AUGUST 11 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

AUGUST 11

1892

Wladyslaw Anders (dob) was a General in the Polish Army, and later became a politician and prominent member of the Polish Government-in-Exile in London. When Poland was invaded by Germany on September 1, 1939,  Anders was called into action and commanded the Nowogródzka Cavalry Brigade in the Battle of Mlawa. With the collapse of the Polish Northern Front, the Brigade withdrew towards Warsaw, fighting several battles against the Germans. Following the Soviet attack on September 17, 1939 Anders retreated south in the direction of Lwów in the attempt to reach the Hungarian or Romanian border but was wounded twice and captured by the Red Army. The Soviets transferred Anders to the notorious Lubyanka prison were he was confined until February 29, 1940. During his imprisonment, he was interrogated and tortured by the NKVD who attempted to force him to join the Russian Army. He refused.  But after the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa, and the signing of the Sikorski-Maisky Agreement, Anders was released, and given the command to form a Polish army which would join the Soviets in the battle against the Nazis. Ander's army, the 2nd Polish Corp were composed of Polish civilians who had been deported to the Russian gulag,  from Soviet-occupied Poland.  The Polish 2nd Corps became a vital tactical and operational unit of the Polish Armed Forces in the West. Anders commanded the Corps throughout the Italian Campaign, capturing Monte Cassino on May 18, 1944, later fighting on the Gothic Line and in the final spring offensive. After the end of World War Two, Anders was prominent in the Polish Government in Exile in London and became inspector-general of the Polish forces-in-exile, as well as working on behalf of various charities and welfare organization. He never returned to Poland.

1939

Ribbentrop met with Ciano, the Italian Ambassador to Germany, and Attolico:  During the meeting, both Ciano and Attolico were horrified to learn from Ribbentrop that Germany planned to attack Poland that summer, and that the Danzig issue was merely a pretext for aggression. When Ciano offered to broker a Polish-German settlement,  Ribbentrop admitted that "We want war!"  Despite Ciano's efforts, the Germans did not want a diplomatic solution, but rather they wanted war only to eradicate Poland from the map.  Ribbentrop was certain that neither Britain nor France would go to war for Poland, claiming that "France and England cannot intervene because they are insufficiently prepared militarily and because they have no means of injuring Germany."

1944

Ochota Massacre:  Germans recaptured the Ochota district of Warsaw from Polish insurgents. (The Polish Underground had launched the Warsaw Uprising on the first of August 1944) By August 11, the Nazis expelled more Polish civilians from their homes and murdered them. Their bodies were placed in piles in the neighboring Hugo Kollajaj Secondary School, doused with alcohol and set on fire. On August 12 a German officer captured three boy scouts of the Gustaw Battalion of the Home Army, and shot them in the backs of their heads as they lowered corpses into an excavated pit.  On August 13, the final evacuation of civilians to the Pruszków transit camp began. This was the Ochota Massacre,  a German orchestrated mass murder of civilians, involving looting, arson, torture and rape. These atrocities continued unabated from August 4 to August 25, 1944 and were carried out by the notorious RONA brigade, commanded by Bronislav Kaminski, of the so-called Russian National "Liberation" Army.   The RONA units withdrew from Ochota in the last week of August 1944, but looting of property continued until the beginning of October. The Nazi Germans organized this campaign of pillaging, and loaded the stolen property on trains and truck convoys headed for Germany. Lastly, units of the Vernichtungskommando were brought into the district where they systematically set street after street on fire, resulting in the total destruction of the Ochota district. More than 40,000 Polish civilians were murdered.

1945

Violent eruption of Krakow Pogrom:  On August 11, 1945, in the Soviet-occupied city of Kraków, Poland,  the pogrom resulted in the shooting death of one person, Róża Berger while she was standing behind closed doors. Five others were wounded.  The prelude to the pogrom occurred on June 27, 1945, when a local Jewish woman, Milicja Obywatelska, was arrested by the police for the alleged abduction of a child. In reality, the mother placed the child in her care. But rumours started to spread like wild fire that the Jewish woman had tried to kill the child and a hysterical mob gathered outside. The militia was brought in to restore peace but the rumours of blood libel continued to spread. By August 11, 1945, the rumours claimed that the number of "victims" had increased to 80. Groups of young hooligans converged at Kleparski Square every week to throw stones at the Kupa Synagogue. On August 11, an attempt was made (by whom?) to seize a thirteen-year-old boy who was vandalizing the synagogue, but the youth managed to escape and ran to the nearby marketplace screaming "Help me, the Jews have tried to kill me!" That's when all hell broke loose. Crowds broke into the syngagogue during Saturday Sabbath service, beating the Jews, and burning the Torah scrolls. Jewish men, women and children were attacked and beaten on the streets, their homes broken into and robbed. Jews wounded during the pogrom were attacked in hospital.  The notorious Soviet NKVD prepared a report for Joseph Stalin, in which they claimed that it was Polish militiamen who sanctioned the violence. (Editors note: In both the Krakow Pogrom and the Kielce Pogrom (July 4 1946) the violence was ignited in the same manner - that of accusations of the abduction of children and blood libel.  Regardless of whether the Polish miltiamen sanctioned the violence,  it can be surmised that the Soviet NKVD were the instigators of the pogrom, and bears their MO.  The NKVD issued a report to Stalin about the event, so their presence at the scene should have raised suspicions.)

1957

Rudolf Stefan Weigl was a Polish biologist and inventor of the first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, Weigl harbored Jews, thereby risking execution by the Germans. His vaccines were also smuggled into the Lwów Ghetto and the Warsaw Ghetto, saving countless additional Jewish lives. Weigl employed and protected Polish intellectuals, Jews and members of the Polish underground. In 1945 Weigl moved to Kraków, Poland. He was appointed Chair of the General Microbiology Institute of Jagiellonian University, and later Chair of Biology of the Poznań Medical Faculty. He died on August 11, 1957 in the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane. In 2003,  Rudolf Weigl was recognized as Righteous Among Nations of the World.

FAMOUS POLISH QUOTATIONS

Great men and women throughout history are remembered for their magnificent oratory, probably much more so than for their valiant, or infamous deeds. Quotations have always captured our attention and fascination. They exquisitely encapsulate in a few words the scope of human understanding, thoughts and ideas and is a skill that is almost tantamount to wizardry. Who among us does not instantly recognize the following quotations, words which will endure for posterity.  Neither shall we forget their names for they have been written into our collective consciousness.

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills: we shall never surrender.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.

Be not afraid.

These are inspiring words but there remain a treasure chest of many other great quotations which have yet to capture our attention. The following are a collection of Polish quotations which I have gathered laboriously from countless sources, from famous writers, musicians, and film makers. I would have included many more, but unfortunately many quotes have not been translated to English. These quotations serve to inspire, amaze, educate, liberate, and sometimes, even amuse. The best quotations, I believe, are those which captured the sentiments of a nation in one moment of history, and thus preserved it for all time. Quotations are the signposts of our society - the good ones inspire us to become better than ourselves, while the bad ones alert us to danger, or alas, lead us astray. In any event quotations invite us to delve deeper to explore its meaning, and to understand its past. That is the mission.

To be defeated and not submit, is victory;
to be victorious and rest on one's laurels, is defeat.
Jozef Pilsudski

 In comparison with the NKVD,
the Gestapo methods
are child's play.  

 Leopold Okulicki

Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory.          Irena Sendler

Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

  Pope John Paul II

I belong to a nation which over the past centuries has experienced many hardships and reverses. The world reacted with silence or with mere sympathy when Polish frontiers were crossed by invading armies and the sovereign state had to succumb to brutal force.

 Lech Walesa

 

But if Russia is to be part of this larger zone of peace it cannot bring into it its imperial baggage. It cannot bring into it a policy of genocide against the Chechens, and cannot kill journalists, and it cannot repress the mass media.       Zbigniew Brzezinski

Warsaw is not waiting for empty words of praise, for expressions of recognition, not for assurances of sympathy. Warsaw is waiting … Warsaw is waiting … for weapons and ammunition.  
  General Kazimierz Sosnkowski

Polish soldiers fight 

for freedom

of other nations 

but dies only

 for Poland. 

General Stanislaw Maczek 

Comrades, I took the red tram of socialism to the stop named Independence, but that's where I got off.

Jozef Pilsudski

This homage has been rendered not to me - for the Polish soil is fertile and does not lack better writers than me - but to the Polish achievement, the Polish genius.         
Henryk Sienkiewicz 

 

The Holocaust committed by the Nazis turned this country, where most of the European Jews used to live and where their culture used to flourish, into a massive grave. This is why initiatives to revive Jewish culture in Poland is so important.
  Marek Belka

 

Ludzi coraz więcej, a człowieka coraz mniej -  

There is more and more people in the world, but less and less humanity.

          Edward Stachura







 

It has been said that Poland is dead, exhausted, enslaved, but here is the proof of her life and triumph. 

 Henryk Sienkiewicz

It is often said that Poland is a country where there is anti-semitism and no Jews, which is pathology in its purest state.  Bronislaw Geremek





 
May God permit us both
to return to a free 
and independent
Poland.
General Wladyslaw Anders

But I am a Christian Jew. I am a practicing Catholic. Although I am not a heretic, still my faith tells me the second original sin has been committed by humanity: through commission, or omission, or self-imposed ignorance, or insensitivity, or self-interest, or hypocrisy, or heartless rationalization....This sin will haunt humanity to the end of time. It does haunt me. And I want it to be so.      Jan Karski 

My most ardent desire is that my country will recapture its historic opportunity for a peaceful evolution and that Poland will prove to the world that even the most complex situations can be solved by a dialogue and not by force.    Lech Walesa

 
During the first 3 years
at Auschwitz, 
2 million people died; 
over the next 2 years -
3 million.   Witold Pilecki

 

So I think that I can say, as the President of Poland, we're proud that I am coming from Poland, which is different and what's more important, much better than before. President Aleksander Kwasniewski







 
There is a fundamental difference between the Polish experience of the state and the Russian experience.  In the Polish experience, the state was always a foreign power. So, to hate the state was a patriotic act.    Ryszard Kapuscinski

[Lenin was] merely a psychopath to whom ideas barely mattered and whose only motivation is to dominate and to kill.        Richard  Edgar Pipes 







To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.  Copernicus 




 


The weakest link in the chain is also the strongest. It can break the chain.  Stanislaw Jerzy Lec







Poland is an ally of the United States of America.  It was our duty to show that we are a reliable, loyal and predictable ally.  America needed our help, and we had to give it.  Adam Michnik





 
We expected that people were just waiting for the collapse of the Soviet Union, or at least for its retreat, and they were going to be full of initiative in all areas of life - in culture, in economy and in politics.  Andrzej Wajda

I did the following routine during practice:
round off, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, flip, double back straight 
with four twists.
Jozef Wadecki

When the world is shifting and new competitors arise, standing still is not sufficient. Institutions and procedures that have worked in the past are not enough. Incremental change is not enough. You have to adapt fast enough even to retain your position.  
Mr. Radek Sikorski (Foreign Minister of Poland)




In a democracy, one does not know what the next government will be like. Under fascism there is no next government.    
        Michal Kalecki



  



It is not so important what I did or how I did it but what is between the notes. That is what matters.  Pope John Paul II said at the beatification of Fra Angelico, "his belief became art, which in turn became faith. The art became a prayer.  You don't have to have a strong belief to make religious art but art and faith follow similar paths.     Henryk Gorecki
 


 

All the common people kissed my hands, my feet, my clothes; others only touched me, saying, 'Ah, let us kiss so valiant a hand!

King John III Sobieski (an excerpt from a letter written to his wife, after victory in the Battle of Vienna)










He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word.  The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.     Joseph Conrad


 

The difference between western and eastern intellectuals is that the former have not been kicked in the ass enough.   Witold Gombrowicz







The Pole listening to Chopin listens to the voice of his whole race.   Ignace Paderewski

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.  Marie Sklodowska (Curie)

Normal love isn't interesting. I assure you that it's incredibly boring.   
Roman Polanski




 



There are no miracles.
There is only what one does oneself.
Tamara de Lempicka








 



I am the master! I stretch forth my hands, even to the skies! I lay my hands upon the stars, as on the crystal wheels of the harmonica. Now fast, now slow, as my soul wills, I turn the stars. I weave them into rainbows, harmonies. I feel immortality! I create immortality!  
             Adam Mickiewicz




 
 
It is only our exactions of life that are terrible. It is only our impossible conceptions of beauty and good and justice that are terrible--because they never are realized, and at the same time they prevent us taking life as it is. That is the real source of all our sorrow and suffering.  
Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont

We have to oppose the widespread view that if the Russians are provoking us, we shouldn`t react because that could be perceived as a confirmation of Poland`s alleged Russophobia.  Let`s remember that Russia is not only provoking us but also checking how far it can go.  Recently, it went definitely too far.  We must react when we have to do with obvious nonsense, like the Russian foreign ministry`s recent statement that Yalta resulted in a strong, free, and democratic Poland.  President Lech Kaczynski

President Lech Kaczynski

December 23, 2005 to April 10, 2010