Here are two Polish - English computer translators to help you:
http://www.poltran.com/
http://www.polish-translation.net/
Permanent Mission of Poland to the United Nations 9 East 66th Street, New York, N.Y. 10021, USA
Phone: (1 212) 744 25 06, 744 25 09
Fax: (1 212) 517 67 71
E-mail: poland@un.int
Consulate of Poland in Lusaka, Zambia
Protea House, Cha cha cha Rd., Lusaka
Honorary Consul: Maria R. Ogonowska-Wilniewska
Halychyna/
Galician vital records website
http://www.halgal.com
Polish Losses in World War II compiled by Witold J. Lukaszewski
KASSEL to POLAND
Jim Bates of the Third Infantry
Division, (ParaHistry@aol.com), is looking for Polish residents who made the
train ride from from Kassel, Germany to Poland, after "World War II, to reach
a designated delivery point a short distance past the Czech-Polish border. Read
his page: Please Mr. Soldier...
Poland Under Soviet Occupation
"Thus, despite the Red Army's
unkempt appearance, the Soviet occupiers proved to be according to Gross greater
victimizers than the Nazis. He argues that, in sheer numbers, more human beings
(regardless of ethnic background - Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Belorussians,
etc.) suffered under Soviet occupation between September 1939 and June 1941 (i.e.,
before the Holocaust began) than under German occupation. By suffering,
Gross refers to loss of life, deportation, forced resettlement, and material
losses through confiscation and fiscal measures (p. 226). Whereas the Germans
killed approximately 120,000 Poles and Jews combined (100,000 Jews and 20,889
Poles) in the first two years of occupation, the Soviet security police (NKVD)
nearly matched that figure in just two episodes of mass execution (viz., the
mass murder of Polish prisoners of war in the spring of 1940, and the evacuation
of prisons in the Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia during June and July
1941). (p. 228). Gross does not compare the total numbers of Poles and Jews killed
in Poland during the entire six-year period, 1939-1945."
Excerpts from: Revolution from Abroad: the Soviet Conquest of Poland, Western Ukraine and Western Belorusssia by Jan T. Gross, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2002. xxiv + 396 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $44.89 (cloth). ISBN 0-691-09603-1, H-Net Book Review, Reviewed for H-Russia by Johanna Granville
Stalin's Ethnic Cleansing in Eastern Poland
Timewitnesses.org The lost child from Siberia http://timewitnesses.org
The New Polish Army, was under the control of the Soviet Controlled Polish Government.
People's Army of Poland - Submitted by Danuta Janina Wojcik
Ludowe Wojsko Polskie; lit: People's Troops of Poland, LWP, unofficial name) was the second formation of the Polish Armed Forces in the East (1943–1945) and later the armed force (1945–1989) of the Polish communist government of Poland (since 1952, the People's Republic of Poland. 1944-1952 Wojsko Polskie. In the period 1952-1990 Si?y Zbrojne Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej (Armed Forces of the People's Republic of Poland).
The official name of those formations were: Armia Polska w ZSRR (Polish Army in USSR) from 1943–1944, Wojsko Polskie (Polish Troops) and Si?y Zbrojne Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej (Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland) from 1944–1952 and since 1952 Si?y Zbrojne Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej (Armed Forces of the People's Republic of Poland.
In the late 1940s and early 50s the Polish Army was under the command of Marshal of the Soviet Union Konstantin Rokossovsky, who was given the additional title Marshal of Poland and was also Minister of National Defense. It was increasingly tied into the Soviet structures. This process was however stopped in the aftermath of the Polish October in 1956, however, and brigades began to be formed in the engineering and artillery arms.
Until the fall of communism the army's prestige continued to fall, as it was used by the communist government to violently suppress opposition:
Poland Under German Occupation
Speaking Polish in public was prohibited in the incorporated provinces during German occupation. On August 22, 1939, a week before his attack on Poland, Hitler exhorted his nation: "Kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need." As many as 200,000 Polish children, deemed to have "Germanic" (Aryan) features, were forcibly taken to Germany to be raised as Germans, and had their birth records falsified. Very few of these children were reunited with their families after the war. The Polish Righteous - those who risked their lives, by Anna Poray http://www.savingjews.org/
The Forgotten Holocaust - How could five million human beings have been killed and forgotten? About Polish holocaust, Richard C. Lukas writes that Poland lost 22 percent of its total population during the six years of war, or 6,028,000 people, and that about 50 percent of these victims were Polish Christians and 50 percent were Polish Jews (p. 39). http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/
Reflections on Richard Lukas' The Forgotten Holocaust by Ewa
M. Thompson
http://www.ruf.rice.edu
Chapter 10 of the book The Last Sunrise by Harold Gordon
Born in Poland and deported for slave-labour to Germany, Harold Gordon lost his
family in the concentration camps.
POLES: Victims of the Nazi Era
Eye witness account
of suffering of non-Jewish people Wallace
Witkowski: movie
Forced workers and the Catholic Church website in German http://www.akademie-rs.de
Overlooked Millions: Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust by Karen Silverstrim, MA|
"Another method, used with
older children, was to separate them from their families and send them off
for forced labour in the Reich. It was mainly girls between the ages of fourteen
to twenty who fell within the scope of this action; they were usually sent
to the Reich as domestic help and there subjected to a process of Germanization.
The areas round Poznan and Lódz were the main source. The girls had most often
been picked up in street round-ups or supplied by labour and social welfare
offices or the Central Resettlement Office. In this way the Nazis managed to
combine exploitation of slave labour with Germanization." "The
Slavic territories lying to the east of Germany were particularly enticing
as the Nazis considered their primarily Slavic inhabitants to be subhuman
(Untermensch).
The Nazis rationalized that the Germans, being a super human
race, had a biological right to displace, eliminate and enslave inferiors.
Poland's Ukrainian conflicts: Operation Vistula - Akcja Wisla
Akcja Wisla (Vistula Action) was a Polish government operation conducted in 1947 to depopulate southeastern Poland's Ukrainian population. All Rusyns/Ukrainians residing in southeastern Poland at that time were resettled into places in western and northern Poland. It was done to solve what the Poles call the persistent Ukrainian bandit problem, but in reality it was an attempt of ethnic cleansing.
Submitted by Lavrentiy
Operation
Vistula & the Lemkos - on this site.
Book: Concentration Camps - Poland, Ukrainians in Poland
Author: MiSYLO, Levhen. Iavozhno.
Title: Nashe Slovo (our word), 1990, 28 sichnia, ch.4, located in Press File
2; Znymky (photos).
Language--Ukrainian. Varshava (warsawa), 1990.
In 1931, Gareth Jones writes about POLAND'S FOREIGN RELATIONS, about the Pole as conqueror, landowner over Ukrainian peasant, who looked at the Pole as the oppressor. "Troops were sent to villages in Easern Galicia. Peasants were flayed; there were burnings and searchings, and deeds of cruelty and brutality were committed."
Sobibor (Nazi
death camp) - Excerpts by Leonard Felson,
Sobidor was a death
camp deep in the Polish forest, the Nazis burned, blew up and buried
the site. The survivors, witnesses and scientists are uncovering the
truth.The Nazis planted a forest to hide what they did. Sobibor was the
second killing center constructed as part of Operation Reinhard. It was
built along the Chelm-Wlodawa railway line, in a wooded, swampy, thinly
populated region. When the gas chambers were fllled with victims, the
gas that was vented nto the room asphyxiated the victims in about 20
to 30 minutes.
Aerial photos show different shades of green in the grassy field...The dark grean areas would be associated with mass burials because ash is a great fertilizer.
To: Alan braveheart180203@hotmail.com
25 Feb 2016
Dear Alan,
I have found your e-mail address on the website on DP camps and I would like to ask for your help. I am writing my doctoral thesis on DP history and I am searching for Polish participants for the small oral history project. I thought that maybe you know people who would be interested in sharing their story with me. I am attaching below the information. I will be happy to send all the details. Do you think you could help me?Best wishes
Katarzyna Nowak
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT – POLES IN DISPLACED PERSONS CAMPS AFTER THE II WORLD WAR
I am a doctoral researcher in the University of Manchester and my thesis deals with the experiences of Poles in Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, Austria and Italy. My aim is to present this story from the perspective of Poles so I would like to gather personal accounts of persons who were in these camps or of their children and relatives who could tell me about their fortunes.
I would like to meet with people who wish to share with me their stories.
If you would be interested in taking part in the project I will be happy to give you further details and send the participant information sheet. The project was approved by the University of Manchester Research Ethics Committee.
I would be very grateful if you would decide to take part in the project and share your story with me. Please contact me if you are interested in taking part in the project:
katarzyna.nowak@manchester.ac.uk
telephone: +44 7743423319
Confiscated property in Galicia: 5/9/05
The story in my family is that my Grandmother, Anna Pograniczna, had a
brother Hryc. He was the eldest brother, and would have inherited substantial
property in Wankowa, Galicia. He and his parents were was relocated
to Strij, Ukraine. He tried to return, was captured, and sent to Siberia.
He escaped after 8 years, finally made his way back to Wankowa. His
large home, in which many generations of Pograniczna's were married
and lived, had been destroyed. He died very shortly after finally making
it back. I walked the site last year, with my mother's first cousin.
My mother's grandfather Wasyli Pograniczna's pear tree still stands
at the site. Wasyl
Olga's reply: This is similar to our ancesteral lands in Javornik Galicia. After WW II in a forced evacuation my grandfather had to leave the huge farmlands of his forefathers and was relocated to the bombed out areas of Prussia, now Northeast Poland.
Chorsów
May 23, 2020
Dear Olga,
I am looking for my Polish origin, which I have very little knowledge of. I manage to find the following document, which is stating my fathers name, "Jan Helmuth Kuchta", and I know that he came to Denmark for a while, after which he left for Canada and later on to the States.
I also know, that he´s family lived in Krulewska Huta, in Upper Slesien, now its names Chorsów, in Poland. He was only 15 years when Poland was occupied, and many of the men in the area joined the Wehrmacht, among them, my father.
I don´t know what happened in his life, from he joined the army in 1939-40 and until the document was issued 30th of January 1947. I hope that you, with your wide knowledge might be able to assist me, in finding some clues to what actually happened. For your info, my father had a terrible youth, where he in young age saw his mother burned to death in front of his eyes, he tried to save her, but couldn´t. His father was elegy alcoholic and beat him up, my father had to flee, until he joined the army. But what happened, where he was stationed and subsequently where the document was issued, I don't know.
How do I interpret the number G112811106, and where can I find more info?Kind Regards,
David Udbjorg (Former Kuchta) udbjorg@gmail.com
DZOK
In the DZOK we have also a branch working on Zwangsarbeiter from Poland; one of our members (Ilona Waloscyk) speaks Polish and has a very good access. The e-mail of the Dzok is dzok@gmx.de. I work for the DZOK as a freelancer for the DP-Project and my main subject is Judaism/ Jewish history of the area. Yours Christof Maihoefer
Ethnic Groups In Poland http://www.joshuaproject.net
Galicia - forgottengalicia.com and www.encyclopediaofukraine.com search Peremyshl / Przemysl
Goralenvolk:
A History of Betrayal -
Wojciech Szatkowski's book, Goralenvolk:
Historia Zdrady (Goralenvolk: A History of Betrayal), is published
by Kanon.
Poland prides itself
on the fact that there was no pro-Nazi government that collaborated
with its German occupiers. However, a clique of highlanders actively
collaborated with the Germans, championing the bogus idea of the Goralenvolk
(Highlander folk), which claimed that the highlanders were descended
from the Goths.
Hans Frank, Nazi governor of the 'Generalgouvernement' sector of occupied
Poland visits Zakopane.
The Germans prepared the idea of the Goralenvolk to break the Polish nation
into small parts,' author Wojciech Szatkowski told our reporter Nick Hodge.
Nazis forged myth that highlanders were descended from German settlers.
Szatkowski, who participated in the 16th Krakow Book Fair over the weekend, is the grandson of Henryk Szatkowski, one of Nazi Germany's key collaborators in the Podhale region of southern Poland. http://www.thenews.pl/
Habricha Escape Routes
Oct 26, 2013 Habricha Organization 1945 - 1948
A new presentation on Habricha Organization (download .pdf to desktop) for the rescue of Jews from post war Europe. My father and mother fled from Poland to Germany by Habricha Routes and I was born in a D.P. Camp in Germany on their way to Israel. Ze’ev Sharon zeevsharon@013.net Kiriat-Ata
History of the Polish Army http://www.angelfire.com/
I. Charsky & Co.
I. Charsky & Co. Law Firm is the largest firm worldwide in the field
of Polish citizenships and handles requests from clients from all over the
world who, as descendants of former Polish citizens are interested in obtaining
Polish citizenship. The firm also specializes in the restitution of property
in Poland to the rightful owners.
Mandy Maor, Advocate, E-mail: mandy@icharsky.com
Irena Sendler
On May 12 2008 a 98 year-old lady named Irena died.
During WWII, Irena got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto,
as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an 'ulterior motive'. She KNEW what the
Nazi's plans were for the Jews (being German).
Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried, and in the back of her truck she carried a burlap sack (for larger kids).
She also had a dog in the back, that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the kids/infants noises. During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely.
Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out, and kept those names in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard.After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids that she helped, got placed into foster family homes, or were adopted.
Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected. Al
Gore won --- for a slide show on Global Warming.
Submitted by Rafi rafa_el@012.net.il
http://www.irenasendler.org/
IRO accused of kidnapping children
It was clear, therefore, that IRO was a mere recruiting agency for cheap
labour and that displaced persons were being used for real slave traffic. In
that connexion, Mr. Altman quoted a statement made by Sir Arthur Rucker, Vice-Chairman
of the IRO, which showed that immigration countries were interested only in
able-bodied workers and that elderly and infirm persons were abandoned to their
fate.
29. He accused Yugoslavia of having adopted the same attitude towards refugees as that of the capitalist countries and of having brought into its territory four thousand Polish families recruited in Germany.
30. He was opposed to the creation of an organization similar to IRO after the latter had ceased to operate. Indeed, he believed that far from promoting the repatriation of displaced persons IRO had put obstacles in the way, although it had had no valid reason to do so; that was clear from the articles published by Mrs. Marie Dresden Lane who had visited Poland as a representative of IRO.
31. After citing the example of one hundred young Polish women who had been brought to Canada by a certain Mr. Dionne and who had fled from the convent where they had been imprisoned, he recalled the case of the one hundred and twenty-three Polish boys and girls who had been sent to Canada from a camp in Tanganyika. Those children had first been sent to Italy where the Polish Embassy had been refused access to their camp, although the British authorities themselves had recognized that nineteen of those children had parents who had requested their repatriation to Poland. After those children had been transferred to Bremerhaven, the Polish Government and the Polish Red Cross had asked the United States Embassy in Warsaw and the local representatives of IRO to delay their departure and supply their names to the Polish authorities, but all such requests had been rejected.
32. Finally, on 29 August, the children had been put on board the General Heinzelman bound for Halifax and had been housed on 7 September in two camps supervised by nuns at Contrecoeur, near Drummondville. When the Polish Government had applied to the Canadian Government, the latter had referred it to IRO.
33. Such kidnapping was very characteristic of the whole activity of IRO and clearly demonstrated that IRO had violated the international agreements which it had assumed.
34. In conclusion, Mr. Altman said that his delegation would oppose any proposal to extend the activities of IRO until 1 April 1951 or to replace IRO by any other permanent body.
35. On the subject of the protection to be granted to Polish nationals resident abroad, Mr. Altman said that any Polish citizen in need of protection could apply to his country's consular services. As to refugees still in the camps, he repeated the view he had previously voiced at the third session of the Assembly to the effect that their repatriation should be completed before 1 July 1950.
Joshua Project Submitted by Lavrentiy lkrupnak@verizon.net
Joshua Project is a research initiative seeking to highlight
the ethnic people groups of the world with the fewest followers of Christ.
Accurate, regularly updated ethnic people group information is critical
for understanding and completing the Great Commission.
http://en.wikipedia.org
Joshua Project seeks to compile and integrate ethnic peoples information from various global, regional and national researchers and workers into a composite whole. We are deeply grateful to the sources below who have provided data to Joshua Project
Karpacka Brigada Polish Anti-tank gunners in North Africa- see Alan's email below.
Kresy-Siberia
In the spring of 1941 I, and some 200,000 Polish citizens living in Eastern
Poland,were conscripted into the Russian Red Army. I was transported from Lwow
(Lviv) to Voroshylovsk (Stavropol)in the Northern Caucasus. In July 1942 I escaped
and travelled from Krasnodar to Guzar (Uzbekistan) where I joined Polish Army
commanded by Gen. W. Anders. In August we left for Persia. You can find more
details by visiting my website Poland and WW II 1939-1945
or visiting Kresy-Siberia site and "A Forgotten Odyssey" - Links Poland in
World War 2-General Poland and World War II 1939-1945.
You may find the last section of my website "War Time Diary / Memoir / Pamietnik" of special interest. Good luck with your project. Best regards, Roman Skulski / West Vancouver, Canada
Monument to the Murdered Polish Populace of the Kresy Regions
Submitted
by: Alan Newark, Leeds, UK braveheart562002@yahoo.com
Reply to: do you know anyone who was in the Polish airforce in Britain
Regarding: Polish Anti-tank gunners in North Africa.
1) It is quite possible
that your father was in the Polish Carpathian Brigade which formed
in 1939 - 40 in Syria , then under French. That Polish
Brigade after the surrender of France in 1940 to Germany and creation
of the pro German Vichy Government, crossed over to Palestine and
Egypt, then under Britain. This Polish Brigade with British Armed
Forces in 1941 was sent to Libya and for a few months defended
Tombruk against renewed German - Italian advances. In my film "For Your Freedom and Ours" composed
of archval material, there are even some pictures of the soldiers of
the Brigade manning the guns in North Africa. Few weeks before
the Fall of Tombruk to Germans in 1942 famous 'Karpacka Brigada' was withdrawn
from fortress Tombruk and transferred to Palestine and Iraq where it was
rejoined with the Polish Anders' Army coming out of Russia and reorganized
into Third Carpathian Divission.
2.) Regarding: The Expelled Exhibition presently in European Parliament. I am one of thousands and thousands of Polish expellees from the Western Poland in 1939, 1940, 1941 and partly in 1942 thrown from our homes and deported to either the German designated zone for Poles, so called "General Government"at the beginning of German occupation or later mostly to Germany for slave labour. Just after German conquest of Poland, Germany annexed the Polish western lands like "Pomorze "and "Kraj nad Warta - Warthegau" into German Reich. In result of this in 1939 and 1940 hundreds of thousands of Polish inhabitants from Poznan, Bydgoszcz, Torun and Katowice, from those cities and regions were forcefully expelled from they homes and with only small personal belongings deported originally mostly to towns and villages in Generalna Gubernia, central part of Poland. Which supposed to be some holding reservoir for Poles and their homes and properties were turned to the German settlers arriving from Germany or to so called Volksdeuch, Germans from the East. In the following years of German occupation the deliberate expulsion of Poles from officially incorporated Polish Lands into Nazi-Germany reached deeper and deeper into Poland even to cities like Sieradz and Lodz which never before belonged to Germany, but the deportation mostly changed direction instead east to 'General Government' to slave labour to Germany proper..
My family turn came in March 1942. Just few days before Easter. At 5 A.M. waken up with loud knocks to our door by a German soldier and speaking Polish civilian Volkdeuch serving in the German administration were told to pack some personal things which each of us can carry in a suitcase, and within an hour be ready to appear before a military commission held just few hundred meters away on the parking lot of a few weeks earlier expelled Polish restaurateur. The commission composed of few German SS officers glancing at our general physical appearance, looking into our faces and eyes for signs of racial etnicity quickly decided that both my parents in the late fifties, me, 13-year old boy and my two older sisters were fit for labour. Consequently with the so selected group of about a thousand people from the city of Sieradz and vicinity, we were the following night moved to the Lodz assembly camp located in some empty factory hall where, under supervision of strict German military guards and little food, we were kept for about 10 days. Finally we were sent by train loads to slave labour camps in Germany. The other, smaller group of Sieradz inhabitants composed of old people and young children which the SS German officers designated as unfit to work in Germany was transported to Generalnej Guberni.
And what happened to our homes, lands and possesions from which we were expelled? Most were taken over by German settlers arriving from bombed out cities in Germany, or Volkdeuch. Some, due to changing changing fortunes in WW II, were left uninhabited till the end of German Third Reich.
I myself only revisited Sieradz and the home of my birth 15 years later
on my first visit to Poland from Canada.
Michael Adamski www.mdavideo.com
Lightning and Ashes
"When we came to
America in 1951, we soon settled in Chicago where there was and still
is a huge Polish community. My parents, however, mainly associated
with other DPs. They felt that the Poles who had come before, what
people called the "old immigration," didn't much care
for the DPs. We were the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched refuse
of Europe's shore--like in Emma Lazarus's poem on the Statue of Liberty--and
the Poles who were here already didn't much want anything to do with
DPs who reminded them of what poverty and dirt and need were like. Or
at least this was the way we saw it." John Guzlowskijzguzlowski@gmail.com For
more of this story, see:
http://lightning-and-ashes.blogspot.com
Map of partitions of Poland download gif
Masuren
Monument to the Blessed Mother, 1850.
Steznica
Masuren
12/13/05
Dear Olga!
Here is a Christian Church in the Masuren in Poland, near
Border to Kaliningrad and White Russia. Thank you. All the best from
Austria! Gerhard, oe2ril@barcelona.com
Poland GenWeb, refugee page http://www.rootsweb.com/
Polish Diaspora
3/22/05 Dear Olga,
I am trying to research the years after the war and why my husband's parents
were sent to the camp in Lusaka. Also anything about the camp as my husband
left there in 1948 to come to the United States. Is there a web site that
has more information? Thank you Amy
S. Rokoszak
7/16/06 Hello:
I am conducting research into post-War Polish refugees and their children. There is information on my website http://www.polishdiaspora.net/ about the archive I am building.
My original intention was to record the stories of the original DPs, but so many of their children have come forward with memories of life in the camps that I am now adding them to the archives. The immediate post-war period is a period that requires a lot of study and I am hoping to give those that lived through it a voice.
If you have an interesting story to tell and I would very much like to hear from you. Perhaps you would agree to a telephone interview? I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely, Bogusia Wojciechowska
Hello Olga,
For further reference, I have thousands of Polish and German family names in my database, but more specific with Galicia area. I wouldn't be charging for look-up but would appreciate covering the cost of printing. Database is mine as well as what other have shared with me. If you could pass this infomation unto your site, great. Darwin Wagner / Saskatoon, Canada.
STEZNICA / Stezhnytsja / Styzhnycja
Dear Olga
Here is a picture from STEZNICA / Stezhnytsja / Styzhnycja (Galicia) in Poland from May 2004.
Kind regards. G.Rieck Barcelona, Spain
Ukrainian Russian War 2022 - Voluntters are housed at this beautiful location: Reymontowka" Manor House Volunteer Lodging in Poland
https://urldefense.com
Wieliczka, Poland
This subcamp of the Krakau-Plaszow concentration camp was created in the spring of 1944 and produced Heinkel aircraft. The camp was abandoned in September 1944.
Åú Wieliczka,
the Nazi death camp in Poland Å\ not the salt mine
Filed under: Holocaust,
World War II \ Tags: Wieliczka labor camp, Wieliczka salt mine \
Here is the story of Holocaust survivor Nathan Taffel, which
was published in the online Beloit Daily News here. Erica Pennington,
the reporter responsible for the article, wrote this:
[Nathan and his brother] "experienced the horrors of Wieliczka, a death camp just outside of Auschwitz, where they were lucky to have escaped having the letter `T' for tot (dead in German) inked on their foreheads. Later they were sent to work in Flossenburg, a camp in southern Germany." Nathan Taffel was not sent to a "death camp." He was sent to a labor camp to work in a factory that was building airplanes. http://furtherglory.wordpress.com
Åú Wieliczka
salt mine near the Auschwitz camp.
In rusyns@yahoogroups.com, Laurence Krupnak
wrote:
During World War II, the shafts were used by the occupying Germans as an ad-hoc facility for various war-related industries. The mine features an underground lake. http://en.wikipedia.org
Apparently back during the Nazi occupation of Poland, the Germans used the salt mines as a base, one evening a group of intoxicated German solders decided to go out for a boat ride, which resulted in the raft capsizing, and all onboard drowned.
WWII Polish Internees - sources of information
Excerpt from: http://donhoward.net
SECTION 12. OTHER BITS AND PIECES
In a GENPOL posted message dated 26 July 1996 R. Postula wrote:
"You may be interested in the following information which I obtained at a meeting of the Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan. It pertains to 'Information Forms on Labor Camp Internees in German Occupied Areas of Pre-world War II Poland 1939-1944.
Microfilmed records were originally in the custody of the Einwanderungszentralstelle (Central Immigration Office), which was subordinate to the "Reichssicherheitshauptamt" (Reich Central Security Dept.), a major division of the Schutzstaffel (SS or Security Police) of the Third Reich.
Microfilmed records are arranged by certificate number, and contain personal and family information forms on labor camp internees in German occupied areas of pre WWII Poland, 1939-1944.
In addition to Poles, the records include some internees from Germany, Austria, and Lithuania. Information contained in the records includes, names, dates and birthplaces of the internee, his parents, grandparents and children: residence, occupation, and religion. Sometimes includes a snapshot of the internee. The internees were sent to Wartheland, other parts of Poland, Germany Czechoslovakia, and Austria.
Unfortunately, there is currently no known index to these records. The records can be found a under POLAND - MILITARY RECORDS at LDS.
Film numbers are 1364501 - 1364556 and includes certificates 110004 - 529400. It appears that sixty-eight rolls of film are involved.Submitted by: Alan Newark braveheart562002@yahoo.com
Zamosc (prison)
German-occupied Zamosc (in southeastern Poland) Camp held forcibly
uprooted Poles
http://www.travel.zamosc.pl/de
Computer translated:
After the outbreak of the Russo-German
war in 1940, originated in the Zamosc camp for Soviet prisoners of
war on the street and in Okrzei Karolowka. In
later times, the camp was moved from the street into the Okrzei Powiatowa
Street. It is estimated that the
Germans shot more than 30 thousand people or died of starvation in
the two camps.
The Germans had to make before, in the region Zamojszczyzna a German settlement cycle, which meant that needed to expel this area of the Polish population and introduced in this place of the population of German descent, mainly from the countries of Eastern Europe. It emerged camp for displaced people including Zamosc on Okrzei Street. In total about 110 thousand people were evacuated from nearly 300 villages.
The tragic fate the children suffered who died in thousands from starvation and cold. One consequence of this terror to the Polish public was the emergence of strong partisan troops.Submitted by: Alan Newark braveheart562002@yahoo.com
ZIH (Zydowski Instytut HIstoryczny) Jewish Historical Institute, in Warsaw
This institution has professionaly qualified staff that helps search for family members and their stories. They are one of the most recognized in the geneology field. This is their website: http://www.jhi.pl/en/genealogy?
Dear Olga Kaczmar,
I'm looking for a person, Mr K.L.H. van der Putt. He was born in Eindhoven, Netherlands and held in concentration camp in Sachsenhausen,
German, in December 1944. After Sachsenhausen, he arrived in Bergen-Belsen in February 1945. In June 1945, Mr Van der Putt was in Gorodishche,
Ukraine in a hospital. In July 1945, Mr. Van der Putt was in Grucele,
Poland. He was there seen maybe with Mr. Theodore Serraris. In August 1945, he should have been in Wittstock,
Germany. Somewhere in 1946 (maybe January), Mr. Van der Putt was hold as prisoner of war in Feodosija,
Ukraine.
Could you give me a help, how to find this person?
Kind regards Jan Burgers / Netherlands
Hello!
My name is Maria Pilkington and I would like to say thank you for creating this website that highlights the plights and heroism the Polish people went through. My mother is Polish although she wasn't around during the war. My grandparents and great-grandparents were though and my great-grandfather was actually the local councillor for the village that they lived in. So they were forced out of their house at gunpoint by the Russians and taken to work-camps in Russia. Even though they had political influence, they fortunately were not killed although it is unbelievable that they were so lucky when others were being so tragically dealt with. My second cousin was also put in the work-camp next to Auschwitz, which was an awful experience as him and the rest of the inhabitants could smell the dead bodies next door and the workers were forced to bury the people who the Nazis killed. An awful and tragic experience in our history, but thank you for highlighting their experiences and pointing out that a lot of the Polish people died as heroes protecting many Jews (which I didn't know and I'm sure many more still don't).
Yours Sincerely, Maria Pilkington, Great Britain.
"I am not far from the forests that once protected our Ukrainian partisans; indeed, not far from where the Ukrainians and Poles finally, after fighting one another for so long, combined their efforts to rid of the Nazis once and for all. As I rode the train from Radom to Warsaw and passed the forests and the small villages, shadows and faces appeared among the green bushes, and peeked from behind the white-paper branches of birch trees. I could see them in their farmer's garb, watching me. Today, the old men and women who walk along the paths must be filled with stories. Did they feed partisans? Did they risk their lives to help those forest people? Or perhaps they helped to detonate a stick of dynamite or two to derail these very tracks to Warsaw; to sabotage the cars that carried stolen food to the Wehrmacht." Copyright
2001,
email Chrystyna K. Lucyk
Olga, Thank you for putting together such a wonderful, heartfelt site. What horrors our relatives lived through - they were BRAVE and compassionate people. My father was born in LWOW, Poland. The family was from MAGIEROW - not too far from Lwow. They were heard from the last time in 1939. I have searched for years for relatives. My father was Kasimier Stanilaus Blaszczak; his father was Ludwik Blaszczak and his mother Anna. My father had a sister named OLGA. A cousin found a postcard from her to my father. My one wish is to see what they looked like. I have one picture of my grandfather and, of course, some of my father. My father and his brother, Frank, came to the US in 1913. My grandfather brought them here and then returned to Poland. Thank you again for providing insight into that time that I
have a hard time believing even existed.
Patty Blaszczak Cole Charleston, SC
Hi. I am Karnak Eugen. I am looking for my uncle Karnak Ivan Vasiliyevich, borned
in 1925, village Hopky, Lublin region, Poland.
He disappeared in 1944 from Poland, when our family was emigrated from Poland
to Ukraine.
My email: ka65@mail.ru Thanks.
1/26/05 Dear Olga,
I am trying to trace my mother's escape from the Russians during January 1945. Here is the story she told me: "I worked for the City of Koenigberg at that time in Jan 1945 and when the Russian artillery was shooting into the city, our department withdrew to the nearest Harbor on the Baltic coast (Danzig, now Gdansk?) and a boat took us to western Germany. We went reluctantly onto that boat as the news has just reached the harbor that the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German liner with over 6000 women and children and wounded soldiers had been sunk by Russian U-boats in the same Baltic Sea which we were about to enter. We had been cut off the land route by advancing Russian Troops. While we had alarms, sometimes U-boats, sometimes planes, we made it safely to the western part of Germany where we were greeted by air raids day and night. At that time I had a choice of going into a refugee camp or go to stay with relatives. I made my way to Hanover where a relative lived. When I reached her place I was told that my Aunt had been killed recently during an air raid."
1. What ship did she take out of Danzig? She said that the only reason that she was able to get a place aboard the departing ship is that she recognized a soldier from her home town being evacuated and he helped her get on the ship. So she departed on a ship evacuating troops and civilians.
2. Where in western Germany did these evacuees disembark?
3. Would this port have records of the persons arriving on these evacuation ships?
I found this information online:
"Until now, Grossadmiral Dönitz's 'sea bridge' had safely carried over 2-million refugees from East and West Prussia and Courland (present-day western Latvia and Lithuania) to western ports. On January 30th, four large transports were tied up at the Gotenhafen docks: The former passenger liners WILHELM GUSTLOFF, HANSA, HAMBURG, and the hospital ship DEUTSCHLAND" Source: http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com
Another site says:
"Admiral Hipper leaves Gotenhafen
with 1529 refugees on board following the passenger ship Wilheim Gostloff to
Kiel. The Wilhlem Gustloff was torpedoed by a Russian submarine, but Admiral
Hipper arrived at Kiel unharmed on 02.02.1945." Source
: http://www.german-navy.de
I would appreciate any help you could give me. Jeanette B. Heath
9/27/05 Hello Olga,
Here is my father's DP identification card. He died 6 years ago. I don't know if you can use these pictures in your great web page. (click to enlarge)
Carlos Matecki, Venezuela
carlos.matecki@eni.com.ve
9/2/07 Hello Olga
I am seeking info on persons who were at DP Camp 17 DPACS. Lagers not mentioned
in your list; show this person stayed at Lochstedter Larger Holstein; also
Linden Prow. Holstein. Then it states Pichlice Prov. Lodz, Poland I assume
this must be his birth place. His wife apparently was in Jagerslust 131 DPACS
which I found. Regards,and many thanks,
Anka Kowalczyk Ozzpol88@yahoo.com.au
3/26/08
While in Germany during the second world war Mrs. Irene Ozarchuk nee
Kowal gave birth to a baby girl, Olga. When Olga was a few weeks old,
she got sick and was taken to the hospital. The nurse which admitted
the baby said to Mrs. Ozarchuk, "Oh my name is the same
Irene Kowal (Canadian Ukrainian). A few days later, the nurse brings
the pillow and blanket of the baby and said the baby died.
The mother did not see the baby after her death. As the Russian soldiers were
moving the people, she did not leave her barrack. All these years she presumed
her daughter was dead until a few years ago she receives this picture stamped
at Sydney Australia and at the back it is written in Polish: "Olga
is a well and beautiful lady." No other information is given. So we presume Olga was sold as a baby in Germany because at that time they
were stealing children and selling them. We presume this is the baby Olga,
grown up and somebody knew about Mrs. Ozarchuk because the envelope was sent
to her to Northam. That is why were are trying to locate her. The hospital
was Soltau. The mother was in a displaced person's Camp named Munster.
We wrote to Germany and we received Olga's birth certificate but there is no record of her death. The hospital destroyed their records after 30 years so we couldn't get the information of when she was discharged and when they took Olga from the hospital.
We went to the Salvation Army police missing persons
unit, but they all
say they cannot help us. So we have tried different channels but to no
avail. The mother is elderly and not too well, therefore,
I would like to see them reunited because I really
feel this is her daughter. If not then at least we'll
clear the case. So if you have any further suggestion, I would appreciate
to hear from you. Thank you kindly for your time.
Sr. Muriel Zemliak / Ozarchuk family, mzemliak2@bigpond.comwikipedia.org
9/5/2011 Submitted by alan newark braveheart562002@yahoo.com
www.projectinposterum.org
Extremely detailed, and painful to read, website about the anti-Polish
terror of the Soviet NKVD and its Polish collaborators.
Features large numbers of individual cases of ill-treatment and torture, mostly of Underground members and supporters and with details of their ill-treatment, from September 1939 et passim through till late-1950's.
Identifies both many secret police prisons and numerous perpetrators of torture with the latter's names and ranks.
A model site for other former Soviet republics to copy and to publish in one place such information about their own Soviet era torturers.
Polish Museums Website: http://dzieje.pl
Submitted by: Alan
Newark braveheart562002@yahoo.com
Reymontowka" Manor House Volunteer Lodging in Poland - Volunteers come here to help Ukrainian children fleeing from Russian War on Ukraine. https://urldefense.com
Uganda
Dear Olga,
I enjoyed reading the informatrion on Polish displacement during the second world war. However, my attempts to find detailed information about imigrants who lived in Masindi and Koja in Uganda all incomplete. Is there a way you could help me? Could I find someone whose family lived there? I will be glad to hear from you on this. Sincerely, Essie Sande UK
Wolin
I have an old note from my mother where she mentioned that she had been at Camp
Wolin - do you know where that is? Janina
Reply: Wolin or Wollin is an island located in the Baltic Sea located just off the Polish coast. It is nearly connected to the island of Usedom. Water from the Oder river (Odra) flows into the Szczecin Bay (in Polish Zalew Szczeci?ski; in German Stettiner Haff), through the strait into Pomeranian Bay (in Polish Zatoka Pomorska; in German Pommersche Bucht), which is a part of the Baltic Sea.
http://en.wikipedia.org
Zygmunt Frackiewicz- The Journey of a Polish POW 1939-1945
May 21, 2015 Hello again Olga,
After spending a much time researching the fate of my dad in WWII as a Polish prisoner of war for 6 years and his time in the post war DP camps, I have published my 1st effort at a blog. There are 13 segments to it
Regards Roman Frackiewicz RFrack8610@aol.com