ZAMOJSZCZYZNA AND THE GERMAN ASSOCIATION OF EXPELLEES
Grzegorz Sprync, Lublin, Poland

ANNIVERSARY OF HIMMLER'S ORDER

In November 2003 the Poles marked the expulsion by Hitler in 1942-1943 of the Poles in Zmojszczyzna. The main aim of these expulsions was to create an area for the settlement of citizens of the Third Reich. The order had come from SS Reichsfurer, Heinrich Himmler in 1941.

General Plan Ost had its origins in 19th century German imperialism, which created the motto :"Drang nach Osten" or Push to the East. The Eastern Plan was designed in two phases. First was the "Small Plan"- it contained projects for the immediate future, as the eastern lands were conquered. The Second phase -"The Great Plan" planed on a 25-30 year horizon. Heinrich Himmler was in charge of preparing those plans. Odillo Globocnik, chief of the SS in the district of Lublin, coordinated direct action.

The choice of Zamojszczyzna was not accidental. The Germans wanted to create along the border of the Reich a "German Defense Wall" which would protect against "damaging" influences from the non colonised East. The Wall, according to German plans had to reach from Zamojszczyzna to Pensylwania, (Romania).

Germanized Zamojszczyzna meant the "Cleansing of alien tribal elements not having any mixture of German blood" had to be carried out and people expelled ( Poles to Siberia, Jews to Madagascar and for the Czechs the destination was the coast of the Arctic Sea). The aim of this process was to wipe out the existing population and the execution of this plan started with the pacification of Zamojszczyzna. The choice of this land as a colony also had an economic rationale. Numerous animal farms were attractive for settlers. In Zamojsczyzna there were also clusters of German settlers, who also played a role in carrying out the new colonization of this area.

General Plan Ost assumed that Germans would displace 80-85% of Poles from the East and from Zamojszczyzna, and on the land they would settle Germans brought from the whole of Europe. The German settlement resulted in the ruin of villages, the removal of children and the old. Polish guerrillas took action against Germans but their forces were too small. The ethnic cleansing ceased only when the German Reich was defeated in 1945.
Germans acted according to one scheme: at night or in the early morning groups of army, police or SS surrounded villages and threatened people they would be executed unless they left their homes. Polish inhabitants had to gather in one place (within 15 minutes or an hour).

POLES MURDERED OR TRANSPORTED

Immediately the Germans killed the disabled, the elderly and the sick. They shot those who resisted and those who tried to flee. People herded together outside were kept for up to 12 hours, no matter what the weather. In those conditions deaths naturally occurred especially among the children, the elderly and the sick. The inhabitants were divided into two groups: those to be taken away and those who had to work for the Reich. The latter were few in number. Those taken away were loaded onto trucks and escorted by army squads into a temporary camp in Zamosc. A tragic fate faced children under 14 years, who were brutally taken from their parents and sent by railway transport to near Warsaw.

DROHICZANY

On 18th January, 1943 in a 35 degrees below zero frost there began the expulsion of the people of my grandfather's village, Drohiczany. German forces together with Ukrainian Nazi militia armed with clubs surrounded the village. They found only three families of old people in bed. The rest of the Polish inhabitants had run away and hidden themselves. My grandfather with my grandmother and their son went to the Chelm area, where such expulsions were not taking place. Germans did not care about the condition of the elderly of Drohicznay - they took them and sent them to a prison camp at Zamosc. One of the families in the village was sent to Auschwitz and never came back. Thirty two German settler families were moved to Drohiczany.

BONDYZ FOREST MASSACRE

One of the worst tragedies happened after the act of ethnic cleansing. On 15th March 1943 Germans and Ukrainian police organized the pursuit of those Poles who had fled and hidden in the village or nearby forests. Those who were seized were brought to the Bondyz forest, near the village of Kolonia Staszic, and shot. After the war, a cross to commemorate this evil event was erected.

In order to avoid persecution by the German occupiers Poles forged Ukrainian and Volksdeutch (ethnic German) documents in order to survive. Hitler did not finish the establishment of an ethnic German district, mainly thanks to the heroic resistance of the Polish " Home Army" (Armia Krajowa) and the "Peasants Battalions", who pursued and harassed German troops in retaliatory actions.

FRAU ERIKA STEINBACH - THE NEW GERMAN EXPANSIONISM

Today we are witnessing a new German nationalistic expansionism in Poland by a certain Erika Steinbach the Leader of the German Expellees Association and German Government demands for a Berlin Center of Expellees (we must add of the German Nation!). The idea of Frau Steinbach (whose group was previously regarded as neo Nazi but is now addressed by leading members of the Social Democrat Government in Berlin-ed) has evoked universal criticism in Poland. The Poles naturally consider the idea of creating a Centre of Expellees in Berlin as impermissible and scandalous. It would be a gross distortion of history with my grandfather's generation appearing not as the victims they were but as occupiers of "German" land.

But as everyone outside Germany knows the situation was somewhat different! Everyone knows that Germany began the war by invading Poland and they must face the consequences of the evils and persecution they brought to millions of Poles. Hitler's Germans attacked Poland and started massive ethnic cleansing of Poles - for example in Zamojszczyzna - for their racial and imperialist purposes. Germans are morally and in international law responsible for the subsequent events - including the justifiable expulsion after the war of Germans who had colluded with the Nazis. But that expulsion was carried out under the auspices of the Potsdam Agreement. Land in the North and in the West of Poland was acquired as part compensation for the evils and human cost of the war and Polish territorial losses in the East after the second world war - a war started by Germany and from which Germans in general were happy to profit, especially in occupied Poland, Czechoslovakia etc etc etc.

And what was the story of the "expulsion" of today's leader of German Expellees, Erika Steinbach? Frau Steinbach came into this world in 1943 in Rumia Northen Poland, near Gdansk, as the daughter of a 27-year old German soldier. His father came from deep inside Germany, from Frankfurt on Main. The mother of Erika Steinbach came from Bremen, a town set many hundreds of kilometres West of today's Polish border. In Rumia near Gdynia little Erika spent only a year and a half of her life. She did not leave a family home, but her family rented a flat. Ludwik Bach, director of the town's Cultural Centre in Rumia said that nobody expelled Erika Steinbach and her mother - who left of her own free will in order to better her life.

The (Polish) Association of Gdynians Expellees has hundreds of older members. In 1939 the first ethnic cleansing of the Second World War started. Germans were not expelled. The Germans needed free accommodation, houses. To make room for them, 70 thousand Poles were expelled from Gdynia and the immediate area. The Association of Gdynian Expellees claims that the number was about one 100 thousand. The historian, Zofia Szreder, describes how Germans treated the expellees. Point Eight of the announcement of the cleansing operation said: "When abandoning your houses leave all keys in doors". Can anyone compare the "expulsion" of Frau Erika to expulsion of Poles from Zamojszczyna?

Gzegorz Sprync, February 2004