Talk:History of Poland (1939–1945)/sources

message: "the issue that Poland has to compensate to the widows and children of the Soviet soldiers who where killed in the course of liberating Poland from Nazism."
Treatment of Poles under Soviet rule:
http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/chodakiewicz1.htm
Communist Torture in Contemporary Sources
The use of torture by the Communists was ubiquitous. The secret policemen of the Public Security Office (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego – UBP, or, colloquially, UB) tortured cruelly even a few of their own comrades accused of ideological “deviation,” including in a secret prison in Miedzeszyn.[10] However, torture was applied primarily against the independentist camp. This entity encompassed all covert and overt forces from the extreme left to far right enrolled in the anti-Communist underground and the political opposition, originating in the war-time Polish Underground State and its Home Army (Armia Krajowa – AK). The most notable among them were the Freedom and Independence Union (Zrzeszenie Wolność i Niezawisłość – WiN); the National Military Union (Narodowe Zjednoczenie Wojskowe – NZW); the National Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe – SN); the Christian Democratic Labor Party (Stronnictwo Pracy – SP) and, last but not least, the Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe – PSL). Because of its scope, terror also affected the population at large.[11]
According to an underground newspaper of July 1945:
It has been established that the NKVD and RB [sic UB] torture their prisoners terribly at the Chopin Street [police headquarters] in Lublin, at the Strzelecka Street [facility] in Warsaw, and in Włochy . The most popular methods of extracting confessions include ripping off fingernails slowly, applying “temple screws” [i.e., clamps that crush the victim’s skull], and putting on “American handcuffs.” The last named method causes the skin on one’s hands to burst and the blood to flow from underneath one’s fingernails. The torture is applied passionlessly in a premeditated manner. Those who faint are revived with a morphine shot. Before the torture session some receive booster shots [zastrzyki wzmacniające ]. The torturers strictly observe the opinion of the chief interrogating officer whether it is acceptable to allow the interrogated to die…. At the infamous Lublin Castle [prison], because of the injuries inflicted during interrogation, mortality among the political prisoners reaches 20 persons per week.[12]
--Molobo 01:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Communist Torture in Contemporary Sources

message: http://www.ialhi.org/news/i0305_9.html
The Soviet Takeover of Eastern Poland
Jan T. Gross. Revolution from Abroad: the Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorusssia. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 2002. xxiv + 396 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $44.89 (cloth). ISBN 0-691-09603-1.
Reviewed for H-RUSSIA by Johanna Granville, Hoover Institution, Stanford University (May 2003).
Occupation by a Spoiler State: the Soviet Takeover of Eastern Poland (1939-1941)
--Molobo 22:44, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Soviet occupation compared to Nazi Occupation

message: http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/chodakiewicz2.htm
http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/chodakiewicz2.htm
*Two types of distinct legal systems functioned at the time: the Soviet and the Polish. The former applied not only in Poland’s eastern territories incorporated into the Soviet Union after the return of the Red Army in 1944, but also to the west of the so-called Curzon line, wherever the Soviet terror apparatus (and judiciary) happened to operate. While at the mercy of the NKVD, most commonly, the political offenders were charged under the infamous Article 58 of the Soviet penal code. According to Article 58, a Home Army soldier, who was ethnically Polish, born in pre-war Poland, and a life-long citizen of Poland could be sentenced as “traitor to the Soviet Motherland” in addition to being a “counter-revolutionary,” “Hitlerite collaborator,” and “fascist.”[36]
*Simultaneously, although always deferring to the Soviet law, the local Communists in Poland introduced their own legal regulations. More precisely, they amended the existing pre-war laws with a bevy of their own decrees. Arguably, the most important of them was the infamous Decree of August 31, 1944, against “the fascist-Hitlerite criminals and traitors of the Polish Nation.” The decree was promulgated by the Communist proxy regime and used mainly as a political and legal tool of repression against the independentists fighters and politicians, who were routinely branded as “Hitlerite collaborators,” “fascists,” and “reactionaries.”[37] The August 31, 1944 Decree was also applied to real and alleged Nazi collaborators, including for instance persons accused of participating the massacre of Jews at Jedwabne, thus from a legal point of view making it a political rather than a criminal case.[38]
*The language of the August Decree was extremely violent. It reflected the language of contemporary Communist propaganda. And the Communists dubbed as “fascists” and “reactionaries” anybody who disagreed with them.[39] The independentist insurgents were of course the primary targets of the Stalinist vituperation. The guidelines for propaganda of the Central Board of Political Formatting of the Polish People’s Army aptly titled “Concerning the mobilization of hatred toward the reactionary thugs” instructed the political commissars to “brand with all your strength the criminal activities of the bastards of the NSZ and AK, Hitler’s emulators. Develop hatred among the soldiers and push them against the reactionaries.”[40]
*Accordingly, Communist military political commissars publicly preached that during the Warsaw ghetto uprising the following forces fought against the Jewish insurgents: “the German air force, the SS, and tanks as well as Polish hooligans, Polish reactionaries and, actually, the AK.”[41] Therefore, “the criminals of the AK and NSZ work hand in glove with the Hitlerites. And they should be treated just like the Hitlerite murderers.”[42] A Communist pundit editorialized that “during the [Nazi] occupation the NSZ formed an auxiliary formation of the SS and Gestapo.”[43] “Put on trial the AK and NSZ murderers, Hitler’s helpers!” screamed the official posters in unison.[44]
*As Professor Krystyna Kersten has noted perceptively, the independentist insurgents and the parliamentary opposition were the chief “reactionaries.” Significantly, “reactionary” was synonymous with “bandit,” “traitor,” “fascist,” “Hitlerite,” “anti-Semite,” and “Jew-killer.” Whoever killed Jews was not just a traitor, but also “an agent of Hitler.” Anybody who opposed the Communists was also a potential “Jew-killer,” or at least could be accused of such terrible anti-Semitic deeds, and, hence, branded “a Nazi collaborator.” This was a convenient propaganda device commonly employed to dupe the West into believing that the opponents of the Communists were pro-Nazi and that the brutal crushing of the independentist insurrection and the parliamentary opposition in Poland was simply a mop-up operation which fittingly concluded the anti-German struggles of the Second World War. This was also a useful tool to rally the population behind the Communists in meting out justice to alleged Polish “Hitlerites.”[45] (The trick was further intended to endear the proxy regime to the Jewish community at home and abroad.)[46]
*Communist law was well-harmonized with the propaganda. It seems that the intention of the authors of the August Decree was to limit, if not outright preclude, the possibility of a fair investigation and a fair trial. The objective was to punish “Nazi collaborators,” whether real or alleged. In other words, the Communist policemen, prosecutors, lawyers, and judges involved in the cases pursued and tried on the basis of the August Decree were not interested in recreating the crimes, describing their details, identifying the victims, and finding the perpetrators. They were out to destroy the enemy: physically and morally. Numerous accounts of the victims of the Communist investigative and legal process seem to signal just that. 
 	
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz: The Dialectics of Pain: The Interrogation Methods of the Communist Secret Police in Poland, 1944-1955. Glaukopis, vol.
--Molobo 14:13, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Molobo, stop pasting chunks into Wikipedia! It makes the dialog impossible to follow by making pages huge. A ref is enough. And use edit summaries as requested from you multiple times. --Irpen 22:32, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Project inPosterum