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

The Inhuman Land, by Joseph Czapski. 1952. Sheed & Ward, Inc., New York

Inhuman Land: Do Not Trivialize Soviet Crimes and the Gulags!

Nowadays, Soviet Communist crimes are often ignored or belittled owing to Holocaust supremacism, and the deadly experiences of the Polish deportees are sometimes vulgarized as “just taking a train ride.” Nothing could be further from the truth! See, for instance:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2021/03/05/poles-and-not-only-jews-were-plundered-poles-and-not-only-jews-inhumanely-transported-by-railroads-siberian-hell-sufferings-of-polish-deportees-to-siberia-soltan/

In this aptly-named book, Inhuman Land, eyewitness Joseph Czapski writes about the Polish deportees: after the Nazi German attack on its erstwhile Soviet ally in 1941, following soon thereafter the “amnesty” at the hands of the Soviet authorities. Some 1.5 million Poles had been deported (p. 155, 283), and most had died from just over one year of captivity. The surviving “amnestied” Poles gathered at Yangi-Yul (Yangi Yul), near Tashkent, from all over the USSR, and General Wladyslaw Anders formed an army out of the men.

THE “LIVING DEATH” OF GULAG SURVIVORS

Any attempt to trivialize the Poles’ gulag experiences evaporates with the contents of this book. And, remember, these are the survivors. It does not include those who already had died in agony!

A picture is worth a thousand words. Czapski features Polish children in Russia (facing p. 177, facing p. 192), with ribs and kneecaps sticking out from starvation.

Briton Edward Crankshaw, an eyewitness, commented on the Poles that had been released from captivity, “I had seen his [Czapski’s] compatriots as they came out of the Russian prison-camps and made their own way to through that terrible winter landscape, those who did not die on the journey, exhausted, more than half-starved, and often diseased, to haven at Kuybyshev and Buzuluk.” (p. 1).

Crankshaw adds, “I myself have witnessed all those aspects of life in the Soviet Union cited in the Polish indictment. I have had, that is to say, glimpses of the forced-labor system, the transportation in bulk and under intolerable conditions of racial groups, the demoralizing effects of the NKVD terror, political prisoners collapsing with exhaustion and left to die in the snow.” (pp. 4-5).

Czapski writes, “To get a clear picture of the situation, one must add the figures for scurvy and for partial blindness caused by under-nourishment, both of them complaints from which nearly all the prisoners suffered.” (pp. 42-43). He adds that, “At that time Chkalov had already assumed considerable importance in our eyes. Almost all the convoys coming from Siberia, or even from Northern Russia, passed through it, carrying not only men fit for military service, but women, children and old men, too, who died by the hundreds on the journey from exhaustion, typhus, and dysentery.” (p. 82).

In describing the situation at Yangi-Yul, Czapski remarked, “Innumerable civilians, women, old men, children, all of them emaciated as skeletons, began to swell our Divisions and the other formations stationed in this starving district of Turkestan…” (p. 171). He adds that, “About half the men were suffering from wounds, or had great scars on their bodies as a result of scurvy. Typhus and dysentery were causing such ravages that, in Turkestan alone, the number who died from these scourges was higher than out losses during the Battle of Monte Cassino.” (p. 176).

The author quoted General Anders, “‘What sort of an army do you expect to get when half your men are suffering from semi-blindness as a result of prolonged lack of vitamins, have no weapons and insufficient food? Can you imagine an army trained in such conditions being anything more than cannon-fodder to be used in the interests of the Bolsheviks?'” (p. 176).

BRITAIN IN DENIAL ABOUT BETRAYING POLAND

In the Introduction, Edward Crankshaw, a Briton, reflected on the Yalta sellout of Poland. He writes, “One of the most repellant features of a world in which morality and chivalry are dying is expressed in the attitude of many Englishmen to the Polish exiles. The betrayal of Poland at Yalta was bad in itself, but it could be argued that this was the sort of partly self-delusive, partly amoral action only to be expected from politicians working under extreme pressure with insufficient information, an imperfect understanding of the issues at stake, and obsessed by the imperative necessity of keeping Russia on our side until the end. What seems to me far worse is the way in which even now, when there is no pressure, when the Stalin regime is seen for what it is, and when the Yalta decisions are recognized to have been not only a betrayal but also, on the lowest level, a political blunder, we still exclude the victims of this tragedy from our hearts; and to such an extent that we refuse to believe what they say. The chief excuse for this boils down to the fact that Poles, as a nation, suffer from certain faults which are particularly irritating to the English temperament. But the real reason, it seems to me, is that we have a bad conscience, and with reason.”  (p. 4).

ZYDOKOMUNA PIVOTAL, AT LEAST IN EARLY SOVIET COMMUNISM

Author Joseph Czapski was in contact with Alexis Tolstoy, a Russian writer at Tashkent. It was said that Tolstoy was a friend of Stalin, and had frequently visited the Kremlin. Tolstoy commented, “‘With a few, very rare, exceptions, the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia of Russia was out of sympathy with the Bolsheviks. Consequently, the Soviet government had to replace it with intelligentsia recruited from among the Jews. Now, however’–he went on with pride–‘we have built a new one for ourselves, which accounts for the fact that far fewer Jews are now in positions of importance.'” (p. 187).

EARLIER RUSSIAN DEPORTATIONS OF POLES

WWII had not been the first time: Far from it. As a result of the Confederation of Bar in 1768, over 16,000 Poles had been deported into the interior of Russia, and little over 2,000 returned in 1774. (p. 83).