JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2835

Poland, a Factual Statement that Every American Ought to Read (published by the Polish Information Center, 151 East 67^th Street, NYC) sounds like a semi-dry academic pamphlet, waiting to be ignored. But it was printed in 1943, and the audience then would no doubt have been interest in what the hell was going on there.  It turns out that there is some extraordinary reading to be done in its quick sixteen pages, not the least of which is a notice of the murder of a million Jews and a description of camp life in Auschwitz (Oswiecim). As there are only five copies of the work located in libraries worldwide (according to WorldCat/OCLC) I thought I’d reproduce its most significant section , the “German Reign of Terror” (pp 12-15). This leads with these numbers of crimes committed by the Germans: To forced labor in Germany (1,000,000 Poles); to the Government General (700,000 Poles); shot and murdered (1,200,000 Poles), starved to death (about 500,000 Poles). “It staggers the imagination to think that every tenth human being in German occupied Poland had already been shot or hanged tortured to death, starved…or deported to Germany.”

There are other stories of mass executions, as well as a short description of Auschwitz: “More than 60,000 Poles have been murdered in the concentration camps of the Government General and the Reich. Oswiecim is the most gruesome on Polish territory. It was set up in July 1940 and consists of ten barracks, each of which is supposed to contain 400 prisoners, but actually houses 1,000 men. Prisoners wear thin cotton uniforms in winter as in summer. They were only given shoes on October 15 and had no caps before December. On arrival they had to fill out answers to 32 questions about their life, family, health, wealth and political activities. Two weeks suffice to break men above 45 years. Younger men lose their vigor and youth within half a year…”

And this: “The Jewish population is closed up in ghettos and suffers no less than the Poles. Particularly in the last six months the Jewish population has suffered an unheard of persecution amounting to a process of willful extermination. Losses in Jewish population up to 1943 exceed one million persons killed.”

• Note: I don’t know enough to speak about the obvious demarcation in this report between “Poles” and “Jews” except to say that it exists in the text and that I’m aware of it.  

And so, here is the scan of the “German Reign of Terror” section:

German Reign of Terror

In his message to Poland broadcast on May 3rd, 1941, Prime Minister Churchill said: “Every day Hitler’s firing parties are busy in a dozen lands. Monday he shoots Dutchmen, Tuesday Norwegians, Wednesday French and Belgians stand against the wall, Thursday it is the Czechs who must suffer, and now there are the Serbs and the Greeks to fill his repulsive bill of execution. But always, all of the days, there are the Poles.”

Let us be frank: for many reasons the world still is not fully aware of the enormity of Polish suffering nor does it realize the importance of Poland’s contribution to the Allied fight for common victory.