World War II in Poland Began in 1939.
2004 Will Mark the 65th Anniversary.
Written by Margaret Odrowaz-Sypniewska,.B.F.A., Clan Malcolm, P.G.S.A, P.G.S.M.

The Warsaw Uprising found the Polish insurgents with a lack of ammunition. This poster reads: "ONE BULLET, ONE GERMAN." This was a plea for soldiers to make each bullet count.

Words from German Nazis seems to mirror the thoughts of the Poles:

World War II was not man's most shining hour. In fact, it was the worst war to date. Poland was greatly affected because of its location between Russia and Germany. Eastern Poland was lost to the Soviet Union, while the rest of Poland was under Hitler's control. Communism and Nazism both prevailed along with all the horror stories of various war crimes. Eastern Poland Jews constituted from 50-90% of the population, which varied from location to location. Seventy-five (75%) percent of the top administrative posts in the cities of L~wow, Nial~stok, and L~uck were in Jewish hands during the Soviet occupation.

On this page I will note some of the events in Poland. Beginning with August 31, 1939, when the Soviet Parliament ratified the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

On September 1, 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland from the East. Approximately 15,000 officers and policemen were sent to three camps:

1. Kozielsk
2. Starobielsk
3. Ostaszkow

And another 190,000 privates and non-commisioned officers were distributed through the vast Gulag sysrem (Hempel, 58). Supposed Jewish collaboration with the Soviets was the reason that Anti-Semitism grew in Poland. While Nazi propaganda was that after they destroyed a Kosciuszko statue in L~odz, they blamed the Jews. The Nazis also burned a synogogue in L~odz and blamed the Poles.

Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. However Poland did not receive support from the Allies.

In February 1940, Polish citizens were sent to Kazakhstan, in the Russian Arctic, and to Siberia. State officials, judges, forresters, and small farmers were the first to be deported. In one year, almost 1.65 million Polish citizens were deported in cattle wagons, from eastern and central Poland. By 1942, more than half those who were deported were dead. As a group, Poles were considered racially alien as were Jews, Gypsies, Belorussians, and the Ukranians. Only 3% of Poles in the annexed provinces were considered worthy of Germanization. Germans under Hitler, classified people as follows:

• Class I --- Germans who promoted the Nazi cause.
• Class II -- Germans who had been passive in the Nazi struggle but retained their German nationality.
• Class III - People of German extraction that had connections with the Polish nation, but would submit to Germanization. These were also couples with one spouse who was German and the other Polish, and their children.
• Class IV -- People of German descent who were Polonized and resisted Germanization.

The Germans abducted Polish children to Germanize them. These included orphans and those in foster homes. Blue-eyed, blond children were the ones they looked for, The estimate is that some 200,000 children were seized for Germanization.

Germans not only seized humans, they also seized Polish industries for their own. Out of the 2, 387 textile factories in L~odz, 2,000 were held in trust by the Treuhandstelle Ost. They adminstered 264 industrial establishments, 9,000 medium-sized industrial concerns, 76,000 small industrial operations, 9,129 large commercial firms, 112,000 small commercial businesses. These figures do not include those enterprizes that were sold to private German ownerships.

Many homes of Poles and Jews were placed in German hands as well. In current times, those homes still remaining, are offered to their owners from before the war.

When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, in June 22, 1941, General Sikorski (one of the leaders of Poland's government-in exile) was granted the concession that a number of Poles, who had been deported to the Soviet Union camps, should be released in order to set up a Polish army. The new Polish army was transported to Iran in the Middle East.

Three thousand to four thousand (3,500-4,000) Jews were evacuated from Russia to the Middle East during the summer of 1942. Two hundred, thirty-six (236) out of two hundred, thirty-eight (238) deserters from the Third Carpathian Divisions were said to be Jewish. By 1942, the Soviets forbade Jewish, Ukranians, and Bylorussian citizens from receiving assistance from the offices of the Polish Embassy in the Soviet Union.

When the Red Cross Commission inspected Katyn, Russia, which was now occupied by the German Wehrmacht, in 1943, they found a mass grave (in a trench) of thousands of Polish Officers. Berlin radio announced on April 13, 1943, that these graves, near Smolensk, Russia, had been discovered. These officers had been executed three years before by the Soviet KNWD (secret police - now called the KBG. Upon the discovery of this atrocity, the Polish government in exile, in London, severed all contacts with the Soviet Union. Stalin (his real name was Dzhugashvili) thought his victory over Germany would erase this event from the minds of the Polish. This event is still remembered however. Their propaganda failed.

At least two people by the name SYPNIEWSKI were killed and buried at Katyn. The total body count at this site is estimated at near 2,000.

Two Sypniewskis are buried in Katyn Cemetary:

Marian Edward Sypniewski was the son of Boleslaw and Lucy (nee Dobrogojsk) Sypniewski and he was born on February 13, in Czarmanie, in Warsaw County. Marian graduated from a teaching seminar in Kozmine (1929) He was a teacher in Podiedzikach, near Poznan. He finished military school as a ground troop (1930) He was assigned to the 58th Infantry Regiment. Marian was married.

Grzegorz Zbigniew Sypniewski was a Lieutenant Militiaman. He was the son of Wiktor Sypniewski and Henrietta (nee Aleksandrowicz). Grzegorz was born in Lwow. He was a legionary in the 1st Regiment of Artillery in 1920. He was in combat in the 5th Regiment as a Lieutenant, as he was promoted from a Sergeant Major. On June 1, 1919, he was incorporated into the 6th Armor Regiment, and later to the 6th District of military personnel. Grzegorz was a teacher of mathematics in Lwow.

***Information from Katyn' Ksiego Cmentaarna (Katyn's Cemetary Log Book)

The first non-German prisoners at Auschitz were Poles. They constituted the largest number of immates housed there until 1942, when the Jews became the largest group. The first gas poisonings at Auschwitz involved 300 Poles and 700 Soviet prisoners of war. Every Polish family had someone close to them who had been tortured or murdered there.

figures:
• Dashau had 35,000 Poles.

• Ravensbruck had 33,000 Polish women.

• At Sachsenhausen 20,000 perished

• At Mauthausen 30,000 perished.

• In Neuengamme 17,000 perished.