Talk:History of Poland (1939–1945)/sources

Communist Torture in Contemporary Sources

"the issue that Poland has to compensate to the widows and children of the Soviet soldiers who where killed in the course of liberating Poland from Nazism." Treatment of Poles under Soviet rule: http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/chodakiewicz1.htm Communist Torture in Contemporary Sources The use of torture by the Communists was ubiquitous. The secret policemen of the Public Security Office (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego – UBP, or, colloquially, UB) tortured cruelly even a few of their own comrades accused of ideological “deviation,” including in a secret prison in Miedzeszyn.[10] However, torture was applied primarily against the independentist camp. This entity encompassed all covert and overt forces from the extreme left to far right enrolled in the anti-Communist underground and the political opposition, originating in the war-time Polish Underground State and its Home Army (Armia Krajowa – AK). The most notable among them were the Freedom and Independence Union (Zrzeszenie Wolność i Niezawisłość – WiN); the National Military Union (Narodowe Zjednoczenie Wojskowe – NZW); the National Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe – SN); the Christian Democratic Labor Party (Stronnictwo Pracy – SP) and, last but not least, the Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe – PSL). Because of its scope, terror also affected the population at large.[11] According to an underground newspaper of July 1945: It has been established that the NKVD and RB [sic UB] torture their prisoners terribly at the Chopin Street [police headquarters] in Lublin, at the Strzelecka Street [facility] in Warsaw, and in Włochy . The most popular methods of extracting confessions include ripping off fingernails slowly, applying “temple screws” [i.e., clamps that crush the victim’s skull], and putting on “American handcuffs.” The last named method causes the skin on one’s hands to burst and the blood to flow from underneath one’s fingernails. The torture is applied passionlessly in a premeditated manner. Those who faint are revived with a morphine shot. Before the torture session some receive booster shots [zastrzyki wzmacniające ]. The torturers strictly observe the opinion of the chief interrogating officer whether it is acceptable to allow the interrogated to die…. At the infamous Lublin Castle [prison], because of the injuries inflicted during interrogation, mortality among the political prisoners reaches 20 persons per week.[12] --Molobo 01:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Soviet occupation compared to Nazi Occupation

http://www.ialhi.org/news/i0305_9.html The Soviet Takeover of Eastern Poland Jan T. Gross. Revolution from Abroad: the Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorusssia. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 2002. xxiv + 396 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $44.89 (cloth). ISBN 0-691-09603-1. Reviewed for H-RUSSIA by Johanna Granville, Hoover Institution, Stanford University (May 2003). Occupation by a Spoiler State: the Soviet Takeover of Eastern Poland (1939-1941) --Molobo 22:44, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Chapter Two (Elections) deals with the elections carried out in the eastern territories in the first six months of occupation (on October 1939 and March 1940). Since the clandestine 1939 Soviet-German treaties make it clear that full incorporation of the Soviets partition of Poland was decided well in advance, one wonders why elections were even necessary. Chapters Three (The Paradigm of Social Control) and Four (Socialization) move beyond the period immediately following the Soviet invasion to concentrate on the various mechanisms by which the Soviets imposed a specifically Soviet international order. Chapter Four explores the socialization of the youth, since -- as Gross explains -- a special place was given to the youth in the blueprint of communist revolution (p. xxiii). He intended this chapter to serve as a steppingstone in the analysis from the process of subjugation to that of social control (p. xxiii). Chapters Three (The Paradigm of Social Control) and Four (Socialization) move beyond the period immediately following the Soviet invasion to concentrate on the various mechanisms by which the Soviets imposed a specifically Soviet international order. Chapter Four explores the socialization of the youth, since -- as Gross explains -- a special place was given to the youth in the blueprint of communist revolution (p. xxiii). He intended this chapter to serve as a steppingstone in the analysis from the process of subjugation to that of social control (p. xxiii). Chapter Five (Prisons) is an especially painful chapter to read, detailing as it does the massive arrests, overcrowding of prisons, conditions of detention, interrogations in the middle of the night, use of torture, deaths (either from torture or suicide) and escapes into insanity while in prison, evacuations, and executions. Chapter Six (Deportations) is a useful analysis of deportations and resettlements -- an often neglected topic, compared to the more conspicuous forms of persecution enumerated above. Gross provides estimates of the numbers of deportees and outlines the varieties of resettlement, registration of refugees, and house searches. In the epilogue (The Spoiler State), Gross attempts to highlight his findings regarding the Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia by putting it in the context of the Nazi occupation of Poland. Which regime -- Soviet or Nazi -- inflicted more suffering on the populations? Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had divided Poland into nearly equal halves, and comparisons of the two oppressive regimes must have figured prominently in the minds of citizens who were debating whither to flee, across the rivers Bug and San? Realizing that this is an ambitious exercise, Gross offers several caveats. He does not intend to present a full-fledged comparative analysis in this book, and he limits the comparison to the period before the Holocaust. He concludes that the Soviet Union inflicted more suffering for reasons explained below. The final section of the Revolution from Abroad, which distinguishes this expanded edition from the original edition published in 1988, is entitled Historiographical Supplement: A Tangled Web. Here Gross raises a serious, but long neglected, topic: Polish-Jewish relations during World War II. Gross piques the reader's interest, particularly in the first chapter, by stating that the Soviet occupiers seemed less oppressive to the Polish and Jewish citizens at first. The Russians lacked the Nazis' discriminatory contempt and Uebermensch airs (p. 230). The author explains that perhaps one reason why the Soviet army seemed less oppressive at first is that it claimed to liberate Poland. Generally, the population was confused about Soviet intentions, and indeed, nobody had warned the local community and the authorities that a Bolshevik invasion was possible and what to do in case it occurred (p. 22). The deceptive slogans of national liberation soothed millions of wishful-thinking Polish citizens -- Jews, Ukrainians, Belorussians who could meet fellow ethnics in the Red Army or the Soviet administration (p. 230). Moreover, a quasi civil war broke out: ethnic Ukrainians and Belorussians versus Poles. The Red Army had cleverly proliferated leaflets beforehand, urging the former ethnic groups in eastern Poland to rectify the wrongs they had suffered during twenty years of Polish rule (p. 35). One popular slogan was Poliakam, panam, sobakam sobachaia smert! [To Poles, landowners, and dogs a dog's death!]. The stark contrast between soldiers in the Wehrmacht and those in the Red Army -- the latter in coats of assorted lengths, with rags wrapped around their shoeless feet -- also made the Soviet occupiers seem less intimidating, Gross explains. One reason for the Red Army's cloddish image is the febrile rapaciousness with which the soldiers bought and consumed Polish goods. Expecting to hear discussions of lofty communist ideals, Poles instead saw in the marketplace how these Soviet people ate eggs, shell and all, horseradish, beets, and other produce. Country women rolled with laughter (p. 46). In a restaurant a Red Army soldier might order several courses or a dozen pastries and eat them all on the spot (p. 46). This massive buying spree was itself a public relations campaign. According to one source, Red Army soldiers received as much as three months salary in advance with instructions to bestow it generously among the Polish villagers (p. 28-9). In this way Poles would see that life is good in Russia. Soldiers mouthed the platitude u nas vsyo est (We have everything) to nonplussed villagers watching them devour common foodstuffs. In comparison to Nazi Germany, then, the Soviet Union struck the Poles at first as a petty and materialistic spoiler state. But not for long. The Soviet occupiers proved themselves masters in psychological manipulation. As they established control, they proudly bruited about the aphorism: There are three categories of people in the Soviet Union: those who have been in jail, those who are in jail, and those who will be in jail (p. 230). So gripped by fear were the inhabitants that some even begged to be arrested, just to end the prolonged suspense. Many reported feeling relieved when they were finally arrested as if the threat, being realized, was removed (p. 144). The NKVD could track individuals with radar-like accuracy. Gross recounts stories of men who, when forewarned that they might be arrested, fled to faraway towns for months. When they returned to their homes just for one night to collect their belongings and bid farewell to their families before crossing the border, the NKVD arrested them on the spot (p. 148). Poles dubbed the dreaded NKVD Nie wiadomo Kiedy Wroce do Domu (impossible to tell when I will return home). NKVD officials were also adept at exploiting the evil in human nature. As one interviewee wrote, Whoever had a grudge against someone else, an old feud, who had a grain of salt in his eye he had a stage to show his skills, there was a cocked ear, willing to listen. Posters encouraged people to bring denunciations (p. 120). Thus, despite the Red Army's unkempt appearance, the Soviet occupiers proved to be -- according to Gross -- greater victimizers than the Nazis. He argues that, in sheer numbers, more human beings (regardless of ethnic background -- Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Belorussians, etc.) suffered under Soviet occupation between September 1939 and June 1941 (i.e. before the Holocaust began) than under German occupation. By suffering, Gross refers to loss of life, deportation, forced resettlement, and material losses through confiscation and fiscal measures (p. 226). Whereas the Germans killed approximately 120,000 Poles and Jews combined (100,000 Jews and 20,889 Poles) in the first two years of occupation, the Soviet security police (NKVD) nearly matched that figure in just two episodes of mass execution (viz., the mass murder of Polish prisoners of war in the spring of 1940, and the evacuation of prisons in the Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia during June and July 1941) (p. 228). Gross does not compare the total numbers of Poles and Jews killed in Poland during the entire six-year period, 1939-1945. --Molobo 23:46, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Project inPosterum

http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/chodakiewicz2.htm http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/chodakiewicz2.htm

• Two types of distinct legal systems functioned at the time: the Soviet and the Polish. The former applied not only in Poland’s eastern territories incorporated into the Soviet Union after the return of the Red Army in 1944, but also to the west of the so-called Curzon line, wherever the Soviet terror apparatus (and judiciary) happened to operate. While at the mercy of the NKVD, most commonly, the political offenders were charged under the infamous Article 58 of the Soviet penal code. According to Article 58, a Home Army soldier, who was ethnically Polish, born in pre-war Poland, and a life-long citizen of Poland could be sentenced as “traitor to the Soviet Motherland” in addition to being a “counter-revolutionary,” “Hitlerite collaborator,” and “fascist.”[36]

• Simultaneously, although always deferring to the Soviet law, the local Communists in Poland introduced their own legal regulations. More precisely, they amended the existing pre-war laws with a bevy of their own decrees. Arguably, the most important of them was the infamous Decree of August 31, 1944, against “the fascist-Hitlerite criminals and traitors of the Polish Nation.” The decree was promulgated by the Communist proxy regime and used mainly as a political and legal tool of repression against the independentists fighters and politicians, who were routinely branded as “Hitlerite collaborators,” “fascists,” and “reactionaries.”[37] The August 31, 1944 Decree was also applied to real and alleged Nazi collaborators, including for instance persons accused of participating the massacre of Jews at Jedwabne, thus from a legal point of view making it a political rather than a criminal case.[38]

• The language of the August Decree was extremely violent. It reflected the language of contemporary Communist propaganda. And the Communists dubbed as “fascists” and “reactionaries” anybody who disagreed with them.[39] The independentist insurgents were of course the primary targets of the Stalinist vituperation. The guidelines for propaganda of the Central Board of Political Formatting of the Polish People’s Army aptly titled “Concerning the mobilization of hatred toward the reactionary thugs” instructed the political commissars to “brand with all your strength the criminal activities of the bastards of the NSZ and AK, Hitler’s emulators. Develop hatred among the soldiers and push them against the reactionaries.”[40]

• Accordingly, Communist military political commissars publicly preached that during the Warsaw ghetto uprising the following forces fought against the Jewish insurgents: “the German air force, the SS, and tanks as well as Polish hooligans, Polish reactionaries and, actually, the AK.”[41] Therefore, “the criminals of the AK and NSZ work hand in glove with the Hitlerites. And they should be treated just like the Hitlerite murderers.”[42] A Communist pundit editorialized that “during the [Nazi] occupation the NSZ formed an auxiliary formation of the SS and Gestapo.”[43] “Put on trial the AK and NSZ murderers, Hitler’s helpers!” screamed the official posters in unison.[44]

• As Professor Krystyna Kersten has noted perceptively, the independentist insurgents and the parliamentary opposition were the chief “reactionaries.” Significantly, “reactionary” was synonymous with “bandit,” “traitor,” “fascist,” “Hitlerite,” “anti-Semite,” and “Jew-killer.” Whoever killed Jews was not just a traitor, but also “an agent of Hitler.” Anybody who opposed the Communists was also a potential “Jew-killer,” or at least could be accused of such terrible anti-Semitic deeds, and, hence, branded “a Nazi collaborator.” This was a convenient propaganda device commonly employed to dupe the West into believing that the opponents of the Communists were pro-Nazi and that the brutal crushing of the independentist insurrection and the parliamentary opposition in Poland was simply a mop-up operation which fittingly concluded the anti-German struggles of the Second World War. This was also a useful tool to rally the population behind the Communists in meting out justice to alleged Polish “Hitlerites.”[45] (The trick was further intended to endear the proxy regime to the Jewish community at home and abroad.)[46]

• Communist law was well-harmonized with the propaganda. It seems that the intention of the authors of the August Decree was to limit, if not outright preclude, the possibility of a fair investigation and a fair trial. The objective was to punish “Nazi collaborators,” whether real or alleged. In other words, the Communist policemen, prosecutors, lawyers, and judges involved in the cases pursued and tried on the basis of the August Decree were not interested in recreating the crimes, describing their details, identifying the victims, and finding the perpetrators. They were out to destroy the enemy: physically and morally. Numerous accounts of the victims of the Communist investigative and legal process seem to signal just that.

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz: The Dialectics of Pain: The Interrogation Methods of the Communist Secret Police in Poland, 1944-1955. Glaukopis, vol.

--Molobo 14:13, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Molobo, stop pasting chunks into Wikipedia! It makes the dialog impossible to follow by making pages huge. A ref is enough. And use edit summaries as requested from you multiple times. --Irpen 22:32, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I restored my posts which were deleted by Irpen. --Molobo 09:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)