Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Rather Die Than Betray the Cause: The Gestapo Detention Center at Aleja Schucha 25, by Witold Zarnowski. 2021. Instytut Pamieci Narodowej (IPN), Warszawa

Polish Guerrillas Assassinate Top Germans. A Graphic Description of a Gestapo Prison in German-Occupied Poland: Broader Implications

This work is on the complex of Gestapo prisons that got the dreaded name Aleja Schucha [Aleja Szucha]. WARNING: The description of the tortures used by the Germans is detailed, and may be upsetting to sensitive readers. Some of the prison cells of Aleja Schucha have survived the war, complete with the graffiti of the doomed inmates. The building has been made into a mausoleum, and is open to tourists.

POLISH GUERRILLAS ASSASSINATE TOP GERMANS: THE EFFICACY OF POLISH GUERRILLA WARFARE

The Polish Underground fought back. It shot many leading Germans that had been especially distinctive in their cruelties to Poles, and author Zarnowski lists some of the successful hits (pp. 42-43):

SS Oberscharführer Herbert Schultz

SS Rottenführer Ewald Lange

SS Oberscharführer Franz Bürkl, deputy to the commanding officer of Pawiak (Prison)

SS Hauptscharführer August Kretschmann

SS Sturmann Ernst Weffels

SS Obersturmführer Joseph Lechner, head of the Gestapo Office to Combat Resistance in the Warsaw District

SS Scharführer Stephen Klein

Zarnowski concludes, “The most prominent operation was targeted at SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor der Polizei Franz Kutschera, the SS and the Warsaw District Police commander, who was killed by the Polish Underground on 1 February 1944. After his death, the German terror in Warsaw subsided significantly, for example street executions were discontinued.” (p. 43). This is another testimony to the efficacy of Polish guerrilla warfare.

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I now consider other issues related to the German mass murder of Poles:

SECRET KILLINGS: UNKNOWN (UNKNOWABLE?) SCALE OF THE POLOCAUST

Pointedly, what is known about the German genocidal murder of Poles should not be conflated with the actual German genocidal murder of Poles. Consider just Warsaw. Tarnowski comments, “In total, 901 mass executions were recorded in the capital (within the present boundaries of the city) and in the so-called ‘Warsaw ring of death’, where Varsovians and the captives of Warsaw prisons were murdered. The list is still growing and most probably there were many more places of executions we do not know about.” (p. 18).

HIGHER OVERALL POLISH DEATH TOLL SUPPORTED

Holocaust museums, for reasons that are not difficult to deduce, typically degrade the total number of Poles murdered by the Germans to 2 million or less. In contrast, Zarnowski affirms the traditional, higher number of 3 million. He writes, “The system of concentration, extermination, penal and forced labor camps played a major role in the realization of Nazi policy in Poland. There were more than 2,000 German camps in Poland, in which approximately 5,000,000 people were imprisoned. We do not know the exact number of victims of the German terror regime aimed at the Polish nation, but it can be assumed that during World War II around 5,700,000 Polish citizens were killed by the Germans, including 2,700,000 people of Jewish origin.” (pp. 16-17).

More recent evidence indicates that as many as 8 million Poles died because of WWII. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2021/04/01/up-to-8-million-poles-perished-in-wwii-intentional-german-starvation-genocide-letter-p-polish-underground-state-unique-confronting-german-guilt-dilution-and-diffusion-kostkiewicz/

THE MASS CREMATION OF POLES

Crematory ovens are usually associated with the Jews’ Holocaust. However, the Germans also burned the bodies of murdered Poles on a large scale. For instance, Zarnowski describes one such situation that occurred after the fall of the Soviet-betrayed Warsaw Uprising, and just in the area of Aleja Szucha. He writes, “The scale of the crimes committed here is documented in a protocol from June 1946, created by the Warsaw branch of the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes: human ashes weighing 5.5 tons were found in a makeshift crematory set up by the Germans in the basements of GISZ.” (pp. 27-28).