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The topic pages below contain a wealth of materials from Yad Vashem's databases and collections  Each topic page suggests a range of resources for a variety of audiences from members of the general public and research scholars to teachers and students  The materials include articles and podcasts Nazi Germany carried out the brutal eviction of Jews with Polish citizenship the elderly and the sick across the Polish border; most of them were concentrated in abandoned stables near the border town of Zbąszyń The deportation to Zbąszyń was directly connected with the November Pogrom a violent anti-Jewish attack that took place on 9-10 November 1938 Operation Reinhard was a codename for the Nazi scheme to exterminate the 2,284,000 Jews living in the five districts of the Generalgouvernement The scheme was named after Reinhard Heydrich the main coordinator of the "Final Solution" in Europe who had been assassinated by Czech resistance fighters Three extermination camps were established for its implementation: Belzec In their implementation of the "Final Solution," the Nazis forcibly uprooted millions of Jews from their homes and sent them to their deaths This systematic campaign marked a tragic and devastating chapter in history annihilating Jewish communities that had thrived for centuries across areas occupied by Nazi Germany Jews from across Europe were deported to the camp Most were sent directly to the gas chambers and a small number were selected for forced labor either within the main camp or in Auschwitz’s sub-camps Some prisoners were also subjected to brutal medical experiments Operation Barbarossa began on 22 June 1941 with the massive military invasion of the Soviet Union Four special operations divisions (Einsatzgruppen) – A C and D – operated behind the corps that took part in the campaign against the USSR police and auxiliaries mobilized from the local population The occupation of France and the establishment of the antisemitic Vichy regime brought 415,000 North African Jews into the orbit of persecution headmaster of the "Yavne" Jewish gymnasium in Köln Jewish organizations attempted to rescue Jews by getting them out of the camps by placing them in children’s institutions or private homes The partisan movement refers to resistance groups and fighters who opposed occupying forces during World War II Wide-scale partisan warfare was waged against the Germans in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union The vast areas with thick forests and marshland were well-suited for partisan combat The family camps were one of the unique phenomena of the partisan movement in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union These units began to emerge in 1942 as a result of the mass extermination of the Jews and the escape of some survivors into the forests with the expansion of German punitive policies the phenomenon of family camps ceased to be exclusively Jewish as the German army was retreating on all fronts Nazi Germany began to evacuate the camps near the Eastern Front and march the inmates westward the Nazis were determined to prevent the survivors from falling into Allied hands With Nazi Germany’s surrender on 8 May 1945 The scale of destruction was staggering — six million Jews an International Military Tribunal put senior Nazis on trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace The Nuremberg trials were the first in history where regime government and military leaders responsible for crimes committed in their countries The Eichmann trial was held in 1961 in Jerusalem which relied extensively on written documents the Eichmann Trial put survivors at center stage I woke up into a nightmare that was as bad or possibly worse than what we fear Trump might do The first thing I heard was the sound of tanks rumbling down a snow-covered boulevard near my apartment building in Warsaw Wojciech Jaruzelski had gone on the air at 6 a.m to declare martial law to crush the Solidarity free trade union Jaruzelski had installed himself as the head of a junta known as the Military Council of National Salvation which held absolute power security forces had detained more than 6,000 Solidarity activists and supporters About 80,000 soldiers and 60,000 police militiamen and Security Service officers were deployed to carry out the operation The junta imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew with soldiers armed with AK-47s patrolling the snow-covered streets to enforce it I was just beginning my journalism career and working as a stringer for several U.S I was at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk in August 1980 when a workers' strike led to an unprecedented agreement with the communist government creating Solidarnosc the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc when Solidarity held its first national congress who had ordered the invasion of Afghanistan just two years earlier I had gotten married that same month to a Polish woman who was an assistant professor working on her Ph.D in the psychology department of the University of Warsaw We had moved up our wedding date because of the growing sense of fear that a Soviet-led invasion of Poland was imminent which would result in a bloodbath That's what had occurred in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968) to crush previous liberalization movements We went to the Netherlands for our honeymoon where my wife stayed because she had received a three-month fellowship at Tilburg University and in our first year of marriage we only saw each other again for about 10 days That's because she remained in Tilburg after Dec As the Soviet Union and its hard-line allies in East Germany and Czechoslovakia ramped up the threats Poland's communist leaders decided to launch their own military crackdown all the provincial governors and local officials were members of the ruling communist party There were no opposition deputies in the Sejm The judiciary did the authorities' bidding Only now military courts were handing out sentences and censorship was even tighter The only counterweight was the Roman Catholic Church His June 1979 pilgrimage to Poland drew crowds in the millions and inspired a collective sense of joy and hope that served as the catalyst for the emergence of Solidarity the following year Poland was cut off from the rest of the world The telexes that journalists relied on to file stories went dead The government press center had working telex machines but stories filed there were subject to censorship In the ensuing days, workers barricaded themselves inside their workplaces and went on strike but security forces used tanks to ram through the gates or walls and the ZOMO paramilitary police used tear gas water cannon and clubs to brutally suppress the workers During the "pacification" of a strike at the Wujek coal mine in the southern city of Katowice the militiamen opened fire on the striking miners killing nine people and wounding dozens more in the bloodiest episode of the martial law crackdown The last occupational strike – led underground by hundreds of miners at the Piast mine – ended on Dec More than 90 people were killed in the initial crackdown The authorities intimidated people with warnings that contacts with foreigners could result in criminal charges and imprisonment People were beaten and even arrested for the slightest public display of opposition such as praying by a cross of flowers put up in a main square in Warsaw as a memorial to the slain Wujek miners A Polish journalist who was a friend of my wife's family committed suicide by jumping out of a hospital window where he was being treated for depression The military regime began a purge of anyone suspected of support for Solidarity activities in government But Warsaw region Solidarity leader Zbigniew Bujak and other activists who had eluded capture in the initial dragnet went into hiding and formed a Fighting Solidarity underground that organized protests and distributed newspapers and leaflets these underground publications were the work of hundreds of volunteers who painstakingly re-typed information bulletins using carbon paper to make copies to distribute including to Western journalists such as myself But if you could describe the national mood that month it is much like what most of us are experiencing today  – depression But why am I writing about events that occurred more than 40 years ago It's because there is a sequel I plan to write with lessons for today about struggle courage and solidarity against those who would suppress our rights That December in Poland there was every reason to abandon hope And Poland emerged as the first free state in the totalitarian Soviet bloc and communist regimes collapsed across Eastern Europe Lech Walesa was the president of Poland after winning a landslide victory in the country's first free presidential election since 1926 the Soviet Union dissolved and its former republics became 15 independent countries The website Polska Kultura wrote this about the martial law period which lasted from December 1981 to July 1983 On the 30th anniversary of the martial law crackdown, Mark Kramer, director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard's Davis Center, wrote in a New York Times opinion piece: (This is adapted from a story I originally wrote for The Journal of Uncharted Blue Places Not signed up for Daily Kos yet? Create a free account The deported Jews were cared for by the Jewish community of Bialystok Some of those pictured here were members of the agricultural training camps of the youth movements German authorities began arresting Jews of Polish citizenship living in the Reich and transporting them to the Polish border Responding to a Polish decree that all passports of Polish residents abroad would be rescinded by the end of October unless a special permit for reentry to Poland was received the Germans preempted the Polish government by forcibly deporting thousands of Jews across the border into Poland The Jews were given no warning of the deportation and were not allowed to bring with them any possessions or valuables beyond 10 marks Almost 17,000 Jews were deported to Poland the vast majority of whom were placed in a camp in the Zbaszyn area the Jews were initially cared for by the local inhabitants of Zbaszyn and were then provided for by representatives of the Joint Distribution Committee whose team in Zbaszyn was headed by the historian and Jewish activist Dr The Polish government decided to close the refugee camp in November 1938 and the refugees thus sought relatives and places of refuge such as Jewish communities willing to adopt them and support them Some of the refugees received visas and left Poland; a number of the young people in Zbaszyn joined the agricultural training camps of the Zionist movements The German and Polish governments eventually reached an agreement in January 1939 in which the deported Jews were allowed to return to Germany for a short period of time in limited numbers where they liquidated their assets and deposited them in blocked accounts in Germany out of which they were unable to make withdrawals The Polish government then allowed these individuals to return to Poland along with their families from Germany The Yad Vashem website had recently undergone a major upgrade The page you are looking for has apparently been moved We are therefore redirecting you to what we hope will be a useful landing page For any questions/clarifications/problems, please contact: webmaster@yadvashem.org.il the Polish government announced that they would refuse to admit Jews without valid passports if they had lived in Germany for more than five years Many Jews wanted to return to Poland because of the anti-Jewish measures in Germany they had to get a stamp at the Polish consulate This was inconvenient for the Nazis: they wanted as many Jews as possible to leave the country but many of the Jews in Germany were Polish The Polish Jews were forced by threats and violence to illegally cross the border with Poland They had to leave their possessions behind The people who were expelled were of all ages Some were born in Germany and did not speak Polish the Polish authorities refused to accept them and so most of them had to stay in the no-man’s-land or in a camp in the Polish border area for a long time Approximately 17,000 people were deported in this way Anne Frank HouseWestermarkt 201016 DK Amsterdam Fred Ostrowski talks about the arrest and deportation of Jews of Polish origin from Germany to Poland on October 28 He remembers the journey from his hometown He relates that he and his mother were placed in the home of a Polish family shortly after their arrival Zbaszyn and notes that his father was in Lódz Digital Accessibility | Accessibility Guidelines Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history The Polenaktion was a precursor to sudden arrests seizure of property and countries making clear Jews were not welcome Although he escaped Poland during the war and survived the Holocaust Stan rarely spoke of their deaths; it was too painful and there was one story which always made him cry It was about his mother and her belief that family togetherness would keep them safe In the early 1900’s thousands of Polish Jews moved to Germany and Austria They hoped to escape the poverty and anti-Semitism in Poland and create a better life Stan’s mother sometimes wept because she missed Avram so much Even though she understood his reasons for moving away “He should be here,” she insisted “How can he raise his children among strangers People are safest when they stay close to home and family.” approximately 50,000 Polish Jews had moved to Germany and 20,000 to Austria Many of them had lived abroad for decades and considered themselves more German than Polish the Polish government feared a mass return of Polish Jews living abroad It passed a law which affected the passports of people who lived outside Poland for over five years These passports now needed a special endorsement stamp to stay valid Failure to get the stamp by October 30th meant loss of citizenship and closed borders loaded onto trains or marched to the Polish border The German Reich began deporting these “stateless” Jews on October 27 During this “Polenaktion” (Polish Action) the government deported only men because it believed women and children would find a way to join their husbands/fathers entire families – including Avram’s – were expelled people died from strain and illness; some committed suicide the Germans made them turn over all money except for ten Reichsmarks A Jewish soup kitchen in the border town of Zbaszyn Polish border guards allowed the first group of Jews to come into Poland his wife and three children were hustled off a train and marched to the Polish border Avram and his family – along with the other Jews from his train – hurried away from the border on foot Jews treated like tennis balls in a macabre game Polish guards screamed and brandished weapons; German police fired shots in the air and laughed; barking dogs strained against their leashes The Polish government finally allowed the Jews to stay in several border towns in a bizarre “no man’s land.” Food and medical care were scarce Thousands of displaced Jews sought shelter in stables and sheds Avram and his family slept on the floor of an old mill amid flour sacks and bins Jewish organizations in Poland set up refugee camps while the Polish government tried to get Germany to take the Jews back “No one wants us,” Avram wrote Stan’s mother in one of many letters “We have nothing and don’t know where to go.” Avram considered emigration but it was a difficult and expensive process Perhaps he should stay by the border in case the situation in Germany improved Stan remembered his parents discussing ways to convince Avram to live with them “My mother was heartbroken to imagine her brother homeless and vulnerable.” Poland agreed the Jews could stay as Polish residents Avram and his family moved in with Stan’s parents Stan’s mother was not blind to the existing dangers in Poland and the rising threat in Germany But she told Avram: “Now you will be safe Stan remembered Uncle Avram and his family as being distinctly foreign The children spoke Yiddish and German and understood only a smattering of Polish They dressed differently and seemed sophisticated Even Avram and his Polish born wife were disconnected from local ways Stan’s mother encouraged Avram to adapt move forward and re-build a life in Poland All Polish Jews were gone from the border towns by August 1939 Most of us are familiar with Kristallnacht in November 1938 which the Germans stated was retribution for the murder of a German diplomat in Paris claimed he acted to protest the Polenaktion and his parents’ deportation to a Polish border town.) But for Stan the October Polenaktion was more significant than the bombs and burnings of November Although the German government had victimized Jews for years the Polenaktion was a precursor to sudden arrests Stan’s Uncle Avram and his family were thrown out of Germany treated as sport and forced to endure terrible circumstances Stan was forcibly separated from his family during the war He escaped Poland and later discovered that his parents Uncle Avram and his wife and children were rounded up on a single day What made Stan weep the most was remembering his mother’s optimism and joy in Avram’s return She didn’t understand that “no man’s land” was not confined to the border and would soon come to their front door She didn’t realize the strength of family bonds was not enough to repel the evil Stan’s mother prayed for the family to be together And at the end – except for Stan – they were She is a columnist for "The Jewish Advocate" and is currently working on a novel about wartime Austria Thank you for signing up for the aish.com free newsletter Der Reisende,by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz Klett-Cotta 2018.303 pages.All translations from the German are by thereviewer by the writer Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (1915-1942) who was driven into exile by the Hitler regime The novel was written over the course of a few weeks in November 1938. It is a remarkable literary work treating the situation in Nazi Germany in the wake of the so-called Kristallnacht (The Night of the Broken Glass) the murderous anti-Semitic pogrom of November 9-10 The book resonates powerfully today amid a global refugee crisis and resurgence of far-right forces The protagonist of The Traveler is Otto Silbermann a German-Jewish businessman who fought in World War I Like an entire layer of German Jews who had been thoroughly assimilated culturally and formed part of the country’s middle or upper class Silbermann identifies entirely as a German His existence is shattered by Kristallnacht The two-week period October 27 to November 9-10 marked a watershed in the escalation of Nazi anti-Jewish policies the Nazis undertook the first mass deportation of Jews from Germany Some 17,000 Jews with Polish citizenship were rounded up by the authorities and sent to Poland where the right-wing Sanacja (Sanitation or act of cleaning) regime denied them entry Thousands remained stranded in the border town of Zbąszyń until the late summer of 1939 The parents of Herschel Grynszpan were among the deported Grynszpan shot and killed the German ambassador in Paris The assassination served the Nazis as pretext for a long-planned state-organized pogrom in the German Reich which by now also encompassed recently annexed Austria About 1,500 people were murdered on Kristallnacht countless businesses and apartments smashed up 1,400 synagogues destroyed and some 30,000 Jewish men incarcerated in concentration camps known as the “Polenaktion” (Polish Action) and the subsequent pogrom were widely reported in the international press Bourgeois governments across Europe and internationally responded by drastically tightening their immigration policies largely blocking entry to political refugees and Jews fleeing Germany Hundreds of thousands of Jews thus remained trapped in Nazi Germany He hands over the bulk of his shares to his former partner whom he had hitherto considered a friend and who now shamelessly uses the opportunity to cheat Silbermann out of the business he had built His apartment is destroyed during the pogrom and his wife goes to stay with her brother who refuses to take in Silbermann for fear of being “compromised.” Most of his friends and relatives are in concentration camps studies in Paris and tries to get visas for his parents Silbermann reflects: “It is strange…Ten minutes ago my house A moment ago war was really declared on me on enemy territory.” With the remains of his fortune stuffed in a briefcase Silbermann takes train after train across Germany desperately trying to find a way to cross the frontier Silbermann has lost all his rights as a citizen and feels powerless as the entire state machinery is being deployed in order to crush him and at the mercy of the arbitrary violence and treachery of anyone he meets He is haunted by the fear that a fellow passenger will discover he is Jewish and betray him to the police Silbermann attempts to cross the Belgian border but he is captured by Belgian border guards who want to send him back They will incarcerate me in a concentration camp.” I have money … It is not my fault that I had to cross the border illegally Silbermann is sent back and again takes train after train in Germany who was just 23 years old when he wrote the novel describes the climate and portrays the moods in Nazi Germany with such admirable clarity seriousness and psychological acumen that the book’s underlying anger emerges all the more forcefully especially those depicting Silbermann’s interactions with his fellow train passengers are informed by an acute awareness of class and political tensions in Nazi Germany We meet a wide variety of characters—a Jewish artisan who like Silbermann is trying to escape but is unable to finance his flight; a young woman who can’t marry because she and her fiancé don’t have enough money and can’t take out a loan—he was just released from a concentration camp; convinced Nazis and shameless opportunists who exploit the situation to enrich and advance themselves on the basis of the misery and over the bodies of the persecuted; and others who are casually indifferent to the fate of the Jews It is a society in which the fear of denunciation and the concentration camp is omnipresent The atmosphere is unrelievedly tense and cold The Traveler gives an inkling of what a major novel of Nazi society There is no comprehensive artistic picture of German life during Nazi rule comparable to that provided by the major novels written under the Empire or the Weimar Republic Literary documents from the period in general are understandably rare From the point of view of its character as literary testimony The Traveler has been legitimately compared to the diaries of Victor Klemperer (published for the first time in the 1990s) a German-Jewish linguist who survived in Nazi Germany with the help of his non-Jewish wife and who meticulously documented his everyday experiences Boschwitz’s own short life tragically reflected the fate of the refugees he was describing in his novel he was one of the many German Jews who felt no connection to Judaism or Jewish culture until they were branded and persecuted by the Nazi regime who was German-Jewish but had converted to Catholicism and died in World War in 1916 from a prominent Protestant family in Lübeck raised him and his sister in the latter faith his sister became a Zionist and left for Palestine Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz and his mother stayed in Germany until 1935 where the young man had his first novel Menschen neben dem Leben (People Next to Life) published in Swedish under the pen name John Grane The success of the book made it possible for him to study two semesters at the Sorbonne in Paris in Brussels in only four weeks following the November 9-10 pogrom he and his mother had emigrated to Britain 1940 and held at the notorious Isle of Man internment camp as were thousands of German Jewish refugees Boschwitz was deported within two weeks by the British government as a potential enemy agent and subjected to the notorious 57-day voyage to Australia of the HMTDunera The conditions on the vessel were calamitous With some 2,500 refugees—mostly anti-Nazi Jewish refugees—on board the ship was horribly overcrowded and the British guards robbed and abused the passengers Boschwitz then spent some two years in Australian internment camps He was released in 1942 along with other prisoners who declared their readiness to fight in the British army he embarked on the MVAbosso back to England was among the 362 passengers who were killed It is believed that a second version of TheTraveler as well as the manuscript for another novel The Traveler has been published before but never in German It was first published in English as The ManWho Took Trains in Great Britain in 1939 and as The Fugitive in the US in 1940 a French-language version (Le fugitif) was also published All the translated versions are credited to John Grane German publishers rejected the novel twice then one of the most influential writers and public intellectuals in West Germany tried to have it released by Middelhauve Verlag (Raoul Hilberg’s monumental history of the Destruction of European Jewry written in the US in the late 1940s and early 1950s met with a similar fate at the hands of German publishers in the 1950s and 1960s) That this extraordinary novel has been rediscovered and published in German after some eight decades is largely due to the efforts of editor and publisher Peter Graf One of Boschwitz’s relatives living in Israel approached Graf after reading about his efforts to reissue the novel Blutsbrüder by Ernst Haffner (published as Blood Brothers in English in 2015) about two homeless youth in the Berlin of the early 1930s became an immediate bestseller in Germany after its republication and is now considered one of the great novels of the Weimar Republic era Graf carefully worked on the first German publication of The Traveler based on correspondence and other documents by Boschwitz that belong to the collection at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York The novel has met with great success in Germany It was reviewed by all the major newspapers and numerous readings in German cities and towns have been organized The German publication of Boschwitz’s first novel is planned for 2019 A new French translation of The Traveler is also being prepared One hopes that The Traveler will be published in many other languages as well it is not just a remarkable literary document about the Nazi period but speaks immediately to the major political and historical questions of our time In one of the rooms of Munich’s town hall members of NSDAP with the lowest numbers of membership cards — the real old guard were clinging their crystal glasses The attendees were graced by the presence of Leader and Chancellor of the Reich Adolf Hitler Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels was speaking At 10:50 pm all the guests peeled off Germany was filled with a wave of anti-Semitic pogroms Almost in every city of the Third Reich panes in Jewish flats and shops were being smashed and looted synagogues set on fire and cemeteries desecrated The crowd led by members of The Sturmabteilung (Assault Division of NSDAP) They got involved only when property of the Germans was at stake Not earlier than about 5pm Goebbels gave a command through the radio to cease any „spontaneous demonstrations” Tired but also fulfilled crowd began going home called so because of the glass slivers scattered around German and Austrian cities 91 Jews were killed and 20–30 thousand were placed in concentration camps Nazi authorities had been planning the escalation of the violence towards the Jews for a long time The death of the secretary of the German Embassy in Paris was considered to be a perfect pretext for its beginning Vom Rath died of gunshot wounds to the abdomen having spent two days in hospital where he was taken care of by Hitler’s personal physician He had been shot by a seventeen-year-old Herschel Grynszpan who had emigrated to Hanover a few years before the outbreak of the First World War Herschel’s desperate act was a retaliation for what had happened to his family a week earlier the Gestapo was given an order to immediately arrest the Jews of Polish descent living in Germany and deport them immediately to Poland They were invaded in their homes and taken outright allowed only to take one piece of luggage Within a few days of Polenaktion 17 thousand Jews were sent in sealed wagons to the Eastern border of the Reich Legal situation of these people was extremely bad Already in March 1939 Polish government for fear of massive returns of the Polish Jews who were being persecuted in Germany passed a law which deprived persons of citizenship of they were living for more than five years abroad German authorities annulled all permanent residence permits for foreigners it was clear that the Jews would not get new permits Polish authorities agreed to admit Jews already deprived of Polish citizenship but only till the end of October And thus the rush of the Gestapo members responsible for arresting them The deported Jews were brought from Zbąszyń a small town on the German-Polish border Polish authorities admitted only a few thousand refugees were forced to camp at the station and in nearby barns. Polenaktion was withheld only when Polish government threatened to deport German citizens who the Germans had not been able to transport through the Eastern border Among the Jews imprisoned in Zbąszyń was a tailor Zendel Gryszpan with his wife Ryfka Herschel’s parents as well as his brother Mordechai with wife Berta had been living at his aunt and uncle’s in Paris where on 3rd November he received a letter informing him on the desperate situation of his family bought a revolver with bullets and went to the German Embassy He asked to see Ambassador Joannes von Welczka but he was admitted only to see the Secretary of the Embassy Herschel was arrested and put in prison It is not known what happened to him later; most likely he was murdered by the Germans he did not have a show trial that had been planned Herschel wrote a postcard addressed to his parents which he put into a pocket of his coat my heart bleeds when I hear about your tragedy and 12 000 Jews I must protest so that the whole world knows about my protest And the Nazis used it to spark aggression towards the Jews aggression on a scale the history had not witnessed yet it was only an introduction to the activation of the murder machine which within the next few years was to eliminate almost 6 million people It looked as if everybody was waiting for a signal and Paderewski gave them one: one day after his arrival there were demonstrations in the city and the first shots were fired An uprising which took place became known as the Greater Poland Uprising since Poles were also a majority in the city’s surroundings They demanded that the former Polish territory of Greater Poland leave the Prussian province and re-join the new Polish state The US president’s postulate of self-determination of nations gave them an important argument in formulating future demands a politician of the national-democratic camp were heading to Versailles for peace negotiations Greater Poland was already in Poland’s ownership The Treaty of Versailles granted Poland both Greater Poland and Western Prussia such as Lower Silesia and parts of Western and Eastern Prussia which were subject of dispute between Germany and Poland The signing of the Versailles Treaty on June 28th 1919 was Paderewski’s next success even after the treaty came into force on January 10th 1920 there were still many border-related issues that remained unresolved it was not until June 1920 that the majority expressed their will to remain on the German side In Lower Silesia the referendum took place on March 20th 1921 and 59.6 per cent of the region’s voters wanted to stay within the German borders while 40.4 percent wanted to become part of Poland The referendum was followed by a third Silesian Uprising It ended on July 5th with an armistice that was forced by the Allies On October 20th 1921 the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris made a decision that two-thirds of Lower Silesia would go to Poland while a third would remain within the German borders Katowice and a larger part of the Coal Basin thus became part of Poland.   The border between Poland and Germany was finally established in 1921 It stretched from Racibórz (located on the Oder River) through the Upper Silesian Coal Basin all the way to the Baltic Sea and the Free City of Danzig and the Polish port of Gdynia there was a border between Poland and Eastern Prussia it was four times longer than today’s Polish-German border that was established in 1945 Since the beginning it was not a normal border where it was regarded as a “bloody border” nationalist and revanchist forces were mockingly calling Poland a “seasonal state” The revision of the border was on the agenda of all political parties in the Weimar Republic it is quite surprising that 100 years later this border is almost completely forgotten phrases such as “the Polish corridor” and the battle over Lower Silesia are still quite popular in Germany In Poland it is sometimes said that the border can still be identified because those parts that belonged to Poland before the Second World War continue to have the same social structures while the areas of the former German territory – the so-called “Polish Wild West” – need to mature which is now fully within the Polish territory like between Zbąszyń (formerly Bentschen) and Zbąszynek (formerly Neu Bentschen) With the establishment of the new border the railroad hub in Bentschen became the railway station of Zbąszyń It was thus necessary to build another hub on the German side – in Neu Bentschen which are located on the Berlin-Frankfurt-Poznań route The railway station in Neu Bentschen was built based on the design of Wilhelm Beringer an architect who also designed the railway station building in Frankfurt (am Oder) the railway station in Zbąszyń became a “gateway to the Second Republic” The new border also had an impact on other cities which lost out economically as a result of the new boundary a new housing estate was built (even before the new railway station was constructed) for the workers of the Eastern Directorate of the Reich Railways (Reichsbahndirektion Osten) who moved there from Berlin The estate was designed by Hanns Martin Kießling and the streets resembling the areas assigned to Poland were called the Posener Ring (Poznań Roundabout) and the Bromberger Ring (Bydgoszcz Roundabout) other buildings designed by Kießling in Frankfurt had bay windows decorated with emblems of German cities which at that time belonged to Poland in Poznań it was debated whether the German Royal Castle located in the city should undergo Polonisation there are still traces of the non-material legacy of the border in Wrocław the university became the place where German Eastern studies found their headquarters In Poznań the third largest Polish university It was here that Polish Western studies programmes had their foundation.  All these created an opportunity for German and Polish academics art historians and museum workers to initiate a project called “1918: A forgotten border” This co-operation is aimed at examining the impact that the border had on the everyday life of Germans and Poles as well as the one that it is playing in the collective memory of both societies today.  In the first part – titled “A rediscovery of the forgotten border” – students in the inter-disciplinary Polish studies programme at the Viadrina European University in Frankfurt (Oder) will travel from Lower Silesia to Gdańsk (former Danzig) in search of traces of the border which complements a seminar led by Professor Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast will allow students the chance to visit the most important landmarks of the former border and engage with experts The results of their fieldwork will be included in a guide envisioned for publication this autumn.  The second part of the project titled “Forgotten modernism and national buildings” will include an exhibition of interwar architecture in Frankfurt (Oder) and Poznań The exhibit will be on display in autumn in Poznań Słubice as well as the castle in Trzebnica Visitors will see the most important buildings of “national modernism” in both cities as well as learn about their architects The third part of the project titled “From enemy observation to trans-border co-operation” will focus on the history of German Eastern studies and Polish Western studies the Marshal of the Greater Poland voivodship and the prime minister of Brandenburg who is also the head of the office of representation to Poland all expressed their interest in supporting this part of the project “Enemy observation” and “co-operation” are the two main slogans that have been accompanying the 100 year history of Polish-German relations since the establishment of the border The hostile attitude towards Poland that characterised Frankfurt (Oder) in the interwar period can be seen in the words of the then mayor of the city who on the anniversary of the Eastern Marchia in 1927 said:  “As the biggest city in Eastern Marchia we need to fulfil our sacred duty which is to build a protective wall against the pressing Slavdom German are to become all things that were German before.” numerous institutions with the name Ostmark (Eastern Marchia) were created Some of these included the earlier mentioned housing estate designed by Hanns Martin Kießling and the 1924 Artesian and Agricultural Fair of Eastern Marchia (Ostmarkschau für Gewerbe und Landwirtschaft In Poznań the atmosphere was less anti-German than it was anti-Polish in Frankfurt.  The city was too focused on itself at the time and had two very different groups One included the Polish residents who lived in the city before the war and knew Germany very well The other group came from the Russian and Austrian partitioned territories and saw Poznań with its Royal Castle and bourgeois buildings it was important for both sides to express their national identity the neo-Roman and neo-Gothic styles were perceived as German as opposed to the neo-Baroque and neo-classicism The latter were regarded as “Polish style” – the example of which are the buildings designed by Polish architect Adam Ballenstedt To enforce the Polish identity on the formerly German Poznań the Polish General Exhibition (Powszechna Wystawa Krajowa) was held in the city in 1929 the Eastern Marchia housing estate designed by Kießling (and today called Paulinenhofsiedlung) exemplified the style of the so-called defence of the fatherland architecture can we really say that in one case it was a German style and in the other Polish Was modernist architecture nationalised on both sides of the border who works for the National Museum in Szczecin and is the author of a book on Poznań architecture between 1919 and 1939 “We can assume that Ballenstedt knew Kießling,” he says during a workshop organised before the planned architecture exhibition “They both studied at the Berlin Technical University and this is what shaped their style in architecture.” With these words Kubiak suggests that there is nothing Polish in Ballenstedt’s architecture.  He could have just as well designed buildings in Germany It can thus be said that the architects did not share the hostile rhetoric and for the whole time spoke the same language there was enemy observation but there was also co-operation was an exception during the interwar period remained a primary source of conflict; especially as the political decisions of the Weimar Republic allowed for the revision of the Versailles Treaty Its constant questioning by Germany at that time can be interpreted as an overture of the country’s later attack on Poland after the conclusion of the 1934 Polish-German pact of non-aggression there were no examples of successful trans-border co-operation nor anything like the everyday interactions that we can observe between Frankfurt and Słubice today the killing of six million Polish citizens (among them three million Jews) and the shifting of the border to the West as a result of the 1945 Potsdam Treaty the older border disappeared into oblivion it still constitutes an important element in the history of Polish-German relations.   He is one of the initiators of the project “1918: A forgotten border” A life story of a river) published by the Jan Nowak-Jeziorański College of Eastern Europe in Wrocław The project “1918: A forgotten border” involves both Poles and Germans and institutions from both countries and the Polish-German Research Institute at Collegium Polonicum in Słubice The first meeting of the project took place at the culture centre “Zamek” located in the former German Royal Castle This place also houses the Music Academy that was named after Ignacy Jan Paderewski who arrived in Poznań 100 years ago The consequences of Russia’s invasion are visible not only in Ukraine The Kremlin has set off or exploited a series of crises that face most European countries New thinking is needed in policies towards Russia in whatever form it will take after the war Ukraine’s suffering goes well beyond the front line With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine we now see our western values under siege whether we consciously recognise it or not The invasion by Russian forces of Ukraine from the north south and east – with the initial aim to take the capital Kyiv – has changed our region The situation with Russian threats towards Ukraine once again illustrates the high level of instability in our region Only a year ago we witnessed the second Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan It took at least 5,000 lives and significantly shifted the geopolitics in the South Caucuses This special issue aims to honour the plight of Belarusians whose democratic choice made in August 2020 was shamelessly snubbed by Alyaksandr Lukashenka a lot of work still remains for this country And this is why Ukraine’s story is incomplete 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union Our societies are more polarised than ever before which makes them more susceptible to disinformation The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed limitations and weaknesses in nearly all countries around the world volatility and the relationship between Russia and the West The Black Sea region is quickly becoming a geopolitical battleground which is gaining the interest of major powers regional players and smaller countries – and the stakes are only getting higher This issue is dedicated to the 10 year anniversary of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership as well as the 30 years since the 1989 revolutions in Central Europe The consequences of the emerging multipolar world This issue takes a special look at the role and responsibility of the public intellectual in Central and Eastern Europe today In the eastern parts of the European continent 1918 is remembered not only as the end of the First World War but also saw the emergence of newly-independent states and the rise of geopolitical struggles which are felt until this day that Belarus remains isolated from the West and very static in its transformation The Summer 2018 issue of New Eastern Europe tackles the complexity of para-states in the post-Soviet space The predicament of refugees at the Polish–Belarusian border evokes deportations to Poland in 1938 and a novel published in 1940 Klaus Neumann 1 October 2021 3893 words Afghan refugees caught between Polish and Belarusian troops near Usnarz Gorny on the Polish-Belarusian border in August before journalists and aid workers were excluded from the area I often pass by an inconspicuous monument — a granite rock with a plaque — a few hundred metres from the Hamburg-Altona railway station Only up close is it possible to see that it marks the day on which 800 Polish Jews living in Hamburg were deported by train to the German–Polish border the Altona district assembly decided to erect this memorial; now it is the focus of a commemorative ceremony Hamburg’s Polish Jews were part of a larger group of long-term German residents deported during what was called the Polenaktion The Nazi authorities were responding to a law passed in Poland in March 1938 — and brought into force in October — that cancelled the citizenship of Polish nationals who had been living abroad continuously for five years or more While it didn’t specify who those Polish citizens were and where they lived it was clearly directed at Polish Jews living in Germany and Austria who would move to Poland if their persecution by the Nazis intensified About 18,000 Polish Jews were expelled from Germany in late October 1938 Because the German authorities reasoned that the breadwinners’ deportation would compel their families to follow Most deportees were taken to the Neu-Bentschen railway station and then forced to walk to the Polish border town of Zbąszyń but we heard the rattling of machine guns in the rear The SS men threatened to shoot if anyone tried to stay behind,” a woman from Hamburg told a New York Times correspondent a couple of days after her deportation where they were beaten and trod on by guards The worst happened when we came to a ditch right on the frontier There was a barbed-wire fence on the other side We were pushed across it carrying children and those who could not move the Polish government protested against their expulsion and initially refused to accommodate them variously referred to as deportees or refugees a town of fewer than 5000 people ill-equipped to handle such a large number of arrivals the New York Times correspondent observed their “strange comfortless existence at Poland’s front gate and Germany’s back door — unable to move in either direction.” Polish Jews after their arrival in Zbaszyn on 29 October 1938 The Zbąszyń refugee camp stayed open until August 1939 Some of those deported in October 1938 were lucky because they had been able to leave Poland before the war They included a handful of unaccompanied minors who were allowed to migrate to Australia Most of the deportees who remained in Poland were murdered during the Holocaust The German government of 1938 wasn’t the last to try to inconvenience of the incident in 1980 that became known as the Mariel boatlift when Fidel Castro’s government encouraged — and in some cases compelled — about 125,000 Cubans unhappy with its rule and their own circumstances to leave for the United States They included people considered to be socially undesirable —because they were gay or lived in psychiatric institutions or had been convicted of criminal offences The Mariel boatlift was designed to create problems for US president Jimmy Carter who was committed to rescuing people from the clutches of communism but unprepared to accommodate such a large number of arrivals in a relatively short time and unwilling to resettle people who were considered socially undesirable from a US perspective gesturing towards its efforts to resist an Asian invasion of Europe 2500 years earlier and what technologies are brought to bear,” which “produces a wide range of variety and complexity.” The Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko Responding to sanctions imposed on members of his regime by the European Union his government has opened up a route for irregular migrants to enter the EU via Belarus Iraqis who had arrived in Minsk by plane from Baghdad began turning up at the Lithuanian border in June Lithuanian border guards caught red-handed twelve members of the Belarusian security forces in riot gear who had crossed over into Lithuanian territory while they were pushing migrants across the border People smugglers were quick to see the business opportunities created by the Belarusian government and offered their services to desperate people hoping to be able to seek protection in the European Union Those entering the EU via Belarus now include irregular migrants from Afghanistan the Republic of Congo and other refugee-producing countries “The unanswered question is: what will happen to them Hamburg’s monument to the 800 Polish Jews deported on 28 October 1938 the three EU member states that share a border with Belarus have resisted admitting people pushed across the border by the Belarusian authorities All three have declared states of emergency erected fences and deployed additional security forces at the border Lithuanian and Polish border guards have also been accused of forcing irregular migrants back to Belarus before they can make asylum claims The focus in recent weeks has been on the border between Poland and Belarus With police and border guards from both countries stopping people from leaving the immediate area groups of migrants have been stuck in no-man’s land In 1938 the world soon found out what was going on at Zbąszyń; in 2021 although we live in the age of mobile phones and citizen journalists we know little about what’s happening at the Polish border That’s because Poland has declared a three-kilometre exclusion zone around its border with Belarus lawyers and the representatives of refugee advocacy groups from talking to the people stuck there We have only a sketchy impression of how many people have managed to slip into Poland the circumstances of those caught between Poland and Belarus and the means used by the security forces of the two countries to stop migrants crossing into Poland or going back to Belarus On 30 September, Amnesty International said that it had used “spatial reconstruction techniques” to track a group of thirty-two people from Afghanistan — twenty-seven men four women and a fifteen-year-old girl — who crossed the Polish border on 8 August Its analysis suggests that the group had camped on the Polish side of the border but been illegally pushed back to the Belarusian side while they were technically in Poland or Belarus The case of the thirty-two Afghan nationals had been brought to the attention of the European Court of Human Rights on 20 August the court told the Polish government to provide them with food But although the court told the Polish government that failure to comply with its interim measures might constitute a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights The governments of all three EU member states have boasted of their ability to keep out potential asylum seekers The Latvian authorities claim that they have turned back some 1400 migrants since 10 August and allowed only thirty-eight to enter The Lithuanian authorities pride themselves on having repelled twice as many Poland recorded 786 attempts to enter the country from Belarus The term “no-man’s land” acquired its prominence and much of its present-day meaning during the first world war when it denoted the stretch of land between enemy trench lines But it could also be a space where the war was temporarily suspended; at night the warring sides occasionally allowed each other to retrieve the bodies of the wounded and dead as in Victor Trivas’s 1931 film Niemandsland be imagined as a utopian space where peace becomes possible But the no-man’s land occupied by the thirty-two migrants from Afghanistan tracked by Amnesty International has little in common with the space between the trenches in wartime: No-man’s Lands are strips of field between the frontiers of the European countries There is no comradeship among the survivors of this peace Europe traces its lines of barbed wire through fields and hearts Into this land between the frontiers the continent pushes the men it has no use for These are lines from Renée Brand’s novel Niemandsland published in the original German in Switzerland in 1940 and then Brand acknowledges no-man’s land’s connotations at the time while highlighting how different her Niemandsland — a literal rendering of “no-man’s land” — is from the wasteland between the trenches of the first world war not long before the outbreak of the second world war It features a motley group of people — “ministers and physicians children” — stranded on a field between Germany and an unnamed European country “This field is No-man’s Land,” the narrator explains; it is “outside.” The people inhabiting the Niemandsland are referred to as Niemandsleute — “No-man’s people” in the published English translation Some of them have been deported to this piece of land others have left or been deported from Germany for other reasons Some were “simply men with some responsibility the kind of men who were what we had always thought men should be.” They have in common that the unnamed European country outside whose borders they are camped refuses to admit them and that they can’t or don’t want to return to Germany While Niemandsland’s protagonists don’t yearn for a lost home they are not projecting all their hopes onto life in a country of refuge either They simply want to be somewhere (rather than in the nowhere of no-man’s land) and don’t harbour any particular expectations about life on the other side of the border Brand drew on her own experience of being a refugee she studied in that city and in Freiburg but quit her studies when she married in 1922 When the Nazi party assumed power in Germany Brand and her seven-year-old son emigrated to France and completed a doctorate in German literature studying psychology and eventually practising as a Jungian psychoanalyst Niemandsland is Brand’s only published work of fiction Its Swiss publisher thought the novel’s literary qualities raised it above most of the literature produced by émigré writers at the time and it was well received when it first appeared in 1940 But in the mid 1940 the Swiss censorship authorities banned any displaying presumably out of concern that Germany might consider it provocative The novel’s English-language edition attracted favourable reviews — a reviewer in the Los Angeles Times marvelled that “Wonder is aroused that such lyrical intensity such universal passion and pity and beauty could be encompassed in so brief a tale” — but has long since been forgotten The widely reported deportation of Polish Jews in late October 1938 may well have informed Brand’s narrative expelled from one country but unable to enter the country they were deported to also found themselves stuck in no-man’s land about 2000 Jews expelled from Slovakia to Hungary became marooned at the Slovakian–Hungarian border for several months sixty-eight Jews expelled from Austria’s Burgenland to Czechoslovakia had been confined for several months on a tugboat on the Hungarian side of the Danube River — an episode that inspired the 1938 play Das Schiff auf der Donau by the German writer Friedrich Wolf who at the time was living in exile in France Both because of its literary qualities and because it hasn’t dated Brand’s novel is in a different league from Wolf’s rather didactic play It also brilliantly analyses the essential qualities of the kind of no-man’s land inhabited by forced migrants: it is no terra nullius it isn’t fiercely contested (as in war) and its status is not fixed It is a no-man’s land only for the Niemandsleute: only they are confined there The space that housed Palestinian deportees at the border between Israel and Lebanon or the ships adrift in the Andaman Sea in 2015 because no country wanted to accommodate their Rohingya passengers became no-man’s land because their inhabitants had been deprived of rights No-man’s land isn’t sitting waiting: it only comes into being once people are abandoned to it and enclosed on it Brand puts it like this: “Between [Germany’s] far-flung frontiers it has become narrow so that one has had to invent a No-man’s Land for those who have no room in there.” She highlights the transformation of refugees and deportees into Niemandsleute “Only former people here,” one of her characters says And look: our former children are running along to get their soup Brand’s novel was directed at a specific audience: “Americans and Europeans of the twentieth century.” She suggests that the book’s readers have been compromised if only because they are unable to imagine what is happening to those banished from Germany Brand doesn’t allow her readers to be distant observers Instead she implicates them in the novel’s events and thereby encourages them to take sides As soon as they identify the predicament of the novel’s characters with that faced by forcibly displaced people today today’s readers are similarly called to account They too are prompted to ask themselves: am I not hiding behind my curtain using migratory flows as a tool for political purposes.” But there is little the European Commission can do to stop Belarus’s weaponisation of irregular migration the EU partially suspended the visa facilitation agreement with Belarus yet it’s doubtful that this will hurt a regime whose key members are already barred from entering the European Union Rather than demonstrating their outrage at Lukashenko’s hybrid warfare the European Commission ought to concern itself with the illegal practices of its member states Von der Leyen and her fellow commissioners may be reluctant to do so not because of a likely backlash from the Polish government but because other EU members have not done nearly enough to provide credible assurances to Lithuania Latvia and Poland that the three countries won’t be left alone to deal with any migrants seeking asylum because Poland is by no means the only EU member state accused of pushing back irregular migrants and violating human rights EU member countries that don’t share a land border with a non-EU country and can’t be easily accessed by sea from outside the EU have shown no sign of being prepared to accommodate people entering Lithuania then those three Eastern European countries would have had little incentive to violate international and EU law and force migrants back across the Belarusian border confine them in no-man’s land at the border Any condemnation of Polish practices would be hypocritical if it did not imply a condemnation of such practices in principle Other EU member states too have been guilty of pushbacks and of violating the human rights of people trying to seek asylum not to mention the sordid saga of the EU’s collaboration with the Libyan “coast guard” to stop migrants from crossing the Mediterranean It’s little wonder that the European Commission has reserved its outrage for Lukashenko and approached the governments in Warsaw and Vilnius with kid gloves. Asked repeatedly during a press conference on 29 September how the commission viewed Poland’s pushbacks, EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson was only prepared to say that “the commission has several question marks.” Or what continent is it?” asks one of Renée Brand’s protagonists whereupon another responds: “There is no Europe any more Could it be true that men live as we live in the heart of Europe?” No matter how you look at the Niemandsland Brand explains in the opening pages of her book “Outside of moon and earth: in the sphere of total indifference.” Later she seemingly allows her readers to object to the charges of indifference With both hands you have reinforced the boundaries against which the waves of despair were surging You appointed committees to confer on how to relieve the stricken Honorable men and women exerted themselves Conferences were in session for days and days Misery is in session for nights and nights there’ll be a memorial for those who froze to death at the European Union’s eastern border Klaus Neumann works for the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture and is an honorary professor at Deakin University. For this essay, he drew on an article about Brand he wrote a few years ago for a special issue of the academic journal lwu that was edited by Sladja Blazan and Nigel Hatton The information on this page is intended for journalists If you click NO you will come back to Mynewsdesk.com In an article written for The Conversation Associate Professor of Architecture and Built Environment explains the significance politics and history behind how we name our city streets Historical events are inscribed into many urban landscapes. As part of an international multidisciplinary research project we have studied the changing patterns of street renaming in East Germany and Poland over the past 100 years Names in medieval town centres are generally quite literal They reflect the typical occupation of their erstwhile medieval inhabitants or the salient characteristics of the street itself we have Badergasse (“physicians’ alley”) and Zur Schmiedegasse (“at the smiths’ alley”) Dominikańska is located by the Dominican church while ul was one of the broadest streets leading from the city gates to the main market square commemorative street naming took precedence The many instances of Frederick’s Street in former Prussian territories refer to one of the seven kings of Prussia called Frederick or Frederick William scientists and industrialists also took their place on street signs these names form a nationalist cultural canon which is almost exclusively German/Polish and male Featuring them prominently as street names effectively encodes – or inscribes – that cultural tradition into the cityscape When the borders in Europe were redrawn after the first world war Poznań changed its affiliation from Prussia to Poland The German cultural pantheon (with names such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) soon disappeared from the city’s street signs to be replaced with a corresponding Polish canon (including the poet Maria Konopnicka) This cultural shift also saw the language of the urban landscape change from German to Polish artisan and landmark street names may not have changed in meaning but they were translated Bahnhofstrasse became ulica Dworcowa (meaning “railway station street” in both cases) Our research reveals that cities and towns also use street naming to express and construct their local cultural identities. Leipzig is famous for its publishing industry and thus features many streets named after local publishers and the writers and musicians whose works were put in print there Poznań commemorates local 19th-century social activism Zbąszyń pays tribute to local bagpipe folk music while Annaberg-Buchholz honours its mining traditions Successive socio-political regimes have imposed their ideological vision on the streetscape by commemorating their leaders or their values Despite the fact that the Nazis had issued instructions explicitly discouraging the naming of streets after living personalities Heinrich Himmler and Herrmann Göring were nonetheless commemorated on Heinrichplatz and in Hermannstadt while Leipzig featured a street named after Hitler (Adolf-Hitler-Straße) from March 1933 until May 1945 streets in the German Democratic Republic and in the People’s Republic of Poland went through a process of denazification The names that replaced those Nazi references served Leipzig’s Adolf-Hitler-Straße thus became Karl-Liebknecht-Straße commemorating the co-founder of the Communist Party of Germany The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 brought about the reunification of Germany and the establishment of a democratic government in Poland This political shift can once again be read in the way the streets of German and Polish cities were de-communised In 1947 the communist administration in Poznań renamed ul meaning “the street leading to the town of Buk”) to commemorate the communist general Karol Świerczewski street renaming in Germany has often aimed to redress the wrongs of the past with the commemoration of journalists fighting for the free press minorities oppressed during the Third Reich or indeed resistance fighters This is the case in Frankfurt (Oder) with the ringroad commemorating Ernst Heilborn the Jewish writer and journalist persecuted by the Nazis Street names also continue to serve as battlefields for representation when local authorities use their power to influence who is remembered Poznań added the names of 28 women to its streetscape in 2018 In Berlin, the Afrikanisches Viertel (African quarter) in the north-western district of Wedding is replacing the names of colonialists with those of African liberation fighters. Nachtigallplatz, for instance, is named after Gustav Nachtigal, who led the colonisation of Cameroon and Togo. It is set to become Bell-Platz to commemorate the Cameroonian royal family who fought against colonial suppression and was executed by the Germans in 1914 When street names are ideologically motivated, their renaming is met with initial enthusiasm, but over time opposition ensues. Residents send letters to local newspapers and petitions to the council when the history of the person commemorated in the street name is less known Few remembered or cared who Julian Leński (a leader of Communist Party of Poland so that a street named after him in Poznań was not changed until 2017 Many claim that the administrative burden involved in renaming – updating documents expensive street name plates – does not always warrant the effort of symbolically “repainting” the streetscape What we have termed “ideological fatigue” can result in new housing developments opting for neutral names And the Polish town of Słubice has gone for fruits Our project shows that during turbulent times turning history into the sedimented social geography of our cities Northumbria is a research-intensive modern university with a global reputation for academic excellence. Find out more about us at www.northumbria.ac.uk --- Please contact our Media and Communications team at media.communications@northumbria.ac.uk with any media enquiries or interview requests --- Northumbria University is a research-intensive university that unlocks potential for all When you choose to create a user account and follow a newsroom your personal data will be used by us and the owner of the newsroom for you to receive news and updates according to your subscription settings To learn more about this, please read our Privacy Policy, which applies to our use of your personal data, and our Privacy Policy for Contacts which applies to the use of your personal data by the owner of the newsroom you follow Please note that our Terms of Use apply to all use of our services You can withdraw your consent at any time by unsubscribing or deleting your account After learning that his family, along with thousands of Jews of Polish origin in Germany, had been deported to the German-Polish border town of Zbaszyn Herschel Grynszpan decided to assassinate a German official in protest 1938 he shot the German embassy’s third secretary The Germans used the assassination as an excuse to launch the Kristallnacht pogrom throughout Germany and Austria This exclusive interview was published in our newsletter Teaching the Legacy (December, 2008) Ron discusses her experiences and memories surrounding Kristallnacht Could you please give us a short introduction of yourself?My name is Miriam Ron Before I was married my name was Miriam Shapira and we lived in Leipzig but my mother came to Germany in 1903 and my father in 1918 Can you describe your family life before Kristallnacht They were very accustomed to German culture having come from German-speaking countries We had a very nice family life and my father worked very hard to make a good living for us We had everything – a nanny to take us out We were a very tolerant but religious family We went every Friday night and Shabbat [the Jewish Sabbath day] to the synagogue and my mother was very careful with kosher food We were on very good terms with our non-Jewish neighbors My father did really well in business and we were able to move to another neighborhood All the streets were named after composers and we were on such good terms with the non-Jewish neighbors The conductor from the conservatorium lived with his wife on the second floor of our building First of all it was in the synagogue and afterwards when we came home we prepared the room for the guests "People will be coming with dirty shoes you are having guests," and she put down her own Persian carpets for us It was in 1935 and I was standing on the balcony of our apartment with my father and we heard people marching on the street "Come and see what's going on." He saw people marching and singing "When the blood of the Jews will be on our knives we will be happy." And one lifted his head and made a sign for us to see and my father had a real shock and he said "It isn't good that we live here amongst all these non-Jews we have to move to another quarter." We don't know what's going on Then of course we couldn't employ a non-Jewish maid in our house and I was forbidden to go to the non-Jewish school so my brother and I were very pleased when our parents moved to a Jewish neighborhood and I was near the school But every time we heard that people were leaving Germany my father said "It's so stupid – it's terrible to be a refugee." My father remembered when he was a refugee living on the Austrian/Russian border after World War I "I was a refugee in Vienna and it was terrible and I don't want to be a refugee anymore Mozart – nothing will happen to us in such a cultured country." This is what he said every day When he saw people marching in the street he said "We should tell the police." He was so naïve Your parents were Ost Juden [East European Jews] Was your family involved in the expulsion to Zbaszyn I am so surprised that nobody mentions this ten days before the pogrom [riot or massacre against Jews] In our Jewish school the boys were praying in the morning but they had to prepare breakfast for the boys to eat after praying It was the turn of my friend and I to make the tea and we had to be at school at 7:00 instead of 8:00 I was already dressed and ready to leave the house when I heard knocking at our door two tall policemen were standing at the door "Where are your parents?" I told them they were asleep "Take me to the bedroom of your parents." They both went into their bedroom and put on the light and said You are going to Poland." My mother thought it was a bad dream My father thought there was a problem with his income tax returns My mother told me to wake up my 16-year-old brother My parents asked why they were going to Poland – could they take something with them "You are going to such a cultural land." (When Germans talked about Poland they said "dirty Poles") "don't take anything with you." My father phoned his brother and asked him to take the keys to our apartment "What have you done?" My father answered "Nothing." My aunt came and took the keys but when she got home and they really were sent immediately to Poland had hastily put on her overcoat and was carrying a little handbag When I asked her why she wasn't dressed she told me the police didn't give her time We were taken and crammed in to the gymnastics hall of the Jewish school We saw all the people we knew from the neighborhood who were of Polish origin My father had very high blood pressure and he couldn't breathe he can't be transported." My brother said We will be in Poland and you will be in Germany." Every half hour a bus came to take the people to the railway station so we took the next bus and as we got in people were pushed in with us We were all standing and that way we arrived at the Leipzig railway station They took us to a siding where they take animals There were soldiers with bayonets standing every ten meters to make sure we didn't run away We waited for the next train and I heard a woman telling a policeman I have all the papers for America." The commander of the action let her go home to get her papers I persuaded my mother to talk to the commander to tell him that our father was in a hospital and I saw the lady in the nightgown pushed onto the train When we told him we speak German with the Leipzig accent They thought we were German and not Polish On Shabbat [Saturday] morning we had a telephone call My mother told them they had the wrong number and cold and eventually found shelter with a Professor Levy who was of German origin My mother said we would go to see him and pretend it was a normal Shabbat visit He also had a little boy with him who he had taken away from his parents at the railway station When did you find out the reason for this aktion After Shabbat we listened to the radio and we learned what had happened. We didn't know. After the Evian conference in July 1938 the Poles decided that from November 1 Polish passports belonging to Ost Juden would be cancelled but all those who still had a valid Polish passport were expelled from Germany immediately Over three days these people were pushed between the Polish and German borders and the Germans took their possessions away Do you think what followed was pre-arranged What happened – I am sure the Germans had prepared this pogrom a long time ago but had no real reason to do it After the German third secretary to Paris was shot and killed by Hershel Grynszpan we heard that the German people had to react against the Jew who had murdered a German official and that was the reason for the pogrom, but we didn't know this yet the Gottschedstrasse Synagogue during Kristallnacht What do you remember about the 10th of November What happened on the 9th of November in the evening I don't know but in the morning I wanted to go back to school and after the Zbaszyn pogrom there were only 10 children left We had 17 synagogues in Leipzig and my father wanted to go to pray in the morning don't go – the synagogues are all burning – there are no synagogues anymore." So we stayed home and waited to see what would happen It was the man who used to work for my father Run away." So again we left everything and ran away through the back entrance and we didn't know where to go I saw a piano being thrown out of the window of an apartment next to us For years I thought I was dreaming and that it was not true you can run to the Dead Sea and drown there." So my father wanted to hire a taxi they will break the windows if they see there are Jews in my taxi." My mother thought we should go to where there was a shopping center where we would be inconspicuous and we could pretend to do our shopping there Then my mother saw the shop where we often went to buy shoes and stockings and she said the man is so friendly to me [that] we will go into his shop They will break my windows if they see that Jews are here Sorry – you have to go." So again we were in the street I am so happy to do something against these damned Nazis." When my father asked why he was helping us he said all his family was in a concentration camp because they were Communists "I am so pleased to help you." He told us he had passed by the Polish consulate and seen a large crowd of Jews hiding there They had Polish passports so they had diplomatic immunity and were theoretically on Polish soil we had to park on the other side of the street near the Supreme Court The students came up onto the roof of the Supreme Court with buckets of garbage and when they saw Jews We entered the consulate and as there was no room inside we waited in the garden We saw wounded children who had been beaten up After a few hours we heard someone calling "Frau Shapiro" – it was the man who worked for my father He told us that everything in our house had been burned and broken "Really?" We thought she didn't understand but she said but I am looking at my children who have no bleeding heads and arms she was relieved that we were not physically hurt] At about 5 o'clock in the evening the Consul himself said through a loudspeaker "Everyone who has a Polish passport should go home as they are under our protection." Can you imagine that 10 days before it was a disaster to be Polish and now it was good to be Polish He knew that there were also German Jews sheltering "Only Jews with Polish passports should go home." We were tired and wanted to go to sleep but how can you go to sleep with an open door They just made a fire outside our house and burned everything they could My mother found our income tax book on the kitchen table This they left and she put it in the oven and said she wanted to finish it But how can you go to sleep without a front door We put a table where the door had been and buckets on the table so if someone pushed the door it would make a noise It was only a neighbor and she wanted to tell us the aktion was over The German nation has calmed down after what has happened They made out it was the ordinary Germans who had taken part in the pogrom and not the Nazis What was the aftermath of Kristallnacht two elderly German Jewish neighbors committed suicide My piano teacher came to tell us that all the German Jewish men including her husband were sent to concentration camps After a few weeks she received a parcel and she had to pay to receive it Then of course it was impossible to stay in Germany anymore On the 11th of November my mother saw one synagogue still burning She asked why everything was still burning and why everything was so destroyed She even went to the police station to complain and they answered her that if she didn't know who had done it we thought it was because they were criminals not because they were Jews Did you have any friends left in the neighborhood after Kristallnacht We had one neighbor who wrote us a letter – I don't know how he found us – and he wanted us to write a letter in 1954 to say he wasn't a Nazi and that he was very friendly with us but in 1988 my husband was invited to Karlsruhe and I went with him but while we were in Karlsruhe they asked if I would speak to some students on November 10th about Kristallnacht; there I spoke to a class of girls aged 14 which was the same age I was during Kristallnacht I told them everything I have told you in German One girl asked if she should feel guilty and I said you know what How can I say that you or your parents are guilty But I will tell you that you must be more careful than all other people not to be antisemitic think about it – everybody is allowed to eat chocolate but not somebody whose grandmother died from diabetes This is also the message I would tell students today Schlepping and Schmoozing Along the Interstate 5: Chapter 10 (Exit 7A: L  Street): Southwestern College Exit 7A (L Street) to Southwestern College: L Street exit lets you off south of L Street The name changes to Telegraph Canyon Road Harris is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who always had a particular fondness for Hebrew Scriptures which she and others of Christian faiths refer to as “The Old Testament.” She speculates that perhaps somewhere in an Eastern European branch of her family After raising three daughters and running a successful business as a contract seamstress for local bridal shops Harris decided it was time to go back to school a bachelor’s degree in humanities and a master’s degree in history with an interdisciplinary focus on Near Eastern Religious History Her master’s thesis concerned how temple architecture evolved in the ancient Near East from that of Mesopotamia to Egypt to Greece and Rome and to the Temple in Jerusalem she was accepted to a doctoral program at the University of California at Santa Barbara where based on her work-study experience at SDSU as an archivist for the Jewish Historical Society of San Diego she anticipated writing a dissertation on the Jewish history of San Diego County that was before the archival records of the late Cantor Joseph Cysner (1912-1961) were donated to the Jewish Historical Society of San Diego by his widow who often volunteered at the society’s offices in the main library at San Diego State University assigned to Harris the task of putting the records in order and cataloguing their contents Cysner (which he pronounced “Sizz-ner” but which others often pronounced “Sigh-zner”) had served as a cantor at Tifereth Israel Synagogue through the 1950s until his death by heart attack at age 48 in 1961 What Harris found was a treasure trove of Cysner’s personal remembrances about two little known aspects of the Holocaust: the Polenaktion by which the German Nazis forced Polish-born Jews residing in Germany to resettle in western Poland in 1938 and the rescue of 1,305 Jews to safety in Manila from 1937 to shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Harris immediately asked the UC Santa Barbara History Department if she could change her dissertation subject so that it could be based upon Cysner’s experiences where he later became a prisoner of the Japanese even though this meant changing Harris’ academic advisor and the schedule of courses to which she would commute from her home in San Diego There were many blanks in Cysner’s story that Harris had to fill, and in this she was aided by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education covering all the travel she would have to do. In Washington, D.C., the National Archives contained records of communications between the State Department and Paul McNuttt High Commissioner in the Philippines (which had been a U.S Territory since the Spanish-American War of 1898) the records of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee nicknamed “the Joint,” were helpful because that office provided funds for German Jewish refugees eligible for jobs in the Philippines including about Cysner’s residences in Bamberg to which Cysner had been deported during the Polenaktion of October 1938 There were survivors of the experience in Manila to be interviewed; records in Japan about its occupation of the Philippines; and additionally there was information to be gathered about Cysner’s experiences in San Francisco where he served as a cantor prior to his final post in San Diego The Philippine experience was the heart of Harris’s research Her dissertation was published as a book titled Philippine Sanctuary: A Holocaust Odyssey “was a township with a population of about 5,000 before the refugees arrived a town with surrounding agricultural areas and then it suddenly had 8,000 refugee Jews The people of Zbaszyn took in these refugees others in an old mill – they scrambled to find a place to live Many of these were city Jews who had means with them or friends or family who could send money on to them It was not a concentration camp but was a site of restricted internment It was a very poor community with a population that tripled overnight.” Cantor Cysner was lodged in the mill with other single people until he was able to live with a family from Hanover that had procured a place by a lake outside the city Among families with whom Cysner became acquainted was that of Herschel Grynszpan Herschel’s sister wrote a postcard to him from Zbaszyn saying that she and their mother and father had been deported to Zbaszyn and in the process they had lost their home and business in Germany “That was what triggered Herschel to shoot the German consul [Ernst vom Rath] in Paris,” Harris said referring to the event that the Nazis used as an excuse to trigger Kristallnacht on Nov during which rioters destroyed 267 synagogues in German territory and damaged or destroyed more than 7,000 businesses The estimates of Jewish fatalities that night in Germany and Sudetenland range from 91 to the hundreds Cysner had no idea that events transpiring across the world in Shanghai A war between Japan and China that erupted in July 1937 prompted various nations to worry about the safety of their citizens Germany sent to Shanghai the 18,160-ton passenger ship SS Gneisenau (named for the Prussian field marshal August Neidhart von Gneisenau whose forces joined the British in the defeat of Napoleon of France at Waterloo.) About 40 Jewish families joined the German citizens who were offered transportation back to Germany The captain was prevailed upon to drop them off in Manila instead of taking them back to the Nazi homeland When organizations such as the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Refugee Economic Corporation learned that the Philippines had accepted Jewish refugees (whereas so many other countries including the U.S there was a flurry of activity and correspondence among rescue committees in Germany was sympathetic to the Jewish cause and in association with Manuel L the president of the Philippine Commonwealth consular officials issue passports and visas to 1,305 Jews whose professions were deemed necessary for the welfare of the Philippines Among those positions was one for a cantor The spiritual leader of the small Jewish community in Manila had worked with Cysner in the Hildesheim-Hanover Jewish Communities before Cysner went to work as a cantor at the Verband Reform Synagogue in Hamburg An official invitation was sent to Hamburg and the German bureaucracy forwarded it to him at Zbaszyn “The Nazis knew where he was; no one else did,” Harris remarked I will accept this post of cantor in the Philippines.’ That allowed him to go to Warsaw—released from Zbaszyn—and get a visa and passport He was able to secure passage on one of those fancy German ocean liners that went through the Suez Canal from ports in Italy and to Asia.” Cysner and other invited Jewish guests were greeted and lodged in a half-way house until they could be relocated Some went to farmland that President Quezon had donated from his personal estate for this purpose setting up a “sort of Jewish kibbutz in the Philippines,” Harris said was able to start immediately as the cantor for the Jewish community of Manila which included business people from the United States Britain and other European nations; Jews who had fled the war in China; Jews who came initially as Russian refugees from the Bolshevik Revolution; and some Jews from the Middle East who had followed trade routes to Eastern Asia Cysner was given a little house as well as an income and he was able to arrange passage from Germany to the Philippines for his mother who soon became “everybody’s mother; everybody loved her,” according to Harris and American children at De La Salle College when the Japanese invaded the Philippines (shortly after striking Pearl Harbor according to many Jewish refugee accounts “was like living in Paradise,” Harris said “They were welcomed by the Filipino people They lived with the Filipino community; they did not live in white segregated communities as some Protestant and Catholic families did.” When the Japanese took control of the Philippines they segregated civilian resident aliens according to their passports Those in Manila with passports issued by countries at war with the Axis powers of Germany and Japan were required to move to Santo Tomas University he too was required to live at the Santo Tomas Internment Camp Those with passports from countries allied with Germany and Japan were permitted to remain in their residences Among these fortunate people was Chaja Cysner Cysner “was able to receive special dispensation to leave the camp” to be her live-in attendant The Cysners held up pretty well under Japanese civilian administration but matters changed for the worse after the Japanese military took over administration of the country Harris said that Santo Tomas University became a “starvation camp” where “there were episodes of torture the survivors looked like the survivors of the camps in Poland and a lot had beriberi (a disease caused by a Vitamin B1 deficiency) because the Japanese military was not caring for them.” People throughout the Philippines were ill-treated Japan surrendered to the United States in 1945 the cantor had corresponded via the Red Cross with Sylvia Nagler who as a teenager had traveled by herself after Kristallnacht from Germany to England where she waited out the war as a dental technician Sylvia arranged for the safe passage necessary for her parents and two younger brothers to join her Sylvia and Joseph had both grown up in Bamberg but hadn’t seen each other since 1937 at the funeral of Cysner’s father when Sylvia was about 15 years old Cysner’s sister Henrietta had suggested the correspondence that blossomed into a romance He invited her to join him in San Francisco she found him so beloved by his congregation that her heart melted and they were married in a big wedding that drew not only local congregants but people from Europe and the Philippines Cysner took a position at Tifereth Israel Synagogue in San Diego which then was located at 30th and Howard Streets (Today the Conservative Synagogue is located on the east side of Cowles Mountain at 6660 Cowles Mountain Boulevard in the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego.) Although his fellow clergy at Tifereth Israel Synagogue was Rabbi Monroe Levens in his personal life Cysner became much closer to Rabbi Morton Cohn of Congregation Beth Israel the Reform congregation which was the original Jewish congregation in San Diego The day after Sylvia’s husband died of a heart attack in a parking lot on Purim an emotional Rabbi Cohn was at her doorstep telling her that he and his wife Sally would provide her with anything she needed Sylvia switched her membership from Tifereth Israel to Beth Israel so appreciative was she of the friendship that Rabbi Cohn had felt for herself and her husband Harris said that the Cysners did not consider themselves “Holocaust survivors,” reserving that term for those who had survived Nazi death camps like Auschwitz “But in the larger context of the Holocaust they were both survivors and both their stories are quite miraculous,” Harris said the Cysners never spoke German to their three daughters The cantor never expressed any desire to return to Europe on a visit This story is copyrighted (c) 2022 by Donald H. Harrison, editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com PLEASE CLICK ON ANY AD BELOW TO VISIT THE ADVERTISER'S WEBSITE Get the latest stories from San Diego Jewish World delivered daily to your inbox for FREE Please help us continue publishing quality content with your non-tax-deductible donation