Jews and Atheists execute millions of Christians
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POLAND, 1939-1941
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The Fate of Polish Officers and Soldiers
Polish soldiers, especially officers, were hunted down like animals,
rounded up and detained in large numbers by the Soviet invaders and
their collaborators. Among the collaborators were many Jews, who often
formed self-appointed militias to help usher in Soviet rule.
After their apprehension, the Polish captives were often mistreated in
public and executed. Those, who refused to surrender their weapons were
summarily shot. The scene of Polish prisoners of war being led along
streets and roads often brought open rejoicing on the part of the Jewish
population and even abuse and assaults directed at the Poles.
The spirit of the new era was abundantly clear to the endangered Polish
military personnel. Once out of uniform, they had to hide first and
foremost not from the Soviet invaders, who could scarcely tell them
apart, but from local collaborators, among whom Jews figured
prominently. As one Polish officer recalls,
... Roads were a nightmare. Ukrainians and Jews stealthily murdered
soldiers returning home or handed them over to the NKVD. The militia or
police was ... mostly Jewish. They wore red armbands on their sleeves
and were armed. They detested everything that was Polish. ... He, who
did not see this and did not live through it has no idea what a horrible
hell they, the Jews, created on these Polish territories which the
Bolsheviks occupied.
As soon as the Soviets entered Nowogrodek, Jews with red armbands came
to the home of Const. Kazimierz Kosinski, who had left for Wilno earlier
that day. Not finding him there, they harassed his terrified wife and
demanded his bicycle.
In Rakow, near the Soviet border,
... The local Jews reacted hysterically at the sight of the Russian
"benefactors". They kissed [Soviet] tanks, tore Polish flags from
buildings and trampled them, and spat at and verbally abused Polish
soldiers whom they had captured somewhere. They seized a Polish
commander, a captain of a company [Frontier Defence Corps], and led him
triumphantly [and handed him over to the Soviets]. The entire group
ganged up on this one defenceless person, ripping his ****rt on the chest
and shoving him around. As we watched this scene we were stunned and
horrified. These were after all our neighbours, once ordinary, peaceful
people. We had lived together for years. The children attended the same
schools, played together and this was entirely natural for us. Our
parents shopped [in their stores] ... No one interfered with each other.
... There were no grounds for animosity or conflict. So we could not
comprehend what had possessed them, where this hatred came from.
According to a Jewish source, the newly formed "workers' guard" in
Pinsk, headed by Benjamin Dodiuk and composed mostly of Jews,
apprehended Polish officers and policemen in that city and executed
them. Patriotic Polish youth, who rallied to the defence of their
country, were also not spared. Often they were turned in by ordinary
Jews, even women, as the following Jewish account illustrates:
... I knew a woman called Bashke, the mother of four children. At the
beginning of the war the woman hid in an orchard for protection from the
air attacks. A Russian mounted soldier passing by was shot at by two
young Poles, but he escaped unhurt. He dismounted from his horse to find
out, who had fired the shots. The woman pointed to the two young men,
and they were arrested.
Near Pinsk, Henryk Skirmuntt (no relation to Count Skirmunt mentioned
below), a soldier in the Polish Army, was apprehended by a Jew with a
red armband and bearing a rifle, who handed him over to the Soviets. As
he was led into a courtyard packed with Polish soldiers, he was struck
twice in the spine with the butt of a rifle.
In Lubieszow, a gang of Jewish teenagers attacked and beat up a Polish
officer as he was leaving church. Throughout this region, after seizing
arms and organizing themselves into bands of "people's militia", Jews
terrorized the local Polish officials and inhabitants and shot at and
apprehended Polish soldiers driven back by the German forces.
On his discharge from the Polish army in Luck (Volhynia) after the
Soviet invasion, Zenobiusz Janicki made his way to his home town of
Przebraze, 25 km away. Individual and small groups of soldiers returning
from the front were frequently set upon by Ukrainians and Jews and
robbed, on occasion even killed. In Przebraze, Janicki witnessed how his
Jewish neighbour, Dawid Gilden, the proprietor of a grocery store, who
had attained the rank of cor****al in the Polish Army, accosted a Polish
soldier on the road with a pistol and stole a blanket from him.
Aleksander Pluta, a company sergeant, was one of many soldiers, who
tried to make his way back home after being discharged from his unit
near Rowne, in Volhynia.
... We headed toward Rowne because there was a train station there. We
tried to avoid the city so we followed paths in areas which were not
built up. ... However, near the city itself we had to enter its
outskirts ... There, patrols formed of NKVD men and Jews awaited us.
They were young and hated Poles. They captured Polish officers, who
tried to blend in. The Russians could not distinguish officers from
soldiers. Jews were needed for that purpose. They also carried guns.
Near the larger cities and in the centre of the cities Jews filled these
functions themselves without Red Army men. Those they recognized as, or
suspected of being, officers were led away somewhere farther. It was
they [these officers], who were doubtlessly sent to Katyn and other
death camps. We walked for several days and the same thing happened
daily.
After surrendering their arms in Busk and receiving a pass to return to
their homes, Polish soldiers were robbed of their bicycles, money and
possessions en route by Ukrainian and Jewish bands and communist
committees. After obtaining civilian clothes in a Polish settlement,
they arrived in Wlodzimierz Wolynski, where they were arrested by Jews
and delivered to the NKVD. Indeed, many Jews in that town donned red
armbands and rushed to help the NKVD identify targeted Poles and round
them up. Poles tried to avoid the streets and often went into hiding for
fear of being lynched.
Two young Polish officer-cadets, who were released from service after
the Soviet entry and were making their way home attempted to board a
train in Luck, Volhynia. That town was overrun with self-appointed
Jewish militiamen on the lookout for Polish military men. They disarmed
Polish soldiers and apprehended officers. The two Poles were accosted by
a group of young Jews with red armbands, who tore the Polish eagles off
their caps while mocking them.
A hunt for Polish officers in Kowel was undertaken by local Jews.
Similar re****ts come from Wisniowiec (Volhynia) and nearby Zbaraz,
where:
... revolutionary committees were established consisting mostly of young
Jews. In Polish uniforms and with red armbands, armed with rifles, they
guard the buildings of their committees. They also stop soldiers and
force them to enter the place. There, they strip-search them, most often
looking for arms, and they humiliate them with foul language.
But it was not just the young "emancipated" Jews, though hardly
card-carrying members of the communist party, who took part in
spectacles like this, repeated again and again throughout Eastern
Poland. In Skalat, a town near the Soviet border, on the 17 of September
1939, Orthodox Jews formed armed parties to chase down and apprehend
Poles in anticipation of the Soviet entry.
... Groups of Orthodox Jews dressed in long, black or charcoal
gaberdines with wide red armbands, their heads covered with black
yarmulkas from which long side curls dangled, carried rifles with long
bayonets. When an armed group like this ran, their gaberdines flew open
and from under their black vests stood out their white ziziths [tassels]
which hung down.
... On one of the side streets we saw this black band surround two
Polish non-commissioned officers, who were walking unarmed. Quite
animated, the Jews led the apprehended men away. Polish army men
captured in this manner were then delivered to Red Army men or the NKVD
as soon as the Soviet army entered the town. Many of those apprehended
by the Jewish militia later lost their lives in Katyn and other places
of Soviet genocide. ... [Polish] policemen caught by the Jews were
executed immediately by Red Army men.
We encountered more and more of these organized groups in black
gaberdines on the streets. We left Skalat in a hurry. ... After columns
of Soviet tanks rolled through the city without stopping and moved
onward, the Jews, who were the largest group of residents of Skalat,
formed their own Red militia. They apprehended and imprisoned Polish
soldiers and policemen. They even prepared a joyful, official welcome to
greet the armies of the Soviet aggressor, when they entered the town.
Skalat was thus taken over by Jewish irredentists.
In Zloczow, pieces of red cloth were hung from windows and balconies and
Polish soldiers were fired at in the streets. Polish soldiers were
apprehended and disarmed by Jewish communists and Ukrainians. On
September 19, Sergeant Jan Bernard Solinski of the Frontier Defence
Corps and his colleagues were ordered by a captain of the Red Army, a
Jew, to leave the premises, where they had taken refuge and to surrender
their arms. A large and highly agitated crowd of Jews and Ukrainians
surrounded the Poles. They were screaming and chanting and they
threatened the Poles saying: ... Your Poland has come to an end. We will
now be in charge.
In Sasow, a small town near Zloczow, the newly formed militia,
consisting of Ukrainians and Jews, apprehended more than twenty Polish
soldiers and policemen and handed them over to the Soviet army. After a
provocation (in which a grenade was thrown into the room in the school
where they were held), the Poles were executed by the Soviets. One of
the main organizers of the "red militia" was Lipa Halpern, a prewar
communist, who was instrumental in the de****tation of more than a dozen
Polish families to the Gulag in February 1940. Later Halpern worked in
the NKVD regional command in Olesko.
In Czortkow, a Jewish and Ukrainian rabble followed Soviet soldiers
around town disarming Polish officers and soldiers, whom they cursed and
insulted verbally. The captured Poles were then driven to the jail.
In Nowe Brusno, near Rawa Ruska, Abraham Starkman and his brother, whose
father was a well-to-do Jewish farmer, took charge of the local
"workers' militia" which disarmed Polish soldiers and executed a few
Polish officers captured near that village.
In Jaryczow, near Lwow,
... The little town was just going through its first spasm of
revolution. Some Polish officers, described as "spies" - God knows on
whose behalf - were arrested. The Ukrainian nationalists formed a
procession with flags and banners, which they followed through the
streets, with revolvers in their hands. Young Jews formed another
procession, with a red flag and a ****trait of Stalin, carried exactly
like a holy ikon. The two groups finally came face to face and
quarrelled, with the result that they together looted the store of the
Polish Spirits Monopoly. When everyone had got drunk, they wanted to
organize a "pogrom" of the Poles in the town. Fortunately, there were
too many Poles to be safely attacked and in the meantime someone
launched the rumour that the Germans were coming.
Instead of the Germans, two Bolshevik commissars arrived with a platoon
of troops a few hours afterwards. The Ukrainian leaders turned meek and
silent, as two of them had been arrested. The Jews all went home and sat
tight there, while the Bolshevik commissar inquired about the local
intelligentsia.
Conditions in Lwow were described by many witnesses: Polish soldiers,
especially officers, were disarmed, abused verbally and physically, and
hauled off by the "red militia", composed mostly of Jews and Ukrainians,
and by ordinary citizens to Soviet posts. This base conduct toward
fellow citizens sometimes elicited a feeling of disgust on the part of
ordinary, decent Soviet soldiers.
... After the arrival of the Soviets in Lwow on September 23, 1939, I
witnessed several incidents on the part of Jews toward Poles. The first
was the welcome given to the arriving Soviet army. Jews seized weapons
from Polish soldiers as they [the Jews] kicked and mocked them. They
tied red ribbons to the barrels of stolen rifles and red armbands on
their sleeves. I saw how one Polish soldierm, who was already disarmed,
was surrounded by a Jewish patrol consisting of three self-styled armed
militiamen with red armbands on their sleeves (this took place just as
the Soviet army was entering Lwow); they tore the military hat from his
head and were jostling him around. At that time a Soviet patrol came by
and when they saw what was happening, they disarmed the Jewish patrol,
gave them a boot and told them to run off. It was a painful sight to see
a disarmed Polish soldier being attacked by Polish Jews.
A group of Jews with red armbands dragged Lt.-Col. Tadeusz Feliks
Prauss, the commander of the 6 Air Force Regiment, out of his house,
pu****ng him around and beating him on his head and face. They thrust him
in a carriage, paraded him publicly as an "enemy of the people" and spat
at him. Eventually, Col. Prauss ended up in the Soviet prison camp in
Starobelsk and in the Spring of 1940, he was murdered by the Soviets in
Kharkov.
A uniformed Polish officer was captured on Meizels Street by two Jews
with red armbands and rifles. After abusing him, they led him to the
"Brygidki" prison.
A former student of the renowned Polish-Jewish scholar, Hugo Steinhaus,
by the name of Borek, was arrested in his home after being denounced to
the NKVD as a reserve officer in the Polish army by his Jewish orderly.
When, in November 1939, Witold Rapf went to stay with his crippled
uncle, an ex-colonel of the Polish army, in Lwow,
... Two NKVD officers, accompanied by three young Jews wearing red
armbands, came at night and arrested my uncle. They made offensive and
disgracing remarks, pointing a to a painting of Jesus and a picture of
Pilsudski.
Pointing out to the Soviets the direction of Polish troop movements and
fleeing Polish soldiers became a common pastime. In Kuty, near Kolomyja,
the self-proclaimed Jewish militia quickly informed Soviet tank drivers
that a Polish military truck had just departed for the nearby Romanian
border. Unable to overtake it, the tank fired a machine gun at the truck
killing a Polish army quartermaster by the name of Tadeusz
Dolega-Mostowicz, a well-known Polish literary figure.
Near Sniatyn, three Polish officers in plainclothes were apprehended
crossing the River Prut to Romania in October 1939. They were detained
and briefly imprisoned in Kolomyja before being de****ted to the Gulag.
Their interrogations were carried out with the assistance of local Jews,
among them a doctor, who acted as interpreters. In one case, the doctor
himself levelled abuse at one of the Polish officers, who were accused
of being spies, and called him a "liar". When he moved to strike the
Polish officer, his over-zealousness was too much to bear for even the
hardened Soviet functionaries, who then dispensed with the
collaborator's services.
A Polish officer, disguised as soldier, was trying to make his way to
the Polish-Hungarian border, when he was apprehended by Ukrainian
militiamen near the village of Skole. Suspected of being a Polish
officer, he was taken to the village and handed over to two Jewish
militiamen, who took him to the Soviet commissar for questioning. A
local Jewish woman, who acted as secretary, mistress and Russian
interpreter for the commissar, ... embellished [the officer's]
confession with communist jargon learned obviously from propaganda
leaflets. During his interrogation captured Polish state employees,
policeman and gamekeepers were brought in by the militiamen, who carried
out their duties with enthusiasm; the commissar sent them to the local
prison. Since the officer had false identification, his guise of being a
simple soldier was eventually accepted and he was released to go home.
A Polish soldier recalled with shock, what he experienced and felt, when
the first Soviet soldiers arrived in the outskirts of Lwow:
... About 5 p.m., we heard some unusual voices and a lot of noise on the
street ... I could not resist the temptation to go out and see what was
happening. I observed a very strange scene: a small group of people -
many of them Jews, and evidently communists - were surrounding a lone
and scared looking Soviet soldier and screaming anti-Polish slogans:
Down with the Polish government!! ... Down with Poland!! ... Long live
the Soviet Union!!
I could not believe my eyes! Why would these people be so happy? Why
would the Jews be against the Polish government and Poland itself? They
had a very good life in Poland, and were free. With the exception of
some small minority [of non-Jews], no one bothered them before the war.
They were able to do whatever they wanted and most of them were
well-to-do. What an unpleasant surprise it was for me to witness a scene
like this. ... I could not help but express my dismay and disgust when I
turned to a tall, middle-aged man and asked him why these people were so
happy. I didn't quite finish what I was going to say, when he turned to
me menacingly and said in a loud voice: "Are you not happy, you
son-of-a-*****?! I'll show you!" He then started towards me with his
not-so-friendly intentions. Obviously, I did not make him happy with my
remarks and questions, but I could only rectify the situation by running
away towards the bunker, where I would feel safe with my friends.
"My God! Where am I?! These people are traitors", I mumbled to myself
for quite some time as a result of this unfortunate episode.
With the entry of the Soviets, groups of young Jews wearing red armbands
and armed with rifles and pistols appeared on the streets of Wilno.
According to one Jewish observer, they disarmed Polish soldiers ... in
an ugly manner and with great satisfaction. A Jew would spit in the face
of a Polish soldier after taking his rifle. Another eyewitness re****ted:
... In the streets, Jewish children latched on to Soviet military
vehicles and joyfully greeted the occupiers. Militia patrols with red
armbands, formed mostly of Wilno Jews and communists, were everywhere. I
will never forget the sight of a Polish soldier walking down a street
(apparently on his way home) without a belt and carrying a haversack.
Suddenly a group of teenagers detached themselves from a Soviet truck
and, undoubtedly wanting to demonstrate its fighting spirit and enmity
toward the remnants of Polish statehood, spat at that emaciated soldier
and tried to rip the buttons off his military coat. And - imagine this!
- the reaction of the Soviet soldiers was entirely different, from what
that swarm of teenagers turned savage expected. They told them to leave
the soldier in peace explaining: '... He's just an ordinary soldier.
Don't harass him'. And that viperous and squalid group of callow youth
left shamefaced.
The main train station in Wilno was a particularly hazardous place to
venture since it was infested with NKVD agents and the largely Jewish
"citizens' militia", whose main task was to stop suspicious people,
especially Polish officers out of uniform. Suspects were followed to
their homes and their credentials were checked. Jews in the service of
the Bolsheviks also carried out nighttime raids of suspect Polish homes
to look for arms. About 80 percent of those arrested were Poles. Soviet
re****ts sang the praises of the predominantly Jewish "orkers' guard",
who maintained "order" and confiscated weapons: ... The mood among the
members of the Workers' Guard is elated; they carry out every order
willingly and with enthusiasm.
Numerous re****ts speak of the abusive treatment meted out to Polish
prisoners of war by Jews in Eastern Poland (this appears to have been a
predilection of the Jewish minority, as there are no re****ts of
Ukrainians or Belorussians taking part in such activities). This conduct
- reminiscent of the displays of hatred directed toward Polish prisoners
of war by pro-Nazi German civilians - ranks among the most shameful
episodes in occupied Europe and one about which Poles quite
understandably retain bitter memories.
When a large crowd formed as the Soviets marched Polish prisoners of war
along the highway to Monasterzyska, near Buczacz, young Jewish
hooligans, who lined the street, spat at the Polish soldiers and threw
rocks at them. As one witness recalled, the Poles, who came out to see
their loved ones being led away, were appalled by this callous conduct.
... They must have been encouraged by their parents to perform such base
deeds. My mother could not stand by idly looking at this any longer and
took them to task. When that did not help, she grabbed one of them by
the collar and gave him a light jerk. All of a sudden, out of nowhere,
some older Jews appeared with red armbands on their coats and wanted to
push my mother into the convoy led by the Soviets. Some Ukrainian women
we knew, saved her and me by raising a terrible outcry. This must have
frightened the Jews because they ran off. Unfortunately, the young Jews
continued to hurl insults at our soldiers.
These brief incidents stuck in my mother's mind for a long time. But
that did not prevent her from sheltering Jews during the German
occupation at risk to our lives. Perhaps among them were those who, in
1939, wanted to hand my mother over to the Soviets.
When the Soviets led captured Polish soldiers, with their hands tied
behind their backs, through the streets of Skala
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