The Image of the Germans in Polish Literature.
By Else Loeser
Translated by Carlos W. Porter
Dedicated to the memory of the ethnic researcher Dr. Kurt Lueck, Posen, in gratitude for his scientific research into the German ethnic national areas of Poland.
FOREWORD:
When I was asked about a year and a half ago whether or not I would
consider giving a talk on the subject of Poland -- in view of the considerable
interest in Poland on the part of the German people and the extent of German
assistance programmes to that country -- I began to research the "Polish
problem" in greater detail than had hitherto been the case.
It was not difficult for me to write recollections from my own experience,
extending as far back as my earliest childhood and school days, while simultaneously
discussing the findings of literature and history. At the request of the
listeners, a printed text of my first talk was prepared, followed, some
time later, by a further revised and expanded second edition, which has
now been superceded by a third. My first talk was followed by many others.
Many questions were raised and innumerable letters received, expressing
gratitude for my work of enlightenment, with the request that I publish
other information, unknown in Germany, which might contribute to a more
accurate appraisal of the Polish national character.
I wish to comply with that request on the part of interested readers
by writing a second part on falsifications of Polish history. The enormous
quantity of available materials made selection difficult; I had only intended
to write a brochure enabling the German reader to see and understand the
development of the Polish nation from its earliest Germanic racial origins
to its chauvinistic hatred of everything German.
In so doing, I made plentiful use of documentation prepared by scientific
researchers and historians of an earlier era, as well as of materials dating
from more recent research. At this point, I should like to thank all those
who have written to me enclosing clippings, etc. from the various news
media, or who have alerted me to certain matters, thus helping me to clarify
the topic of a falsified historical past in relation to falsifications
of the present day.
It is not the case that the falsification process has come to an end.
Quite the contrary: it is now, as in the past, being given continued life
not only by foreigners, but by German writers and journalists, whether
out of ignorance, carelessness, or deliberate malice, we may not say.
It is the fashion -- indeed, the fad -- to write about Poland, since
Poland is headline news in the world press; the subject must therefore
be dealt with. The following pages are intended to reveal another aspect
of Poland: the Poland of Polish literature, to which all Poles, and many
Germans, make reference. At the immediate moment, for example, the Hoffman
and Campe Publishing Company is offering a large-format MERIAN book on
glossy paper, advertised as follows: "POLAND - a passion. Poland, the eternal.
What kind of land is it, what kind of people? ...
We know too little about the history of Poland, writes the author Karl
Dedecius. Yet Polish history is made especially clear to us precisely by
Polish literature. Polish history and literature complement each other
perfectly, since Polish literature has at all times been nationally and
historically conscious, and therefore representative of the Polish people.
The selection of texts is unusual. Poetry and prose are presented alongside
historical documents and many journalistic texts. Bruno Barbey's photos
provide atmosphere, depicting everyday occurrences, unique qualities, and
historical events. Barbey's photographs reveal the Polish people and their
surroundings with unreserved sympathy.
That Polish literature was, and is, very nationalistic, is already
well known. How historically accurate it may be, has been discussed by
someone more competent than the writer discussed above. The second authority
is the Pole, Prof. Markiewicz, head of the Polish School Book Commission,
who, speaking on German television, described the kind of historical consciousness
which is representative of the Polish people. His statements are as follows:
"We should not forget that the historical consciousness of a people
was, and still is, influenced not so much by professional historians and
their work, but rather -- and to a much greater degree -- by novelists
and their works. I would like to remind you of our great writers Adam Mickiewicz,
particularly his two novels 'Drazyna', and 'Konrad Wallenrod'; Henryk Sienkiwicz,
whose novel 'The Knights' was filmed a few years ago; and Boleslaw Prus,
with his work entitled "The Watch Posts".
When the publisher of the Merian Book says that we know too little
about Polish history, we can only agree with him. But
he offers only an "unusual selection of texts", and, in addition to historical
and political documents, a number of more journalistic writings and topics
photographed with "unreserved sympathy". This means that the reader
can renounce all hope of learning the truth about Poland and its history.
I should like to provide some assistance in ameliorating this lack
of knowledge with regards to the works of the great Polish poets referred
to by Prof. Markiewicz, who were responsible for "forming the historical
consciousness of the Polish people", as Prof. Markiewicz expressly admits;
but I fear that I will not concur with the "passionate author",
Karl Dedecius, and his 60 books on Poland -- which he would like to expand
to 100, according to page 37 of the "Darmstadter Echo" of 18 September
1982.
The manner in which the writer's output is praised to the book purchaser
is highly peculiar. This clever fellow possesses an inimitable method of
production, described as follows: "Every morning -- at least this is the
impression he gives the reader -- he takes one, two, three, Polish poems
and translates them, much as another man might munch upon one, two, three
English muffins. For a mid-morning snack, he treats himself to a couple
of letters, which he translates; at noon, he relaxes with a few aphorisms,
which he translates; in the afternoon, he writes a little essay or two
-- sometimes short, sometimes long -- on translation work. In the evening,
he attends a colloqium on Polish literature, or holds a meeting or two
with a few experts on Poland. One may admire the quantity of work tossed
off per annum by the 61-year old translator, but the quality can only be
wondered at. So far, he has written, translated, or published approximately
60 books, testifying to his passion for Poland."
I shall not attempt to compete with this mass producer as regards sheer
quantity; but perhaps I can come closer where quality and truth about Poland
are concerned. His connections -- such as the Robert-Bosch Foundation --
are not available to me, but I hope to offer my readers a closer acquaintance
with the Polish literature mentioned by Prof. Markiewicz so as to provide
them with a clearer image of the land and people of Poland. There is also
a study group called "Poland Writings in the German Language", led by a
certain Udo Kuehn of Wiesbaden, of whom I wish to speak, since he has also
attempted to "fill the German information gap on Poland".
According to the advertising blurb, however, he is apparently attempting
to do so in the interests of the Poles and their country, rather than in
German interests. The wares offered therein will therefore rather resemble
the merchandise purveyed by Prof. Markiewicz where the historical consciousness
of the Polish people is concerned, i.e., a product based on anything but
reality and truth. German interests cannot, however, be served by whitewashing
Polish literature and rendering it innocuous through deceptive translations,
but rather, solely and finally, through the truth.
I therefore agree with all those who say that the information gap on
Poland must be filled, but please, let it not be filled not by persons
who know neither the land nor the people, who have no idea of the conditions
there, or who have only permitted themselves to be filled with one-sided
information from Poles, i.e, those who accept the Polish image of themselves.
Rather, I am in favour of permitting an expert with the highest qualications
to speak on the subject.
My compatriot from the German East, the ethnic and national researcher
Dr. Kurt Lueck, of Posen, provides information on the Polish national character
and way of thinking in his very extensive works "The Myth of the German
in the Polish Tradition and Literature", and "German Construction Forces
in the Development of Poland"
It is regrettable that these works can only be consulted in the Eastern
Studies Departments of Universities.
They really belong in every German home, so that the unrealistic delusion
of a proud and noble Poland -- standing as high as the heavens above German
barbarism -- might finally be dispelled here in Germany, and facts be taken
into account. Kurt Lueck's research has done us a magnificent service through
his sifting of Polish literature; I wish to rescue that work from obscurity.
It is only natural for screams of "incitement to racial hatred" to
be raised whenever the coddled, pampered Polish child receives a scolding.
In reply, let it be said that I cite exclusively texts originating in Polish
literature or history, that is, admissions made by the Poles themselves,
for which they alone are responsible. To us Germans, it is more important
-- in fact, a vital necessity -- to learn the whole
truth about the systematically engendered and pressure-packed Polish hatred
of everything German, i.e, that we recognize the extent and origins of
Polish chauvinism, as we ourselves experienced it in the 1920s and 30s,
and are still experiencing it today.
Contemporary research has dealt with the question of the Eastern German
settlement areas with typically German thoroughness, and in so doing it
has reached findings which can no longer be thoughtlessly ignored.
Even the Poles will be compelled to recognize these truths, if genuine
reconcilation between both peoples is to become a reality. The history
of the settlement of an area is determinative for all time. Culture is
not created by force or by lies, but only by intellectual work on the part
of the elite of a people. Rights and ownership arise only by reason of
the achievements of a people brought into fullness in a geographical area.
There is no culture of weapons, no culture of lies. Only history provides
an insight into the identity of the real founders of an ethnic culture.
I described the origins of the Polish nationality in my previous text,
"Falsifications of Polish History", in which I limited myself to the briefest
possible discussion. Here again, I must return to the beginnings of Polish
historical writings in the briefest manner possible.
All Polish history books, indeed all Polish literature, including the
so-called "Letter of Reconciliation" from the Polish bishops Stefan Wyszynski
and Karol Woytyla to the German bishops in 1956, refer to Miseszko I as
the "first Polish Duke", who took the Holy Sacrament of baptism in the
year 966.
Of course, at the same time, this constitutes proof that no Polish
empire existed in 966, since Miezszko was the "first"; furthermore, he
was not a Pole, but rather, a Norman named "Dago-Mesico", from the Norwegian
family line of the Daglingers, who migrated into lands settled by the Germans
on the Weichsel and Warthe.
His baptism proves nothing at all -- certainly not that he was a Pole,
or that he ever became a Pole: it only proves that Dago accepted Christianity.
There are no records -- as scholars confirm today -- which ever mention
-- even once -- a people bearing the name "Poles" or "Slavs" "in the area"
at that time.
The only tribes which were native to the area were Germanic, and the
founders of the Polish empire were also German. But Polish history has
to begin somewhere; it was therefore logical to take this Christian baptism
as the point of departure. The falsifiers of history, who came along very
much later, were simple men who lived mostly for the present, as is the
case at all times. They lacked experience in falsification, and failed
to realize that their falsifications would be recognized as such, even
centuries later. They could hardly imagine that research into the truth
would ever begin, even after a thousand years.
They falsified for the present and the immediate future; they encouraged
belief for the present, and they knew how to compel this belief, just as
they had known how to compel baptism at an earlier time. Baptism or death
-- thus was the conversion to Christianity achieved.
The new "Polish" language, which was only invented much later, could
hardly be imposed by force in the same way, since nobody would have understood
it. The transformation of an entire people into a previously non-existent
ethnic group could hardly occur overnight; long periods of time were required
for this purpose, as well as stubborn, deliberately conscious work. First
to be effaced was human memory, relegated to oblivion. The re-writing of
the cloister chronicles dating back to the year 966 -- the time of the
first Christian baptism in the area -- was only completed at the expense
of great time and effort. It was, after all, necessary to take the name
of every well-known person, every village, every ordinary object, and give
it a new name, while concealing one's objective. Artificial languages are
not as difficult to devise or as unusual as one might at first imagine.
Synthtetic languages are created with specific objectives and propagated
in books and groups even today, such as Esperanto, for example. * ------------------------------------------------------------
* "Translator's note: The 1911 Encylopaedia (Poland) remarks: "The first
press from which books in the Polish language appeared was that of Hieronymus
Wietor, a Silesian, who commenced publishing in 1515... the first complete
work in the Polish language appeared from the press of this printer at
Cracow in 1521...". Polish belongs to the West Slavonic group of languages,
several of which acquired written form, with many German loan words, only
in the 19th century.
Today, we are in a position to see how our own experience of the very
recent past is falsified on a daily basis.
Since 1945, the German past -- not just the National Socialist period but
even the Weimar Republic and the Empire of the Kaisers -- has been re-written
according to the requirements of the victors and the ruling hierarchy.
The newspapers are simply not allowed to say how it really was.
And the further removed we become from personal experience, the more
susceptible we become to a history bespattered with lies and filth; all
efforts to clear our name are either ignored or subject to legal prosecution.
Yet this is the case in an "enlightened age", a "democratic state", a "state
of law". The same certainly cannot be said of the period during which the
Polish falsifications were devised. The invention of the "new" Polish artificial
language by the German bishop Wolf Gottlobonis -- later name-changed into
Wincent Kadlubek -- began in 1218, at the cloister of Klein-Morimund, near
Cracow. Just as, today, all sorts of attempts are made, with recourse to
every conceivable variety of manipulation, to turn the German people into
a race of mongrels, doomed to renounce their traditions and their ability
to recall, to make them easier to rule and to exploit, in the same manner,
an effort was begun to dissolve the connections between the peoples of
the Eastern German settlement areas and their Germanic origins.
The new language was also given a new past. For simplicity's sake,
the date of the origins of the Polish state was deemed to coincide with
the first Christian baptism. For that particular period of history, this
may have been enough: ordinary people had no idea what the falsifiers were
getting up to in their ecclestiastical and municipal chronicles.
If a "Polish people" really existed from a racial point of view, then
it must have fallen down out of the sky, without any racial ancestors.
A Polish miracle without parallel.
Ordinary people didn't accept the new artificial language for a long
time. It took almost 300 years for a so-called Polish conversational language
to arise from the glagolitic church Latin of the monks. The city of Cracow,
which according to the statements of Polish historians remained German
until the late 15th century, held out the longest. But as it was impossible
to cause the German chronicles to disappear, they continue to provide mute
evidence, even today.
That the German inhabitants of the city Cracow resisted for so long,
is food for thought. It cannot have been due to their religious belief,
since all men were of the same faith. But the seat of the bishop falsifier
Kadlubek, who would today be called a "collaborateur", was located in the
city of Cracow. We may presume that the reason why a knowledge of the altered
form of the language and ethnic identity of the people was retained for
so long, was precisely because people had acquired a first awareness of
the basic objective. Their ideological teachings obviously aroused resistance,
which lasted until the final eradication of tradition, as people fell gradually
victim to compulsion.
The manner in which Germans are transformed into Poles is described
very exactly on pages 240-276 ff. of "Ostgermanien" by Franz Wolff. I know
from personal experience how German names became Polish, how German names
were changed in the 1920s and 30s, how personal identity documents were
issued bearing Polish names only. Thus, Else became Elzbieta; Eugen became
Eugeniusz; Albert or Albrecht became Wojciech; Nickolaus became Mikolaj;
Lorenz became Wawrzyniak; Mathias became Maciej. And if there wasn't any
translation for a name -- Hildegard, for example -- then the person was
simply called Elzbieta, i.e., Elizabeth. Protests were a waste of time.
The Nuremberg sculptor Veit Stoss became "Wit Stwosz". The German,
Nikolaus Kopernikus, from Thorn, became "Mikolaj Kopernik". The last two
could hardly protest, since they had already been dead for centuries.
Yet top-ranking officials of the Polish Catholic Church, Cardinals
Wyszynski and Wojtyla, in their so-called "Letter of Reconciliation" in
1965, claimed that the Germans were permitted to retain their names, that
nothing was taken from them. How credible, then, are the other statements
made by the same men in their attempt to excuse themselves?
Do the stones of Breslau really "speak Polish", as the Primate Cardinal
Wyszynski claimed in Breslau Cathedral?
If the Cardinal Primate personally lies in solemn ceremonies in the Cathedral,
then what can one expect from his colleagues in the education of a people?
Ordinary people are not responsible for the lies contained in Polish history
-- the Polish clergy, the intellectuals, the writers, and the press are
responsible. They are the educators of the people, as everywhere in the
world. When these educators are dishonest and filled with hate, then the
people will be, too.
The seeds sown by chauvinistic educators produce cruel fruit. I should
like to describe this "seed" to the German reader. In my view, this is
absolutely necessary, because only a recognition of the causes can lead
to a remediation of the effects. Light must be shed one of the most shameful
chapters in Polish history.
In his incomparably exhaustive work, Dr. Kurt Lueck of Posen has researched
and established the traditional conceptions of the Polish people from German
traditions. In the introduction to his "Myth of the German in Polish Popular
Traditions and Literature", he mentions the peculiarly Polish manner of
viewing identical matters in a different light; for example, the "winning"
of the originally German -- but later Western Slavonic -- areas between
the Oder and the Elbe by Boleslaus the Brave is called a "State programme"
by Polish historians, who, in the same breath, call it "lust for plunder"
when the same areas are settled by the German Empire.
These contradictory value judgments on all aspects of national and
popular life, to their own advantage and according to the needs of the
moment, were, and still are, the mainspring of Polish actions and the Polish
character. Lueck then continues: "The sociological roots of the Polish
anti-German hatred and antipathy may be illustrated by a few additional
examples. The religious division was decisive. The abyss which first separated
Christian Germans from pagan Poles in the early Middle Ages was not overcome
without great pressure upon converts. As a result of paganism's defensive
anti-Christian attitudes, the new religion was called "the German Faith".
But even the still unified world of the Western churches was not free
from disputes. In 1248, for the first time, we hear bitter complaints from
the Poles regarding foreign colonists who failed to keep the fasts as strictly
as themselves; or, later, of serious conflicts within the nationally mixed
clergy itself over benefices, rights, and the language of sermonizing and
educational work.
Stubbornly, but finally in vain, the German bourgeousie of the end
of the 15th and 16th centuries in Cracow, Lemberg, Krossen, and Weislok,
in Bietsch and other localities struggled to retain their mother tongue
in religious services.
But nothing brought religious temperaments to a boil with greater heat
than the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Once again, the Polish people
called the faith of which they wished to know nothing, "the German Faith".
As in the Middle Ages, awakening nationalism implied that the struggle
against Lutheranism was now to became the chief source for a renewal of
Polish Catholicism. Hatred of dissidents grew to a mass psychosis, exploding
in the numerous persecutions of Protestants over the centuries which have
cast their dark shadow over the history of the country. Protestantism is
described in Polish writings, even today, as the 'eternal enemy of Poland'".
This is the key to all later developments in Poland. It can hardly
be assumed that the new converts complained so bitterly of the failure
of old believers to keep fasts -- believers who had been invited into the
area from the German Empire by Polish counts and priests to develop the
land -- as to be the cause of the ensuing conflicts. Rather, the serious
conflicts among the nationally mixed clergy over benefices, rights, and
the language of sermonizing and educational work sowed the initial seeds
of the hatred which was to become so pervasive among the common people
of later times.
There are so many indications of this clerical hatred that it is impossible
to mention them all. The following is therefore a mere selection from Kurt
Lueck's compendium: Page 34: "From the 17th century, there are so many
such statements that we can only list a few of them: 'The Bishop Pawel
Piasecki explains in one of his chronicles:
'The Poles, and all the Slavic peoples, have always felt a national
abhorrence of everything that smelt of Germany. Anything that originated
in Germany, regardless of value, everything except the works of mechanics,
is considered pernicious, and is rejected with suspicion.' Or: 'The name
of the Germans is hateful to the Poles, inherently arousing an inexorable
Slavic tribal hatred in their hearts'.
Piasecki viewed the Reformation as the mortal enemy, calling it the
'German poison', which the Poles were to reject at all costs." Page 84:
"The Dominican Fabian Birkowski writes: 'Your corrupt religion arose through
false prophets, and was created by the Devil, who wanted to be equal to
God... Your leader is the Angel of Hell, that is, the Devil'".
Page 269: "The Gneneser Archbishop, Jakob Swinka, around the turn of the
13th century, habitually called the Germans 'dog's heads'. Thus he said
of a bishop at Brixen that he would have been an excellent preacher, had
he not been a 'dog's head' and a German." The term "dog's head" is also
referred to in the "Koenigsaaler Chronicle".
King Wenzel is said to have been displeased by the expression, his
reply being noted in the chronicle: 'He who spake thus, showed that he
possessed a worse tongue than a dog; since a dog's tongue promotes healing,
while the tongue of the speaker, on the contrary, injects the poison of
slander.
'" This "poison of slander", originally invented and expressed by an
Archbishop, has been passed down for centuries.
Not only has this poison passed into the language of the people, vilifying
the Germans in every manner possible, but "aesthetic" and "spiritual" writings,
even paintings, have used this disgusting manner of expression. The frequency
of vilification, the constant recurrence of insults in all possible contexts
and variations, reveals a deliberate intent and, finally,
a popular conviction that there had to be a justification for such slander,
or else literature and even the clergy would not have produced it.
The term "dog" is considered by Poles to be the worst insult applicable
to anyone. Polish collections of popular sayings include the following:
"Co Niemiec, to pies" Whoever is a German, is a dog. "Zdechly Niemiec,
zdechly pies, mala to roznica jest"
A dead German is a dead dog, there's not much difference. "A wy Niemcy
nic nie wiecie, wasza mowa to psie wycie.
Wnaszej wsi, jak psy zawyly, wsystkich Szwabow diabli wzieli." And you
Germans don't know anything, your language is pure dogs' barking. When
the dogs howled in the villages, the devils took away all the Germans.
For the corresponding results in the plastic arts, one need only mention
a painting by W. Brotanski: "Psie Pole pod Wroclawem", i.e.,"Dog's Field
by Breslau", in relation to which Kurt Lueck remarks: "The battle after
which the bodies of the German knights were eaten by dogs before the very
eyes of the victorious Polish King Boleslaus 'Crooked Mouth',
is well known never to have taken place; rather it is an invention.
Brotanski's painting is distributed as an 'art postcard' by the 'Exposition
of Polish painters in Cracow', entitled, in Polish: "Dogs Field in Breslau.
Boleslaus 'Crooked Mouth' on the Battlefield after the Glorious Victory
over Henry V, the German Emperor, in 1109".
We wonder whether it ever dawns upon the Polish admirers of this work
-- as it does to us -- if they were to reflect a bit, with how little dignity,
how tastelessly, a Polish king is depicted here? What it is supposed to
prove, if Boleslaus allowed the corpses of enemy knights to be eaten by
dogs? It is certainly no proof of historical greatness. We Germans would
never distribute such postcards; we would be too ashamed of them." Let
us consider a few more examples of Polish "literary" writings. Even their
greatest and best-known novelists, such as Adam Mikiewicz and Henryk Sienkeiwicz,
use these insulting terms. Yet it is precisely in reference to them that
Professor Markiewicz says, in his discussion of the film "Scars":
"We should not forget that the historical consciousness of a people
was, and still is, influenced not so much by professional historians and
their work, but rather -- and to a much greater degree -- by novelists
and their works. I would like to remind you of our great writers Adam Mickiewicz,
particularly his two novels 'Drazyna', and 'Konrad Wallenrod';
Henryk Sienkiwicz, whose novel 'The Knights' was filmed a few years ago;
and Boleslaw Prus, with his work entitled "The
Watch Posts". Now, let us look at Lueck for Adam Mickiewicz's statements
on the Teutonic Knights "invited into Poland to protect the Poles against
the Lithuanians; the Poles later combined with the Lithuanians against
the Teutonic Knights -- Translator's note" in his novel "Grazyna", to see
just what Professor Markiewicz is so proud of today. Mickiewicz uses expressions
such as "psiarnia Krzyzakow"- "the dog scum of the Knightly order"; or,
"such a damned fellow from the dog scum of the Crusaders".
And this in the edition intended for Polish school children! The same
writer, in his novel "Pan Tadeusz", speaks of "all state counsellors, court
counsellors, commissars, and all dog scum". His novel "Tzech Budrysow"
refers to "Krzyzacy psubraty" -- "the Knights, the scum of dogs". Henryk
Sienkiewicz uses the insult "scum of dogs" several times in his novel "Krzyzacy"
(the Knights). Lueck discusses several other writers who speak of Germans
as "scum of dogs", "Saxon vile dogs", "bloody German dogs", "rabid German
dogs", "barking German dogs", etc.
The very well known Polish writer W. Reymont, in his peasant novel
"Chlopi", speaks of "dog heretics" and "dog rabble". Jan Kochanowski, in
"Proporzec" (1569) calls the Order of the Teutonic Knights "pies niepocigniony"
-- "unexcelled dogs". R.W. Berwinski, in "Powiesci Wielko-Polskie" (Tales
of Greater Poland) 1844, speaks of "the Germans, the damned race of dogs."
Jozef Szujski, in his play "Krolowa Jadwiga" (Queen Hedwig) (1866), act
II, scene 2, says: "A Teutonic
dog sank down from his horse." Adolf Dygasinski, in his novel "Demon" (1866),
says: "psy szwabscie "German dogs", and, at another point, exclaims, "and
who brought you to Poland, you dogs?"
K. Przerwa-Tetmajer, in his novel "Nefzowkie", speaks of a German manufacturer
who is called "rudy pies" -- "red haired dog" -- by his Polish workermen.
Lucjan Rydel -- Polonized form of the German name Riedel -- in "Jency"
(The Prisoners), speaks of "the German enemy dogs". Maria Konopnicka, in
"Pan Balcer w Brazyliji", speaks of
"the German packs of dogs". Jadwiga Luszczweska, in "Panienka z Obienka"
(3rd edition, 1927, p. 17), says "co pol Niemiec i pies luter" -- "half
a German is also half a Lutheran dog". J. Weyssenhoff's "Woz Drzymaly",
in which a German official is called "brother to the dogs" was compulsory
reading in German classical secondary schools (for example, in Posen).
In Gustow Morcinek's novel "Wyrabany Chodnik" (1931, volume 1, p. 309,
310, 312), which won a prize in 1931 and was republished in 1936, a dog
with the name "Bismarck" appears several times. As we shall see, it is
not just abstract theory when Polish writers speak and write of "bloody
German dogs". The first month of the war proved that, in September 1939.
According to Lueck, p. 271: "the Poles threw dead dogs into many of the
graves of murdered ethnic Germans.
Near Neustadt in West Prussia, the Poles cut open a captured German
Luftwaffe officer's abdomen, rippped out his intestines, and packed a dead
dog inside. This report has been reliably established." Where is the dignity
of a people which can sink so low? They may believe themselves to be expressing
hatred for their neighbour, but in reality they are only revealing their
own soul.
Do they think it is a sign of culture when German-speaking human beings
are referred to as "tam sczczekaja po neimiecku" -- "there, they're barking
German"? Or when a dog is called by the name of a great German statesman,
or is called "Prusak", "Krzyzak", "Szwab", or "Niemiec"? This lack of dignity
is neither a unique phenomenon nor a momentary aberration. It is a systematic
denigration of a neighbouring people, with the unrelenting object of education
in hatred and contempt. It is precisely this which reveals the Polish lack
of that culture which they claim to possess in such great measure.
Culture is not expressed by the spewing forth of hatred, insults, lies,
and distortions in all aspects of life. On the contrary, such actions simply
express a painful inferiority complex festering in the soul of the writer
or painter. Painting has not been used just occasionally to make the Germans
appear contemptible: it has been used systematically in this education
in hatred. Lueck reproduces illustrations of a variety of paintings, for
example, "Zamordowanie Przemyslawa w Rogoznie przez Margrabiow brandenburskich"
(1296). ("The Murder of Premeyslaus in Rogasen by the Count of Brandenburg").
This is the title of a colour postcard reproduction of a painting by Jan
Matejko, published by the "Exposition of Polish Painters in Cracow". The
painting shows one the murderers with a dagger clutched between his teeth.
His helmet bears the Black Eagle of Brandenburg. In reality, this is just
another atrocity legend. Premyslaus -- as serious Polish historians have
established -- was killed by Polish irregulars. Even the insinuation of
the Polish text -- irresponsibly presented as fact -- that the Brandenburgers
were the instigators, lacks convincing evidence. It is part of the psychosis
of border dwellers to blame their neighbours for wind, rain, illness, and
accidents. Art and science should be freed from this psychosis."
Another painting in the service of hatred is "Lowy na ludzi" ("Manhunt"),
by Wojciech Kossak. The picture depicts flaming huts and fleeing peasants,
while Teutonic Knights discharge firearms from horseback. Regarding this
painting, Lueck remarks: "Polish painting never depicts Teutonic Knights
except as burning villages, ravishing women, and butchering the male population.
The comments of a POLISH HISTORIAN -- Tadeusz Ladenberger -- regarding
this painting, should also be quoted: 'Study has convinced us that two
factors have had a decisive influence on the distribution of population
in Poland: the soil, and German colonization. In the north, the pioneers
of this movement were the Teutonic Knights. The Order succeeded, over a
100 year-period, in establishing populous cities and villages in the region
of Chelm -- instead of a thinly populated wilderness -- and in making the
land productive. A century was all it took to give this region -- with
by no means the best soil -- mostly clay -- the highest population density
in Poland.'
" The Poles have repaid this achievement of the Teutonic Knights with
libels and hatred, as in the painting by Wojciech Kossak, "Napad Kryzapkow"
-- "The Attack of the Knights". The scene shows a Polish village population
being murdered. The settlement is being set on fire, while a young girl
is ravished despite the pleadings of her mother. This painting was sold
in both black and white and colour reproduction as an "art post card" in
every stationery shop in Poland, and was published by the "Exposition of
Polish Painters in Cracow".
The great masses of the Polish people had no idea that this was just
a shameless piece of atrocity propaganda.
On Polish songs, Lueck writes: "Even 'History in the Songs of the Polish
People' is not characterized by love for truth. Sobieski's forward movement
to Vienna (1683) has long been celebrated by Polish tradition. The songs
tell how the city was conquered by the Turks, the houses of worship desecrated,
the monks and nuns tortured and killed. Parts of the song consist of confused
phrases taken from a song about Turkish battles in the vicinity of Podolisch-Kamentz.
But the verses fit the legend of Polish assistance and German ingratitude,
for example: 'The Poles beat the Turks at Vienna, but the German thieves
did nothing, and didn't even say "'thank you"'.
Even today, whenever someone generously sets off on a thankless errand,
he is warned 'it's worth about as much as fighting for Vienna.
'" Here I must recall Brigette Pohl's description, published in the
"Deutsche Wochen Zeitung" no. 9 of 2 March 1979, of the noble Polish chronicle
of Jan Sobieski and his movement to Vienna. It is worth recalling, even
if only in excerpts, since it shows why the Poles always blame the Germans
in connection with the battles against the Turks at Vienna, saying "the
thieves didn't even say 'thank you'". The Poles always reveal their own
character defects in attempting to accuse the Germans. The "brave Polish
king" remained behind with his comrades, far removed from the blood of
battle at all times, at a safe distance from the battlefield. He knew just
where to hide -- in the Vienna woods, at Dreimarkstein, where no Turk was
to be seen or could even be expected for miles around... Far behind the
front line, the noble Sobieski was right up front: on Bald Mountain, ministering
to the Papal nuntio Marco D'Aviano and reading Mass.
Then he once again withdrew, leaving it to the Germans to defeat the
Turks. He must have been about as peace-loving as the Soviet Union today.
Again and again, the Germans attempted to pursuade the Polish nobleman
to move forward to intervene. But in vain. He had
letters to write to his noble wife, who wanted to know how much loot he
would bring back. He replied that he and his son Jakob would quite certain
to run no risk of danger. This was while the Germans fought and died in
fierce combats around Heiligenstadt, in Nussdorf, and Grinzing. The generals
were wounded, the brothers Moritz of Duke Croy fell at Nussdorf, the Duke
himself was severely wounded. Prince Eugene, later to become famous, won
his first laurels here, in the service of Germany; none spared himself.
Streams of blood flowed over the famous wine region of Grinzing.
Only the Poles held back, "biding their time... But when they considered
the battle safely won, oh, then they broke cover, since of course they
wanted to be the first to divide the spoils. But they failed to reckon
with the Pascha of Ofen, Ibrahim, who broke forth upon the Poles at the
edge of the city of Dornbach, so that the Poles, crying for help -- this
is reported by the chronlicler Diani, who is very well disposed towards
Sobieski -- ran away in large numbers.
Count Ludwig of Baden then attacked with two of his Imperial dragoon
regiments, and succeeded in rolling back the Turkish line of battle. Duke
Charles of Lorraine gained the victory by undertaking a daring wheeling
movement with doubling and flanking movements. The road to the surrounded
city of Vienna now lay open. The chronicler reports: "Our cavalry was too
heavy to keep on their "the Turks'" heels. That of the king "Sobieski"
was, of course, lighter; he, however, abandoned the attempt at pursuit
due to other considerations" (!)
For the Poles, in particular, their greatest hour had come: while the
Germans buried their dead, cared for their wounded, comforted distraught
and desperate refugees from the burning outlying villages of Vienna, and
sought in vain to pursue the Turks with their heavy cavalry, the good Sobieski
made himself at home in the tent of the Great Vizier and "gave his Polish
army and accompanying hordes the order to plunder." Thus the legend of
"the brave King Sobieski" and his equally brave army is disproven on the
basis of historical fact. "Translator's note: The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica
disputes this, but depicts Sobieski as a traitor in the pay of Louis XIV:
"He died a broken-hearted man, prophecying the inevitable ruin of a nation
which he himself had done so much to demoralize."". Sobieski's behaviour
is strikingly similar to that of the Polish Marshal in the last war, Rydz-Smigly,
who naturally wished to be depicted in an equestrian victor's pose before
the wings of the Brandenburg Gate in the summer of 1939, but who, when
the war which he demanded actually came about, rapidly left his troops
in the lurch and fled to a foreign country (Roumainia).
Polish bravery was -- and is -- simply a legend, just like their honesty.
Why would they need to call the Germans robbers and plunderers at all times
if they didn't need to distract attention from their own misdeeds? Plundering
the treasures of the Great Vizier Kara Mustafa at Vienna can hardly have
been so unprofitable as not to be worth fighting for. But this must not
be admitted; attention must therefore be diverted towards the ungrateful
Germans. There are a few Polish historians and writers who recognize the
constructive achievements of the Germans, and have openly confirmed it.
But the overwhelming majority dispute everything, twisting even the arduous
task of clearing the land and making it arable into its very opposite:
they call it "plundering the Polish peasant".
At this point, I would like to include a few remarks by Polish scholars
as quoted by Kurt Lueck in his extensive work "German Construction Work
in the Development of Poland". The following comments were made by one
of the most respected Polish scholars of his time, Alexander Brueckner
(despite his German name, he considered himself ethnically Polish), Professor
at the University of Berlin until WWII:
"German settlement, especially in the cities, was beneficial to both
sides. The Germans provided the standard of living, the Poles provided
order. The role of the cities was truly educational. The two peoples learned
to respect each other; to live together; to respect the law; "German" urban
legal proceedings (law and procedure) was progressive compared to "Polish"
domestic procedures.
The cities created trades and professions, which had hitherto existed
only as a potential. The cities contributed to the wealth of the whole
country, as well as to the general standard of living. They created the
basis for schools and universities, which could only function in a well-managed
city." The history of German immigration in Poland is known to most people
only in its general outlines.
In my first publication, "Poland and Falsifications of History", I
stated that the regions of Weichsel and Warthe at the time of the introduction
of Christianity were not even inhabited by Poles, and that the newly founded
cloisters were forced to recruit German peasants and artisans from the
German Reich.
In this connection, Professor Grabski of the University of Warsaw writes
as follows (p. 54): "The cloisters founded by the Germans in Poland began
to draw emigrants from Germany, Flanders, and other areas, as early as
the 12th century, in order to achieve more efficient land management. Polish
peasants were very unreliable as settlers." The Pole Dabrowski described
the activity of German farmers in the following manner: "The Germans lived
in closed cities and open villages, in village farmhouses and manors, occupying
themselves with artisanship, trade, farming, soldiering, and the word of
God. Since they were hardworking, peaceful and economical, they were a
socially creative element representing a model for the domestic population."
The Poles always brag that Casimir the Great took over a "wooden Poland",
and left it a "Poland made of stone". Lueck gives the Polish historian
Bruecker an opportunity to express himself in the following terms (p. 23):
"It was not Casimir the Great who changed 'wooden Poland' into a 'Poland
of masonry and stone': it was the cities that accomplished this.
There was a tremendous difference between the German Cracow of 1300
and the Bishop's Cracow of 1200 -- and this applies not just to Cracow,
but to every other city." The Pole Czeckanowski confirms German research
on "Polish" racial and biological descendance from the Germans in the following
two sentences (p. 103): "In the rise of our city population, German immigrants
played a very great role. Their descendants today form part of the highest
strata of the Polish patriciandom."
Another Polish historian has also concerned himself with the significance
of the German city founders and citizens; he is the very respected and
serious cultural historian Ptasnik (p. 131). "It is uncomfortable to write
about the history of trade and professions in Poland, and even sadder to
describe the magnificent men who rendered service in this connection. Certainly,
there was Polish trade, in the sense that it took place on Polish soil,
importing goods from abroad, selling them to the Polish population, and
exporting domestic raw products to foreign countries. But who were the
merchants and tradesmen, who carried on the trade? Germans mostly -- Poles
only came along at the end."
What Ptasnik (p. 22) as well as Grodecki (p. 23) were compelled to
admit with regards to earlier times also applies, with some reservations,
to Poland during the 17th century. Ptasnik writes: "Insofar as it applies
to earlier times, that is, around the 13th and 14th centuries, those who
immigrated into the newly founded cities were primarily German population
groups; at least, the strata that gave the city its national character,
namely, the tradesmen and artisans, were German.
The name of the citizens who took part in city government, whose names
are recorded in the archives even today, testify expressly to this fact."
Another Polish testimony to the value of German work of construction is
given by Sokolowski
(p. 136): "Honour must be paid to these careful, assiduous, hardworking,
and energetic descendants who, though they came from foreign lands, acquired
a liking for their new homeland, were loyal to their King and city; who
brought culture to the rough soil of our earth, uniting us with the world
of the West and sealing our link to Latin culture.
In the tops of the Cracow towers, in the bastions surrounding the city,
in the construction of houses, in commercial and art objects, in everything
that is dear to us, everything which forms the pride of our city, we may
perceive traces of the influence of the Franks, which, together with the
influence of the Italian Renaissance, created the Golden Age of our history."
On page 330 of his work "German Construction Work in the Development of
Poland".
Lueck quotes the Pole Tadeusz Smarzewski, in the agricultural newspaper
"Kraj" in January 1901: "...Only those who are unaquainted with history
due to the present circumstances of nationalities in the Prussian part
of the territory could be depressed by this picture "of German construction
work". Those who, by contrast, possess a more exact knowledge of history
from childhood on, and who know what to expect in Greater Poland, will
feel differently. Anyone who knows that these provinces had already long
reflected a land with a mixed population, that the cities of West Prussia
bore a German character even during the ancient Republic of the Nobles,
and that the great Polish cities possessed an overwhelmingly German middle
class, will be far less disappointed."
In like manner, an equally, extraordinarily positive view of the Germans
and the value of their construction work, published in the "Gazeta Polska"
in 1901, is quoted by Lueck on pages 451-2. It confirms that not all Poles
have adopted the so-called "traditional hostility" as the sole basis of
their dealings with Germany: many excellent historians have shown a dedication
to the truth, and have also attempted to do justice to the truth. But they
were the minority, and are ignored by their ill-willed brethren. Here is
the translation of a note published in the Polish original text of Prus-Glowacki:
"We always had the best possible relations with the German people.
>From them, we acquired the Gothic style in building, wood cutting, numerous
mechanical devices, vessels, and tools, a great deal of scientific knowledge,
trades and textiles, trade, many customs, and many forms of organization...
We have no fear of the truth: to this noble people we owe the greater part
of our civilization."
These Poles have done their fatherland a greater service than those
who, dripping with envy and hatred caused by their feelings of inferiority,
describe the Germans as the progeny of Hell. The German Polish border was
at peace for more than 300 years.
During this period, the Germans achieved incomparable feats of culture
which benefitted the country. Of course, they didn't do so for the country's
sake alone; they did it for their own well-being as well -- it could hardly
be otherwise -- but the greatest beneficiary was the country itself. Allegations
to the contrary notwithstanding, the Germans did not engage in compulsory
"Germanization"; on the contrary, they were often forced to resist an extremely
violent "Polonization".
They were compelled to defend themselves against the forced assimilation
of German Catholics as Poles.
The excessively emotional, egotistical Poles only acknowledge measures
taken in their favour; they are not objective.
The Poles always consider their "Polonization" programmes to be justified,
no matter how violent they may be; measures taken by others in self-defence,
on the other hand, are considered an injustice committed against themselves.
At this point, I should like to reproduce part of a history by a German
writer which is relevant to the Pole Czckanowski's remark that the descendants
of German immigrants formed part of the highest strata of Polish patriciandom.
The information is derived from an East Prussian family chronicle,
which we owe to a fortunate accident. It was written after WWII in book
form as the story of the history of a distinguished family, from which
the author was descended.
The book is entitled "Names None Dare to Mention", and the author is
Marion Graf Doenhoff.
At the beginning, we learn how the Countess Doenhoff came to occupy
herself with the history of her family, which had not interested her when
she was younger. Upon concluding her studies at Basel, the professor assigned
her the dissertation topic of "The Rise of the Landed Estates of the Doenhoffs
in East Prussia".
She agreed to the topic, after some initial hesitation, and got down
to work. In so doing, she had to consult many cubic metres of official
documents and private papers, which she had to sort, label, catalogue,
and classify. After 12 months of preparatory work, she was finally ready
to begin her dissertation. This family chronicle is extraordinarily interesting:
it is probably the most revealing chronicle in existence of over 700 years
of German history in East Prussia.
The Doenhoff family left the Ruhr in the 13th century, and emigrated
to the East. They settled first in Livonia, and finally in East Prussia.
The oldest available document dates back to 1379, and was signed by
Grand Master Winrich von Knipprode, who bestowed the title under the law
of Chelm. According to this document, the Doenhoffs had already been settled
in the area for 100 years at that time. I do not wish to dwell on the descriptions
of the expansion of the landed property, which are of no interest here,
but rather, on the parallels to the Pole Czekanowski's remark -- that the
descendants of German immigrants formed part of the highest strata of Polish
patriciandom.
The Doenhoffs contributed a great many state officials and advisors
to kings, both German and Polish.
The author mentions a Doenhoff who was a representative at the Brandenburger
court in the 17th century, and who founded a Polish line. This is a perfect
example of the manner in which ethnic Germans became Poles.
Because the Polish king needed a representative at the Brandenburg
court, the honour was offered to a descendant of the most highly respected
family.
Since German was the "lingua franca" at all European princes's courts,
* the linguistic qualification was decisive in itself. Did this emissary
of a Polish king then become a Pole solely by virtue of his office? The
Poles are supposed to be Slavs. Did Count Doenhoff become a Slav, and found
a Polish Slavic family?
Such cases exist by the hundreds of thousands, beginning with the monk
Wolf Gottlobonis, who later became bishop "Wincent Kadlubek", and who has
remained so to the present day. The only difference was that the monk adopted
a Polonized name, while Count Doenhoff retained his German name, which
makes it easier for us to establish his German origins.
Neither was a Slav; nor were the hundreds of thousands -- even millions
-- of Germans who emigrated to the East during the same period, cleared
the land, and made it arable. The Doenhoff family chronicle also contains
another interesting piece of information: the grandmother of the Polish
king Stanislav Lezczynski was also a Doenhoff!
The question now arises: how "Slavic" was this Polish king? Perhaps
they will find someone to research the Leszczynski family tree, so as to
discover the origins of their family name. Nor was Kadlubek born under
that name in Poland.
And according to legend, the name Pilsudzki -- which is unique in Poland
-- allegedly stems from the German name "Pils" or "Pilz". It is generally
well known that Pilsudzki originated in Lithuania, was Calvinistic in religion,
and that his first marriage was consecrated in the Evangelical Church near
Bialystok.
His second marriage was to a Jewess atheist; he only converted to Roman
Catholicism after becoming Polish head of state. This is not a legend,
but simple fact. Was he Slavic in origin, or just possibly a German named
Pilz?
After all, the names Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Tito, and even Willy Brandt,
are not real names either, but pseudonyms.
But back to the Doenhoff family chronicle, which reveals still another
important piece of information. In relation to the allegedly "originally
Slavic" area of East Prussia, the Countess, based on her documentation,
remarks as follows:
"Since we are dealing with errors at this point, reference may be made
to another inexact allegation:
East Prussia was never originally Slavic territory, into which the
Germans penetrated as conquerors; rather, the Slavs appeared quite late
on the Weichsel and Oder, no earlier than around the 9th century A.D.
Germans had already inhabited the area for 1500 years. As early
as 1000 B.C., the Goths inhabited the mouth of the Weichsel, (Vistula)
and remainded in the area!....
At the time of the birth of Christ, East and West Prussia were both
inhabited by Goths, and the region of Posen was inhabited by Burgundians."
There were, therefore, no "original Slavic areas" on the Weichsel, Warthe,
Oder, and Pregel. And when the "Slavs" allegedly "appeared", suddenly in
the 9th century, they must have fallen down out of the sky, since they
have been unable to prove any other origins. * ------------------------------------------------------------
* "Translator's note: The 1911 Encylopaedia Britannica, "Slavs", vol. XXV
p. 229, states: "In spite of the prevalent brachycephaly of the modern
Slavs, measurements of skulls from cemeteries and ancient graves which
are certainly Slavonic have shown, against all expectations, that the farther
back we go, the greater is the proportion of long heads, and the race appears
to have been originally dolichocephalic and osteologically indistinguishable
from its German, Baltic, and Finnish neighbours." " ------------------------------------------------------------
Today we know that the concept "Slav" is not characteristic of a race
or of racial origins, but was the invention of vain scholars, manipulated
by a hateful clergy against German power and greatness. ------------------------------------------------------------
* "Author's note: Proof that the Polish language and glagolitic monks'
Latin were still generally unknown as late as the 15th century is the "the
parchment document with attached lead seal" of King Casimir of Danzig",
dated 1466. It begins as follows: "Kazimirus von gots gnade konig zsu Polan,
grosforste in Lythawin, in Rewssin, Prewssin herre und erbeling etc. bekennen
und thun kunth... "I, Casimir, king of Poland by grace of God, great prince
of Lithuania, lord and heir in Russia, Prussia, and heir etc., hereby acknowledge
and announce... i.e., the document is in archaic German and not Polish.".
It might be observed that the term is not "Polen" "Poland" but rather
"Polan", i.e., "po" (Germanic "an", "am", "bei" = near", and "lan", derived
from the Germanic = "arable land, field, land". (See my remarks on page
24, part I, "Falsifications".).
The term "Slav" arose in the 18th century through the German theologist
August Shloezer (1738-1809), in Russian service, who, to please his employer,
the Czar, as a researcher of Russian history and linguistic sciences at
St. Petersburg, systematized his research on glagolitic church Latin and
invented the word "Slav".
The basis for the word was the designation "Sclavi" in the ancient
church Latin of the monks, which, however, meant "servant, pagan, heathen".
The term is used in all ancient chronicles to refer to any heathen not
yet converted to Christianity. The Poles, naturally, refuse to admit this.
"Slavic" traditions are sacrosanct.
The present day also furnishes examples of what happens to people in
Poland who undertake research into authentic history. The Polish literatary
historian, Jan Josef Lipski, made the attempt: he was arrested and thrown
into prison.
His crime, in particular, consisted of the following passage in his
history of culture: "A mass of false myths and concepts has arisen in the
Polish mind regarding our historical relations with the Germans, which,
for the sake of truth and our own well-being, must be cleansed of lies
once and for all. False statements on one's own history are a sickness
in the soul of a nation, which, in particular, can only lead to hostility
to foreigners and national megalomania."
And he adds: "Almost everyone in Poland -- even the educated -- believes
today that, after the Second World War, we moved into an area which had
been stolen from us by the Germans.
We need only mention Danzig and the Emland, which were among the
lands given to the First Republic under the Second Peace of Thorn (1466),
(to be understood, not to the State) although both Danzig and Emland were
ethnically German in the majority, then, always, and until the end of WW
II.
Immediately thereafter, from the end of March 1945, long before
all Guns fell silent in Europe, under Polish military Tyranny, the entire
civilian Danzig population fell victim to "ethnic cleansing", also known
as Genocide, in the most brutal and concentrated way, by starvation, and
by applied terror, was physically and mentally bludgened into submission.
Every one not willing to opt for Polish citizenship was stripped
of every bit of private property, evicted by force. Never allowed to return
as a free person to their place of Birth.
The rest of East Prussia was never Polish; the Germans did not take
this area away from Poland, they took it from the Prussians...
" Elsewhere, Lipski says: "After centuries of development of German culture,
side by side with Polish culture in Silesia (the overwhelmingly
German City of Danzig, prominent Member of the Hanseatic League www.danzig-freestate.org
together with Hamburg, Bremen, Luebeck, Riga, remained autonomous, proud
and independend) and the long since exclusively German culture of West Pomerania,
a rich heritage of architecture and other works, in addition to German historical
archive materials, was bequeathed to us as the result of historical events.
We are the trustees of this material for all of humanity. We are therefore
obliged to maintain these treasures in full awareness that we are safeguarding
a heritage of German culture for the future -- including our future --
without lies, and without concealing the origin of this material.
People in Poland don't like to write about this, or to be reminded of
our debt to the Germans in terms of civilization and culture: our styles
of roofing, brickwork, our masons, printers, painters, sculptors, and hundreds
of Polish words, are all evidence of debt to our Western neighbour. "The
magnificent heritage in architecture and sculpture, paintings, and other
works of art and craftsmanship in Cracow and many other cities and villages
of Poland, not only during the middle ages, but to some extent even later,
up to the end of the 19th century, was for the most part the work of the
Germans, who settled here and enrichened our culture.
Almost every Pole knows about Veit Stoss. But not everybody knows that
he was an ethnic German (credit must be paid here to Polish scholarship,
because, in this case, definitive proof was adduced by the priest Boleslaw
Przybyszewski; many people imagine that he was a Pole, and are ready to
assault those who contradict them -- only specialists know the hundreds,
nay, thousands, of first and last names of creative Germans who have left
indelible traces in our culture.
" Apart from the fact that the Poles were not "bequeathed" any heritage,
but, to the contrary, committed land piracy, this paragraph from the pen
of a Pole is a cultural act of greatness for which its author was compelled
to pay with his freedom; and not only with his freedom, but with his health.
The Polish press supplied proof of that in its own reports. Just like
earlier Polish rulers, the present rulers of the Polish people do not wish
to hear any truth at all; they do not wish to admit that they lack a suitable
national identity to look back upon; they therefore invent their history
in order to feel like a people, at least for the present moment at any
particular time. They believe that they cannot permit themselves to hear
the truth.
Truth must therefore be subjugated to a hotheaded nationalism which
has long since deteriorated into chauvinism, to make up through "style"
that which it lacks in positive substance. This lack of substance -- of
which the Poles are ashamed, and which they attempt to conceal through
the camouflage of misappropriated German cultural accomplishments, has
another, hidden side, however.
This is described by a Polish contemporary of the first partition of
Poland in 1772, born in Scheidemuehl, Stanislaw Staszic: "Before my eyes
stand five sixths of the Polish people. I see millions of unhappy creatures,
half-naked, covered with skins and raw cloths, disfigured by smoke and
dirt, with sullen eyes, short of breath, moody, degenerate, stupified:
they feel little, think little: one hardly perceives in them a rational
soul.
"They look more like animals than human beings. Their usual fare is
bread mixed with chaff; the fourth part of the year, merely weeds. They
drink water and brandy; they live in earth huts or dwellings which are
almost on a level with the earth; there, no sun penetrates; smoke and vapours
suffocate the people inside and often kill them in childhood.
Exhausted from the days work for their noble lords, the father of the
family sleeps together with his naked children on filthy straw, in the
same room with the cow with her calf, and the pig with her piglets."
Such was the reality of the Polish Republic of the Nobles, which is
so famous today, of which the claimant to the Polish royal crown, Stanislaw
Leszczynski, at that same time complained:
"I cannot remember without a shudder of horror the law according to
which a nobleman who killed a peasant was fined no more than 50 franks.
This was the price at which one purchased immunity from the force of law
in our nation.
Poland is the only country in which all men are equal in having lost
all their human rights."
Today, the Poles glorify the misery and suffering of the past, from
which they only rose with German help, vilifying and libelling precisely
those German accomplishments which enabled them to do so, although there
is sufficient proof of both. The contemporary witness, Staczic, has even
been honoured by a monument in his birthplace Scheidemuehl, as may be seen
from the "Pommerschen Zeitung" of 24 July 1982 -- a monument to Polish
misery.
The Poles are, in fact, well aware of the limitless misery of the people
who suffered under the degenerate and corrupt Republic of the Nobles, since
a monument exists, even today, to the writer who revealed the conditions
of that epoch for what they were, and set them down for posterity in writing.
The quotation is taken from the booklet "Germany and Poland 1772-1914",
only 76 pages long, by Dr. Enno Meyer, published by Ernst Klett Verlag,
Stuttgart.
At the time of its partition in 1772, Poland was incapable of survival.*
"* Translator's note: The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica calls Poland "a
moribund state, existing on sufferance simply because none was yet quite
prepared to administer the coup de grace... the folly, egotism, and selfishness
of the Polish gentry, whose insane dislike of all discipline, including
even the salutary discipline of regular government, converted Poland into
something very like a primitive tribal community...". The same description
could be applied to almost any period of Polish history."
Without the concern of the Prussian King Frederick the Great, who took
over the old settlement areas in a wretched condition, there would presumably
have been no more Poles left alive today. That is what the Poles refuse
to admit in their megalomania and arrogance. That is why every voice of
reason in Poland is suppressed.
That is the explanation for the creation of a hate literature without
parallel. Though national conflicts, despite the invention of the artificial
Polish language, were insignificant until the end of the 18th century,
a systematic buildup of hatred began with the invention of the term "Slav".
Responsibility for this rests, first of all, with the clergy: this
is shown by the endless number of Polish proverbs current among the lower
classes, crushed by the power of the priesthood.
Kurt Lueck remarks as follows in volume I page 111: "Polish Messianism,
which made Poland the Saviour of the World in the 19th century, was an
entire philosophical system. For centuries, the Poles considered it their
mission to form the bulwark of Christendom in the East. Even in the early
Middle Ages, the Holy Stanislaw Cult contributed considerably to bringing
about an awakening of Polish national feeling in the struggle against their
German neighbour.
And God's preferential support to Poland is already clearly visible
in the chronicle of Vincenz Cadlubko (Kadlubek).
"The superstitious beliefs of the Polish peasant, contain, of course,
neither philosophical systems, nor concepts of a mission.
The peasant is simply convinced that, in Heaven and around the Pope,
the only language ever spoken is Polish.
"Conflicts of the following variety break out on the ethnic front on
a daily basis.
An old German says to a little old Polish grandmother from Gutowo near
Wreschen (Warthegau): 'Yes, soon we'll both go up to Heaven!' 'What', protests
the old woman, 'you Evangelicals think you're going to Heaven? Heaven is
only for Catholics! The Germans and Jews are swindlers. Your religion is
false. God only created the Catholic faith'.
"In many areas, they also believe that German is spoken in Hell. The
Mother of God, naturally, is only concerned with the Poles, as the 'Crowned
Queen of Poland', as 'Our Mother'. It would never occur to the peasantry
to think that Holy Mary would ever think of the Germans, or even understand
their language. On the contrary, she is sometimes beseeched in their prayers
to go for the throats of their enemies.
One of these prayers is quoted by Kazimierz Laskowski in his novel
'The Culture Bearers': "'Matko Boska Polska ochraniaj Polakow. Tych przybledow
szwabow powrzucaj do krzakow".
Translated: 'Polish Mother of God, protect us wonderful Poles, and
throw the Schwabs "Germans" in the bushes.'
" The following verse, which I prefer to give in translation only,
is noted from the region around Cracow:
"At Cracow Castle, the gods had a brawl. Our Lord Jesus cut the Germans'
legs in two."
This clearly shows that the religious abhorrence of the peasantry did
not simply arise from the people, but was instigated by the Polish clergy,
which needed to explain to the peasantry why the Germans were so much more
prosperous than the Poles. Of course, they didn't wish to tell them that
the Germans worked harder, were more assiduous, frugal, and cleaner, while
the common Poles, vegetating in the slavery of their nobles and the clergy,
gave themselves over increasingly to drink and idleness in an attempt to
escape their inhumane existence.
Thus, attention was diverted from the real problem, while subliminally
convincing the peasants that the Germans were responsible for all their
misery -- so much the more so, since great numbers of these same "Schwabs"
were also heretics. At the same time, Catholic Germans were said to be
"Polish", on the principle that "anyone who was a Catholic was also a Pole".
The heretics, the Lutherans, on the other hand, were the enemies of
Poland, and were to be abhorred.
Here are a few examples: In the entire General Gouvernement, it was
said: "Whoever is a Pole, is a Catholic. Whoever is a German, is a Lutheran."
From the Posen area: "Look there, what heretics!", people who see a
wild brawl exclaim to each other. From the Lemberg area: "Every German
is a renegade." And from the region of Chelm: "Half German, half goat:
an unbeliever without God." "The Germans believe in God as the devil in
his horn." "The German religion is like an old cow". "When a German is
sick, the devil dances."
The next 4 lines are taken from the first strophe of a formerly widespread
song from the Swedish war, which was reproduced in a Polish songbook by
J.St. Brystron (1925), and which runs, freely translated:
"In Poland, there was great misery Did it come from Man or God? From
the unholy heretics it comes And from too few Catholics in the land."
The Reformation of Martin Luther and Calvin had reached the German settlement
areas. During the Counter Reformation, the clergy shrank from no tactic,
no matter how devious, to lead people back to Catholicism.
The diffamation of Martin Luther from that time onward continues to
produce results in religious hatred even today, religious hatred which
cannot be separated from national hatred.
Luther is portrayed as a drunkard, glutton, whoremonger, and betrayer
of souls, as the progeny of the Devil and of Hell. The Dominican friar
Fabian Birkowski wrote (see Lueck p. 84): "Your rotten religion arose through
false prophets, created by the Devil, who wanted to be equal to God...
your leader is the Angel of Hell, who is the Devil."
Of course, similar expressions were used by Catholics against Protestants
during the Counter Reformation in Germany; but the German Enlightenment
ensured that this kind of language finally ceased to be used.
In Poland, by contrast, this kind of language was encouraged, and has
continued down the centuries to the present day, quickened and entwined
with national sentiment, rendered second nature to the people through so-called
'aesthetic literature'. The culturally very backward, exploited people
sought solace and consolation for their miserable existence, and found
it -- which is perfectly normal and understandable -- in religion.
Thus, the clergy had an easy time of it, achieving its own objectives
in terms of power. Letters were published which Luther was said to have
written from Hell. In the sermons of the Dominican friar Birkowski, Luther
was called 'stinking filth', and it was said that even pigs -- if they
could talk -- would speak like Luther.
In the region of Lublin a taunting game arose, which, freely translated,
says: "Was Martin Luther born of woman?
No! a she-wolf in the forest lost him out of her behind. Who raised
him? Lucifer, his companion! What kind of person is he? The Minister of
Hell!" Or "A God, that's what the Germans don't have. They only believe
in Luther, the wretch.
He was immediately banned from Rome, Since he invented a new church.
He seduced many women.
A new order was his objective. That's why he had to flee from Rome
to Germany, Since the Pope wanted to castrate him. If the Germans didn't
listen to Luther, They would have clothing and forage in winter. But the
Schwab is so stupid, He gives everything to Luther.
And Luther collects the money, And spends in the tavern on wine." This
verse refers to German stupidity: this alleged characteristic of the Germans
is constantly stressed in all possible variations. No Polish novel fails
to describe the Germans as stupid, cowardly, greedy, dishonest, fat, filthy,
thieving, cruel, brutish, and as many other similar qualities of a devlish
kind as can be invented.
In the forefront of all of these stands Henyrk Sienkiewiczs's novel
"The Knights", the most widely read quasi-historical novel in Poland, which
depicts the Germans as the cruelest of all animals; all Poles, without
exception, are examples of shining nobility.
The reader is soon compelled to put aside the novels of Sienkiewicz,
Mickiewicz, and many others from a feeling of sheer nausea at the sight
of so much hatred. But Professor Markiewicz is quite proud of this literature,
even today: indeed, he considers this literature of diffamation to be of
"historical value" for German children in his recommended school books!
We cannot understand how so much filth can accumulate in a single human
being, who reveals his true nature despite himself merely by depicting
this animalistic hatred.
Since even the best author can only describe in words that which dwells
in his mind, his manner of expression is the mirror of his soul. The language
of this literature committed, and continues to commit, a form of murder
against the soul of the Polish people, just as the language of the fanatical
Polish clergy of the 16th and 17th centuries deliberately obscured and
murdered the souls of the people in the struggle against Protestantism.
It was believed necesary to erect a religious retaining wall to prevent
the loss of souls, which would have weakened the power of Rome and the
Polish Church. But the results were even more far-reaching: confused souls,
crippled and made sterile by hatred, were converted or retained, for whom
there existed only one guilty party in relatiion to any of the difficulties
which arose in the natural struggle for existence: the German.
Such persons no longer made any attempt to overcome difficulties on
their own. They had a scapegoat, responsible for all the evils of life:
the Germans. This was much more comforting than having to work personally.
And if things went well for the Germans, then the Germans were naturally
to blame if things went badly for the Poles, since the Poles had of course
been taught that the German was in league with the Devil -- even that the
German was a devil himself. Of all the devils in the world, the German
was by far the worst.
The devil spoke only German: he wore German clothing, while German
laws, which were naturally dishonest and devilish, were valid in Hell.
This doctrine of the German devil enabled the Polish Catholic clergy to
reinforce its own position among the people.
Fear of the devil kept the people in obedience: after all, who should
know better than the clergy, who was alone competent in religious matters?
The people failed to notice the transition from faith to superstition,
and they still don't notice.
Proof of this was provided in 1977: a Polish worker's newspaper, in
an article on the great Lodz industrialist Karl Scheibler, claimed that
Scheibler had made a pact with the devil, as a result of which he received
gold rubles down the factory chimney into his lap, for the sole purpose
of better exploiting his Polish workers!
The "Deutsche Wochen-Zeitung" informed us of this piece of lunacy in
an article in the last issue of May 1977, and printed my remarks as a letter
to the editor in one of the following issues. How primitive must a people
be to accept such a sick joke today? But how can one explain that, in Germany,
the Poles are considered an enlightened, proud, and pious people? And how
can we explain the present German sympathy for the Poles?
First, there is the very skillful propaganda of the Poles, who possess
a magnificent understanding of how to depict themselves in the best light.
They must exaggerate their own worth if they wish to survive in competition
against the hardworking, culturally much more highly developed Germans.
They must therefore represent themselves as a people with an ancient
culture who have been unfairly dealt with by history. As a necessary corollary,
they must present their history in the best possible light in order to
gain sympathy.
People who enjoy sympathy are more readily believed, especially by
the Germans themselves. But this alone is not enough: their adversaries
must be denigrated, and their human worth reduced to a minimum.
This is why the Germans are depicted as devils in human form, a dangerous
people of violent criminals, constantly obsessed with plundering the poor,
noble Poles. If it is possible to misappropriate the credit for the enormously
valuable construction work performed by the Germans, one must necessarily
rise in the estimation of others.
Above all, this must be hammered into the heads of one's own people;
eventually, the whole forgetful world will believe it. Isn't there a saying
that "attack is the best defence"? That is how the Poles proceed in their
propaganda.
As attackers, they are justified in their own eyes if the victim is
made to appear to appear inferior and of lesser worth, since he must appear
to deserve no better treatment. That is why the entire Polish people from
childhood onwards is educated in hatred and superstition, destroying the
capacity for rational judgement through prejudice.
Are the Poles pious? In their own own minds, yes, since they are the
underlings of their clergy, and think only what they are supposed to think.
This is shown with particular clarity by the present conflict between the
State and the at all times politically committed national Church. A power
struggle is raging between these two blocks in Poland.
Which of them will emerge victorious it is impossible to predict, but
it will not result in freedom for the masses in any case, since the result
will be continue to be subjugation as in the past.
How can one explain the one-sided sympathy of the German people for
the Poles, despite the immense hate literature directed against all things
German?
Kurt Lueck provides one answer: dishonest translations of Polish literature,
novels, poems, etc. In volume 2, p. 415, he remarks: "At this point in
our study, mention must be made, in all strictness, of what is traditionally
an egregious defect in all German translations.
These translations regularly delete or falsify passages in Russian
or Polish originals containing derogatory statements or expressions of
hatred and contempt for Germany and the Germans. One need only compare
the originals of Russian masterpieces such as Tolstoy's 'War and Peace',
'Anna Karenina', Dostoievsky's 'Debased and Insulted', 'The Brothers Karamozov',
and others, with the translations!
'Corrections' are also often made in the translations of Polish novelists.
'The Knights', by H. Sienkiewicz, translated into German by Sonja Placzek,
not to mention a second translation, is nothing but a hoax perpetrated
on the German reader.
The spirit of the Polish original is falsified by means of numerous
deletions, and the text, which are often quite "raw", is adjusted to suit
the reader's taste. "A number of cosmetic corrections in the Polish text
were made even in the translation of W. St. Reymont's 'The Peasants'.
For example, volume II, p. 475, 'you are even worse than the Germans',
should, in reality, be translated as 'you are even worse heathens than
the Germans.' "On p. 491, certain insults hurled at the Germans 'swinskie
podogonia, sobacze pociotki' i.e., 'sow buttocks, race of dogs', have been
left out.
On page 492, in the curse 'that you shall all come to shame to the
last man', the last phrase, 'like rabid dogs', has been deleted. "Reymonts
'Ziemia obecana' ('The Promised Land', 1899, which appeared in 1915 in
a translation published by Georg Mueller, Munich) contains very seriously
falsified translation passages.
We refer to the third edition, published in Warsaw by Gebethner and
Wolf. The following passages have been deleted in the translation: "Vol.
I, p. 79, the passage containing the sentence 'that the Germans are a low
people'; p. 122
'German swine' (in the translation only 'swine') p. 163 'Prussian cattle';
p. 286 'German women are only good for founding a national cattle stall'.
"In S. Lipiner's translation of 'Mr. Thaddeus, or the Last Entry into
Lithuania', by Adam Mieckiewicz, published in Leipzig in 1882, the expression
coined for Prussian officials 'psubraty' ('dog's brother') has been replaced
with the somewhat milder-sounding 'vermin'.
"Even the rendering of 'Polish Folk Tales' by Glinski replaces the
contemptous term 'rozum niemieki'
('German understanding'), with 'citified understanding'. "And in the
translation of the Jalu Kurek's novel 'Grypa szaleja w Naprawie' (4th edition,
Warsaw 1935), a few evil expressions used against Germany are simply left
out.
A Pole, in the reverse case, would simply refuse to translate such
a book. This novel, of course, won a prize from the Polish Academy of Literature
in 1934; in Poland, it nevertheless appears on the Catholic Church's index
of forbidden books. "A few tasteless anti-German expressions have even
been deleted from the novel 'The Sable and the Fairy', by Josef Weissenhoff,
which recently appeared in German translation.
This undignified process of falsification should be ended once and
for all. We should either translate all the passsages critical of Germans
without doctoring them up, or we should simply ignore a work of fiction
containing unjustified or tactless criticism. The German people are done
a misservice through the censorship of statements critical of us in foreign
works of fiction. What is more, foreign authors are encouraged to think
that they need not shrink from any manner of expression, since the book
will appear in German translation anyway, while ethnic Germans, to whom
these falsifications become very quickly apparent, are deprived of their
German dignity and worth as human beings."
The ethnic researcher Dr. Kurt Lueck has rendered us a great service
in exposing these falsified translations for what they are, and in calling
them by their true name: a hoax perpetrated against the German reader,
who is not permitted to see how he is viewed in a foreign country.
Dr. Lueck's remark regarding foreign authors -- that they may permit
themselves any manner of expression, since their books are translated anyway
-- is of even greater significance. At this point, I should say that the
problem is not just that translations of Polish authors are falsified and
given a face-lift; the problem is that we translate this hate literature
at all, instead of protesting publicly and, if needs be, throwing it on
the rubbish dump -- through public condemnation -- since the preservation
of this red-hot hatred over the centuries undermines all human dignity,
including that of the Polish writer.
What kind of miserable people nourishes itself upon hatred, deriving
gratification from the most inhumane atrocity propaganda directed against
precisely that neighbour to whom it owes its basic existence?
I must admit that I did not recognize the extent of the hatred contained
in Polish literature, even though these books were compulsory reading in
my school days. Our teachers obviously proceeded in the same manner as
our translators, and deleted the worst atrocity tales. Not one of us ever
read a Polish novel -- such as "The Knights" -- in its entirety.
And how many people ever read them in Germany? But it, and many other
Polish atrocity legends, are translated and sold. Are they read all the
way through, or just part way, and put aside?
Really, shouldn't the competent cultural authorities have raised an
objection? Let us take the contrary case as an assumption. If a comparable
body of anti-Polish hate literature had ever existed, no matter who wrote
it, the Poles would have screamed incessantly until it was prohibited.
To give the German reader at least a taste of this "aesthetic literature",
I would like to cite a few examples, indicating the original source,
followed by the page numbers in Lueck's book;
"May the hand of God protect us from the German neighbour".
Reymont; p. 351. "Strong were the scoundrels, broad shouldered and
strong, in blue jackets with silver chains across gorged bellies, and their
snouts -- they simply glowed from good eating. "Give their pig snouts a
sound thrashing...
"I'll give this one on the end a punch in the guts, and if he attacks
me, then I'll strike! Don't hurry so, you beggars, or you'll lose your
baggy breeches!".
St. Reymont, in "Chlopi" ("The Peasants"), 1914; p. 351. "Wherever
the Germans go, no poor Jew can earn a living, much less a dog", Henr.
Sienkiewicz, in "Dwie drogi" ("Two Ways"); p. 351. "The Brandenburg swine
want to root up the earth with their snouts, to make a new empire of swine.
That might be good enough to destry the flowers, but he rubbed his snout
bloody on a stone, and had to give up his plan", Sienkiewicz, in "Flowers
and Stone"; p. 353. "One must hit them, break their bones, until the soul
quits peeping in their bodies".
Adolf Dygasinski, in "Struggle for the Land" p. 353. Lueck remarks
that Dygasinksi was an implacable enemy of the Germans, whose extermination
in the interest of a durable peace in Europe he repeatedly demanded.
"Listen, you degenerate tyrant! Thus smote Moses the Egyptian bloodhounds
to death, who murdered the children of God! And again he struck the Germans,
overflowing with blood until they looked like a bloody stump.
"The people need men like Moses!" cried the crazy mob, ruled by fury,
"so that such men may free the people from the hands of the heathen!" "Blows
crackled down like hail over the Germans, who had not a moment's time to
stand up straight. 'When you strike, strike like a crazy man', said von
Molken. 'Follow me, people, let's take the German Palki down again! To
the castle! "But Staszek alone pushed himself slowly out of the crowd,
with a gigantic scythe in his hand. Immediately, a group of Germans came
out of the castle bearing various weapons from Lutowojski's armory, kept
ready to shoot. The crazed one nevertheless had such a horrible expression
on his face, and such a fire of rage broke forth from him, that the horde
of Germans held back at some distance".
Jantsch aimed at Von Molken. "'Shoot, you scoundrel, men without weapons
are easy to kill!", called the youngster, going after his adversary. "Now,
you degenerate folk, worse than all the beggars in the world, infamy of
the century, scum of humanity! Go ahead and shoot!".
Dygasinki, in "Von Molken", (1885); pp. 353-5. "Wherever one went,
everywhere, one came into contact with Germans. No one in the vicinity
could earn their daily bread, because they even forbade the old women to
go into the woods, so that they couldn't gather mushrooms any more... A
great deal of gibberish was spoken, but nobody understood what it was all
about with those renegades. The peasants liked them about as much as a
dog's tail, but the lord of the manor stuck close to this gang".
Dygasinski, in "Two Devils" (1888); p. 355-6. "'Who caused such devastation
in the Ojcower woods? Tell me exactly who made so much destruction? Now,
the Germans, the Germans who else?', my travel companion cut in involuntarily.
The Polish peasant spoke further: 'Yes, see! see!', and with these words
the white-haired old man raised his sinewy, work-worn hand in the air,
his face took on a peculiarly hard expression, and he called solemnly,
as if in answer to an inspiration: 'May the Lord God refuse them wood for
their coffins, they that exterminate us here so. Everywhere, the Germans
take the wood away from the Polish peasants, suck us dry, make us all their
slaves. All the poison of the Germans will not suffice to poison the body
of our people... the peasant loves his earth, and hates the Germans".
Dygasinski in "Demon" (1886); p. 357. An especially tasty tidbit, such
as Zofia Kossak-Szczucka's recent (1930) novel, turns the history of medieval
Silesia (1234-41) completely upside down. In her "Legnickie Pole", "The
Battlefield at Liegnitz", she compares the Duke of the Piasts (first dynasty
of Polish rulers) Heinrich the Bearded, and his second son, Heinrich the
Pious with the Duke's eldest son Konrad, who is an enthusiastic Pole, and
at the same time a implacable enemy of the Germans and their way of life.
The dialogue of Konrad with his brother goes like this: "'Have you
brought new Germans over here?' Heinrich got excited: 'Yes, three families,
a heap of people in each one. Decent settlers from far away in the Bamberg
area. You will be astonished at how hardworking they are! They will harvest
many times the wheat that you sow. Our lord Father gave them farmland near
Buczyna and in addition, fields in the east"; p.36 "'Where did the Koczura
and Biesage come from, who settled at Buczyna?
The Duke gave them land in Greater Poland to clear!' Konrad said indignantly,
'Why don't the Germans settle on uncleared land?' Heinrich laughed haughtily:
'Them, clear land! They're not used to that kind of work. It's been hard
enough to bring them out into the cleared fields, although they each have
3 'malter' of grain for sowing.
They wouldn't go into the wilderness under any circumstances!', said
Konrad, knitting his brows. 'And when the Koczura clears the new land,
then you give it to the Germans, since they're not used to hard work!
The Koczura should have broken their German bones -- not deserted the
honestly acquired property which was theirs.'" And then: "'Our people just
clear new land, and get tired. When they have made a strip arable, then
you give it to the Germans, and they send you further into the wilderness.'"
At another point, it says: "Two more wagons with Germans appeared.
'It's already known', replied Slup, 'these are new settlers from the Bamberg
area.' "'They ate so greedily it was impossible to tolerate it', Konrad
continued. 'Whereever you throw a stick, you hit a German, and my illustrious
father, the Duke, calls more and more in'.
The nobles agreed with him: 'The Germans are a plague, may the Devil
take them to Hell!'"
This is how the Poles are deceived into believing that it was they
who cleared the land and made it arable. Here is a part of a "humourous
poem" of the 17th century by Wezpazyan Kochowski (1633-99), p. 376:
"A man from Masow and a German met on a narrow road. 'Out of the way!'
shouted the Pole to the other loudly. 'Step aside, you baggy pants, or
you'll see right away how I beat a German up yesterday; I'll beat up another
today'.
The German moved aside, and asked, seized with fear: 'What's the matter?'
'Ha! If you weren't such a coward', said the Pole, 'I would have gotten
out of the way!'
This "poem" contains a typically Polish allegation which should not
be overlooked. The quarrelsome, brawling Pole challenges the less belligerant
German, and orders him about at every possible opportunity. When the German
gives way without making too much trouble, he is accused of cowardice.
Thus, the Germans are described as cowardly in many scornful verses,
novels, and stories, such as, for example, in the following verses by Antoni
Labecki (born 1786): "Should you meet a real schwab in the war, "He never
thought of anything but drink and food. "You don't need to prepare a regiment,
"Or any drums, flutes, or trumpets against those weaklings. "Just show
the Schwab a hare, "He can scare away three hundred Schwabs."
Or, in Reymonts "Peasants", the Pole Gschela scorns the Germans: "'They
are too soft to be neighbours to us peasants, and if you ever hit one of
them on the head, they just fall down right away.' "'Did he ever fight
with one?' asked the lord of the manor, curiously. "'You call that fighting?
Mathias pushed one, because he didn't answer his 'Praised be Jesus Christ',
and he started bleeding right away; a miracle that his soul didn't didn't
fly up and away. "'A whole nation of softies!
They look like oaks, but if you ever hit one with your fist, it's like
hitting a feather bed..."
"Bartek the Victor", hero of the novel by Sienkiewicz, beats up a German
teacher together with his adult son, sticks him headfirst into a water
barrel, and, with a lathe of wood, holds off the colonists hurrying to
assist, until a treacherous stone's throw on the head knocks him to the
ground. But even then, the Germans don't dare approach him.
Only in overwhelmingly great numbers do the Germans ever dare to attack
the Poles: for example, in Artur Gruszeckis "Starancza" (1899), where forty
German boys attack an old man and a few women, and beat them unconsious.
The fight begins when the boys bait the old man like a dog. A miracle
of bravery is performed by a brave peasant in a novel by Walery Lozinski:
three Teutonic Knights stand before the peasant.
He warns them in a friendly manner, and, when that is no use, he chops
all three Knights' heads off simultaneously with one single blow of his
sword (a peasant with a sword?).
For this miracle, he is rewarded with the grant of a coat of arms featuring
3 ass's heads by King Lokietek
(King "Yard-Long"). In Zeromskis "Popioly", five hundred Germans are
besieged by the Poles and French at Tschenstochau.
Peasants from the surrounding area set fire at several different locations
to feign great numbers of besieging troops.
At the mere threat of immediate bombardment of the city, five hundred
German soldiers surrender with three hundred (!) weapons to an enemy numbering
one fifth as many.
At another point, Friedrich Wilhelm III is ridiculed: "He's taken Warsaw,
besieged Tschenstochau, and marched up to Cracow. And now you baggy pants
have lost your guts, now you retreat! Where is your land then! Show me!
Don't you have Berlin anymore?
Not one piece of land, you thief of foreign property!" Do arrogance
and conceit have no limits?
Are these writers or spreaders of filth? But even the Polish "Prince
of Poets", Adam Mickiewicz, is not sparing in disgusting outbursts of hatred.
In the much-read "Pan Tadeusz", which is compulsory reading in all schools,
the following "poem" has been preserved for posterity: "From Lord Todwen
came a message in all haste, "Grabowski read the letter, called 'Jena Jena
Hail!
"The Prussians are beaten, knocked on the head! Victory!'
"I hardly hear the words before I immediately get down from the saddle,
"And, after kneeling to thank the Lord, we rode into the city. "Apparently
just on business, as if we had heard nothing. "Look there! All the state
counsellors, court advisors, commissars, "And all other vermin of the same
type honours us, "Bowing down deeply before us.
They tremble, their blood is pale, "Just like when the Germans pour
boiling hot broth on a cockroach. "We rub our hands laughingly, and ask
in a servile sort of way, "What's new? What news of Jena? Ha! Didn't they
give a start!
Astonished that we know of the misfortune of their army, the Germans
cry: 'O Lord God, o misery'!
And run with their long noses towards home. Then they really make a
run for it! "How they did run!
All the streets out of Greater Poland were full of fleeing Germans!
Crawling like ants, "They dragged their vehicles, coaches, and carriages,
whatever they are called, each one heavy laden, the women as well as the
men, "With pipes, boxes, and chests, bedsteads and coffee pots.
"'Run for it! Wherever there's a place!' Meanwhile, we say softly to
each other, "Holla! To horse! Let's make this journey a misery for the
Germans! "Hey! One court counselor's ribs broken! Another state counselor,
and another dog's brother hacked to pieces! "Officers and gentlemen packed
by the pigtails, "And General Dombrowski started for Posen,
"Bringing the order to rise up for the Emperor of the French!
In eight days, the Prussians were driven out. "Not even a drop of medicine
remained behind!
The reader senses the poet positively gloating over the cruel notion
that no Prussian was still alive who might still have needed medical treatment.
This is certainly great testimony to the great "humanity" of the Polish
people!
I would like to give the German reader one more example of this "humanity",
the last one of its kind which I care to repeat here, since these texts,
with their lust for murder and bestial cruelty, cannot be contemplated
without the profoundest horror.
This doesn't mean that there is no more "educational literature" of
this kind. Lueck discusses a great many more examples of these hateful
tirades from Polish literature than I can reproduce here.
He writes: "An allusion to 'The Knights' in Waclaw Sierosczewski's
novel 'Zacisze' (1923) displays a singular tastelessness and lack of spirituality.
A Polish student tells a German wood merchant, in reply to the question
of what a great stone is doing in such a place, the following legend, which
is supposed to be amusing: "'O, that is a long and terribly fascinating
story!' answers Izyda.
'They say the Devil brought it here... In any case, he performed very
devlish ceremonies there.
On top, there is a depression and a furrow. The simple people say that,
in the night of the full moon, around midnight, the mountain opens up,
and, from underneath the stone come bearded old men dressed in white with
oak clusters on their foreheads and golden lutes in their hands...
Behind go others leading a Knight fastened with an iron chain. The
Knight wears a black cross on his coat and breast.
In vain, he struggles and moans; his eyes flash like lightning: men
in linen cloth rip off his irons and garments, drag him out of the stone
without formality, and cross his arms.
An old priest bends over him, and sinks a sharp stone knife into the
breast arched with pain... Blood spurts.
The Knight bellows like a stuck pig! The priest pushes his arm into
the steaming wound to above the elbow, and searches for a long time...
Finally, the whole story concludes miserably, since, instead of the heart
of the barbarian, he pulls forth, with great effort... a rather large but
empty purse, manufactured in Berlin...
The Knight spent everything he had on frivolous lady Slavs!.. maybe
he even lent money to their parents at high rates of interest... Really,
just look! I found one just like it!...' he concludes solemnly, drawing
an old, rain drenched, completely faded purse from his pocket.
The youth tore it laughingly from his hand, and began to examine it
with great interest. "'By God, that's mine! I lost it here last year! But
there must have been money in it! Give it here, Izyda!' cried Antos. "'Yes!
So you you've been carousing around here too, with frivolous lady Slavs?
And with a German purse? .. that's really... Polish economics!'
That's really a fascinating legend... it must be some old tradition...'.
Szmit turned to Izyda. "'O, yes, it's a tradition... from the sojourn of
the beloved neighbour... dating back... to the time of Lokieteks!"
One could not possibly imagine a bloodthirstier fantasy or a greater
degradation on the part of scribbling Polish slanderers and liars. What
can possess the soul of a Polish scribbler who imagines that he is elevating
his own people with oak clusters and golden lutes, depicting the Teutonic
Knights as whoremongers carousing around with stolen money, bellowing like
pigs, while at the same time a priest of his own people is described sinking
his arm bloodily to above the elbow into the breast of a barbarian, in
search of his heart?
Who, then, is the greater barbarian: the tortured Knight, or the bloodthirsty
priest?
But one can hardly expect so much logic from Polish writers, whose
only concern is to sow hatred at any price.
Polish literature is intended for long term effect, and depends upon
the short memories of other nationalities, as well as on the well-known
good nature and helpfulness of the Germans -- as well as on German stupidity,
which inclines us to believe all the lies told by other people -- people
who ridicule us in practically every novel, not to mention their proverbs.
For example: "Even clever Germans are stupid rabble, the Poles can always
sell them a pig in a poke."
"The German is as big as a poplar, but infernally stupid." "Dumb as
a German."
"Poles grow wiser by experience; the Germans should profit by our example,
but they never learn, with or without experience." "You Germans, you just
don't know anything. People swindle you with sheer cleverness."
The whole point of Polish literature is simply to portray the Poles
as the most good natured, the noblest, most heroic people in the world,
while branding the Germans as the greediest, dumbest, most cowardly, degraded,
and cruel.
Constant exposure to this poison is bound to awaken the cruelest instincts,
instincts which cry for war to get revenge, although one does not even
know why.
And since the Germans are represented not only as stupid but as cowardly
as well, the entire Polish people is educated in arrogance, and taught
to overestimate themselves.
Thus, even responsible officials in the Ministry of War in 1939 believed
that all they needed to do was to order Polish troops on horseback, armed
with lances decorated with pennants, to attack German tanks, and then ride
through the Brandenburg Gate as victors.
The awakening was a bitter one. But the guilt for that, of course,
lay, not with the frivolous, arrogant Poles, but with the wicked Germans,
who had tanks. "Translator's note: This is a perfect example of the manner
in which the Poles are unable to learn from history.
In 1648, the Cossack leader Chmielnicki annihilated them under identical
circumstances. "The Polish army, 40,000 strong, with 100 guns... consisted
almost entirely of the noble militia, and was tricked out with a splendour
more befitting a bridal pageant than a battle array.
For Chmielnicki and his host these splendid cavaliers expressed the
utmost contempt. 'This rabble must be chased with whips, not smitten with
swords', they cried... After a stubborn three days' contest the gallant
Polish pageant was scattered to the winds. The steppe for miles around
was strewn with corpses..." 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Poland".
Only the bloodthirsty descriptions contained in Polish novels, the systematic
education in hatred, the demands for the extermination of every German
inhabitant of the area, which the Poles merely took to heart and imbibed,
could lead to the orgy of murder on Bloody Sunday in Bromberg, Bereza Kurtuska,
and, later, in Lamsdorff.
The Polish people were fed on this literature for two hundred years,
from the 18th to the 20th centuries.
This is in addition to the hereditary heritage of the Mongolian hordes
of earlier wars, a heritage determined by blood. Blood is not just a body
fluid. Suitably instigated, it exploded in an avalanche of crimes against
ethnic Germans which is without parallel in the world.
Polish radio on 1 September 1939 repeatedly broadcast "call number
59" at short intervals. The call contained a codeword, established in collaboration
with the authorities, and an order to the voivodes "administrative officials",
for transmission to the police stations, to arrest all the ethnic Germans,
who were already listed by name, in accordance with already existing arrest
warrants.
Then began the manhunt for the Germans.
At the same time, the Polish singer Jan Kiepura -- discovered by a
German film director and trained as a singer in Germany, made famous by
the German UFA film company at a time when he was considered to have no
talent in his own country -- sang the notorious "Rota", calling for war
against Germany, at a demonstration in a market place in Warsaw.
This, too, was typical Polish thanks for benefits received. The following
events, especially in Bromberg on Sunday, September 3, 1939, were
of such cruelty that the human mind has difficulty believing them. And
yet they are true.
In my possession are 347 pages of photocopies of official records and
sworn statements, in addition to accompanying photographic evidence, of
horrifyingly mutilated bodies, proving the kind of murder orgies of which
the Poles are capable.
In addition to these 347 pages from the secret archives of the Reichsgovernment,
650 pages of text and photographic documentation were published relating
to the preliminary history of the Second World War, which material is also
available to me, proving the irrefutable testimony of diplomats regarding
the Polish atrocities.
The crimes committed were comparable to those described in the novels.
But in the novels they were invented, and attributed to the Teutonic Knights.
Here, they were actually committed -- because people were instigated
and encouraged to commit them, and because weapons had been distributed
in the churches for that purpose.
Where these weapons did not suffice, the Poles used knives, axes, saws,
hammers, automobile parts, daggers, hatchets, shovels, whips, fence lathes,
clubs, pickaxes, iron bars, and metal-studded clubs, etc., from their own
households. Germans were murdered indiscriminately without regard to age,
profession, social position, religion, or sex: no class was spared from
torture, whether farmer or property owner, teacher, priest, doctor, merchant,
worker or factory owner.
The victims were not shot by firing squad: the butchery was never based
on any title of law.
The victims were shot, beaten to death, stabbed, tortured to death,
without reason; the majority, in addition, were mutilated in an animal-like
manner. These were deliberate murders, committed mostly by Polish soldiers,
policemen or gendarmes, as well as by armed citizens, classical secondary
school students, and apprentices.
Uniformed insurgents, members of the "Westverband", riflemen, railroad
workers, released criminals, even housewives, all joined in the blood frenzy.
Everywhere, a definite method was followed, leading naturally to the
inference of a centrally planned, uniform programme of murder. The open,
and even admitted, aim of Polish policy was the extinction of Germanness.
Literature, among other things, was an instrument of this policy, as
a means to which hatred was deliberately fomented.
I prefer to show the results of this systematic education in hatred.
I do not wish to reproduce more than 3 photographs,
as they appeared in the forensic medical report of the Supreme Command
of the Armed Forces, accompanied by graphic evidence, and printed in the
650 pages of text and photographic documents on the preliminary history
of the Second World War, from the archive of the Reichsgovernment.
To show more than these 3 photographs would constitute intolerable
cruelty to the human soul, which I wish to spare the reader.
Not only do the Poles deny the atrocities they committed, they brazenly
twist the truth and allege that the ethnic Germans killed 25,000 poles
in Bromburg, in eternal remembrance to which they even erected a monument
to their imaginary dead.
There is another monument to the actual events in Bromberg, one which
was not just erected recently with lying inscriptions to conceal the perpetrators'
own guilt: one completed immediately following these inconceivable cruelties
against innocent Germans, written by the man who took down the testimony
of these horrible events from survivors still suffering from shock, in
a book containing the following lines in a foreword: "caption p. 45" "German
Catholic priest from the Church of the Heart of Jesus in Bromberg in silent
prayer before the bodies of murdered ethnic Germans in Bromberg."
"This book was the most difficult task ever assigned to me as a reporter:
it contains only the naked truth.
Every name is that of the actual witness, every description is based
on sworn statements." The author was the world famous writer and reporter
Edwin Erich Dwinger, who called his monument to the slaughtered innocent
ethnic Germans "DEATH IN POLAND -- The Ethnic German Passion".
That which is contained in a hundred official records of a few words
each is described here in consecutive images of the inhuman crimes of the
Polish population against the innocent and helpless Germans, revealing
a spiritual attitude on the part of the Poles which deprives them of their
claim to a place in European culture.
The reader must be allowed repeated pauses in the description of the
horrifying martyrdom and murderous fury to which the ethnic Germans were
exposed, because the normal human mind cannot tolerate such cruelty.
Through these massacres of the Germans, the Poles have forfeited all
claim to pride and honour. That they dare to turn to the Germans today
and beg for help, and actually accept such help, is a clear index of their
character.
Even if they erect a hundred monuments in Bromberg intended to prove
the contrary, they can in no way conceal the real monument erected by Erich
Dwinger to the slaughtered ethnic Germans in his book. For some time now,
the Poles have also made it known, in their usual way, that camp Lamdsdorff
is supposed to have been a real sanitorium for the Germans held there.
They proceed in this connection exactly as they did with their monument
in Bromberg. I therefore recommend that every German should read the report
of the Lamsdorff camp doctor, Dr. Heinz Esser: "The Hell of Lamsdorff",
to be convinced of just how shamelessly the Poles lie.
Yet no Polish priest steps forward to defend the truth; on the contrary,
they demand belief in Polish innocence, which is, after all, only a lie.
The misuse of religion for political purposes is obvious, because,
strangely enough, no one is scandalized by these events. Even German Catholics
in Germany turn a blind eye, even though the inhuman persecutors of Bloody
Sunday in Bromberg made no distinction between Evangelical and Catholic
Germans; on the contrary, Catholics who declared themselves to be Germans
often suffered worse than the others.
I will now reproduce some sworn statements by Catholic priests on these
crimes, which were taken down by the War Crimes Investigation Office of
the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces; Pater Breitinger, pastor for the
German Catholics of Posen, writes as follows on the procession of kidnapped
persons out of Posen:
Posen, 5 October 1939 War Crimes Investigation Office of the Supreme
Command of the Armed Forces Regarding: Advisor to Court Martial, Hurtig
Legal Inspector for the Army, Pitsch; there now appeared Pastor Breitinger
upon interrogation, after being duly sworn:
As to myself: My name is Lorenz Breitinger, religious appelation Father
Hilarius, born 7 July 1907 in Glattbach near Aschaffenburg, pastor for
the German Catholics of Posen, resident in the Franciscan cloister at Posen.
"captions p. 46" "Murdered and castrated: a body found at Bromberg" "A
married woman, Mrs. Kempf, 25 years old, murdered at Wiesenau, district
of Hohensalza.
With her were killed: her husband, 36 years old, their children Hilde
K. 9 years old, and Helene K., 2 1/2 years old, in addition to the elderly
married couple K. 70 and 65 years of age, and the farmhand Theodor Draeger,
17 years of age, i.e., a total of 7 persons.
Killed by pistol shots through the skull (a), in addition to mutilation
of the 4th and 5th fingers of the right hand (b), with amputation of the
ring finger (c). The victim was nearing the natural termination of her
pregnancy.
The embryo was found partially expelled from the abdominal cavity.
This is not an example of commonly so-called "post-mortem birth", due to
the effects of decomposition.
Rather, birth began during the death agony of the mother." Section
no. Report 127 (Supreme Command of Armed Forces)/H.S. In)
As to the facts: on 1 September 1939, around 6 P.M., a police officer
appeared before the cloister door and stated that I was under arrest. Upon
my request to be permitted to take some changes of clothing and food with
me, he replied that this would not be necessary, that I would be released
to go home inside half an hour. Another police officer was waiting in front
of the cloister with his pistol drawn; both policemen drove me, together
with three other arrested persons, like dangerous criminals, to the police
station. There, a police official placed me under arrest, and pressed a
certificate of arrest into my hand against receipt, whereupon I saw that
I was really going to be interned.
In the police courtyard, I met about 20 people I knew; I spent the
night together with them under an open sky. Additional transports filled
with companions in misfortune arrived during the night from other parts
of the city. The Elder of my cloister attempted to intervene with regards
to my arrest with the supreme commandant of the police administration.
After my return, I heard from him that his intervention was rejected with
the words, "What? You dare to intervene for such a man? You must be mixed
up with spies. You deserve a bullet through your head like the others."
When the Elder asked to be permitted to give me a suitcase with clothing
and food, he was told "the lice could eat it".
My Elder was so astonished that he later told me that, at that moment,
he felt ashamed to be Polish for the first time. Furthermore, I heard from
my Superior that he had also attempted to intervene with the police commandant
of Posen at the Woiwodeschaft "an administrative office", who was a good
acquaintance of his and of myself.
The commandant, however, replied that, unfortunately, he could do nothing,
since all power was in the power of the military.
On 2 September 1939, we had to line up in 2 groups. A police officer
in civilian clothes then deprived us of our civil rights in the name of
the voivode, and furthermore remarked that we were now to march into a
camp; and that anyone who did not march properly on the street would be
shot on the spot. The police then loaded their weapons, took out their
sidearms, and then led us through the streets of Posen to Glowno. The police
repeatedly called to the crowds filling both sides of the street "they're
all Germans"; the crowd responded with absolutely incredible screams of
rage, together with disgusting profanity. The crowd became violent at the
old market as well, and we were hit with sticks, kicked, struck by flying
rocks, so that we were already covered with bruises when we arrived in
the suburb of Glowno.
In a restaurant in Glowno, I was filled with hope when a Catholic priest,
the Vicar of Glowno, entered the room. In particular, I hoped to meet with
understanding and protection from him, and above all, information as to
our future.
I was immeasurably astonished when the priest began to interrogate
me as to whether I was not really a spy in disguise, asking in a brusque
tone asked why, then, had I fought with weapons in my hands against Poland?
Totally speechless, I gave up any attempt at further conversation with
him. Late in the afternoon, we were led to a great meadow, which was surrounded
by a large crowd.
Two other groups were also interned there, including women and children,
two cripples who could hardly walk -- war invalids with wooden legs --
and a great crowd with bandaged heads, whose clothes were covered with
blood. On the meadow, we were arranged in groups of four, and were counted.
We were then placed under the command of the leader of our guards, consisting
of a few policemen and various humanities students in the uniform of military
youth organizations, and made to exercise and sing a hateful anti-German
song.
He then made me step forward in my clerical clothing, and perform exercises
all by myself, to the howls of the crowd. Finally, he put me in the front
row, as the "leader of the rebels", which is what we were always called.
We then had to return to Schwersenz through a gauntlet of excited people
who spat on us, threw rocks, and kicked us. The accompanying guards did
nothing to protect us from this mistreatment or, if they had any desire
to do so, they were utterly powerless or lacked the strength to do so.
In Schwersenz, the animalistic crowd beat both children and cripples
sitting on wagons with sticks until the sticks broke in pieces. The next
day, I noticed that representatives of almost all German organizations
as well as the entire German priesthood had been driven together. These
were without exception men who were convinced that they had always conscientiously
fulfilled their public duties to the Polish state, and therefore could
not understand why they were now being treated worse than dangerous criminals.
In Schwersenz, an Evangelical minister and myself asked if we could
minister to the people's spiritual needs. I received a very rude negative
answer from the leader of our accompanying guards. Running the guantlet
of heavy blows with cudgels and kicks, we were then marched through Kostrzyn
to Wreschen. Here we received more blows with cudgels and kicks. Here,
my Cardinal drove by, who must have recognized me as an internee from Posen.
But he did nothing to intervene for us. In Wreschen, we had to exercise
in a room for a while; they made us stand up, sit down, kneel down, etc.
He treated me in a particular manner, called me a hypocrite and a swindler,
and declared that the cross ought to be torn off me, since I had betrayed
it.
Towards noon, the march continued. The guards drove in the car together
with the sick people; often we had to run behind the trucks, when it suited
the drivers to make us do so. At times we attempted to cover our heads
with blankets and coats due to the danger of flying stones. It was incomprehensible
to me that Polish soldiers, even Polish officers, participated in this
mistreatment to a particular degree. Thus it happened that after a while,
members of the Polish army, wearing medals, ran alongside our ranks dealing
out especially powerful kicks to those of us they could reach. From Konin,
we could no longer continue our march to Kutno, and we were suddenly marched
northwards.
Approximately 7 km before Konin, our guards left us, and only a single
policeman remained with us, who was of very limited intelligence. In the
meantime, we were mistreated by Polish reservists with long beatings and
thrown stones. We were saved from this by field police. At a farmstead
near Maliniec, we were able to lie down for 3 days, since our policeman
first had to obtain instructions as to what to do with us.
Near Slesin, we came through the first Polish positions, and were lodged
behind the city in a freight yard which was completely occupied with polish
soldiers. Here, a young Polish lieutenat threatened us with death, uttering
innumerable curses. The next morning, we were awakened at 2 A.M. to continue
the march. The wagons with the cripples and children remained behind. Later
I heard that they had been shot.
They were the whole Schmolke family and a war invalid with one leg.
We made a forced march under cannon fire to Babiak. In the afternoon, we
were forced to continue after being split into three groups, and being
assigned to the guardianship of numerous soldiers. On a forest road, we
were forced to give the soldiers all our watches and other jewelry, money,
and even wedding and engagement rings. When we were told to start marching
again on Monday morning, some of us could no longer stand up.
In addition to five sick people, who were absolutely unable to continue
(including a teacher from Posen), three healthy people remained behind
to protect them. Later, we heard that they had simply been shot by the
guards and cruelly beaten to death with stones. After marching to and fro
all day, the frontline came closer to us, and we were freed on 17 September
by German troops.
We were sent back to Germany through Breslau by the German army. Dictated
aloud, corrected, and signed Signed: Lorenz Breitinger (Father Hilarius)
The witness swore the following oath: I swear by God the Almighty and Omniscient
that I have told the pure truth and have concealed nothing, so help me
God. Conclusion Signature: Hurtig Signature: Pitsch
In addition, I note the following: I was interned together with the
following people, all from Posen people. Among them in my group were Director
Hugo Boehmer, Pastor Stefani, the Director of the German Humanities School,
Dr. Swart, Dr. Robert Weise, and other leading persons. I also swear to
this on my oath. Signed: Lorenz Breitinger (P. Hilarius) Conclusion Signature:
Hurtig Signature: Pitsch Source: WRII 1" Rev. Rauhut, pastor for the Salvation
of German Catholics, testified as follows on the kidnapped persons from
Gnesen: Gnesen, 21 September 1939 Research Office for Violations of International
Law of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces Present: Military Legal
Advisor: Hurtig Army Legal Inspector: Pitch Rev. August Rauhut fron Gnesen
appeared and declared as follows:
As to myself: my name is August Rauhut von Gnesen, born on 21 September
1888 in Dambitsch, district of Lissa. Pastor for German catholics at Gnesen,
former director of the German private humanities school, 2nd associational
chairman of the Union of German Catholics in Poland, resident of Gnesen,
Poststrasse 1a. As to the facts: I went with my group of expelled ethnic
Germans, accompanied by two policemen, along the Chaussee of Wreschen to
Stralkowo.
On the way, Polish troops lay on the edge of the woods. When they saw
us being transferred, they threatened to shoot me in particular, because
I was a clergyman. We nevertheless reached Stalkowo in the company of both
police officials. Shortly before Stalkowo, policemen from military trucks
supplied us with food for the continued journey, for high prices, paid
cash. We were supposed to march to Kossow in the Woiwodschaft of Polesie
(district of Pinsk). After several days of wandering hear and there in
the fields and woods of Stralkowo to Powitz, our group of 42 men decided
to send 3 men to Powitz; it was 7 September 1939.
These 3 men were to ask the authorities in Powitz either to settle
us in Powitz, or to allow us to return to Gnesen. They were: 1. Mr. Ernst
Wiedermeyer from Gnesen, a businessman 2. Mr. Derwanz from Przybordzin,
a farmer from the district of Gnesen 3. Myself, August Rauhut. We arrived
in Przybrodzin around 11 A.M. and received permission from the local authorities
to settle in Przybrodzin, and even received identity papers.
When these formalities were taken care of, Mr. Wiedemeyer and myself
saw our third companion, Mr. Derwanz, together with one of my former students,
Lyk, being taken away by soldiers to be shot.
In any event, we never saw Mr. Derwanz again. Afterwards, we heard
that Mr. Derwanz had reportedly been buried naked in the Evangelical cemetery
of Powitz. Mr. Derwanz was found after several graves were opened by persons
known to me, and was identified. Around 2:30 P.M., Mr. Wiedermeyer and
myself went back to our group in the forest with our identity documents
and permission from the authorities approximately 4 km away, to take them
back to the city. We were close to our group. Then we were stopped by young
people bearing arms and making a great deal of noise, and taken back with
violence and threats of every kind, saying, "You have to go back, your
identity documents are no longer valid; you will be shot".
They nearly carried out this death sentence several times on the way
back. We had to go separately, and could not speak to each other. Mr. Wiedermeyer
just murmured to me: "If you get out of this alive, greet my wife and children."
We reached the city, where the population was very hostile, with insults
and curses directed at us on several occasions, especially against myself.
We reached the police station around 5:30 P.M.
While we sat in the police station, we heard from the commisssioner
of police, himself a large landowner in Poland, make several painful remarks
concerning the shooting of Mr. Derwanz. He even condemned the shooting.
We sat in the waiting room for around two hours; then our identity papers
were once again demanded of us. Shortly afterwards, we got them back again,
and I was immediately taken away by three very shabbily-dressed Polish
soldiers to be shot.
Among them there was even a lame invalid carrying a wepon, who was
particularly rough in his manner towards me. Mr. Wiedermeyer stayed behind.
When I was in the corridor, I was told to go back into the consultation
room. There was a group of young people, among them a former chairman of
the so-called firing squad. He accused me of being a "gang leader", and
of owning a short-wave radio.
When I denied all of this, he told me that fooling with shortwave radio
technology was a very black point against me. I saw that my fate was sealed.
Then I remembered that the clerical authorities had given a letter of recommendation
for my bishop in Polesia. I produced this; they were surprised. In the
meanwhile, the local religious authority entered the consultation room
and declared: "I have no power over him, but transfer him to Gnesen to
the Deacon Zablicki, who is head of the citizens committee." I had to leave
the consulation room, and returned to the waiting room. Mr. Wiedermeyer
was no longer there.
I knew what had happened to him in the meantime. At any rate, I was
sure that he had been shot, since that was the fate which had been decided
for me. After a short while, the local clergyman took me away and told
me that he had taken full responsibility for me; I had to spend the night
at the clergyman's house, and would be transferred to my authorities in
Gnesen on the next day, Friday 8 September 1939. This also happened on
the next day. For my own protection as a clergyman, I was accompanied by
another clergyman who happened to be staying in Powitz with the local chairman
of the citizens committee.
We reached Gnesen despite many threats made against my person along
the way. The citizens committee decided to house me in the hospital of
the Grey Sisters for my protection. This was done. I stayed until Monday,
11 September 1939, at 11:30 A.M., after the Germany army had taken the
area. I was released by a German army captain from protective custody.
I remarked that constant accusations had been made on the way to Powitz
to the effect that I had possessed a shortwave radio hidden in the oven
of my dwelling; I had the chairman of the Citizens Committee in Powitz
establish the groundlessness of the accusation.
At this point, he told me: "I must tell you that Mr Wiedermeyer is
no longer alive." He asked to maintain the strictest secrecy about this.
On Thursday, 14 September 1939, all fresh graves in the cemetery of Powitz
were dug up by civilians sent by the city of Gnesen, which led to the discovery
of the dead bodies of Mr. Derwanz and Mr. Wiedermeyer. Wiedermeyer's body
was particularly badly mutilated, in particular, exibiting bleeding wounds
on the neck.
Both men were killed by Polish soldiers. n addition to these two men,
six other persons from the region of Gnesen were bestially murdered near
their farms by armed civilians. Among them was Kropf and his son in law,
Brettschneider.
The abdomen of one murder victim had been cut open, and the head had
been crushed.
These crimes were spoken of with genuine horror in Gnesen, even among
the Poles. In my opinion, the civilians were supplied with weapons by the
authorities. This happened during my absence from Gnesen. The grave diggers
at the Evangelical cemetery can testify to the condition of the bodies.
I cannot remember their names for the moment. An expulsion order was issued
against me on 1 September 1939 from the Starost, and I left Gensen on 3
September. Dictated aloud, corrected, and signed. Signature: August Rauhut
The witness was duly sworn. Conclusion Signature: Hurtig Signature: Pitsch
Posen, 29 January 1940
Your Excellency! A great many priests and laymen have asked us whether
the reports on Polish atrocities reported in the papers committed against
the German population at the beginning of September of last year, are based
on fact.
Since surely many more people, including the Catholic clergy, must
be awaiting an answer to this question, we, the undersigned German Catholic
priests from the Archdiosese of Gnesen, Posen, hereby send at least the
following reports from two brethren of our acquaintance, who experienced
the harsh fate of internment or kidnapping.
Despite the nearly unbelievable harshness and cruelty testified to
by these reports, we should like to emphasize that these are not exceptional
cases. Rather, all German Catholic priests without exception have suffered
from the Polish terror to a greater or lesser degree, and many of them
have looked Death in the eye on more than one occasion.
In addition, our entire German population, due solely to their German
ethnic origin, have suffered the greatest losses in blood and property:
5,000 deaths have been established so far, committed in the cruelest, most
bestial manner by Poles.
These frightful crimes were not, however, committed only by an overexcited
Polish rabble, but by educated Poles as well, and even by police officials,
and officers in the Polish army, who should have intervened to protect
us. People may perhaps refuse to believe this, since the Poles are known
as a pious people.
But their piety has obviously failed to penetrate inwardly to a sufficient
depth, so that, in their hatred of everthing German, incited on all sides,
they have come to be guilty of atrocities which stand in the most extreme
contradiction to Christian thought and feeling.
The following persons swear to the truth of the above: Cathedral chapter
member: Dr. Joseph Paech Cathedral chapter member: Prof. Dr. Albert Steuer
Rademacher Gumpacht August Rauhut Georg Kliche, Priest Juettner, Propst
Father Hilarius Breitlinger In view of the above testimonies of German
Catholic dignitaries, Catholics in Germany should be cured of the superstition
that Poles would not expel Germans of Catholic faith.
It would really be impossible to raise a stupider objection defence
of the Poles.
People filed serious accusations against me with the State Prosecutor,
just because I quoted a Polish saying on television: "A German Catholic
is not a real German." I quoted this in my first book. Due to my having
quoted this phrase taken from the mouth of a Pole, I was accused of "insulting
German Catholics".
I only made one mistake -- as I realize only now, but at any rate a
most serious one, when I referred to the journalist Zdanowski as the speaker.
A tape of the television discussion has been made available to me, from
which it is clear that it was not Zdanowski who made this statement, but
rather our much-beloved expert Prof. Markiewicz, the self-styled historian,
in person.
I shall now quote his statement word for word: "Religion plays a great
role here. To a Pole, a real Pole was one who was a Catholic, as well as
vice versa: a real German simply had to be a Protestant.
For this reason, a special term was invented: German-Catholic; which
sometimes means, and all the more so, that he is a German, but that he
is a Catholic, that is, that he is not a real German."
In keeping with this piece of wisdom, a Catholic Swede in Evangelical
Sweden cannot be a "real Swede", and a Catholic Chinese cannot be a "real
Chinese".
This logic may be impossible to fathom, but it is, in clear language,
the statement of a speaker who is far more important than the journalist
Zdanowski could ever be.
A history professor can hardly be said to have been talking simple
rubbish when he takes a position on German-Polish problems on German television.
That religion must coincide with nationality is a thought which can only
originate in a Polish brain.
The person who tried to turn me over to the State Prosecutor, since
he considered himself insulted and outraged as a German Catholic by my
quotation from the Poles, should really have withdrawn his complaint against
me and filed it against Prof. Markiezwicz.
Did he possess that much decency? No. He filed an appeal to the Attorney
General against the prosecutor's order dismissing the case against me on
the grounds that it was groundless.
After that, he even filed a complaint with the State Supreme Court.
This event shows the grossly unlogical thinking which lurks in the brains
of many who permit themselves to judge the facts and background of history.
They read, but do not understand what they read. They write, but do
not understand what they have written.
But they proclaim their opinions at the top of their lungs, regardless
of the damage they are doing to their own country and their own people.
Letters to the editor are written based on willful ignorance, conceding
the territories of the German East to the Poles, just because that is what
the writers once learned in school.
This is not the first time that the Poles have made an effort to get
their ideas into German school books, through their representative Prof.
Markiewicz.
Such persons have always existed and on the German side, do-gooders
who are ignorant of German rights and therefore give in. Among them, I
include the Evangelical Churches of Germany, who, forgetting their dead
in the East, express contempt for the victims through their demands that
the homeland be given up.
Even the Evangelical Churches of the East have had to pay in blood
for their Christian convictions. The following obituaries taken from two
official German publications set forth the names of those who lost their
lives in the Polish murder action:
"p. 57" "Translation of obituary notice from Deutsche Rundschau, 18
October 1939"
In true fulfilment of their service to people and Church of the homeland,
the following clergymen and church officials of our church district, insofar
as could thus far be determined beyond doubt, died during the days of the
liberation, either killed by Polish murder gangs or as a result of exhaustion
during long marches: Rev. Friedrich Tuft of Sienno 55 years of age, in
the 29th year of his ministry. Murdered on 1 September 1939 in Sienno.
Rev. Richard Rutzer of Bromberg-Jaegerhof 48 years of age, in the 10th
year of his ministry. Murdered on 3 September 1939 in Bromberg-Jaegerhof
Deacon Willy Lubnau of Posen District Trombone Guard in the Evangelical
Young Men's Work 39 years of age, murdered on 10 September 1939, near Rutno.
Rev. Emil Mix of Strelno 64 years of age, in the 48th year of his ministry.
Died in the "House of Mercy" in Lodz on 20 September 1939, as a result
of severe mistreatment suffered on the march to Lowitich. Superintendant
Georg Reisel of Rentomischel 75 years of age, in the 46th year of his ministry.
Died on 12 September 1939 in the Deaconage of Posen, exhausted by interment.
Rev. Paul Rudolph of Graz 43 years of age, in the 24th year of his ministry.
Murdered on 10 September 1939 near Rostchen. Rev. Johannes Schwerdtseger
of Posen 48 years of age, in the 24th year of his ministry. Murdered on
10 September 1939 near Rutno Rev. Johannes Tauber in Sontop 47 years of
age, in the 15th year of his ministry. Murdered on 10 September 1939 near
Rostschen The memory of these men will live on in our hearts forever. "No
man hath greater love than this, than to lay down his life for a friend."
John, 15:13 Posen, 16 October 1939 The Evangelical Consistorium and Synodol
Board of the United Evangelical Churches D. Blau Birschel General superintendant
President of the synod ------------------------------------------------------------
"p. 59"
"Translation of obituary notice from Deutsche Rundschau, 17 November
1939"
The unremitting search for those arrested and taken away during the
first days in September has proven beyond a certainty that, in addition
to the victims already reported by us, the following Christian clergymen
from our Evangelical Church were killed by Polish murder gangs: Rev. Oskar
Reder In Roglino, 63 years of age, in the 36th year of his ministry. Shot
in early September near Thobecz. Rev. Ernst Reinitz, Graduate in Theology
In Czempin, teacher at the Theological University of Posen, 44 years of
age, in the 17th year of his ministry. Murdered in early September near
Turek. Rev. Henz Werner In Czin, 34 years of age, in the 10th year of his
ministry. Murdered during the night of 4-5 September in Hohensalza. Rev.
Wilhelm Borgmann In Rendstadt-bei-Pinne, 30 years of age, in the 3rd year
of his ministry. Shot on 4 September near Rostchen. Pitar Mark Riede In
Schwiegel, 25 years of age. Murdered on 8 September at Turek. The memory
of these men will live on in our hearts forever. "Remain true unto death,
and I will give you the crown of life." Revelations 2:10 Posen, 11 November
1939 The Evangelical Consistorium and Synodal Council of the United Evangelical
Church D. Blau Birschel General Superintendant President of the synod ---------------------------------------------------------
It is impossible to describe all the cruelty that millions of people
were condemned to suffer merely because they were German, in an event which
would certainly never have taken place if the Polish people had not been
incited by their intelligentsia and their fanatical clerical leadership.
The persons responsible can never wash themselves clean from their
guilt. It is a crime for which there is only one redmption: that is, to
look at their own souls, and turn to their own people and tell the truth.
The official records from September 1939 show that many Poles who committed
horrible crimes against their German neighbours, weepingly exclaimed that
they didn't know how they could have been capable of such deeds, had they
not been incited to such an extent; it was believed that if the priests
demanded it, they had to do it.
As a further proof of clerical encouragement, I quote the following
text of a prayer embroidered by a Polish Christian into the priestly raiment:
"O Lord, give strength to our hands, accuracy to our cannons, resistance
to our tanks, invisibility to our planes, speed and universality to our
gases; give them the sign which is equivalent to your Holy Love.
"In the name of the Holy Love with which you love us, may the enemy
sink down like grass, mowed by the scythe of your justice. May their women
and their land be unfruitful, may their children go begging, and their
daughters fall victim to rape. May their bullets and artillery shells fall
in the grass like little lambs, and ours tear the heart out of the enemy
like tigers, and may they finally go blind. "Our soul is the same as one
thousand years ago. It hates the enemy and spares him not.
So pardon not the godless, but punish them; so that they may cease
to do us harm; and please do not hinder us when we kill them. "For now
and forever, and for all Eternity. Amen."
The author of this "prayer" was the Polish Catholic priest Mieszko
Uszerski. It was distributed as a postcard in the 1930s, along with a "map
of the Greater Polish Empire" -- also printed on a postcard -- which included
Berlin and parts of Czechoslavakia.
The "enemy" was understood to be exclusively German, in whose extermination
the great majority of the Polish people saw the panacea for all the ills
of humanity.
This is only one example of flood of anti-German incitement and the
rage to destroy which explains the explusion of one million Germans after
the First World War, the murder of thousands of Germans on Bloody Sunday
in Bromberg on the third day after the beginning of the Second World War
in 1939, as well as the most brutal, and total extermination of many
Millions of innocent civilians smelling as much of "German ethnicity" East
of the Oder/Neisse Line.
This "prayer" by an allegedly Christian priest, inoculating his flock
with chauvinistic hatred, was quoted in the "Deutsche-Wochen Zeitung" of
22.1.1971. It cannot be objected that this is merely the temporary aberration
of a single priest: we have many other proofs as well.
The Polish Church has never disassociated itself from such clear expressions
of hatred or condemned them. They did not do so even in view of general
knowledge of the cruel murder orgy of Bromberg and the long lines of kidnapped
persons: rather, they were silent. Had they intervened, the atrocities
of Lamsdorff could never have taken place.
But down to the present day, not a word of disassociation or condemnation
of the criminals has ever been uttered, not a single criminal has been
brought before a court.
This shows that they approve of the murder of ethnic Germans, and stubbornly
defend the theft of German land. In so doing, the highest representative
of the Polish Church, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, stands forth so prominantly
that he even declared, in God's House, Breslau Cathedral, that Poland had
regained its own property, that the very stones spoke Polish, that it was
not the German soul that inhabited this cathedral, but the Polish.
Is the Polish Church really Christian? Or is it exclusively Polish,
pursuing other objectives which the same Cardinal revealed when he said:
"The greatest Counter-Reformation in history began in 1945!"
The explusion of nearly 15 million people from their centuries-old homeland
was obviously a step towards this Counter-Reformation, since this same
Polish clerical has admitted that the Lutheran Reformation was reversed
in the reconquered areas.
Let us remember the role played by the Primate of Poland Cardinal Hlond,
Cardinal Wyszynski's predecessor, in 1945, when he compelled the Administrator
of the Bishopric of Breslau, the chapter vicar Dr. Ferdinand Piontek, to
waive his jurisdiction beyond the Oder-Neisse Line.
He claimed to be acting on behalf of the Vatican, but it later turned
out that Pope Pius XII had no knowledge of the matter.
When the Breslau University Councillor Dr. Kaps informed the Pope of
Hlond's actions in detail, Pope Pius XII is said to have been very upset,
saying, "We didn't wish that".
This is significant proof of the evil role of the Polish Church in
politics. It shows quite clearly that it does not travel the narrow path
of virtue, but uses every instrument to achieve its goals, even lying and
swindling.
The Axel Springer publishing house in Berlin revealed Cardinal Hlond's
role under the headline "Polish Cardinal Tricks Papal Nuntius"; at least,
according to the "Homeland Letter of the Catholics of the Archbishop of
Breslau" no. 3/1977.
---------- "Translation of illustration p. 38-39" Poster of the "Polish
Protective Association" of "Anti-German Week", 21 - 28 November 1930 Translation
of text: "Away, Prussia! We Are Repeating Grunwald!" Grunwald is the Polish
name for the battle of Tannenberg in 1410, in which the Poles gained a
victory against the Teutonic Knights due to the betrayal of the German
positions. The German in this illustration is depicted as fat, brutal,
beastly -- a monster. The Pole, by contrast, is slim, resolute -- the picture
of nobility! ---------------------------------------------------------
"page 50"
The Poles reveal their attitude towards us at every possible opportunity
-- including banners on the streets during their never-ending strikes.
Their attitude is that they neither forgive nor forget, even though they
are responsible for their own misfortune.
But that is suppressed and denied; the Poles have always been the only
angels of innocence in the whole world.
And the German fool always turns the right cheek even when he has just
received a powerful buffet on the left one; he never sees his own rights,
only those of others, no matter how lying and arrogant.
And because the whole world knows this, every kind of disgraceful act
is permitted against him: it is always endured.
Might I be permitted at this point to provide additional proof of the
anti-German attitude of the Polish intelligentsia, making it particularly
clear that Polish Christian beliefs are dependent on whether certain circumstances
and events turn in their favour or to their disadvantage.
The proof is a letter from Pope XII to the German bishops, in which
he expresses an opinion on events in the East and on the expulsion of the
Germans, together with the reaction of the Polish university teachers.
The Papal letter of 1 March 1948 reads in part as follows: "The refugees
from the East will always deserve special consideration, expelled as they
were from their homeland in the East by force, expropriated without compensation,
and sent to the German zones.
When we come to speak of them we are not so much concerned with the
legal, economic, and political point of view of this procedure, which is
without parallel in European history.
History will be the judge of the above mentioned points of view. We
fear that its verdict will be unfavourable.
We believe we know what happened during the war years in the broad
expanses from the Weichsel to the Volga.
But was it permissible, in retaliation, to expel twelve million people
from their homes and farms, and expose them to misery?
Are not the victims of every retaliation, in their majority, people
who took no part in the events and misdeeds which took place, who had no
influence over them? And were these measures politically reasonable or
economically responsible, when one considers the living needs of the German
people, in addition to the well-being of all of Europe?
Is it unrealistic for us to hope and desire that all participants may
come to a more tranquil view of things, and make these events reversible
insofar as that is still possible?..."
The pious Poles, who are so fond of their churches, nevertheless showed
the value to them of an appeal from a Pope who was not a Pole.
Three months later, the university teachers of Cracow replied in a
sharp counter resolution. This answer is so interesting, and provides such
an insight into the character of educated Poles in particular, that one
can never read this reply often enough.
Envy and hatred ring throughout it, since the Pope had found words
of mercy and love for the victims of explusion, but not for the Poles.
"We, the undersigned Rectors, Deacons, and Professors of the University,
hereby affirm:
1) We decisively reject the unjustified opinion of the Pope regarding
the question of our Western borders, which are not negotiable. The Western
territories are, and remain, an integral part of the New Poland.
2) The statement of the Pope that 12 million germans were expelled,
reflects neither the facts nor the truth, since only 2,155,000 Germans
were resettled to Germany, and this in a manner which differed considerably
from the methods employed by the Germans.
3) In his letter, the Pope speaks of the 'proud achievements of Catholic
Germany in Breslau', thereby forgetting that Wrocklaw was for centuries
the seat of a Polish bishop and part of the Polish state, which was governed
by Catholic kings.
4) The letter of the Pope is characterised by love, friendship and
mercy with regards to the Germans. The Pope addresses the Germans 'Dear
Sons and Honourable Brethren', calling them a Christian people, which 'has
a double right to know that the heart and concern of a Shepherd of the
Representative of Christ stands nearby them'. The resettlement of the Germans
from Poland is termed by the Pope a 'procedure without parallel in European
history'.
Unfortunately, the Pope found no such words for us when the Germans
killed millions of Poles, in a manner truly without parallel in the history
of mankind, nor when, in an equally unparalleled manner, they arrested
outstanding personalities from the Polish sciences, professors from the
oldest universities in Poland, and one of the oldest universities in Europe,
as well as from other academic institutions, and caused them to die slowly
in Dachau and Oranienburg; nor did he do so when they arrested Polish Catholic
priests -- patriots -- and tortured them in camps.
The Pope did not protest against the gas chambers and crematoria of
Auschwitz, Maidenek, and Treblinka, nor did he call this 'a crime without
parallel in European history.'
" This answer to Pope Pius XII proves the peculiar attitude of the Poles
to the Head of the Church.
They do not hesitate in the slightest to accuse the Pope of injustice
and untruthfulness (that is, lying), or of preferring the Germans over
the Poles. They could not possibly provide Christ's Representative at the
Holy See of St. Peter with a clearer proof of the envy and ill will, the
hatred and abhorrance, which they have always felt towards the Germans
than this letter, in which they turn history completely upside down, since
the Rectors, Deacons and University Professors obviously believe that Pope
Pius XII is unaware of the history of the German East.
This reveals the boundless arrogance of the intellectual classes in
Poland, which does not hesitate to attack the Christian Catholic Head of
the Church with a contempt "which has no parallel", since he dares to demand
justice and humanity for the Germans whom they hate so much.
This is the perfect answer to Kurt Lueck's question: do the Poles really
think they are proving their greatness through an incomparable contempt
for history? These honourable gentlemen refer to the "oldest universities
in Europe", as if their founding had been the work of the Poles. But there
is nothing unique in this procedure; they have always laid claim to everything
to which they had no fundamental right.
This what they did with Nicholas Copernicus, with Veit Stoss, and an
endless list of other Germans who lived and worked in Poland to the benefit
of the land and its people. They continue to do so at the present time,
even with the ethically German Father Maximilian Kolbe, whom they also
wish to claim for their own due to his Catholic faith, since, in keeping
with the formula "Catholic means Polish, and Polish means Catholic", the
Catholic Kolbe was also transformed into a Pole. Kolbe was most certainly
an extraordinary man, and he took his Christian beliefs seriously, but
does that make him a Pole?
Kolbe's life story is told in the script "Father Maximilian Kolbe --
Hero of Auschwitz" by Franz Lesch, OFM Conv. Radio Vatican: we learn that
he was born the second of 5 children in a working class family, and was
named Raimund. Zdunska-Wola, his birthplace, is a city adjacent to mighty
industrial city of Lodz.
His father was a weaver. The father's first name is nowhere mentioned,
but since the boy was given the name of Raimund, which was not common anywhere
in Poland, we must assume that his parents came from the Austrian part
of Silesia, where this first name occurs frequently, that they emigrated
to the booming German textile city Lodz, and settled in Zdunksa Wola, which
is also German.
The name Kolbe is so unequivocal that it leads necessarily to the conclusion,
in combination with the baptismal name of Raimund, that Kolbe was a German
by birth. At the time of this birth in 1894 there was no such nation as
Poland.
It was, however, an era during which Silesian weavers, due to the misery
of their own homelands, emigrated to seek new homes. The industrial city
of Lodz and the surrounding areas offered both bread and work. None of
these hard-working German weavers ever went to "Poland", but rather to
the city of Lodz, which was under Russian sovereignty.
"Translator's note: The Czarist administration of Poland was enormously
beneficial to the Poles, abolishing the privileges of the nobles and leading
to unprecedented prosperity among the peasantry and middle classes."
That the young boy was accepted into the university to study the humanities,
was the result of his gifts; that he was accepted into the Holy Order of
Francis of Assissi at the age of 16 is no proof of Polish nationality either.
During the following period, he was sent to Rome to continue his theological
studies at the Papal University. In Rome, he fell ill with consumption.
In January 1917 in Rome, he had a experience which proved decisive to his
life.
Father Lesch describes this in the above mentioned short book: "The
Freemasons were celebrating the 200th anniversary of the founding of their
craft. At the same time, they were unsparing in their words: 'The Devil
will reign in the Vatican, and the Pole will serve him as a Swiss guard.'
Kolbe described this event in 1941 in the following words: 'These men,
divorced from God, are in a state of misery. Such deadly hatred of the
Church and Christ's Representative on Earth is not the work of mere individuals,
but is the result of systematic activities ultimately rooted in Freemasonry.'
"To hold out a helping hand to these unhappy men, to help all to a blessed
life, under the protection and through the interception of the Immaculate
Virgin Mary, Maximilian, together with six fellow brethren on 17 October
1917, in the college of the order in Rome, founded the 'combat troops of
the Immaculate', the 'Militati Immaculatea' (MI), known in the German language
as the 'Kreuzzug' "Crusade".
The founding documents state that its objective was the redemption
of sinners, heretics, schismatics, but especially Freemasons, together
with the healing of all men. What an ecumenical document! "At 23 years
of age, while still a sub-deacon, Kolbe became the father of a worldwide
movement which had no lesser aim than to lead the whole world to God in
such a manner as to enable Him to dwell in all."
From this and other statements, it is clear that Father Kolbe was motivated
by a general love of humanity which recognized no nationalities, only service
and love, but never hatred of any kind: a quality of character typically
characteristic of no other people as much as the self-sacrificing Germans.
There is no people on earth which, apart from its other good and bad qualities,
so converts this humility and dedication, this love of its enemies and
renunciation of its own living rights, into action. It is precisely this
characteristic which, in addition to his German name, Raimund Kolbe, confirms
that he was a German and not a Pole.
This fact is in no way exceptional. Another example is readily available
in the person of a Catholic politician of the present day, who, though
he knows nothing whatsoever about Poland, calls himself a "committed friend
of Poland and Polish history", and, what is more, proclaims that that he
is in no sense a German nationalist.
If he had lived in Poland, as was the case with Father Kolbe, the Poles
would naturally claim him as one of their own, since after all, he is a
Catholic, and full of friendship for the Polish people. The remarks of
this politician, the then Federal Representative Dr. Helmut Kohl, on 19
February 1976 in the German Bundestag, as reported in the official stenographic
record, read as follows:
"We have said that it is natural, based on the great tradition of the
German Centre Party, to which my family belongs and in whose tradition
I was raised, not having experienced the period personally, to take a pro-Polish
position...
"I assure you, Mr. Chancellor, that you are entirely correct in your
impression. No German nationalist, no committed enemy of Poland, sits before
you here, but rather, a committed friend of Polish history, of the Polish
future, and, above all, of the Polish people."
Dr. Kohl, according to his own admission, is first of all a Catholic,
and loves the Polish people above all else. Since he is no German nationalist,
but rather a committed friend of Poland, the Polish people, and the Polish
future, is he then no longer a true German, in keeping with the logic of
Professor Wadyslaw Markiewiscz?
And can he be therefore be claimed as a Pole by the Polish people,
like Raimund Kolbe, who recognized no nationalities, and was only a Catholic?
Father Kolbe's fellow prisoners in Auschwitz testified that he felt no
hatred, not even of the Germans who had put him in the camp and who guarded
or drove him; rather, he at all times urged only peace and love, which
are certainly not Polish character traits, since Polish history supplies
us solely with proofs to the contrary.
Whether Father Kolbe served as a missionary in China, Japan or Poland,
was indifferent to him, as may be seen from the many stories and obituaries
written about him. His concern was exclusively the Catholic mission, and
his particular vocation was the order of the "Militati Immaculatae", which
he founded.
According to the founding documents, the order was not concerned with
Poles, but the conversion of all sinners, particularly the Freemasons,
followed by the healing of all men. But that is not the aim of the Poles,
since they claim Heaven for themselves alone, turning the Mother of Jesus
into the "Queen of Poland", that is, a worldly regent, who can, and must,
reign solely for one single people, and who must, and therefore does, only
speak Polish. But this was not Father Kolbe's view: when he served as a
missionary in China and Japan, his order was called the "Immaculate Virgin
Mary", not the "Queen of Poland".
He could hardly have converted any Chinese or Japanese in the name
of a Polish queen!
At his canonization, he was represented as the symbol of all reconciliation.
But in reality, this symbol of universal reconciliation and love of humanity
has been turned into a symbol of eternal hatred of the Germans. That is
a Polish, not a German, method of procedure. In the past pages, I have
described how Polish literature and the fanatacal Polish priesthood have
used atrocity propaganda against all things German.
In literature and painting, the most horrifying atrocities were invented,
depicting the Germans as subhuman monsters, and the Poles as the most heroic
and noblest people in the world. Thus it is with the symbol of reconciliation
which they now wish to claim for themselves, allegedly because Kolbe was
of Polish blood.
Precisely the same kind of "Polish blood" as flowed in the veins of
Nicholas Copernicus, Veit Stoss, or Gottlieb Linde.
At the same time, no image, no book, no obituary, fails to recount
the most disgusting atrocities imaginable which this hero was allegedly
forced to endure at the hands of the Germans.
This is intended to bring anti-German disgust and hatred to a boil.
It is unceasingly hammered into Polish minds that the Germans murdered
their priests. At the same time, they never neglect to attribute the corresponding
qualities to the Germans: the blood-drenched hangmen, SS torturers, slaves
doomed to extinction, executioners, and anything else which could be invented
by the noble Poles, nothing is missing. The black-white caricature of evil
vs. good is drawn to perfection. Everyone is forced to participate. On
the back cover of the little book by Father Lesch from the Vatican is an
afterword signed by Cardinal Wojtyla, containing the epithet "Bloody
Fritz".
This is another indication of this "high dignitary's" true priorities,
since the epithet "Bloody Fritz" is intended as an incitement to hatred.
The man to whom the afterword was dedicated was of far greater nobility
than the man who wrote it, since all witnesses agree that Father Kolbe
never spoke a word of contempt or hatred, but taught only peace and love.
This type of remark from a "Man of God" is certainly not in
the spirit of Maximilian Kolbe, who was a German by birth by the name of
Raimund Kolbe. We do not doubt the descriptions of his life and dedication,
we simply wish to delve further into the legend of his death, i.e., his
alleged murder, since the stories abound with so many contradictions.
Again, we wish to point to the misuse of religion for political purposes.
First, it must be kept in mind that Kolbe, at the time of his death,
was dangerously ill with tuberculosis -- very active tuberculosis -- as
Father Lesch and others never fail to mention.
He therefore identified himself entirely with the thought of the sacrificing
his life for others. He even requested this very sacrifice.
Father Lesch reports that Kolbe repeatedly, voluntarily, and constantly
did without bread and tea -- even medical treatment -- to prove his Christian
humility and service.
His incurable tuberculosis may have been partially responsible for
this longing for death. Let us now turn to the available -- and unavailable
-- Auschwitz documents concerning Father Maximilian Kolbe.
From a letter from the Auschwitz State Museum dated 21.10.1977, we
learn that "due to the destruction of the majority of the documents by
the SS camp administration, the file of death records for Maximilian Kolbe
is unavailable.
But the individual document from the registry office, i.e, the "individual
certificate", is available.
As such a certificate, the cloister at Niepokolanow, upon request,
issues a photocopy of a letter of the last alleged eyewitness. I have translated
this letter, and reproduce it in its entirety as follows, since it contains
allegations which are so monstrous that they cannot reflect the truth:
"Chorow, 27 December 1945 "To the administration of the 'Knights of
the Immaculatae' in Niepokolanow "Upon reading the article 'Remembrance:
the last days of Pastor O. Maximilian Kolbe' in the December issue of the
'Knights', I wish to describe his last days in the underground bunker of
the Auschwitz camp.
"I was then working as writer and interpreter "!" in the mentioned
bunker, and due to this noble man's extraordinary behaviour in the face
of death, which inspired admiration even among the SS men, I still remember
his last days exactly.
"Block 13, at the right end of the camp, was surrounded by a 6 meter
high wall. Under the earth were cells, on the other hand in the ground
floor the penal company was located. In many cells, there were small windows
and bunks; others had no windows or bunks, and were completely dark. In
one of the latter cells in July 1941 after the evening roll call, 10 prisoners
were led out of block 14.
Before the block, they were ordered to strip naked, after which these
poor souls were pushed into the darkness, where 20 unhappy victims from
the previous group were already confined, also naked. All new arrivals
were led into one cell. Upon being locked into the cells the SS men laughed,
'You'll shrink like tulips'.
From this day onwards, the prisoners received no food at all. At the
daily inspection, the SS men on Block 13 were ordered to take out the dead
from the night. I was always present during these visits, since I noted
the numbers of the dead and had to interpret possible conversations and
requests of the prisoners from Polish into German "Translator's note: they
were killed in the cruelest manner possible by the Germans, but interpreters
were provided to serve as convenient witnesses".
From the cells in which the unhappy victims were located, came loud
daily prayers, rosary recitations, and songs in which the prisoners in
the neighbouring cells participated. At times, when the SS crew was not
present, I went into the bunker to speak to my colleagues and to cheer
them up. Heartfelt greetings and songs from the suffering to the Holy Mother
could be heard from all entrances to the bunker. I had the feeling I was
in church.
Father Kolbe spoke, and the prisoners answered in a chorus. They were
so deeply absorbed in prayers, that they didn't even notice the SS men
spying on them. They only fell silent when the SS shouted loudly. When
the cells were opened, the sufferers begged for a bit of bread or water,
but they didn't get it.
When one of the stronger prisoners approached the door, he was struck
blows in the abdomen so that he fell over backwards and hit the hard cement
floor and was killed, or was shot. The degree of torment the prisoners
had to endure before their death is shown by the fact that the latrines
were always dry and empty; hence we may conclude that the unfortunates
had to drink their own urine due to their great thirst.
Kolbe himself kept himself apart. He didn't complain, and asked for
nothing. He gave. He consoled his fellow prisoners, saying that the departed
would be all right, and that the prisoners would be released. Since they
were already very weak, they prayed only very softly. During inspections,
the priest Kolbe could be seen standing or kneeling in the midst with a
peaceful expression, looking out upon the world, while all the others already
lay on the floor.
The SS, who recognized his dedication and saw that all the others in
the cells had died guiltlessly, came to have a great respect for Kolbe
and told each other 'that priest there is really a really decent person.
We never had one like him here before'. Thus 2 weeks passed. In the
meantime, one after the other died, until after 3 weeks, only 4 were left
alive, including Kolbe. That seemed too long to the camp administration.
The cell was needed for new victims. Therefore, they fetched the leader
of the hospital, a German with the criminal name of Bock, who gave each
one of them an injection of carbolic acid in the veins of the left hand.
Kolbe, with a prayer on his lips, held out his arm to his murderer. I could
not look. Pretending that I had work in the office, I left the room.
After the SS had left the room with the murderer, I returned immediately,
and found Kolbe in a sitting position with his back against the wall, his
eyes open, and his head leaning to one side. The peaceful, pure face was
beaming.
Together with the barber on the block, Chlebik, I bore the body of
this hero to the washroom. There he was laid into a box and taken away.
Thus disappeared the heroic priest of Auschwitz camp, freely sacrificing
himself for the father of a family, peaceful and still, praying until the
last moment.
For several months in the camp, everyone thought of the heroic deed
of the priest; the name Kolbe was mentioned at every execution. The impressions
I had of this event will remain in my memory forever.
I could not confide the details of Kolbe's last days to the priest
K. Szweda, since any violation of secrecy about the building was punished
by death. Some time later, the priest Szweda was transferred to Dachau,
and we didn't see him any more. I have just now accidentally received the
December issue from my colleagues Hornika from Chorzow, and decided to
write this letter immediately. With sincere best wishes and Gods blessings,
I remain, Faithfully, Borgowiec Bruno."
Now. The German occupation troops had already withdrawn from Poland
by January - February 1945. But the last "eyewitness" kept the secret of
the Kolbe's death all to himself until the end of December; that is, no
one showed any interest in the manner of Kolbe's death until then, obviously
because there was nothing remarkable about it.
From December 1945 onwards, however, it was different. The death records
-- i.e., documents from the internment period -- were unfortunately lost,
but a "death certificate" is available. There was also a last "eyewitness",
and he was alleged to have made this report. I have spoken to a doctor
about this report. Here is what he says:
1. No healthy man, let alone someone suffering from tuberculosis, could
survive 2 or even 3 weeks naked in a dark cell, on a bare cement floor,
without any food or water. Thirst and cold would have caused very rapid
death.
2. The latrines are said to have been dry and empty because the prisoners
allegedly drank their own urine due to severe thirst. But if they had done
that, they would have died much more quickly, since all the toxic substances
of the body are concentrated in the urine, which is excreted precisely
so that the body may be free of these toxins. If the prisoners had satisfied
their thirst in this unappetizing manner, they would have re-ingested these
toxins into their bodies, and would have rapidly died from poisoning. (A
question from the doctor: if the latrines were dry and empty, did they
also eat their own excrement?
Even when they suffered from diarrhoea, which would have been inevitable?)
3. After 3 weeks naked on a cold cement floor with active tuberculosis,
Kolbe allegedly continued to stand or kneel in the middle of the cell,
praying loudly, consoling his last fellow prisoners! And all this time,
they never received a drop of water! That would have been impossible even
for a Hercules.
4. The last 4 prisoners are said to have been killed with an injection
in the left hand, with carbolic acid, no less. This was surely the first
time in the history of medicine that carbolic acid has ever been used for
such a purpose; to a doctor, this is completely incredible.
5. The witness reported that any violation of secrecy about the building
was punishable by death, that is, the killing was to remain secret. But
carbolic acid is a strongly-smelling substance which betrays its own presence.
And now I must add a 6th objection. The death records were lost, of course,
but the X-ray records survived. According to these records, Kolbe was X-rayed
on two occasions, on 28 July 1941 for the last time!
The witness speaks of confinement in a dark cell for 3 weeks, from
July to 14 August 1941. That means that Kolbe was taken out of his dark
cell to be given a quick X-ray, just before his intended murder!
What curious people these Germans are! The fact that Kolbe was X-rayed
on 28 July 1941 proves that his active tuberculosis was given medical treatment,
and that he was not held in any "death bunker", since it is inconceivable
that the Germans would have taken him out to X-ray him. This therefore
proves that the letter from this "Borgowiec" is a fabrication.
The purpose of the fabrication is clearly revealed at the end of the
sworn statement of the person for whom Kolbe allegedly sacrificed his life.
This sworn statement is dated even later than the Borgowiec's statement,
i.e, 25 October 1946, more than 5 years after the alleged events!
It does do not restrict itself to the facts, but extends to Kolbe's
future beatification and canonization, which is obviously the purpose for
which the statement was drawn up and written. "I drew the lot. With the
words, 'oh, my wife and my children, whom I must leave as orphans....',
I went to the end of the block. I was doomed to go and starve to death
in the hunger block. Father Maximilian Kolbe and a Minority Father from
Niepokolanow heard these words. He stepped out of the ranks went to the
camp leader and tried to kiss his hand (!). "What does the Polish pig want?",
Fritsch asked the interpreter.
Father Maximilian pointed to me with his finger, and declared himself
ready to go to his death for me. With a corresponding movement of his hand
and the word "Aus!", the camp leader called me out of the ranks of the
doomed, and Father Maximilian Kolbe took my place.
Shortly afterwards, they led them off to the death cells. They ordered
us to go to the blocks. At this point, it was difficult to resist the overpowering
impression which gripped me. I -- the condemned man -- was now to go on
living, while another sacrificed himself willingly for me! Was this a dream
or reality? ... Among our companions in suffering at Auschwitz, only voices
of admiration were to be heard for the priest's heroic sacrifice of his
own life for me. I grew up in the Catholic religion, and have kept my belief
throughout the hardest times of my life. Only religion gave me strength
and hope at these times. Father Maximilian Kolbe's sacrifice has further
strengthened my religious convictions, as well as my attachment to the
Catholic Church, which is able to produce such heroes.
The only thanks that I can offer my rescuer is a daily prayer, which
I say together with my wife." The rescued person whose life had been saved,
whose life was now given back to him, regardless of the overpowering impression
which Father Maximilian Kolbe's sacrifice made on him, felt no immediate
impulse to speak of the heroic sacrifice of the priest from his Church
and his people, or to give public thanks for his salvation, even after
the collapse of the German Reich, the evacuation of Auschwitz, and the
liberation of the prisoners.
Only one and a half years later did he sign a statement which was obviously
prepared because it had dawned on someone that the Church needed a new
Saint with which to kill two birds with one stone. First, a closer attachment
of the people to the Church, and secondly, the memorializing of eternal
anti-German hatred, since the simultaneous beatification and later canonization
would provide plentiful opportunity to harp on German crimes.
The Kolbe case was intended to establish German inhumanity even if
all the other lies and atrocity stories were proven false. In so doing,
they didn't limit themselves to speaking of the priest's sacrificial death;
they used the opportunity to make renewed accusations of German crimes.
The intent is obvious, and destroys the effect, as Wilhelm Busch would
say. It must be stressed that Father Kolbe bears no guilt for this swindle.
In Poland, the Church, God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the clergy have
all been nationalized and conscripted into the national struggle.
And according to the motto that "Catholic means Polish", the Catholic
Kolbe is said to have been a Pole, just as in the 19th century, the villages
of Bamberg were made Polish right under the noses of the Prussian government.
The total misunderstanding of this process in Germany, and the indifference
of Germans abroad for all the problems of ethnic Germans in Poland, contribute
to this process and are equivalent to aiding and abetting in it.
How could it otherwise have been possible to confiscate the churches
from their Evangelical believers, not only after the German collapse, but
even today? "Marienkirche in Danzig (Church of Mary) the biggest Protestant
Church in Europe of Gothic design, is but one of them."
Evangelical churches are still occupied by the Poles. This became particularly
widespread after Pope Wojtyla's first visit to their homeland!
This was reported in no. 1/82 of the "Anzeiger of the Emergency Administration
of the German East", as well as in some domestic newspapers and on German
television. The reports contained pleas from long-resident Evangelical
citizens of Mazur, weeping over the theft of their churches.
Even more shocking was the impudence of the Catholic clergy, who simply
declared that the confiscation of Evangelical churches in Poland was thoroughly
justified and no cause for anxiety, since there were many more Catholics
than Protestants in Mazur!
The procedure was described by the Lutheran pastor Firlas at Sehesten
in answer to questioning by reporters. Poles gathered in the locality,
and then approached the Evangelical church in the form of a procession.
Adults and old people, as well as children, approached the church carrying
candles in their hands. The locks on the church doors had already been
broken open. The churches were guarded day and night. Signs were posted
on the church doorways stating that entrance was forbidden to Evangelicals.
Pastor Firlas says: "We protest against this thievery and robbery.
Relations between Evangelicals and Catholics have been damaged, because
we cannot live in friendship if the Catholic priests steal our churches.
The Catholic Church walks over corpses to achieve its goals.
The Church is fanatical, and this has worsened since a Pole became
Pope.
There can be no question of ecumenicalism. A total of 12 churches have
been occupied. The churches are guarded day and night." A Catholic priest
was also interrogated by reporters on the occupation of churches. Here
is his answer: "The great number of Catholics here in Poland justifies
the actions of members of the municipality, who acted without my knowledge.
The Protestants here have 5 churches, and needed only 1.
The others are empty and falling into neglect. We have so few churches
here in the northern region -- and only small churches -- and the municipality
is a big one. I believe that the Protestants are satisfied that their churches
are now in better hands.
We do not forbid them entrance." When questioned by the reporter on
the occupation of churches by violence, the answer was: "Occupation, yes...
but a guard is necessary. It ensures that the Protestants cannot come and
try to get in."
Nothing can exceed the impudence of this "Christian" clerical after
this. He has the stolen churches guarded so that the victimized owners
can no longer gain entrance, and at the same time he claims that entrance
is not forbidden to them!
He justifies occupation by violence on the grounds of the great number
of Catholics, and even claims that Evangelicals are glad that the churches
were stolen from them, since they are now in better hands!
In view of such shamelessness, it is superfluous to ask how one can
pray in such stolen churches.
The clergyman Firlas attempted to alarm his brothers in the faith in
the West. He turned to the ecumenical churches of Germany, to the World
Association of Lutherans, and the Evangelical Churches of Germany for support.
But they all refused to intervene, speaking of mere "Polish political
conflicts".
This is the cowardly manner in which they abandon their brothers in
the faith. Reverend Firlas sees the increasing homelessness of the Lutherans
in Mazur, and doesn't know what to do.
The Poles say anyone who is a Catholic is a Pole, and that all the
Protestants are Germans.
But the Germans leave their countrymen in the lurch, saying it's only
a problem of Germans in a foreign country; thus are Germans abandoned by
the faith, and not just in the East.
Poland has always attempted to eradicate minorities. The Catholic Churches
now sense that their power is increasing; against this background, an anti-ecumenical
spirit is also on the rise, particularly, a rejection of minorities: chauvinism
and nationalism are also growing.
Intolerance of everything which is not Polish gives rise to hatred;
despite this, their worldwide propaganda claims that they are a tolerant
and highly moral people.
They have, so to speak, laid claim to a monopoly on morals, in an arrogance
which is second to none.
The violent occupation of churches shows the effects of bad spiritual
examples, even decades later.
Speaking in Breslau Cathedral, the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Wszysynski,
declared: "When we look at these Houses of God, we know that we have not
taken German soil. It is not the German soul which speaks from these stones.
These buildings have waited and waited, and have finally returned to
Polish hands."
But history shows that it is not the Polish soul which speaks from
one single stone of Breslau Cathedral, because "Catholic" doesn't mean
"Polish".
But the example given above constitutes a free licence for every kind
of thievery, even that of Lutheran churches, since the Polish majority
need them. It never even occurs to them to build churches of their own.
They have no sense left of justice left; these "pious Christians" have
simply set aside the Seventh Commandment.
This Polish attitude also reveals another aspect to these developments
which should not be overlooked, since it is of enormous importance to us.
The Poles advocate marriage with large families. Seven to nine children
are desired by them. Lech Walesa even has eight children. He is a model
to the masses.
If this continues -- and that is a certainty, since it is the Germans
who feed these blessings in the form of Polish children -- the Poles can
look forward to a population of 60 to 70 million people by the year 2000.
Here in Germany, by contrast, the opposite will have occurred: we will
have shrunk to 60 million at the most.
In my first publication, I showed, based on a map published in Poland,
that German regions as far north as Bremen and as far south as Munich have
already been declared "originally Slavic regions" by the Poles.
There are already a great many people writing "letters to the editor
-- in Hamburg, Luebeck, Lueneberg -- in an attempt to support this contention.
Since the Catholic priest at Sehesten justified the violent occupation
of the Evangelical churches through the greater numbers of Catholic believers
while Evangelical churches stood empty, we must be prepared to be treated
in exactly the same manner in Germany.
Of course, it will then be said that we are "satisfied to see our country
in better hands"! This is the policy which has received the blessing of
the Polish Pope with the aid of German Catholics, who send countless millions
and millions of packages full of valuable goods as love offerings to Polish
babies -- postage paid! -- who will expel us as soon as they are able to
do so, just as they expelled 15 million Germans in 1945.
The German worship of everything Polish blinds us to Polish realities.
German Catholicism cannot be equated with Polish Catholicism, because
German Catholicism lacks any national component, while Polish Catholicism
has given birth to a nationalism, even chauvinism, which recognizes no
borders.
A people which, as history shows, has never been able to govern itself,
is following a policy which, in its megalomania and lust for power, must
lead to an explosion of violence between nations. German Catholicism is
jointly guilty in this, since it only sees only the foreground of Polish
economic misery and not the background of the Polish lust for power.
Constant German assistance encourages the Poles to rely upon help from
abroad, while continuing to refuse to work. Germany is occupied territory
too, but the German people work hard. We have no freedom of action either,
nor are we sovereign in our politics, but nobody goes on strike because
of it.
Our trade unions have not, so far, demanded 3 years maternal leave
for the birth of each child, as established by Solidarnosc in the Danzig
agreement.
In Germany, we seem to be too poor to have children of our own, but
the bankrupt Poles, by contrast, can afford 7 to 9 children per family,
and 3 years maternal leave for the mother!
What's the point of talking about working women? 1 child every 3 years,
and there won't be a single day left for any paid work! And the stupid
Germans pay for it all! And what thanks will we get?
When this "Polish Master Race"" runs out of space in its border
territories -- which are already stolen land -- they will move westwards,
over the border.
At this point, it will be too late for the stupid Germans. The whole
point of Polish policy is to reverse the Reformation in the Lutheran areas,
as the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Wyszynski, already expressly indicated
speaking of the regions stolen so far.
The German people must recognize this. But the Polish people must also
realize
that every people has a right to the type of faith which is compatible
with its own ethnic heritage; that medieval-style religious warfare will
not necessarily end with the victory of the Polish Church.
They have already stolen part of the religious heritage of the Lutheran
Masuren, and deprived the rest of their lives of meaning, as the victims
complained on television. This has not helped the reputation of the Poles,
since the theft could not remain concealed. The Germans have always been
prepared for reconciliation and peace, but this presupposes that the opposite
side must call a halt to its attacks and its lies, put an end to its insults,
recognize its artificially generated hatred for what it is, and renounce
it; that it pay a tribute to truth, both past and present; that it recognize
the extent of its own guilt, and call its own criminals exactly what they
are, and bring them to trial, which is what every state with any culture
would do.
If Poland wishes to be a European state with any culture, then it must
behave like a state with some culture, instead of allowing criminals to
be protected by priests.
As Bishop Dr. Wetter, upon leaving office in Speyer, said to his congregation
in his final address: "We must succeed in reducing hostilities in the hearts
of men, but on both sides. I expressly say: 'on both sides'; since only
then will there be any prospect of peace."
Every day, the Germans prove -- through huge floods of assistance packages
-- that they bear no hostility in their hearts. They are waiting for the
Poles to renounce their unjustified hatred and evil libels. This, of course,
includes their lie letters about the death of Father Kolbe. Otherwise,
the prospects for peace will be nil.
Greatness is not revealed by hate and libel, as Polish authors believe.
As long as Germans are referred to as "mad dogs"
in Polish literature, we must reject reconciliation, despite our over-abundant
assistance.
It is shameless that one side should holds its hands constantly open
to receive love gifts worth millions, while at the same time, the givers
are hated so much that their very language is no longer tolerated.
Until 1990 the German language was strictly illegal in Poland, and
anyone who spoke German was, without mercy, thrown into jail!
The CDU Bundestag Representative Helmut Sauer spoke of this before
the Bundestag. Sauer, a Silesian, had taken part in his godfather's funeral
in Poland. When the clergyman, a German, spoke a few words of consolation
in German to the mourners in a German municipality in Poland, he was immediately
arrested.
His relatives only succeeded in obtaining his release by saying that
he could just as easily have said a few words in English or French. "Why
aren't these things called by their right name?" Representative Sauer asked
the Bundestag. And I ask the same question.
Why is this concealed from the German people? Why do German government
representatives have to conceal the excesses of the Poles?
The Poles cannot impose themselves through a lack of national dignity:
in reality, this can only lead to a contempt for them. And they show their
contempt for us openly, but the Germans are too stupid to notice. And if
they notice, they say nothing.
That is why Dr. Fritz Wittmann, a member of the Bundestag, expressly
stated, in the Danube Schwabian newspaper "Der Donauschwab" on 2 January
1983, no. 2, that the Polish authorities, especially the State Security
Service, ensure that ethnic Germans receive no consideration when assistance
shipments arrive from private individuals or charitable organizations.
Bundestag Representative Dr. Wittmann therefore requested all assistance
organizations to take special care that this discrimination be ended, its
existence be recognized, and made the object of public discussion. The
myth of the Germans in the Polish popular tradition and literature is strongly
in need of correction.
But it is up to us to demand this correction, and to do so with determination.
Finally, our politicians should understand that they were elected by the
German people, and not by the Poles, to look after German interests. Even
our churches should understand that religious freedom can only be ensured
when German priests -- both Evangelical and Catholic -- defend their own
people and protect them from defamation. I
t is not the responsibility of Christian clergymen to worry about misery
in foreign countries which is the foreigners' own fault, while neglecting
the misery of one's own people. "Brotherly love" means love for one's neighbour,
one's brother, one's friends, without asking which relgion they belong
to, instead of worrying about members of one's own religion in a foreign
country which hates us with all its soul.
My remarks are intended to serve the truth. Because truth, and only
truth, is the prelude to reconciliation.
Only a recognition of historical truth can lead to peace between the
peoples of Europe. As long as lies and defamation prevail, reconciliation
will not be achieved.
Bibliography: Franz Wolff. Ostgermanien "Eastern germany" Grabert Verlag,
Tuebingen, 1977Dr. Kurt Lueck: Der Mythos vom Deutschen in der polnischen
Volksueberlieferung und Literatur "The Myth of the Germans in Polish Popular
Tradition and Literature" Historische Gesellschaft im Wartheland Verlag
S. Hirzel, Leipzig, 1943 Dr. Kurt Lueck: Deutsche Aufbaukraefte in der
Entwicklung Polens - Forschungen zur deutsch-polnischen Nachbarschaft im
ostmitteleuropaeischen Raum "German Forces of Construction in the Development
of Poland - Research on German-Polish Relations in Central Europe" erlag
Guenther Wolff, Plauen im Vogtl. 1934 Dr.Enno Meyer: Deutschland und Polen
1772-1914 "Germany and Poland 1772- 1914" Ernst-Klett-Verlag, Stuttgart
Pater Franz Lesch O.F.M. Conv. Der Selige Maximilian Kolbe - Held von Auschwitz
"Father Maximilian Kolbe - Hero of Auschwitz" Vrlag "Friede und Heil" Wuerzeburg
und M.I. Franziskaner-Kloster, Freiburg, Switzerland UT Verlag: Aus dem
Archiv der Reichsregierung 650 Text- und Bilddokumente zur Vorgeschichte
des Zweiten Weltkrieges "From the Archives of the Reichs Government: 650
Text and Graphic Illustrations on the Preliminary History of the Second
World War".
Die Polnischen Greueltaten an den Volksdeutschen in Polen.
Im Auftrage des Auswaertigen Amtes auf Grund urkundischen Beweismaterials
zusammengestellt, bearbeitet und herausgegeben. Zweite ergaenzte Auflage
"Polish Atrocities Against Ethnic Germans in Poland.
On Behalf of the Foreign Office, based on Documentary Evidentiary Material.
Second Supplemented Edition" Berlin 1940. Heimatbrief der Katholiken des
Erzbistums Breslau no. 3/1977. Herausgegeben vom apostolischen Visitator
des Katholiken des Erybistums Breslau e V., Koeln "Letter Home from the
Catholics of the Archdiocese of Breslau no. 3/1977, published by the Apostolic
Visitator of the Catholics of the Archdiocese of Breslau e. V., Cologne".
elf-published by Elsie Loeser 1st edition 1983 tanslated by Carlos W. Porter.
sources for all information in translator's notes: 1911 Encylopaedia Britannica