Salvete Omnes,
Sunday, end of the summer really, and again, as every year from 1939, our Polish people around the world remember the German armies invasion of II Polish Republic - with about 50,000 Slovak troops invading along the Wehrmacht in the Carpathians valleys and mountains.
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betrayed by UK and France |
Jewish Polish citizens were not yet facing genocide,and Polish state was hopeful that allies will come to aid |
The most cultured nation in Europe eg the Germans, started the invasion by bombing undefended and free of military targets Polish cities:
on Sept 1,1939 they bombed Wielun.
bombed Frampol
Westerplatte - Polish military strongpoint in Free City of Gdansk, with a Polish army skeleton crew defended themselves for 7 days - under the actual command of captain Franciszek Dabrowski. Polish writer Jacek Komuda wrote a fine historical fiction account of this heroic defense.
Also Warsaw, attacked since Sept 8 1939 by the ground German forces, was bombed from Sept 1 multiple time, causing the capital to suffer thousands of dead, wounded and destruction of buildings and infrastructure..
This day marks the beginning of the most terrible period of calamity & mayhem for Polish Nation during the XX century, terminated with the Burza Plan 'uprisings' and destruction of Warszawa during the 1944 uprising. The Polish ruling elites, of the Pilsudski's junta in power since 1926, failed in their duty to protect the Nation. I guess nothing new then, like nothing new nowadays.
Germans and Slovaks started the war by murdering Polish prisoners of war, executing Polish civilians, like in Bydgoszcz, Upper Silesia eg Katowice, and destroying Polish property. Germany deployed special 8 mobile killing units - Einsatzkommandos - that begun murder and rapine from day one.
In Ciepielow they murdered 300 Polish soldiers - prisoners of war |
Piasnica or Piasnica Forests were to became graveyard to thousands of Polish citizens from northern and western Poland, and Poles of Polish minority from Nazi Germany, equaling or surpassing the Katyn Forest Massacre carried by the Soviets Union in 1940.
Majority of the German minority in Poland aided and abetted the invaders - attacking Polish troops and provided intelligence to the German invaders.
Ukrainian nationalists of OUN attacked Polish army units and Polish population in southern and south-eastern Poland from Sept 1, and caused countless deaths, loss of military personnel and equipment, burned villages and towns, causing diversion in favor of the invading Germans .
And on Sept 17, 1939 the final coup was to come - the Soviet invasion of Poland, based on the treaty Hitler and Stalin made (known as Ribbentrop-Molotov) - the Polish central command folded (they had no bloody plan to defend the country to speak of), the commander-en-chief marshal Smigly-Rydz abandoned his troops and crossed the border with his staff officers and families into Romania on Sept 17, 1939 - and some 30 thousand Polish troops. Along with him the president of Poland, Moscicki - really a figurehead as the country was ruled by the colonels' 'junta,' crossed the same border (known as Zaleszczyki crossing, but actually in Kuty). Famous Polish writer Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz, NCO of the Polish army, was killed by the Red Army near Kuty on Sept 20, 1939, being part of the Romanian corridor defense organized by the Polish army elements.
Pacem Aeternam to all fallen -
valete
1 comment:
https://archive.chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6803.i-2-physical-evidence-of-the-hero Monsacré, Hélène. 2018. The Tears of Achilles. Trans. Nicholas J. Snead. Something to check out
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