Nationalism in Poland: From Occupiers to Patriots
The image above is striking — a modern Nazi supporter in Poland from their recent Polish Independence Day celebrations (Nov 11). For those unaware this image should not only revolt most readers but is a massive affront to the many many Poles that suffered under Nazi occupation during WWII. For their own citizens today to take up the Nazi salute is a direct insult to the many sacrifices the Polish people had to make during those turbulent era.
In the below map you can find Poland neatly tucked between Germany and former Soviet Satellite countries such as Belarus and Ukraine. The nation is squarely fits into the categorization of an Eastern European Country.
Before WWII the map looked dramatically different. Poland was basically squished between the Soviet Union and Germany as seen below:
This only got more extreme as Germany aggressively annexed part of Slovakia and most of Austria. By 1939 the Soviets and Germany both rushed the country on both sides splitting it in half:
Then as the war heated up, Nazi Germany pushed on the Soviets and quickly claimed the remainder of Poland until the later years of the war. Given all this history and background we now consider the seven years during which Poland was occupied by the Germans (1939- 1946).
While seven years does not seem like a long time, the Nazis in Germany inflicted an uncountable number of horrors on the Polish people during this time. Not withstanding the immense loss and suffering of the Polish Jewish population, the overall country under went massive struggles of survival. The following examples are only a small subset of the many atrocities the Nazi’s committed in Poland during this time.
Adolf Hitler had a grand vision for the former Polish lands (grand in his sense). The plan was to make much of the Polish territory home for those of pure Germanic populations only. He intended to force much of the slavic Polish population further east or to act primarily as slave labor for the soon to come Germanic population.
Fortunately this vision never came to fruition — but significant progress was made starting immediately after Nazi Germany’s occupation. Over 300,000 Poles unsuitable of Germanization were forced off their property by the end of 1940. For those that were considered worthy but resisted Germanization, had their children (nearly 50,000) taken from them at a young age in order to abandon their former Polish heritage. By the end of the war only 10–15% ever returned to their former homes. In large cities such as Krakow segregation took place forcing non-Germans to lesser quality facilities.
Theuergarten Ewald
To add insult to injury, many of the Poles that were unsuitable for Germanization or had resisted were used as a means for forced labor. Polish workers were not allowed to access many of the desired facilities as “German” citizens could. They had to have very limited lifestyles who’s sole focus was to serve the German Industrial Labor force. Over 2.3 million Polish citizens were forced to move to Germany at one point to support the Nazi war effort — without any say in the matter. Those who refused were met with execution. Polish workers were also required to wear badges — showing their reduced status in this new society.
Polish culture was degraded and destroyed systematically. Various cultural institutions and places of higher learning were shut down and monuments torn down. Polish leaders across the former country were systematically silenced. Religious leaders were sent to concentration camps and years of hard labor never to regain their freedom. The Nazi’s also made it so that Polish children only received a few years of schooling. The main reason being to keep the Poles from becoming too “clever” against the Nazis.To quote Heinrich Himmler, A leading member of the Nazi Party:
“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 it is divine law to obey the Germans. … I do not think that reading is desirable”
Finally, if this all wasn’t enough — many Polish citizens were placed into concentration and extermination camps much like those of Jewish descent simply for their resistance to the occupation. Major concentration camps such as Auschwitz were actually set up in Poland. It was here, on Polish soil, that there were unspeakable amount of atrocities committed.
A study by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance in 2009 found that including Polish Jew’s and other Polish citizens — nearly 5.5 million had died under German Occupation. Of that nearly 3 million were Jewish but still around 2 million were ethnic Poles.
Now I return to the present — with that striking image in mind from the start of this post: A Polish citizen proudly doing a Nazi salute. It is a sobering thought and an insult to all the Polish citizens that had died under Nazi occupation to now have one of their praising their former occupiers. To be clear not, all Polish citizens sympathize or associate with the man in the image above. However, his confidence and willingness to show his positions indicates that there are currents in Polish society today that are a far cry from Poland in the 1940s.
In some sense this shows and reflects how the “Nazi like” ideology is so persistent even 70 years after in a country it once destroyed. The idea of exclusion and targeting minority groups (Poland today is a hot bed of anti-LGBT activity — and recently passed a ban on abortion in all cases) persists. It gives one a sense of superiority and of power over those that have none of either. Today it is one group and tomorrow it is another to be targeted. The hatred only begets more hatred until we drown in heated conflict.
However, it is images like this that show us the importance in understanding our collective past, to not ignore or forget the suffering humanity has endured in the past. To learn from the mistakes of others in a reflection of ourselves — and to prevent similar atrocities from occurring again. We are all human, past, present, and future and should be treated always as equals.
