Price of the Treason: Article on World War, Germans, Poles & Jews
Article on World War, Germans, Poles & Jews – Price of the Treason
Photo credit: wintersixfour from morguefile.com
Germans, Poles, and a word about Jews.
I am Polish. From 1795 to 1918 Poland was occupied by Germans, Austrians, and Russians. In fact it didn’t exist as a country, but still was alive in people’s hearts.
Walenty (Valentine) Hałupka was my great grandfather. He was born in 1900 and had a twelve years older brother Antoni (Anthony). They lived in a pretty small village Torzeniec and both attended to a German primary school, as before 1918 there was no Poland on the world map. In 1914 the World War 1 started and both brothers were drafted to the army of Kaiser Wilhelm, the German ruler. That was was significantly hard time for Poles, as sometimes Polish soldiers under the Russian rule had to fight against Poles in German army. [1]
Walenty was in a pretty better situation than his brother, because he joined the army only about 1916 or 1917, when Germans had to recruit younger and younger boys. In 1918 the war was over and finally Poland gained independence. Soon later Walenty was fighting in the Greater Poland Uprising (Greater Poland is the name of the district in Poland) and soon after also took part in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920.
Thus both Hałupka brothers, Walenty and Antoni, knew the German culture very well and also the German language in speech and writing…
Poland had finally gained independence after 123 years of slavery. However, the society was mixed. Sixty nine per cent of the society were Polish and fourteen – Ukrainian. Nine per cent were Jewish and it was the biggest concentration on Jewish population in Europe, almost three millions in 1931.
Like other European countries Germany was in a hard situation after the lost war. They lost some territory, especially to Poland. The consecutive German governments were falling pretty often, and no one could stop the crisis. In the mid thirties of the twentieth century the rule over Germany was given to the man who finally dealt with the hard economic situation. He was Adolf Hitler. His heavy-handed rule imposed discipline to Germans, and also showed the very concrete source of the problems – Jews! He blamed them for everything.
One of the main points of Hitler’s program was obtaining the land for Germans. He claimed that that there was too little room for for his great nation to live, that Germans were cheated and had to demand a land for them.
Germans have always been a nation of practical solutions. Hitler’s government adjusted the economy to military production and soon it was boosting. Hitler saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. If he attacked Poland to gain more living-space for Germans… and almost ten per cent of Polish population was Jewish, especially in cities.
When World War 2 started Walenty was 39 and was recruited to the Polish army. 51 year old Antoni stayed at home . His two sons were drafted instead.
England and France which promised to help Poland in case of German invasion did nothing, and in one month our fatherland was defeated.[4] Especially that on the 17th September also the Red Army attacked Poland, already heavily bled, from the east.
Walenty became a POW, so did his nephews. Germans took Walenty to north-east, and … released him somewhere in East Prussia. He was free, only had to travel more than 600 kilometers (over 350 miles) to his home village, mostly on foot as he had no money.
Antoni’s sons were not so lucky and had to stay longer in their POW camp. The conditions in their camp were dramatic…
Meanwhile Nazi were organizing structures of the new authority on the conquered Polish land. The territory of Greater poland with village of Torzeniec was assigned to a new district Warthegau, the Land of Warta (from the name of the main river in that area). For obvious reasons it could not be called the Greater Poland anymore. The conquered territory in the north, near the Baltic Sea was renamed to Danzig-Ostpreussen. General Government with Warszawa (Warsaw), the (former) capital of Poland, was the thid district.
Hitler, in his book Mein Kampf had stated that he was gong to reject any “ratially foreign element” from the new country which he wanted Germany to become. Heinrich Himmler, the chief of SS organization, was not so radical and paid attention rather to physical human features than to ancestors. He wanted to create the land of blonde people. This was more pragmatic thinking as there was really not enough “pure Germans” to populate the conquered area. Hitler’s slogan “There is not enough room for Germans” was a pure fiction. Himmler stated that these true Germans were somewhere there, hidden among the other nations, the “holy” German blood was mixed with the blood of “worse category”.
Himmler somehow convinced Hitler to his idea, and in March 1941 so called German nationality list (DVL – Deutsche Volkslist) was introduced. [5] The goal was to gather and classify people who had German ancestors.
DVL allowed to assign people to one of four categories:
-
Category 1, the elite: former Polish citizens, speaking German language and belonging to German organizations before the war; they received German citizenship
-
Category 2: people who “belonged to German race” and were using German language living under Polish rule; they also received German citizenship
-
Category 3: Germans in mixed marriages and their children
-
Category 4: renegades, who used to act against Germany despite German ancestry
This system, however, didn’t include all cases. Thus, the practical use of the new law often depended on the German governor of the district.
The Land of Warta was ruled by Artur Greiser, and introducing the DVL played a seamless role in that district. Greiser was very rigorous and ordered to strictly check every “candidate for a new German”. This orthodoxy caused that situation in the Land of Warta didn’t change a lot, and this area was still dwelt mostly by Poles.
Alber Foster, the leader of Danzig-Ostpreussen district was Greiser’s rival, and didn’t mind to follow Greisler’s policy. Thus, it was much easier to enter the DVL.
In 1941 Foster allowed to enter the DVL to any former Polish citizen who could speak German and hadn’t acted against Germany.
That was a chance for Antoni’s sons. Antoni Hałupka left Torzeniec and moved to Gdynia, pretty big city in Foster’s district. Together with his wife and children, he signed the DVL and the family became German. Soon his sons were free. Antoni betrayed the fatherland for his children! The rules of entering the DVL must have been not too strict, as Hałupka in Polish means… a small cottage (it should be written ‘chałupka’ but it reads the same).Definitely they had never been Germans. Obviously Antoni’s service in German army during World War I was helpful, as well as his good knowledge of German language and culture. I have no information which category the family had been assigned to, but I suppose it was category three.
What happened then? As Germans, Antoni’s family prospered pretty well. They were “the privileged ones”.
The whole situation didn’t have a happy end.
“You are the new Germans? Then prove the loyalty to our new fatherland!” they heard one day.
Three Antoni’s sons were drafted to Wehrmacht, the German army about a year after signing the DVL. Two of them died under Stalingrad in 1942 or 1943, the place of the third son’s death is unknown…
Antoni Hałupka paid the highest possible price for his treason. Neither Walenty, nor anyone from my family had never heard about him after that tragedy. Walenty had some troubles after the war because of his brother’s treason, but finally proved that he didn’t signed the DVL like his brother.
I have written a poem about it:
How would you call me? Victim or traitor?
My sons are dead, Prisoners of War.
German line soldiers, fallen in Stalingrad,
Polish not anymore. Do you understand that?
My neighbors do not, they despise me,
for I left my fatherland to make my sons free.
Now I don’t have them, either don’t have home.
Father’s heart is wounded, so is heart of mom.
There’s no hope in my sorrow, no hope in my pain.
For sons I’ve betrayed Poland, and that was all in vain.
At the end, I’d like to leave you, reader, with a question: “Would you betray your fatherland for your family?”
END
References:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_during_World_War_I
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Poland_Uprising_%281918%E2%80%931919%29
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War
[5] Mark Mazower “Hitler’s Empire. Nazi rule in occupied Europe” Part 1, Chapter 7
