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Romanians Rights or Big Old Romania
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In the aftermath of the First World War the defeated team, including Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman and Russian Empires, had to comply with harsh conditions imposed by the winning forces through the Treaty of Versailles. Germany lost all its colonies and a part of its home territory and the size of the armed forces had to be reduced. The Bolshevik Revolution occurred in Russia, turning the country from an Empire to a communist republic.
Towards the end of 1930s Germany and Italy started to become bolder and annex neighboring territories; Germany annexed Austria and a part of Czechoslovakia (it was agreed by France and Britain to cede that part of Czechoslovakia to Germany with the condition that Germany would stay on its own territory from then on). But when Germany started to annex the rest of Czechoslovakia and Italy annexed Albania, France and Britain guaranteed the independence of Poland, Romania and Greece. As a feedback to the Franco-British actions, Italy and Germany signed their own agreement: Pact of Steel.
Things had to be settled with the other great power of Europe, the Soviet Union. The deal between the two powers was sealed with the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Europe was to be split into spheres of influence: western Poland and Lithuania for Germany, eastern Poland, Finland and Bessarabia for USSR.
Romania tried to remain neutral when the war started to break out, but it proclaimed a new government with anti-Semitic tendencies, hoping to gain Germany’s sympathy in order to be able to recover the territories occupied by the USSR. But Germany was not impressed by the new Romanian government and the Axis even forced Romania to cede half of Transylvania to Hungary.
Things changed a bit along with Antonescu’s rise to power. He was apointed Prime minister by King Carol I and he formed a government out of the members of the Iron Guard, which enforced the anti-Semitic law in very violent way. After Germany invades USSR, in 1941, Antonescu decides that an alliance with Germany would benefit Romania. The goal of this alliance was to recover the territories were stolen from Romania by the USSR. After those territories were back under Romanian governance, Antonescu decided to send the military even further East at the request of Hitler, in the hope that the Fuhrer would appreciate the loyalty and help us regain Transylvania as well.
Since Germany lost the war, Antonescu’s plan could not be realized. Towards the end of the war, Antonescu was dismissed and arrested by the order of King Mihai because he refuse to break the alliance with Germany. Romania’s alliance with the Allies followed, but this didn’t stop the occupation of the Romanian territory by the Red Army. However, at the end of the war, Romania was considered a defeated enemy state and remained under Soviet influence. However Northern Transylvania was returned to us, but Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina were decided to remain part of the USSR.
During the war a policy of destruction was carried out by the Nazi program against the Jewish population; but other ethnic, religious had to endure the same treatment. Slavic population, Catholics, Jehovah’s witnesses and other minorities went through the same torments inflicted not only by Nazis but also by Soviets. Poland was to suffer a great deal because of the two dominant non-democratic regimes of Europe.
Everything started on August 23, 1939, when the two countries signed a non-aggression pact: Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. The act stipulated the conditions of dividing Europe into spheres of influence between the two great powers. Poland was split in half, Germans occupying their side on September 1, 1939, the Soviets claiming their part a few weeks later. A nightmare for Polish people began because Hitler considered them “sub-humans” and Stalin as a threat to his communist regime. People started to be deprived of personal belongings, forcibly deported into ghettos, labor or concentration camps; they faced cultural genocide, sexual slavery, famine, pestilence, disease and unbearable living conditions that led to many deaths beside the mass killings systematically conducted by both regimes.
Nazi Horrors
Cultural Genocide
Jewish Poles were to be murdered, while Polish were to be exploited by Germany: politically, religious or intellectual leaders were going to be killed so they could not form any sort of resistance groups or a new governing class, while the majority of Polish people, peasants and farmers were to be used as cheap labor force in German industry.
Universities, schools, museums, libraries, scientific laboratories were destroyed. National monuments and symbols met the same fate. The right to education would be denied to polish children because of the fear that they might form a new generation of leaders. The order was given by SS chief, Heinrich Himmler: “The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one’s name; and the doctrine that it is the divine law to obey the Germans. … I do not think that reading is desirable.” Also all the names of streets, cities and so on were Germanized.
Sexual slavery
Women and young girls were sent to be soldiers’ entertainment in military brothels or were subject to mass rapes in prisons or concentration camps, where they were being raped right before they were sent to death.
Expulsions and Deportations
The expulsions of Poles started in October 1939 in what was called the Germanization process. People were relocated from their homes, families torn apart, the men and young being sent to labor camps while the old, sick and children sent to concentration camps. The houses, farms and the belongings left behind were to be used by the Germans that were later to inhabit the area.
Kidnapping of children and the Lebensborn Program
In the expulsion process many Polish children, which suited the characteristics of the Aryan race, were kidnaped and put into the Lebensborn program. This program was created by the SS in order to ensure that the space of the future Reich will be inhabited only by people of pure race. The children that pass the “scientific examination” regarded their Aryan descent were sent to be raised and educated by German families or by SS as Germans, while those that didn’t meet the necessary requirements would be killed on the spot or sent to Auschwitz.
Concentration camps and forced labor
Children born in concentration camps would be taken from their mothers and sent to be raised as Germans, were subject to medical experiments or if the examination proved that the parents were not likely to produces a “valuable” child the abortion would be compulsory.
Around 1.5 million Poles were sent to forced labor in concentration camps. Their treatment there depended on the individual employer, but usually Poles were forced to work more hours a day for lower wages, they were forbidden to talk to Germans and lived in improvised barracks behind barbed wires.
As prisons became overcrowded or people would get old or sick due to the unhealthy living conditions, they were being sent to Auschwitz. Poles along with Soviet war prisoners were the subject of first gas experiments.
Medical Torture
Medical “experiments” in concentration camps aimed at improving military skills of the German soldiers; develop new weapons, experiment new cures for injured soldiers. Of course that all these led to nothing but to death, permanent disability, disfigurement and loosing of one’s dignity.
Experiments on twins involved injecting chemicals into the eyes in order to see if the color of the eyes will change or sewing twins together; transplantation of bone, muscle and nerves aimed at helping the recovery of German soldiers – the experiments were performed without the use of anesthesia; freezing, malaria, sterilization, poison.
Soviet Horrors
The Soviet Union ceased to recognize Poland’s sovereignty right after the occupation. The traumas suffered by the civilians at the hands of the Soviets were no less harmful than the tortures inflicted by Nazis.
The same policy of destroying the intelligentsia was carried on. Since USSR never declared war on Poland the military personal were never seen as war prisoners, but as the enemies of the new regime. USSR did not sign the Convention regarding the international laws of war; therefore they were not bonded by any such treaty to respect any rights of the prisoners or of the civilians. The NKVD ordered mass killings, just like the SS, many Poles were sent into forced labor concentration camps or in Siberia, the Soviets implemented the “land reform” policy which consisted in dispossessing the people of their lands, forced collectivization and huge crops quotas; they exploited ethnic conflicts which already existed in Poland.
Much like in the German controlled side, under Soviet occupation Poland had to face cultural genocide, the media becoming a tool for Soviet propaganda, deportation occurred just for the same reasons; concentration camps were just as bad and mass killings just as brutal.
The memories of a surviving Polish person describe best the Soviet crimes:
“In Bobrka, many inmates were scalded with boiling water; in Berezwecz, people’s noses, ears and fingers were cut off, and there were also children corpses in the prison compound; in Czortkow female prisoners breasts were cut off; in Drohobycz, prisoners were fastened together with barbed wire; in Luck a drum line with barbed wire stood next to one of three mass graves unearthed in the prison yard; in Przemyslany, victims noses, ears and fingers were cut off.”1
At the end of war Nazi actions of destruction would be punished by the International Military Tribunal formed by the Allied forces at Nuremberg. The crimes against humanity were define as: “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecution on political, racial or religious grounds in execution or connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of this Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated. “ 2
The one positive outcome that followed the Great War was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed in 1948. The purpose of this act is to prevent another horrific such event and to protect basic rights and liberties, as well as human dignity. Other two very import settlements were made, as outcomes of the Nuremberg Trials. The first one is known as the Nuremberg Code which set the ethic framework for medical experimentation and the second one is the Nuremberg Principles, the act that settles what a war crime means.
At Nuremberg the Germans who held some of the most important offices during the Nazi regime were punished for their crimes, ironically enough one of the prosecuting countries being Russia. Not even the Soviet Union was not held responsible for its position in the Second World War, but it continued the policy of terror almost another 50 years after the end of the war through the Communist regime. It looks like being on the wining team has its advantages.
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Bibliography
• Piotrowski, Tadeusz, Poland’s Holocaust, 1998, McFarland & Company
• Bidiss, Michael, Nuremberg Trials, Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity: the Development of a Supranational Concept at the Nuremberg Trials
• Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Yearbook of International Law Commission, Vol. 2, Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, 1950
• Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No.10, the Nuremberg Code, Vol. 2, pp. 181-182. Washington D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office 1949
• http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml – The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Bourke Joanna, The Second World War: A People’s History, chapter 9 The Holocaust, Oxford University Press, 2001
Cris Bodnarescu 