The Article printed below is a resource text designed to expose
you to all the difficulties that the Poles faced from September 1,
1939 until 1945 and beyond.
The betrayal trail is long and the Polish suffering is even more
intense than all of the scholars of WWII have determined.
Hopefully these dimensions will become obvious to you!
PART I
GENERAL INFORMATION
Poland's Place in the Sun.
Poland is the sixth country in Europe both as regards area
(150,470 square miles) and population (35,500,000).
Among all the nations of the world, Poland ranks eleventh
in population and twenty-sixth in area.
Poland's frontier is 2,250 miles long.
Of this only forty-five miles is Baltic sea coast.
This 2 % gateway to the world is totally inadequate for Poland's needs,
compared to Germany's 2l%, France's 60%, Spain's 65%, America's 71%,
Great Britain's 100%.
In the 15th Century, Poland was the largest state in Europe,
as the following table shows:
In the 11th Cent., Poland's area was 130,888 s.m.
In the 15th Cent., Poland's area was 430,502 "
In the 18th Cent., before the 1st partition 392,664 "
In the 18th Cent., before the 2nd partition 200,772 "
Contemporary Poland 150,470 "
2. POLAND, A DEMOCRACY.
After regaining her independence in 1918, Poland adopted a parliamentary
form of Government. The first parliament of reborn Poland, elected by
universal suffrage of both sexes, established the Constitution in 1921.
This Constitution made the Government and the President of the Republic
responsible to parliament as the predominant power.
In 1935,
the Constitution of Poland was amended by a small majority, the
power of the executive strengthened, that of parliament restricted.
Even so the President of Poland had far less power than the President
of the United States.
Freedom of Religion, of Press and Speech was
granted and even in the days of greatest State interference with
individual initiative, more than half the Polish press openly criticized
the Polish Government, showing that constitutional rights were not impaired.
Universal suffrage gave men and women over 21 the right to vote in secret
ballot irrespective of race and creed.
3. GOVERNMENT OF POLAND.
After the invasion of Poland by Germany and Russia, President Moscicki,
in accordance with the Constitution, transmitted his powers to
Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz, then in Paris.
In September, 1939, President
Raczkiewicz took the oath of office at the Polish Embassy there, and
appointed General Sikorski to be the Prime Minister and Commander-in Chief.
In December 1939, the Polish National Council, an advisory body acting
in the absence of an electoral parliament, was appointed and Ignacy
Paderewski elected as its chairman.
When France collapsed in 1940,
the Polish government was transferred from angers to London. the following
year the Polish National Council was expanded to include representatives of
all Polish political parties.
The Government submits its budget to the
National Council and consults it on all major policies.
The National Council has the rights to make representations to the
Government on all matters affecting the welfare of the Polish nation.
4. COMPOSITION OF THE POLISH GOVERNMENT.
After General Sikorskis tragic death on July 4, 1943 President Raczkiewicz
called upon Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, who had been acting as Prime Minister
in General Sikorski absence, to form a Government.
Prime Minister
Mikolajczyk cabinet consists of
Jan Kwapinski, deputy Prime Minister
and Minister of Industry, Commerce and Shipping;
Tadeusz Romer, Minister
of Foreign Affairs;
General Marian Kukiel, Minister of National Defense;
Wladyslaw Banaczyk, Minister of Home Affairs;
Stanislaw Kot, Minister of
Information;
Ludwik Grosfeld, Minister of Finance;
Jan Stanczyk, Minister
of Labor and Social Welfare;
Waclaw Komarnicki, Minister of Justice:
Marian Seyda, Minister of State (Peace Conference Planning);
Karol Popiel,
Minister of State (Polish Administrative Planning);
The Rev. Zygmunt Kaczynski,
Minister of Education;
Henryk Strassburger, Polish Minister in the
Middle East.
The Peasant and Labor parties each have one more member in this
Government than they had in that of General Sikorski.
The Peasant Party is represented by three members. Mikolajczyk,
Banaczyk and Kot;
The Polish Labor party by three members: Kwapinski,
Stanczyk and Grosfeld;
The National Liberal Party by two members: Kaczynski
and Popiel;
The National Democratic Party by two members: Komarnicki
and Seyda;
three members belong to no party: Romer, Kukiel and Strasburger.
Of the thirteen members of the Government, two are peasants,
two are labor men, three are teachers, three are newspapermen:
one is a lawyer, one is a soldier and one is a career diplomat as
follows:
Two Peasants:
Prime Minister Mikolajczyk, the son of a small farmer,
organizer of rural cooperatives and a prominent leader of
agrucultural labor;
Minister of the Interior Banaczyk is a small farmer.
Two Labor Men:
Deputy Prime Minister Kwapinski, Minister of Industryk Cimmerce and
Shipping, an agricultural laborer who fought the Czar and
was exiled to Siberian;
Minister of Labor and Social Welfare Stanczyk,
a Miner and labor leader.
Three Teachers:
Minister of Information Kot, professor of the History of Polish
civilization;
Minister of Justice Komarnicki, son of a farmer,
Professor of Law;
Minister of Polish Affairs in the Middle East Strasburger,
Professor of Economics and protagonist of parliamentary union
with Czechoslovakia.
Three Newspapermen:
Minister of State Popiel, son of a working man;
Minister of State Seyda, son of a storekeeper,
fought German imperialism for 40 years and was exiled
by Germany before the last War;
Minister of Education,
Rev, Kaczynski, head of the Polish Catholic Press Agency,
very active in the Polish underground movement in 1939-1940.
One lawyer:
Minister of Finance Grosfeld, counsel and financial adviser
to Polish labor unions.
One soldier:
Minister of national Defense General Kukiel,
Professor of Military Histroy.
One diplomat:
Minister of Foreign Affairs Romer, career diplomat ,
former Ambassador to Japan and Russia.
5. POLANDS VITALITY.
From 1920 to 1937, the average increase in Polands population was 14.7
per thousand, the total increase 26.9 percent.
During the same period the population of Germany increased by 13.0 percent.
But for the war the population of Poland would have exceeded that of France
before 1950 and that of Germany about 1970.
6. LANGUAGE AND RELIGION IN POLAND.
Language
Polish 68.3%
Polands Ukrainian 14.1%
Yiddish and Hebrew 8.16%
White Ruthenian 3.9%
German 2.3%
Russian 0.4%
Other and not given 3.2%
Religion
Roman Catholic 64.8%
Eastern Orthodox 11.8%
Greek Catholic 10.4%
Hebrew 9.8%
Protestant 2.6%
Others 0.6%
After 1918, in independent Poland, political and civil rights
were granted to all national minorities.
They had their own representatives in Parliament and in local
government, their own educational system and full freedom of cultural
and educational development. In 1939 there were in Poland 3,000
Ukrainian schools maintained by the Government.
Polish Ukrainians differ greatly as regards religion and
language from the Ukrainians in Soviet Russia.
Among White
Ruthenians, national development is slow, Polish efforts to
raise the national culture of White Ruthenia were successful
only in part.
For instance, a certain number of high schools,
organized by Poles for White Ruthenians, had to be closed for
lack of pupils.
7. POPULATION OF POLISH CITIES.
Warsaw 1,389,000
Lodz 672,000
Lwow 318,000
Poznan 272,000
Krakow 259,000
Wilno 200,000
Bydgoszcz 141,000
Czestochowa 138,000
Katowice 134,000
Sosnowiec 130,000
Lublin 122,000
Gdynia 120,000
Chorzow 110,000
Bialystok 107,000
8. Density of Rural Population In Poland the density of gainfully
occupied rural population per 100 acres of farmland compared as follows
with other countries:
Persons Per 1,000 acres of
Year Country farmland
1931 Poland 154
1931 Yugoslavia 146
1933 Germany 132
1930 Czechoslovakia 129
1930 Hungary 120
1931 France 89
1931 Great Britain 26
9. POLES ABROAD
Some nine million Poles and people of Polish descent are living abroad:
In the United States (approximately) 4,500,000
In Germany (mostly in Silesia and East Prussia) 1,450,000
In Soviet Russia (approximately - not including 1,500,000 Polish citizens
deported to Russia in
1939-1941) 1,000,000
In France 600,000
In Brazil (some two-thirds in the State of Parana) 300,000
In Lithuania (mostly around Kowno) 200,000
In Canada 150,000
In Rumania 80,000
In Latvia 75,000
In Argentine 70,000
In Paraguay 18,000
10. HOW THE POLES VOTED.
In Poland the number of voters had increased
from 12,989,000 in 1922 to 14,907,000 in 1925.
Then it rose to 15,791,000 out of a population of 35,500,000.
This represents an electorate of 44.5%.
In the United States with a population of 131,669,275 the vote
cast in the last presidential election was 49,815,312 or 37.8% of
this total population.
The most striking thing about the Polish
electorate was the very small number of extremists.
The extreme right and communists combined, never amounted
to more than 47% of the total votes cast in any election.
Nearly half the votes (46.4%) were cast for liberal and
progressive candidates.
The Center, made up of middle-class
democrats, polled 28.6% of the votes and the minorities
(Jews, Ukrainian, White Ruthenians, etc.) 21%.
In the last election under Marshal Pilsudski's
administration the opposition parties polled 53% of
the votes, but were so divided among themselves that
they never had a working majority in the parliament.
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