Polish culture during World War II
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Polish Underground State
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Polish culture was brutally suppressed during World War II by the country's occupiers, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, both of which were hostile to Polish culture and to the Polish people and sought their destruction.[1] Poland sustained major cultural losses during the war, with many scholars and scientists perishing and many cultural artifacts being either destroyed (often deliberately) or looted.
Much that is of particular value in Polish culture was nonetheless preserved by courageous individuals and underground organizations. Specialized departments within the Polish Underground State worked to salvage what cultural institutions and artifacts could be saved. The Catholic Church and wealthy individuals helped save some artists and their works. Throughout the war, in the face of draconian measures by the Nazis and Soviets, Polish underground cultural activities (including publications, concerts and dramatic presentations), education and even academic research continued.
After World War II, this wartime period influenced an entire new generation of Polish artists, writers and scholars.
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[edit] Destruction of Polish culture
Immediately after the German invasion of Poland, the Nazi German government declared the confiscation of all Polish state property, as well as various kinds of property owned by private individuals.[2] Places of learning and culture such as universities, schools, libraries, museums, theaters and cinemas were either closed or changed to "Nur für Deutsche" status.
Many university professors, as well as teachers, lawyers, artists, writers and other members of the Polish intelligentsia were arrested and executed or sent to concentration camps (in operations such as AB-Aktion, which produced the infamous Sonderaktion Krakau[3] and the massacre of Lwów professors[4]).[2] The matter was perhaps most simply put by one Nazi administrator: "In my area, whoever shows signs of intelligence will be shot."[2]
The war against the Polish language included the tearing down of signs in Polish and the banning of Polish speech in public places. Those who spoke Polish in the streets were often insulted and beaten. Germanization of all names was thoroughgoing.[5] Many treasures of Polish culture, such as monuments to Polish national heroes (e.g., the Adam Mickiewicz Monument in Kraków) were wilfully destroyed.[6] The Nazis planned eventually to level entire cities.[7][5][6]
Publication of any Polish-language book, literary study or scholarly paper was prohibited.[6] [2] The occupying powers destroyed Polish book collections, including the Sejm and Senate Library, the Przedziecki Estate Library, the Zamoyski Estate Library, the Central Military Library, and the Rapperswil Collection.[8][2] The last remaining Polish library in German-occupied territories, the Warsaw Public Library, was closed in 1941.[6]
Bookstores were emptied, and the last thousand or so Polish book titles, not previously proscribed, were withdrawn in 1943 (even Polish prayer books were confiscated).[6] An index of prohibited books was created, and over 1,500 Polish writers were declared "dangerous to the German state and culture" (including Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Stefan Żeromski, Stanisław Wyspiański and Maria Konopnicka); mere possession of such books was made illegal and punishable by imprisonment. The press was reduced from over 2,000 publications to a few dozen, all censored by the Germans. The only officially available reading matter was the propaganda press published by the German occupation administration.[6] Twenty-five museums and many other institutions were destroyed.[9]
Countless art objects were looted and taken to Germany, in execution of a plan that had been prepared well in advance of the invasion.[9] Over 516,000 individual art pieces were taken, including 2,800 paintings by European painters; 11,000 works by Polish painters; 1,400 sculptures, 75,000 manuscripts, 25,000 maps, and 90,000 books (including over 20,000 printed before 1800); as well as hundreds of thousands of other objects of artistic and historic value.[9] Even exotic animals were carted off from the zoos.[10]
To forestall the rise of a new generation of educated Poles, German officials decreed that Polish children's schooling should end after a few years of elementary education. Heinrich Himmler wrote in a May 1940 memorandum, "The sole purpose of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans... I do not think that a knowledge of reading is desirable."[7][2] Hans Frank echoed him: "The Poles do not need universities or secondary schools; the Polish lands are to be converted into an intellectual desert."[5]
Soviet authorities likewise sought, particularly in the years 1939-1941, to remove all traces of the Polish history of the area under their control by crash Sovietization and by eliminating much of what had any connection to the Polish state or even to Polish culture in general.[11] All institutions of the dismantled Polish state, including Lwów University, were closed, then reopened with new, mostly Russian directors.[11] Soviet communist ideology became paramount in all teaching; Polish literature and language studies were dissolved by the Soviet authorities; the Polish language was replaced with Russian or Ukrainian, even in the primary schools; Polish-language books were burned in the schools.[11]
The Soviet authorities regarded service to the prewar Polish state as a "crime against revolution"[12] and "counter-revolutionary activity,"[13] and proceeded to arrest large numbers of Polish intelligentsia, politicians, civil servants and academics, but also ordinary people suspected of posing a threat to Soviet rule. Many were sent to Gulags for years, even decades; others died, including over 20,000 Polish officers in the infamous Katyn massacres.[11]
Many writers obeyed Soviet orders and wrote anti-Polish and pro-Soviet propaganda, including Wanda Wasilewska, Jerzy Putrament and Teodor Bujnicki. Polish monuments were torn down. Most scholars believe that "In the Soviet occupation zone, conditions were only marginally less harsh than under the Germans."[5]
Altogether, during World War II, Poland lost 45% of its physicians and dentists (Christian as well as Jewish), 57% of its lawyers, over 15% of its teachers, 40% of its university professors and over 18% of its clergy.[5]
[edit] Underground culture
The Polish Underground State created a Department of Culture and Art, which, together with the Department of Labor and Social Welfare and the Department for the Elimination of the Effects of the War, became underground patrons of Polish culture.[8] These Departments oversaw efforts to save, from looting or destruction, works of art in state and private collections, compiled reports on looted and destroyed works, and provided artists and scholars with means to continue their work and publications, and to support their families.[8] They sponsored, for example, the underground publication (bibuła) of works by Winston Churchill and Arkady Fiedler and of 10,000 copies of a Polish primary-school primer, and commissioned artists to create pro-resistance artwork (for example, see Action N).[8] Occasionally, even secret exhibitions, theater performances and concerts were sponsored.[8]
Other important patrons of Polish culture included the Catholic Church and members of the Polish aristocracy, who likewise took initiatives related to supporting artists and safeguarding Polish heritage (notable patrons included Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha and a former politician, Janusz Radziwiłł).[8]
Thus Polish culture persisted through diverse underground activities — education, publications, even theater.[14][5] In the General Governement alone, some 100,000 secondary-school pupils and over 10,000 university students were involved in secret education.[15] There were over 100 underground newspapers,[16] and over 200 underground publications dedicated to literature alone (e.g., Biuletyn Informacyjny and Sztuka i Naród). Novels and anthologies were published by underground presses. Literary discussions were held, and even some academic research was carried out. Prominent writers of the period, working in Poland, included Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, Tadeusz Borowski, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, Maria Dąbrowska, Tadeusz Gajcy, Zuzanna Ginczanka, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, future Nobel Prize winner Czesław Miłosz, Zofia Nałkowska, Leopold Staff and others. There were writers who plied their trade and published their works in prisoner-of-war camps and even in concentration camps. Many writers, including Baczyński, Ginczanka and Boy-Żeleński, did not survive the war.
During the Warsaw Uprising (August–October 1944), in Polish-controlled territory, people endeavored to recreate the former day-to-day life of their free country. Cultural life was vibrant, among both soldiers and civilian population, with theatres, post offices, newspapers and similar activities.[17] Headed by Antoni Bohdziewicz, the Home Army's Bureau of Information and Propaganda even created three newsreels and over 30,000 meters of film documenting the struggle.[18] Eugeniusz Lokajski took some 1,000 photographs before he died, Sylwester Braun some 3,000, of which 1,520 survive.
Polish Radio broadcast in English.
[edit] Culture in exile
There were also Polish writers at work and publishing abroad. Arkady Fiedler wrote about the 303 Polish Fighter Squadron, based in Britain; Melchior Wańkowicz, about the conspicuous Polish contribution to the capture of Monte Cassino, in Italy. Other writers working abroad included Jan Lechoń, Antoni Słonimski, Kazimierz Wierzyński and Julian Tuwim.
[edit] Influence on postwar culture
Perhaps ironically, the wartime attempts to destroy Polish culture, strengthened it. Norman Davies writes in God's Playground: "In 1945, as a prize for untold sacrifices, the attachment of the survivors to their native culture was stronger than ever before."[19] That culture was, however, different from the culture of interwar Poland; most notably, with the destruction of Poland's Jewish community, with Poland's postwar territorial changes, and with the various postwar migrations, Poland lost its ethnic minorities. The multicultural nation was no more.[20]
The experience of World War II had placed its stamp on a generation of Polish artists that became known as the "Generation of Columbuses." The term denotes an entire generation of Poles, born soon after Poland regained independence in 1918, whose adolescence had been marked by World War II; in their art they "discovered a new Poland" — one forever changed by the atrocities of World War II and the ensuing creation of a communist Poland.[21][22][23]
Over the years, nearly three-quarters of the Polish people have emphasized the importance of World War II to the Polish national identity.[24] Many Polish works of art created since the war have centered around events of the war. Books by Tadeusz Borowski, Adolf Rudnicki, Henryk Grynberg, Miron Białoszewski, Hanna Krall and others; films, including those by Andrzej Wajda (A Generation, Kanał, Ashes and Diamonds, Lotna, A Love in Germany, Korczak, Katyń); TV series (Four Tank Men and a Dog and Stakes Bigger than Life); music (Powstanie Warszawskie (album)); and even comic books — diverse works have reflected those times. The Polish historian Tomasz Szarota wrote in 1996: "Educational and training programs place special emphasis on the World War II period and on the occupation. Events and individuals connected with the war are ubiquitous on TV, on radio and in the print media. The theme remains an important element in literature and learning, in film, theatre and the fine arts. Not to mention that politicians constantly make use of it. Probably no other country marks anniversaries related to the events of World War II so often or so solemnly".[24]
[edit] See also
- Emanuel Ringelblum and Oyneg Shabbos – historians
- Home front during World War II
[edit] Citations
- ^ Olsak-Glass, Judith (January 1999). Review of Piotrowski's Poland's Holocaust. Sarmatian Review. Retrieved on 2008-01-24. “The prisons, ghettos, internment, transit, labor and extermination camps, roundups, mass deportations, public executions, mobile killing units, death marches, deprivation, hunger, disease, and exposure all testify to the 'inhuman policies of both Hitler and Stalin' and 'were clearly aimed at the total extermination of Polish citizens, both Jews and Christians. Both regimes endorsed a systematic program of genocide.'”
- ^ a b c d e f Rebecca Knuth, Libricide:The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003, ISBN 027598088X, Google Print, p.86-89
- ^ Burek, Edward (ed.) “Sonderaktion Krakau” in Encyklopedia Krakowa. Krakow: PWM, 2000.
- ^ Albert, Zygmunt (1989). Kaźń profesorów lwowskich - lipiec 1941 - collection of documents. Wrocław, University of Wrocław Press. ISBN 8322903510.
- ^ a b c d e f Wrobel, Piotr. The Devil's Playground: Poland in World War II, part I & II. Project InPosterum. Price-Patterson. Retrieved on 2008-01-25.
- ^ a b c d e f The Nazi Kultur in Poland by several authors, with Foreword by John Masefield. Polish Ministry of Information (1945). Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
- ^ a b Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved on 2008-01-24.
- ^ a b c d e f Grzegorz Ostasz, Polish Underground State's Patronage of the Arts and Literature (1939-1945). Last retrieved on 20 March 2008.
- ^ a b c (Polish) Rewindykacja dóbr kultury
- ^ Vernon N. Kisling, Zoo and Aquarium History: Ancient Animal Collections to Zoological Gardens, CRC Press, 2001, ISBN 084932100X, Google Print, p.122-123
- ^ a b c d Trela-Mazur 1997.
- ^ (English) Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1996). A World Apart: Imprisonment in a Soviet Labor Camp during World War II. Penguin Books, 284. ISBN 0140251847.
- ^ (Polish) Władysław Anders (1995). Bez ostatniego rozdziału. Lublin: Test, 540. ISBN 8370381685.
- ^ World War II and The Communist Regime: Shakespeare in the Theatre of Political Allusions and Metaphors. Internet Shakespeare Editions. Retrieved on 2008-01-24.
- ^ The Second World War: The Fourth Partition. The History of Poland. Retrieved on 2008-01-25.
- ^ Polish Facts and Figures in World War II 56. More Than 110 Underground Newspapers
- ^ Nawrocka-Dońska 1961.
- ^ Warsaw Uprising - Timeline. Warsaw Uprising 1944. Retrieved on 2008-01-25.
- ^ Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0231128193, Google Print, p.174
- ^ Marek Haltof, Polish National Cinema, Berghahn Books, 2002, ISBN 1571812768, Google Print, p.223
- ^ Marcel Cornis-Pope, John Neubauer, History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004, ISBN 9027234523, Print, p.146
- ^ Bolesław Klimaszewski, An Outline History of Polish Culture, Interpress, 1984, ISBN 8322320361, Print, p.343
- ^ Marek Haltof, Polish National Cinema, Berghahn Books, 2002, ISBN 1571812768, Print, p.76
- ^ a b Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, The memory of World War II in Poland, Eurozine, 2007-09-05. Retrieved on 26 March 2008.
[edit] References
- Nawrocka-Dońska, Barbara (1961). Powszedni dzień dramatu, 1st edition (in Polish), Warsaw: Czytelnik.
- Trela-Mazur, Elżbieta; Bonusiak, Włodzimierz; Ciesielski, Stanisław Jan; Mańkowski, Zygmunt; Iwanow, Mikołaj (eds.) (1997). Sowietyzacja oświaty w Małopolsce Wschodniej pod radziecką okupacją 1939-1941 (Sovietization of education in eastern Lesser Poland during the Soviet occupation 1939-1941) (in Polish). Kielce: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna im. Jana Kochanowskiego. ISBN 978-83-7133-100-8.
[edit] Further reading
- Mężyńskia, Andrzej; Paszkiewicz, Urszula; Bieńkowska, Barbara (1994). Straty bibliotek w czasie II wojny światowej w granicach Polski z 1945 roku. Wstępny raport o stanie wiedzy (Losses of Libraries During World War II within the Polish Borders of 1945. An Introductory Report on the State of Knowledge) (in Polish). Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Reklama. ISBN 8390216701.
- Ordęga, Adam; Terlecki, Tymon (1945). Straty kultury polskiej, 1939–1944 (Losses of Polish Culture, 1939–1944) (in Polish). Glasgow: Książnica Polska.
- Antoni Symonowicz, Nazi Campaign against Polish Culture, in Roman Nurowski, ed., 1939-1945 War Losses in Poland (Poznan: Wydaw- nictwo Zachodnie, 1960
- Jan P. Pruszynski, Poland: The War Losses, Cultural Heritage, and Cultural Legitimacy,, in Elizabeth Simpson (ed.), The Spoils of War: World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property, Harry N. Abrams: New York, 1997, ISBN 0810944693
[edit] External links
- Lukaszewski, Witold J. (April 1998). Polish Losses in World War I. The Sarmatian Review.
- Polish Department of National Heritage: Wartime losses
- World War II in Poland, its Impact on Everyday Life; Personal Perspective
- The Nazi Kultur in Poland by several authors of necessity temporarily anonymous written in Warsaw under the German Occupation
- The German New Order in Poland: Part 1, Part 2
