Issues from the Second World War have intrigued me these past few years. Blame it on my 90-year old Polish neighbour.
By the time the Second World War was declared, Roman Goralski had left his farm, near the border of East Prussia, to join the Polish armed forces. Within weeks, he and his fellow soldiers were captured by Soviets who, like the Nazis, were scheming to carve up Poland, according to the pact between Hitler and Stalin.
On the forced march to L'vov, prisoner-of-war Goralski scoped out a field of haystacks. He gambled and zig-zagged away from the troops, risking bullets fired in his direction. He figured the Soviets did not have the time and manpower to leave their custodial duties and mount a search. He was right.
More risks awaited Goralski, until he was able to get past the German-occupied sector of Warsaw to connect with his brother and obtain civilian clothes. Goralski returned to his farm, only to find that it had been appropriated by the Nazis and given, instead, to German colonists from Byelorussia. Had it not been for a neighbour, who offered the Goralski family a substitute home, the outcome of this story would have been very different.
In the ensuing years, the Nazis ordered Goralski to go to Westphalia, in Germany, where he became forced labour.
In his accounts of the time, Goralski inspired me to write a story for young adults, I set it in Poland, circa 1942. But by the fourth chapter, I was stumped. I realized that I couldn't continue writing about a country I'd never tasted. It was time to travel. This, in spite of my uncooperative health.
It took me nine months to plan an itinerary that would combine an historical review with my literary and photographic goals. I began in London, England, where I viewed the exhibits at the Imperial War museum, as well as the photographic archives of two Polish institutes.
I next flew to Gdansk, from where I travelled throughout the country, seeking eleven museums, a little-known, mass grave in a rural forest, designated cemeteries, and several houses of worship.
I would have preferred an extra 6 months to better learn the basics of a language I barely know; it would have made communications with a variety of Poles a richer experience. But I could no longer postpone my search for answers to some persistent questions, among them:
- What was it about Poland that made it so vulnerable to aggressors from the West (Germany) and aggressors from the East (Soviet Union)?
- Why, after 60-plus years, do most people not know about ALL the millions who were persecuted and annihilated by the Nazis?
- Why is the generic term 'Holocaust' associated with six million Jews, whose memories are honoured in exhibits, literature and film, while others - reportedly five million - are given general and vague billing, if they are mentioned at all?
Obtaining answers would not be easy. In a world beset by partialities and political agendas, I could only hope for a compass pointing to intellectual honesty.
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In London, I visited The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum (PISM), the Polish Underground Study Trust (PUMST), and the Imperial War Museum (IWM-London).
PISM is the steward of artifacts and documentation from the Polish government-in-exile during the Second World War. That is, after the spring of 1940 when the Polish government fled Paris as the Nazis invaded France. With my interest in their photographic archives, from 1939 to the mid-forties, I buried my nose in PISM's basement one gorgeous Spring day.
Next, I reviewed the more extensive collection of photographs at PUMST, and spoke with its curator who confirmed what I had read and heard while I learned about nuances of which I was unaware.
In contrast, IWM-London offered only the slimmest of photographic archives on Poland; in fact, I found only one black and white image from 1942: that of Himmler visiting Stutthof, the first detainee camp for Polish political prisoners from what was then the Free City of Danzig. (Stutthof would become, as of 1942, a concentration camp for detainees of 25 nationalities who did not fit the desired profile of the Nazis.)
I chose to better spend my time visiting several exhibits at the IWM - the one in the lobby, focusing on the armaments of war, the one on intelligence and espionage, and the one on the Holocaust. They were all superbly presented.
Months earlier, I was referred to the Holocaust exhibition at IWM-London by a fellow writer, after I had voiced my concerns to our group over the partialities I was encountering on the reports of victims from the Second World War. I might as well have been talking to the wall. For the man who referred me to the Holocaust exhibition at IWM-London confirmed how entrenched are the partialities that have been promoted regarding the victims of the Second World War.
Allow me to explain.
Upon entering the Holocaust exhibition, we learn about the stories of Jewish victims and their families. One Jewish family after another is presented up close and personal through photographs and video commentaries from the survivors or their relatives. Only much further along in the exhibition is there a video commentary from one non-Jew: a Jehovah's Witness. And there is a vague and general reference to millions of non-Jews who, too, lost their lives due to Nazi viciousness. But outside the Jehovah's Witness, there is no personalization of non-Jews, no fullness of accounts for the millions of non-Jewish victims who, too, were exerminated, who too, failed to live up to the profile established by the Nazis.
My search for a balanced presentation on all the victims of the Holocaust – Jews and non-Jews, alike, was in vain. I didn't find it at the IWM-London as I didn't find it, online, at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Perhaps the exhibits at museums in what were earlier concentration camps, in Poland, would better account for the brutal losses of all parties during the Second World War. At the very least, I hoped to find information on the direct and indirect extermination by the Nazis of Polish citizens: its three million Polish Jews, and its three million non-Jewish Poles.
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