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ZEGOTA saved 50000 Jews from Holocaust 3/3

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Uploaded by on Jun 18, 2008

ZEGOTA-Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland(1939-1945). ZEGOTA (in Polish:ŻEGOTA) was the cryptonym for the clandestine underground organization in German-Nazi- occupied Poland(1939-1945) that provide assistance to the Jewish people. World War2- 1939-1945. Would you risk your own life and your family's to save another human being? Zbigniew Brzezinski writes "ZEGOTA is the story of extraordinary heroism...tantamount to 'Schindler's List' multiplied a hundred-fold." ZEGOTA was the only such organization in German-occupied EUROPE during the Holocaust.

More than 500 towns and villages were burned, over 16 thousand persons, mostly Polish Christians, were killed in 714 mass executions of which 60% were carried out by the Wehrmacht (German army) and 40% by the SS and Gestapo. In Bydgoszcz the first victims were boy scouts from 12 to 16 years old, shot in the marketplace. All this happened in the first eight weeks of the war. See Richard C. Lucas, The Forgotten Holocaust; The Poles under German Occupation. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky [c1986].
Waclaw Bielawski, from the Main Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against the Polish Nation, issued a list of 1,181 names of Poles who had been killed for helping Jews during World War II. In Western Europe the automatic death sentence for help rendered to Jews did not exist and applying it to a whole family or neighbors was unthinkable. The reign of terror that organized in German-occupied Poland(1939-1945) was completely isolated, and unimaginable in the West.

Germans selected Poland as the only country where aiding a Jew, be it only to give him a slice of bread, was immediately punished by death. Failure to inform on a neighbor hiding Jews meant deportation to a GERMAN NAZI Concentration and Extermination Camp(1939-1945) AUSCHWITZ, BUCHENWALD, DACHAU, BERGEN BELSEN, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, MAUTHAUSEN, Neuengamme, GROSS-ROSEN, SZUCHA, PAWIAK, PALMIRY.

As early as 1941, a representative of the Polish government-in-exile in London suggested to the British authorities that they bomb Auschwitz. The British rejected such a solution.
As a courier for the Polish Underground State, Jan Karski (Kozielecki) reached the West with accounts of the situation in German-occupied territory. During his second mission in the autumn of 1942, he delivered a report on the situation of the Jews in German-occupied Poland and the way they were being murdered, along with a plea for help, to representatives of the Polish government-in-exile and then to British and American politicians (including the US president). Karski had obtained his information from representatives of underground Jewish organizations. He entered the Warsaw ghetto himself on two occasions, and managed to reach a German camp in Izbica Lubelska, where he witnessed Jews being transported to their deaths at the German extermination camp in Bełżec.
Similarly, international Jewish organizations asked the Allies in 1944 to destroy the Auschwitz-Birkenau death apparatus, to no avail. American and British strategists regarded defeating the Third Reich and bombing industrial targets in Germany as higher priorities. The Americans also referred to the inadmissibility of using military force for non-military purposes.

A special section of ŻEGOTA was organized to get Jewish children out of the German Warsaw Ghetto after locating homes for them. The Jewish children also required false documents and stories to match. If they were old enough, they had to memorize new identities. ŻEGOTA rescued about 2,500 Jewish children in the city of Warsaw. IRENA SENDLEROWA (de domo: IRENA KRZYŻANOWSKA) (also IRENA SENDLER) played a leading role in the rescue and hiding of Jewish children. LIFE IN A JAR.
ZEGOTA (ŻEGOTA) distributed about 50,000 sets of false identification documents that were provided by secret forgery units of the underground. The Polish Army never surrendered to the Germans and no Armistice was ever signed. The Poles continued to fight during World War II, as insurgents or illegal combatants in the Polish Home Army and major battles and campaigns in which Polish regular forces took part: Invasion of Poland (1939), Battle of Mokra, Battle of the Bzura River, Battle of Tomaszów Lubelski, Battle of Kock (1939), Battle of Warsaw (1939), British campaign in Norway (Battle of Narvik), French Campaign, Battle of Britain, Battle of the Atlantic, Battle of Tobruk, Operation Jubilee (Battle of Dieppe), Battle of Lenino, Battle of Normandy (D-Day), Battle of Monte Cassino, Battle of Falaise, Operation Market Garden (Battle of Arnhem: "A Bridge Too Far"), Battle of Ancona, Battle of Bologna, Battle of Berlin- 1945, Prague Offensive. Polish underground actions: Operation Tempest (Burza), Operation Ostra Brama, Lwów Uprising, Warsaw Uprising- 1944.
Righteous Among the Nations: POLAND-6066-more than from any other German Nazi-occupied country. Total Persons- 22,211

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  • Poles are some of the most brave and loving and kindest people in the world.  I love them!

  • Bartoszewski is a well known and respected Polish Jew, he is right, I mean Polands occupation were not like in the west Europe... it was much harder...

    Bartoszewski was a minister of foregin affairs first Prime minister of Poland was Jewis too I.m fed up with black PR of Brooklin Jewish, have you honor?

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  • @BratWody Władysław Bartoszewski is a Pole, member of Home Army, Żegota movement and Auschwitz inmate with number 4427.

  • l agree, well said ! May the world never choose to close his eyes againt one of his child.

  • "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"

  • my father gave his life 1945, we are from Edinburgh we could give no more.

  • wonderfully said

  • I judged the Poles by their enemies. And I found it was an almost unfailing truth that their enemies were the enemies of magnanimity and manhood. If a man loved slavery, if he loved usury, if he loved terrorism and all the trampled mire of materialistic politics, I have always found that he added to these affections the passion of a hatred of Poland. She could be judged in the light of that hatred; and the judgment has proved to be right."

    Gilbert Keith Chesterton

  • and now American Jews called Poles the worst antisemites on whole world...

    Question is what American Jews do for Polish Jews in WWII? Because We Poles do many to Them... 50 000 Jews get aid from polish Żegota mouvement. Poles are on the first position of Righteous Among Nation list - 6123 persons. What occupied nation do more?

  • @viking303

    Don't believe it. AK was Polish Resistance against German murderers. They saved a lot of Jews lives. Poland never collaborated with Germans such as France of Marschal Petain, Norway of Vidkun Quisling or Slovakia of Tiso.

  • Poland resisted more, I think they knew "taste" of the freedom too good to just let it go and wait in hiding for "better times", as they lost it too many times.

  • Poland had many Wallenbergs

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