Defenestration of Prague, Number Four

[Jan Klimkowski]

Whether the human rights of the Sudetenland Germans and German colonists from the Third Reich in Czechoslovakia were violated by the post-war mass expulsion, I can't say. I have to wonder how many true Sudetenland Germans are left and how many of them really want to live in Bohemia again now. Reversing or compensating their expulsion leads to the question of East Prussian Germans being compensated or allowed to resettle in Kaliningrad and calls into question the current borders of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus besides those of the Russian outpost. Then there's the Danzig corridor and all Polish territory from the border with Kaliningrad to Brandenberg where Germans once lived and were expelled. Half of East Prussia was also taken by Poland. And if those borders are up for grabs, then there's Karelia in Russia, or in Finland, depending on one's loyalties. And come to think of it Iceland probably still belongs in the Danish Kingdom. Why should Denmark be penalized for the Nazi aggression?

Klaus is probably very correct to adhere to the current status quo on European borders and the general outcome of World War II.

"Borders" in continental Europe have always been fluid.

Let's take "Poland" as an example. My father was born near Lwow, which was part of Poland in 1939. Lvov in a translation from Russian cyrillic. Lviv in Ukrainian.

The area was always ethnically mixed.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact resulted in the division of Poland between Hitler and Stalin. The Polish army fought the invading Nazis and lost. Badly.

Of course the British and the French, who had made a purely technical declaration of war on Germany, kept their militiaries at home. There was no western military help against the Nazis in 1939.

Meanwhile, after a brief vacuum of power, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland under the secret protocols of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ribben...olotov.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wrzesien2.jpg

The NKVD murdered tens of thousands of Poles at Katyn (and elsewhere) and ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Poles who were considered "unsound" or "bourgeois" to Siberia.

My father was seven. His grandfather was in his sixties but had dementia. Both were deported to Siberia, having been designated as sinister threats to the Soviet Union, along with my father's mother and his 20-year-old sister. My greatgrandfather died in transit. My aunt's infant daughter, Halina, also died, starving and sick, in a bitterly cold, faeces ridden, cattle truck.

In 1943, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainian: Українська Повстанська Армія (УПА), "Ukrayins’ka Povstans’ka Armiya," or "UPA"), who were primarily Ukrainian nationalists but who often collaborated with the Nazis and the SS, started ethnically cleansing the remaining Poles, mostly women, children and the infirm, in pre-WW2 eastern Poland.

On February 9, 1943, a group pretending to be Soviet partisans murdered 173 Poles in the Parośle settlement in Sarny county. According to Polish historiography, the perpetrators were a unit of UPA, commanded by Hryhory Perehyniak.[43][44][45] The assault on Polish settlements began between late March and early April 1943, killing approximately 7,000 unarmed men, women, and children in its first days.[46] On the night of April 22–23, Ukrainian groups, commanded by Ivan Lytwynchuk (aka Dubowy), attacked the settlement of Janowa Dolina, killing 600 people and burning down the entire village. Those few who survived were mostly people that found refuge with friendly Ukrainian families.[47] In one of the massacres, in the village of Lipniki, almost the entire family of Miroslaw Hermaszewski (Poland's only astronaut) was murdered. Also, the nationalists murdered the grandparents of composer Krzesimir Debski, whose parents met each other during the Ukrainian attack on Kisielin (see Kisielin massacre). Debski's parents survived, taking refuge with a friendly Ukrainian family. In another massacre, according to an UPA report, "in the village of Kuty, in the the Szumski region, an entire Polish colony (86 farms) was liquidated for cooperation with the Gestapo and German authorities."[48] According to Polish sources, Kuty self-defense unit managed to repel the UPA assault, though 67 Poles were murdered. The rest of inhabitants decided to abandon the village and were escorted by the Germans who arrived at Kuty concerned by the glow of fire and the sound of gunfire. Nevertheless, the claims about collaboration prior to the attack seem unreliable.

The decisive Soviet offensive at Kursk acted as a prime stimulus for escalation of massacres in June and August 1943, when ethnic cleansing reached its peak.[3] In June 1943, Dmytro Klyachkivsky head-commander of UPA-North made a general decision to exterminate Poles in Volhynia. His secret directive stated: "We should make a large action of the liquidation of the Polish element. As the German armies withdraw, we should take advantage of this convenient moment for liquidating the entire male population in the age from 16 up to 60 years. We cannot lose this fight, and it is necessary at all costs to weaken Polish forces. Villages and settlements laying next to the massive forests, should disappear from the face of the earth".[49]

In mid-1943, after a wave of killings of Polish civilians, the Poles tried to initiate negotiations with the UPA. Two delegates of the Polish government in Exile,[50] Zygmunt Rumel and Krzysztof Markiewicz, together with a group of representatives from the Polish Home Army, attempted to negotiate with UPA leaders, but instead, they were captured, tortured and murdered on July 10, 1943, in the village of Kustycze.

The following day, July 11, 1943, is regarded as one of the bloodiest days of the massacres, with many reports of UPA units marching from village to village, killing Polish civilians. On that day, UPA units surrounded and attacked Polish villages and settlements located in three counties – Kowel, Horochow, and Włodzimierz Wołyński. The events began at 3:00am, with the Poles having no chance to escape. After the massacres, the Polish villages were burned to the ground. According to those few who survived, the action had been carefully prepared; a few days before the massacres there had been several meetings in Ukrainian villages, during which UPA members told the villagers that the slaughter of all Poles was necessary.[51] Within a few days an unspecified number of Polish villages were completely destroyed and their populations murdered. In the Polish village of Gurow, out of 480 inhabitants, only 70 survived; in the settlement of Orzeszyn, the UPA killed 306 out of 340 Poles; in the village of Sadowa out of 600 Polish inhabitants only 20 survived; in Zagaje out of 350 Poles only a few survived. In August 1943, the Polish village of Gaj (near Kovel) was burned and some 600 people massacred. In September in the village of Wola Ostrowiecka 529 people were killed, including 220 children under 14, and 438 people were killed, including 246 children, in Ostrowki. In September 1992 exhumations were carried out in these villages, confirming the number of dead.[51]

The atrocities were perpetrated with utmost cruelty. The victims, regardless of their age or gender, were routinely tortured to death. Norman Davies in No Simple Victory gives a short, but shocking description of the massacres. He writes: "Villages were torched. Roman Catholic priests were axed or crucified. Churches were burned with all their parishioners. Isolated farms were attacked by gangs carrying pitchforks and kitchen knives. Throats were cut. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were cut in two. Men were ambushed in the field and led away. The perpetrators could not determine the province's future. But at least they could determine that it would be a future without Poles."[52] Timothy Snyder describes the murders in the following way: "Ukrainian partisans burned homes, shot or forced back inside those who tried to flee, and used sickles and pitchforks to kill those they captured outside. In some cases, beheaded, crucified, dismembered, or disembowelled bodies were displayed, in order to encourage remaining Poles to flee".[53] Similar account has been presented by Niall Ferguson, who wrote: Whole villages were wiped out, men beaten to death, women raped and mutilated, babies bayoneted.[54] Ukrainian historian Yuryi Kirichuk from Lviv described the conflict as similar to the medieval rebellions.[55]

Altogether, in July 1943 the Ukrainians attacked 167 towns and villages.[56] This wave of massacres lasted 5 days, until July 16. The UPA continued the ethnic cleansing, particularly in rural areas, until most Poles had been deported, killed or expelled. These actions were conducted by many units, were well-coordinated and thoroughly planned.[3] Also, even though it may be an exaggeration to say that the massacres enjoyed general support of the Ukrainians, it has been suggested that without wide support from local Ukrainians they would have been impossible.[29] Those Ukrainian peasants who took part in the massacres, created their own units,[3] called Samoboronni Kushtchovi Viddily (Kushtchov Self-Defence Units). People who did not speak Polish, but were considered Poles by the perpetrators were also murdered. Ukrainians in ethnically mixed settlements were offered material incentives to join in the slaughter of their neighbours, or warned by UPA's security service (Sluzhba Bezbeky) to flee by night, while all remaining inhabitants were murdered at down. Nevertheless, many of Ukrainians risk, and in some cases, lost their lives trying to shelter or warn Poles[53][57] - such activities were treated by the UPA as collaboration with enemy and severely punished.[58] According to the Volhynian delegation to the Polish government, by October 1943 the number of Polish casualties exceeded 15,000 people.[59] Timothy Snyder estimates that in summer and spring 1943 the UPA actions resulted in deaths of 40,000 Polish civilians.[29]

Władysław Filar from the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, a witness of the massacres, cites numerous statements of the Ukrainian officers, who reported their actions to the leaders of UPA-OUN. For example, in late September 1943, the commandant of the Lysoho group wrote to the OUN headquarters: "On September 29, 1943, I carried out the action in the villages of Wola Ostrowiecka (see Massacre of Wola Ostrowiecka), and Ostrówki (see Massacre of Ostrowki). I have liquidated all Poles, starting from the youngest ones. Afterwards, all buildings were burned and all goods were confiscated".[60] On that day in Wola Ostrowiecka 529 Poles were murdered (including 220 children under 14), and in Ostrówki, the Ukrainians killed 438 persons (including 246 children).[61]

In August 1943 the UPA placed notices in every Polish village stating in 48 hours leave beyond the Buh or the Sian river - otherwise Death.[62] Ukrainian nationalists limited their actions to villages and settlements, and did not attack towns or cities. Prosecutor Piotr Zając from the IPN branch in Lublin stated that in 1943 the massacres were organized westwards, starting in March in Kostopol and Sarny counties, in April they moved to the area of Krzemieniec, Rivne, Dubno and Lutsk, by June 1943, the attacks had spread to the counties of Kovel, Włodzimierz Wołyński, Horochów, and in August to Luboml county.[63] The slaughter did not stop after the Red Army entered the areas, with massacres taking place in 1945 in such places as Czerwonogrod (Ukrainian: Irkiv), where 60 Poles were murdered on February 2, 1945,[64][65] the day before their departure to the Recovered Territories.

According to Polish historian Piotr Łossowski, the method used in most of the attacks was the same. At first, local Poles were assured that nothing would happen to them. Then, at dawn, a village was surrounded by armed members of the UPA, behind whom were peasants with axes, hammers, knives, and saws. All the Poles encountered were murdered; sometimes they were herded into one spot, to make it easier. After a massacre, all goods were looted, including clothes, grain, and furniture. The final part of an attack was setting fire to the village.[66] In many cases, victims were tortured and their bodies mutilated, with all vestiges of Polish existence eradicated. Even abandoned Polish settlements were still burned to the ground.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_o...n_Volhynia

In 1944, when the Polish resistance rose against the Nazis in the Warsaw Uprising, the Red Army - most probably on direct orders from Stalin - refused to help. The Nazis slaughtered around 200,000 Polish partisans and civilians.

At the end of WW2, Churchill and Roosevelt sold out the Poles at Yalta. They agreed to Stalin's demand to move the borders of a Soviet-controlled Poland which meant that pre-war eastern Poland became part of the USSR, and the newly configured Poland was given formerly German territories in Silesia and Prussia.

See maps here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial...rld_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of...(1945).png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial..._of_Poland

Back in 1939, my grandfather and my father's two elder brothers had escaped across the Tatry mountains to the west. They fought in the Polish free forces against the Nazis throughout WW2. They were clear that at Yalta they had been betrayed again, this time by Churchill and Roosevelt.

The upshot is that my family was unable to return to their home near Lwow, because ethnic Poles were not allowed to move to the USSR which is where this part of pre-war Poland now was. Not that they wanted to move to the USSR.

My great uncle did go back, to Soviet-controlled newly configured Poland, and was allowed to rent a small farm in what had been German Silesia. The farmhouse had two floors and an attic. The original German owners were still living in the attic. Unsurprizingly, this relationship did not last long, and the German family soon moved to the newly created East Germany.

Currently, Germans are demanding "reparation" for their property losses in the east in 1945. Jews have long demanded "reparation" for property losses under the holocaust.

Last year, my family was finally able to make a visit to Skole, the small railway town near Lwow, where my father spent the first seven years of his life. It is now part of the Ukraine. The local people were nervous, fearing we had come to make property claims. After much searching, we identified the family home. Still there after 69 years.

Do we want monetary compensation for these historical crimes? No.

Do we want our former home back? No.

The current residents have nothing to fear from us.

The important thing is that a real history, a true history of these terrible events, is acknowledged, preserved, remembered.

Of course, there's fat chance of that happening.

The borders of Europe have always been arbitrary. However, it is totally unacceptable for aggressors, such as the Germans, to start demanding reparations for their own particular losses.