OLAND and PEACE

Few Nations know the horrors of -

By GEORGE LAMBERT
Tribune Staff Correspondent

WARSAW

S I WATCHED the signing
A of the Treaty of Friendship,
Co-operation and Mutual
Assistance between the Polish
People’s Republic and the Ger-
man Democratic Republic in the
beautiful hall of the Council of
Ministers in Warsaw, my mind
was full of the happenings that
led up to this historic event.
This treaty is one of a series
signed recently by Poland, Cze-
choslovakia and the GDR to
ensure peace and security in
Europe. And not only in Europe,
for, in our times, wars on this
continent are never local wars,
as is obvious from World War I
and World War I.

In both cases the German im- .

perialists and militarists unleash-
ed the war; in both cases they
suffered defeat; in both cases
their revival was promoted by
their erstwhile enemies—prima-
rily by the American imperialists
—in order to turn Germany into
a bastion against socialism. But
the Sixties are not the Thirties.
Instead of a single socialist state
—the Soviet Union—there is a
powerful group of socialist coun-
tries, including the German De-
mocratic Republic, whose bor-
ders reach as far west as the
Elbe and whose main force, the
USSR, is one of the two super
powers in the world.

These countries all belong to
the Warsaw Treaty Organization,
a most -effective defensive in-
strument for thwarting the plans
of any would-be aggressor, for
shattering the dreams of the
West German politicians, mili-
tarists and neo-Nazis about
swallowing the German Demo-
cratic Republic, regaining the
territories up to the frontiers of
1937, then of 1938 (after Mu-
nich), then perhaps of 1914, and
so on. : ;

Does this sound far-fetched?
Not to the people in Europe,
especially to those who suffered
so terribly at the hands of the
Nazis and their predecessors.

The Polish people have for
centuries been the victims of the
Prussian “Drang noch Osten.”
Through the ages Polish territo-
ries were the scene of expansion
on the part of German militar-
ism. The Prussian King Fred-
erick the Great was the initiator
of the first partition of Poland,
in 1772, when Prussia, Austria
and Russia grabbed big chunks
of the country and later dismem-
bered it completely. German
imperialism was alwavs guided
by the concept of the Chancellor
of the “Great Reich,” Bismarck,
who in 1886 said: “If we are to
live we must exterminate them,”
meaning the Poles. Hitler surely
did his best to bring this about.

No fess than 6,028,000 Polish
citizens Jost their lives during
World War II — 644,000 as a

were shipped

war and therefore value peace as

much as do the Polish people

result of military operations and
5,384,000 as a result of Nazi
genocide. A breakdown of the
latter figure shows that 3,577,000
died in death camps or as a re-
sult of the “liquidation” of Jew-
ish ghettos; pacification actions,

‘executions, etc.; 1,286,000 died

in concentration camps, penal
labor camps, etc., or in prisons;
521,000 died outside of camps as
a result of wounds, injuries,
overwork, physical depletion,
etc., 3,200,000 of the victims
were Polish Jews.

In proportion to its size, no na-

GEORGE LAMBERT, a resi-
dent of Warsaw, has agreed
to become our regular corres-
pondent from Poland. This is
his first article.

tion (including the Soviet Union,
with its approximately 20,000,-
000 dead—nearly half of them
civilians and prisoners of war
tortured to death by the Nazis)
suffered such great losses. Out
of every 1,000 Polish citizens
220 perished at the hands of
the Nazi criminals and as a re-
sult of the hostilities, or 100
times the losses sustained by the
United States in relation to its
population.

In order to grasp the magni-
tude of the Nazi crimes in Po-
land, let me point out that in
Warsaw alone, which before the
war had a population of 1,310,-
000, 700,000 residents plus ano-
ther 200,000 who~settled there
during the war, were victims of
extermination.

No nation witnessed on its
soil an Auschwitz—the biggest
and most tragic cemetery in the
world—where about four million
people of 28 nationalities died a
martyr’s death, or, for that mat-
ter, a Majdanek (360,000 mur-
dered), a Treblinka, (750,000
Jews murdered), a Chelmno
(350,000 Jews killed), a Sobibor
(about 300,000 Jews murdered)
or a Belzec (600,000 Jews mur-
dered).

The Nazis made sure that they
killed off a great many intellec-
tuals and professional people—
the Poles were to be turned into
a nation of slave laborers. And,
indeed, 2,460,000 Polish citizens
to Germany for
forced labor.

The picture of the Polish tra-
gedy would be incomplete with-
out a few figures on material
losses. The Nazis destroyed
more than one-third of the coun-
try’s industry and agriculture,
nearly one-third of the residen-
tial buildings, half of the public
utilities and transportation, over
half of the health service facili-
ties, 60 percent of the schools
and other educational institu-
tions, a great part of the cultural
institutions and treasures. War-

April 28, 1967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 8

saw, the capital, was a heap of
rubble. In terms of buildings
destroyed the losses came to
80 percent.

All these dry figures—tragic
figures, can give only an inkling
of the catastrophe that befell
the Polish people. Aside from
the almost complete annihilation
of the Jewish community in the
country, not a single Polish
family was unaffected. Whoever
you talk to lost someone near
and dear, whoever you meet tells
you about those horrible times,
about death and_ destruction,
about systematic efforts to cor-
rupt the Polish people by means
of vodka, gambling halls, por-
nography, and what not, and, last
but not least, about the heroic
struggle put up by the Poles
against the Nazis. And they
fought everywhere—in partisan
units and regular military for-
mations in the country, in the
ranks of the Polish army set up
on Soviet soil with Soviet help,
in the Allied armed forces in the
West—on land, sea and in the
air.

A nation so decimated, a coun-
try so ruined, had to start to
build a new life on the ruins
of the old. This could only
be done by a social system in
which the interest of the vast
majority comes first, by a sys-
tem which could concentrate

resources and manpower on the
most urgent projects. This could
only be done by a government
which once and for all put an
end to tiie disastrous anti-Soviet
policy pursued by Poland's pre-
war governments and conclud-

The shipyards in Gdansk (formerly Danzig) are a busy place. Its workers

ed a Treaty of Friendship, Co-
operation and Mutual Assistance
with the USSR and the other
neighbors.

As part of the socialist camp,
but primarily through the great
endeavor of the Polish people
led by its Marxist-Leninist party
—up to 1948 the Polish Workers’
Party and after the unification
of the latter with the Polish
Socialist Party, by the Polish
United Workers’ Party—Poland
has made great progress, and
this despite the serious errors
and distortions of the ideas of
socialism as a result of the copy-
ing of some of the bad Stalinist
features.

It’s no heaven, there’s still a
lot to be done, but it’s a different
Poland from the pre-war one.
In an address to a special session
of the Seym (parliament) on July
21, 1966, to mark the 1,000th
anniversary of the Polish State,
the First Secretary of the Polish
United Workers’ Party, Wlady-
slaw Gomulka, said in part: “In
the course of twenty-two years
Poland’s industrial potential has
been increased tenfold and mo-
dernized by the toil of a single
generation . . . Dozens of new
branches .of production have
come into being. For the first

_ time in centuries we have access

to the high seas .. . In the pre-
vious generation two-thirds of
our population was still employ-
ed in agriculture. Today two-
thirds of our people largely
derive their livelihood from work
in industry, construction, trans-
port and the services, and only
one-third earn a living by work

in agriculture. With ihe»
modern production fonts
work of our nation NOW y
ces a national incom a
3.7 times higher than ie
war. The people empl
industry put out eleva
more manufactured 80% y
and, thanks to moe
means of farming, the Td
the population employr f
culture gives Poland =

more food and agric

duce than before the Wa

true!
u i

previous generation OM ig
of Pol

of the inhabitants

did not even know
and write and the
two-thirds of the you
go farther than the

Today, Poland is h
leading countries in t

th oe

i
as regards general edo al

of

oduct He

all and accessibility ina

at all levels. Poland as po

ed tenfold the numbét
bers of the intelligé fot
higher technical edu@ ic?
The role of our econo™ ig

: ene
is subordinated to rd

to realize the basic
cialism — to ens
improvement in the!
tions of the people ad

To prevent a repelilly
tragedy of World a ial
continue the peacelll
the people, the P
ment has,
liance with the S?

re sna CY
living
ieee

tries, been pursuins putt i

policy to safeguard
security. Some
Minister of Foreist
Adam Rapacki,
plan for a nuclear’ 3s
Central Europe, kf"
Rapacki Plan, the
quently gave rise !0 ist
such zones in other Bist

world, In 1963 the Pit

ernment sponsore if

freeze nuclear weal cot

tral Europe, called visi
Plan, which made pro ni

control by mixed ae:

Poland has been
its effort to ease de
Europe, to strengthet

of peace and hold watt

revenge-seeking MM! west
neo-Nazi forces 9
many.

point vt

to the fact that they have produced 361 ships in the past five years.

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in addition i he
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