Would you like to make this site your homepage? It's fast and easy...
Yes, Please make this my home page!
BACK TO SITE PLAN
MY UNIVERSITIES 1. CONTEXT
INTRODUCTION
I shall begin by the framework which has moulded my original view
of the world - Warsaw of between the two wars. Poland savoured its
newly acquired independence, victoriously defended against the
recent Bolshevik invasion. The all-new Polish army was commanded by
former Russian, Austrian and German officers, residents of Polish
lands partitioned in the 18 century, who have opted for Poland.
Such was the case of my father, former captain of German Hussars,
who consolidated his new citizenship fighting the Russians in 1920
and the Germans in 1939, as captain of Polish Uhlans. The duality
of nationality/citizenship depicted truly the reality: Warsaw of
between the two wars was perhaps the most cosmopolitan city of the
world. It counted about 30% of "pure" Poles, the rest divided among
Jews, Russians, Germans, French, Armenians, etc. True, it was causing
some frictions, but the cultivated intelligentia couldn't care less
about religion and nationality, attributing them purely descriptive
value. In short, I never heard about our Jewish origin.
The revelation struck me like a lightning from the blue. Nazis
invaded Poland and I was sent with my father to the Ghetto.
My mother stayed separated from us in Wilno, invaded by the Soviets.
I'll take a break to describe the visit of Herr Hapke, event, on
the one hand crucial for my survival and, on the other hand, the
first intimation to refrain from absolute generalizations.
HERR HAPKE
My father had a very lucrative enterprise "TDL" dealing with all
sorts of wood. Among others it supplied aspen wood, abounding in
east Poland, for Kreuger, the king of Swedish matches industry.
Among many international businessmen father met in Sweden a German,
Herr Hapke, senior official of the NSDAP, who has shown interest
in TDL's operations.
Now, Nazi entrepreneurs could choose Polish enterprises to
appropriate, upon the invasion, and Herr Hapke selected the TDL.
A few weeks after our moving to Ghetto, he came to see father,
to inform that TDL from now on belonged to him, to realize details
of the take over and to make a most astounding proposal.
He appreciated TDL in general, but did not know the ropes and
proposed father to act for him as a shadow manager. He would
hide father in his (appropriated) estate, but only him, no family,
not even me. Too dangerous. Unmasking would mean Dachau for Herr
Hapke. Salary $200/month, mere peanuts by TDL standards, but a
fortune in occupied Poland, where most people lived on $5 or less.
Gentlemen agreement, - said Herr Hapke - after the fool have
lost (a Nazi big bug speaking in 1940 !) the winners will probably
intend to jail, or to hang me, and you shall intervene in my
favor.
In the meantime, profits will go to a Swiss bank, to be split
50/50 after the war.
Proposal impossible to refuse - better survive separated than
perish together - and father departed with a heavy heart
in a Grosse Mercedes with Hakenkreuz, leaving me in care of
friends, with solid financial backing.
After the war we did the impossible to find Herr Hapke.
In vain. He must have disapeared in the last spasms of the
croaking monster. And the Swiss embezzled our money.
ESCAPE FROM THE GHETTO
Down in the Ghetto, I was brimming over with horror of daily atrocities
and started to envisage the escape. All sages tried to dissuade me:
in the ghetto I have a chance to survive; the Germans need workforce;
they cannot kill everybody. But at the other side, where they shoot at
sight during the curfew, I shall perish at the first evening, because
nobody will let me enter a house.
Logically, they were right. For sheltering a Jew all house inhabitants
would be shot there and then, those who took him in, those who knew, but
failed to denounce and the rest for good measure. I have described such
event in the French autobiographic novel "H..."
http://findgeorges.com/ROOT/WRITINGS/LITERATURE/h.html
Finally, I did it my way and have survived the war, which seems to
suggest casual superiority of intuition over logic.
It's true, that I had an unheard-of fortune. I looked for some friends
of my family - in vain, all got volatilized in the general turmoil.
And the curfew approaching I ran by chance into my mother's best
friend, the countess Mierzejewska, who, - as I learned later -
worked for the Polish resistance AK (Armia Krajowa - the Home Army)
heading under the alias of Captain Danuta the service of Gestapo
infiltration.
She led me to the Filtrowa str. hideout, which I describe in "H...".
After some time she suggested that I make use of my German proficiency
by working for her, providing liaison with Gestapo double agents.
I accepted and later asked for additional assignment of liaison with
ZOB (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa - Jewish Combat Organisation)
in the Ghetto.
I was on mission in the Ghetto when, on the Holy Monday 1943, broke
out the uprising, which I have joined. My souvenirs of the uprising
are described in the novel "PASSION WEEK"
http://findgeorges.com/ROOT/WRITINGS/LITERATURE/passion_week.html
a translation of the central part of the French novel "La FETE"
http://findgeorges.com/ROOT/WRITINGS/LITERATURE/fete.html
KIBBUTZ IN THE GHETTO
Many people know the bunker of 18 Mila Street as the headquarters
of Mordechai Anielewicz, commander of the ZOB (Jewish Fighting
Organization) and of the Ghetto uprising.
But only few know that it was also the seat of a HaShomer HaTsair
(Young Guardian) kibbutz founded by Anielewicz in the Ghetto.
HaShomer HaTsair (HH) was a movement bringing together young
Polish Jews sharing a secular, communist and democratic ideology
embodied by kibbutzim, collectivities molding their life
accordingly.
HH ideology resembles surprisingly Einstein's "new reason",
confirming its principle: "There are innumerable dogmatisms,
but only one rationality".
HH rationality rejects abstract generalities, admitting only
their factually verifiable instances.
Thus, it rejects the phantasm of "nationality", admitting but
its cultural appearances in a purely descriptive manner.
Thus, it denies religious dogmas any moral, social or political
legitimacy and accepts religion only as a social phenomenon.
It rejects the homonym of "communism" kidnapped by the Soviet
tyranny defining its own "communism" as "everyone according to
his capacities; to everyone according to his needs" - as the
regime where an unproductive invalid needing costly treatment
gets more than the most productive, healthy man.
It rejects the homonym of "democracy" kidnapped by the uncrowned
kingdoms of the West, replacing it with "regime where the power
is exerted directly by the people". Considering its communism
as a necessary condition of democracy, as in the jungle of the
"free economy" power is sold at auctions called "elections".
It's remarkable that with the first notable direct democratic
decision of our civilization, approving Anielewich's call to
"die upright spitting in their face", the participants opted
for their own death.
I met Mila Kibbutz members only during my brief liaison errands
and in the middle of the uprising, so we had no opportunity to
dissert philosophy and ideology. Yet, it seems germane to mention
here by anticipation, what I learned subsequently.
So much for my encounter with Jewishness. Israel, in the
sense of "Eretz Yisrael", turned up for me after the war,
through meeting other survivors, mostly adherents of
HaShomer HaTzair, preparing to join kibbutzim and IDF.
We saw Israel as a safe harbor for Jews, as an ideal in
which "Jew" had little to do with religion and meant mainly
"the oppressed". Enthusiastic about the creation of
Israel, we were deeply disappointed by its religious order,
and by the Law of Return founded in the halakhic definition
of Jew.
We dreamed about a secular country, sheltering of course
religious Jews, but open to anybody sharing Jewish culture
or fate. We saw the halakhic rule as an affront to our
secular Weltanschauung and as outrageous injustice to "Goim"
who trained in view of migrating for moral reasons to Israel,
some being former AK liaison agents who had themselves fought
in the uprising.
Most of us were simple youngsters without much intellectual
upbringing, but we saw the halakhic definition of "Jew" as
an insult to common sense.
(Indeed, Halakha defines a Jew as the offspring of a Jewish
mother. However, in order to ascertain that his mother was
Jewish, he would have to prove that in turn, her mother, her
grandmother, etc. were Jewish. A glaring vicious circle
making motherhood-based Jewishness a logical nonsense. The
marginal entry to the cycle, viz. the conversion, is no better:
the converting rabbi must clearly be Jewish, but he cannot
prove it either and may only spin in the same vicious circle.)
Thus, by the halakhic definition itself there ain't no sich
animal as a "Jew". Halakhic "Jew" is an irrational, dogmatic
phantasm. And yet, the fact remains that millions of Jews
have been exterminated.
Phantasms versus Facts. I have grasped this dichotomy much later,
working on foundations of Relativity in Einstein's team.
OUTSIDE OF THE GHETTO
On August 22 1939, one week before invading Poland, Hitler
addressed in Obersalzberg, to the commanders of his army
the following speech, known as the Dschingis-Khan-Rede:
Unsere Staerke ist unsere Schnelligkeit und unsere Brutalitaet.
Dschingis Khan hat Millionen Frauen und Kinder in den Tod gejagt,
bewusst und froehlichen Herzens. Die Geschichte sieht in ihm nur
den grossen Staatengruender. Was die schwache westeuropaeische
Zivilisation ueber mich behauptet, ist gleichgueltig. Ich habe
den Befehl gegeben - und ich lasse jeden fuesilieren, der auch
nur ein Wort der Kritik auussert - dass das Kriegsziel nicht im
Erreichen von bestimmten Linien, sondern in der physischen
Vernichtung des Gegners besteht. So habe ich, einstweilen
nur im Osten, meine Totenkopfverbaende bereitgestellt mit dem
Befehl, unbarmherzig und mitleidslos Mann, Weib und Kind
polnischer Abstammung und Sprache in den Tod zu schicken.
Nur so gewinnen wir den Lebensraum, den wir brauchen.
Wer redet heute noch von der Vernichtung der Armenier?
My translation:
Our strength is our rapidity and our brutality. Genghis Khan
rushed millions of women and children to death deliberately and
joyfully. History sees in him only the great state-founder.
What the weak western European civilization says about me is
indifferent.
I have issued the command - and I'll have anybody, who utters but
one word of criticism, executed by a firing squad - that our war
aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical
extermination of the enemy. So, I have placed my death-head
formations in readiness - for the present only in the East - with
the order to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men,
women and children of Polish origin and language. Only thus gain we
the Lebensraum which we need.
Who, after all, speaks to-day of the extermination of the Armenians?
Now, the Germans are in the habit of making their principles and
plans come true, with impressive tenacity. Such was the case of the
Obersalzberg order, which would inevitably end up at annihilation
of the Polish people, had the war lasted longer. I'll mention three
actions which I have witnessed:
1.AB-Aktion (Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion / extraordinary
pacification),
2.routine homicide,
3.cleansing of the Zamosc region.
AB-Aktion
Upon invading Poland, the death-head SS set out to capture and
murder scientists and artists of international celebrity,
influential politicians, journalists, priests, etc., and, in
the name of the noble Olympic spirit, sportsmen who had ever
won against a German. The victims were tortured in the Pawiak
prison before being shot in secret places in the country.
The first mass execution took place in December 1939 at Palmiry,
in the Kampinos forest. Among at least 2,115 shot men and women
were Janusz Kusocinski, the winner of 10 000m in the 1932
Olympics and Boy-Zelenski, one of the most remarkable Polish
writers.
In 1940, 30 000 Polish notables fell prey to the "pacification".
The resistance endeavored to sheltered some in clandestine
hideouts.
Routine homicide
One does not talk about a Polish Oradour, because there were hundreds
of them. Over 500 villages have suffered total extermination and
destruction. In Warsaw, the routine took the form of round-ups and
public executions. Several streets were blocked up and all passers-by
crammed into trucks. After brutal interrogations they were divided
into three groups - some for concentration camps, some for forced
work in Germany and some for a public execution. Drained of blood for
German hospitals, dressed in paper clothes they were shot in the
street with all passers-by forced to observe. This happened every day
and the number of publically executed exceeds 50 000.
Cleansing of the Zamosc region
Here we touch on the bedrock of the Nazi ideology - the Lebensraum.
The SS have cleansed the Zamosc region in order to colonize it by
Germans. 110 000 grown up Poles were deported to concentration camps.
Tens of thousands of children were kidnapped. Those judged fully
aryan were sent to Germany to be germanized, others - to block 20
in Auschwitz I, to be killed by phenole injections in the heart,
or - to the KZ for children (because there was one), where the death
toll surpassed that of Birkenau.
Hideout briefings
Even if I did not live in clandestinity, I would not go to school,
because in occupied Poland, by an explicit order of Himmler, there
were no schools. But, thanks - if I dare to say - to the AB-Aktion,
I encountered in the hideouts some savants, whom otherwise I would
never meet. And, as time hanged heavy on our hands in drab caves,
some found it diverting to brief an enthusiastic youngster on their
fields.
Now, it's unbelievable, how a real expert can elucidate in a few
hours what thick textbooks try and fail to do in years. Einstein
believed that if you know your subject, you can explain it to your
grandmother. (BTW true, if the grandmother is tabula rasa, but
nobody can explain relativity to an expert Aether addict, nor
Einstein's Physical Reality to an expert Realist, Idealist,
Platonist, Materialist, Neokantist, or any expert ...ist
whatsoever).
Be that as it may, I had the unbelievable fortune to be briefed
in philosophy by Tatarkiewicz and Kotarbinski, in mathematics by
Pogorzelski, in Logic by a Lukasiewicz student "Dziwny" -some
activists were only known by pseudonyms-, and, last but not
least, by "Daniel", a Jewish origin Jesuit - another Dirac if
the SS did not catch and hang him - in relativity, in Einstein's
physical reality and in science/religion pseudo-problem.
Contents of these elucidations will be presented in
"MY UNIVERSIIES 2. HIDEOUT BRIEFINGS".
