on the eve of the year of the 75th anniversary of the Victory over fascism, we all have to become little historians. To no neither us, nor our children could not fool malicious nonsense about the causes of the Second world war and the proportions of contribution to the Victory of the different States and peoples.
President Putin started with myself — I sat down for historical documents, and again to clarify details and accents. Recently, the head of state touched on the subject twice at a press conference on the informal meeting of CIS leaders in St. Petersburg. Then he again returned to the pre-war period — at the Board meeting of the Ministry of defense and a lot of the details — at a meeting with the leadership of the chambers of the Federal Assembly.
the Speech had great resonance, but such that the Russian Ambassador in Warsaw caused the Polish foreign Ministry to Express their dissatisfaction. Why Horny first of all Poland? And because of the role of Poland in cooperation with Hitler, Putin has devoted considerable time in its historical perspective.
Why Poland? And because today is Poland more active than others motivates the thesis about equal responsibility of the USSR and Nazi Germany for the outbreak of the Second world war, so much so that the idea was included in the recent resolution of the European Parliament, becoming almost canonized by the position of the European Union. Putin has decided that so business will not go. With its huge archive of captured documents, reports of ambassadors, records, interviews and eyewitness accounts, he proved two important points.
First: Poland on the eve of the war, actually formed a military Alliance with Nazi Germany, worked with her at the same time and in coordination came to land grabbing in foreign countries.
Second, the anti-Semitism in Poland on the eve of world war II was the state ideology, pervasive in society. Ideologically it has created a bond between the Polish government with Hitler.
From all this it follows that if there were to be someone’s equal responsibility for the outbreak in Europe of the Second miworld, the second country after Germany is just Poland and not the USSR. After all, Poland had guaranteed Germany secure dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938, but still she took a predatory act the part, taking the first Cieszyn Silesia (it is 800 square kilometers of territory, which increased the power of heavy industry of Poland by half immediately), and immediately after — the territory on the North of Slovakia in the regions of Orava and spiš, the so-called Zaolzie.
Blinded by the predatory nationalism of the Polish press savored the triumph and prospects. For example, Gazeta Polska dated 9 October 1938: “Open before us the road to the sovereign, the leading role in our part of Europe requires in the near future, great efforts and resolution of extremely difficult tasks.”
Hitler, meanwhile, was intoxicated poles by the prospect of access to the Black sea through the territory of Soviet Ukraine, they say, Poland from sea to sea, from the Baltic to the Black. But the poles and hung the ears.
Meanwhile the Soviet Union was ready to work with France to help Czechoslovakia, but Poland — with guarantees from Germany — refused to allow Soviet troops, and Soviet aircraft threatened to shoot down. Alone, France would not have dared to speak out against Hitler. The British also decided to sit on the Islands. So the fate of Czechoslovakia was decided.
“Harden” the barbarity of the so-called Munich agreement. Fundamental point: without Poland, Hitler would not have dared to expansion. It is Poland managed to paralyze France, followed by Britain. Since the war began. And if justice, here it is, the date of the beginning of world war II in Europe — the Munich agreement. The movement of troops began immediately after him. This chronology puts everything in its place. Putin drew attention to the importance of the moment.
“But in the course of the Nuremberg trial of war criminals to the question, would Germany attack Czechoslovakia in 1938 if the Western powers supportAli Prague, field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel said: “No. We were not strong enough from a military point of view,” said the President.
And now something that has recently caused such a nervous reaction of the Polish foreign Ministry. About the anti-Semitism that was sealed when the then leadership of Poland with Hitler.
“Hitler told the foreign Minister, and then Polish Ambassador to Germany, told me that he has the idea to send Jews to the African colony. Present, 1938, the expulsion of Jews from Europe to Africa. To extinction. At the destruction. What the Polish Ambassador told him, and then wrote it down in my memo paper Minister for foreign Affairs of Poland Mr. Beck: “When I heard that, I told him that if he does, we will build him a magnificent monument in Warsaw”. Bastard, pig anti-Semitic — another way to say it is impossible! He completely sided with Hitler in his anti-Semitic sentiments, moreover, for the humiliation of the Jewish people promised to put a monument to him in Warsaw. And he writes to his patron, Minister of foreign Affairs, apparently, based on the promotion. So would not began to write,” he said.
Calling the Polish Ambassador józef Lipski “anti-Semitic pig”, Putin assesses and around the Polish anti-Semitism of the time. Of course, not all poles were anti-Semites, but for some reason social mobility, as they say, worked better for anti-Semites. Example — Ambassador Jozef Lipski. And, probably not coincidentally, the main death camps for the Jews, Hitler placed for some reason in Poland, and not somewhere in occupied Denmark or the defeated France. Their names cause tremors today: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek. But it was in Poland that were destroyed, the Jews not only from Eastern Europe but also from West — from Italy, France, Austria.
of Course, the concentration camps were on the territory of Germany, but they were not of the status of the death camps. And if the expense of the victims of the Holocaust killed in Poland, in the millions, the number of dead in these terrible camps, like Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Neuengamme, ravensbrück or Dachau, in the tens of thousands. Other orders. Of course, the prisoners there were shot, poisoned in gas chambers or the Nazis was the subject of medical experiments, but still the main purpose of the camps in Germany was different — it’s forced labor, whether in factories or weapons for the needs of German companies supplying the Wehrmacht.
the Germans just exploited the Polish anti-Semitism. Even after the Nazi invasion and the capture of Warsaw the capital of Poland the Jews felt threatened not only from the Germans but from the poles themselves.
In the book of the historian Valentina Alexeeva published by the society “memorial”, told about the history of the Warsaw ghetto. According to her and about the situation by the end of 1939: “People brought misfortune in the end of 1939 Jews and poles, but silent on anti-Semitism began after the defeat of Poland once again to raise his head. The anti-Semites helped the Germans to catch Jews avoiding forced labor, showed eager to plunder the German soldiers and officials of the flats and shops of wealthy Jews. Helpful informants pointed fingers at the Jews who dared, despite the ban, take a train. Hooligans broke into the house, hunted in the streets for the Jews, carried on the tradition of beard and sidelocks, and they brought these unfortunates to the Germans, who urged on by the laughter of the assembled rabble cut the Jews hair with a knife, often along with skin and meat.”
again, make a reservation: since the war, not all poles. But that shortly before his death, writes the Polish historian of Jewish origin Emmanuel Ringelblum. By the way, in early 1944, his hideout, the Germans were issued by the Polish teenage Ringelblum shot.
“No one, no one will blame Polish people for these continual excesses and pogroms of the Jewish population. A large majority of the nation and its conscious work class, working intelligentsia undoubtedly condemn these excesses, seeing in them the German instrument of weakening of social cohesion, cooperation with the Germans. Our reproach, however, is the fact that there was no dissociation in the oral word (preaching in churches, and so forth) or in printed from collaborating with the Germans anti-Semitic beast that was not effectively counter the incessant excesses that nothing was done to weaken the impression that all the Polish population, all groups supported the antics of the Polish anti-Semites”, — stressed Ringelblum.
Here in this situation already in the autumn of 1940 hundreds of thousands of Jews were gathered into ghettos in Northern Warsaw. The territory was surrounded by a brick wall. The original population of the Jewish ghetto under half a million, more than a third of the entire population of Warsaw. Officially isolated for so the Jews were set a food rule, designed to starvation — just 184 calories a day. To survive helped a black market and smuggling, but it all worked from time to time.
From January 1942 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto in a boarded-up freight cars began to export to Treblinka to the killing in the gas chambers. Raids in the ghetto was headed by the German gendarmes, but mostly by Latvian and Lithuanian members of the SS, with the active support of the Polish police.
Not even spare the children. With his pupils into the chamber volunteered and the famous educator Janusz Korczak. At Treblinka people parties were herded into the brick of the room, tightly locked and pressurized exhaust gases back to the engine of a heavy tank. Half an hour was all dead. Then the next one. So in Poland, worked the conveyor of the Holocaust. When in the Warsaw ghetto in less than 30 thousand Jews, that is, less than one-tenth of the original population, a revolt broke out. It was April-may 1943. Forces were not equal. The rebels — only guns and improvised explosive devices. All — in a space enclosed by a wall. The Nazis brutally suppressed — about 7000 were shot and killed, another 6,000 Jews were burned in their homes. Other — 15 000 — were collected and taken to the same camp. Thus ended the Warsaw ghetto. It was on Easter.
And here is how this horror in his book “the Warsaw ghetto is no more” historian Valentin Alexeev: “the Beginning of the fighting ghetto coincided with the celebration of Easter. The Nazis planning the “big event”, by the way, we count on the fact that the known part of the faithful Catholics, busy holiday, I will take to heart the events in the ghetto. Indeed, these events someone not marred the occasion. Crowds of people were gathered near the walls of the ghetto to see the bizarre spectacle: on burning streets, the charred body hanging from the balconies, living torches, hopping across the roofs. The Germans did not deter onlookers, and those other times pointed out the gunners and the gunners appeared in a particular place outside the ghetto rebels. Other, not paying attention to what is happening in the ghetto, had fun near the area on the holiday carousel together with the German soldiers. The fun area hooted, hollered merchants water, chocolates and cigarettes, loud music was blaring, people were talking loudly and laughing.”
Now all this seems wild. The Europeans are trying very hard to look handsome and sleek so historically, they say, not all the fault of our totalitarianism. An obvious simplification. And blame on others.
Text: “News of the week”
