Teaching
FREEDOM a series of speeches and lectures honoring the virtues of a free and democratic society
THE POLISH-CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE AND WORLD WAR II By Aldona Wos, M.D.
Ambassador Aldona Wos delivered the following remarks to students attending the 2011 Engalitcheff Institute on Comparative Political and Economic Systems (ICPES), a program of The Fund for American Studies (TFAS). Aldona Wos served as the U.S. Ambassador to Estonia from 20042006. As ambassador, Wos focused on winning the hearts and minds of the next generation of Estonian leaders, Russian integration, HIV/
I
AIDS prevention and the preservation of Estonian culture. For her service and dedication to Estonia, Wos was given the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, 1st Class, by President Toomas-Hendrik Ilves. Wos earned her medical degree at the Warsaw Medical Academy and completed her residency in
Born in Warsaw, Poland, Wos is the daughter of Paul Zenon Wos, a survivor of Flossenburg Concentration Camp. In her remarks, Wos discusses the future of freedom, drawing from the experiences of her family during World War II. As a child of a survivor, Wos is passionate about preserving full and accurate information about the Polish experience during World War II. In 2002 and 2004 Wos was appointed by President Bush to serve on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, and in 2007 she was presented with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland on behalf of President Lech Kaczynski. I have been asked to speak to you today about an unusual topic for Washington, D.C., and the topic is freedom. Now, hopefully after hearing my view of freedom and the many lessons from history – you will agree with the basic fact, as I see it, that freedom is not free.
internal medicine and a fellowship in pulmonary medicine in New York. She has served on numerous boards of
philanthropic
and
community
organizations, including the United Way of Greater Greensboro, Family Service of the Piedmont, Hospice and Palliative Care of Greensboro, the National Conference for Community and Justice, Triad Stage Theatre, Sterling South Bank & Trust, the Council of American Ambassadors, The Institute of World Politics and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
As a first generation immigrant from Poland, a country whose democracy was taken away by imposed Soviet Communist rule for over 50 years, I wanted to share with you how history affected my family and me and how that pertains to freedom, to democracy and to current events. I will start two generations before mine, with my grandparents. Poland was a free democracy before World War I, and they were born into this freedom. But my grandparents’ freedom was forcibly taken away when they were taken as slave laborers to Germany in World War I.
Now, as history unfortunately tends to repeat itself, those same grandparents, this time as adults with their children, were taken into concentration camps during World War II. As all of you know, World War II started on September 1, 1939, when Hitler – Germany – invaded Poland. It was really apparent from the start that the Germans were not interested in the war against the Polish government or the Polish armed forces. Instead, the Germans were waging the war against the Polish people. The Poles became the first people in Europe to experience this systemic terror, enslavement and extermination of civilians on an unprecedented scale. Except for Russia, it took the German Army longer to conquer Poland than it did any of its other victims. On the invasion of Poland, Hitler said, “Kill mercilessly and
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2 racially screened for possible adoption by German parents. They were given German names, they were forbidden to speak their native tongue of Polish and forced to speak German, and they were re-educated in Nazi institutions. Those that were found to be unsuitable for this Germanification were sent to childrens’ homes, if they were lucky, or to childrens’ concentration camps – or they were simply taken and killed. During this time, abortion was compulsory, and infants that were born to the Polish slave laborers in Germany were taken away from their mothers.
Aldona Wos takes questions from the crowd of TFAS students.
without compassion men, women and children of the Polish derivation and language. Only thus far should we gain the land that we need.” Heinrich Himmler, who was the minister of internal affairs, and subsequently was the person who was the overseer of all the concentration camps, stated, “It is imperative the great German nation considers the elimination of all Polish people as its chief task.”
Russia invaded Poland from the east. When it was partitioned, 34 million people lost their freedom. Many people who lived under both occupiers felt that the Soviet NKVD, which was the Soviet Secret Service Police in eastern Poland, were far more destructive than the Gestapo was from the west.
Stalin stated, “After we signed this nonaggression pact with Hitler, the first benefit that we will have is the destruction of Poland, and then the movement of our borders all the way up to Warsaw.”
This partition of Poland lasted all the way until Germany subsequently invaded the Soviet Union. Germany seized all of Poland by 1941. The Nazi plan for the Polish citizens focused on murder and suppression of political, religious and intellectual leaders. Some of the tactics they used included currency devaluation, food quotas and confiscation of personal property. Without any warning, hundreds of thousands of people were expelled from their homes. Tens of thousands of Polish wealthy landlords, clergy members and intelligentsia as well as government officials, teachers, doctors, dentists, officers and journalists were all either murdered in mass executions or sent to prison or concentration camps. Over a million Polish Christians as well as Polish Jews were sent to nearly every concentration camp.
Now, imagine, just 17 days after Germany invaded Poland from the west,
The Germans also seized over 50,000 Polish children from their parents to be
Stalin and Hitler had a master plan that involved the conquest of Europe, as you’ll remember. But, in order for this plan to come to fruition, he needed to defeat Poland. On August 23, 1939 – just a few days before Germany invaded Poland – Germany and the Soviets signed a nonaggression pact. It’s called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and its purpose was simply to divide Poland.
As part of the efforts to destroy the Polish people and their culture, the Germans closed and destroyed just about everything, including universities, schools, museums, libraries and laboratories. They demolished hundreds of monuments. Ninety-two percent of the Polish archives at that time were robbed or destroyed. They raided museums, and they took national treasures – even Polish music was banned. In 1940, Himmler wrote a decree that children in Poland should only have schooling until the fourth grade. Any education after fourth grade was forbidden. They closed the elementary schools in Poland, and they closed all schools where Polish was spoken. It was also forbidden to teach history and geography. In these annexed territories, the greater goal was complete Germanification – Germanification politically, culturally, socially and, of course, economically. The Roman Catholic Church, which was the prominent religion in Poland, was suppressed. Churches were closed and destroyed, and most priests were imprisoned, deported or executed. The most dramatic evidence of German racial policies in German-occupied
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Poland was the network of 2,000 concentration camps. Poles constituted the largest number of inmates at Auschwitz until the Final Solution, starting in 1942, when Jews were brought into Auschwitz and became the largest group, exceeding the Poles. Now, getting back to my family, at the outbreak of World War II, at the age of 18 – younger than most of you in this room – my father was already enlisted in the Polish Army. He was stationed on the eastern border of Poland and was captured by the Soviets along with his officers. All the non-officers were put into a barn and all the officers were taken away. That night my father was able to bribe the Russian soldier guarding him, who was also 18, with the watch that his mother had given him before he left for the Army. The Russian officer simply turned around, and my father and two of the other 18-year-olds ran for their lives. They successfully escaped and survived the ordeal. Sadly, the other officers with them who were also captured were not quite as fortunate. They, along with 20,000 other Polish officers, intellectuals, professors and clergy, were murdered in cold blood in the Katyn massacre by Stalin’s security forces.
With the approach of the Soviet Army on August 1, the Polish Home Army launched the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. My entire family took part in the uprising, fighting to liberate their city and their country from German occupation and Nazi rule.”
During that time, it was actually the German news agencies that reported finding mass graves in Katyn containing Polish soldiers. The Germans reported this to the international community, blaming the Russians, and the Russians claimed that they were not guilty. The Polish government asked the United States, as well as the international Red Cross, to verify these reports. But the United States decided not to put pressure on the Soviets. After my father escaped he walked for three months, mostly at night, hiding from both the Communists and the NKVD. When he got to Warsaw the Germans had already killed 50,000 people. He somehow found his family, and after rejoining them, he continued to fight for freedom. He subsequently joined the largest underground movement in all of Europe, the Polish Home Army, or AK, which stood for Armia Krajowa. The Polish Home Army functioned not only as an army, but as an underground clandestine civil government. This included an entire educational system, legal system, medical system and both a religious and military organization. And all of these organizations in this movement were taking orders from the Polish government, which at that time was in exile in London.
Aldona Wos presents slides of her courageous family members.
All my aunts and my uncles were educated in underground clandestine schools. If any of them were found, they
would have been shot on the spot. Also of note is that the previous Pope, John Paul II, studied in Krakow, through the Polish Home Army’s help in an illegally reopened underground school called Jagiellonian University. Now, in the midst of this German occupation of Poland, and despite a German-imposed immediate death sentence for any Pole who helped Jews, both my father, my grandmother and my grandfather rescued 12 Jews out of the ghetto. For this, they’re recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel at Yad Vashem. A righteous gentile is a non-Jew who risked their life to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis. The highest percentage of all national groups who assisted Jews were Poles. It is important for you to know that in German-occupied Poland all household members were punished by death if anyone provided help to a Jew. That means for giving water, giving bread, hiding or employing you were killed, and the person you were assisting who was Jewish or hiding was also killed as well as every member of your household. Everyone would be taken out of the building to the street and shot. It is said that hundreds of thousands of people died trying to help the Jews, including my aunt’s classmate, who was given, at the request of my father, a six-year-old Jewish boy from the ghetto. My father had asked this young medical student to take this boy because he was living alone, and he agreed. He took
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4 him, and unfortunately, the little boy was discovered. The Jewish boy and the young medical student, along with everyone who was on the floor in the building, were taken outside and shot. That medical student’s parents survived the war, and they later ran into my aunt and father in Warsaw on the street, recognized them, and said that they held my father personally accountable for what happened to their son because they felt that their son was killed because my father was hiding Jews. The London-based Polish government was the first Allied government in World War II to bring to the attention of the entire world Hitler’s intention to annihilate the Jews of Poland. The representative of the Polish government in exile was a man called Jan Karski, who is of special note since we are here at Georgetown, and he survived the war and later became a scholar at Georgetown University. Karski bore eyewitness accounts of the perpetrated atrocities that the Nazis imposed on the Jews. He traveled to the United States where he brought these accounts to the attention of President Franklin Roosevelt and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter as well as to the authorities in Great Britain. He wanted to ask everyone to help because, by that time, over a million Jews had already been killed. Unfortunately, the president decided not to intervene. Frustrated by the allied governments’ rejection of intervention, the exiled Polish leaders decided to set in motion their own plan to help the Jews in Poland. They did this by organizing the Polish Underground with their civil counterparts, and they also formed something called the Council to Aid Jews, which was important because it was the only government-sponsored agency established in all of Europe to rescue Jews. This Polish organization was given a cryptonym, and the code
was Zegota. It provided hiding places, false identification papers and money for Jewish men, women and children, saving thousands of lives. Irene Sendler, who’s now deceased, was a young 22-year-old Polish Catholic woman who worked in Zegota. She is personally credited with saving 2,500 Jewish children. If you’re interested in learning more about her, the Hallmark Channel’s recent film called The Courageous Heart of Irene Sendler is wonderful.
please help – to send planes, which were needed to deliver shipments of arms and food to the besieged people of the city. But the president declined. As a result of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, 250,000 men, women and children – nearly all civilians – were killed in just 63 days. My father and his entire family were arrested during the uprising, and they were transported to the Flossenbürg concentration camp. My father became prisoner number 23507. His mother, his sister, his great-aunt – all the women in the family – were transported
TFAS students applaud Aldona Wos.
Getting back to history – with the approach of the Soviet Army on August 1, the Polish Home Army launched the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. My entire family took part in the uprising, fighting to liberate their city and their country from German occupation and Nazi rule. During the 63 days of the uprising, the Soviet Army stood on a river that is at the side of the capital of Warsaw and watched as the Poles were massacred. The Allied world stood still as the doomed Poles gallantly battled against the elite Nazi SS. Churchill had asked our president to
subsequently from Flossenbürg to Ravensbrück, and by the grace of God they all survived. My father and my grandfather were liberated from the Flossenbürg concentration camp by General Patton’s Third Army. My grandmother and my aunts were also liberated, but, unfortunately they weren’t liberated by the Americans. They were instead liberated by the Red Army and were brutalized by the Soviet liberators before they were able to join their families back in Poland. All of you are aware of the absolutely horrific fate that awaited the 6 million European Jews during the Holocaust.
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Freedom and democracy are gifts that are bestowed on us by the sacrifices of previous generations. We must cherish and preserve these gifts, and we must pass them on to our children.”
But most of you are probably not familiar with the tragic fate of millions of Polish Christians. During World War II, 3 million Polish Jews were killed – but on top of that, it is estimated that over 2 million Polish Christians were also killed, and on top of that number, there’s an estimated 2 million more Polish citizens who were transported against their will to Germany to forced slave labor camps. This included my mother who was blond and blue-eyed, and at the age of 14 was taken to Germany for forced slave labor.
Interested students stick around to talk with Aldona Wos after the lecture.
history, you cannot possibly interpret the present correctly in order to make wise decisions for the future.
On top of all those massive numbers still another 1.7 million Polish people were forcibly deported in the other direction, this time to Siberia, also known as the Gehenna, or the inhuman land. The journey for over a million people ended in suffering, starvation, excessive labor, sickness, disease or exposure to the frigid elements.
After the war my family’s hopes for returning to their homeland and once again rebuilding a free and democratic country were shattered. What fate awaited Poland after the war? Although occupied by two enemies, Poland continued to fight both home and abroad during World War II. Polish forces fought alongside the United States and Britain in most of the major campaigns in Europe, including the famous Polish fighter pilots who were instrumental in helping save Britain during the Battle of Berlin.
Overall, 6 million Polish citizens were lost, and these were not military losses. In fact, 90 percent of the losses in Poland were civilians.
Poland lost 17 percent of its population. Why is this important? Because it’s the greatest percentage of population loss of any country in Europe. Poland never surrendered to Germany and Poland never surrendered to Russia. Yet, what was their fate? At Yalta, President Roosevelt traded away the freedom of millions of people in the vain pursuit of stability.
It is imperative that we continue to educate ourselves about this topic. Now you may say to me, “Why do we need to know this? This is old history.” My view is very simple. If you do not know
My parents endured years of Communist rule before leaving everything in their native country to bring my brother and me to a country that provides freedoms and opportunities for each and
every one of us to fulfill our dreams. Freedom and democracy are gifts that are bestowed on us by the sacrifices of previous generations. We must cherish and preserve these gifts, and we must pass them on to our children. We must, as a United States, lead a principled foreign policy. When we lose sight of a principled foreign policy, we make terrible mistakes like that of President Roosevelt. The victory over this evil empire was really a result of calculated strategy by political, military and religious leaders who supported the millions of people onsite who never gave up hope that they would regain their freedom. When the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall fell, 400 million people regained their freedom. President Bush, in his speech for the 60th anniversary of the start of World War II, said, “No one’s liberty is expendable.” And he called Yalta one of the greatest wrongs in history. I firmly believe that every human being hungers for freedom. I know firsthand the devastation that the Communist regimes have imposed on millions of people. We must remember, even today, in present time, a quarter of the population of the world is enslaved
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6 in states that are controlled by the Communist Party. Can you imagine that? We forget China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. Living under communism, the power of words – and words of encouragement – can provide hope. We all remember President Reagan’s famous words in 1987 when he was standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate, and he demanded Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” Or, some of you may even remember Pope John Paul II when he was speaking to the Polish people on his first visit to Communist-occupied Poland. He said, “Be not afraid. Change the image of this land.” These words did matter.
as Poland, the land of my birth, and Estonia, the country where I served as the United States Ambassador, communism is not a thing of the past. Communism didn’t end with the fall of the Berlin Wall. There are still shades of communism, and they are apparent in every country. They are often concealed behind advocacy groups for greater good or greater social justice. Don’t be fooled. Why is all this history important to you? Well, several reasons, and I’ll start with the one that’s most important to me. And that is that I feel it is our moral obligation to honor the more than 60 to 70 million people who died in World War II followed by the deaths of the over 100 million people who were simply victims of communism.
While there’s been great progress in the quest for freedom in countries such
Here’s another reason why all this is important: turn on your TV, read
anything – and what do you see? You see the Arab Spring recently. Are these people perhaps yearning for freedom? Is this not a humanitarian crisis in the making, caused by violent oppression? Sounds real familiar, doesn’t it? It’s really up to all of you once again – it’s up to you to know history so that you can interpret the present. You’re going to have to make wise decisions, and you can’t make them unless you know the past. ON I will close with President Ronald Reagan’s statement, because this puts it all together. “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is to be fought for, protected and handed down to the next generation.”
Teaching Freedom is a series of remarks published by The Fund for American Studies, a nonprofit educational organization in Washington, D.C. The speakers featured in each issue delivered their remarks at a TFAS institute or conference or serve as faculty members of an institute. The speakers who participate in the educational programs contribute greatly to the purpose and mission of TFAS programs. The speeches are published in an effort to share the words and lessons of the speakers with friends, alumni, supporters and others throughout the country and world who are unable to attend the events.
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To read past issues of Teaching Freedom, visit: www.TFAS.org/TeachingFreedom.
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