How many poles died during the holocaust

Auschwitz, Treblinka, Chelmno and other SS-run camps employed industrial-style killing, using a pesticide designed to kill rats. The old, the very young, and the physically weak—those unable to work—were killed first.

When the strong grew weak and unable to work they were exterminated. But by mid, almost all Jews who arrived at a death camp were put to death immediately.

Charlotte Weiss recalled that when she arrived at Auschwitz in with her sisters, they saw mountains of eyeglasses, shoes, and clothing belonging to the victims. An aerial photograph of part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex, taken August 25, There were valorous efforts to resist the Holocaust.

A number of armed uprisings in the ghettos and camps surprised the Nazis, but all were put down with fanatical brutality. Some Jews escaped ghettos and joined partisan movements fighting against the Nazis from forest enclaves. Within the ghettos and the killing camps, acts of defiance, small or large, were suppressed and the brave dissidents savagely punished. When the Allies began to close in on Germany in late and early , the Nazis forced the surviving prisoners on long marches to camps believed to be out of the way of the advancing enemy armies.

Hundreds of thousands died of exposure, violence, and starvation on these death marches. As the Allied armies moved into Germany and Poland, they liberated the concentration and extermination camps, and witnesses to these scenes—war reporters and military personnel—were horrified by what they found. The world already knew the Germans were gassing, or working to death, Jews and other ethnic victims in these camps. Escaped prisoners had reported conditions to the media and to government officials in the United Kingdom and the United States.

At least 1. In total, over 2 million non-Jewish Polish civilians and soldiers died during the course of the war. As German authorities implemented killing on an industrial scale, they drew upon Polish police forces and railroad personnel for logistical support, notably to guard ghettos where hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children were held before deportation to killing centers.

The so-called Blue Police was a force some 20, strong. These collaborators enforced German anti-Jewish policies such as restrictions on the use of public transportation and curfews, as well as the devastating and bloody liquidation of ghettos in occupied Poland from Paradoxically, many Polish policemen who actively assisted the Germans in hunting Jews were also part of the underground resistance against the occupation in other arenas.

Individual Poles also often helped in the identification, denunciation, and exposure of Jews in hiding, sometimes motivated by greed and the opportunities presented by blackmail and the plunder of Jewish-owned property. In November , an individual who signed his note Ewald Reiman blackmailed a family he believed was Jewish. In view of the above, we request that you deliver to the bearer of this note the sum of 2, zlotys two thousand zlotys in a sealed envelope.

Otherwise, we will immediately hand over the evidence to the German authorities. Cases of anti-Semitic action were not limited to abetting the German occupation authorities.

Perhaps the most infamous of these episodes was a massacre in the town of Jedwabne in summer when several hundred Jews were burned alive by their neighbors.

In May , non-Jewish residents of the town held hostage some two to three dozen local Jews. Over the course of several days, they tortured and raped their hostages before finally murdering them. These and countless other episodes muddy the waters between victim and oppressor in the chaotic environment of wartime Poland.

In contrast, the Polish Government in Exile based in London sponsored resistance to the German occupation, including some to help Jews in their native land. Jan Karski, who acted as an emissary between the Polish underground and the government in exile, was one of the first to deliver eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to Allied leaders like President Franklin Roosevelt in the hope of spurring rescue.

On the ground in occupied Poland, the Zegota group the clandestine Council to Aid Jews saved several thousand people by supplying false papers and organizing hiding places or escape routes.

As inspiring as they are, though, these cases of rescue and resistance represent only a tiny fraction of the Polish population. New York: J. P6 W65 [ Find in a library near you ]. Features several photographs, a glossary of names, and a section of sources and notes.

Explore our comprehensive entries on the events, people, and places of the Holocaust. Learn More. London: Earlscourt Publications, R4 B [ Find in a library near you ]. A collection of testimonies from Polish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. Features many original documents, including transcripts and translations of German ordinances, as well as statements and reports issued by the Polish underground movement. Warsaw: Tow. P62 J [ Find in a library near you ]. An anthology of articles by reporters, historians, and public figures published in Poland in response to the book, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland.

Confronts the issues of collective guilt and the extent of Polish responsibility for the atrocities committed in that town. Gross, Jan. Examines the slaughter of the 1, Jewish residents of the little Polish town of Jedwabne by their Polish neighbors.

Uses survivor testimonies, postwar trial transcripts, and a memorial book, to review the days leading up to the pogrom and the pogrom itself. Includes photographs, maps, and extensive notes. P6 K55 [ Find in a library near you ]. Documents how the Polish resistance movement assisted Jewish ghetto fighters and sought to gain international support for its activities.

Analyzes Polish-Jewish relations in Poland as well as abroad from a post-Holocaust perspective. Includes historical photographs. Written by a former leader of the Polish Underground State. Kurek, Ewa. J4 K [ Find in a library near you ]. Focuses on the hiding of Jewish children in convents throughout Nazi-occupied Poland. Polonsky, Antony, editor. P6 M [ Find in a library near you ]. A collection of fifteen essays, previously published in Polish journals in the late s, on the question of Polish responsibility during the Holocaust.

Also presents the transcript of a discussion held at the International Conference on the History and Culture of Polish Jewry exploring ethical issues of relating to the Holocaust in Poland. Includes an introduction by the editor and brief biographical statements about the contributors.

German Crimes in Poland. New York: Howard Fertig, G4 B53 [ Find in a library near you ]. Reproduces translations of original findings and reports about Nazi war crimes and atrocities committed on Polish soil. Includes maps and charts. Kunert, Andrzej Krzysztof, editor. Oversize DS P6 P [ Find in a library near you ]. Provides documents from Jewish communities, underground press articles, reports by the Polish Underground State and Polish Government-in-Exile, as well as Nazi occupation authorities about Polish-Jewish relations during All documents are transcribed and presented in English, German, and Polish languages.

Z [ Find in a library near you ]. Provides translations of 38 primary source documents reflecting aid given by Poles to Jews, and the attempts of Poles to inform the Western Allies of atrocities in Poland. Ringelblum, Emanuel. P6 R45 [ Find in a library near you ]. A collection of the writings and reflections of Emanuel Ringelblum , historian of the Warsaw Ghetto. Records his reactions to events in the Ghetto, particularly as they inform his understanding of Polish-Jewish relations.

Anticipates the public debate on the question of Polish responsibility during the Holocaust. Wituska, Krystyna, and Irene Tomaszewski. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, G3 W [ Find in a library near you ].

Includes letters written by the courts announcing her death sentence for underground activities and the return of her letters to her parents. Contains an annotated list of people mentioned in the letters. Film and Video Archive: Poles. Holocaust Encyclopedia: Polish Victims. Includes links to other articles and Web sites on the subject.

Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has conducted nearly oral history interviews with Poles concerning their experiences during the war and their actions concerning the Holocaust. Interviews are in various languages and can be watched online. Ask at the reference desk to see the following subject files for newspaper and periodical articles:.

To search library catalogs or other electronic search tools for materials on Poles during the Holocaust, use the following Library of Congress subject headings to retrieve the most relevant citations:. See all Bibliographies. The ceremony at the US Capitol, featuring a candle-lighting and names reading, is happening now.

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