Poland during WW2

I dedicate this blog post to family members who lived through the horrors of WW2 in Poland.  I decided to write this post after hearing about the atrocities that Polish family members lived through during WW2. Yes, I had heard about the horrors of the Holocaust and the murder of Polish Jews, but I knew of little else.  I knew that one of the first places Hitler invaded was the hometown of my ancestors - Gostynin. But I admit, I knew little else.

This post is a work in progress.  I will update it periodically.

And then when visiting family in NJ, my mom and sister shared with me a calendar commemorating the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.  I had never heard of the Warsaw Uprising, and so this journey to learn began.

I contacted my kind and ever gracious, loving cousin Daniel Banasiak and as always he wrote back, patiently educating me about Poland - this time, about the Warsaw Uprising.  And when I wrote to him to tell him that I was reading the book Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising (by Alexandra Richie, c. 2013) and asked for his help, he immediately agreed.

So I will start with Daniel's recounting of the events in a FB post of August 1, 2023. The timing was lost on me until I started reading the aforementioned book.

"The Warsaw Uprising probably applies to every Warsaw family in one way or another.

My great-great-grandmother Felixa and her two grandchildren - Aunt Danusia (6 years old) and my grandfather Bodzio (5 years old) took part in the march. In Zielonka they were just spending their holidays on their plot... they succeeded, going to the eastern station in the vicinity of Brzeska Street their neighbor saw them, during the commotion and confusion Felixa grabbed Danusia and Bodzia's hands and quickly jumped to Markowska Street, and in this hurry to her apartment. I remember grandpa Bodzio and aunt Danusia's stories about this march today, they talked about terrible fatigue and horror, that they walked together. They spent the rest of the uprising in the basement of the tenement house where they lived, at Brzeska 4 street. They talked about fear and lice, about a bomb that fell on their tenement and that someone was watching over them that the entrance to it was not threatened..."

Danuta Wojciechowska wrote, "We remember the hour At 17 we stand and pay homage to their memory."
 
Wiesława Kulińska responded, "From Markowska Street through garages they got to the apartment on Brzesko 4."

 

Wacława Rutkowka and Zdzisław Kuliński 1937, great grandparents of Daniel Banasiak. Zdzisław passed away in 1940 in Warsaw

Danuta and Bogdan, 1947, Bogdan is Daniel's grandfather.  Danuta is his great-Aunt.

As part of that post, Daniel included this except:

"The tragedy of the expelled inhabitants of Zielonka"

Author : MARY WINTER-MARIAN

 

"On September 5, from the morning, residents from central and southern Zielonka were massively displaced. The population expelled in a hurry by the Germans could take only the most necessary things with them. The Germans didn't take anyone lightly. They rushed the elderly, the sick and women with children.

Some residents tried to return to their homes, but such attempts ended in shooting. Civilians were chased through the highway in the direction of Z Cbek, then to Praga. They were under constant fire from the ongoing German-Soviet fighting. Tired and even wounded, they slept in Praga park; women and children in St. Church. Floriana. After all, the church was a gathering place for the expelled - hence the Germans chased them at the station: East and West. Displaced from Zielonka arrived in the transitional camps after 2-3 days of traveling by train, on foot, as well as by trucks.

Organized on 4-5 September 1944, the expulsion of the inhabitants of Zielonka was aimed at facilitating the Germans to continue fighting for Warsaw with the Soviets. In addition to cleaning the battlefield, exiled people - like others expelled from Warsaw and surrounding areas - were to be recruited as much as possible for forced labor for the Third Reich. Most of the expelled ended up in the camp in Pruszków, the rest went to Dulagów in Zakroczyme, Modlin, O zoarowo. ”

Little was known in the West about the Warsaw Uprising until after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. Prior to that, neither Germany nor the Soviet Union was keen to remember, let alone take responsibility for the death and destruction. As described in the book Warsaw 1944, this is the story of what happened to the ordinary people of Warsaw in the summer of 1944. 

Hitler and the Reich were brutal, cruel, and murderous beyond image. What they did in Belarus (Byelorussia) was a prelude to Warsaw. "Nine million people lived in Soviet Byelorussia when the Germans invaded in 1941, and at least two million of them were killed - by shooting, gassing, hanging, burning, and drowning. Another two million were deported to the Reich as forced labor". Almost half the population of Byelorussia! 

And so, Hitler, Himmler, and the Reich continued to plumage, murder, and destroy entire populations - this time, in Warsaw. Hitler hated Poland - it stood between him and Soviet Russia - his ultimate goal of controlling the Western World.

"After the merciless bombing raids that began on 1 September 1939, its population was terrorized by the Gestapo, and almost its entire Jewish community was murdered. During the uprising of the summer of 1944, its people were massacred, besieged, pulverized, and burned. In the end the entire population, which before the war had numbered over 1.3 million people, was gone.  More than 400,000 of Warsaw's Jews were dead. Over 150,000 of its remaining citizens died during the uprising and lay buried under the rubble; 18,000 members of the Armie Krajowa (Home Army - the single largest resistance army in the world) also lay dead. Hapless civilians were hauled from their shelters and sent to Pruszkow transit camp on the outskirts of Warsaw, where some 60,000 innocent men, women, and children were dispatched to concentration camps including Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and Dachau, where many perished.  Nearly 100,000 were sent as forced laborers to the Reich as a source of cheap labor."

As described by Richie, " "Poles were treated as Untermenschen - subhumans - who were to be killed, deported, or turned into slaves of the German master race. Hitler had made it very clear from the beginning that his troops were sent to death 'mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children, of Polish race and language'. The Poles, and Warsawians in particular, were despised by both Hitler and Himmler. Generalplan Ost was not reserved for Warsaw alone; indeed the entire pre-war Polish population of 35 million was to be reduced to a mere 3-4 million uneducated 'peasants' who would be put to work in industry or agriculture. To this end the Germans swept through Poland in 1939, arresting the country's elite - tens of thousands of doctors, teachers, bureaucrats and landowners, clergymen and professors, journalists and businessmen, actors and priest.  Many were murdered at killing grounds such as the Palmiry forest near Warsaw, or in the Pawiak prison in the city. Between 1.5 million Poles were sent as forced laborers to the Reich." The death toll in Warsaw alone was 685,000 Jews and non-Jewish Poles. 

As described by distant relative Ewelina Bakuła, "Stefania Nadwodna was my great grandmother, she married Stanisław Bakula. One of her great uncles emigrated to USA.  I come from place in Poland named Ulatowo Pogorzel/ Jednorożec and am quite familiar with the place your direct ancestors came from. Stefania Nadwodna had really tough life, her husband was taken by Germans in 1945 and killed by them in mass execution. Their house was burned down and she suffered extensive injuries from dogs that the germans had when their raided the house."

I honor Stanisław Bakuła and Stefania Nadwodna. They shall not be forgotten.

 _____

This is what grief is.
A hole ripped through the very fabric of your being.
The hole eventually heals along the jagged edges that remain. It may even shrink in size.
But that hole will always be there.
A piece of you always missing.
For where there is deep grief, there was great love.

 

   Hi Susan, nice to hear from you. Stefania Nadwodna was my great grandmother, she married Stanisław Bakula. One of her great uncles emigrated to USA. I was never aware of this, and thanks to your profile found out the history of Warrior Run etc.
I come from place in Poland named Ulatowo Pogorzel/ Jednorożec and am quite familiar with the place your direct ancestors came from.
Stefania Nadwodna had really tough life, her husband was taken by Germans in 1945 and killed by them in mass execution. Their house was burned down and she suffered extensive injuries from dogs that the germans had when their raided the house.
Its nice to know those stories as they get forgotten.
Hope you and your family are all well.
Kind regards
Ewelina Bakula