Hershy Orenstein

  • Test

  • Aktion Reinhard or Aktion Reinhardt; alsoknown as Einsatz Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhardt

    Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt was the codename of the secret German plan in WW2 to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Gouvernement district of German-occupied Poland & this deadliest phase of the Holocaust was marked by the introduction of extermination camps - Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. The operation proceeded from March 1942 to November 1943; about 1.47 million or more Jews were murdered in just 100-days from late July to early November 1942;

    July to October 1942, the overall death toll, including all killings of Jews and not just carbon monoxide gassings of Operation Reinhard, amounted to over 2-million killed in those 4-months alone.

    No totals for those murdered are accurate - as it will never be known.

    People were deliberately exterminated in the freight wagons, (exposure, starvation, lack of water) on the way to the mass-murder destinations and some freight wagons never made it to their destinations as the cadavers of those transported were disposed of enroute.

    All these Reinhard murder sites looked more like temporary builders yards, with rail sidings, built in forests and that is what they were: constructed for expediency, to efficiently murder tens of thousands of Jews every day from the Generalgouvernement and elsewhere, whereas the fixed sites like Majdanek & Auschwitz II-Birkenau KL, near Auschwitz I KL initially operated as forced-labour camps were planned to be more longterm facilities.

    Reinhard murder sites were staffed predominantly by German personnel from the “euthanasia” Aktion T4 programme ending in August 1941, during which more than 70,000 Polish and German disabled men, women, and children were murdered. The SS officers responsible for the Aktion T4, including Christian Wirth, Franz Stangl, and Irmfried Eberl, were all given key roles in the implementation of the “Final Solution” of the Reinhard murder sites which was managed out of an HQ in Lublin. 13 October 1941, SS and Police Leader Odilo Globočnik received an oral order from Himmler – anticipating the fall of Moscow – to begin the construction of the first extermination camp at Bełżec (operational from March 17, 1942. The murder facilities were to be self-funding paid for by the personal effects and clothing brought by those unfortunate murder victims - they returned a huge profit

  • Generalplan Ost

    The main objective of Generalplan Ost was to establish a pure “German and Aryan” community in Eastern Europe, composed of individuals who would be loyal subjects of the Greater Germanic Reich.

    It was Nazi Germany’s plan for the settlement and “Germanization” of captured territory in Central- & Eastern- Europe, involving genocide, extermination & large-scale ethnic cleansing of Slavs, Jews, and other indigenous peoples of Eastern Europe, categorized as “Untermenschen” [see blog post] in Nazi ideology - a precusor was a series of systematic massacres, mass starvations, chattel labour, mass rapes, child abductions, & sexual slavery. Under direct orders from Nazi leadership, around 11-million Slavs were killed in systematic violence & terrorism carried out as part of the Generalplan Ost. In addition to genocide, millions more were forced into slave labour to serve the German war economy; In partial fulfilment of the “Drang nach Osten” (drive to the East) ideology of German expansionism. Intended for the genocide were the majority of Slavic inhabitants by various means – mass killings, forced starvations, slave labour and other occupation policies. The remaining populations were to be forcibly deported beyond the Urals [considered the Eastern extend of “Lebensraum,” [see blog post] paving the way for German settlers.

    The Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums, RKF, RKFDV(Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood) was the office in Nazi Germany, directed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler,[see blog post] directly responsible for developing and implementing the Generalplan Ost which gave Himmler direct control of the Reichbahn (German railways) and the railways of occupied territories for population transfers and forced transportation to mass murder centers in Operation Reinhard.

    Tis Racist plan, prepared in the years 1939–1942, was part of Lebensraum policy [see blog post and a fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten (Drive towards the East) ideology of German expansion to the east, both of them part of the larger plan Generalplan Ost. Economic calculations, negated by scorched-earth policies of the Wehrmacht on the Easter Front. The ideological fanaticism & Hitler’s doctrine of Lebensraum envisaged the mass-killings, enslavement and ethnic cleansing of Slavic inhabitants of Eastern Europe, followed by the colonization of these lands with Germanic settlers. The Master Race doctrine [see blog post] condemned Slavs to permanent domination by Germanic peoples, since it viewed Slavs as primitive people who lacked the ability to undertake autonomous activities.

    ”… when we speak of new territory in Europe today we must principally think of Russia and the border states subject to her. Destiny itself seems to wish to point out the way for us here. … For the Russian state was not organized by the constructive political talent of the Slav element in Russia, but was much more a marvelous exemplification of the capacity for state-building possessed by the Germanic element in a race of inferior worth. … This colossal empire in the East is ripe for dissolution. And the end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We are chosen by destiny to be the witnesses of a catastrophe which will afford the strongest confirmation of the nationalist theory of race.” — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

    Germanization campaign for Poland, as part of the Generalplan Ost, by 1952 called for 3–4 million ‘non-Germanized’ Poles (all of them peasants) were to be left residing in the former Poland.

    • Generalplan Ost for new German settlement colonies (marked with dots and diamonds), drawn up by the Friedrich Wilhelm University Institute of Agriculture in Berlin, 1942.svg

  • Germanisation of Poles during Partitions

    After the Napoleonic Wars, Hapsburg-Austria remained in possession of parts of Lesser Poland, Galicia, Volhynia, as well as a minor share of Silesia. For most of the 19th century, the Hapsburg-Austrian empire made few or no concessions to their Polish constituents, their attitude being that a “patriot was a traitor – unless he was a patriot for the [Austrian] Emperor.” - Franz Joseph I of Austria and His Empire by Anatol Murad (1968). However, by the early 20th century – just before the outbreak of WWI and the collapse of Austria-Hungary – out of the three partitions, the Austrian-Partition of Poland had the most local autonomy.

    Prussian (German: Preussen) Poland in turn not only retained the bulk of Upper Silesia but upon dissolution of the Duchy of Warsaw it also reclaimed the entire West Prussia (formed by Pomerelia, the northernmost part of Greater Poland and a strip of historical Prussia on the right bank of Vistula) and, most importantly, obtained the bulk of Greater Poland where an autonomous polity was formed under the name of Grand Duchy of Posen with an officially stated purpose to provide its overwhelmingly Polish population a degree of autonomy; in May 1815 King Frederick William III, of Prussia, issued a manifest to the Poles in Posen: “You also have a Fatherland. […] You will be incorporated into my monarchy without having to renounce your nationality. […] You will receive a constitution like the other provinces of my kingdom. Your religion will be upheld. […] Your language shall be used like the German language in all public affairs and everyone of you with suitable capabilities shall get the opportunity to get an appointment to a public office. […]”

    There was an easing of Germanisation policy in the period 1815–30. Then reforming Prussian minister for Education Karl Sigmund (Franz Freiherr vom Stein zum) Altenstein stated in 1823: Concerning the spread of the German language it is most important to get a clear understanding of the aims, whether it should be the aim to promote the understanding of German among Polish-speaking subjects or whether it should be the aim to gradually and slowly Germanise the Poles. According to the judgement of the minister only the first is necessary, advisable and possible, the second is not advisable and not accomplishable. To be good subjects it is desirable for the Poles to understand the language of government. However, it is not necessary for them to give up or postpone their mother language.

    Silesia had always been a strategic Borderland at the crossroads between Berlin, Prague and Cracow. Contested by surrounding rulers and German speaking peoples dominated Silesia. Silesia was a “bulwark” against Slavic-Polish culture

    • Growth of Prussia. Yellow are the territories gained by Prussia during the partitions of Poland
    • Prussia 1807-1871

  • Germanisation of Poles during Partitions

    After the Napoleonic Wars, Austria remained in possession of parts of Lesser Poland, Galicia, Volhynia, as well as a minor share of Silesia. For most of the 19th century, the Hapsburg-Austrian empire made few or no concessions to their Polish constituents, their attitude being that a “patriot was a traitor – unless he was a patriot for the [Austrian] Emperor.” - Franz Joseph I of Austria and His Empire by Anatol Murad (1968). However, by the early 20th century – just before the outbreak of WWI and the collapse of Austria-Hungary – out of the three partitions, the Austrian one had the most local autonomy.

    Prussia in turn not only retained the bulk of Upper Silesia but upon dissolution of the Duchy of Warsaw it also reclaimed the entire West Prussia (formed by Pomerelia, the northernmost part of Greater Poland and a strip of historical Prussia on the right bank of Vistula) and, most importantly, obtained the bulk of Greater Poland where an autonomous polity was formed under the name of Grand Duchy of Posen with an officially stated purpose to provide its overwhelmingly Polish population a degree of autonomy; in May 1815 King Frederick William III issued a manifest to the Poles in Posen: “You also have a Fatherland. […] You will be incorporated into my monarchy without having to renounce your nationality. […] You will receive a constitution like the other provinces of my kingdom. Your religion will be upheld. […] Your language shall be used like the German language in all public affairs and everyone of you with suitable capabilities shall get the opportunity to get an appointment to a public office. […]”

    There was an easing of Germanisation policy in the period 1815–30. Then reforming Prussian minister for Education Karl Sigmund (Franz Freiherr vom Stein zum) Altenstein stated in 1823: Concerning the spread of the German language it is most important to get a clear understanding of the aims, whether it should be the aim to promote the understanding of German among Polish-speaking subjects or whether it should be the aim to gradually and slowly Germanise the Poles. According to the judgement of the minister only the first is necessary, advisable and possible, the second is not advisable and not accomplishable. To be good subjects it is desirable for the Poles to understand the language of government. However, it is not necessary for them to give up or postpone their mother language.

    Growth of Prussia. Yellow are the territories gained by Prussia during the partitions of Poland

  • Gleichschaltung

    Lit “bringing into line”, was the process of Nazification by which Adolf Hitler — leader of the Nazi Party in Germany — established a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society “from the economy & trade associations to the media, culture & education”.

    Although the Weimar Constitution remained nominally in effect throughout Hitler’s dictatorship, near total Nazification was achieved by 1935 with the resolutions approved during that year’s Nuremberg Rally, fusing the symbols of the party and the state.

    The Nazis were able to put Gleichschaltung into effect due to multiple legal measures enacted by the Reich government during the 20-months following January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

    Reichstag Fire Decree. The day after the Reichstag fire [see blog post], President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg, acting at Hitler’s request and based on the emergency powers in article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, issued the Reichstag Fire Decree on February 28, 1933).

    There then followed a series of measures that shifted control from the federated states and Reichstag to Adolf Hitler (Reich Chancellor):

    Enabling Act. When the newly elected Reichstag convened – not including the Communist delegates whose participation in politics had been banned – it passed the Enabling Act on March 23, 1933). This gave the Reich Chancellor and his cabinet) the right to enact laws for a period of 4-years without the involvement of the Reichstag or the Reich President

    Provisional Law on the Coordination of the States with the Reich. Enacted by the Reich government using the Enabling Act, the “Provisional Law on the Coordination of the States with the Reich” March 31, 1933, dissolved the sitting parliaments of all German states except the recently elected Prussian parliament, which the Nazis already controlled.

    Further laws followed, but the dictatorial die was cast.

    During the debate on the Enabling Act, Social Democrat party chairman Otto Wels spoke the last free words in the democratic Reichstag: “Freedom and life can be taken from us, but not our honor.” The subsequent passage of the Act did away with parliamentary democracy.

    • The “Law to Secure the Unity of Party and State” (Reichsgesetzblatt December 2, 1933)
    • The German states were not formally abolished (except Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1934 & Lübeck in 1937), their constitutional rights & sovereignty were eroded & ultimately ended. Prussia was already under federal administration when Hitler came to power, providing a model for the process.

  • Volksgemeinschaft

    “Community” belonging to “people’s”, “folk”, “national”, or “racial” group. Originally the concept of “belonging” became popular during WW1 as Germans rallied in support of the war, & many experienced “relief that all social & political divisions are resolved in the great common purpose.” After WW1, the idea of Volksgemeinschaft was also used to interpret economic catastrophes & hardship faced by all Germans during the Weimar Republic [see my Blog post] era as a common experience. Then, embraced by the newly founded Nazi Party in the 1920s, and eventually became strongly associated with Nazism - to live together harmoniously & work for the nation. Upon assuming power in 1933 the Nazis sought to gain support of various elements of society. Their concept of Volksgemeinschaft was racially unified and organized hierarchically. Nazis expounded the theory of a mystical Germanic unity, a form of racial soul uniting all Germans, including those living abroad; this soul was regarded as related to the land, in the doctrine of Blut und Boden “blood and soil.” [see blog post]. Volksgemeinschaft served only as a symbolic unity, while real differences of status & wealth continued to dominate daily life in Nazi Germany. A “folk community” in Nazi propaganda, depicts the events of assuming power in1933 as a Volkwerdung, or a people finally becoming itself.

    Those Germans outside the Volksgemeinschaft were called Gemeinschaftsfremde “communal aliens” and in 1944 there was a proposal that Community aliens - should be subject towards police supervision. - If supervisory measures are insufficient, the police shall transfer them to the “Gau” (see blog post) welfare authorities. - If, in the case a stricter degree of custody is required the police shall place them in a police camp.

    Hitler declared that he knew nothing of bourgeois or proletarian, only Germans - Volksgemeinschaft was portrayed as overcoming distinctions of party and social class.

    Modern German historian Detlev Peukert wrote tabout the purpose of Nazi social policy: “The goal was an utopian Volksgemeinschaft, totally under police surveillance, in which any attempt at nonconformist behaviour, or even any hint or intention of such behaviour, would be visited with terror.”

    Surce Deutsche Nationalbibliothek “allegiance to the German national community!”

  • Weltanschauung

    Nazi Weltanschauung “worldview” - the core ideological force that launched Naziism violent project in pursuit of a new global order - aimed to dissolve the contradictions between the Nazi conceptualizations of “race” and “space” through the creation of a Germanic Lebensraum [see blog post] and achieve world domination by the, so-called ‘Nordic people’. This combination both ‘biopolitical’ & ‘geo-political’ formed the basis for its Germanization policies, the mission of what it regarded as the “purification of the Volksgemeinschaft a mystical unity, a form of racial soul uniting all German peoples a racial/community,” at very core its state-sponsored genocide of the “other.”

    Ken Funk, of Oregon State University, explains 21 March 2001: “Woldview” as literally, a perception of the world as “At the heart of one’s knowledge is one’s “worldview”; a foundation for all reasoning, providing the standards of value to establish the cognitive goals towards which reason works and to select the rules by which reason operates. - A worldview is the set of beliefs about fundamental aspects of Reality that ground & influence all one’s perceiving, thinking, knowing, and doing “… with all reasoning focused & goal-directed …”

  • Lebensraum

    Lit. “Living space” a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism {see blog post herein] and a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in WW1 (1914–1918) whose ultimate goal of was to establish a Greater German Reich. The Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (Master Plan for the East) was based on its tenets - Slavic populations were to be removed permanently either through mass deportation to Siberia extermination, or enslavement. Jews were to be killed for being “parasitic”.

    Hitler told General Wilhelm Keitel [(1882–1946), Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command from 1938 to 1945: “that the war would be a difficult racial struggle and that the General Gouvernement was set-up to “purify the Reich territory from Jews and Polacks” [At Nuremberg trials Keitel was guilty of the shooting of hostages, the massacre of prisoners of war & civilians in German occupied territories.]

    In the words of Norman Naimark, historian : “If the awful counterfactual of a Nazi victory had come to pass… (Slavs) Russians, Belarusians & Ukrainians would surely have shared the fate of the Poles and been eliminated culturally and ethnically as distinct peoples and nations.”

    Vejas Liulevicius wrote: “While the Soviets retreated, “trading space for time,” the Nazis gave up time to gain space — seeking an everlasting, timeless present of destructive expansion in their vision of the Ostland. As the tide of events turned in the East, Hitler refused to give up the spaces conquered and forbade withdrawal again and again, producing military disasters.”

    See: Wochenspruch der NSDAP series, 17 December 1939 Hitler’s quote reads “we are fighting for the Security of our people & for our living space”

    See: Stylised map _Das Grossdeutschland in der Zukunft _ “Greater Germany in the future” (1943) Nazi Occupied Eastern Europe depicted as as a settler-colonial territory of Nazis

  • Volksdeutschen (ethnic Germans)

    The estimated 10-million Volksdeutschen (ethnic Germans) of central- and eastern- Europe were useful prpoganda tools for Nazi Germany. Even before Whermacht troops began their assault on Poland, The German Foreign Office prepared a propoganda offensive. With wildly exagerated accounts of agressions and reports of atrocities against ethnic Polish-Germans by their neighbours. The reconstitution of Poland, following the Treaty of Versailles (1919), made ethnic German minorities of what were ‘Prussian provinces of the German Empire,’ now citizens of the Polish nation state. In September 1939, reports of atrocities against Volksdeutsche accompanied the German invasion of Poland - included were detailed descriptions of rape, dismemberment, and mass slaughter. The “real aggressors,” being, the Poles, Jews, and their allies and backers - presented the Volksdeutschen of Polabd as victims only - and as the only victims.

    After Germany occupied western Poland, it established a central registration bureau, called the Deutsche Volksliste, DVL (German People’s List)), whereby Poles of German ethnicity were registered as Volksdeutsche. The German occupiers encouraged such registration, in many cases forcing it or subjecting Poles of German ethnicity to terror assaults if they refused. Those who joined this group were given benefits including better food, as well as a better social status.

    The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle [or VoMi, a Nazi Party agency founded, in 1937, to manage the interests of the Volksdeutsche and responsible the implementation of Nazi Lebensraum, “living-space” policies, see blog post,] organised large-scale looting of property and redistributed goods to the Volksdeutsche. They were given apartments, workshops, farms, furniture, and clothing confiscated from Jews and Poles. In turn, hundreds of thousands of the Volksdeutsche joined the German forces, either willingly or under compulsion.

    During WW2, the Polish citizens of German ancestry that identified with the Polish nation faced the dilemma whether to register in the Deutsche Volksliste. Many families had lived in Poland for centuries and more-recent immigrants had arrived over 30 years before the war. They faced the choice of registering and being regarded as traitors by the Poles, or not signing and being treated by the Nazi occupation as traitors to the Germanic race.

    Polish Silesian Catholic Church authorities, led by bishop Stanisław Adamski and with agreement from the Polish Government in Exile, advised Poles to sign up to the Volksliste in order to avoid atrocities and mass murder that happened in other parts of the country.

    In occupied Poland, Volksdeutscher enjoyed privileges but were subject to conscription, or draft, into the Whermacht. In occupied Pomerania, the Gauleiter of the Danzig-West Prussia region Albert Forster ordered a list of people considered of German ethnicity to be made in 1941. Due to insignificant voluntary registrations by February 1942, Forster made signing the Volksliste mandatory and empowered local authorities to use force and threats to implement the decree. Consequently, the number of signatories rose to almost a million, or about 55% of the 1944 population.

    Ethnic German colonisers, resettled into German-annexed and occupied Poland during “Heim ins Reich” action (see my blog post]. The Deutsche Volksliste categorised non-Jewish Poles of German ethnicity into one of four categories: Category I: Persons of German descent committed to the Reich before 1939. Category II: Persons of German descent who had remained passive. Category III: Persons of German descent who had become partly “Polonised”, e.g., through marrying a Polish partner or through working relationships (especially Silesians and Kashubians). Category IV: Persons of German ancestry who had become “Polonised” but were supportive of “Germanisation”.

    Volksliste of Category 1 and 2 in the Polish areas annexed by Germany numbered 1-million, and Nos. 3 and 4 numbered 1.7-million. In the General Gouvernement there were another 120,000 Volksdeutsche.

  • Polish or Pomeranian Corridor

    Polish Corridor (German: Polnischer Korridor; Polish: korytarz polski), also known as the Pomeranian Corridor, dividing the bulk of Weimar Germany from the German province of East Prussia. At its narrowest point, the Polish territory was just 30 km wide. The Free City of Danzig (now the Polish cities of Gdańsk, Sopot and the surrounding areas), situated to the east of the corridor, became after WW1 a semi-independent German speaking city-state forming neither German nor of Poland, though united with the latter through an League of Nations imposed union covering customs, mail, foreign policy, railways as well as defence. 90% of Danzig’s population was German before WW1 so turning it into Polish territory@ was in violation of the League of Nations principle of national self-determination, but the League of Nations had promised in the Fourteen Points of allowing Poland “secure access to the sea” gave Poland a claim on Danzig, hence the compromise of the Free City of Danzig. In 1819 those claiming German descent in Danzig made up 46% of the population

    On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The German 4th Army defeated the Polish Pomorze Army, which had been tasked with the defence of this region, and captured the corridor during the Battle of Tuchola Forest by September 1-5, 1939. The corridor was subsequently directly annexed by Germany until it was recaptured by the Red Army at the end of the war. Other local notable battles took place at Westerplatte, the first battle of the German invasion of Poland, marking the start of World War II in Europe., Defence of the Polish Post Office in Danzig (Gdańsk) September 1st, 1979, Battle of Kępa Oksywska [Oksywie outside the Polish city of Gdynia] between 10 and 19 September 1939, and the Battle of the Defense of Hel (Polish: Obrona Helu) September 1, to October 2, 1939 [each of these battles will eventually have their own blog post to accompany our tour)

    Map Wikipedia

  • Gau Ausland [overseas Nazi-party membership]

    1925 was an interesting year for postwar Germany. The Weimar Republic was beginning to reap some of the rewards of economic recovery, and the nation was once again assuming a more meaningful role in world affairs. The “spirit of Locarno,” with its arbitration 7-treaties guaranteeing the frontiers of France, Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, opened the way for Germany’s membership in the League of Nations. Early 1930s also saw steps taken in the direction of searching for peaceful solutions to certain problems in foreign affairs. For example, the first important treaty that Hitler agreed to with Poland on January 26th, 1934 was a 10-year non-aggression pact that added diplomatic prestige for both nations, in reality it hamstrung Poland : in that Poland would not interfere if Germany moved against Austria or Czechoslovakia, and it did not address the smoldering German resentment toward the existence of the “Polish Corridor” [see my Blog Post] that had been created as a result of the 1919 Versailles peace settlement. It also complemented the non-aggression pact concluded by Poland a year and a half earlier, in July 1932, with the USSR

    In 1931 the Nazi Party extended its membership to Germans who lived overseas, this class of membership was known as Auslandsorganisation der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterparte [NSDAP/AO or Gau Ausland]had as its Gaulieter Ernst Bohler. Gau Ausland Poland had only 17-party members, but no organization as Polish members were scattered all over Poland. The other limiting factor was that Gau Ausland only accepted full-German citizens. The Treaty of Versailles had placed millions of people who were former-German citizens into the border territories of Denmark, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, and France, while other thousands were separated from their homeland in Danzig, Memel, and the Saar, but they did nor have access to the NSDAP

    So, in Poland, these Polish-Germans, who could not become members of Gau Ausland had to wait till specialised categories were formed for Polish nationals of German Descent the [see my blog post] Volksliste

  • Blue Police / Ordnungspolizei

    When we visit Poland we tour the streets of the Cities, towns [שטאָט], villages [שטעטל] and village [דאָרף] which on German occupation were mainly policed by Granatowa policja (Polish Blue police). The German security forces included - dedicated units of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen) which were tasked with arresting or outright killing of those resisting the German occupation. These were supplemented, in the first months, by armed squads of ethnic German-Polish militia called Selbstschutz (Self-Defence) [see my blog post] organised for Operation Tannenberg [see my blog post]. and then disbanded at beginning 1940 - with Selbstschutz members transfering to various units of the SS, Gestapo and the German police.

    These Blue Police formations officially came into being on 30 October 1939 when Germany drafted Poland’s prewar Policja Państwowa (Poland’s state police officers), into organized local units under German leadership.

    From the German perspective, the primary role of the Blue Police was to maintain law and order on the territories of occupied Poland, as to free the German Order Police for other duties. As Heinrich Himmler [see my Blog Post] stated in his order from 5 May 1940:

    “providing general police service in the General Gouvernement is the role of the Polish police. German police will intervene only if it is required by the German interests and will monitor the Polish police.”

    On 30 October 1939, Higher SS and Police Leader in General Government Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger [see my blog post] ordered the mobilization of the pre-war Polish police into the service of the German authorities. The policemen were to report for duty or face severe punishment.

    As there were not enough Polish-speaking Germans even from the Volksdeutsche-Polish population [people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship]. Please note that in Occupied Poland, Nazi authorities compiled specific lists and registered people as ethnic Germans in the “Deutsche Volksliste” in 4-categories.

    The main reason for the restoration of the Polish police, into the Blue Police, was:

    • the inability to maintain order under wartime conditions,

    • the lack of knowledge of the Polish language by German policemen and occupation officials, as well as

    • the undecided fate of the occupied Polish lands, the formation of the so-called residual-buffer state, “Reststaat” for Slavs, was still under consideration. This would be instituted in conjunction with the plan for the Jews “Nisko Plan” [see blog entry] expulsion and resettlement of the Jews of Europe into a remote corner of the Generalgouvernement [see my blog post] territory, bordering the cities of Lublin and the Nisko Plan, [see my blog post, was devised by Adolf Hitler and formulated by assistants and bore similarities to the American Indian reservations.

    The Blue Police, initially employed purely to deal with ordinary criminality, was later also used to counter smuggling, which was an essential element of German-occupied Poland’s underground economy.

    The Blue Police organization was officially dissolved and declared disbanded by the Polish Committee of National Liberation on 15 August 1944.

    The Blue Police was finally formed on 17 December 1939, by order of Governor General Hans Frank. In January 1940, the manpower of the Blue Police amounted to more than 10,000 men, including 1173 criminal policemen. After verification of personnel and the removal of most senior officers, the newly created police force was subordinated to the Kommandeur der Ordnungspolizei [KdO].

    The Blue Police did not have a separate commander, but this role was de facto performed by its organizer Major Hans Köchlner - who had been a supervisory officer in the Polish State Police for 2-years prior to invasion, and then Staff-Commander in the Occupying Ordnungsdienst [Order Police]. Köchlner had a reputation as an expert on the Polish police, as he had served an internship with them in 1937. He was assisted by a liaison officer, Lt. Col. Roman Sztaba, who before the war was the police commandant of the Wołyń voivodeship.

    Blue Police were in fact a local- communal- institution, maintained by the local government. The highest level of command within its ranks was that of district or city commandant. In fact within the German security services of Occupied Poland the Blue Police was essentially the executive body of the local Gendarmerie and Schupo. The role of the district commandant was diminishing, and by the end of the occupation he had effectively become a figurehead.

    In the districts, individual stations were directly under the supervision of the local Gendarmerie.

    In urban areas, the role of commandants was somewhat greater, although they were also under the strict control of the local [uniformed] Schutzpolizei des Reiches (Schupo) the state protection police of Nazi Germany and a branch of the Ordnungspolizei. [Schutzpolizei is the German name for a uniformed police force] **this meant that an order to a Blue Policeman could be given by any uniformed German functionary**.

    After the German attack on the USSR the District of Galicia was incorporated into the General Gouvernement, [see my blog post] but the Blue Police was not established there, local policing was under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian police.

    During the first year of occupation, about 1,000 Blue Police stations were restored in the Generalgouvernement. The Blue Police had little autonomy, and all of its high-ranking officers came from the ranks of the German police (Kriminalpolizei). It served in the capacity of an auxiliary force, along with the police forces guarding seats of administration (Schutzpolizei), Railway Police (Bahnschutzpolizei), Forest Protection Command (Forstschutzkommando) and Border Guard (Grenzschutz).

    To sum-up, the Blue Police was subordinate to the German Order Police with Polish prewar regulations.

    The Anwärter, new volunteers to the Blue Police, were trained at a police school in Nowy Sącz, [see blog post] with 3,000 graduates (receiving salary of 180 zł each) The school was run by Schutzpolizei Major Vincenz Edler von Strohe (real name Wincenty Słoma, a Reichdeutscher [ ethnic Germans who resided within the German state that was founded in 1871] formerly in the Austrian police). There were additional though separate courses for Polish and Ukrainian enlisted ranks.

    As the force was primarily a continuation of the prewar Polish police force, it also relied largely on prewar Polish criminal laws, a situation that was accepted as a provisional necessity by the Germans.

    Scholars disagree about the degree of involvement of the Blue Police in the rounding up of Jews. Although policing inside the Warsaw Ghetto was a responsibility of the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Ghetto Police) [see my blog post], a Polish-Jewish historian Emmanuel Ringelblum, [see my blog post] chronicler of the Warsaw Ghetto and leader of the underground Oneg Sabbes, mentioned “Polish policemen” carrying out extortions and beatings. The “Polish Police” also took part in street roundups.

    On 3 June 1942, members of the Blue Police refused to execute 110 Jews in Gęsiówka prison in Warsaw, but they were forced to watch, some of them wept, while the Germans themselves executed the victims.

    According to Szymon Datner:

    “The Polish police were employed in a very marginal way, in what I would call keeping order. I must state with all decisiveness that more than 90% of that terrifying, murderous work was carried out by the Germans, with no Polish participation whatsoever.”

    According to Raul Hilberg:

    “Of all the native police forces in occupied Eastern Europe, those of Poland were least involved in anti-Jewish actions…. They [the Polish Blue Police] could not join the Germans in major operations against Jews or Polish resistors, lest they be considered traitors by virtually every Polish onlooker. Their task in the destruction of the Jews was therefore limited.”

    Jan Grabowski, a Polish-born Jewish writer, has claimed that:

    Blue Police played an important role in the Holocaust in Poland, often operating independently of German orders and killing Jews for financial gain. Grabowski states:

    “For a Jew, falling into the hands of the Polish police meant, in practically all known cases, certain death… The historical evidence—hard, irrefutable evidence coming from the Polish, German, and Israeli archives—points to a pattern of murderous involvement throughout occupied Poland.”

    According to Emanuel Ringelblum, of the underground Oneg Shabbes, Ringelblum compared the role of the Polish _Blue Police _ to the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Order Service aka Ghetto Police): “The uniformed police has had a deplorable role in the “resettlement actions”. The blood of hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews, caught and driven to the “death vans” will be on their heads. The Germans’ tactics were usually as follows: in the first “resettlement action” they utilized the Jewish Order Service, which behaved no better from the ethical point of view than their Polish opposite numbers. In the subsequent “actions,” when the Jewish Order Service was liquidated as well, the Blue (Polish) Police force was utilized.”

    However, A substantial part of the Blue Police belonged to the Polish underground resistance AK Home Army, mostly its counterintelligence and National Security Corps. Some estimates are as high as 50%.

    There were some Blue Police members who reportedly acted against round-up orders. But, police officers who disobeyed German orders did so at the risk of death.

    We know of one Blue Policeman who was awarded Righteous among the Nations [see my blog post], Bronisław Marchlewicz (b.1899-d.1972), who in 1942 saved 5-year-old Marysia Osowiecka, who survived the Warsaw ghetto, from the hands of the Germans, and there were probably more Blue Policemen who saved Jews.

    Bronisław Marchlewicz

  • Fritz Bracht (b.1899 – suicide May 9, 1945) Gauleiter Upper Silesia (wherein KL Auschwitz)

    Bracht was appointed to the post of Deputy Gauleiter of Gau Silesia on 1 May 1935, serving under Gauleiter Josef Wagner. He also served briefly as acting Deputy Gauleiter in Wagner’s other jurisdiction, Gau Westphalia-South from 1 to 15 August 1936.

    When Silesia was split into two Gaue, Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia on 27 January 1941, Bracht succeeded Wagner as the Gauleiter of the new Upper Silesia. He also succeeded to the position of Oberpräsident (High President) of the new Province of Upper Silesia, thus uniting under his control the highest party and governmental offices in the province.

    On 16 November 1942 he was named Reich Defense Commissioner in his Gau. On 20 April 1944, he was promoted to the rank of SA-Obergruppenführer.

    Within Bracht’s jurisdiction was Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1944, with war threatening Silesia, Bracht ordered that air defence facilities in his Gau be upgraded but could not prevail upon the Armament Ministry to do so.

    Major Red Army offensives were launched against Upper Silesia beginning in January 1945, it is rumoured that during the time of the Death Marches from Auschwitz he was taken-ill and hospitalised which led to poor management and confusion.

    Hostilities continued in Upper Silesia into May, 1945. As the Red Army marched into Silesia, Bracht and his wife both died by poisoning themselves with potassium cyanide/

  • Col. Salomon Morel, NKVD (b.Garbów near Lublin 1919 – d.2007)

    Salomon Morel was a Jewish-officer in the [Polish-Communist] Ministry of Public Security in the Polish People’s Republic & commander, Polish communist concentration camps, run by the NKVD until 1956. During most of 1945, Morel was commander of the Zgoda labour camp in Świętochłowice.

    When Nazi Germany occupied Poland, Morel & his family went into hiding to avoid being placed in one of the Jewish ghettos. Morel’s mother, father and one brother were killed by the Blue Police [se my blog post] during Christmas of 1942. Both Salomon and his brother survived part of the war under the protection of a local Polish farmer, hidden by Józef Tkaczyk, a Polish Catholic (Righteous Among the Nations, see my blog post), before Morel joined communist partisans - accounts of his WW2 and his families experience at this horrific time vary. Morel claimed that he was at one point an inmate in Auschwitz and over 30 of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust.

    In 1944 Morel became warden of the Soviet NKVD prison at Lublin Castle where many soldiers of the anti-communist Armia Krajowa (Home Army) were imprisoned and tortured.

    In 1949 he was made commander of Jaworzno concentration camp and remained a commandant of numerous concentration camps until they were all closed down in 1956 following the Polish October. Dorota Boriczek, an internee, described Morel as “a barbaric and cruel man” who often personally tortured and killed prisoners. Gerhard Gruschka, a local Upper Silesian of Polish descent, was imprisoned in Zgoda when he was 14 years old and wrote a book about his experiences, detailing the endemic torture and abuse in the camp. Morel was also accused of an extensive pattern of sadistic torture in John Sack’s book An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against Germans (2000) in 1945, contributed to publicizing his case in the Anglophone world.

    Morel then worked as head of prison in Katowice and was promoted to the rank colonel in the political police, known as the MBP (Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego). He was dismissed during the 1968 Polish political crisis which saw the purging of ex-Stalinists. Morel was dismissed from his position in May 1968 in the wake of the 1968 Polish political crisis, which saw the purging of both Jewish officials and ex-Stalinists.

    Morel emigrated to Israel in 1992. In 1998, Poland requested that Morel be extradited for trial, but Israel refused. A reply sent to the Polish Justice Ministry from the Israeli government said that Israel would not extradite Mr. Morel as the statute of limitations had expired on war crimes.

    In April 2004, Poland again filed another extradition request against Morel, this time with fresh evidence, upgrading the case to communist crimes against the population. Charges against Morel were based primarily on the evidence of over 100 witnesses, including 58 former inmates of the Zgoda camp.

    In July 2005 this request was again formally refused by the Israeli government. The response rejected the more serious charges as being false, potentially part of an antisemitic conspiracy, and again rejected extradition on the grounds that the statute of limitations against Morel had run out, and that Morel was in poor health.

    Anne Applebaum (in 2012) describes Morel as: “a Holocaust victim, a communist criminal, a man who lost his entire family to the Nazis, a man consumed by a sadistic fury against Germans and Poles – a fury which may or may not have originated from his victimhood, and may or may not have been connected to his communism. He was deeply vengeful, and profoundly violent. He was awarded medals by the communist Polish state, was prosecuted by the post-communist Polish state, and was defended by the Israeli state, though he had expressed no interest in moving to Israel until half a century after the war, and even then only after he started to fear prosecution.” See Applebaum, Anne Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 (2012).

    Polish journalist Marek Łuszczyna published a book, Mała zbrodnia. Polskie obozy koncentracyjne (“The little crime: Polish concentration camps”) about Zgoda and other Polish concentration camps that operated after the war.

  • Zgoda/Świętochłowice formerly Arbeitslager Eintrachtshütte [KL Auschwitz]

    Formerly, (from 1943- January 1945) the camp in Świętochłowice operated as a labour subcamp Arbeitslager Eintrachtshütte of KL Auschwitz. On capture the NKVD transfered the facility to Ministry of Public Security & Col. Salomon Morel [see blog post] became the commander of the renamed Zgoda camp on March 15, 1945.

    The Nazi camp was evacuated by the Germans before January, 23, 1945, leaving its infrastructure intact and after a few weeks the camp was restored by the NKVD, disinfected, and repopulated (in February 1945) with Silesian-inhabitants from Kattowitz/Katowice, Bielitz/Bielsko and Neisse/Nysa.

    The decision to treat Silesian civilians as Germans were motivated by prior dealings with the General Gouvernement [conquered Poland] Volksdeutsche [In Nazi terminology : people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship] & did not take into account local Silesian conditions.

    About 6,000 persons were imprisoned at the Zgoda camp: 1/3 of them Germans (1,733 in August 1945 along with those from Upper Silesia)

  • Upper Silesia after WW2

    After 1945, almost all of Upper Silesia (that was not ceded to Poland in 1922) was placed under the administration of the Republic of Poland. German civilians, as well as Nazi criminals, were interned in labor camps, like the infamous Zgoda labour camp [whose memorial we visit, see my forthcoming article on shoah.blog], the majority of the German-speaking population that had not fled were expelled, in accordance with the decision of the victorious Allied powers at their 1945 meeting at Potsdam.

    The expulsions of German-speakers did not totally eliminate the presence of a population that considered itself German. In contrast to the situation in Lower Silesia, where almost the totality of the pre-war population that was expelled was exclusively German-speaking (only about 50-60% of the population of Upper Silesia was displaced to Germany, while over 95-97% of population of Lower Silesia was displaced), the pre-war population of Upper Silesia was in considerable number Roman Catholic mixed bilingual that spoke both German and Polish dialects, and their Polish linguistic skills were considered solid enough for them to be kept in the area.

    I would recomend the eBook by Kunce, Aleksandra : Being at Home in a Place: The Philosophy of Localness, pp. 41–112 [23] After the war, Poles displaced from Polish territories incorporated into the USSR settled in Upper Silesia, but also Polish settlers from other overpopulated parts of Poland. Then, in the years 1945-1989, a large number of Poles from various parts of Poland settled in Upper Silesia, who received work, e.g. in the mines.

    By November 14, 1990 the area formally became part of the Republic of Poland by virtue of the German-Polish border treaty and German Silesians remaining in Upper Silesia were formally recognised as part of the German minority in Poland.

  • Upper Silesia inter-war years

    The Upper Silesia plebiscite was a plebiscite mandated by the Versailles Treaty and carried out on March, 20, 1921 to determine ownership of the province of Upper Silesia between Weimar Germany and Poland. The region was ethnically mixed with both Germans and Poles; according to prewar statistics, ethnic Poles formed 60 percent of the population.

    Under the previous rule by the German Empire, Poles claimed they had faced discrimination, making them effectively second class citizens. The period of the plebiscite campaign and inter-Allied occupation was marked by violence. There were 3-Polish uprisings, and German volunteer paramilitary units came into the region as well.

    The area was policed by French, British, and Italian troops, and overseen by an Inter-Allied Commission. The Allies planned a partition of the region, but a Polish insurgency took control of over half the area.

    The Germans responded with volunteer paramilitary units from all over Germany, which fought the Polish units. In the end, after renewed Allied military intervention, the final position of the opposing forces became, roughly, the new border. The decision was handed over to the League of Nations, which confirmed this border, & Poland received roughly one third of the plebiscite zone by area, including the greater part of the industrial region.

    After the referendum, on October, 20, 1921, a conference of ambassadors in Paris decided to divide the region. Consequently, the German-Polish Accord on East Silesia (Geneva Convention), a minority treaty, was concluded on May, 15, 1922 which dealt with the constitutional and legal future of Upper Silesia that had partly become Polish territory.

  • The Nazi Gau Upper Silesia [location of KL Auschwitsz]

    The Nazi Gau Upper Silesia ; also known as in German: Gau Oberschlesien was an administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945. Upper Silesia was part of the Prussian Province of Silesia. The Gau was created when the Gau Silesia was split into Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia on 27 January 1941. The Gau included territory annexed by Nazi Germany after the invasion of Poland.

    The Nazi Gau (plural Gaue) system was originally established in a party conference on 22 May 1926, in order to improve administration of the party structure. From 1933 onwards, after the Nazi seizure of power, the Gaue increasingly replaced the German states as administrative subdivisions in Germany.

    At the head of each Gau stood a Gauleiter, a position which became increasingly more powerful, especially after the outbreak of WW2, with little interference from above. Local Gauleiters often held government positions as well as party ones and were in charge of, among other things, propaganda & surveillance and, from September 1944 onward, the Volkssturm and the defense of the Gau.

    The position of Gauleiter in Upper Silesia was held by Fritz Bracht [see my post on him] throughout the history of the Gau Oberschlesien, Bracht, who was not a powerful figure in the Nazi hierarchy andcommitted suicide on 9 May 1945.

    The KL Auschwitz (concentration camp & extermination camp where more than 1,100,000 people were killed), was located in the Gau Upper Silesia, near Oświęcim. KL Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945.

  • Lower Silesia

    Also known as - in German: Provinz Niederschlesien ; in Polish: Prowincja Dolny Śląsk ; in Silesian: Prowincyjŏ Dolny Ślōnsk ; was between 1938 & 1941 reunited with Upper Silesia as the Province of Silesia.

    The capital of Lower Silesia was Breslau (now Wrocław in Poland). Province was further divided into 2-administrative regions (Regierungsbezirke), Breslau & Liegnitz. It also contained what until 1815 had belonged to the Kingdom of Saxony: the districts of Görlitz, Rothenburg & Hoyerswerda

    My Matriarchal grandparents has a home in Görlitz!

  • Karl August Hanke Gaulieter Lower Silesia

    January 27, 1941, Hitler appoints Hanke to the position of Gauleiter [a political official governing a district under Nazi rule] of the newly formed Gau Lower Silesia on .

    February, 1, 1941, Hanke was appointed Oberpräsident of the Prussian Province of Lower Silesia [see my post: Province of Lower Silesia], thus uniting under his control the highest party and governmental offices in the Province.

    Finally, on February, 9, 1941, Hanke was named Reich Defense Commissioner for Wehrkreis (Military District) VIII, which included his Gau as well as “Gau Oberschlesien, “Gau Upper Silesia” [see my post] and the eastern sections of Reichsgau Sudetenland - this cemented his Nazi regional control. NB The area denoted Wehrkreis VIII which was headquartered at Breslau contained the territory of the historic province of Silesia.

    Wehrkreis VIII was the home district of VIII Army Corps, which was formed in October 1934, initially disguised as “Heeresdienststelle [Border Guard Section Command] Breslau” as Germany’s military capability was diminished under the Treaty of Versaillles.

    April 20, 1941, Himmler promoted Hanke to the rank of SS general (SS-Gruppenführer), giving him the second highest status in the SS. Hanke was a fanatical enforcer of Nazi policy: during his rule out of Breslau more than 1,000 people were executed on his orders, earning him the nickname “Hangman of Breslau”.

    November, 16, 1942, the jurisdiction of the Reich Defense Commissioners was changed from the Wehrkreis [Military district] to the Gau level, Hanke remained Commissioner only for his Gau.

    On 30 January 1944, Hanke was promoted, by Himmler, to SS-Obergruppenführer.

    Later, as the Soviet Red Army advanced into Silesia and encircled “Festung Breslau” (Fortress Breslau), [see my post] Hanke was named by Hitler to be the city’s “Kampfkommandant” (Battle Commander). Hanke was fanatical in the defense of Breslau - during what became known as the Siege of Breslau. Goebbels repeatedly expressed his admiration of Hanke, in his diary. During the 82-day Siege of Breslau, the Red Army took more than 40,000 prisoners of war, while suffering themselves 60,000 casualties.

    Considering Breslau was under a total siege, the Aviatik tobacco factory in Breslau reportedly produced 500,000 cigarettes a day.

    On 6 May, the day before Germany’s unconditional surrender, General Hermann Niehoff surrendered the besieged Breslau to the Red Army. Hanke had flown out the previous day in a small Fieseler Storch plane kept in reserve for him. Breslau was the last major city in Germany to surrender.

    Breslau’s destruction by Soviet aerial & artillery bombardment, along with acts of destruction committed by the SS and Nazi Party members, saw up to 90% of Breslau in a state of ruin.

    Hanke’s fanaticism & unconditional obedience to Hitler’s orders impressed Hitler, who in his political testament appointed Hanke to be the last Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police, replacing Heinrich Himmler on 29 April 1945.

    8-days beforehand, Hanke had been honored with the Nazi Party’s highest decoration, the German Order, a reward for his defence of Breslau against the advancing Red Army.

    Hanke’s ascendancy to the rank of Reichsführer-SS was a result of Hitler proclaiming Himmler a traitor for his secretly-attempted surrender negotiations with the Western Allies. Hitler stripped Himmler of all his offices and ranks and ordered his arrest.

  • After 'Death Marches' last KL Auschwitz commander SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Richard Baer became the new commander of the KL Mittelbau

    The last commander of KL Auschwitz, on 1 February 1945, the 33-year-old Baer became the new commander of the KL Mittelbau. He had come to KL Mittelbau, in the Southern Harz Mountains, at the end of January, 1945, along with thousands of Death March inmates of KL Auschwitz and hundreds of other members of the SS, including the entire general staff of the KL Auschwitz.

    Baer was no stranger to concentration camp service: Before his appointment as commander of the of KL Auschwitz, he had worked in various functions in the Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald & Neuengamme camps from 1933 onwards.

    Other positions in the KL Mittelbau command were also filled by SS men from Auschwitz: Franz Hössler, for example, became the new officer in charge of the “protective custody” camp in Dora; Hössler had likewise been pursuing a concentration camp career since 1933.

    In February and March, 1945, the SS carried out one mass execution after the other & disastrous living conditions worsened.

    [Image left to right Baer, Mengele, Höß]

  • KL Auschwitz Commandants

    At the head of the concentration camp at Auschwitz stood the camp commandant, responsible for all matters connected with the KL, particularly security of the complex, so commander of the SS garrison and also the director of the SS economic enterprises:

    May 4, 1940-November 10, 1943 SS-Obersturnbannfuhrer Rudolf Höss

    November 11, 1943-May 8, 1944 SS- Obersturmbannfuhrer Arthur Liebehenschel

    May 11, 1944-January, 1945 SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Richard Baer

    The commandant had complete authority over the camp and the SS garrison. In turn, he reported to the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps. When, on March 3, 1942, the inspectorate became part of the SS Main Economic-Administration Office Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamat, SS-WVHA the concentration camp commandants came under the authority of Amtsgruppe D in the SS-WVHA (Office Group D).

  • Visit to Oshpitzin Jewish Museum in Oświęcim

    No trip to the area around Auschwitz would be complete without a visit to Oshpitzin Jewish Museum in Oświęcim telling the history of the Jews who lived in Oświęcim. Tomasz Kuncewicz enthralled us with cameos (short stories) on the life of Jews in pre-war Oświęcim-Oshpitzin [from אושפיזין] “guests”

  • Accomodation for this trip

    Accomodation for this trip was the Estera Hotel, Kraków, top-notch and well located for all things Jewish, but those who keep ש”ק only key cards to rooms ; and, Hampton by Hilton, Oświęcim clean & modern (but כשר travellers beware no fridges in rooms, you can request one “they say”).

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