, at one time, chiefly intel1ectuals. Among the hostages taken were all the doctors in the town. The hostages were later ransomed for 120,000 zlotys, collected from the people of the town.


At Kielce there were extensive arrests and searches during March. The police curfew hour was fixed at eight o'clock. Ninety-five persons were arrested, nearly a score of them being shot, while the rest were taken to Oswiecim concentration camp. The town's inhabitants were forbidden to stop at street corners, were not allowed to walk in groups of more than two, and were not allowed to loiter in the gateways ·and doors of houses.

 

There were many arrests and searches in Lublin and its district during March, and the process has continued since. Some 200 persons were arrested at Janow Lubelski, including the mayor, the majority of the intellectual class, and almost the whole of the Polish police force. Numerous arrests were made among the staff of the Magistracy at Krasnik, and arrests in Hrubieszow county are still continuing, a further twenty persons being arrested at Laszczow recently.

 

German soldiers blindfold Polish Red Cross workers

At the beginning of March more than twenty peasants accused of sabotage were shot at Ostroleka. Their bodies were flung into holes and covered with wood, then petrol was poured over and the pyre was set alight. At Skierniewice also a number of young men were arrested, even being hauled out of trains which stopped at the station.


Among those arrested were a number of active members of the Polish Red Cross. In the same month there were numerous arrests at Przedborz and Radoszyce, on.the charge of distributing illegal literature. The prisoners were tortured in order to force confessions. In the early spring the prison at Jaslo, in Cracow county, was emptied of all its prisoners, who were transferred to Tarnow. The occasion was taken to shoot a number of them

 

Reports from Wlodawek indicate that there also. arrests are continually, being made, and passers by in the streets are beaten up. And at Kozmin, in Western Poland, numerous arrests followed the killing of two Germans, and fourteen hostages were shot.

 

 

 

 

* Part 2 of of Issue No. 31 can be read under the title: The Real New Order -Terror #2

 


 

Sources:

 

The National Archives KEW

The Chris Webb Archive

Public Records Office, London

Polish Museum in the United Kingdom

Holocaust Historical Society

US NARA

USHMM

 

 

 

Copyright  Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010

 

 

Remember Me  |   Special Thanks   |   Holocaust Links   |   Publications

© 2013  H.E.A.R.T  All Rights Reserved.