Poles in the Holocaust

Background

• Invasion: September 1st , 1939

• Polish Surrender: October 1, 193

The Nazi Strategy

• Not all Poles targeted

• Political, religious, and intellectual leaders specifically chosen for annihilation

• Two Goals– Exploit peasants– Disable elite from organizing resistance and

educating peasants

A-B Aktion

• Extraordinary Pacification Operation

• Summer of 1940

• 7,000 killed

• Around 20,000 taken to concentration camps

• A SS firing squad executing Polish intellectuals near Bydgoszcz, Poland (Source: Central Photo Agency, Warsaw)

Himmler’s Quote

• May 1940• “The sole goal of this schooling is to teach

them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500, writing one’s name; and the doctrine that is divine law to obey the Germans… I do not think that reading is desirable.”

Zamosc Expulsions

• Polish children adopted by German families

• 4,454 children chosen for Germanization• Approximately 50,000 children were

kidnapped in Poland

Reich Labor Camp

1939 - 1945

• 1.5 million Polish citizens transported to this camp

• Majority of teenage boys and girls• Forced to wear visual purple P’s sewn to

clothing, subjected to a curfew and banned from public transportation

Social Darwinism

Lebensraum

• “Living Space”• “…with orders to send to death mercilessly and

without compassion, men, women and children of Polish derivation and language. Only then shall we get the living space we need – Adolf Hitler

• The Germans invaded Poland simply for the ‘need’ of extra living space.

German Treatment of Poles

• Viewed as Sub-humans• Anti-Polish signs in public places.• Concentration camp workers forced to do

hard labour.• Singled out Poles of German descent.• Poles kicked out of their houses for

Germans to occupy.

•Polish child in the ruins of Warsaw September 1939. http://collective-history.tumblr.com/post/25685945737/polish-boy-in-the-ruins-of-warsaw-september-1939

Fragmenting Poland

• Destruction of Warsaw as capital.• Attempts to separate ethnic and social

groups.• Heavily disputed over areas of Poland with

large numbers of ethnic Germans (Volskdeutsche).

• Germanization