Polokaust 75% of Poles Lost Close Loved Ones Gorski

Warszawa w Latach 1944-1949: Odbudowa, by Jan Gorski. 1988

Polokaust: >75% of Young Poles Had Lost at Least One Close Loved One. Germans Massively Pillage Poles, and Not Only the Jews We Keep Hearing About. Warsaw: The Phoenix Rises From the Ashes

THE REBUILDING OF WARSAW IN THE YEARS 1944-1949 is the title of this Polish-language book (review based on 1988 edition).

THE VAST MAJORITY OF POLES HAD LOST CLOSE RELATIVES IN THE POLOKAUST

One common Holocaust-promoting meme is the one that “only” 10% of the Polish population perished under German occupation. Yes, “only” 10%. What a relief! But even that “only 10%” does not tell the full story.

A postwar survey of youth (p. 437) showed that 73% of them had lost at least one close loved one. Of the losses, some 14% had been from military action, thus debunking the Holocaust-related myth that Poles, unlike Jews, had “merely” died “because it was war.”

Fact is, the vast majority of Poles who died during WWII did so from deliberate murderous German action. For instance, 43% of close loved ones had perished in German prisons and concentration camps; 24% had been publicly murdered the Germans (by shooting, hanging, etc.), and 10% had died from the deliberately brutal conditions under the German occupation. [Of course, the survey seriously understates the situation, because it cannot count those youth who did not survive to be surveyed about the losses of THEIR loved ones!]

DON’T BLAME POLES FOR NOT ALWAYS BEING EXACTLY WELCOMING TO RETURNING HOLOCAUST-SURVIVING JEWS!

This book also touches on the privations faced by the population. There were rampant problems with such behaviors as begging, vagabondage, chronic looting, and even selling of children. (p. 184, 228). [Not mentioned is the fact that the situation explains the looting of sites of mass murder of Jews, and the occasional postwar killings of Jews by Poles (perhaps 600 out of 300,000), as trumpeted by Jan T. Gross in his FEAR.].

NOT ONLY JEWS WERE ROBBED BY NAZIS: POLES WERE ALSO

Nowadays, the media makes much of the fact that Jews in Poland, and over much of Europe, had their properties confiscated. As usual, the impression is created that only Jews suffered in this regard. They most certainly did not.

Before destroying Warsaw, the Germans had removed 26,000 wagonloads of loot from the Nazi-condemned city. (p. 77). Ironically, this enabled a small fraction of the otherwise German-burned library and archival collections to survive when they turned up after the war in Germany. (p. 474-on). The USSR belatedly (in 1958) returned 19 tons of German-confiscated Warsaw cultural materials that the Red Army had located in Germany. (pp. 481-482).

GRIM BUT TRUE PHOTOGRAPHS

The non-Polish reader can appreciate the many photos in this book. They show such things as the Soviet “liberators” entering the city they had betrayed and allowed the Germans six leisurely months to systematically destroy, the returning poverty-stricken people eking out a life amidst the ruins, the volunteers removing the rubble with hand tools and horse-drawn lorries (later also rail cars), the first temporary dwellings, the tramcars serving as restaurants, the first Communist-propaganda slogans and statues, the re-establishment of an electrical network, the crane-hoisting of the rebuilt Zygmunt Column, the monotonous blocs of newly-constructed apartments, etc.

THE GERMAN VENDETTA AGAINST THE SOVIET-BETRAYED WARSAW UPRISING

Warsaw was by far the most destroyed capital city in all of Europe. A map and figures show the extent of the destruction. (pp. 75-76). About 10% had been destroyed in the 1939 German terror bombing and shelling, and another 20% had been destroyed in the Warsaw Uprising. The remainder of the destruction, approaching 100% in left-bank Warsaw, had been entirely non-military–done by the Germans, who systematically burned and blew-up almost every remaining building in the three months after the fall of the Soviet-betrayed Warsaw Uprising and the forced evacuation of the city. Even the Stare Miasto (the historic old town), notwithstanding the fierce combat during the Warsaw Uprising, had a substantial number of surviving buildings and library/archival collections until the barbarous Germans came after the Uprising and destroyed them all. (p. 406).

REBUILDING WARSAW: WHERE EVEN TO START?

The rebuilding of Warsaw seemed an insurmountable challenge. First of all, tens of thousands of booby-trapped explosives (mines), shells, and grenades left behind by the Germans had to be removed. (p. 69). Some 38,000 unburied or shallow-buried corpses had to be removed and then buried at a safe depth in the outlying cemeteries. (p. 207). Twenty million cubic meters of rubble had to be removed. (p. 206).

WARSAW THE PHOENIX SLOWLY COMES BACK TO LIFE

Some 200,000 Poles returned to Warsaw in the first few months of 1945, settling mostly in less-damaged Praga. (p. 154). The returnees re-established their careers as much as possible. For instance, hospital staff improvised field hospitals amidst the ruined hospitals, and librarians dug books out from the ruins of libraries and catalogued them. (pp. 184-185).

At the end of May 1945, the first rebuilt municipal water pump began to function. Some 352 km of functional waterworks were available by the end of 1945: By the end of 1948, this had risen to 561 km–approaching the prewar total. (pp. 246-247). By December 1945, electrical service had been restored to the main institutions of Praga. (p. 55). The danger of mass epidemics amidst the Warsaw returnees passed in 1947 with the completed reconstruction of the sewer system and other sanitary facilities. (p. 207).