Polish Americans Mark Start of WW II- The War that began with a lie

A 10:15 a.m. memorial mass at St. Hyacinth’s Church, 319 Cedar Swamp Road will be followed by a reception at the parish hall. Participating in the day’s event will be the Polish American Congress, Polish War Veterans, concentration camp survivors and Polish Catholics honored by Israel for risking their lives to rescue Jews during the German occupation.
 
As the Germans launched the invasion, they unleashed a massive blitzkrieg of death and destruction on the people of Poland.  Then, a little more than two weeks later, Communist armies of the Soviet Union marched from the east and joined the Germans in the carnage.
 
German brutality was obvious from the very start.  The invaders were diabolically intent on enforcing the order of Adolf Hitler who had commanded his generals to “send to death mercilessly and without compassion men, women and children of Polish derivation and language.”
 
These words of hatred and contempt are prominently displayed at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. on the wall at the entrance of the museum’s exhibit depicting Poland’s dreadful agony under German occupation.  
 
Heinrich Himmler, whom Hitler put in charge of his concentration camps, echoed the same genocidal idea when he also declared, “All Poles will disappear from the world …It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles.”
 
But even before the evil plan to invade Poland was set in motion, German propaganda was already blaming the Poles for starting World War II.
 
The “big lie” against Poland came the day before the invasion. To make Poland look like the aggressor, the Germans contrived a phony raid on their own German radio station at Gleiwitz.
 
Germans cunningly dressed themselves in Polish military uniforms, broke into the station and then broadcast an anti-German message that made it sound like Poles attacked the Germans and were taking over the station.
 
To give this deception a look of authenticity, the Germans shot one of their own German convicts they had forced to wear a Polish military uniform.  They left behind his corpse as they left the station and then announced it was the corpse of a Pole they shot as they tried to defend themselves.
 
For six long and bloody years, the Germans and the Russians brought death and devastation to Poland.  By the time it all ended, six million Polish citizens were dead – three million Polish Jews and three million Polish Christians.
 
World War II officially ended in 1945.  But not for Poland.  Even though Polish soldiers and airmen went on to join the Allies and contributed greatly to the eventual victory, they found out – too late – the Allies had lied to them at the same time they were agreeing to turn Poland over to the Russians.  The treachery at Yalta became the death sentence for many Polish patriots.
 
The Poles fought the Germans under the banner, “For your freedom and ours.”  Sadly, they never realized it would turn out to be “only for yours.”
 
One of the speakers at the anniversary ceremonies will be Michael Preisler, a Polish Catholic who spent more than three years as a prisoner of Hitler’s SS in Auschwitz.  For the past twenty years, he has been co-chair of the Holocaust Documentation Committee of the Polish American Congress.
 
Despite his age, Preisler refuses to stop his longtime fight for “the truth about Poland.”
 
His three plus years in Auschwitz were the worst nightmare of his life.  He constantly forces himself to resist any hard feelings against Germans – justifiable as they may be, considering what they did to him.
 
But fighting those feelings became very difficult for him recently when the German newspaper Der Spiegel tried to claim the other countries of wartime Europe (including Poland) were just as guilty as Germany for the Holocaust.
 
The misrepresentation stunned Preisler.  “It was like reliving the 1939 invasion all over again and having to listen to German propaganda blame Poland for starting the war at the same time they were dropping bombs on us,” he said.

Contact:  Frank Milewski
(718) 263-2700 – Ext. 105
pacdny@verizon.net