History /
Polish martyrology during WW2 - today`s monuments [54]
Polish society suffered heavy human losses during WW2. Polish Jews perished almost totally, ethnic Poles were exterminated too. Nazi Germans planned to get rid of the Polish elites and any opposition to their rule, then transfer 20 million Poles to Siberia, so that Poland could be settled by German colonists. The plan allowed a few million Poles stay as cheap labour force.
But all educated people were destined for extermination.
The same fate was planned for Polish elites by Soviet Russians.
The memory of Polish WW2 Golgota is honoured by thousands of monuments and memorial places all over Poland.
Chojnice, a monument to fallen teachers.
Warsaw is a special place on the map of Polish martyrology. About 800.000 citizens of Warsaw perished by Nazis` hands during WW2. And all American losses were only 414.000.
Isn`t it unfair that today Polish losses are so unknown and forgotten?
The Warsaw Insurgents` Cemetery holds mostly ashes of people who died during the 1944 Warsaw Rising. There were about 200.000 victims, 50.000 were buried in the cemetery after the war finished and exhumations all over the ruined city began. There are also remains of Poles from other periods of the war, totalling 100.000 in the whole cemetery.
A dozen names and 20 unknown
7 names and 18 unknown
13 names, 25 unknown and ashes of 50 burnt people
The monument to the Fallen Invincible
Ashes of 50.000 people murdered and burnt by Germans in August and September 1944 were buried here.
Defenders of Warsaw in 1939 are lying here: two dozen names and 728 unknown.
350 unknown soldiers of 1939 defence war.
Soldiers from the Polish Army in the East who tried to help Warsaw in 1944.
On 5 August 1944 Germans started a murderous pacification of Wola district. A house by house were emptied and all residents were executed. Here, people from houses 15. 26, 37 in Gorczewska Street.
Even at the end of the Rising, despite agreements and proimises to the allies, Germans executed captured insurgents. Here, women soldiers, murdered on 24 Sept. 1944, aged 16 to 25.
5 unknown
The final plaque: 104.000 people were buried in this cemetery alone. And they were not the only Warsawians who perished during the war. Including Jews from Warsaw, the city lost about 800.000 people during the war. To compare, American losses during WW2 totalles about 400.000 people, mostly soldiers. Certainly Warsaw paid a price.
In the centre, among modern architecture, there is a monument which was built a few years ago -to the victims of Soviet invasion of 17 September 1939 and to all who perished in the East. The form is of a train carriage - in such carriages people were transported to Siberia to gulag camps.
The monument contains symbols of Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Orthodox religions - all of them became objects of persecution when the USSR attacked Poland. E.g., 10% of Polish officers murdered in Katyń were Jewish.
