DECEMBER 13 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

DECEMBER 13

1849

Edmund Louis Gray Zalinski (dob) was a Polish-born American soldier, military engineer and inventor. He is famous for the development of the pneumatic dynamite torpedo-gun.  Zalinski was born in Kórnik, Prussian and emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1853. He attended school in Seneca Falls, New York and high school in Syracuse until 1863. He dropped out at the age of 15 and lying about his age, enlisted in the United States Army. He served during the American Civil War as aide-de-camp on the staff of General Nelson A. Miles from October 1864. In February 1865, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Second New York Heavy Artillery Regiment, and was recommended for promotion for gallant and meritorious conduct at the Battle of Hatcher's Run, Virginia. He continued on General Miles's staff until the surrender of General Robert E. Lee in April 1865.

1938

Neuengamme Concentration Camp:  On December 13, 1938, the Nazi SS established the Neuengamme concentration camp, as a subcamp to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and transported 100 prisoners from Sachsenhausen as forced laborers to begin constructing the new camp and operate the brickworks.  Heinrich Himmler inspected the site in January 1940 and assessed Neuengamme brick production below standard. By spring of the same year, the SS and the city of Hamburg signed a contract for the construction of a larger, more modern brick factory, an expanded a connecting waterway, and a direct supply of bricks and prisoners for construction work in the city. Within months,the Neuengamme concentration camp became an independent camp,  and transports began to arrive from all over Germany and soonafter the rest of Europe. Between 1940 and 1942, the death rate had risen greatly, and was dealt with by the construction of  a crematorium onsite.  After the war in Stalingrad, the Nazis imprisoned Soviet prisoners of war in the camp. By the end of 1944, the total number of prisoners grew to about 49,000 ( 12,000 in Neuengamme and 37,000 in the subcamps)  including roughly 10,000 women in the various subcamps for women.  The  SS practice had a policy of “extermination through labour”. Prisoners were forced to work for 10-12 hours per day and were killed as a result of brutal beatings at the hands of the guards, or due to inhumane condition, malnourishment, and disease.

1981

Martial Law in Poland:   On December 13, 1981, Polish General Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law in Poland in an attempt to crush the rise of the Solidarity movement. Jaruzelski claimed that martial law had to be instigated in order to save Poland from the potential military intervention by the Soviet Union, East Germany and other Warsaw Pact countries (as had occurred in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968). Thousands of opposition activists were arrested and imprisoned, 91 were killed. Civil liberties were drastically reduced. Consumer prices skyrocketed leading to an economic crisis. It reduced real wages by 20% or more and forced the Polish people to ration even the most basic of foodstuffs. Over 700,000 Poles left Poland for the West between 1981 and 1989. Though martial law was lifted on July 22, 1983,  many of the political prisoners were not released until a general amnesty in 1986.

OCTOBER 28 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

OCTOBER 28

1938

Nazi German government called for the arrest of about 18,000 Polish Jews living in Germany and had them expelled to Poland. Then Poland in turn refused them entry, thus leaving them stranded in so-called 'No-Man's Land' near the Polish border for several months. (In March of 1938, the Polish government had decreed that passports held by Polish citizens living abroad for more than five years would require re-validation. )  Many of the Polish Jews sought refuge in the nearby towns of Zbaszyn and Bytom.  According to some sources, about six to ten thousand Jews gathered in the town of Zbaszyn, within the space of a few days.  A large refugee camp was created in Zbaszyn, with help from Jewish aid organisations. It wasn't until the end of November 1938 that the Polish authorities decided to disband the camp and allow the refugees residency in Poland. Many of them settled in Poland while others arranged travel visas to leave the country.  (nb. Polish authorities threatened retaliations and the expulsion of the same number of Germans, according to the papers and memoirs of Ambassador Jozef Lipski, "Diplomat in Berlin" 1933-1939)

1941

Second Odessa Massacre:  On October 28, another massacre was instigate by the Romanians, and Nazi Germans. They herded between 4,000 and 5,000 Jewish civilians into stables and bars and shot them.. By the end of December, an additional 50,000 Jews from the concentration camp at Bogdanovka had been killed. Another 10,000 Jews were taken on a death march to three concentration camps near Golta: Bogdanovka, Domanovka and Acmecetca. Many died during the march. Those who survived were murdered two months later, along with tens of thousands of other Jews who had been brought to these camps from northern Transnistria and Bessarabia.

1942

Nazi Germany made its first V-1 rocket glide test flight on October 28, 1942, from Peenemunde, carried under a Focke-Wulf Fw200.  The launch sites were capable of launching about a maximum of 18 V-1s per day but only 25% of them actually hit their targets.  Most failed due to a combination of ineffective mechanical design, or guidance errors. With the capture or destruction of the launch facilities by the Allies, the V-1s were redirected in attacks against strategic points in Belgium, particularly the port of Antwerp.  (Attempts to launch the V-1 against Britain were met by a variety of countermeasures, including barrage balloons and aircraft including the Hawker Tempest and Gloster Meteor.  The British were so successful in these measures that by August 1944 approximately 1,000 V-1s or 80 per cent  were destroyed by the RAF aircraft.)

MAUS is propagandist memoir says Canadian Polish Congress Part 2

The Problems with Spiegelman’s MAUS:

Why MAUS Should Not Be Taught in High Schools

or Elementary Schools

PART #2.  WHY IS PORTRAYING POLES AS PIGS OBJECTIONABLE FROM AN ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE? 

Portraying Poles as pigs is offensive. In fact, it has been acknowledged as such by literary critics. In the biographical introduction to the excerpt from MAUS that appears in The Norton Anthology of American Literature,7th edition   (New York: Norton, 2007), Volume E, p. 3091, editors Jerome Klinkowitz and Patricia B.Wallace describe Spiegelman’s representation of Poles as pigs as “a calculated insult” leveled against Poles. A similar point was made by Harvey Pekar, a celebrated underground comic book writer, who describes himself as a Jew with a background similar to Art Spiegelman’s: “When he [Spiegelman] shows them [Poles] doing something admirable and still portrays them as pigs, he’s sending a mixed message.” (1)  Characteristically, Spiegelman has dismissed Poles’ concern about their depiction as pigs as “a squeal,” the sound pigs make.(2)

 

The incessant depiction, in MAUS, of Poles as anti-Semitic “pigs” – with the highly

derisive connotation that term carries – forms an image that cannot easily, if ever,

be erased from the minds of young students whose knowledge of World War II

history is minimal at best. 


NB:  Nazi Germany used propaganda in an effort to destroy ethnic communities in Poland, and pit them against each other. Some of that propaganda still endures to this day. The danger of propaganda is in its persistence so eventually people tend to believe it.  But please beware that repetition of lies does not make the truth.  It is still propaganda.

. 

The mouse and cat metaphor is fairly obvious to most readers of MAUS. It is a well-

known fact that cats chase mice, and that the Nazis targeted Jews for destruction. The cat imagery is generally explained by teachers and in accompanying reading materials provided to or accessible by students. The pig imagery or “metaphor,” on the other hand, is rarely, if ever, explained – whether in MAUS itself, or in available reading materials. One handout provided to students states that the animals have a “symbolic quality,” without any further explanation of the role of the pigs.(3) This begs the question, what is their symbolic quality?

The use of pigs to depict Poles is something that cannot be missed, especially by

impressionable young readers, as the very word “pig” is widely used as a term of derision. “You pig,” is universally considered to be an insult. In many cultures, pigs are viewed as disgusting, filthy, and greedy animals. They are often considered to be vulgar and stupid. The implication, therefore, is that there is something unsavoury about the pig people. This is one obvious negative connotation that would not be lost on the students, especially since that image is reinforced by the negative stereotypes used to portray Poles, who even manage to remain fat while imprisoned in Auschwitz. For Jews and Muslims, pigs are “unclean” animals. Jewish culture in particular views pigs, and pork, as non-kosher, or unclean. This is very important contextual information of which the students are not made aware. According to the Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center,

There is probably no animal as disgusting to Jewish sensitivities as the pig. It’s not just because it may not be eaten: there are plenty of other animals that aren’t kosher either, but none of them arouse as much disgust as the pig. Colloquially, the pig is the ultimate symbol of loathing; when you say that someone “acted like a chazir [pig],” it suggests that he or she did something unusually abominable.(4)

  

An Israeli court found a Jewish woman guilty of racism for putting up posters depicting Islam’s Prophet Mohammad as a pig. After a volatile demonstration against immigrants from Russia, heckled as “pork eaters,” David Benziri, a leading Sephardi rabbi and brother of an Israeli cabinet minister, said: “There is nothing so anti-Jewish as pig.” (5)

Unfortunately, the image of Poles as being “unclean” has a long and shameful tradition. In prewar Poland, some Jews were known to refer to Poles as “Polish pigs”. This went hand-in-hand with the popular image of Poles as “stupid goys (“Goy,” a derogatory term for Christians, was commonly used by Jews to refer to Poles.) Samuel Oliner, a respected Jewish scholar, recalled his grandmother’s lament, “Shmulek will grow up to be a stupid goy!” “The presence of a gentile defiled the home of a Jew,” he also recalled. (6)   We can see an allusion to that type of thinking in Vladek’s characterization of the Polish priest who comforted him in Auschwitz: “He wasn’t Jewish – but very intelligent. ” Moreover, the similarities between the Nazi and traditional Jewish perception of Poles as stupid, disgusting animals are disturbing.  


NB.  The world greatly discredits Poland and its people.  Polish people are noble, honorable and brilliant in virtually every discipline.  Poland has given the world many gifts, among them Nicolaus Copernicus, Madame Curie (nee Maria Sklodowska-Curie), Frederic Chopin, Joseph Conrad (nee Jozef Korzeniowski), referred to as "the greatest British novelist" and many more. There is a multitude of great Polish men and women in the sciences, arts, literature, and music (past and present) The list is endless..... ! 

Polish inmates of Nazi camps were often called “Polish swine” by German officials and kapos. (7)  Poles are also referred to as “pigs” in Jewish memorial books.(8)  MAUS employs the same imagery of the Poles as found in Nazi propaganda, where Poles were often referred to as “pigs.” Art Spiegelman was, of course, aware of these problematic associations when he chose to portray Poles as pigs. Are the teachers aware of it? Are the students being informed? How else would they learn about it?

Spiegelman, in MAUS itself, shows how carefully he selects the animals to depict the various nationalities when he ponders how to draw his French wife. (There is more on this later.) The choice of pigs was quite deliberate and sends a clear message that anyone with an understanding of the cultures involved, and the times, would appreciate. The narrative then plays into the stereotype by its relentless focus on Poles who behave brutishly, venally, and badly. 

NB. Not all Polish people during the war behaved brutishly, venally, or badly.  The fact is that the Polish Underground established the Polish Council to Aid the Jews, or Zegota as it came to be known.  Of the many excellent websites on the subject, I recommend the following. Please click on the link.  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Zegota.html 
 I also recommend that you read the book, "Zegota" written by Irene Tomaszewski, and Tecia Werbowski. (Publisher: Price-Patterson, ISBN10 # 1896881157, ISBN#13 978-1896881157

 

In the past, Art Spiegelman has not been forthright as to why he chose to draw Poles as pigs. In MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus (New York: Pantheon, 2011), Spiegelman divulges his actual reasons for portraying Poles as pigs: it is to bash Poles. With reference to his father’s attitude towards Poles, he quips, “So my metaphor [mice to be killed outright, and pigs to be exploited and eaten] was somehow able to hold that particular vantage point while still somehow acknowledging my father’s dubious opinion of Poles as a group.” (P. 122.) Despite the fact that Poland had for centuries given sanctuary to Jews persecuted elsewhere, Spiegelman adds that, “‘And considering the bad relations between

Poles and Jews for the last hundred years in Poland, it seemed right to use a non-

Kosher animal.’” (P. 125.) 


N.B.   Apparently Spiegelman can only count up to 100. The fact is that Poles and Jews have lived in Poland as neighbors for the past 1,000 years, through turbulent eras, yes - but there were also times of peace and goodwill. King Stephen Batory continues to be regarded with great respect and admiration among the Jews of today.  Among the Kings decrees, he offered protection to the Polish Jews, and denounced religious violence.

Unfortunately, Art Spiegelman’s anti-Polish biases run deep. At an interactive meeting at Angelo State University in February 2011, Spiegelman dismissed as “silly” the notion that Poles and Polish Americans were offended by his pig depiction. He told the audience that he had read a book that supposedly proved that the Poles in Nazi-occupied Poland were in favor of the Holocaust. He alleged that Poles objected only to having to sit back and watch while the Nazis carried out mass murder, referring to a diary written by a Polish man that, Spiegelman claimed, showed that most Poles resented not being able to carry out the Holocaust themselves. Spiegelman then said he could not remember the author or the title of the book on which he based this slanderous claim, joking awkwardly that he has always accepted the fact that memory is imperfect. (9)

All of this supports what Erin Einhorn, a Jewish-American author, concludes as being the real inspiration for the pig metaphor:              

... people like my grandparents, the survivor generation, emerged from the war with a blazing hatred for the Poles ... And they passed that hatred on to their children. It was why, I suspected, Art Spiegelman, the son of a survivor from Sosnowiec, the town next to the one where my mother was born, drew the Poles as pigs in his holocaust comic book, Maus, and the Germans as comparatively pleasant cats. The implication from our parents and grandparents was that the Germans, while evil and calculating in the war, were basically intelligent people who were swept catastrophically into nationalistic frenzy, while the Poles were anti-Semitic pigs. There was a reason – I had been told many times with a wink – that the Germans located the death camps in Poland, that the German people never would have stood for such horror on their own land. Poles, I was told, had welcomed the camps.

They’d embraced the chance to see Jews die around them. Even my mother, who was saved by a Polish family, told me the family only did it for the money. The reasonable part of me didn’t believe this. People don’t risk their lives for money alone, and such horrible, sweeping statements couldn’t possibly apply to an entire population without benefit of nuance or exception. (10)

That Spiegelman was under the influence of such biases is evident in MAUS itself. Nations or cultures he approves of are represented by noble or respectable animals, for example, Americans as dogs and Swedes as reindeer. However, cultures which he scorns are symbolized negatively. When discussing with his wife, who is French, how to draw Frenchmen, Spiegelman rejects her suggestion of bunny rabbits, as “too sweet and gentle” to apply to a nation [France] with a deep history of anti-Semitism and Nazi collaboration. Instead, he chose to draw Frenchmen as frogs, which could be seen as a slimy and lowly creature. However, since the French are peripheral to the MAUS story, their depiction as frogs plays no significant role in the book. One cannot say the same about the Poles, who appear front and centre and, for the most part, in a negative light. Their portrayal as pigs reinforces the notion that they were supposedly a nation of Nazi collaborators. Their portrayal at Auschwitz – overwhelmingly as brutal kapos – is a striking and graphic illustration of that phenomenon. 
 

NB.   Spiegelman' s depiction that all kapos being Polish is inaccurate. The majority of kapos were Germans thugs and convicted criminals, as well as Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, and even Jews.  Though some claim that there were Polish kapos I am certain that most were the Volksdeutscher. (Poles of German descent)

The bigotry and historical distortions inherent in Vladek’s perspective on Poles are

validated by the author. Spiegelman’s own presence within the narrative (e.g., during the discussion between himself and his French wife about how to depict French characters) would have allowed him, through the voice of his own mouse character, to call attention to those flaws within his father’s views. Instead, he purposefully supports his father’s bias against Poles. (In contrast, his own mouse character challenges Vladek’s racism against African Americans near the end of the book.)

The claim that the use of animals to portray nations (anthropomorphism) simply reflects Nazi German ideology is not true, except in the case of Poles, who were often referred to “swine.” The Nazis did not portray the Germans as cats, the French as frogs or the Americans as dogs. In the Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew, Jews are portrayed as filthy, disease-bearing rats that had to be exterminated, not as helpless, emaciated mice. Moreover, the use of the pig metaphor is inept in showing the Poles’ actual place in the Nazi hierarchy of nations. While it is true that cats pursue mice, pigs are not their natural enemies: cats do not eat pigs. There is no indication that German cats intended to slaughter Poles, as they did by the millions. Rather, portraying Poles as well-fed pigs serves to underscore their alleged role as crude and dull stooges. The leitmotif of Poles as Nazi sympathizers and henchmen reinforces the false image of Poles as a nation of collaborators. In actual fact, Poles were one of the primary victims of National Socialist racial policies. They also produced occupied Europe’s largest underground army to fight the German invaders.


N.B.  Western media and schools give little or no information about one of the most important events in WW2 such as The Warsaw Uprising. The study of Poland is an essential part of the study of WW2 and must be included in history studies.  Please click on this link for in-depth facts and stories. http://www.warsawuprising.com/

Writing in the Comics Journal (no. 113, December 1986) from the perspective of “a first-generation American Jew,” Harvey Pekar voiced his strong objection to Spiegelman’s portrayal of Poles as pigs: 

It undermines his moral position. He negatively stereotypes Poles even though he portrays some hiding Jews from the Germans. ... I do not have general objections to anthropomorphism, but I do object to the way Spiegelman uses it. Art stereotypes nationalities, Orwell doesn’t. Orwell’s pigs do not represent a whole nation. They represent what comes to be the corrupt ruling class of a nation. Orwell didn’t portray the leaders of the animal revolution as pigs just to praise their intellects: he wanted people to view them as coarse and greedy, which is what people usually mean when they call each other ‘pig’. 

No amount of literary “deconstruction” of the text will undo that harmful and indelible impression. So when students studying MAUS direct remarks like “Oink, oink, piggies” and “you Poles killed the Jews” at fellow students of Polish origin, as was reported in a Toronto high school in the fall of 2013 , they are actually quite perceptive in picking up on the message – the biases and negative stereotypes – conveyed in MAUS. The fault lies not with the students, but with the book itself. 

FOOTNOTES

1  The Comics Journal , no. 113, December 1986.

2  Joseph Witek, ed., Art Spiegelman: Conversations

(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2007), 193.

3  Ian Johnston, “On Spiegelman’s Maus I and II”,

Internet:  http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/maus.htm.

4  Internet: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2376474/jewish/Pigs-Judaism.htm.

5  Alan Philps, “Pork-eating Gentiles stir outrage in Israel,” National Post (Toronto),

November 24, 1999.

6  Samuel P. Oliner, Restless Memories: Recollections of the Holocaust Years (Berkeley, California: Judah L. Magnes Museum, 1986), 29, 54.

7  Record of Witness Testimony No. 014, November 30, 1945, Voices from Ravensbrück,

Polish Institute of Source Research, Lund, Sweden, Internet:

http://www3.ub.lu.se/ravensbruck/interview14.

8  For example, Kosow Lacki (San Francisco: Holocaust Center of Northern Calif

ornia, 1992), 49; and The Cieszanow Memorial Book (Mahwah, New Jersey: Jacob Solomon Berger, 2006), 40.

9  Internet: http://bieganski-the-blog.blogspot.ca/2012/10/protesting-maus-by-dr-linda-

kornasky.html.

10 Erin Einhorn, The Pages In Between: A Holocaust Legacy of Two Families, One Home New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2008), 48–49. 

NEXT

"The Problems with Spiegelman's MAUS:
Why MAUS should not be taught in High Schools or Elementary Schools"

Part # 3 
 Why is the depiction of Poles in MAUS objectionable 
from a historical perspective?

 

Please click on the above link

STALIN'S COURTROOM: THE TRIAL OF THE 16 POLISH LEADERS

The Trial of the 16 was one of the most sinister crimes perpetrated by the Stalinist regime against the Polish nation. From June 18 to June 21, 1945 a series of staged trials were held in Moscow at which sixteen leaders of the Polish underground movement were accused of allegedly "drawing up plans for military action against the USSR." In the presence of international observers and journalists, the Soviet court brazenly ignored legal precepts, and sentenced innocent men to prison on trumped up charges. Even more shocking was the fact that the governments of the United States, and of Britain tacitly accepted the courts' rulings and made no attempt to intercede on behalf of the Polish leaders.

Before World War Two, Stalin had conducted many mock trials and purges to eliminate political opposition and consolidate his power. Those victims however were Russians - the old bolsheviks, heads of the Soviet secret police, members of the Politburo, diplomats, among others. Before the Great Purge which took place from 1937 to 1938, there were the Moscow Trials from 1936 to 1937 which consisted of three major trials. the Trial of the Sixteen, as well as the Trial of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center; and the Trial of the Twenty-One. In every case, the modus operandi was the same. The Russian defendants, or rather, the victims were allegedly charged with the crimes of plotting to assassinate Stalin, overthrow the Soviet regime, and conspire with the western governments to destroy communism, dismember the Soviet Union, and restore capitalism to the masses. The Russian defendants were all sentenced to death, and shot. They had confessed to the crimes under torture.

(1943) Polish bodies exhumed - Katyn

The Stalinist regime made similar accusations against the Polish leaders in the 1945 Trial of the 16. But this trial was just one scenario of a much larger conspiracy. From the very inception of the war it was Stalin's mission (as well as that of Hitler's) to erase every vestige of Polish leadership and authority - the belief that a headless Polish state could more easily be conquered and repressed. Among the Soviet crimes against the Poles were the infamous Katyn Massacres in which over 16,000 Polish officers were arrested by the Soviet NKVD, deported to Russia and systematically executed. Over a million Polish civilians including members of the intelligentsia, had been deported to Russian gulags and either executed or worked to death. This was genocide - the calculated destruction of the Polish people, their culture, and their leadership.

Prisoners in Russian Gulag

Typical of Soviet chicanery, Colonel Pimenov of the Soviet NKVD, on behalf of General Ivanov, sent cordial invitations to the Polish leaders to attend a conference in the city of Pruszkow, Poland and, giving his "word of honour", guaranteed their personal safety. Incidentally, that the Soviets chose Armii Krajowej Street as the location for the conference could not have been a coincidence, I believe, but rather a devious means to lull the Polish leaders into a false sense of security. These gestures led the Polish leaders to believe that they were being called upon to form a Polish Provisional Government. In reality the future of Poland had already been decided by Stalin. It was fait accompli. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Big Three (Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill) agreed upon a Polish Provisional Government which would hold "free and unfettered elections", as soon as possible. But it was a ruse. Just a month earlier the Polish Provisional Government had been taken over by the Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation (or PKWN). The Polish Government in Exile was outraged and issued a statement protesting the actions of the Soviet Union as having "taken over the sovereign rights of the Polish nation.

Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin at Yalta Conference February 1945

On March 26 and 27, 1945, the Soviet NKVD captured and arrested the sixteen Polish leaders and deported them to Moscow where they were imprisoned in the infamous Lubyanka prison and subjected to months of brutal torture. The Polish leaders were accused of numerous crimes: such as having collaborated with Nazi Germany; acts of sabotage and terrorism against the Red Army; creating propaganda against the Soviet Union; planning a military alliance with Nazi Germany; owning a radio transmitter, printing machines and weapons; and membership in the Polish underground.

Immediately after the arrest, the Polish Government in Exile sent a message of protest to Washington and London calling for the immediate release of the sixteen Polish leaders. But it fell on deaf ears. Stalin attempted to deflect scrutiny by declaring that the whole episode was merely a ploy concocted by the so-called "Fascist Polish Government", in their effort to discredit the Soviets, and that it was nothing more than fabrication. Even when the truth finally came out on May 5th, Stalin shrugged it off, saying that, "there is no point in linking the case of the Trial of the Sixteen with the support for the Soviet-backed government of Poland because the sentences will not be high." Apparently, the American and British governments agreed hence no action was taken to intervene.

Soviet accusations against the Polish leaders were a complete sham, in particular allegations of collaboration with Nazi Germany. The fact is that the Polish Underground had fought ferociously against Nazi German occupation for the entire six years of the war, culminating in the heroic Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Neither did the Poles engage in any sabotage or terrorist activities against the Red Army. There is an abundance of historical documentation which attests to the fact that the Polish Home Army made many and frantic efforts to solicit the participation of and assistance by the Soviet Red Army in fighting against the Nazi Germans. The Poles fought alone. In a tragic and shocking turn of events, the Red Army advanced as far as the opposite bank of the Vistula, and then stopped short. The Soviet plan was to allow the Nazi Germans to slaughter as many Polish insurgents as possible before advancing on Warsaw and thus (so-called) "liberating" the Poles.

Okulicki defending himself in Russian court June 1945

In the Trial of the 16, the Soviet Union was guilty of countless violations of international law; of kidnapping and detaining citizens of a foreign country, of charging them with alleged crimes committed on foreign soil, of depriving the Polish prisoners of basic human rights, and subjecting them to torture. Moreover, General Okulicki's witnesses were expressly prohibited from even entering the court, and none of the Polish defendants were permitted to plead in their defense. Initially the judge conceded only three witnesses (though Okulicki requested six). But later the judge announced that the three witnesses could not attend the trial due to "bad atmospheric conditions." What's more, the prosecution was unable to provide evidence to support their claims against the Polish defendants. It was a travesty of justice doled out to absurd proportions.

On June 21, 1945, after only three days, the Soviet court delivered its verdicts. Of the sixteen Polish defendants, only one was not forced by the Soviets to admit to alleged crimes, while the others pleaded guilty. By 1951 only two survived. The United States and Britain remained tacit throughout the trial, and to add insult to injury, on July 6, 1945, formally withdrew their support from the legitimate Polish Government in Exile. For the ensuing twenty years, Soviet and Polish communists conducted large-scale man-hunts for former members of the Secret Polish State, and the Home Army (Armia Krajowa). The war had ended in 1945 - but not for the enslaved Polish nation.

POLISH LEADERS ON TRIAL

LEOPOLD OKULICKI (Niedźwiadek)

Commander in Chief of the Armia Krajowa

Okulicki was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He died on Christmas Eve 1946.
The cause of death was attributed to complications brought about by a hunger strike, but speculation indicates that Okulicki may have been murdered.

JAN STANISLAW JANKOWSKI

Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and the Government Delegate

Jankowski was sentenced to 8 years in prison. He died in prison March 13, 1953 just two weeks before the end of his sentence.  Suspicions abound that he was murdered.

ADAM BIEN

MINISTER OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS

Bien was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.

STANISLAW JASIUKOWICZ

Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs

Jasiukowicz was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

 

 KAZIMERZ PUZAK

Head of the Council of National Unity, and

PPS-WRN Socialist Party

Puzak was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison and released in November 1945.

He returned to Poland and refused to emigrate.  In 1947 he was arrested again by the infamous secret police, Urzad Bezpieczenstwa and sentenced to 10 years in prison.  Puzak died April 30 1950.

ALEKSANDER ZWIERZYNSKI

Deputy Head of the Council of National Unity and

Head of the Labor Party

Zwierzynski was sentenced to 8 months in prison.

KAZIMERZ BAGINSKI

Member of the Council of National Unity

Baginski was sentenced to 1 year in prison after which he was released. 

He was forced to emigrate to the United States.

EUGENIUSZ CZARNOWSKI

Member of the Council of National Unity

Head of Ziednoczenie Demokratyczne

Czanowski was sentenced to 6 months in prison.

JOZEF CHACINSKI

Member of the Council of National Unity

Head of the Labor Party

Chacinski was sentenced to 4 months in prison.

STANISLAW MIERZWA

Member of the Council of National Unity

Mierzwa was sentenced to 4 months in prison.

ZBIGNIEW STYPULKOWSKI

Member of the Council of National Unity.

Stypulskowski was sentenced to 4 months in prison. 

Upon his release he was forced to emigrate to the United Kingdom.

FRANCISZEK URBANSKI

Member of the Council of National Unity

Urbanski was sentenced to 4 months in prison.

STANISLAW MICHALOWSKI

Member of the Council of National Unity

Michalowski was acquitted of all charges.

KAZIMERZ KOBYLANSKI

Member of the Council of National Unity

Kobylanski was acquitted of all charges.

JOZEF STEMLER

Member of the Council of National Unity 

(interpreter for the group of 16)

Stemler was acquitted of all charges.

ANTONI PAJDAK

Deputy Government Delegate

Pajdak was subjected to a secret trial, and sentenced to 5 years in prison in November 1945.

He was not released until 1955.

The soul of Poland is indestructible. She will rise again like a rock which may for a spell be submerged by a tidal wave 
but which remains a rock.
Winston Churchill.

Suggested Links:
You Tube video footage Moscow Show Trial 1938
Trial of the 16 - June 1945 (in Polish only)
Moscow Trial of the 16 Polish Leaders - June 1945 (in English only)