Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[sarai]

As all are aware, I am no fan of George the Second, but to compare Bush's invasion of Iraq to Hitler's invasion of Poland does an enormous injustice to those 6.5 mil Poles who perished by Hitler's program of genocide, and their families.

The Nazis exterminated 6.5 mil people in Poland, approx 3 mil Jews and 3.5 mil non-Jews - predominantly Christians. Those 3.5 mil who perished in Poland are often called the "forgotten victims", and that in itself is an atrocity. No one should be forgotten. No on should "forget"...


Poland's Holocaust:

A Family Chronicle of Soviet and Nazi Terror

Poland's tragic fate during WW II, particularly the Holocaust, is well known, including the fact that 6.5 million Polish citizens perished, of whom close to 3 million were Jews. This web site documents the horrors of Nazism, but as importantly it is a study of a chapter of history long misunderstood and even denied: Poland's suffering under Stalinism and Communism.

Hitler and Stalin divided Poland between themselves in 1939, subjecting Poles to a double reign of terror. Under the Soviet occupation of Poland (September 1939 to June 1941) over 100,000 Poles were killed, including 27,000 Polish officers at Katyn and other sites.

During WW II, as many as 2 million Poles were deported to Siberia and other points in the USSR, half of whom died. Even after the war, between 1945-1955, tens of thousands more were imprisoned and executed by the Communist regime in Poland installed by Moscow.

Letters of Natalia and Wanda Sulkowska

Page 1 1940: Stary Suchotin, Kazakhstan, USSR.
Page 2 1941: Stary Suchotin, Kazakhstan, USSR.
Page 3 1942 - 1945: Stary Suchotin, Kazakhstan, USSR; Kijaly, Kazakhstan, USSR.
Page 4 1946 - 1947: Biala Podlaska, Poland.
Letters of Felicja Gladun

Page 1 1941 - 1942: Posiolek Juznoje, Kazakhstan, USSR.
Page 2 1942 - 1951: Posiolek Juznoje, Kazakhstan, USSR; Poland; Bedzin, Poland.

Letters of Jan Sulkowski

Page 1 1941: Turynski Sowhoz, Sverdlovsk, USSR.
Page 2 1942: Invalid's Hospital, Bukhara, USSR; In transit to Persia from USSR.
Page 3 1943 - 1946: Teheran, Persia; Bombay, India.
Page 4 1947 - 1948: Bombay, India; Valivade-Kolhapur, India; Polish Hospital, Diddington Camp, England.




Introduction
A Family Chronicle of Soviet and Nazi Terror
Poland's Holocaust
My Toronto Star article describing the tragedy of my parents in WWII has grown into a family tribute, and a victims' eyewitness account of a part of History still largely unacknowledged - Chris Gladun.

My mother Janina joined the Polish underground in 1939 to fight the Soviets and Nazis, for which she was tortured by the NKVD and deported to the Gulag, as were her family and friends--a number of whom were murdered. Miraculously she survived the Gulag, only to face permanent exile and separation from loved ones. She dedicated her life to finding her loved ones and honouring their memory.

My father Leon was one of the few survivors of Katyn where all of his comrades were murdered on Stalin's orders in one of the greatest crimes of history. He went on to fight the Germans in Italy, but he could not return to a Poland that was handed over to the Soviets by the very Allies he fought for.

I have spent years translating and researching my family dairies, letters, documents, as well as conducting interviews with relatives and survivors. My mother left an extensive chronicle of her Gulag odyssey including award-winning memoirs, while my father started a POW diary which he kept through the entire war.

The family letters written amid terror and deprivation, in prisons, camps and exile, ranging from Soviet and Nazi-occupied Poland, to Siberia, India and England, provide a victim's testimony and eyewitness account that no historian can match.

My father records the first battles against the blitzkrieg and Red Army in 1939, to VE-Day in Italy in 1945. Leon trained and fought in Poland, the USSR, the Middle East and Italy. As a Soviet prisoner-of-war he records one of the great crimes of the war: Katyn, in which most of his friends perished. Leon Gladun was one of only 448 who survived the murder of 27,000 Allied POW's by Stalin.
World War Two Letters of the Sulkowski/Gladun Family
A Gulag and Holocaust Memoir of Janina Sulkowska-Gladun
I would very much like to hear from those who are interested in this topic, particularly from survivors and veterans, and their children or family (in English/Po Polsku):
[e-mail]

Contents
The accounts, memoirs and letters are an interconnected chronicle of a family and a national tragedy, and should be read in their totality. Links and cross-references are provided.
A great myth developed that only the fascist enemy was capable of genocide, of mass crime. If the crimes of the Soviet Union were to be
put into the same category as those of the Nazis, the whole moral story
of why we fought the Second World War would have been ruined.
We now know that during the war, Stalin actually killed more of
his own people than Hitler killed during the Holocaust.
-- Norman Davies

http://www.polandsholocaust.org/intro.html

"Never Forget" the extermination of nearly 10 mil innocent people... There is no comparison between Bush's Iraq policy, and Hilter's Genocidal programs which were nothing short of Pure Evil...