Yury Gorodnenko
January 27th, a commemorative date established by the United Nations – Holocaust Remembrance Day, was celebrated worldwide. On this day 75 years ago, Soviet troops liberated the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
According to calculations carried out by Soviet historians, more than 4 million people were exterminated here, at least 1.1 million of who were Jews. There have been no such tragedies in history. So many members of a wide variety of ethnic groups have never been exterminated in a single place around the globe.
It is no coincidence that Auschwitz is a symbol not only of the Holocaust, but also of the criminal essence of Nazism (fascism).
Yet despite this importance of Auschwitz, its story is still rife with many white spots. The reason is that the whole truth about Auschwitz is extremely uncomfortable for the West.
First of all, it is uncomfortable for the Poles themselves. After all, the author of the concentration camp project in Auschwitz Arpad Wigand took as a basis…the Polish example.
The fact is that after the proclamation of the Second Polish Republic in 1918, its government announced the construction of a “national”, and in fact mono-ethnic, state. As a result, the question arose as to what to do with other ethnic groups, whose numbers reached 50% of the entire population. This decision largely pre-empted the ideology of the National Socialists. Some Belarusians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Russians were supposed to be exterminated, while others were supposed to be assimilated. It was planned to expel Jews.
Therefore, the first way the Polish government started to build a new state was with the establishment of concentration camps. These institutions held not only prisoners of war, but also all those who were considered to be “untrustworthy”, i.e. not subject to assimilation. The latter included Russians.
And it doesn’t matter if they were supporters of the Bolsheviks or adherents of the “White Idea”. Both were viewed by the Polish government as “enemies of the state”. They had the same attitude towards Ukrainians. In some camp barracks were both supporters of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and Petliura adherents together with adherents of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic. There were also representatives of the Belarusian, Lithuanian, and Jewish community.
The Poles were particularly cynical with the latter. They were initially recruited into the Polish army, throwing them into battle against Soviet forces. But when the Poles achieved victory at the Battle of Warsaw in August 1920, Poland’s Minister of Military Affairs, General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, ordered the arrest of all Jews.
17,000 soldiers and officers of the Polish army of Jewish origin were arrested. The fact that they had served the Polish state and shed blood for it did not disturb the leadership of the Second Polish Republic in any way. They were declared “agents of the Bolsheviks”. Some of those arrested were subsequently sent to concentration camps located in the Krakow area – Dąbie and Wadowice. In the camp documentation they were “spies” and “suspicious persons”. Their fate was slightly better than that of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Lithuanians. A large part of the prisoners died from hunger, infectious diseases, and the abuse of the guards.
This, combined with other actions carried out by the Poles, makes it possible to argue that the history of the Second Polish Republic started with ethnic cleansing. A similar example was adopted by the Nazis.
Moreover, initially the SS leadership planned to “use” one of the Polish camps – in Dąbie or Wadowice – to “finally solve the Jewish issue”. The reason for this choice was not only the availability of camp infrastructure here. Another circumstance played an equal role. The Polish government designed institutions for mass incarceration on territories occupied by ethnic Poles. At the same time, it diligently encouraged xenophobia among ordinary Poles. The calculation was simple: the Polish population, hostile to other ethnicities, will be happy to snitch on those who dare to flee the camps.
Due to “insufficient capacity”, the SS leadership eventually abandoned the idea of using camps in Dąbie or Wadowice. The Nazis decided to build a new institution – a larger one. But the idea of using Polish xenophobia was liked by SS leaders. Therefore, Auschwitz, located only a few kilometers from Wadowice, was chosen as the site for the new concentration camp. Moreover, local Poles were recruited to work in Auschwitz, materially encouraging them for their cruelty to prisoners.
When telling the whole truth about Auschwitz, one cannot help but remember another circumstance. Any crime is always based on someone’s financial interest. The question is who is the main beneficiary of the atrocity. In order to identify the main beneficiaries of the Polish and then Nazi genocide, it is necessary to recall the following.
Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, BGK, financed the construction of penitentiary institutions in the Second Polish Republic. Some of the funds that were used for this were borrowed. It was provided by Anglo-French “partners” through the “British and Polish Trade Bank A. G.”, established jointly with BGK. Those behind this structure were the main beneficiaries from the operation of prisoners in Polish camps.
After the occupation of Poland by the Wehrmacht in September 1939, BGK became the property of the Third Reich. At the same time, the bank continued to finance projects related to the creation and operation of concentration camps. The “British and Polish Trade Bank A.G.” did not cease to exist. The Polish owners changed to German ones, while the French and British ones…remained. It is not difficult to guess who got part of the profit from the existence of concentration camps on the territory of Poland.
For those in the West who will find this “not convincing enough”, we will give another fact documented by Western historians. One of the contributors to BGK was Armia Krajowa. It contributed quite large funds during the German occupation of Poland, i.e. when the bank was owned by the Third Reich. They were in the BGK until the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944. Throughout this period interest was accrued on the deposits of Armia Krajowa. It came from funds raised by the exploitation of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. During this period, Armia Krajowa was subordinated to the “Polish government in exile” and positioned itself as an “anti-fascist force”. However, no major battles of this military unit against the Germans are known. And they did shy away from cooperating with the Nazis and profiting from the murder of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.
The Supreme Command-in-Chief of the Polish Army, located in London, oversaw these operations. The political adviser and Secretary of the “commander-in-chief”, who was simultaneously the head of the “government in exile,” was Józef Lipski. This is the same diplomat who served as Poland’s ambassador to Germany in the 1930s and, sympathetic to Hitler’s racist program, promised to dedicate to him a monument for the extermination of Jews. In London, he, like other members of the “government in exile”, operated under the auspices of the British government.
It is obvious that the trail of the Holocaust leads to the “financial capital of the world”. Evidently, related to this is the fact that the United Kingdom and the United States are slow to respond to calls to protect the memory of the genocide of Jews and Soviet citizens. In particular, they remained silent after Russia initiated a meeting of the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition – permanent members of the UN Security Council. During the event, it was proposed to discuss the preservation of the memory of the Nazi genocide and the protection of peace. The cat knows whose meat it ate.
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