lesbianhawkeye:

I feel a little apprehensive to post this but damn, I’m tired of Poland during WWII being mentioned only in the context of “Hitler invaded it first” (which is not technically accurate anyway).

SO:

• during WWII, around 6 000 000 Polish people were killed, over 3 000 000 of it were Jewish. The vast majority were civilians. To give you the perspective on those numbers, 35 000 000 people lived in Poland before the war. That means that over 22% of all Polish people were killed in WWII.

• The first actual report of the scope of Holocaust was conducted by the Polish Underground State. Jan Karski gathered a detailed account of the mass murders that were being committed and presented it to the Allies on the West as early as 1942, asking for help. USA and UK did nothing.

• (by the way, while giving Jan Karski posthumously the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Barack Obama used the very loaded phrase “Polish concentration camps” – which were, you know Nazi Germany concentration camps where Polish citizens were killed. Not to rag on Obama personally but this goes to show what’s the general American attitude towards this)

• Speaking of the Polish Underground State – did you know that it was the biggest resistance movement under the Nazi Germany? And it was an actual underground state, with underground cabinet, diplomatic channels, education, judiciary system, the press, etc. There was a branch called “Żegota” that provided help for Jewish people in gettos and accomodated their hiding on the “Aryan side”. (You should consider that in Poland only the punishment for helping Jewish people was death).

• Don’t forget too that Hitler first offered Poland a deal and the Polish response was “We in Poland don’t know the notion of peace at any cost. There is only one thing in the lives of people, nations and states which is priceless: that thing is honor”.

• (that probably wasn’t very smart but you have to admit it’s pretty badass)

• Subsequently, both Nazi Germany and USSR invaded Poland while France and Britain (who formally “declared war” on Germany) did nothing.

• Also don’t forget that Polish Underground State was forced to work with Stalin even though USSR invaded Poland and committed terrible war crimes. For our troubles, we got sold to the Soviets after WWII. By the way, NKWD (secret police) was actively arresting Polish freedom fighters and Jewish people even BEFORE the war was done (sometimes those “freed” from the concertration camps were transferred directly to the Soviet prisons). USA knew about this.

There’s more but I wrote this off the top of my head and I’m tired.

American followers, be aware of this.