The Rape of Poland: Pattern of Soviet Aggression

332 Pages·1972·24.137 MB·English

by  Stanislaw Mikolajczyk

THE RAPE OF POLAND
Pattern of Soviet Aggression
Blackstone Studios
Stanislaw Mikolajczyk
THE RAPE OF POLAND
Pattern of Soviet Aggression
P
GREENWOOD PRESS, PUBLISHERS
WESTPORT, CONNECTICUT
The Library of Congress has catalogued this publication as follows:

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mikołajczyk, Stanisław, 1901-1966.
The rape of Poland.
l. Poland--Foreign relations--Russia. 2.
Foreign relations--Poland. 3. Poland--History-—
Occupation, 1939-1945. 4. Poland--History--1945-
I. Title.
DK4Ą4L.M5 1978 943.8'05 73-141282
ISBN 0-8371-5879-6

Copyright 1948 by Stanislaw Mikolajczyk
All rights reserved
Originally published in 1948
by Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.,
New York
Reprinted with the permission
of the McGraw-Hill Book Company
First Greenwood Reprinting 1972
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 73-141282
ISBN 0-8371-5879-6
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated to the Polish People

PREFACE
A raging question in Poland has become, “How long will it take them to
communize us completely?”
To my mind, however, the question is badly framed. I am convinced that
human beings cannot be converted to communism if that conversion is at-
tempted while the country concerned is under Communist rule. Under Com-
munist dictatorship the majority become slaves—but men born in freedom,
though they may be coerced, can never be convinced. Communism is an evil
which is embraced only by fools and idealists not under the actual heel of
such rule.
The question should be phrased: How long can a nation under Commu-
nist rule survive the erosion of its soul?
Never before in history has there been such an organized attempt to de-
moralize men and whole nations as has been made in Communist-dominated
countries. People there are forced to lie in order to go on living; to hate in-
stead of to love; to denounce their own patriots and natural leaders and their
own ideas. The outside world is deceived by Communist misuse of the organs
of true democracy, true patriotism—even, when necessary, true Christianity.
Who rules Poland today, and by what means? The answer is as complex as
the nature of communism itself.
The pattern of Communist rule in Poland goes back to 1939, when Molotov
and Ribbentrop agreed to partition my country. After stabbing Poland in the
back while Hitler was engaging the Polish Army in the west, the Commu-
nists established their iron rule in the east of Poland. This de facto rule was
tacitly recognized in the conference rooms of Teheran and Yalta.
Therefore it is important to recognize the real aims of the Communist,
his methods, the pattern of Soviet aggression.
By October, 1947, the month in which I began my flight to freedom, the
Communists ruled Poland through secret groups, open groups, Security Po-
vii
Vili,’ PREFACE
Slamei” ce—including special Communist units called the Ormo, the military, the
Army, Special Commissions, and Soviet-patterned National Councils. A mil-
lion well-armed men were being used to subjugate 23,000,000. Control of all
top commands was—and remains—completely in the hands of Russians. Their
orders, even some of the more savage ones, were and are now being carried
out by Poles. These Poles are either Communists or men of essentially good
heart whose spirit has at long last snapped. They are mainly chosen from
among the 1,500,000 Poles transferred by Stalin to Russia in 1939. Stalin has
“prepared” them thoroughly for their work.
The American reader who scans these words while sitting comfortably in a
strong, free country may wonder at many aspects of Poland’s debasement. He
may wonder why the nation did not revolt against the Communistic minority
which has enslaved it. On the other hand, he may wonder why Russia needed
two and a half years to impose its rule. Or why Russia went to the trouble
of camouflaging its aggression during much of that period.
But the Communist minority has gained absolute control simply because it
alone possessed modern arms. History reveals instances where a mob of a
hundred thousand, armed with little more than rocks and fists, has overcome
despotic rule by one assault on a key city or sector. Today is another day.
If the despot owns several armored cars, or even a modest number of machine
guns, he can rule. The technology of terror has risen far beyond the simple
vehemence of a naked crowd.
| We in Poland fell—for this reason and for many others. We fell even before
the war had ended because we were sacrificed by our ; allies, the United States
and Great | Britain. we fell because we became isolated from the Western
world, for the Russian zone of Germany lay to our west, and Russia leaned
heavily on the door to the east. In the morbid suspicions of the Kremlin, the
plains of Poland had become a smooth highway over which the armor of the
west might someday roll. Thus, much of our nation must be incorporated
into the USSR, and the rest must be made to produce cannon fodder to resist’
such an advance. We fell because the Russians had permitted—indeed, they
encouraged—the Germans to destroy Warsaw. In the average European coun-
try the capital remains heart, soul, and source of the nation’s spirit. Our capital
was murderously crushed; its wreckage became not alone the wreckage of a
city but the debris of a nation. _J
We fell because while so many of our best youths were dying while fighting
PREFACE ix
with the Allies, so many of the people who knew the dream of independence
were slaughtered and so many who constituted the backbone of our economy
were herded like cattle into Germany or Russia. We fell because Russia

stripped us of our industrial and agricultural wealth, calling i it ' ‘war booty.”m en I
“We lasted two and a half years because we were the largest nation being
ground down to fragments behind the Iron Curtain. We held out because we
are a romantic people who can endure much if the prospect of liberty remains
on the horizon. We lasted because the deeply ingrained religion of the country
brought solace and hope. We existed because, through centuries of hardship,
we have learned to fend, to recognize the tactics of terror and propaganda.
We held out because the Poles have loathed the concept of communism since
it first showed its head, and because the strong-armed bands of communism—
strong as they were—were still not huge enough to blanket all the scattered
farm lands which make up so much of Poland. The sparks of freedom flicker
and sparkle through the length and breadth of agricultural Poland, fanned
by priests and members of the intelligentsia who hide with the simple peasants
when the horrors of life in the cities become too great to bear.
\Russia carefully camouflaged its actions in Poland for much of two and
alf years, because it wished to make certain that the Americans and British
would again disarm and drop back to their traditional torpor of peace. The
Reds took into consideration Poland’s status as an ally, not in any humane
way, but with an eye to the possibility that if they raped us too abruptly, the
West might remain armed and thus complicate the job of grabbing another
countfy-"3
The Western mind may find it hard to comprehend rule by a fanatic hand-
ful. Yet such rule is a fact, both in Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe.
After the fixed elections of January, 1947, the Communist Party was itself a
party subjected to purge. Its size in Warsaw, for example, was cut from 40,000
to 24,000. This murderous group no longer had to wear the cloak of democracy,
shielding itself as the “Polish Workers Party”; “ window dressing” became
superfluous, as well as the people who filled the windows.
The Western mind may find difficulty, too, in reconciling the facts about
Poland’s rule with the apparent enthusiasm of the vast mobs one sees at Com-
munist rallies, grouped around the speaking platforms of tirading, frenzied
leaders. It must be remembered, however, that these mobs have been com-
manded to gather. A worker who does not obey the command of the NK VD’s