Poland
The Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive contains
around 24,600 testimonies with content about Poland in the prewar,
wartime, and postwar periods. These are in several
languages, including English, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian,
and Yiddish. Major subjects of discussion include:
• Prewar Jewish communities.
•
Relations between Jews and non-Jews before World War II; the contrast
in relations before and after Pilsudski’s death.
• Pogroms before, during, and after the war.
• The deportation of Polish-born Jews from Germany to Zbaszyn in October
1938.
• The German invasion of Poland of September 1, 1939.
•
The Soviet invasion of September 17, 1939: The “Sovietization” of
Eastern Poland, including the deportation of civilians to remote areas
of northern and eastern Russia.
• Ghettos. The archive includes interviews with survivors of the large
ghettos of the Generalgouvernement (e.g. Warsaw, Lodz, Lublin, Lwow,
Krakow) as well as smaller ghettos in the south and the east of prewar
Poland.
• Concentration camps. A great many Jewish survivors were sent from all
parts of Europe to camps in Poland. The testimonies contain information
on the Nazi extermination camps (Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Sobibor,
Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno) as well as many lesser known concentration
and labor camps.
• Resistance. Specific resistance organizations are discussed (e.g. the
Armia Krajowa), as are events such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943),
the Warsaw Polish Uprising of 1944, the Sonderkommando Uprising in
Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the Sobibor Uprising.
• Means of survival, hiding, and false identity.
• Aid given to Jews by non-Jews.
• The Polish-Ukrainian conflict of 1943-44.
• The Polish army in exile. Polish units in the French and British armies,
Anders Army, and the Kosciuszko Infantry Division of the Soviet Army.
Polish-language testimonies
Within the Polish collection, there is an especially valuable collection
of 1,565 testimonies in the Polish language, which includes 935 Jewish survivors,
318 rescuers and aid providers, 181 Sinti-Roma survivors, and 122 political
prisoners. A total of 1,525 interviews were conducted in Poland by
the Shoah Foundation.
Polish-Jewish survivors
Some of the subjects covered by Jewish survivors in the Polish language
in particular relate to the social and political history of Polish
Jews in the period before World War II.:
• Jewish and Polish identity.
• Antisemitism of the late 1930s in terms of its origin, driving forces,
and the response of both the Polish and Jewish society (for example,
the economic boycott and violence at the universities, most notably
of Warsaw and Lwow).
• Jewish involvement in the Polish Socialist and Communist movements.
• Zionist political and social activities, e.g. participation in youth
organization of various orientations.
• Service in the Polish military and insights into relations between
Jews and non-Jews in the army.
• The patriotic feelings on the part of Jews toward Poland upon the outbreak
of war, regardless of the negative Jewish experience in the prewar
years.
Many of these interviewees are survivors of the larger Polish ghettos
such as Warsaw and discuss similar situations:
•
As Jews, they were exposed to all the animosities of the time, yet
sooner or later they were given help by the Poles. This help came in
the form of provision of a place to hide, of false documents, or of
a combination of both. Those Jews who survived the occupation survived
it on the “Aryan side”, hiding and using false documents.
• There are instances when young Jewish men and women became members
of the Polish underground, acting under false names with false documents.
A large number of these interviews are with survivors of the Warsaw
ghetto, many of whom took a very active participation in Warsaw Uprising
in 1944.
• Blackmail or szmalcownictwo is an attribute of almost every story in
German-occupied Poland.
• The same is true of the Granatowa Policja and Jewish police, and there
are informative stories about both. If the former are depicted as half-szmalcowniki,
the latter are predominantly seen as German helpers, who in crucial
moments could spare a life or, conversely, betray and denounce.
Other Polish-Jewish survivors fled German-occupied Poland to the Soviet-controlled
territories or stayed there. A great number of them were exiled to
remote areas such as Arkhangel'sk oblast' and Komi ASSR. Some made
it to Anders army or to Polish units of the Soviet army. Some returned
to Poland in 1944 with the new Polish government, while others found
themselves captives of the Soviet regime and only able to leave the
USSR after the war.
Experiences other than the
ones mentioned above vary by geography and type: hiding in Galician
forests, in the swamps of Polesie, on
small farms in Lithuania and Vilno województwo; concealing the
fact that one of the parents was Jewish; posing as Poles; and being
sent to Germany as civilian laborers; and so on. The number of interviews
in Polish with survivors of Krakow, Lodz, or ghettos other than Warsaw
is relatively small.
Political Prisoners
Most of the political prisoners interviewed in Polish were arrested
as members of different underground resistance organizations. Of
particular interest is the fact that many of them went through Nazi
camps such as Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Dachau, and Ravensbruck from
the very beginning (1939, 1940) to the very end (spring 1945). Some
of these interviewees had two-number tattoos on their arms (in Auschwitz,
for instance), meaning that they arrived with the first transports.
Aid Givers
Farmers from remote isolated farms, peasants from big villages, university
professors, doctors, workers, professionals, military, police, actors,
artists and others are among the many people who risked their lives
and the lives of their families by helping Jews in hiding, by providing
them with false identities, by smuggling food and clothes into the
ghettos.
Sinti-Roma
Although many of the Polish-language testimonies with Sinti-Roma survivors
have limited or no Holocaust-related content, there are a few that
do contain unique stories about being in the “Gypsy Camp” in
Auschwitz-Birkenau.
