MetaFilter posts tagged with poland and war

Do you know these children?

Asparagirl — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:32:10 -0800

Do you, or an older relative of yours, recognize any of these children? More than 70 children separated from their families during WWII, now all elderly men and women, are using the Internet to try to find some answers about their pasts, their families, and sometimes even their own names. They are soliciting help and suggestions in the comments sections on each story. Sadly typical story: "The infant was hungry and crying, so her mother asked for milk from a Polish couple that happened to be on the train station. The Polish man brought milk for the baby. Then the Jewish mother asked if they would want to take the baby as their own because she could not keep it. This couple did not have any children, so after some consideration, they agreed. They asked the Jewish mother who she was, but she told them that it was better for them and for the baby not to know who she was. She then gave her newborn baby girl, who was probably one month old, to the Polish couple. The Polish couple raised the girl as if she was their biological daughter and never told her how she had come into the family. The girl grew up, married and had a son. It is this son who wants to find his Jewish roots..."

Bacterial marketing: the other Oskar Schindler

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:20:23 -0800

Upon the Nazi invasion of Poland, pediatrician Eugeniusz Łazowski and his friend Stanisław Matulewicz fabricated a fake typhus epidemic to save Polish Jews from the Nazis. Knowing that typhus-infected Jews would be summarily executed, non-Jews were injected with the harmless Proteus OX19, which would generate false positives for typhus. Anglicising his name to "Eugene Lazowski", the doctor moved to the United States after the war. He lived and worked in Chicago from 1958, and passed away in late 2006 at the vernerable age of 92, in Eugene (!), Oregon. Oddly little is written about Lazowski and Matulewicz on the web; although apparently there has been work on a documentary titled "A Private War" by a filmmaker named Ryan Bank. So feel free to add supporting links if you are aware of any.

From the Diary of Adam Czerniakow on the Eve of the Deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto, 1942

matteo — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 11:22:29 -0800

"They are demanding that I kill the children of my people with my own hands"
On October 4, 1939, a few days after Warsaw's surrender to the Nazis, Adam Czerniaków was made head of the 24 member Judenrat, the Jewish Council (write "Czerniakow" in the linked page's search box) responsible for implementing German orders in the Jewish community (interactive map of the Warsaw ghetto). On July 22, 1942 -- Tisha B'Av, the "saddest day in Jewish history" -- the Judenrat received instructions that all Warsaw Jews were to be deported to the East (exceptions were to be made for Jews working in German factories, Jewish hospital staff, members of the Judenrat and their families, and members of the Jewish police force and their families. Czerniaków tried to convince the Germans at least not to deport the Jewish orphans). Czerniaków kept a diary from September 6, 1939, until the day of his death. It was published in 1979 in the English language as the "The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniaków: Prelude to Doom", edited by one of the most prominent Holocaust scholars, Raul Hilberg. More inside.

Poland At War

cmonkey — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 14:18:09 -0800

Poland at War - Photographs of Nazi-occupied Poland taken between 1939 and 1945