Warsaw Ghetto Extremely Rare Book Uprising 1945 Pb Poland 1St Hand Accounts

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (808) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176278959843 WARSAW GHETTO EXTREMELY RARE BOOK UPRISING 1945 PB POLAND 1ST HAND ACCOUNTS. Warsaw: Paṅstwowe Wydawnictwo Literatury Politycznej, 1945. Octavo (20.3 × 14.8 cm). Original staple-stitched printed wrappers; 50, [1] pp. Very good; Early volume documenting the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. The book was published shortly after the end of WWII in May 1945. Aside from numerous essays and reports from the contemporary press, the book contains poems by Jan Kott and Wladyslaw Broniewski, one full-page photograph, and facsimile reproduction of two broadsides calling for the uprising. Scarce. An early collection of first hand accounts and documentation of the famous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, from a variety of sources and authors. The final page contains a table of contents, listing all 22 of the written pieces, some taken from newpspaers, diaries and other firsthand accounts. Includes reproductions of two broadsides published in 1945, memorializing the ghetto and one b/w photograph of a memorial service to those killed. Text in Polish. Wrappers with strains and smudges. Some light to moderate rubbing, chipping, and creasing to extremities. text throughout with some sporadic minor to light stains


 The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the German authorities within the new General Government territory of occupied Poland The Warsaw Ghetto (German: Warschauer Ghetto, officially Jüdischer Wohnbezirk in Warschau, "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; Polish: getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the German authorities within the new General Government territory of occupied Poland. At its height, as many as 460,000 Jews were imprisoned there,[5] in an area of 3.4 km2 (1.3 sq mi), with an average of 9.2 persons per room,[6][7] barely subsisting on meager food rations.[7] From the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps and mass-killing centers. In the summer of 1942, at least 254,000 ghetto residents were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during Großaktion Warschau under the guise of "resettlement in the East" over the course of the summer.[7] The ghetto was demolished by the Germans in May 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had temporarily halted the deportations. The total death toll among the prisoners of the ghetto is estimated to be at least 300,000 killed by bullet or gas,[8] combined with 92,000 victims of starvation and related diseases, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the casualties of the final destruction of the ghetto.[2][9][10][11] Background Before World War II, the majority of Polish Jews lived in the merchant districts of Muranów, Powązki, and Stara Praga.[12] Over 90% of Catholics lived further away from the commercial center.[12] The Jewish community was the most prominent there, constituting over 88% of the inhabitants of Muranów; with the total of about 32.7% of the population of the left-bank and 14.9% of the right-bank Warsaw, or 332,938 people in total according to 1931 census.[12] Many Jews left the city during the depression.[12] Antisemitic legislation, boycotts of Jewish businesses, and the nationalist "endecja" post-Piłsudski Polish government plans put pressure on Jews in the city.[13] In 1938 the Jewish population of the Polish capital was estimated at 270,000 people.[14] The Siege of Warsaw continued until September 29, 1939. On September 10 alone, the Luftwaffe conducted 17 bombing raids on the city;[15] three days later, 50 German planes attacked the city centre, targeting specifically Wola and Żoliborz. In total, some 30,000 people were killed,[15] and 10 percent of the city was destroyed.[4] 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 (SD). The commander of EG IV, Josef Meisinger (the "Butcher of Warsaw"), was appointed chief of police for the newly formed Warsaw District.[15] Establishment of the ghetto Karmelicka Street 11 from Nowolipia September/October 1939 Anachronistic map with borders of the Warsaw Ghetto in November 1940, with location of Umschlagplatz for awaiting death trains Anachronistic map with borders of the Warsaw Ghetto in November 1940, with location of Umschlagplatz for awaiting death trains Main article: Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland Aerial photograph of the northern Warsaw Ghetto area after its destruction, probably 1944 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.[16] In less than a year, the number of refugees in Warsaw exceeded 90,000.[17] On October 12, 1939, the General Government was established by Adolf Hitler in the occupied area of central Poland.[18] The Nazi-appointed Jewish Council (Judenrat) in Warsaw, a committee of 24 people headed by Adam Czerniaków, was responsible for carrying out German orders.[17] On October 26, the Jews were mobilized as forced laborers to clear bomb damage and perform other hard labor. One month later, on November 20, the bank accounts of Polish Jews and any deposits exceeding 2,000 zł were blocked.[18] On November 23, all Jewish establishments were ordered to display a Jewish star on doors and windows. Beginning December 1, all Jews older than ten were compelled to wear a white armband, and on December 11, they were forbidden from using public transit.[18] On January 26, 1940, the Jews were banned from holding communal prayers due to "the risk of spreading epidemics."[19] Food stamps were introduced by the German authorities, and measures were stepped up to liquidate all Jewish communities in the vicinity of Warsaw intensified. The Jewish population of the capital reached 359,827 before the end of the year.[17] Roundup of Jewish men for forced labor by the Order Police battalions, Krakowskie Przedmieście, March 1940 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.[20] 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.[21] On October 16, 1940, the creation of the ghetto was announced by the German governor-general, Hans Frank.[22] The initial population of the ghetto was 450,000 confined to an area of 307 hectares (3.07 km2).[17][23] Before the Holocaust began the number of Jews imprisoned there was between 375,000[24] and 400,000 (about 30% of the general population of the capital).[25] The area of the ghetto constituted only about 2.4% of the overall metropolitan area.[26] Warsaw Ghetto wall and footbridge over Chłodna Street in 1942 Corner of Żelazna 70 and Chłodna 23 (looking east). This section of Żelazna street connected the "large ghetto" and "small ghetto" areas of German-occupied Warsaw. The Germans closed the Warsaw Ghetto to the outside world on November 15, 1940.[16] The wall around it was 3 m (9.8 ft) high and topped with barbed wire. Escapees were shot on sight. German policemen from Battalion 61 used to hold victory parties on the days when a large number of prisoners were shot at the ghetto fence.[27] The borders of the ghetto changed and its overall area was gradually reduced, as the captive population was decreased by outbreaks of infectious diseases, mass hunger, and regular executions.[21] The ghetto was divided in two along Chłodna Street Ulica Chłodna w Warszawie [pl], which was excluded from it, due to its local importance at that time (as one of Warsaw's east–west thoroughfares).[28] The area south-east of Chłodna was known as the "Small Ghetto", while the area north of it became known as the "Large Ghetto". The two zones were connected at an intersection of Chłodna with Żelazna Street, where a special gate was built. In January 1942, the gate was removed and a wooden footbridge was built over it,[29] which became one of the postwar symbols of the Holocaust in occupied Poland.[30] Ghetto administration Jewish Ghetto Police guarding the gates of the Warsaw Ghetto, June 1942 The first commissioner of the Warsaw Ghetto, appointed by Fischer, was SA-Standartenführer Waldemar Schön, who also supervised the initial Jewish relocations in 1940.[31] He was an attritionist best known for orchestrating an "artificial famine" (künstliche Hungersnot) in January 1941. Schön had eliminated virtually all food supplies to the ghetto causing an uproar among the SS upper echelon.[32] He was relieved of his duties by Frank himself in March 1941 and replaced by Kommissar Heinz Auerswald, a "productionist" who served until November 1942.[33] Like in all Nazi ghettos across occupied Poland, the Germans ascribed the internal administration to a Judenrat Council of the Jews, led by an "Ältester" (the Eldest).[34] In Warsaw, this role was relegated to Adam Czerniaków, who chose a policy of collaboration with the Nazis in the hope of saving lives. Adam Czerniaków confided his harrowing experience in nine diaries.[35] In July 1942, when the Germans ordered him to increase the contingent of people to be deported, he committed suicide.[36] Czerniaków's collaboration with the German occupation policies was a paradigm for attitude of the majority of European Jews vis à vis Nazism. Although his personality as president of the Warsaw Judenrat may not become as infamous as Chaim Rumkowski, Ältester of the Łódź Ghetto; the SS policies he had followed were systematically anti-Jewish. Czerniakow's first draft of October, 1939; for organizing the Warsaw Judenrat, was just a rehash of conventional kehilla departments: chancellery, welfare, rabbinate, education, cemetery, tax department, accounting, vital statistics... But the Kehilla was an anomalous institution. Throughout its history in czarist Russia, it served also as an instrument of the state, obligated to carry out the regime's policies within the Jewish community, even though these policies were frequently oppressive and specifically anti-Jewish. — Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews [34] The Council of Elders was supported internally by the Jewish Ghetto Police (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst),[17] formed at the end of September 1940 with 3,000 men, instrumental in enforcing law and order as well as carrying out German ad hoc regulations, especially after 1941, when the number of refugees and expellees in Warsaw reached 150,000 or nearly one third of the entire Jewish population of the capital.[19] Catholics and Poles in the ghetto In January 1940 there were 1,540 Catholics and 221 individuals of other Christian faiths imprisoned in the ghetto, including Jewish converts. It is estimated that at the time of closure of the ghetto there were around 2,000 Christians, and number possibly rose eventually to over 5,000. Many of these people considered themselves Polish, but due to Nazi racial criteria they were classified by German authorities as Jewish.[37][38] Within the ghetto there were three Christian churches, the All Saints Church, St. Augustine's Church and the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. All Saints Church served Jewish Christians who were detained in the ghetto. At that time, the parish priest, Marceli Godlewski who before the war was connected to Endecja and anti-Jewish actions, now became involved in helping Jews. At the rectory of the parish, the priest sheltered and helped many escape, including Ludwik Hirszfeld, Louis-Christophe Zaleski-Zamenhof and Wanda Zamenhof-Zaleska. For his actions he was posthumously awarded the Righteous Among the Nations medal in 2009.[37][39] Conditions Homeless children in Warsaw Ghetto A child dying on the sidewalk of the Warsaw Ghetto, September 19, 1941 See also: Hunger Plan Nazi officials, intent on eradicating the ghetto by hunger and disease, limited food and medical supplies.[5] An average daily food ration in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw was limited to 184 calories, compared to 699 calories allowed for gentile Poles and 2,613 calories for the Germans.[40] In August, the rations fell to 177 calories per person. This meager food supply by the German authorities usually consisted of dry bread, flour and potatoes of the lowest quality, groats, turnips, and a small monthly supplement of margarine, sugar, and meat.[41] As a result, black market economy thrived, supplying as much as 80% of the ghetto's food.[5][41] In addition, the Joint had opened over 250 soup kitchens,[42] which served at one time as many as 100,000 meals per day.[5] Men, women and children all took part in smuggling and illegal trade, and private workshops were created to manufacture goods to be sold secretly on the "Aryan" side of the city. Foodstuffs were often smuggled by children alone, who crossed the ghetto wall by the hundreds in any way possible, sometimes several times a day, returning with goods that could weigh as much as they did. Unemployment leading to extreme poverty was a major problem in the ghetto, and smuggling was often the only source of subsistence for the ghetto inhabitants, who would have otherwise died of starvation.[41] "Professional" smugglers, in contrast, often became relatively wealthy.[5] During the first year and a half, thousands of Polish Jews as well as some Romani people from smaller towns and the countryside were brought into the ghetto, but as many died from typhus and starvation the overall number of inhabitants stayed about the same.[43] Facing an out-of-control famine and meager medical supplies, a group of Jewish doctors imprisoned in the ghetto decided to use the opportunity to study the physiological and psychological effects of hunger.[44][45] The Warsaw Ghetto Hunger Study,[46] as it is now known, remains one of the most thorough investigations of semi-starvation done to date.[45] Education and culture Despite grave hardships, life in the Warsaw Ghetto had educational and cultural activities, both legal and those conducted by its underground organizations. Hospitals, public soup kitchens, orphanages, refugee centers and recreation facilities were formed, as well as a school system. Some schools were illegal and operated under the guise of soup kitchens. There were secret libraries, classes for the children and even a symphony orchestra. Rabbi Alexander Friedman,[47] secretary-general of Agudath Israel of Poland, was one of the Torah leaders[clarification needed] in the Warsaw Ghetto; he organized an underground network of religious schools, including "a Yesodei HaTorah school for boys, a Bais Yaakov school for girls, a school for elementary Jewish instruction, and three institutions for advanced Jewish studies".[48] These schools, operating under the guise of kindergartens, medical centers and soup kitchens, were a place of refuge for thousands of children and teens, and hundreds of teachers. In 1941, when the Germans gave official permission to the local Judenrat to open schools, these schools came out of hiding and began receiving financial support from the official Jewish community.[49] Former cinema Femina became a theater in this period.[50] The Jewish Symphonic Orchestra performed in several venues, including Femina.[51] Israel Gutman estimates that around 20,000 prisoners (out of more than 400,000) remained at the top of ghetto society, either because they were wealthy before the war, or because they were able to amass wealth during it (mainly through smuggling). Those families and individuals frequented restaurants, clubs and cafes, showing in stark contrast the economic inequalities of ghetto life.[52] Tilar Mazzeo estimates that group at around 10,000 people—"rich industrialists, many Judenrat council leaders, Jewish police officers, profiteering smugglers, nightclub owners [and] high-end prostitutes" who were spending their time at over sixty cafes and nightclubs, "dancing among the corpses."[53] Manufacture of German military supplies Jews working in a ghetto factory Not long after the ghetto was closed off from the outside world, a number of German war profiteers such as Többens and Schultz appeared in the capital.[54] At first, they acted as middlemen between the high command and the Jewish-run workshops. By spring 1942, the Stickerei Abteilung Division with headquarters at Nowolipie 44 Street had already employed 3,000 workers making shoes, leather products, sweaters and socks for the Wehrmacht. Other divisions were making furs and wool sweaters also, guarded by the Werkschutz police.[55] Some 15,000 Jews were working in the ghetto for Walter C. Többens from Hamburg, a convicted war criminal,[56] including at his factories on Prosta and Leszno Streets among other locations. His Jewish labour exploitation was a source of envy for other ghetto inmates living in fear of deportations.[55] In early 1943 Többens gained for himself the appointment of a Jewish deportation commissar of Warsaw in order to keep his own workforce secure, and maximize profits.[57] In May 1943 Többens transferred his businesses, including 10,000 Jewish slave workers to the Poniatowa concentration camp barracks.[58] Fritz Schultz took his manufacture along with 6,000 Jews to the nearby Trawniki concentration camp.[54][59] Treblinka deportations The Grossaktion Warschau 1942 Umschlagplatz holding pen for deportations to Treblinka death camp The Grossaktion Warschau 1942 boarding onto the Holocaust trains Approximately 100,000 ghetto inmates had already died of hunger-related diseases and starvation before the mass deportations started in the summer of 1942. Earlier that year, during the Wannsee Conference near Berlin, the Final Solution was set in motion. It was a secretive plan to mass-murder Jewish inhabitants of the General Government. The techniques used to deceive victims were based upon experience gained at the Chełmno extermination camp (Kulmhof).[60] The ghettoised Jews were rounded up, street by street, under the guise of "resettlement", and marched to the Umschlagplatz holding area.[61] From there, they were sent aboard Holocaust trains to the Treblinka death camp, built in a forest 80 kilometres (50 mi) northeast of Warsaw.[62] The operation was headed by the German Resettlement Commissioner, SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle, on behalf of Sammern-Frankenegg. Upon learning of this plan, Adam Czerniaków, leader of the Judenrat Council committed suicide. He was replaced by Marek Lichtenbaum,[7] tasked with managing roundups with the aid of Jewish Ghetto Police. No-one was informed about the real state of affairs.[63] The extermination of Jews by means of poisonous gases was carried out at Treblinka II under the auspices of Operation Reinhard, which also included Bełżec, Majdanek, and Sobibór death camps.[60] About 254,000 Warsaw Ghetto inmates (or at least 300,000 by different accounts) were sent to Treblinka during the Grossaktion Warschau, and murdered there between Tisha B'Av (July 23) and Yom Kippur (September 21) of 1942.[9] The ratio between Jews killed on the spot by Orpo and Sipo during roundups, and those deported was approximately 2 percent.[60] For eight weeks, the deportations of Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka continued on a daily basis via two shuttle trains: each transport carrying about 4,000 to 7,000 people crying for water; 100 people to a cattle truck. The first daily trains rolled into the camp early in the morning often after an overnight wait at a layover yard; and the second, in mid-afternoon.[64] Dr Janusz Korczak, a famed educator, went to Treblinka with his orphanage children in August 1942. He was offered a chance to escape by Polish friends and admirers, but he chose instead to share the fate of his life's work.[65] All new arrivals were sent immediately to the undressing area by the Sonderkommando squad that managed the arrival platform, and from there to the gas chambers. The stripped victims were suffocated to death in batches of 200 with the use of monoxide gas. In September 1942, new gas chambers were built, which could kill as many as 3,000 people in just 2 hours. Civilians were forbidden to approach the camp area.[63] In the last two weeks of the Aktion ending on September 21, 1942, some 48,000 Warsaw Jews are deported to their deaths. The last transport with 2,200 victims from the Polish capital included the Jewish police involved with deportations, and their families.[66] In October 1942 the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) was formed and tasked with opposing further deportations. It was led by 24 year–old Mordechai Anielewicz.[2] Meanwhile, between October 1942 and March 1943, Treblinka received transports of almost 20,000 foreign Jews from the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia via Theresienstadt, and from Bulgarian-occupied Thrace, Macedonia, and Pirot following an agreement with the Nazi-allied Bulgarian government.[67] By the end of 1942, it was clear that the deportations were to their deaths.[2] The underground activity of ghetto resistors in the group Oyneg Shabbos increased after learning that the transports for "resettlement" led to the mass killings.[68] Also in 1942, Polish resistance officer Jan Karski reported to the Western governments on the situation in the ghetto and on the extermination camps. Many of the remaining Jews decided to resist further deportations, and began to smuggle in weapons, ammunition and supplies.[2] Ghetto Uprising and final destruction of the ghetto Main article: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Suppression of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Captured Jews escorted by the Waffen SS, Nowolipie Street, 1943 On January 18, 1943, after almost four months without deportations, the Germans suddenly entered the Warsaw Ghetto intent upon further roundups. Within hours, some 600 Jews were shot and 5,000 others removed from their residences. The Germans expected no resistance, but the action was brought to a halt by hundreds of insurgents armed with handguns and Molotov cocktails.[69][70][71] Preparations to resist had been going on since the previous autumn.[72] The first instance of Jewish armed struggle in Warsaw had begun. The underground fighters from ŻOB (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa: Jewish Combat Organization) and ŻZW (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy: Jewish Military Union) achieved considerable success initially, taking control of the ghetto. They then barricaded themselves in the bunkers and built dozens of fighting posts, stopping the expulsions. Taking further steps, a number of Jewish collaborators from Żagiew were also executed.[43] An offensive against the ghetto underground launched by Von Sammern-Frankenegg was unsuccessful. He was relieved of duty by Heinrich Himmler on April 17, 1943, and court-martialed.[73] Warsaw Ghetto area after the war. Gęsia Street, view to the west Ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto The final assault started on the eve of Passover of April 19, 1943, when a Nazi force consisting of several thousand troops entered the ghetto. After initial setbacks, 2,000 Waffen-SS soldiers under the field command of Jürgen Stroop systematically burned and blew up the ghetto buildings, block by block, rounding up or murdering anybody they could capture. Significant resistance ended on April 28, and the Nazi operation officially ended in mid-May, symbolically culminating with the demolition of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw on May 16. According to the official report, at least 56,065 people were killed on the spot or deported to German Nazi concentration and death camps (Treblinka, Poniatowa, Majdanek, Trawniki).[74][better source needed] The site of the ghetto became the Warsaw concentration camp. Preserving remnants of the Warsaw Ghetto The ghetto was almost entirely leveled during the Uprising; however, a number of buildings and streets survived, mostly in the "small ghetto" area, which had been included into the Aryan part of the city in August 1942 and was not involved in the fighting. In 2008 and 2010 Warsaw Ghetto boundary markers were built along the borders of the former Jewish quarter, where from 1940 to 1943 stood the gates to the ghetto, wooden footbridges over Aryan streets, and the buildings important to the ghetto inmates. The four buildings at 7, 9, 12 and 14 Próżna Street are among the best known original residential buildings that in 1940–41 housed Jewish families in the Warsaw Ghetto. They have largely remained empty since the war. The street is a focus of the annual Warsaw Jewish Festival. In 2011–2013 buildings at number 7 and 9 underwent extensive renovations and have become office space.[75][76] The Nożyk Synagogue also survived the war. It was used as a horse stable by the German Wehrmacht. The synagogue has today been restored and is once again used as an active synagogue. The best preserved fragments of the ghetto wall are located 55 Sienna Street, 62 Złota Street, and 11 Waliców Street (the last two being walls of the pre-war buildings). There are two Warsaw Ghetto Heroes' monuments, unveiled in 1946 and 1948, near the place where the German troops entered the ghetto on 19 April 1943. In 1988 a stone monument was built to mark the Umschlagplatz.[76] There is also a small memorial at ul. Mila 18 to commemorate the site of the Socialist ŻOB underground headquarters during the Ghetto Uprising. In December 2012, a controversial statue of a kneeling and praying Adolf Hitler was installed in a courtyard of the ghetto. The artwork by Italian artist, Maurizio Cattelan, entitled "HIM", has received mixed reactions worldwide. Many feel that it is unnecessarily offensive, while others, such as Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, feel that it is thought-provoking, even "educational".[77] People of the Warsaw Ghetto This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Casualties Umschlagplatz Memorial on Stawki Street Borders of the ghetto are marked in remembrance of its victims Tosia Altman – ghetto resistance fighter, escaped the ghetto in 1943 uprising through the sewers. Died after she was caught by the Gestapo when the celluloid factory she was sheltering in caught fire. Mordechai Anielewicz – ghetto resistance leader in the ŻOB (alias Aniołek). Died with many of his comrades at their surrounded command post. Dawid Moryc Apfelbaum – ghetto resistance leader and commander of the ŻZW. Killed in action during the ghetto uprising.[a] Maria Ajzensztadt – singer known as the Nightingale of the Ghetto Adam Czerniaków – engineer and senator, head of the Warsaw Judenrat (Jewish council). Committed suicide in 1942. Paweł Finder – First Secretary of the Polish Workers' Party (PPR) from 1943 to 1944; killed by Germans in Warsaw Ruins 1944 Paweł Frenkiel – one of the leaders of ŻZW (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy – Jewish Military Union). Mira Fuchrer – ghetto resistance fighter in the ZOB. Died with many of her comrades at their surrounded command post. Yitzhak Gitterman – director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, resistance fighter. Killed in action during the ghetto uprising. Itzhak Katzenelson – teacher, poet, dramatist and resistance fighter. Executed at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. Janusz Korczak – children's author, pediatrician, child pedagogist and orphanage owner. Executed along with his orphans at Treblinka in August, 1942, after refusing an offer to leave his orphans and escape. Simon Pullman – conductor of the Warsaw Ghetto symphony orchestra. Executed at Treblinka in 1942. Emanuel Ringelblum – historian, politician and social worker, leader of the ghetto chroniclers. Discovered in Warsaw and executed together with his family in 1944. Kalonymus Kalman Shapira – grand rabbi of Piaseczno. Executed at Trawniki during Aktion Erntefest in 1943. Gershon Sirota – cantor known as the "Jewish Caruso". Was killed during the uprising. Władysław Szlengel – poet of the Warsaw ghetto; killed in 1943 uprising. Lidia Zamenhof – Baháʼí-Esperantist daughter of Dr. L. L. Zamenhof. Executed at Treblinka in 1942. Nathalie Zand – neurologist and research scientist. Practiced as a doctor within the ghetto. Thought to have been executed at Pawiak prison, September 1942. Yitzhak Suknik – fighter in the Jewish Fighting Organization. Was shot and killed in combat in an escape operation. Survivors Rokhl Auerbakh – Polish Jewish writer and essayist; member of the ghetto chroniclers group led by Emanuel Ringelblum. Died in 1976. Mary Berg – 15-year-old diarist (in 1939) born to American mother in Łódź; Pawiak internee exchanged for German POWs in March 1944.[16] Died in 2013. Adolf Berman – leader in Jewish Underground in Warsaw; member of Zegota and CENTOS – died in 1978. Yitzhak Zuckerman testifies for the prosecution during the trial of Adolf Eichmann Yitzhak Zuckerman – ghetto resistance leader ("Antek"), founder of the Lohamei HaGeta'ot kibbutz in Israel. Died in 1981. Marek Edelman – Polish political and social activist, cardiologist. He was the last surviving leader of the ŻOB. Died in 2009. Jack P. Eisner – author of "The Survivor of the Holocaust". The young boy who hung the Jewish flag atop the burning building in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. ZZW fighter. Commemorator of the Holocaust. Died in 2003.[b] Ruben Feldschu (Ben Shem) (1900–1980) – Zionist author and political activist[80] Joseph Friedenson – editor of Dos Yiddishe Vort. Died in 2013. Bronisław Geremek – Polish social historian and politician. Died in 2008. Martin Gray – Soviet secret police officer and American and French writer. Died in 2016. Mietek Grocher – Swedish author and the Holocaust remembrance activist. Alexander J. Groth – Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. Author of Lincoln: Authoritarian Savior and Democracies Against Hitler: Myth, Reality and Prologue, Holocaust Voices, Accomplices: Roosevelt, Churchill and the Holocaust. Ludwik Hirszfeld – Polish microbiologist and serologist, died in 1954. Morton Kamien – Polish-American economist, died in 2011. Zivia Lubetkin – ghetto resistance leader, Aliyah Bet activist, later married Cukierman. Died in 1976. Vladka Meed – ghetto resistance member; author. Died in 2012. Uri Orlev – Israeli author of the semi-autobiographical novel The Island on Bird Street recounting his experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto. Marcel Reich-Ranicki – German literary critic. Died in 2013. Sol Rosenberg – American steel industrialist and philanthropist. Died in 2009.[81] Simcha Rotem – ghetto resistance fighter ("Kazik"), Berihah activist, post-war Nazi hunter. Died in 2018. Uri Shulevitz – book illustrator Władysław Szpilman – Polish pianist, composer and writer, subject of the film The Pianist by Roman Polanski (survivor of the Kraków Ghetto) based on his memoir. Died in 2000. Menachem Mendel Taub – Kaliver rabbi in Israel. Died in 2019. Dawid Wdowiński – psychiatrist, political leader of the Irgun in Poland, resistance leader of the ŻZW, American memoirist. Died in 1970. Bogdan-Dawid Wojdowski – writer and the author of the most renowned novel about the Warsaw Ghetto, Chleb rzucony umarłym (1971; Bread for the Departed, 1998) Associated people Władysław Bartoszewski – Polish resistance activist of the Żegota organization in Warsaw. Henryk Iwański – Polish resistance officer in the charge of support for the ghetto. Died in 1978.[c] Jan Karski – Polish resistance courier who reported on the ghetto for the Allies. Died in 2000. Zofia Kossak-Szczucka – Polish writer and World War II resistance fighter and co-founder of Żegota. Died in 1968. Irena Sendler – Polish resistance member who smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the ghetto and helped to hide them, subject of the film The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. Died in 2008. Szmul Zygielbojm – Polish-Jewish socialist politician. In 1943 committed suicide in London in an act of protest against the Allied indifference to the death of the Warsaw Ghetto. Ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1945; left, the Krasiński's Garden and Swiętojerska street. The entire city district was leveled by the German forces according to order from Adolf Hitler after the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 See also Executions in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto (1943–1944) Group 13 – Jewish collaborationist secret police, also known as Jewish Gestapo, led by Abraham Gancwajch Odilo Globocnik – The Nazi leader responsible for the liquidation of the ghetto Ludwig Hahn – Chief of the Sicherheitspolizei and the Sicherheitsdienst (KdS) for Warsaw Mila 18 – book by Leon Uris The Silver Sword – novel focused on a family from Warsaw during the Second World War Stroop Report – official Nazi record of the Ghetto Uprising, 19 April 1943 – 24 May 1943 Timeline of Treblinka extermination camp Warschauer Kniefall – gesture by Chancellor of Germany Willy Brandt Polish (Polish: język polski, [ˈjɛw̃zɨk ˈpɔlskʲi] (listen), polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɨzna] (listen) or simply polski, [ˈpɔlskʲi] (listen)) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script.[9] It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In addition to being the official language of Poland, it is also used by the Polish diaspora. There are over 50 million[10][11] Polish speakers around the world. It ranks as the sixth most-spoken among languages of the European Union.[12] Polish is subdivided into regional dialects and maintains strict T–V distinction pronouns, honorifics, and various forms of formalities when addressing individuals.[13] The traditional 32-letter Polish alphabet has nine additions (ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż) to the letters of the basic 26-letter Latin alphabet, while removing three (x, q, v). Those three letters are at times included in an extended 35-letter alphabet, although they are not used in native words.[14] The traditional set comprises 23 consonants and 9 written vowels, including two nasal vowels (ę, ą) defined by a reversed diacritic hook called an ogonek.[15] Polish is a synthetic and fusional language which has seven grammatical cases.[16] It is one of very few languages in the world possessing continuous penultimate stress (with only a few exceptions) and the only in its group having an abundance of palatal consonants.[17] Contemporary Polish developed in the 1700s as the successor to the medieval Old Polish (10th–16th centuries) and Middle Polish (16th–18th centuries).[18] Among the major languages, it is most closely related to Slovak[19] and Czech[20] but differs in terms of pronunciation and general grammar. In addition, Polish was profoundly influenced by Latin and other Romance languages like Italian and French as well as Germanic languages (most notably German), which contributed to a large number of loanwords and similar grammatical structures.[21][22][23] Extensive usage of nonstandard dialects has also shaped the standard language; considerable colloquialisms and expressions were directly borrowed from German or Yiddish and subsequently adopted into the vernacular of Polish which is in everyday use.[24][25] Historically, Polish was a lingua franca,[26][27] important both diplomatically and academically in Central and part of Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by approximately 38 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a second language in eastern Germany, northern Czech Republic and Slovakia, western parts of Belarus and Ukraine as well as in southeast Lithuania and Latvia. Because of the emigration from Poland during different time periods, most notably after World War II, millions of Polish speakers can also be found in countries such as Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Israel, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. History Main article: History of Polish Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. Mieszko I, ruler of the Polans tribe from the Greater Poland region, united a few culturally and linguistically related tribes from the basins of the Vistula and Oder before eventually accepting baptism in 966. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, which until then had existed only as a spoken language.[28] The closest relatives of Polish are the Elbe and Baltic Sea Lechitic dialects (Polabian and Pomeranian varieties). All of them, except Kashubian, are extinct.[29] The precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish descends from the unattested Proto-Slavic language. The Book of Henryków is the earliest document to include a sentence written entirely in what can be interpreted as Old Polish – Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ty poziwai, meaning "let me grind, and you have a rest" highlighted in red. The Book of Henryków (Polish: Księga henrykowska, Latin: Liber fundationis claustri Sanctae Mariae Virginis in Heinrichau), contains the earliest known sentence written in the Polish language: Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai (in modern orthography: Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj; the corresponding sentence in modern Polish: Daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpoczywaj or Pozwól, że ja będę mełł, a ty odpocznij; and in English: Come, let me grind, and you take a rest), written around 1280. The book is exhibited in the Archdiocesal Museum in Wrocław, and as of 2015 has been added to UNESCO's "Memory of the World" list. [30] The medieval recorder of this phrase, the Cistercian monk Peter of the Henryków monastery, noted that "Hoc est in polonico" ("This is in Polish").[31][32][33] The earliest treatise on Polish orthography was written by Jakub Parkosz [pl] around 1470.[34] The first printed book in Polish appeared in either 1508[35] or 1513,[36] while the oldest Polish newspaper was established in 1661.[37] Starting in the 1520s, large numbers of books in the Polish language were published, contributing to increased homogeneity of grammar and orthography.[38] The writing system achieved its overall form in the 16th century,[29][39] which is also regarded as the "Golden Age of Polish literature".[36] The orthography was modified in the 19th century and in 1936.[29] Tomasz Kamusella notes that "Polish is the oldest, non-ecclesiastical, written Slavic language with a continuous tradition of literacy and official use, which has lasted unbroken from the 16th century to this day."[40] Polish evolved into the main sociolect of the nobles in Poland–Lithuania in the 15th century.[39] The history of Polish as a language of state governance begins in the 16th century in the Kingdom of Poland. Over the later centuries, Polish served as the official language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Congress Poland, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, and as the administrative language in the Russian Empire's Western Krai. The growth of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's influence gave Polish the status of lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe.[41] Geographic distribution See also: Geographical distribution of Polish speakers Poland is one of the most linguistically homogeneous European countries; nearly 97% of Poland's citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in areas which were once administered or occupied by Poland, notably in neighboring Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. Polish is the most widely-used minority language in Lithuania's Vilnius County, by 26% of the population, according to the 2001 census results, as Vilnius was part of Poland from 1922 until 1939. Polish is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. In Ukraine, it is most common in the western parts of Lviv and Volyn Oblasts, while in West Belarus it is used by the significant Polish minority, especially in the Brest and Grodno regions and in areas along the Lithuanian border. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries. In the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. According to the 2000 United States Census, 667,414 Americans of age five years and over reported Polish as the language spoken at home, which is about 1.4% of people who speak languages other than English, 0.25% of the US population, and 6% of the Polish-American population. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census (over 50%) were found in three states: Illinois (185,749), New York (111,740), and New Jersey (74,663).[42] Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services (which has a large number of branches in all of these areas) offers services available in Polish at all of their cash machines in addition to English and Spanish.[43] According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England and Wales who consider Polish to be their "main" language. In Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population: There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto (91,810 speakers) and Montreal.[44] The geographical distribution of the Polish language was greatly affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II and Polish population transfers (1944–46). Poles settled in the "Recovered Territories" in the west and north, which had previously been mostly German-speaking. Some Poles remained in the previously Polish-ruled territories in the east that were annexed by the USSR, resulting in the present-day Polish-speaking minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, although many Poles were expelled or emigrated from those areas to areas within Poland's new borders. To the east of Poland, the most significant Polish minority lives in a long, narrow strip along either side of the Lithuania-Belarus border. Meanwhile, the flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50), as well as the expulsion of Ukrainians and Operation Vistula, the 1947 forced resettlement of Ukrainian minorities to the Recovered Territories in the west of the country, contributed to the country's linguistic homogeneity. Geographic language distribution maps of Poland from pre-WWII to present The "Recovered Territories" (in pink) were parts of Germany, including the Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk), that became part of Poland after World War II. The territory shown in grey was lost to the Soviet Union, which expelled many Poles from the area. Geographical distribution of the Polish language (green) and other Central and Eastern European languages and dialects. A large Polish-speaking diaspora remains in the countries located east of Poland that were once the Eastern Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939). Knowledge of the Polish language within parts of Europe. Polish is not a majority language anywhere outside of Poland, though Polish minority groups are present in some neighboring countries. Dialects Main article: Dialects of Polish The oldest printed text in Polish – Statuta synodalia Episcoporum Wratislaviensis printed in 1475 in Wrocław by Kasper Elyan. The Polish alphabet contains 32 letters. Q, V and X are not used in the Polish language. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak Polish somewhat differently, although the differences between modern-day vernacular varieties and standard Polish (język ogólnopolski) appear relatively slight. Most of the middle aged and young speak vernaculars close to standard Polish, while the traditional dialects are preserved among older people in rural areas.[45] First-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty recognizing the regional and social differences. The modern standard dialect, often termed as "correct Polish",[45] is spoken or at least understood throughout the entire country.[20] Polish has traditionally been described as consisting of four or five main regional dialects: Greater Polish, spoken in the west Lesser Polish, spoken in the south and southeast Masovian, spoken throughout the central and eastern parts of the country Silesian, spoken in the southwest (also considered a separate language, see comment below) Kashubian, spoken in Pomerania west of Gdańsk on the Baltic Sea, is thought of either as a fifth Polish dialect or a distinct language, depending on the criteria used.[46][47] It contains a number of features not found elsewhere in Poland, e.g. nine distinct oral vowels (vs. the six of standard Polish) and (in the northern dialects) phonemic word stress, an archaic feature preserved from Common Slavic times and not found anywhere else among the West Slavic languages. However, it "lacks most of the linguistic and social determinants of language-hood".[48] Many linguistic sources categorize Silesian as a dialect of Polish.[49][50] However, many Silesians consider themselves a separate ethnicity and have been advocating for the recognition of a Silesian language. According to the last official census in Poland in 2011, over half a million people declared Silesian as their native language. Many sociolinguists (e.g. Tomasz Kamusella,[51] Agnieszka Pianka, Alfred F. Majewicz,[52] Tomasz Wicherkiewicz)[53] assume that extralinguistic criteria decide whether a lect is an independent language or a dialect: speakers of the speech variety or/and political decisions, and this is dynamic (i.e. it changes over time). Also, research organizations such as SIL International[54] and resources for the academic field of linguistics such as Ethnologue,[55] Linguist List[56] and others, for example the Ministry of Administration and Digitization[57] recognized the Silesian language. In July 2007, the Silesian language was recognized by ISO, and was attributed an ISO code of szl. Some additional characteristic but less widespread regional dialects include: The distinctive dialect of the Gorals (Góralski) occurs in the mountainous area bordering the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Gorals ("Highlanders") take great pride in their culture and the dialect. It exhibits some cultural influences from the Vlach shepherds who migrated from Wallachia (southern Romania) in the 14th–17th centuries.[58] The Poznański dialect, spoken in Poznań and to some extent in the whole region of the former Prussian Partition (excluding Upper Silesia), with noticeable German influences. In the northern and western (formerly German) regions where Poles from the territories annexed by the Soviet Union resettled after World War II, the older generation speaks a dialect of Polish characteristic of the Kresy that includes a longer pronunciation of vowels. Poles living in Lithuania (particularly in the Vilnius region), in Belarus (particularly the northwest), and in the northeast of Poland continue to speak the Eastern Borderlands dialect, which sounds "slushed" (in Polish described as zaciąganie z ruska, "speaking with a Ruthenian drawl") and is easily distinguishable. Some city dwellers, especially the less affluent population, had their own distinctive dialects – for example, the Warsaw dialect, still spoken by some of the population of Praga on the eastern bank of the Vistula. However, these city dialects are now mostly extinct due to assimilation with standard Polish. Many Poles living in emigrant communities (for example, in the United States), whose families left Poland just after World War II, retain a number of minor features of Polish vocabulary as spoken in the first half of the 20th century that now sound archaic to contemporary visitors from Poland. Polish linguistics has been characterized by a strong strive towards promoting prescriptive ideas of language intervention and usage uniformity,[59] along with normatively-oriented notions of language "correctness"[45] (unusual by Western standards).[59] Phonology Main article: Polish phonology 1:09 Spoken Polish in a neutral informative tone A Polish speaker, recorded in Poland Vowels Polish has six oral vowels (seven oral vowels in written form), which are all monophthongs, and two nasal vowels. The oral vowels are /i/ (spelled i), /ɨ/ (spelled y and also transcribed as /ɘ/), /ɛ/ (spelled e), /a/ (spelled a), /ɔ/ (spelled o) and /u/ (spelled u and ó as separate letters). The nasal vowels are /ɛ̃/ (spelled ę) and /ɔ̃/ (spelled ą). Unlike Czech or Slovak, Polish does not retain phonemic vowel length — the letter ó, which formerly represented lengthened /ɔ/ in older forms of the language, is now vestigial and instead corresponds to /u/. Front Central Back Close i ɨ u Mid ɛ ɔ Open a Consonants The Polish consonant system shows more complexity: its characteristic features include the series of affricate and palatal consonants that resulted from four Proto-Slavic palatalizations and two further palatalizations that took place in Polish. The full set of consonants, together with their most common spellings, can be presented as follows (although other phonological analyses exist): Labial Dental/ alveolar Retroflex (Alveolo-) palatal Velar plain palatalized Nasal m n ɲ Plosive voiceless p t k kʲ voiced b d ɡ ɡʲ Affricate voiceless t͡s t͡ʂ t͡ɕ voiced d͡z d͡ʐ d͡ʑ Fricative voiceless f s ʂ ɕ x xʲ voiced v z ʐ ʑ Tap/trill r Approximant (w) l j w Polish oral vowels depicted on a vowel chart. Main allophones (in black) are in broad transcription, whereas positional allophones (in red and green) are in narrow transcription. Allophones with red dots appear in palatal contexts. The central vowel [ɐ] is an unstressed allophone of /ɛ, ɔ, a/ in certain contexts In some dialects the sounds of the digraph ch and of the letter h are distinct, the r can be also said as an [ɾ]. Also, in some dialects the sounds [ɕ] and [ʂ], [ʑ] and [ʐ], [t͡ɕ] and [ʈ͡ʂ] and [d͡ʑ] and [ɖ͡ʐ] can be merged to [ʃ], [ʒ], [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ] Neutralization occurs between voiced–voiceless consonant pairs in certain environments, at the end of words (where devoicing occurs) and in certain consonant clusters (where assimilation occurs). For details, see Voicing and devoicing in the article on Polish phonology. Most Polish words are paroxytones (that is, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable of a polysyllabic word), although there are exceptions. Consonant distribution Polish permits complex consonant clusters, which historically often arose from the disappearance of yers. Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants.[60] Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as bezwzględny [bɛzˈvzɡlɛndnɨ] ('absolute' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), źdźbło [ˈʑd͡ʑbwɔ] ('blade of grass'), wstrząs [ˈfstʂɔw̃s] ('shock'), and krnąbrność [ˈkrnɔmbrnɔɕt͡ɕ] ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from a verse by Jan Brzechwa) is W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie [fʂt͡ʂɛbʐɛˈʂɨɲɛ ˈxʂɔw̃ʂt͡ʂ ˈbʐmi fˈtʂt͡ɕiɲɛ] ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed'). Unlike languages such as Czech, Polish does not have syllabic consonants – the nucleus of a syllable is always a vowel.[61] The consonant /j/ is restricted to positions adjacent to a vowel. It also cannot precede the letter y. Prosody The predominant stress pattern in Polish is penultimate stress – in a word of more than one syllable, the next-to-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress, e.g. in a four-syllable word, where the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first.[62] Each vowel represents one syllable, although the letter i normally does not represent a vowel when it precedes another vowel (it represents /j/, palatalization of the preceding consonant, or both depending on analysis). Also the letters u and i sometimes represent only semivowels when they follow another vowel, as in autor /ˈawtɔr/ ('author'), mostly in loanwords (so not in native nauka /naˈu.ka/ 'science, the act of learning', for example, nor in nativized Mateusz /maˈte.uʂ/ 'Matthew'). A formal-tone informative sign in Polish, with a composition of vowels and consonants and a mixture of long, medium and short syllables Some loanwords, particularly from the classical languages, have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-from-last) syllable. For example, fizyka (/ˈfizɨka/) ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. This may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement, for example muzyka /ˈmuzɨka/ 'music' vs. muzyka /muˈzɨka/ – genitive singular of muzyk 'musician'. When additional syllables are added to such words through inflection or suffixation, the stress normally becomes regular. For example, uniwersytet (/uɲiˈvɛrsɨtɛt/, 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive uniwersytetu (/uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛtu/) and derived adjective uniwersytecki (/uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛt͡skʲi/) have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Loanwords generally become nativized to have penultimate stress.[63] In psycholinguistic experiments, speakers of Polish have been demonstrated to be sensitive to the distinction between regular penultimate and exceptional antepenultimate stress.[64] Another class of exceptions is verbs with the conditional endings -by, -bym, -byśmy, etc. These endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress; for example, zrobiłbym ('I would do') is stressed on the first syllable, and zrobilibyśmy ('we would do') on the second. According to prescriptive authorities, the same applies to the first and second person plural past tense endings -śmy, -ście, although this rule is often ignored in colloquial speech (so zrobiliśmy 'we did' should be prescriptively stressed on the second syllable, although in practice it is commonly stressed on the third as zrobiliśmy).[65] These irregular stress patterns are explained by the fact that these endings are detachable clitics rather than true verbal inflections: for example, instead of kogo zobaczyliście? ('whom did you see?') it is possible to say kogoście zobaczyli? – here kogo retains its usual stress (first syllable) in spite of the attachment of the clitic. Reanalysis of the endings as inflections when attached to verbs causes the different colloquial stress patterns. These stress patterns are considered part of a "usable" norm of standard Polish - in contrast to the "model" ("high") norm.[66] Some common word combinations are stressed as if they were a single word. This applies in particular to many combinations of preposition plus a personal pronoun, such as do niej ('to her'), na nas ('on us'), przeze mnie ('because of me'), all stressed on the bolded syllable. Orthography Main articles: Polish orthography and Polish Braille The Polish alphabet derives from the Latin script but includes certain additional letters formed using diacritics. The Polish alphabet was one of three major forms of Latin-based orthography developed for Western and some South Slavic languages, the others being Czech orthography and Croatian orthography, the last of these being a 19th-century invention trying to make a compromise between the first two. Kashubian uses a Polish-based system, Slovak uses a Czech-based system, and Slovene follows the Croatian one; the Sorbian languages blend the Polish and the Czech ones. Historically, Poland's once diverse and multi-ethnic population utilized many forms of scripture to write Polish. For instance, Lipka Tatars and Muslims inhabiting the eastern parts of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth wrote Polish in the Arabic alphabet.[67] The Cyrillic script is used to a certain extent today by Polish speakers in Western Belarus, especially for religious texts.[68] The diacritics used in the Polish alphabet are the kreska (graphically similar to the acute accent) over the letters ć, ń, ó, ś, ź and through the letter in ł; the kropka (superior dot) over the letter ż, and the ogonek ("little tail") under the letters ą, ę. The letters q, v, x are used only in foreign words and names.[14] Polish orthography is largely phonemic—there is a consistent correspondence between letters (or digraphs and trigraphs) and phonemes (for exceptions see below). The letters of the alphabet and their normal phonemic values are listed in the following table. The Jakub Wujek Bible in Polish, 1599 print. The letters á and é were subsequently abolished, but survive in Czech. Upper case Lower case Phonemic value(s) Upper case Lower case Phonemic value(s) A a /a/ Ń ń /ɲ/ Ą ą /ɔ̃/, [ɔn], [ɔm] O o /ɔ/ B b /b/ (/p/) Ó ó /u/ C c /ts/ P p /p/ Ć ć /tɕ/ Q q Only loanwords D d /d/ (/t/) R r /r/ E e /ɛ/ S s /s/ Ę ę /ɛ̃/, [ɛn], [ɛm], /ɛ/ Ś ś /ɕ/ F f /f/ T t /t/ G g /ɡ/ (/k/) U u /u/ H h /x/ (/ɣ/) V v Only loanwords I i /i/, /j/ W w /v/ (/f/) J j /j/ X x Only loanwords K k /k/ Y y /ɨ/, /ɘ/ L l /l/ Z z /z/ (/s/) Ł ł /w/, /ɫ/ Ź ź /ʑ/ (/ɕ/) M m /m/ Ż ż /ʐ/ (/ʂ/) N n /n/ The following digraphs and trigraphs are used: Digraph Phonemic value(s) Digraph/trigraph (before a vowel) Phonemic value(s) ch /x/ ci /tɕ/ cz /tʂ/ dzi /dʑ/ dz /dz/ (/ts/) gi /ɡʲ/ dź /dʑ/ (/tɕ/) (c)hi /xʲ/ dż /dʐ/ (/tʂ/) ki /kʲ/ rz /ʐ/ (/ʂ/) ni /ɲ/ sz /ʂ/ si /ɕ/ zi /ʑ/ Voiced consonant letters frequently come to represent voiceless sounds (as shown in the tables); this occurs at the end of words and in certain clusters, due to the neutralization mentioned in the Phonology section above. Occasionally also voiceless consonant letters can represent voiced sounds in clusters. The spelling rule for the palatal sounds /ɕ/, /ʑ/, /tɕ/, /dʑ/ and /ɲ/ is as follows: before the vowel i the plain letters s, z, c, dz, n are used; before other vowels the combinations si, zi, ci, dzi, ni are used; when not followed by a vowel the diacritic forms ś, ź, ć, dź, ń are used. For example, the s in siwy ("grey-haired"), the si in siarka ("sulfur") and the ś in święty ("holy") all represent the sound /ɕ/. The exceptions to the above rule are certain loanwords from Latin, Italian, French, Russian or English—where s before i is pronounced as s, e.g. sinus, sinologia, do re mi fa sol la si do, Saint-Simon i saint-simoniści, Sierioża, Siergiej, Singapur, singiel. In other loanwords the vowel i is changed to y, e.g. Syria, Sybir, synchronizacja, Syrakuzy. The following table shows the correspondence between the sounds and spelling: Digraphs and trigraphs are used: Phonemic value Single letter/Digraph (in pausa or before a consonant) Digraph/Trigraph (before a vowel) Single letter/Digraph (before the vowel i) /tɕ/ ć ci c /dʑ/ dź dzi dz /ɕ/ ś si s /ʑ/ ź zi z /ɲ/ ń ni n Similar principles apply to /kʲ/, /ɡʲ/, /xʲ/ and /lʲ/, except that these can only occur before vowels, so the spellings are k, g, (c)h, l before i, and ki, gi, (c)hi, li otherwise. Most Polish speakers, however, do not consider palatalization of k, g, (c)h or l as creating new sounds. Except in the cases mentioned above, the letter i if followed by another vowel in the same word usually represents /j/, yet a palatalization of the previous consonant is always assumed. The reverse case, where the consonant remains unpalatalized but is followed by a palatalized consonant, is written by using j instead of i: for example, zjeść, "to eat up". The letters ą and ę, when followed by plosives and affricates, represent an oral vowel followed by a nasal consonant, rather than a nasal vowel. For example, ą in dąb ("oak") is pronounced [ɔm], and ę in tęcza ("rainbow") is pronounced [ɛn] (the nasal assimilates to the following consonant). When followed by l or ł (for example przyjęli, przyjęły), ę is pronounced as just e. When ę is at the end of the word it is often pronounced as just [ɛ]. Depending on the word, the phoneme /x/ can be spelt h or ch, the phoneme /ʐ/ can be spelt ż or rz, and /u/ can be spelt u or ó. In several cases it determines the meaning, for example: może ("maybe") and morze ("sea"). In occasional words, letters that normally form a digraph are pronounced separately. For example, rz represents /rz/, not /ʐ/, in words like zamarzać ("freeze") and in the name Tarzan. Doubled letters are usually pronounced as a single, lengthened consonant, however, some speakers might pronounce the combination as two separate sounds. There are certain clusters where a written consonant would not be pronounced. For example, the ł in the word jabłko ("apple") might be omitted in ordinary speech, leading to the pronunciation japko. Grammar Main article: Polish grammar Polish is a highly fusional language with relatively free word order, although the dominant arrangement is subject–verb–object (SVO). There are no articles, and subject pronouns are often dropped. Nouns belong to one of three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. The masculine gender is also divided into subgenders: animate vs inanimate in the singular, human vs nonhuman in the plural. There are seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative. Adjectives agree with nouns in terms of gender, case, and number. Attributive adjectives most commonly precede the noun, although in certain cases, especially in fixed phrases (like język polski, "Polish (language)"), the noun may come first; the rule of thumb is that generic descriptive adjectives normally precede (e.g. piękny kwiat, "beautiful flower") while categorizing adjectives often follow the noun (e.g. węgiel kamienny, "black coal"). Most short adjectives and their derived adverbs form comparatives and superlatives by inflection (the superlative is formed by prefixing naj- to the comparative). Verbs are of imperfective or perfective aspect, often occurring in pairs. Imperfective verbs have a present tense, past tense, compound future tense (except for być "to be", which has a simple future będę etc., this in turn being used to form the compound future of other verbs), subjunctive/conditional (formed with the detachable particle by), imperatives, an infinitive, present participle, present gerund and past participle. Perfective verbs have a simple future tense (formed like the present tense of imperfective verbs), past tense, subjunctive/conditional, imperatives, infinitive, present gerund and past participle. Conjugated verb forms agree with their subject in terms of person, number, and (in the case of past tense and subjunctive/conditional forms) gender. Passive-type constructions can be made using the auxiliary być or zostać ("become") with the passive participle. There is also an impersonal construction where the active verb is used (in third person singular) with no subject, but with the reflexive pronoun się present to indicate a general, unspecified subject (as in pije się wódkę "vodka is being drunk"—note that wódka appears in the accusative). A similar sentence type in the past tense uses the passive participle with the ending -o, as in widziano ludzi ("people were seen"). As in other Slavic languages, there are also subjectless sentences formed using such words as można ("it is possible") together with an infinitive. Yes–no questions (both direct and indirect) are formed by placing the word czy ("whether") at the start, although it's often omitted in casual speech. Negation uses the word nie, before the verb or other item being negated; nie is still added before the verb even if the sentence also contains other negatives such as nigdy ("never") or nic ("nothing"), effectively creating a double negative. Cardinal numbers have a complex system of inflection and agreement. Zero and cardinal numbers higher than five (except for those ending with the digit 2, 3 or 4 but not ending with 12, 13 or 14) govern the genitive case rather than the nominative or accusative. Special forms of numbers (collective numerals) are used with certain classes of noun, which include dziecko ("child") and exclusively plural nouns such as drzwi ("door"). Borrowed words Poland was once a multi-ethnic nation with many minorities that contributed to the Polish language. Top left: cauliflower (Polish kalafior from Italian cavolfiore). Top right: rope (sznur from German Schnur). Bottom left: shark (rekin from French requin). Bottom right: teacher (belfer (colloquial) from Yiddish בעלפֿער belfer) Polish has, over the centuries, borrowed a number of words from other languages. When borrowing, pronunciation was adapted to Polish phonemes and spelling was altered to match Polish orthography. In addition, word endings are liberally applied to almost any word to produce verbs, nouns, adjectives, as well as adding the appropriate endings for cases of nouns, adjectives, diminutives, double-diminutives, augmentatives, etc. Depending on the historical period, borrowing has proceeded from various languages. Notable influences have been Latin (10th–18th centuries),[69] Czech (10th and 14th–15th centuries), Italian (16th–17th centuries),[69] French (17th–19th centuries),[69] German (13–15th and 18th–20th centuries), Hungarian (15th–16th centuries)[69] and Turkish (17th century). Currently, English words are the most common imports to Polish.[70] The Latin language, for a very long time the only official language of the Polish state, has had a great influence on Polish. Many Polish words were direct borrowings or calques (e.g. rzeczpospolita from res publica) from Latin. Latin was known to a larger or smaller degree by most of the numerous szlachta in the 16th to 18th centuries (and it continued to be extensively taught at secondary schools until World War II). Apart from dozens of loanwords, its influence can also be seen in a number of verbatim Latin phrases in Polish literature (especially from the 19th century and earlier). During the 12th and 13th centuries, Mongolian words were brought to the Polish language during wars with the armies of Genghis Khan and his descendants, e.g. dzida (spear) and szereg (a line or row).[70] Words from Czech, an important influence during the 10th and 14th–15th centuries include sejm, hańba and brama.[70] In 1518, the Polish king Sigismund I the Old married Bona Sforza, the niece of the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian, who introduced Italian cuisine to Poland, especially vegetables.[71] Hence, words from Italian include pomidor from "pomodoro" (tomato), kalafior from "cavolfiore" (cauliflower), and pomarańcza, a portmanteau from Italian "pomo" (pome) plus "arancio" (orange). A later word of Italian origin is autostrada (from Italian "autostrada", highway).[71] In the 18th century, with the rising prominence of France in Europe, French supplanted Latin as an important source of words. Some French borrowings also date from the Napoleonic era, when the Poles were enthusiastic supporters of Napoleon. Examples include ekran (from French "écran", screen), abażur ("abat-jour", lamp shade), rekin ("requin", shark), meble ("meuble", furniture), bagaż ("bagage", luggage), walizka ("valise", suitcase), fotel ("fauteuil", armchair), plaża ("plage", beach) and koszmar ("cauchemar", nightmare). Some place names have also been adapted from French, such as the Warsaw borough of Żoliborz ("joli bord" = beautiful riverside), as well as the town of Żyrardów (from the name Girard, with the Polish suffix -ów attached to refer to the founder of the town).[72] Common handbag in Polish is called a torba, a word directly derived from the Turkish language. Turkish loanwords are common as Poland bordered the Ottoman Empire for centuries[failed verification] Many words were borrowed from the German language from the sizable German population in Polish cities during medieval times. German words found in the Polish language are often connected with trade, the building industry, civic rights and city life. Some words were assimilated verbatim, for example handel (trade) and dach (roof); others are pronounced similarly, but differ in writing Schnur—sznur (cord). As a result of being neighbors with Germany, Polish has many German expressions which have become literally translated (calques). The regional dialects of Upper Silesia and Masuria (Modern Polish East Prussia) have noticeably more German loanwords than other varieties. The contacts with Ottoman Turkey in the 17th century brought many new words, some of them still in use, such as: jar ("yar" deep valley), szaszłyk ("şişlik" shish kebab), filiżanka ("fincan" cup), arbuz ("karpuz" watermelon), dywan ("divan" carpet),[73] etc. From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 through the early years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country of Jews in Europe. Known as the "paradise for the Jews",[74][75] it became a shelter for persecuted and expelled European Jewish communities and the home to the world's largest Jewish community of the time. As a result, many Polish words come from Yiddish, spoken by the large Polish Jewish population that existed until the Holocaust. Borrowed Yiddish words include bachor (an unruly boy or child), bajzel (slang for mess), belfer (slang for teacher), ciuchy (slang for clothing), cymes (slang for very tasty food), geszeft (slang for business), kitel (slang for apron), machlojka (slang for scam), mamona (money), manele (slang for oddments), myszygene (slang for lunatic), pinda (slang for girl, pejoratively), plajta (slang for bankruptcy), rejwach (noise), szmal (slang for money), and trefny (dodgy).[76] The mountain dialects of the Górale in southern Poland, have quite a number of words borrowed from Hungarian (e.g. baca, gazda, juhas, hejnał) and Romanian as a result of historical contacts with Hungarian-dominated Slovakia and Wallachian herders who travelled north along the Carpathians.[77] Thieves' slang includes such words as kimać (to sleep) or majcher (knife) of Greek origin, considered then unknown to the outside world.[78] In addition, Turkish and Tatar have exerted influence upon the vocabulary of war, names of oriental costumes etc.[69] Russian borrowings began to make their way into Polish from the second half of the 19th century on.[69] Polish has also received an intensive number of English loanwords, particularly after World War II.[69] Recent loanwords come primarily from the English language, mainly those that have Latin or Greek roots, for example komputer (computer), korupcja (from 'corruption', but sense restricted to 'bribery') etc. Concatenation of parts of words (e.g. auto-moto), which is not native to Polish but common in English, for example, is also sometimes used. When borrowing English words, Polish often changes their spelling. For example, Latin suffix '-tio' corresponds to -cja. To make the word plural, -cja becomes -cje. Examples of this include inauguracja (inauguration), dewastacja (devastation), recepcja (reception), konurbacja (conurbation) and konotacje (connotations). Also, the digraph qu becomes kw (kwadrant = quadrant; kworum = quorum). Loanwords from Polish in other languages See also: List of English words of Polish origin There are numerous words in both Polish and Yiddish (Jewish) languages which are near-identical due to the large Jewish minority that once inhabited Poland. One example is the fishing rod, ווענטקע (ventke), borrowed directly from Polish wędka. The Polish language has influenced others. Particular influences appear in other Slavic languages and in German — due to their proximity and shared borders.[79] Examples of loanwords include German Grenze (border),[80] Dutch and Afrikaans grens from Polish granica; German Peitzker from Polish piskorz (weatherfish); German Zobel, French zibeline, Swedish sobel, and English sable from Polish soból; and ogonek ("little tail") — the word describing a diacritic hook-sign added below some letters in various alphabets. The common Germanic word quartz comes from the dialectical Old Polish kwardy. "Szmata," a Polish, Slovak and Ruthenian word for "mop" or "rag", became part of Yiddish. The Polish language exerted significant lexical influence upon Ukrainian, particularly in the fields of abstract and technical terminology; for example, the Ukrainian word панство panstvo (country) is derived from Polish państwo.[81] The Polish influence on Ukrainian is particularly marked on western Ukrainian dialects in western Ukraine, which for centuries was under Polish cultural domination.[81][20][69][82] There are a substantial number of Polish words which officially became part of Yiddish, once the main language of European Jews. These include basic items, objects or terms such as a bread bun (Polish bułka, Yiddish בולקע bulke), a fishing rod (wędka, ווענטקע ventke), an oak (dąb, דעמב demb), a meadow (łąka, לאָנקע lonke), a moustache (wąsy, וואָנצעס vontses) and a bladder (pęcherz, פּענכער penkher).[83] Quite a few culinary loanwords exist in German and in other languages, some of which describe distinctive features of Polish cuisine. These include German and English Quark from twaróg (a kind of fresh cheese) and German Gurke, English gherkin from ogórek (cucumber). The word pierogi (Polish dumplings) has spread internationally, as well as pączki (Polish donuts)[84] and kiełbasa (sausage, e.g. kolbaso in Esperanto). As far as pierogi concerned, the original Polish word is already in plural (sing. pieróg, plural pierogi; stem pierog-, plural ending -i; NB. o becomes ó in a closed syllable, like here in singular), yet it is commonly used with the English plural ending -s in Canada and United States of America, pierogis, thus making it a "double plural". A similar situation happened with the Polish loanword from English czipsy ("potato chips")—from English chips being already plural in the original (chip + -s), yet it has obtained the Polish plural ending -y. It is believed that the English word spruce was derived from Prusy, the Polish name for the region of Prussia. It became spruce because in Polish, z Prus, sounded like "spruce" in English (transl. "from Prussia") and was a generic term for commodities brought to England by Hanseatic merchants and because the tree was believed to have come from Polish Ducal Prussia.[85] However, it can be argued that the word is actually derived from the Old French term Pruce, meaning literally Prussia.[86] Literature Main article: Polish literature The manuscript of Pan Tadeusz held at Ossolineum in Wrocław. Adam Mickiewicz's signature is visible. The Polish language started to be used in literature in the Late Middle Ages. Notable works include the Holy Cross Sermons (13th/14th century), Bogurodzica (15th century) and Master Polikarp's Dialog with Death (15th century). The most influential Renaissance-era literary figures in Poland were poet Jan Kochanowski (Laments), Mikołaj Rej and Piotr Skarga (The Lives of the Saints) who established poetic patterns that would become integral to the Polish literary language and laid foundations for the modern Polish grammar. During the Age of Enlightenment in Poland, Ignacy Krasicki, known as "the Prince of Poets", wrote the first Polish novel called The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom as well as Fables and Parables. Another significant work form this period is The Manuscript Found in Saragossa written by Jan Potocki, a Polish nobleman, Egyptologist, linguist, and adventurer. In the Romantic Era, the most celebrated national poets, referred to as the Three Bards, were Adam Mickiewicz (Pan Tadeusz and Dziady), Juliusz Słowacki (Balladyna) and Zygmunt Krasiński (The Undivine Comedy). Poet and dramatist Cyprian Norwid is regarded by some scholars as the "Fourth Bard". Important positivist writers include Bolesław Prus (The Doll, Pharaoh), Henryk Sienkiewicz (author of numerous historical novels the most internationally acclaimed of which is Quo Vadis), Maria Konopnicka (Rota), Eliza Orzeszkowa (Nad Niemnem), Adam Asnyk and Gabriela Zapolska (The Morality of Mrs. Dulska). The period known as Young Poland produced such renowned literary figures as Stanisław Wyspiański (The Wedding), Stefan Żeromski (Homeless People, The Spring to Come), Władysław Reymont (The Peasants) and Leopold Staff. The prominent interbellum period authors include Maria Dąbrowska (Nights and Days), Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Insatiability), Julian Tuwim, Bruno Schulz, Bolesław Leśmian, Witold Gombrowicz and Zuzanna Ginczanka. Other notable writers and poets from Poland active during World War II and after are Aleksander Kamiński, Zbigniew Herbert, Stanisław Lem, Zofia Nałkowska, Tadeusz Borowski, Sławomir Mrożek, Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, Julia Hartwig, Marek Krajewski, Joanna Bator, Andrzej Sapkowski, Adam Zagajewski, Dorota Masłowska, Jerzy Pilch, Ryszard Kapuściński and Andrzej Stasiuk. Five people writing in the Polish language have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature: Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905), Władysław Reymont (1924), Czesław Miłosz (1980), Wisława Szymborska (1996) and Olga Tokarczuk (2018). Notable Polish language authors Mikołaj Rej (1505–1569) Mikołaj Rej (1505–1569) Jan Kochanowski (1530–1584) Jan Kochanowski (1530–1584) Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855) Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855) Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916) Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916) Władysław Reymont (1867–1925) Władysław Reymont (1867–1925) Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004) Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004) Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Andrzej Sapkowski (born 1948) Andrzej Sapkowski (born 1948) Olga Tokarczuk (born 1962) Olga Tokarczuk (born 1962) Sample text Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Polish:[87] Wszyscy ludzie rodzą się wolni i równi pod względem swej godności i swych praw. Są oni obdarzeni rozumem i sumieniem i powinni postępować wobec innych w duchu braterstwa. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:[88] All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. See also Polonism (words of Polish origin) Adam Mickiewicz Institute A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish-Language Civil-Registration Documents BABEL Speech Corpus Holy Cross Sermons Lechitic languages The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland. The Nazis developed their ideology based on previous politics of racism and German colonization of Eastern Europe and seized power in early 1933. In an attempt to force all German Jews to emigrate, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws and orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, around 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators. Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews throughout Europe. Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation or exhaustion. Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was very difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to the German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. The Nazi regime and its allies also killed millions of non-Jews, although Jews made up the majority of the civilian war-related deaths in some European countries. Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews' losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials, and culture. It has become central to Western historical consciousness as a symbol of the ultimate human evil. Terminology and scope Main article: Names of the Holocaust The term Holocaust, derived from a Greek word meaning "burnt offering",[2] has become the most common word used to describe the Nazi extermination of Jews in English and many other languages.[3] The term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to other groups that the Nazis targeted,[2][4] especially those targeted on a biological basis, in particular the Roma and Sinti, as well as Soviet prisoners of war and Polish and Soviet civilians.[5][6][7] All of these groups, however, were targeted for different reasons.[8] By the 1970s, the adjective Jewish was dropped as redundant and Holocaust, now capitalized, became the default term for the destruction of European Jews.[9] The Hebrew word Shoah ("catastrophic destruction") exclusively refers to Jewish victims.[3][4][5] The perpetrators used the phrase "Final Solution" to describe their actions towards Jews.[10] Background A postcard of a river with buildings behind it View of the Pegnitz with the Grand Synagogue of Nuremberg, destroyed in 1938 during the November pogroms Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years.[11] Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, Jews were subjected to antisemitism based on Christian theology, which blamed them for killing Jesus.[12][13] In the nineteenth century many European countries granted full citizenship rights to Jews in hopes that they would assimilate.[14] By the early twentieth century, most Jews in central and western Europe were well integrated into society, while in eastern Europe, where emancipation had arrived later, many Jews still lived in small towns, spoke Yiddish, and practiced Orthodox Judaism.[15] Political antisemitism positing the existence of a Jewish question and usually an international Jewish conspiracy emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century due to the rise of nationalism in Europe and industrialization that increased economic conflicts between Jews and non-Jews.[16][17] Some scientists began to categorize humans into different races and argued that there was a life or death struggle between them.[18] Many racists argued that Jews were a separate racial group alien to Europe.[19][20] The turn of the twentieth century saw a major effort to establish a German colonial empire overseas, leading to the Herero and Nama genocide and subsequent racial apartheid regime in South West Africa.[21][22] World War I (1914–1918) intensified nationalist and racist sentiments in Germany and other European countries.[23] Jews in eastern Europe were targeted by widespread pogroms.[24] Germany lost two million war dead and substantial territory;[23] opposition to the postwar settlement united Germans across the political spectrum.[25][26] The military promoted the untrue but compelling idea that, rather than being defeated on the battlefield, Germany had been stabbed in the back by socialists and Jews.[25][27] see caption 1919 Austrian postcard showing a Jew stabbing a German Army soldier in the back The Nazi Party was founded in the wake of the war,[28] and its ideology is often cited as the main factor explaining the Holocaust.[29] From the beginning, the Nazis—not unlike other nation-states in Europe—dreamed of a world without Jews, whom they identified as "the embodiment of everything that was wrong with modernity".[8] The Nazis defined the German nation as a racial community unbounded by Germany's physical borders[30] and sought to purge it of racially foreign and socially deficient elements.[25][31] The Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, were also obsessed with reversing Germany's territorial losses and acquiring additional Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe for colonization.[32][33] These ideas appealed to many Germans.[34] The Nazis promised to protect European civilization from the Soviet threat.[35] Hitler believed that Jews controlled the Soviet Union, as well as the Western powers, and were plotting to destroy Germany.[36][37][38] Rise of Nazi Germany see caption Territorial expansion of Germany from 1933 to 1941 Amidst a worldwide economic depression and political fragmentation, the Nazi Party rapidly increased its support, reaching a high of 37 percent in mid-1932 elections,[39][40] by campaigning on issues such as anticommunism and economic recovery.[41][42] Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933 in a backroom deal supported by right-wing politicians.[39] Within months, all other political parties were banned, the regime seized control of the media,[43] tens of thousands of political opponents—especially communists—were arrested, and a system of camps for extrajudicial imprisonment was set up.[44] The Nazi regime cracked down on crime and social outsiders—such as Roma and Sinti, homosexual men, and those perceived as workshy—through a variety of measures, including imprisonment in concentration camps.[45] The Nazis forcibly sterilized 400,000 people and subjected others to forced abortions for real or supposed hereditary illnesses.[46][47][48] Although the Nazis sought to control every aspect of public and private life,[49] Nazi repression was directed almost entirely against groups perceived as outside the national community. Most Germans had little to fear provided they did not oppose the new regime.[50][51] The new regime built popular support through economic growth, which partly occurred through state-led measures such as rearmament.[43] The annexations of Austria (1938), Sudetenland (1938), and Bohemia and Moravia (1939) also increased the Nazis' popular support.[52] Germans were inundated with propaganda both against Jews[43] and other groups targeted by the Nazis.[47] Persecution of Jews Main article: The Holocaust in Germany Further information: Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany The roughly 500,000 German Jews made up less than 1 percent of the country's population in 1933. They were wealthier on average than other Germans and largely assimilated, although a minority were recent immigrants from eastern Europe.[53][54][55] Various German government agencies, Nazi Party organizations, and local authorities instituted about 1,500 anti-Jewish laws.[56] In 1933, Jews were banned or restricted from several professions and the civil service.[52] After hounding the German Jews out of public life by the end of 1934, the regime passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.[57] The laws reserved full citizenship rights for those of "German or related blood", restricted Jews' economic activity, and criminalized new marriages and sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans.[58][59] Jews were defined as those with three or four Jewish grandparents; many of those with partial Jewish descent were classified as Mischlinge, with varying rights.[60] The regime also sought to segregate Jews with a view to their ultimate disappearance from the country.[57] Jewish students were gradually forced out of the school system. Some municipalities enacted restrictions governing where Jews were allowed to live or conduct business.[61] In 1938 and 1939, Jews were barred from additional occupations, and their businesses were expropriated to force them out of the economy.[59] A building that has been ransacked with debris strewn around View of the old synagogue in Aachen after its destruction during Kristallnacht Anti-Jewish violence, largely locally organized by members of Nazi Party institutions, took primarily non-lethal forms from 1933 to 1939.[62] Jewish stores, especially in rural areas, were often boycotted or vandalized.[63] As a result of local and popular pressure, many small towns became entirely free of Jews and as many as a third of Jewish businesses may have been forced to close.[64] Anti-Jewish violence was even worse in areas annexed by Nazi Germany.[65] On 9–10 November 1938, the Nazis organized Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), a nationwide pogrom. Over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) were looted, more than 1,000 synagogues were damaged or destroyed,[66] at least 90 Jews were murdered,[67] and as many as 30,000 Jewish men were arrested,[68][69] although many were released within weeks.[70] German Jews were levied a special tax that raised more than 1 billion Reichsmarks (RM).[71][a] The Nazi government wanted to force all Jews to leave Germany.[74] By the end of 1939, most Jews who could emigrate had already done so; those who remained behind were disproportionately elderly, poor, or female and could not obtain a visa.[75] The plurality, around 110,000, left for the United States, while smaller numbers emigrated to South America, Shanghai, Mandatory Palestine, and South Africa.[76] Germany collected emigration taxes of nearly 1 billion RM,[a] mostly from Jews.[77] The policy of forced emigration continued into 1940.[78] Besides Germany, a significant number of other European countries abandoned democracy for some kind of authoritarian or fascist rule.[35] Many countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, passed antisemitic legislation in the 1930s and 1940s.[79] In October 1938, Germany deported many Polish Jews in response to a Polish law that enabled the revocation of citizenship for Polish Jews living abroad.[80][81] Start of World War II A large crowd of people with swastika banners Danzigers rallying for Hitler, shortly after the free city's annexation into Germany The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, triggering declarations of war from the United Kingdom and France.[82] During the five weeks of fighting, as many as 16,000 civilians, hostages, and prisoners of war may have been shot by the German invaders;[83] there was also a great deal of looting.[84] Special units known as Einsatzgruppen followed the army to eliminate any possible resistance.[85] Around 50,000 Polish and Polish Jewish leaders and intellectuals were arrested or executed.[86][87] The Auschwitz concentration camp was established to hold those members of the Polish intelligentsia not killed in the purges.[88] Around 400,000 Poles were expelled from the Wartheland in western Poland to the General Governorate occupation zone from 1939 to 1941, and the area was resettled by ethnic Germans from eastern Europe.[89] The rest of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union, which invaded Poland from the east on 17 September pursuant to the German–Soviet pact.[90] The Soviet Union deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to the Soviet interior, including as many as 260,000 Jews who largely survived the war.[91][92] Although most Jews were not communists, some accepted positions in the Soviet administration, contributing to a pre-existing perception among many non-Jews that Soviet rule was a Jewish conspiracy.[93] In 1940, Germany invaded much of western Europe including the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Denmark and Norway.[82] In 1941, Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece.[82] Some of these new holdings were fully or partially annexed into Germany while others were placed under civilian or military rule.[83] The war provided cover for the murder of around 70,000 institutionalized Germans with mental or physical disabilities at specialized killing centers using poison gas.[89][94][95] The victims included all 4,000 to 5,000 institutionalized Jews.[96] Despite efforts to maintain secrecy, knowledge of the killings leaked out and Hitler ordered a halt to the centralized killing program in August 1941.[97][98][99] Decentralized killings via denial of medical care, starvation, and poisoning caused an additional 120,000 deaths by the end of the war.[98][100] Many of the same personnel and technologies were later used for the mass murder of Jews.[101][102] Ghettoization and resettlement Further information: The Holocaust in Poland People and buildings with an unpaved street Unpaved street in the Frysztak Ghetto, Krakow District People walking on a paved surface around a still body A body lying in the street of the Warsaw Ghetto in the General Governorate Germany gained control of 1.7 million Jews in Poland.[55][103] The Nazis tried to concentrate Jews in the Lublin District of the General Governorate. 45,000 Jews were deported by November and left to fend for themselves, causing many deaths.[104] Deportations stopped in early 1940 due to the opposition of Hans Frank, the leader of the General Governorate, who did not want his fiefdom to become a dumping ground for unwanted Jews.[105][106] After the conquest of France, the Nazis considered deporting Jews to French Madagascar, but this proved impossible.[107][108] The Nazis planned that harsh conditions in these areas would kill many Jews.[107][106] During the invasion, synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews fled or were expelled into the Soviet occupation zone.[109] Various anti-Jewish regulations were soon issued. In October 1939, adult Jews in the General Governorate were required to perform forced labor.[110] In November 1939 they were ordered to wear white armbands.[111] Laws decreed the seizure of most Jewish property and the takeover of Jewish-owned businesses. When Jews were forced into ghettos, they lost their homes and belongings.[110] The first Nazi ghettos were established in the Wartheland and General Governorate in 1939 and 1940 on the initiative of local German administrators.[112][113] The largest ghettos, such as Warsaw and Łódź, were established in existing residential neighborhoods and closed by fences or walls. In many smaller ghettos, Jews were forced into poor neighborhoods but with no fence.[114] Forced labor programs provided subsistence to many ghetto inhabitants, and in some cases protected them from deportation. Workshops and factories were operated inside some ghettos, while in other cases Jews left the ghetto to work outside it.[115] Because the ghettos were not segregated by sex some family life continued.[116] A Jewish community leadership (Judenrat) exercised some authority and tried to sustain the Jewish community while following German demands. As a survival strategy, many tried to make the ghettos useful to the occupiers as a labor reserve.[117][118] Jews in western Europe were not forced into ghettos but faced discriminatory laws and confiscation of property.[119][120][121] Rape and sexual exploitation of Jewish and non-Jewish women in eastern Europe was common.[122] Invasion of the Soviet Union Germany and its allies Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Italy invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941.[123][106] Although the war was launched more for strategic than ideological reasons,[124] what Hitler saw as an apocalyptic battle against the forces of Jewish Bolshevism[125] was to be carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war.[126][127] A quick victory was expected[128] and was planned to be followed a massive demographic engineering project to remove 31 million people and replace them with German settlers.[129] To increase the speed of conquest the Germans planned to feed their army by looting, exporting additional food to Germany, and to terrorize the local inhabitants with preventative killings.[130][131] The Germans foresaw that the invasion would cause a food shortfall and planned the mass starvation of Soviet cities and some rural areas.[132][133][134] Although the starvation policy was less successful than planners hoped,[135] the residents of some cities, particularly in Ukraine, and besieged Leningrad, as well as the Jewish ghettos, endured human-made famine, during which millions of people died of starvation.[136][137] Public execution of Masha Bruskina, a Belarusian Jew who helped Soviet prisoners escape Soviet prisoners of war in the custody of the German Army were intended to die in large numbers. Sixty percent—3.3 million people—died, primarily of starvation,[138][139] making them the second largest group of victims of Nazi mass killing after European Jews.[140][141] Jewish prisoners of war and commissars were systematically executed.[142][143] About a million civilians were killed by the Nazis during anti-partisan warfare, including more than 300,000 in Belarus.[144][145] From 1942 onwards, the Germans and their allies targeted villages suspected of supporting the partisans, burning them and killing or expelling their inhabitants.[146] During these operations, nearby small ghettos were liquidated and their inhabitants shot.[147] By 1943, anti-partisan operations aimed for the depopulation of large areas of Belarus.[148][149] Jews and those unfit for work were typically shot on the spot with others deported.[147][150] Although most of those killed were not Jews,[145][148] anti-partisan warfare often led to the deaths of Jews.[151] Mass shootings of Jews Further information: The Holocaust in the Soviet Union and The Holocaust in Romania Half naked woman running, and a man carrying a bat At least 3,000 Jews were killed during the 1941 Lviv pogroms, mainly by local Ukrainians.[152] The systematic murder of Jews began in the Soviet Union.[153] During the invasion, many Jews were conscripted into the Red Army. Out of 10 or 15 million Soviet civilians who fled eastwards to the Soviet interior, 1.6 million were Jews.[154][117] Local inhabitants killed as many as 50,000 Jews in pogroms in Latvia, Lithuania, eastern Poland, Ukraine, and the Romanian borderlands.[155][156] Although German forces tried to incite pogroms, their role in causing violence is controversial.[157][158] Romanian soldiers killed tens of thousands of Jews from Odessa by April 1942.[159][160] Prior to the invasion, the Einsatzgruppen were reorganized in preparation for mass killings and instructed to shoot Soviet officials and Jewish state and party employees.[161] The shootings were justified on the basis of Jews' supposed central role in supporting the communist system, but it was not initially envisioned to kill all Soviet Jews.[162][163] The occupiers relied on locals to identify Jews to be targeted.[164] The first German mass killings targeted adult male Jews who had worked as civil servants or in jobs requiring education. Tens of thousands were shot by the end of July. The vast majority of civilian victims were Jews.[159] In July and August Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel), made several visits to the death squads' zones of operation, relaying orders to kill more Jews.[165] At this time, the killers began to murder Jewish women and children too.[165][166] Executions peaked at 40,000 a month in Lithuania in August and September and in October and November reached their height in Belarus.[167] Men rounded up and walking Original Nazi propaganda caption: "Too bad even for a bullet... The Jews shown here were shot at once." 28 June 1941 in Rozhanka, Belarus Men execute at least four Soviet civilians kneeling by the side of a mass grave Shooting from behind became popular because killers did not have to look at their victims' faces and the dead were likely to fall into the grave.[168] The executions often took place a few kilometers from a town. Victims were rounded up and marched to the execution site, forced to undress, and shot into previously dug pits.[169] The favored technique was a shot in the back of the neck with a single bullet.[170] In the chaos, many victims were not killed by the gunfire but instead buried alive. Typically, the pits would be guarded after the execution but sometimes a few victims managed to escape afterwards.[169] Executions were public spectacles and the victims' property was looted both by the occupiers and local inhabitants.[171] Around 200 ghettos were established in the occupied Soviet Union, with many existing only briefly before their inhabitants were executed. A few large ghettos such as Vilna, Kovno, Riga, Białystok, and Lwów lasted into 1943 because they became centers of production.[117] Victims of mass shootings included Jews deported from elsewhere.[172] Besides Germany, Romania killed the largest number of Jews.[173][174] Romania deported about 154,000–170,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina to ghettos in Transnistria from 1941 to 1943.[175] Jews from Transnistria were also imprisoned in these ghettos, where the total death toll may have reached 160,000.[176] Hungary expelled thousands of Carpathian Ruthenian and foreign Jews in 1941, who were shortly thereafter shot in Ukraine.[177][178] At the beginning of September, all German Jews were required to wear a yellow star, and in October, Hitler decided to deport them to the east and ban emigration.[179][180] Between mid-October and the end of 1941, 42,000 Jews from Germany and its annexed territories and 5,000 Romani people from Austria were deported to Łódź, Kovno, Riga, and Minsk.[181][182] In late November, 5,000 German Jews were shot outside of Kovno and another 1,000 near Riga, but Himmler ordered an end to such massacres and some in the senior Nazi leadership voiced doubts about killing German Jews.[172][183] Executions of German Jews in the Baltics resumed in early 1942.[184] After the expansion of killings to target the entire Soviet Jewish population, the 3,000 men of the Einsatzgruppen proved insufficient and Himmler mobilized 21 battalions of Order Police to assist them.[165] In addition, Wehrmacht soldiers, Waffen-SS brigades, and local auxiliaries shot many Jews.[169][185][186] By the end of 1941, more than 80 percent of the Jews in central Ukraine, eastern Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been shot, but less than 25 percent of those living farther west where 900,000 remained alive.[187] By the end of the war, around 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot[153] and as many as 225,000 Roma.[188] The murderers found the executions distressing and logistically inconvenient, which influenced the decision to switch to other methods of killing.[189] Systematic deportations across Europe Most historians agree that Hitler issued an explicit order to kill all Jews across Europe,[190] but there is disagreement when.[191][192] Some historians cite inflammatory statements by Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as the concurrent mass shootings of Serbian Jews, plans for extermination camps in Poland, and the beginning of the deportation of German Jews as indicative of the final decision having been made before December 1941.[191][193] Others argue that these policies were initiatives by local leaders and that the final decision was made later.[191] On 5 December 1941, the Soviet Union launched its first major counteroffensive. On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.[194][195] The next day, he told leading Nazi party officials, referring to his 1939 prophecy, "The world war is here; the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence."[195][196] It took the Nazis several months after this to organize a continent-wide genocide.[195] Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), convened the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. This high-level meeting was intended to coordinate anti-Jewish policy.[197] The majority of Holocaust killings were carried out in 1942, with 20 or 25 percent of Holocaust victims dying before early 1942 and the same number surviving by the end of the year.[198][199] Extermination camps Main article: Extermination camp Deportation to Chełmno Gas vans developed from those used to kill mental patients since 1939 were assigned to the Einsatzgruppen and first used in November 1941; victims were forced into the van and killed with engine exhaust.[200] The first extermination camp was Chełmno in the Wartheland, established on the initiative of the local civil administrator Arthur Greiser with Himmler's approval; it began operations in December 1941 using gas vans.[201][202][203] In October 1941, Higher SS and Police Leader of Lublin Odilo Globocnik[204] began work planning Belzec—the first purpose-built extermination camp to feature stationary gas chambers—amid increasing talk among German administrators in Poland of large-scale murder of Jews in the General Governorate.[205][201] In late 1941 in East Upper Silesia, Jews in forced-labor camps operated by the Schmelt Organization deemed "unfit for work" began to be sent in groups to Auschwitz where they were murdered.[206][207] The camps were located on rail lines to make it easier to transport Jews to their deaths, but in remote places to avoid notice.[204] The stench caused by mass killing operations was noticeable to anyone nearby.[208] Except in the deportations from western and central Europe, people were typically deported to the camps in overcrowded cattle cars. As many as 150 people were forced into a single boxcar. Many died en route, partly because of the low priority accorded to these transports.[209][210] Shortage of rail transport sometimes led to postponement or cancellation of deportations.[211] Upon arrival, the victims were robbed of their remaining possessions, forced to undress, had their hair cut, and were chased into the gas chamber.[212] Death from the gas was agonizing and could take as long as 30 minutes.[213][195] The gas chambers were primitive and sometimes malfunctioned. Some prisoners were shot because the gas chambers were not functioning.[214] At other extermination camps, nearly everyone on a transport was killed on arrival, but at Auschwitz around 20-25 percent were separated out for labor,[215] although many of these prisoners died later on.[216] Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka reported a combined revenue of RM 178.7 million from belongings stolen from their victims, far exceeding costs.[217][218] Combined, the camps required the labor of less than 3,000 Jewish prisoners, 1,000 Trawniki men (largely Ukrainian auxiliaries), and very few German guards.[219][210] About half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust died by poison gas.[220] Thousands of Romani people were also murdered in the extermination camps.[221] Prisoner uprisings at Treblinka and Sobibor meant that these camps were shut down earlier than envisioned.[222][223] Major extermination camps[224] Camp Location Number of Jews killed Killing technology Planning began Mass gassing duration Chełmno Wartheland[224] 150,000[224] Gas vans[224] July 1941[224] 8 December 1941–April 1943 and April–July 1944[225] Belzec Lublin District[224] 440,823–596,200[226] Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[224] October 1941[225] 17 March 1942–December 1942[225] Sobibor Lublin District[224] 170,618–238,900[226] Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[224] Late 1941 or March 1942[227] May 1942–October 1942[227] Treblinka Warsaw District[224] 780,863–951,800[226] Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[224] April 1942[224] 23 July 1942–October 1943[224] Auschwitz II–Birkenau East Upper Silesia[224] 900,000–1,000,000[224] Stationary gas chamber, hydrogen cyanide[224] September 1941 (built as POW camp)[228][224] February 1942–October 1944[224] Liquidation of the ghettos in Poland Further information: Operation Reinhard See caption Cumulative murders of Jews from the General Governorate at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka from January 1942 to February 1943 Plans to kill most of the Jews in the General Governorate were affected by various goals of the SS, military, and civil administration to reduce the amount of food consumed by Jews, enable a slight increase in rations to non-Jewish Poles, and combat the black market.[229] In March 1942, killings began in Belzec, targeting Jews from Lublin who were not capable of work. This action reportedly reduced the black market and was deemed a success to be replicated elsewhere.[230][231] By mid-1942, Nazi leaders decided to allow only 300,000 Jews to survive in the General Governorate by the end of the year for forced labor;[229] for the most part, only those working in armaments production were spared.[232] The majority of ghettos were liquidated in mass executions nearby, especially if they were not near a train station. Larger ghettos were more commonly liquidated during multiple deportations to extermination camps.[233][231] During this campaign 1.5 million Polish Jews were murdered in the largest killing operation of the Holocaust.[234] In order to reduce resistance the ghetto would be raided without warning, usually in the early morning, and the extent of the operation would be concealed as long as possible.[235] Trawniki men would cordon off the ghetto while the Order Police and Security Police carried out the action.[236] In addition to local non-Jewish collaborators, the Jewish councils and Jewish ghetto police were often ordered to assist with liquidation actions, although these Jews were in most cases murdered later.[237] Chaotic, capriciously executed selections determined who would be loaded onto the trains. Many Jews were shot during the action, often leaving ghettos strewn with corpses. Jewish forced laborers had to clean it up and collect any valuables from the victims.[235] A young boy surrounded by other unarmed civilians holds his hands over his head while a man in uniform points a submachine gun in his direction The Warsaw Ghetto uprising became significant as a symbol of Jewish resistance against the Nazis.[237] The Warsaw Ghetto was cleared between 22 July and 12 September. Of the original population of 350,000 Jews, 250,000 were killed at Treblinka, 11,000 were deported to labor camps, 10,000 were shot in the ghetto, 35,000 were allowed to remain in the ghetto after a final selection, and around 20,000 or 25,000 managed to hide in the ghetto. Misdirection efforts convinced many Jews that they could avoid deportation until it was too late.[238] During a six-week period beginning in August, 300,000 Jews from the Radom District were sent to Treblinka.[239][240] At the same time as the mass killing of Jews in the General Governorate, Jews who were in ghettos to the west and east were targeted. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from ghettos in the Warthegau and East Upper Silesia to Chełmno and Auschwitz.[241] 300,000 Jews—largely skilled laborers—were shot in Volhynia, Podolia, and southwestern Belarus.[242][243] Deportations and mass executions in the Bialystok District and Galicia killed many Jews.[244] Although there was practically no resistance in the General Governorate in 1942, some Soviet Jews improvised weapons, attacked those attempting to liquidate the ghetto, and set it on fire.[245] These ghetto uprisings were only undertaken when the inhabitants began to believe that their death was certain.[246] In 1943, larger uprisings in Warsaw, Białystok, and Glubokoje necessitated the use of heavy weapons.[247] The uprising in Warsaw prompted the Nazi leadership to liquidate additional ghettos and labor camps in German-occupied Poland with their inhabitants shot or deported to extermination camps for fear of additional Jewish resistance developing.[248] Nevertheless, in early 1944 more than 70,000 Jews were performing forced labor in the General Governorate.[249] Deportations from elsewhere A column of people marching with luggage Jews are deported from Würzburg, Germany to the Lublin District of the General Governorate, 25 April 1942. Unlike the killing areas in the east, the deportation from elsewhere in Europe was centrally organized from Berlin, although it depended on the outcome of negotiations with allied governments and popular responses to deportation.[199] Beginning in late 1941, local administrators responded to the deportation of Jews to their area by massacring local Jews in order to free up space in ghettos for the deportees.[250] If the deported Jews did not die of harsh conditions, they were killed later in extermination camps.[251] Jews deported to Auschwitz were initially entered into the camp; the practice of conducting selections and murdering many prisoners upon arrival began in July 1942.[252] In May and June, German and Slovak Jews deported to Lublin began to be sent directly to extermination camps.[252] In Western Europe, almost all Jewish deaths occurred after deportation.[253] The occupiers often relied on local policemen to arrest Jews, limiting the number who were deported.[254] In 1942, nearly 100,000 Jews were deported from Belgium, France, and the Netherlands.[255] Only 25 percent of the Jews in France were killed;[256] most of them were either non-citizens or recent immigrants.[257] The death rate in the Netherlands was higher than neighboring countries, which scholars have attributed to difficulty in hiding or increased collaboration of the Dutch police.[258] The German government sought the deportation of Jews from allied countries.[252][259] The first to hand over its Jewish population was Slovakia, which arrested and deported about 58,000 Jews to Poland from March to October 1942.[260][261][262] The Independent State of Croatia had already shot or killed in concentration camps the majority of its Jewish population (along with a larger number of Serbs),[263][264] and later deported several thousand Jews in 1942 and 1943.[265] Bulgaria deported 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia, who were murdered at Treblinka, but declined to allow the deportation of Jews from its prewar territory.[266] Romania and Hungary did not send any Jews, which were the largest surviving populations after 1942.[267] Prior to the German occupation of Italy in September 1943, there were no serious attempt to deport Italian Jews, and Italy refused to allow the deportation of Jews in many Italian-occupied areas.[268][269] Nazi Germany did not attempt the destruction of the Finnish Jews[270] and the North African Jews living under French or Italian rule.[271] Perpetrators and beneficiaries Men and women in uniform smiling and posing with musical instruments Auschwitz SS guards enjoying themselves on vacation in Solahütte An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Germans were directly involved in killing Jews and including all those involved in the organization of extermination the number rises to 500,000.[272] Genocide required the active and tacit consent of millions of Germans and non-Germans.[273][274] The motivation of Holocaust perpetrators varied and has led to historiographical debate.[273][275] Studies of the SS officials who organized the Holocaust have found that most had strong ideological commitment to Nazism.[276][277] In addition to ideological factors, many perpetrators were motivated by the prospect of material gain and social advancement.[278][279][280] German SS, police, and regular army units rarely had trouble finding enough men to shoot Jewish civilians, even though punishment for refusal was absent or light.[281][282] Non-German perpetrators and collaborators included Dutch, French, and Polish policemen, Romanian soldiers, foreign SS and police auxiliaries, Ukrainian Insurgent Army partisans, and some civilians.[273][283][284] Some were coerced into committing violence against Jews, but others killed for entertainment, material rewards, the possibility of better treatment from the occupiers, or ideological motivations such as nationalism and anti-communism.[285][286][287] According to historian Christian Gerlach, non-Germans "not under German command" caused 5 to 6 percent of the Jewish deaths, and their involvement was crucial in other ways.[288] Millions of Germans and others benefited from the genocide.[273] Corruption was rampant in the SS despite the proceeds of the Holocaust being designated as state property.[289] Different German state agencies vied to receive property stolen from Jews murdered at the death camps.[290] Many workers were able to obtain better jobs vacated by murdered Jews.[291] Businessmen benefitted from eliminating their Jewish competitors or taking over Jewish-owned businesses.[292] Others took over housing and possessions that had belonged to Jews.[293] Some Poles living near the extermination camps later dug up human remains in search of valuables.[293][294] The property of deported Jews was also appropriated by Germany's allies and collaborating governments. Even puppet states such as Vichy France and Norway were able to successfully lay claim to Jewish property.[295] In the decades after the war, Swiss banks became notorious for harboring gold deposited by Nazis who had stolen it during the Holocaust, as well as profiting from unclaimed deposits made by Holocaust victims.[296] Forced labor Further information: Forced labor in Nazi Germany People collecting refuse in a wagon Jews of Mogilev, Belarus, forced to clean a street, July 1941 See caption Woman with Ostarbeiter badge at work at IG-Farbenwerke in Auschwitz Beginning in 1938—especially in Germany and its annexed territories—many Jews were drafted into forced-labor camps and segregated work details. These camps were often of a temporary nature and typically overseen by civilian authorities. Initially, mortality did not increase dramatically.[297][298] After mid-1941, conditions for Jewish forced laborers drastically worsened and death rates increased; even private companies deliberately subjected workers to murderous conditions.[299] Beginning in 1941 and increasingly as time went on, Jews capable of employment were separated from others—who were usually killed.[300][301] They were typically employed in non-skilled jobs and could be replaced easily if non-Jewish workers were available, but those in skilled positions had a higher chance of survival.[302][303] Although conditions varied widely between camps, Jewish forced laborers were typically treated worse than non-Jewish prisoners and suffered much higher mortality rates.[304] In mid-1943, Himmler sought to bring surviving Jewish forced laborers under the control of the SS in the concentration camp system.[305][306][b] Some of the forced-labor camps for Jews and some ghettos, such as Kovno, were designated concentration camps, while others were dissolved and surviving prisoners sent to a concentration camp.[311] Despite many deaths, as many as 200,000 Jews survived the war inside the concentration camps.[312] Although most Holocaust victims were never imprisoned in a concentration camp, the image of these camps is a popular symbol of the Holocaust.[313] Including the Soviet prisoners of war, 13 million people were brought to Germany for forced labor.[314] The largest nationalities were Soviet and Polish[315] and they were the worst-treated groups except for Roma and Jews.[316] Soviet and Polish forced laborers endured inadequate food and medical treatment, long hours, and abuse by employers. Hundreds of thousands died.[317] Many others were forced to work for the occupiers without leaving their country of residence.[318] Some of Germany's allies, including Slovakia and Hungary, agreed to deport Jews to protect non-Jews from German demands for forced labor.[319] Escape and hiding A bunker with a bed and other supplies A bunker where Jews attempted to hide during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising Further information: Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust Gerlach estimates that 200,000 Jews survived in hiding across Europe.[320] Knowledge of German intentions was essential to take action, but many struggled to believe the news.[321] Many attempted to jump from trains or flee ghettos and camps, but successfully escaping and living in hiding was extremely difficult and often unsuccessful.[322][323][324] The support, or at least absence of active opposition, of the local population was essential but often lacking in Eastern Europe.[325] Those in hiding depended on the assistance of non-Jews.[326] Having money,[327] social connections with non-Jews, a non-Jewish appearance, perfect command of the local language, determination, and luck played a major role in determining survival.[328] Jews in hiding were hunted down with the assistance of local collaborators and rewards offered for their denunciation.[329][283][330] The death penalty was sometimes enforced on people hiding them, especially in eastern Europe.[331][332][333] Rescuers' motivations varied on a spectrum from altruism to expecting sex or material gain; it was not uncommon for helpers to betray or murder Jews if their money ran out.[334][332][335] Gerlach argues that hundreds of thousands of Jews may have died because of rumors or denunciations, and many others never attempted to escape because of a belief it was hopeless.[336] Jews participated in resistance movements in most European countries, and often were overrepresented.[337] Jews were not always welcome, particularly in nationalist resistance groups—some of which killed Jews.[338][339] Particularly in Belarus, with its favorable geography of dense forests, many Jews joined the Soviet partisans—an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 across the Soviet Union.[340] An additional 10,000 to 13,000 Jewish non-combatants lived in family camps in Eastern European forests, of which the most well known was the Bielski partisans.[341][342] International reactions Main article: International response to the Holocaust The Nazi leaders knew that their actions would bring international condemnation.[343] On 26 June 1942, BBC services in all languages publicized a report by the Jewish Social-Democratic Bund and other resistance groups and transmitted by the Polish government-in-exile, documenting the killing of 700,000 Jews in Poland. In December 1942, the United Nations adopted a joint declaration condemning the systematic murder of Jews.[344] Most neutral countries in Europe maintained a pro-German foreign policy during the war. Nevertheless, some Jews were able to escape to neutral countries, whose policies ranged from rescue to non-action.[345] During the war the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) raised $70 million and in the years after the war it raised $300 million. This money was spent aiding emigrants and providing direct relief in the form of parcels and other assistance to Jews living under German occupation, and after the war to Holocaust survivors. The United States banned sending relief into German-occupied Europe after entering the war, but the JDC continued to do so. From 1939 to 1944, 81,000 European Jews emigrated with the JDC's assistance.[346] Second half of the war Continuing killings see caption Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia, annexed by Hungary in 1938,[347] on the selection ramp at Auschwitz II in May or June 1944. Men are lined up to the right, women and children to the left. About 25 percent were selected for work and the rest gassed.[215] After German military defeats in 1943, it became increasingly evident that Germany would lose the war.[348][349] In early 1943, 45,000 Jews were deported from German-occupied northern Greece, primarily Salonica, to Auschwitz, where nearly all were killed.[350] After Italy switched sides in late 1943, Germany deported several thousand Jews from Italy and the former Italian occupation zones of France, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece, with limited success.[351][352] Attempts to continue deportations in Western Europe after 1942 often failed because of Jews going into hiding and the increasing recalcitrance of local authorities.[353] Most Danish Jews escaped to Sweden with the help of the Danish resistance in the face of a half-hearted German deportation effort in late 1943.[354] Additional killings in 1943 and 1944 eliminated all remaining ghettos and most surviving Jews in eastern Europe.[153] Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were shut down and destroyed.[355][356] The largest murder action after 1942 was that against the Hungarian Jews.[357] After the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, the Hungarian government cooperated closely in the deportation of 437,000 Jews in eight weeks, mostly to Auschwitz.[358][347][359] The expropriation of Jewish property was useful to achieve Hungarian economic goals and sending the Jews as forced laborers avoided the need to send non-Jewish Hungarians.[360] Those who survived the selection were forced to provide construction and manufacturing labor as part of a last-ditch effort to increase the production of fighter aircraft.[301][361] Although the Nazis' goal of eliminating any Jewish population from Germany had largely been achieved in 1943, it was reversed in 1944 as a result of the importation of these Jews for labor.[362] Death marches and liberation see caption A mass grave at Bergen-Belsen after the camp's liberation, April 1945 Following Allied advances, the SS deported concentration camp prisoners to camps in Germany and Austria, starting in mid-1944 from the Baltics.[363] Weak and sick prisoners were often killed in the camp and others were forced to travel by rail or on foot, usually with no or inadequate food.[364][365] Those who could not keep up were shot.[366] The evacuations were ordered partly to retain the prisoners as forced labor and partly to avoid allowing any prisoners to fall into enemy hands.[367][365] In October and November 1944, 90,000 Jews were deported from Budapest to the Austrian border.[368][369] The transfer of prisoners from Auschwitz began in mid-1944, the gas chambers were shut down and destroyed after October, and in January most of the remaining 67,000 Auschwitz prisoners were sent on a death march westwards.[366][370] In January 1945, more than 700,000 people were imprisoned in the concentration camp system, of whom as many as a third died before the end of the war.[320] At this time, most concentration camp prisoners were Soviet and Polish civilians, either arrested for real or supposed resistance or for attempting to escape forced labor.[320] The death marches led to the breakdown of supplies for the camps that continued to exist, causing additional deaths.[364] Although there was no systematic killing of Jews during the death marches,[371] around 70,000 to 100,000 Jews died in the last months of the war.[372] Many of the death march survivors ended up in other concentration camps that were liberated in 1945 during the Western Allied invasion of Germany. The liberators found piles of corpses that they had to bulldoze into mass graves.[373][374][375] Some survivors were freed there[375] and others had been liberated by the Red Army during its march westwards.[376] Death toll Main article: Holocaust victims see image description Holocaust deaths as an approximate percentage of the 1939 Jewish population: 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 Low Around six million Jews were killed.[377] Most of those killed were from Eastern Europe, and half were from Poland alone.[378][379] Around 1.3 million Jews who had once lived under Nazi rule or in one of Germany's allies survived the war.[377] One-third of the Jewish population worldwide, and two-thirds of European Jews, had been wiped out.[380] Death rates varied widely due to a variety of factors and approached 100 percent in some areas.[381] Some reasons why survival chances varied was the availability of emigration[382] and protection from Germany's allies—which saved around 600,000 Jews.[383] Jewish children and the elderly faced even lower survival rates than adults.[384] The deadliest phase of the Holocaust was Operation Reinhard, which was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. Roughly two million Jews were killed from March 1942 to November 1943. Around 1.47 million Jews were murdered in just 100 days from July to October 1942, a rate approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the Rwandan genocide.[385] Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; estimated by Gerlach at 6 to 8 million, at more than 10 million by Gilbert[386] and at over 11 million by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[387] In some countries, such as Hungary, Jews were a majority of civilian deaths; in Poland, they were either a majority[388] or about half.[379] In other countries such as the Soviet Union, France, Greece, and Yugoslavia, non-Jewish civilian losses outnumbered Jewish deaths.[388] Aftermath and legacy Main article: Aftermath of the Holocaust Return home and emigration After liberation, many Jews attempted to return home. Limited success in finding relatives, the refusal of many non-Jews to return property,[389] and violent attacks such as the Kielce pogrom convinced many survivors to leave eastern Europe.[390][375] Antisemitism was reported to increase in several countries after the war, in part due to conflicts over property restitution.[391] When the war ended, there were less than 28,000 German Jews and 60,000 non-German Jews in Germany. By 1947, the number of Jews in Germany had increased to 250,000 owing to emigration from eastern Europe allowed by the communist authorities; Jews made up around 25 percent of the population of displaced persons camps.[392] Although many survivors were in poor health, they attempted to organize self-government in these camps, including education and rehabilitation efforts.[393] Due to the reluctance of other countries to allow their immigration, many survivors remained in Germany until the establishment of Israel in 1948.[392] Others moved to the United States around 1950 due to loosened immigration restrictions.[394] Criminal trials Further information: Category:Holocaust trials Rows of men sitting on benches Defendants in the dock at the International Military Tribunal, November 1945 Most Holocaust perpetrators were never put on trial for their crimes.[376] During and after World War II, many European countries launched widespread purges of real and perceived collaborators that affected possibly as much as 2–3 percent of the population of Europe, although most of the resulting trials did not emphasize crimes against Jews.[395] Nazi atrocities led to the United Nations' Genocide Convention in 1948, but it was not used in Holocaust trials due to the non-retroactivity of criminal laws.[396] In 1945 and 1946, the International Military Tribunal tried 23 Nazi leaders primarily for waging wars of aggression, which the prosecution argued was the root of Nazi criminality;[397] nevertheless, the systematic murder of Jews came to take center stage.[398] This trial and others held by the Allies in occupied Germany—the United States Army alone charged 1,676 defendants in 462 war crimes trials[399]—were widely perceived as an unjust form of political revenge by the German public.[400] West Germany later investigated 100,000 people and tried more than 6,000 defendants, mainly low-level perpetrators.[401][402] The high-level organizer Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped and tried in Israel in 1961. Instead of convicting Eichmann on the basis of documentary evidence, Israeli prosecutors asked many Holocaust survivors to testify, a strategy that increased publicity but has proven controversial.[403][404] Reparations Historians estimate that property losses to Jews of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Poland, and Hungary amounted to around 10 billion in 1944 dollars,[405] or $170 billion in 2022.[73] This estimate does not include the value of labor extracted.[406] Overall, the amount of Jewish property looted by the Nazis was about 10 percent of the total stolen from occupied countries.[406] Efforts by survivors to receive reparations for their losses began immediately after World War II. There was an additional wave of restitution efforts in the 1990s connected to the fall of Communism in eastern Europe.[407] Between 1945 and 2018, Germany paid $86.8 billion in restitution and compensation to Holocaust survivors and heirs. In 1952, West Germany negotiated an agreement to pay DM 3 billion (around $714 million) to Israel and DM 450 million (around $107 million) to the Claims Conference.[408] Germany paid pensions and other reparations for harm done to some Holocaust survivors.[409] Other countries have paid restitution for assets stolen from Jews from these countries. Most Western European countries restored some property to Jews after the war, while communist countries nationalized many formerly Jewish assets, meaning that the overall amount restored to Jews has been lower in those countries.[410][411] Poland is the only member of the European Union that never passed any restitution legislation.[412] Many restitution programs fell short of restoration of prewar assets, and in particular, large amounts of immovable property was never returned to survivors or their heirs.[413][414] Remembrance and historiography A memorial of many square concrete blocks Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, 2016 In the decades after the war, Holocaust memory was largely confined to the survivors and their communities.[415] The popularity of Holocaust memory peaked in the 1990s after the fall of Communism, and became central to Western historical consciousness[416][417] as a symbol of the ultimate human evil.[418] Holocaust education, which its advocates argue promotes citizenship while reducing prejudice generally, became widespread at the same time.[419][420] International Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated each year on 27 January, while some other countries have set a different memorial day.[421] The Holocaust has been commemorated in memorials, museums, and speeches, as well as works of culture such as novels, poems, films, and plays.[422] Holocaust denial is a criminal offense in some countries.[423] Although many are convinced that there are lessons or some kind of redemptive meaning to be drawn from the Holocaust, whether this is the case and what these lessons are is disputed.[424][425][419] Communist states marginalized the persecution of Jews while eliding their nationals' collaboration with Nazism, a tendency that continued into the post-communist era.[426][427] In West Germany, a self-critical memory of the Holocaust developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and spread to some other western European countries.[428] The national memories of the Holocaust were extended to the European Union as a whole, in which Holocaust memory has provided both shared history and a narrative for committing to human rights. Participation in this memory is required of countries seeking entry.[429][430] In contrast to Europe, in the United States the memory of the Holocaust tends to be more abstract and universalized.[431] Whether Holocaust memory actually promotes human rights is disputed.[419][432] In Israel, the memory of the Holocaust has been used at times to justify the use of force and violation of international human rights norms.[429] The scholarly literature on the Holocaust is massive, encompassing thousands of books.[433] The tendency to see the Holocaust as a unique or incomprehensible event continues to be popular among the broader public after being largely rejected by historians.[434][435][436][clarification needed] Another debate concerns whether the Holocaust emerged from Western civilization or was an aberration of it.[437] The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II (1939–1945) began with the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, and it was formally concluded with the defeat of Germany by the Allies in May 1945. Throughout the entire course of the occupation, the territory of Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR), both of which intended to eradicate Poland's culture and subjugate its people.[1] In the summer-autumn of 1941, the lands which were annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Germany in the course of the initially successful German attack on the USSR. After a few years of fighting, the Red Army drove the German forces out of the USSR and crossed into Poland from the rest of Central and Eastern Europe. Sociologist Tadeusz Piotrowski argues that both occupying powers were hostile to the existence of Poland's sovereignty, people, and the culture and aimed to destroy them.[2] Before Operation Barbarossa, Germany and the Soviet Union coordinated their Poland-related policies, most visibly in the four Gestapo–NKVD conferences, where the occupiers discussed their plans to deal with the Polish resistance movement.[3] Around 6 million Polish citizens—nearly 21.4% of Poland's population—died between 1939 and 1945 as a result of the occupation,[4][5] half of whom were ethnic Poles and the other half of whom were Polish Jews. Over 90% of the deaths were non-military losses, because most civilians were deliberately targeted in various actions which were launched by the Germans and Soviets.[4] Overall, during German occupation of pre-war Polish territory, 1939–1945, the Germans murdered 5,470,000–5,670,000 Poles, including 3,000,000 Jews in what was described during the Nuremberg Trials as a deliberate and systematic genocide.[6] In August 2009, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimated Poland's dead (including Polish Jews) at between 5.47 and 5.67 million (due to German actions) and 150,000 (due to Soviet), or around 5.62 and 5.82 million total.[7] Administration Main article: Administrative division of Polish territories during World War II In September 1939, Poland was invaded and occupied by two powers: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, acting in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[8] Germany acquired 48.4% of the former Polish territory.[9] Under the terms of two decrees by Hitler, with Stalin's agreement (8 and 12 October 1939), large areas of western Poland were annexed by Germany.[10] The size of these annexed territories was approximately 92,500 square kilometres (35,700 sq mi) with approximately 10.5 million inhabitants.[9] The remaining block of territory, of about the same size and inhabited by about 11.5 million,[9] was placed under a German administration called the General Government (in German: Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete), with its capital at Kraków. A German lawyer and prominent Nazi, Hans Frank, was appointed Governor-General of this occupied area on 12 October 1939.[11][12] Most of the administration outside strictly local level was replaced by German officials.[12][13] Non-German population on the occupied lands were subject to forced resettlement, Germanization, economic exploitation, and slow but progressive extermination.[12][13][14] A small strip of land, about 700 square kilometres (270 sq mi) with 200,000 inhabitants[9] that had been part of Czechoslovakia before 1938, was ceded by Germany to its ally, Slovakia.[15] Poles comprised an overwhelming majority the population of the territories that came under the control of Germany, in contrast the areas annexed by the Soviet Union contained a diverse array of peoples, the population being split into bilingual provinces, some of which had large ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities,[16] many of whom welcomed the Soviets due in part to communist agitation by Soviet emissaries. Nonetheless Poles still comprised a plurality of the population in all territories annexed by the Soviet Union.[17] German and Soviet soldiers stroll around Sambir after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland.[18] By the end of the invasion, the Soviet Union had taken over 51.6% of the territory of Poland (about 201,000 square kilometres (78,000 sq mi)), with over 13,200,000 people.[9] The ethnic composition of these areas was as follows: 38% Poles (~5.1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians, and 0.6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees, mostly Jews (198,000), who fled from areas occupied by Germany.[17] All territory invaded by the Red Army was annexed to the Soviet Union (after a rigged election),[19][20] and split between the Belarusian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR, with the exception of the Wilno area taken from Poland, which was transferred to sovereign Lithuania for several months and subsequently annexed by the Soviet Union in the form of the Lithuanian SSR on 3 August 1940.[9][21] Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, most of the Polish territories annexed by the Soviets were attached to the enlarged General Government.[22] The end of the war saw the USSR occupy all of Poland and most of eastern Germany. The Soviets gained recognition of their pre-1941 annexations of Polish territory; as compensation, substantial portions of eastern Germany were ceded to Poland, whose borders were significantly shifted westwards.[23] Treatment of Polish citizens under German occupation Generalplan Ost, Lebensraum and expulsion of Poles See also: Nazi crimes against the Polish nation and The Holocaust in Poland For months prior to the beginning of World War II in 1939, German newspapers and leaders had carried out a national and international propaganda campaign accusing Polish authorities of organizing or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland.[24] British ambassador Sir H. Kennard sent four statements in August 1939 to Viscount Halifax regarding Hitler's claims about the treatment Germans were receiving in Poland; he came to the conclusion all the claims by Hitler and the Nazis were exaggerations or false claims.[25] Expulsion of Poles from western Poland, with Poles led to the trains under German army escort, 1939. From the beginning, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany was intended as fulfilment of the future plan of the German Reich described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf as Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germans in Central and Eastern Europe.[11][26] The goal of the occupation was to turn the former territory of Poland into ethnically German "living space", by deporting and exterminating the non-German population, or relegating it to the status of slave laborers.[27][28][29] The goal of the German state under Nazi leadership during the war was the complete destruction of the Polish people and nation.[30][31] The fate of the Polish people, as well as the fate of many other Slavs, was outlined in genocidal[32][33] Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) and a closely related Generalsiedlungsplan (General Plan for Settlement).[34] Over a period of 30 years, approximately 12.5 million Germans would be resettled in the Slavic areas, including Poland; with some versions of the plan requiring the resettlement of at least 100 million Germans over a century.[34] The Slavic inhabitants of those lands would be eliminated as the result of genocidal policies;[32][33] and the survivors would be resettled further east, in less hospitable areas of Eurasia, beyond the Ural Mountains, such as Siberia.[34] At the plan's fulfillment, no Slavs or Jews would remain in Central and Eastern Europe.[34] Generalplan Ost, essentially a grand plan to commit ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts, the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan"), covered actions which would be undertaken during the war, and the Grosse Planung ("Big Plan"), covered actions which would be undertaken after the war was won.[35][36][37] The plan envisaged that different percentages of the various conquered nations would undergo Germanization, be expelled and deported to the depths of Russia, and suffer other gruesome fates, including purposeful starvation and murder, the net effect of which would ensure that the conquered territories would take on an irrevocably German character.[37][38][39] Over a longer period of time, only about 3–4 million Poles, all of whom were considered suitable for Germanization, would be allowed to reside in the former territory of Poland.[40] Public execution of Polish civilians randomly caught in a street roundup in German-occupied Bydgoszcz, September 1939 Those plans began to be implemented almost immediately after German troops took control of Poland. As early as October 1939, many Poles were expelled from the annexed lands in order to make room for German colonizers.[11][41]: 204  Only those Poles who had been selected for Germanization, approximately 1.7 million including thousands of children who had been taken from their parents, were permitted to remain,[42] and if they resisted it, they were to be sent to concentration camps, because "German blood must not be utilized in the interest of a foreign nation".[43] By the end of 1940, at least 325,000 Poles from annexed lands were forced to abandon most of their property and forcibly resettled in the General Government. There were numerous fatalities among the very young and very old, many of whom either perished en route or perished in makeshift transit camps such as those in the towns of Potulice, Smukal, and Toruń. The expulsions continued in 1941, with another 45,000 Poles forced to move eastwards, but following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the expulsions slowed down, as more and more trains were diverted for military logistics, rather than being made available for population transfers. Nonetheless, in late 1942 and 1943, large-scale expulsions also took place in the General Government, affecting at least 110,000 Poles in the Zamość–Lublin region.[11] Tens of thousands of the expelled, with no place to go, were simply imprisoned in the Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Majdanek concentration camps.[11] By 1942, the number of new German arrivals in pre-war Poland had already reached two million.[44] The Nazi plans also called for Poland's 3.3 million Jews to be exterminated; the non-Jewish majority's extermination was planned for the long term and initiated through the mass murder of its political, religious, and intellectual elites at first, which was meant to make the formation of any organized top-down resistance more difficult. Further, the populace of occupied territories was to be relegated to the role of an unskilled labour-force for German-controlled industry and agriculture.[11][45] This was in spite of racial theory that falsely regarded most Polish leaders as actually being of "German blood",[46] and partly because of it, on the grounds that German blood must not be used in the service of a foreign nation.[45] After Germany lost the war, the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials and Poland's Supreme National Tribunal concluded that the aim of German policies in Poland – the extermination of Poles and Jews – had "all the characteristics of genocide in the biological meaning of this term."[47][48] German People's List Nur für Deutsche ("For Germans only") sign, on Kraków line-8 streetcar Main article: Deutsche Volksliste The German People's List (Deutsche Volksliste) classified the willing Polish citizens into four groups of people with ethnic Germanic heritage.[49] Group 1 included so-called ethnic Germans who had taken an active part in the struggle for the Germanization of Poland. Group 2 included those ethnic Germans who had not taken such an active part, but had "preserved" their German characteristics. Group 3 included individuals of alleged German stock who had become "Polonized", but whom it was believed, could be won back to Germany. This group also included persons of non-German descent married to Germans or members of non-Polish groups who were considered desirable for their political attitude and racial characteristics. Group 4 consisted of persons of German stock who had become politically merged with the Poles. After registration in the List, individuals from Groups 1 and 2 automatically became German citizens. Those from Group 3 acquired German citizenship subject to revocation. Those from Group 4 received German citizenship through naturalization proceedings; resistance to Germanization constituted treason because "German blood must not be utilized in the interest of a foreign nation," and such people were sent to concentration camps.[49] Persons ineligible for the List were classified as stateless, and all Poles from the occupied territory, that is from the Government General of Poland, as distinct from the incorporated territory, were classified as non-protected.[49] Encouraging ethnic strife According to the 1931 Polish census, out of a prewar population of 35 million, 66% spoke the Polish language as their mother tongue, and most of the Polish native speakers were Roman Catholics. With regards to the remainder, 15% were Ukrainians, 8.5% Jews, 4.7% Belarusians, and 2.2% Germans.[11][50] Germans intended to exploit the fact that the Second Polish Republic was an ethnically diverse territory, and their policy aimed to "divide and conquer" the ethnically diverse population of the occupied Polish territory, to prevent any unified resistance from forming. One of the attempts to divide the Polish nation was a creation of a new ethnicity called "Goralenvolk".[11] Some minorities, like Kashubians, were forcefully enrolled of into the Deutsche Volksliste, as a measure to compensate for the losses in the Wehrmacht (unlike Poles, Deutsche Volksliste members were eligible for military conscription).[11][51] Polish teachers guarded by members of ethnic German Selbstschutz battalion before execution In a top-secret memorandum, "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East", dated 25 May 1940, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, wrote: "We need to divide the East's different ethnic groups up into as many parts and splinter groups as possible".[52] Forced labour Further information: Forced labour under German rule during World War II Almost immediately after the invasion, Germans began forcibly conscripting laborers. Jews were drafted to repair war damage as early as October, with women and children 12 or older required to work; shifts could take half a day and with little compensation.[53] The labourers, Jews, Poles and others, were employed in SS-owned enterprises (such as the German Armament Works, Deutsche Ausrustungswerke, DAW), but also in many private German firms – such as Messerschmitt, Junkers, Siemens, and IG Farben.[53][54] Forced labourers were subject to harsh discriminatory measures. Announced on 8 March 1940 was the Polish decrees which were used as a legal basis for foreign labourers in Germany.[55][56] The decrees required Poles to wear identifying purple P's on their clothing, made them subject to a curfew, and banned them from using public transportation as well as many German "cultural life" centres and "places of amusement" (this included churches and restaurants).[11][55][57] Sexual relations between Germans and Poles were forbidden as Rassenschande (race defilement) under penalty of death.[11][55][58] To keep them segregated from the German population, they were often housed in segregated barracks behind barbed wire.[11] Polish-forced-workers' badge Polish-forced-workers' badge Poster in German and Polish listing decrees of labour obligations Poster in German and Polish listing decrees of labour obligations Notice of death penalty for Poles refusing to work during harvest Notice of death penalty for Poles refusing to work during harvest Labor shortages in the German war economy became critical especially after German defeat in the battle of Stalingrad in 1942–1943. This led to the increased use of prisoners as forced labourers in German industries.[59] Following the German invasion and occupation of Polish territory, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens, including teenagers, became labourers in Germany, few by choice.[11] Historian Jan Gross estimates that "no more than 15 per cent" of Polish workers volunteered to go to work in Germany.[60] A total of 2.3 million Polish citizens, including 300,000 POWs, were deported to Germany as forced laborers.[61] They tended to have to work longer hours for lower wages than their German counterparts.[11] Concentration and extermination camps Polish Franciscan, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, at Auschwitz, volunteered to die in place of another prisoner. Further information: German camps in occupied Poland during World War II A network of Nazi concentration camps were established on German-controlled territories, many of them in occupied Poland, including one of the largest and most infamous, Auschwitz (Oświęcim).[62] Those camps were officially designed as labor camps, and many displayed the motto Arbeit macht frei ("Work brings freedom").[54][62] Only high-ranking officials knew that one of the purposes of some of the camps, known as extermination camps (or death camps), was mass murder of the undesirable minorities;[62][63][64] officially the prisoners were used in enterprises such as production of synthetic rubber, as was the case of a plant owned by IG Farben, whose laborers came from Auschwitz III camp, or Monowitz.[53] Laborers from concentration camps were literally worked to death. in what was known as extermination through labor.[53][65] Auschwitz received the first contingent of 728 Poles on 14 June 1940, transferred from an overcrowded prison at Tarnów. Within a year the Polish inmate population was in thousands, and begun to be exterminated, including in the first gassing experiment in September 1941.[11] According to Polish historian Franciszek Piper, approximately 140,000–150,000 Poles went through Auschwitz, with about half of them perishing there due to executions, medical experiments, or due to starvation and disease.[11] About 100,000 Poles were imprisoned in Majdanek camp, with similar fatality rate. About 30,000 Poles died at Mauthausen, 20,000 at Sachsenhausen and Gross-Rosen each, 17,000 at Neuengamme and Ravensbrueck each, 10,000 at Dachau, and tens of thousands perished in other camps and prisons.[11] The Holocaust 1941 announcement of death penalty for Jews caught outside the Ghetto, and for Poles helping Jews Further information: Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland and The Holocaust in Poland Following the invasion of Poland in 1939 most of the approximately 3.5 million Polish Jews were rounded up and put into newly established ghettos by Nazi Germany. The ghetto system was unsustainable, as by the end of 1941 the Jews had no savings left to pay the SS for food deliveries and no chance to earn their own keep.[66] At 20 January 1942 Wannsee Conference, held near Berlin, new plans were outlined for the total genocide of the Jews, known as the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question".[67] The extermination program was codenamed Operation Reinhard.[68] Three secret extermination camps set up specifically for Operation Reinhard; Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.[69] In addition to the Reinhard camps, mass killing facilities such as gas chambers using Zyklon B were added to the Majdanek concentration camp in March 1942[69] and at Auschwitz and Chełmno.[64] Cultural genocide Main articles: Polish culture during World War II and Cultural genocide Nazi Germany engaged in a concentrated effort to destroy Polish culture. To that end, numerous cultural and educational institutions were closed or destroyed, from schools and universities, through monuments and libraries, to laboratories and museums. Many employees of said institutions were arrested and executed as part wider persecutions of Polish intellectual elite. Schooling of Polish children was curtailed to a few years of elementary education, as outlined by Himmler's May 1940 memorandum: "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. ... I do not think that reading is desirable".[11][70] Extermination of elites Photos from The Black Book of Poland, published in London in 1942 by the Polish government-in-exile. The extermination of the Polish elite was the first stage of the Nazis' plan to destroy the Polish nation and its culture.[71] The disappearance of the Poles' leadership was seen as necessary to the establishment of the Germans as the Poles' sole leaders.[71] Proscription lists (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen), prepared before the war started, identified more than 61,000 members of the Polish elite and intelligentsia leaders who were deemed unfriendly to Germany.[72] Already during the 1939 German invasion, dedicated units of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen) were tasked with arresting or outright killing of those resisting the Germans.[11][73] They were aided by some regular German army units and "self-defense" forces composed of members of German minority in Poland, the Volksdeutsche.[11] The Nazi regime's policy of murdering or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites was known as Operation Tannenberg.[74] This included not only those resisting actively, but also those simply capable of doing so by the virtue of their social status.[11] As a result, tens of thousands of people found "guilty" of being educated (members of the intelligentsia, from clergymen to government officials, doctors, teachers and journalists) or wealthy (landowners, business owners, and so on) were either executed on spot, sometimes in mass executions, or imprisoned, some destined for the concentration camps.[11] Some of the mass executions were reprisal actions for actions of the Polish resistance, with German officials adhering to the collective guilt principle and holding entire communities responsible for the actions of unidentified perpetrators.[11] One of the most infamous German operations was the Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion (AB-Aktion in short, German for Special Pacification), a German campaign during World War II aimed at Polish leaders and the intelligentsia, including many university professors, teachers and priests.[75][76] In the spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the German authorities of German-occupied Poland.[11][75] Several thousands were executed outside Warsaw, in the Kampinos forest near Palmiry, and inside the city at the Pawiak prison.[11][76] Most of the remainder were sent to various German concentration camps.[75] Mass arrests and shootings of Polish intellectuals and academics included Sonderaktion Krakau[77][78] and the massacre of Lwów professors.[79][80] Public execution of Polish priests and civilians in Bydgoszcz's Old Market Square on 9 September 1939. The Nazis also persecuted the Catholic Church in Poland and other, smaller religions. Nazi policy towards the Church was at its most severe in the territories it annexed to Greater Germany, where they set about systematically dismantling the Church – arresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen and nuns were murdered or sent to concentration and labor camps.[11][81] Already in 1939, 80% of the Catholic clergy of the Warthegau region had been deported to concentration camps.[82] Primate of Poland, Cardinal August Hlond, submitted an official account of the persecutions of the Polish Church to the Vatican.[83] In his final observations for Pope Pius XII, Hlond wrote: "Hitlerism aims at the systematic and total destruction of the Catholic Church in the... territories of Poland which have been incorporated into the Reich...".[82][83] The smaller Evangelical churches of Poland also suffered. The entirety of the Protestant clergy of the Cieszyn region of Silesia were arrested and deported to concentration camps at Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Oranienburg.[82] Protestant clergy leaders who perished in those purges included charity activist Karol Kulisz, theology professor Edmund Bursche, and Bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland, Juliusz Bursche.[82] Boys' roll call at main children's concentration camp in Łódź (Kinder-KZ Litzmannstadt). A sub-camp was KZ Dzierżązna, for Polish girls as young as eight. Germanization Main articles: Germanisation in Poland (1939–1945), Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, and Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany (1939–1944) See also: Germanization, Kidnapping of Polish children by Nazi Germany, and Kinder KZ In the territories annexed to Nazi Germany, in particular with regards to the westernmost incorporated territories—the so-called Wartheland— the Nazis aimed for a complete "Germanization", i.e. full cultural, political, economic and social assimilation. The Polish language was forbidden to be taught even in elementary schools; landmarks from streets to cities were renamed en masse (Łódź became Litzmannstadt, and so on). All manner of Polish enterprises, up to small shops, were taken over, with prior owners rarely compensated.[11] Signs posted in public places prohibited non-Germans from entering these places warning: "Entrance is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs.", or Nur für Deutsche ("Only for Germans"), commonly found on many public utilities and places such as trams, parks, cafes, cinemas, theaters, and others.[11][84][85] The Nazis kept an eye out for Polish children who possessed Nordic racial characteristics.[86] An estimated total of 50,000 children, majority taken from orphanages and foster homes in the annexed lands, but some separated from their parents, were taken into a special Germanization program.[11][49] Polish women deported to Germany as forced labourers and who bore children were a common victim of this policy, with their infants regularly taken.[11][87] If the child passed the battery of racial, physical and psychological tests, they were sent on to Germany for "Germanization".[41]: 250  At least 4,454 children were given new German names,[41]: 249  forbidden to use Polish language,[88] and reeducated in Nazi institutions.[11] Few were ever reunited with their original families. Those deemed as unsuitable for Germanization for being "not Aryan enough" were sent to orphanages or even to concentration camps like Auschwitz, where many were murdered, often by intercardiac injections of phenol.[11] For Polish forced laborers, in some cases if an examination of the parents suggested that the child might not be "racially valuable", the mother was forced to have an abortion.[11][87] Infants who did not pass muster would be removed to a state orphanage (Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte), where many were murdered through calculated malnourishment, neglect, and unhygienic conditions.[41]: 400–1 [89][90] Resistance Earliest World War II partisan unit, commanded by Henryk "Hubal" Dobrzański, winter 1939 Main article: Polish resistance movement in World War II Despite the military defeat of the Polish Army in September 1939, the Polish government itself never surrendered, instead evacuating West, where it formed the Polish government in Exile.[11] The government in exile was represented in the occupied Poland by the Government Delegation for Poland, headed by the Government Delegate for Poland.[91] The main role of the civilian branch of the Underground State was to preserve the continuity of the Polish state as a whole, including its institutions. These institutions included the police, the courts, and schools.[92] By the final years of the war, the civilian structure of the Underground State included an underground parliament, administration, judiciary (courts and police), secondary and higher-level education, and supported various cultural activities such as publishing of newspapers and books, underground theatres, lectures, exhibitions, concerts and safeguarded various works of art.[91][93] It also dealt with providing social services, including to the destitute Jewish population (through the council to Aid Jews, or Żegota).[91] Through the Directorate of Civil Resistance (1941–1943) the civil arm was also involved in lesser acts of resistance, such as minor sabotage, although in 1943 this department was merged with the Directorate of Covert Resistance, forming the Directorate of Underground Resistance, subordinate to Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa).[93] German Panther tank captured by the Poles during 1944 Warsaw Uprising, with Batalion Zośka armored platoon commanded by Wacław Micuta In response to the occupation, Poles formed one of the largest underground movements in Europe.[11][94] Resistance to the Nazi German occupation began almost at once. The Home Army (in Polish Armia Krajowa or AK), loyal to the Polish government in exile in London and a military arm of the Polish Underground State, was formed from a number of smaller groups in 1942.[95] There was also the People's Army (Polish Armia Ludowa or AL), backed by the Soviet Union and controlled by the Polish Workers' Party (Polish Polska Partia Robotnicza or PPR), though significantly less numerous than the Home Army.[11][96] In February 1942, when AK was formed, it numbered about 100,000 members. In the beginning of 1943, it had reached a strength of about 200,000. In the summer of 1944 when Operation Tempest begun AK reached its highest membership numbers. Estimates of AK membership in the first half of 1944 and summer that year vary, with about 400,000 being common.[97] With the imminent arrival of the Soviet army, the AK launched an uprising in Warsaw against the German army on 1 August 1944. The uprising, receiving little assistance from the nearby Soviet forces, eventually failed, significantly reducing the Home Army's power and position.[11] About 200,000 Poles, most of them civilians, lost their lives in the Uprising.[98] Effect on the Polish population The Polish civilian population suffered under German occupation in many ways. Large numbers were expelled from land intended for German colonisation, and forced to resettle in the General-Government area. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported to Germany for forced labour in industry and agriculture, where many thousands died. Poles were also conscripted for labour in Poland, and were held in labour camps all over the country, again with a high death rate. There was a general shortage of food, fuel for heating and medical supplies, and there was a high death rate among the Polish population as a result. Finally, thousands of Poles were killed as reprisals for resistance attacks on German forces or for other reasons. In all, about three million Poles died as a result of the German occupation, more than 10% of the pre-war population. When this is added to the three million Polish Jews who were killed as a matter of policy by the Germans, Poland lost about 22% of its population, the highest proportion of any European country in World War II.[99][100] Walling-off Świętokrzyska Street seen from Marszałkowska Street on the 'Aryan side' of the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940 Poland had a large Jewish population, and according to Davies, more Jews were both killed and rescued in Poland, than in any other nation, the rescue figure usually being put at between 100,000 and 150,000.[101] Thousands of Poles have been honoured as Righteous Among the Nations – constituting the largest national contingent.[102] When AK Home Army Intelligence discovered the true fate of transports leaving the Jewish Ghetto, the council to Aid Jews (Zegota) was established in late 1942, in cooperation with church groups. The organisation saved thousands. Emphasis was placed on protecting children, as it was nearly impossible to intervene directly against the heavily guarded transports. The Germans implemented several different laws to separate Poles and Jews in the ghettos with Poles living on the "Aryan Side" and the Jews living on the "Jewish Side", despite the risk of death many Poles risked their lives by forging "Aryan Papers" for Jews to make them appear as non-Jewish Poles so they could live on the Aryan side and avoid Nazi persecution.[103] Another law implemented by the Germans was that Poles were forbidden from buying from Jewish shops in which, if they did, they were subject to execution.[104] Jewish children were also distributed among safe houses and church networks.[101] Jewish children were often placed in church orphanages and convents.[105] Some three million gentile Polish citizens perished during the course of the war, over two million of whom were ethnic Poles (the remainder being mostly Ukrainians and Belarusians). The vast majority of those killed were civilians, mostly killed by the actions of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.[106][107] Aside from being sent to Nazi concentration camps, most ethnic Poles died through shelling and bombing campaigns, mass executions, forced starvation, revenge murder, ill health, and slave labour. Along with Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the main six extermination camps in occupied Poland were used predominantly to exterminate Jews. Stutthof concentration camp was used for mass extermination of Poles. A number of civilian labour camps (Gemeinschaftslager) for Poles (Polenlager) were established inside Polish territory. Many Poles died in German camps. The first non-German prisoners at Auschwitz were Poles who were the majority of inmates there until 1942 when the systematic killing of the Jews began. The first killing by poison gas at Auschwitz involved 300 Poles and 700 Soviet prisoners of war. Many Poles and other Central and Eastern Europeans were also sent to concentration camps in Germany: over 35,000 to Dachau, 33,000 to the camp for women at Ravensbrück, 30,000 to Mauthausen and 20,000 to Sachsenhausen.[108] The population in the General Government's territory was initially about 12 million in an area of 94,000 square kilometres, but this increased as about 860,000 Poles and Jews were expelled from the German-annexed areas and "resettled" in the General Government. Offsetting this was the German campaign of extermination of the Polish intelligentsia and other elements thought likely to resist (e.g. Operation Tannenberg). From 1941, disease and hunger also began to reduce the population. Poles were deported in large numbers to work as forced labour in Germany: eventually about a million were deported, and many died in Germany. Treatment of Polish citizens under Soviet occupation Identifying ethnic German prisoners massacred by Soviet secret police NKVD near Tarnopol, July 1941 Main article: Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946) Further information: Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia By the end of the Polish Defensive War, the Soviet Union took over 52.1% of Poland's territory (~200,000 km2), with over 13,700,000 people. The estimates vary; Prof. Elżbieta Trela-Mazur gives the following numbers in regards to the ethnic composition of these areas: 38% Poles (ca. 5.1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews (198,000).[17] Areas occupied by the USSR were annexed to Soviet territory, with the exception of the Wilno area, which was transferred to Lithuania, although it was soon attached to the USSR once Lithuania became a Soviet republic. Initially the Soviet occupation gained support among some members of the linguistic minorities who had chafed under the nationalist policies of the Second Polish Republic. Much of the Ukrainian population initially welcomed the unification with the Soviet Ukraine because twenty years earlier their attempt at self-determination failed during both the Polish–Ukrainian War and the Ukrainian–Soviet War.[109] There were large groups of prewar Polish citizens, notably Jewish youth and, to a lesser extent, the Ukrainian peasants, who saw the Soviet power as an opportunity to start political or social activity outside their traditional ethnic or cultural groups. Their enthusiasm however faded with time as it became clear that the Soviet repressions were aimed at all groups equally, regardless of their political stance.[110] British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore states that Soviet terror in the occupied eastern Polish lands was as cruel and tragic as the Nazis' in the west. Soviet authorities brutally treated those who might oppose their rule, deporting by 10 November 1940 around 10% of total population of Kresy, with 30% of those deported dead by 1941.[111] They arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Poles during 1939–1941, including former officials, officers, and natural "enemies of the people" like the clergy, but also noblemen and intellectuals. The Soviets also executed about 65,000 Poles. Soldiers of the Red Army and their officers behaved like conquerors, looting and stealing Polish treasures. When Stalin was told about it, he answered: "If there is no ill will, they [the soldiers] can be pardoned".[112] In one notorious massacre, the NKVD-the Soviet secret police—systematically executed 21,768 Poles, among them 14,471 former Polish officers, including political leaders, government officials, and intellectuals. Some 4,254 of these were uncovered in mass graves in Katyn Forest by the Nazis in 1943, who then invited an international group of neutral representatives and doctors to study the corpses and confirm Soviet guilt, but the findings from the study were denounced by the Allies as "Nazi propaganda".[citation needed] Sovietization propaganda poster addressed to the Ukrainian population residing within Polish borders. The text reads "Electors of the working people! Vote for joining of Western Ukraine into the Soviet Ukraine" The Soviet Union had ceased to recognize the Polish state at the start of the invasion.[113][114] As a result, the two governments never officially declared war on each other. The Soviets therefore did not classify Polish military prisoners as prisoners of war but as rebels against the new legal government of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia.[n] The Soviets killed tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war. Some, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński, who was captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were executed during the campaign itself.[115][116] On 24 September, the Soviets killed 42 staff and patients of a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec, near Zamość.[117] The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack, on 28 September.[118] Over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre.[119][120] The Poles and the Soviets re-established diplomatic relations in 1941, following the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement; but the Soviets broke them off again in 1943 after the Polish government demanded an independent examination of the recently discovered Katyn burial pits.[citation needed] The Soviets then lobbied the Western Allies to recognize the pro-Soviet Polish puppet government of Wanda Wasilewska in Moscow.[121] On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany had changed the secret terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. They moved Lithuania into the Soviet sphere of influence and shifted the border in Poland to the east, giving Germany more territory.[122] By this arrangement, often described as a fourth partition of Poland,[120] the Soviet Union secured almost all Polish territory east of the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Western Bug and San. This amounted to about 200,000 square kilometres of land, inhabited by 13.5 million Polish citizens.[123] The Red Army had originally sowed confusion among the locals by claiming that they were arriving to save Poland from the Nazis.[124] Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who had not been advised how to respond to a Bolshevik invasion. Polish and Jewish citizens may at first have preferred a Soviet regime to a German one,[125] but the Soviets soon proved as hostile and destructive towards the Polish people and their culture as the Nazis.[126][127] They began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property.[128] During the two years following the annexation, they arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens[129] and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 150,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians.[b][130][5][131] Land reform and collectivisation The Soviet base of support was strengthened by a land reform program initiated by the Soviets in which most of the owners of large lots of land were labeled "kulaks" and dispossessed of their land, which was then divided among poorer peasants. However, the Soviet authorities then started a campaign of forced collectivisation, which largely nullified the earlier gains from the land reform as the peasants generally did not want to join the Kolkhoz farms, nor to give away their crops for free to fulfill the state-imposed quotas. Removal of Polish governmental and social institutions While Germans enforced their policies based on racism, the Soviet administration justified their Stalinist policies by appealing to the Soviet ideology,[132] which in reality meant the thorough Sovietization of the area. Immediately after their conquest of eastern Poland, the Soviet authorities started a campaign of Sovietization[133][134] of the newly acquired areas. No later than several weeks after the last Polish units surrendered, on 22 October 1939, the Soviets organized staged elections to the Moscow-controlled Supreme Soviets (legislative body) of Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine.[135] The result of the staged voting was to become a legitimization of Soviet annexation of eastern Poland.[136] Residents of a town in Eastern Poland (now West Belarus) assembled to greet the arrival of the Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. The Russian text reads "Long Live the great theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin-Stalin" and contains a spelling error. Such welcomings were organized by the activists of the Communist Party of West Belarus affiliated with the Communist Party of Poland, delegalized in both countries by 1938.[137] Subsequently, all institutions of the dismantled Polish state were closed down and reopened under the Soviet appointed supervisors. Lwow University and many other schools were reopened soon but they were restarted anew as Soviet institutions rather than continuing their old legacy. Lwow University was reorganized in accordance with the Statute Books for Soviet Higher Schools. The tuition, that along with the institution's Polonophile traditions, kept the university inaccessible to most of the rural Ukrainophone population, was abolished and several new chairs were opened, particularly the chairs of Russian language and literature. The chairs of Marxism-Leninism, Dialectical and Historical Materialism aimed at strengthening of the Soviet ideology were opened as well.[17] Polish literature and language studies ware dissolved by Soviet authorities. Forty-five new faculty members were assigned to it and transferred from other institutions of Soviet Ukraine, mainly the Kharkiv and Kiev universities. On 15 January 1940 the Lviv University was reopened and started to teach in accordance with Soviet curricula.[138] Simultaneously, Soviet authorities attempted to remove the traces of Polish history of the area by eliminating much of what had any connection to the Polish state or even Polish culture in general.[17] On 21 December 1939, the Polish currency was withdrawn from circulation without any exchange to the newly introduced rouble, which meant that the entire population of the area lost all of their life savings overnight.[139] All the media became controlled by Moscow. Soviet authorities implemented a political regime similar to a police state,[140][141][142][143] based on terror. All Polish parties and organizations were disbanded. Only the Communist Party was allowed to exist along with organizations subordinated to it. All organized religions were persecuted. All enterprises were taken over by the state, while agriculture was made collective.[144] Rule of terror An inherent part of the Sovietization was a rule of terror started by the NKVD and other Soviet agencies. The first victims of the new order were approximately 250,000 Polish prisoners of war captured by the USSR during and after the Polish Defensive War (see Polish prisoners of war in Soviet Union (after 1939)).[145] As the Soviet Union did not sign any international convention on rules of war, they were denied the status of prisoners of war and instead almost all of the captured officers were then murdered (see Katyn massacre) or sent to Gulag.[146] Ordinary soldiers who were ethnic minorities living in the territories that the Soviet Union planned to annex were released and allowed to go home. Those who lived in the German zone of occupation were transferred to the Germans. "Military settlers" were excluded from home release. About 23,000 of POWs were separated from the rest and sent to construct a highway, with a planned release in December 1939.[147] Thousands of others would fall victim to NKVD massacres of prisoners in mid-1941, after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.[citation needed] Similar policies were applied to the civilian population as well. The Soviet authorities regarded service for the pre-war Polish state as a "crime against revolution"[148] and "counter-revolutionary activity",[149] and subsequently started arresting large numbers of Polish intelligentsia, politicians, civil servants and scientists, but also ordinary people suspected of posing a threat to the Soviet rule. Among the arrested members of the Polish intelligentsia were former prime ministers Leon Kozłowski and Aleksander Prystor, as well as Stanisław Grabski, Stanisław Głąbiński and the Baczewski family. Initially aimed primarily at possible political opponents, by January 1940 the NKVD aimed its campaign also at its potential allies, including the Polish communists and socialists. Among the arrested were Władysław Broniewski, Aleksander Wat, Tadeusz Peiper, Leopold Lewin, Anatol Stern, Teodor Parnicki, Marian Czuchnowski and many others.[150] Deportation During 1942–1945, nearly 30,000 Poles were deported by the Soviet Union to Karachi (then under British rule). This photo shows a memorial to the refugees who died in Karachi and were buried at the Karachi graveyard. In 1940 and the first half of 1941, the Soviets deported more than 1,200,000 Poles, most in four mass deportations. The first deportation took place 10 February 1940, with more than 220,000 sent to northern European Russia; the second on 13 April 1940, sending 320,000 primarily to Kazakhstan; a third wave in June–July 1940 totaled more than 240,000; the fourth occurred in June 1941, deporting 300,000. Upon resumption of Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations in 1941, it was determined based on Soviet information that more than 760,000 of the deportees had died – a large part of those dead being children, who had comprised about a third of deportees.[151] Approximately 100,000 former Polish citizens were arrested during the two years of Soviet occupation.[152] The prisons soon got severely overcrowded.[110] with detainees suspected of anti-Soviet activities and the NKVD had to open dozens of ad hoc prison sites in almost all towns of the region.[136] The wave of arrests led to forced resettlement of large categories of people (kulaks, Polish civil servants, forest workers, university professors or osadniks, for instance) to the Gulag labour camps and exile settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union.[134] Altogether roughly a million people were sent to the east in four major waves of deportations.[153] According to Norman Davies,[154] almost half of them were dead by the time the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement had been signed in 1941.[155] According to the Soviet law, all residents of the annexed area, dubbed by the Soviets as citizens of former Poland,[156] automatically acquired Soviet citizenship. However, actual conferral of citizenship still required the individual's consent and the residents were strongly pressured for such consent.[157] The refugees who opted out were threatened with repatriation to Nazi controlled territories of Poland.[4][158][159] Exploitation of ethnic tensions In addition, the Soviets exploited past ethnic tension between Poles and other ethnic groups, inciting and encouraging violence against Poles calling the minorities to "rectify the wrongs they had suffered during twenty years of Polish rule".[160] Pre-war Poland was portrayed as a capitalist state based on exploitation of the working people and ethnic minorities. Soviet propaganda claimed that unfair treatment of non-Poles by the Second Polish Republic was a justification of its dismemberment. Soviet officials openly incited mobs to perform killings and robberies[161] The death toll of the initial Soviet-inspired terror campaign remains unknown. Restoration of Soviet control Main article: History of Poland (1945–1989) While formal Polish sovereignty was almost immediately restored when the forces of Nazi Germany were expelled in 1945, however, it was quickly replaced by a self- proclaimed Polish Committee of National Liberation at the orders of Stalin. The country remained under firm Soviet control as troops of the Soviet Army Northern Group of Forces were stationed out there up until 1956. To this day the events of those and the following years are one of the stumbling blocks in Polish-Russian foreign relations.[citation needed] Casualties Main article: World War II casualties of Poland Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East, Warsaw Around 6 million Polish citizens – nearly 21.4% of the pre-war population of the Second Polish Republic — died between 1939 and 1945.[162] Over 90% of the death toll involved non-military losses, as most civilians were targets of various deliberate actions by the Germans and Soviets.[162] Both occupiers wanted not only to gain Polish territory, but also to destroy Polish culture and the Polish nation as a whole.[2] Tadeusz Piotrowski, Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire has provided a reassessment of Poland's losses in World War II. Polish war dead include 5,150,000 victims of Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles and the Holocaust, the treatment of Polish citizens by occupiers included 350,000 deaths during the Soviet occupation in 1940–41 and about 100,000 Poles killed in 1943–44 in the Ukraine. Of the 100,000 Poles killed in the Ukraine, 80,000 perished during the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Losses by ethnic group were 3,100,000 Jews; 2,000,000 ethnic Poles; 500,000 Ukrainians and Belarusians.[106] In August 2009 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimated Poland's dead (including Polish Jews) at between 5.47 and 5.67 million (due to German actions) and 150,000 (due to Soviet), or around 5.62 and 5.82 million total.[7] The official Polish government report prepared in 1947 listed 6,028,000 war deaths out of a population of 27,007,000 ethnic Poles and Jews; this report excluded ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian losses. However some historians in Poland now believe that Polish war losses were at least 2 million ethnic Poles and 3 million Jews as a result of the war.[163] Another assessment, Poles as Victims of the Nazi Era, prepared by USHMM, lists 1.8 to 1.9 million ethnic Polish dead in addition to 3 million Polish Jews.[11] POW deaths totaled 250,000; in Germany (120,000) and in the USSR (130,000).[164] The genocide of Romani people (porajmos) was 35,000 persons.[165] Jewish Holocaust victims totaled 3,000,000.[166] See also Chronicles of Terror The Holocaust in Poland Nazi crimes against the Polish nation Polish minority in Germany Polish minority in the Soviet Union Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939-1946) Gestapo–NKVD conferences

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