The entrance to the Auschwitz extermination camp

Persecution of the Jews by the German Nazi occupation government, particularly in the urban areas, began immediately after the occupation. In the first year and a half, however, the Germans confined themselves to stripping the Jews of their property and herding them into ghettoes and putting them into forced labor in war-related industries. During this period the Jewish community leadership, the Judenrat, which, unlike Polish authorities, had an official recognition by the Germans, was able to some extent to bargain with the Germans. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, special extermination squads (the Einsatzgruppen) were organised to kill Jews in the areas of eastern Poland which had been annexed by the Soviets in 1939. Download high resolution version (427x653, 61 KB)Entrance to Auschwitz I, photograph taken in mid-March, 2002 by Uri Yanover. ... Download high resolution version (427x653, 61 KB)Entrance to Auschwitz I, photograph taken in mid-March, 2002 by Uri Yanover. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... A ghetto is an area where people from a specific racial or ethnic background or united in a given culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion. ... Judenrats, German for Jewish council, were administrative bodies that the Germans required Jews to form in each ghetto in General Government (the Nazi-occupied teritory of Poland) and later in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. ... Einsatzgruppen (a German military term meaning mission groups, loosely translated as Task Force) were semi-military groups formed in Nazi Germany before and during World War II. These death squads belonged to the SS and followed the Wehrmacht in their attacks first on Poland and then the Soviet Union. ...

A few German-inspired massacres were carried out with help from, or even active participation by, Poles themselves. For example, the massacre in Jedwabne, in which between 300 (Institute of National Remembrance's Final Findings [1]) and 1,600 (Jan T. Gross [2]) Jews were tortured and beaten to death by part of Jedwabne's citizens. The full extent of Polish participation in the massacres of the Polish Jewish community remains a controversial subject, but the Polish Institute for National Remembrance identified 22 other towns that had pogroms similar to Jedwabne. [3]. The reasons for these massacres are still debated, but they included anti-Semitism, resentment over cooperation with the Soviet invaders in Polish-Soviet War and during 39' invasion of Kresy regions, and simple greed for the possessions of the Jews. The Massacre in Jedwabne or Jedwabne Pogrom was an event in July 1941, during World War II where a significant part of (or most of, according to J. T. Gross) the Jewish population of the Polish village of Jedwabne was massacred, many of them burned alive, by their non-Jewish... Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (IPN, Institute of National Remembrance) is a Polish institution created by the IPN Act in 18 December 1998. ... Jan Tomasz Gross is the Norman B. Tomlinson 16 and 48 Professor of War and Society at Princeton University. ... Pogrom (from Russian: ; from громить - to wreak havoc, to demolish violently) is a form of riot, a massive violent attack on a particular group; ethnic, religious or other, primarily characterized by destruction of their environment (homes, businesses, religious centers). ... The Eternal Jew: 1937 German poster. ... The name Kresy (Polish for borderlands, or more correctly Kresy Wschodnie, Eastern Borderlands) is used by Poles, mostly in historical context, to refer to the eastern part of Poland before the II World War. ...

At the Wannsee conference near Berlin on 20 January 1942, Dr Josef Bühler urged Reinhard Heydrich to begin the proposed "final solution to the Jewish question" in the General Government. Accordingly, in 1942 the Germans began the systematic killing of the Jews, beginning with the Jewish population of the General Government. Six extermination camps (Auschwitz, Belzec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór and Treblinka) were established in which the most extreme measure of the Holocaust, the mass murder of millions of Jews from Poland and other countries, was carried out between 1942 and 1944. Of Poland's prewar Jewish population of 3 million, only about 50,000 survived the war. The Wannsee Villa, location of the Wannsee Conference, is now a Holocaust museum. ... (help· info) is the capital city and a state of Germany. ... January 20 is the 20th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the year. ... The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. ... Reinhard Heydrich as SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (March 7, 1904 – June 4, 1942) was an SS-Obergruppenführer, chief of the Reich Main Security Office, and Reich governor of Bohemia and Moravia. ... Majdanek - crematorium Extermination camp (German Vernichtungslager) was the term applied to a group of death camps set up by Nazi Germany during World War II for the express purpose of killing the Jews of Europe, although members of some other groups whom the Nazis wished to exterminate, such as Roma... Auschwitz is the name used to identify the largest German Nazi extermination camp along with two main German concentration camps and 45-50 sub-camps. ... Bełżec was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. ... The CheÅ‚mno extermination camp was a Nazi extermination camp that was situated 70 km from Łódź near a small village called CheÅ‚mno nad Nerem (Kulmhof an der Nehr, in German), in Greater Poland (which was, in 1939, annexed and incorporated into Germany under the name of Reichsgau Wartheland). ... Monument at Majdanek Memorial. ... Sobibór was a Nazi extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard. ... Treblinka was an extermination camp operated by the Nazis as part of the Holocaust, the systematic murder of Jews and others. ... Concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust The Holocaust was Nazi Germanys systematic genocide (ethnic cleansing) of various ethnic, religious, national, and secular groups during World War II. Early elements include the Kristallnacht pogrom and the T-4 Euthanasia Program established by Hitler that killed some 200,000 people. ...

The role played by Poles in these events has been the subject of considerable debate. Since the fall of Communism in Poland, it has become possible to debate this issue openly, and Polish political parties, the Catholic Church, and Jewish organisations both inside and outside Poland have contributed. Before the war there were 3 million Jews in Poland, about 10% of the population. Poland was a deeply Catholic country and the presence of this large non-Christian minority had always been a source of tension, and periodically of violence between Poles and Jews. There was both official and popular anti-Semitism in Poland before the war, at times encouraged by the Catholic Church and by some political parties, but not directly by the government. There were also political forces in Poland which opposed anti-Semitism, but in the later 1930s reactionary and anti-Semitic forces had gained ground. In some cases, the Germans were clearly able to exploit this anti-Jewish sentiment. Some Poles betrayed hidden Jews to the Germans, and others made their living as "Jew-hunters", although many others hid Jews rather than collaborate in their destruction. Anti-Semitism was particularly strong in the eastern areas which had been occupied by the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1941. Here the local population accused the Jews of having collaborated with the Soviets, and also alleged that Jewish Communists had been prominent in the repressions and deportations of Catholic Poles of that period, leading to acts of vengeance that, on occasion resulted in innocents being targeted.

In general, during the German occupation, most Poles were engaged in a desperate struggle for survival. They were in no position to oppose or impede the German extermination of the Jews even if they had wanted to. There were however many cases of Poles risking death to hide Jewish families and in other ways assist the Jews. (Only in Poland was death a standard punishment for a person and his whole family, and sometimes also neighbours, for any help given to Jews.) In September 1942 the Provisional Committee for Aid to Jews (Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Żydom) was founded on the initiative of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka. This body later became the Council for Aid to Jews (Rada Pomocy Żydom), known by the code-name Żegota. It is not known how many Jews were helped by Żegota, but at one point in 1943 it had 2,500 Jewish children under its care in Warsaw alone. (See also an example of the village that helped Jews: Markowa). Because of these sorts of actions, Polish citizens have the highest amount of Righteous Among The Nations awards at the Yad Vashem Museum. Zofia Kossak-Szczucka (1890 - 1968), Polish author and resistance fighter, is best known for her wartime efforts to help the Polish Jews. ... Å»egota (read: [ʒε:gÉ”ta], also spelled Zhegota, Zegota) was the codename for the Council to Aid the Jews (Rada Pomocy Å»ydom), an underground organisation in German-occupied Poland from 1942 to 1945. ... Markowa is a Polish village near ŁaÅ„cut. ... Righteous Among the Nations (Hebrew: חסידי אומות העולם, Khasidei Umot HaOlam) is a term used to describe non-Jews who behaved heroically during the Holocaust in order to save Jews from the Nazis. ... Yad Vashem memorial sculpture Yad Vashem (יד ושם) is Israels official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust established in 1953 through the Memorial Law passed by the Knesset, Israels parliament. ...

There was no collaborationist government in Poland, and relatively little active collaboration by individual Poles with any aspect of the German presence in Poland, including the Holocaust - certainly less than in France, for example. This was partly because the long-term German plan was to resettle Poland with Germans, and while German authorities were on occasion interested in recruiting Polish collaborators, Hitler always refused to take the idea seriously as it would require lessening of the terror reign in Poland. As such all propaganda efforts to recruit Poles in either labour or auxiliary roles were met with almost no interest, due to contrast of everyday reality of German occupation. The non-German auxiliary workers in the extermination camps, for example, were mostly Ukrainians and Balts rather than Poles. The Polish underground movements, the nationalist Home Army (AK) and the Communist People's Army (AL), generally opposed collaboration in anti-Jewish persecution and punished it by death. The Polish Government in Exile was also the first (in November 1942) [4] to reveal the existence of Nazi-run concentration camps and the systematic extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, through its courier Jan Karski and through the activities of Witold Pilecki, a member of Armia Krajowa who volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz in order to organize a resistance movement inside the camp itself. For other meanings of Home Army see: Home Army (disambiguation) The Armia Krajowa or AK (Home Army) functioned as the pre-eminent underground military organization in German-occupied Poland, which functioned in all areas of the country from September 1939 until its disbanding in January 1945. ... The Government of the Polish Republic in exile was the government of Poland after the German occupation of Poland in September 1939. ... Before a wall map of the Warsaw Ghetto at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jan Karski recalls his secret 1942 missions into the Nazi prison-city-within-a-city. ... Witold Pilecki (May 13, 1901 – May 25, 1948; pronounced [vitɔld pileʦki]; codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold) was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic, founder of the resistance movement Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska) and member of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa). ... Auschwitz, in English, commonly refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex built near the town of Oświęcim, by Nazi Germany during World War II. Rarely, it may refer to the Polish town of Oświęcim (called by the Germans Auschwitz) itself. ...

However, a distinct from the Home Army resistance movenent the ultra-nationalist^[1][5] Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (NSZ or National Armed Forces) organized a large number of murders of Jews in Poland.^[2] Narodowe SiÅ‚y Zbrojne (English National Armed Forces, NSZ) was one of the Polish armed underground guerilla organizations, fighting Nazi German occupation in General Government. ...

At the same time, while the Home Army as a whole was largely untainted by the collaboration against the Jews, it is difficult to attribute separate cases of anti-Jewish violence since resistance members sometimes switched between the resistance forces. The cases of collaboration between the AK and the Nazi fources that did occur were more at the tactical level and mostly directed against the pro-Soviet partisans and, sometimes, the Red Army rather than against the Jews.^[2][6] Such collaboration was tacit rather than open, for example Germans didn't officially provide the Polish resistance members with arms but rather left the arms stockpiles "unguarded".

References

1. ↑ Steven J Zaloga (1982). “The Underground Army”, Polish Army, 1939-1945, Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 0850454174.
2. ↑ ^a b Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1997). “Polish Collaboration”, Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947, 77-142, McFarland & Company. ISBN 0786403713.