Here's how the Nazis desecrated Freedom Square. Since, according to an extreme ideological propaganda and dingbats duplicating its lies, we allegedly were under Soviet occupation during the first decades after World War II, why did the Monument of Kosciuszko (pronounciation: koscyushko) return to its interbellum’ place in this square and no one took it from there anymore?
Lodge (Lodz, Łódź), like other industrial cities of Central Poland, was significantly different from the rest of the country
This one of the largest districts of the textile industry in the world before the First World War was created as a result of the joint work of four nations: Polish, German, Jewish and French. Particularly noteworthy is the contribution of hard and honest work, technical skills and far going social reforms movement of Polish Germans. On the other hand, this national group which received huge donations from Polish aristocrats and from the government of the Kingdom of Poland, arriving on Polish soil in most cases as paupers, felt grateful to the Polish nation.
German national group in the so-called Congressional Poland largely became part of the Polish society for many other reasons. For example, most of them came from Saxony and Lower Silesia, where many local residents spoke also Polish, Czech or Sorbian. Hence, an exceptionally harmonious community of industrialists and traders; the People of the City of Lodge (Lodzermenschen) — was established quickly here. Further strengthening of the community spirit and community of interests of Polish and German factory owners, also the workers was influenced by the fact that...
Already the first German occupation, the one from 1914-18, took a heavy toll on the inhabitants of Central Poland
Famine emerged in many homes due to unemployment, related mainly to the confiscation of cotton mills’ machinery by the occupier. Emperor Willy's soldiers also took grain, potatoes, poultry, cattle and pigs away. They paid so much that it was enough only for salt, matches and some fuel for kerosene lamps. There was no mercy, no allowances were made for German manufacturers and workers or for German villages. As a result ...
German youth took an active part in disarming the soldiers of the German Reich — the restoration of the Polish state was greeted with great enthusiasm
The internal policy of National Democracy which, together with the Christian Democrats and the People Party ruled the reborn Polish state, was quite smart in this particular sphere. German language schools were transformed according to the principles of newly introduced utraquist (bilingual) schooł system. German schoolchildren who had spoken in many different dialects of the old country in their villages until now, had learned clear German language. In the industry, the government has rushed to help buy new machines to replace those taken away and send to Germany. Lodge and Bielow received exclusive purchasing agreement to make and deliver uniforms for the Polish Army.
Good relations of the Polish State with his German minority don’t upset the Third Reich – the Sanation regime should be blamed for that
In the year 1932, dictator Joseph Pilsudski finally adopted the course for accelerated, imposed by force, polonisation and colonisation of national minorities. With regard to the German minority, it took the form of a gradual and actual liquidation of junior high and elementary schools to which Polish Germans sent their children. The two languages of instruction were out of the question. The number of hours of German taught there as a foreign language was limited to four, at most five a week, during the 1938/9 school year. The constant payment roll suspensions in the textile industry related to the economic crisis that the Sanation regime could not cope with, exasperated a lot of people too.
Still, as a result of the bestial bombardment of Łódź on September 2, 1939, only a handful of local Nazis welcomed the Wehrmacht entering the city
The purpose of the raid was to destroy tenement houses inhabited by the Jewish minority and workers supporting the German Socialist Labor Party in Poland and kill their inhabitants. After bombs were drop the planes lowered the flight and opened fire from machine guns to Polish soldiers and scouts, hurrying to help the wounded and buried by debris. At the intersections of Franciscan and Marine streets from the Polish Army Street rivers of blood flowed. Hell on earth also broke out near the factory of the Poznanski family (currently there is the Old Town Park) and on the Old Market Square. Among the wounded was the German historian, being also the captain of the Polish Army, Albert Breyer. He died two weeks later in a hospital in Warsaw.
The Nazis took over Lodz and continued to murder Poles, Jews and Germans
The murder of the clergy was particularly outrageous; first Catholic priests were arrested executed in the woods, then Protestant preachers tortured to death by the Gestapo. The vast majority of the people of the city of Lodge united in resistance against the "reckless Germans from the Reich".
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The liberation of the city on the Lodka (Boat River) was preceded by the last, wide-ranging action of the resistance
The Socialists, such as the PPS as the aforementioned German Labour Party (WRN-DSAP), had their secret organisations here all the time. The German criminal police, mostly made up of local residents, took part in the underground activities. While the Wehrmacht withdrew from the city, the police officers quickly removed the uniforms and handed over the weapons to the Socialists. A doomsday for the SS-men came, and the Red Army soldiers
, marching in to Lodge carried out the work of their doom. Although the Gestapo managed to burn alive political prisoners in the Radegast (Radogoszcz) prison, another group of Himmler’s cutthroats did not manage to escape from Polish People’s Army tanks in Alexandrov.
The entry of the Soviet Army's into Lodge ended with the victory the battle fought by the workers, which lasted for several days in the Lodger factories
On January 19, in the evening, as soon as it became clear that the German army and the authorities of Varta Land (Polish lands incorporated into the Reich) left the city, removed by the occupier in the suburbs the Polish poor rushed to loot food stores and warehouses. Since it was about obtaining first-needed articles in conditions of confusion caused by war, this was difficult to consider as actions requiring fierce counteraction
The situation around the factories, where there was a threat of robbery and demolition by asocial scum, which traditionally did not lack in Lodz, was quite different. Crews of workers and technicians sent by the occupation authorities (there were Polish Germans among them), who for several days had deliberately worked as slowly as possible on dismantling and preparing industrial equipment for transport, closed on January 20 themselves from inside at workplaces. Wanting to ward off the siege somehow (in many factory halls all windows were broken with stones thrown by hooligans), the workers sent a delegation to the city commander.
The Soviet colonel allowed the creation of a workers' guard and ordered to arm the guards with trophy Mauser repetitive rifles, with which Polish workers were well acquainted. The following weeks passed on the devoted self-propelled organisation of factory crews who, notwithstanding the frosts, fixed sheet glass in the windows and set back in factory halls all the cotton mills machinery saved from taking deep into Germany. Poles and Lodger Germans worked side by side in many places.
On this day, a completely new, better era began in the informal capital of Central Poland, being at the same time (for over than next two years) the real capital of the Republic of Poland
As the only industrial city which was not seriously damaged as a result of war and occupation, Lodge gained (along with Upper Silesia) strategic importance in the conditions of the need to rebuild other cities and ensure the supply of industrial goods to the village areas. Huge funds have been invested there under the centrally planned economy. During the first fifteen years, the dictatorship of nomenklatura has greatly advanced the work of ensuring cleanliness and hygiene in the city, which was earlier widely known for its terrible smell. The smell of hundreds of rural toilets in the courtyards and open sewers. Waterworks were build almost from the scratch and sewage appeared on every street.
A huge number of new blocks of flats was built: first of brick, and since 1959 as standardised concrete-block buildings. The first department stores emerged. Soviet communism, which was established in a relaxed form in Poland, under which some part of the free market was preserved, coped well with such tasks. In 1988 Łódź, with 850,000 inhabitants (now 680,000), was at the peak of the heyday of its industry and crafts. So far, these population or production volumes have been not restored.
The city of four cultures has never restless lost its own face
First of all, about 30 percent of pre-war Polish Germans remained in it. Deprived of their former cultural and sports institutions, treated at first harshly, they quickly proved necessary. First of all, to run pharmacies and hospitals, where they collaborated with several people who left alive from the hell of the Lodz ghetto (Litzmanstaedter Ghetto). The authentic Polish proletarian communist Kazimierz (Casimir) Mijal (pronounciation; mee-yal), who was at the head of the post-war administration of Lodge, was fighting with decrees for their lives against the commander of "Polish" concentration camps Salomon Morel. The descendants of Russian and Georgian government officials continued to attend the Orthodox Church. The Lodger rabbi preferred not to flaunt himself, but those who needed him knew where to find him
It is true that the era of “squares dictatorship” also had its dark sides
This pithy term comes from Paweł Jasienica - the most outstanding Polish historian. To be outstanding, however, does not mean to be also imperturbable. It is enough to consider the history of East German rail transport modelling to understand that he was not 100 per cent right in this assessment. Standing at night in a queue for meat, the lack of basic consumer goods, holes in asphalt and in pavements are only some narrow sections of the history of the Polish People's Republic, not its average weekday. Similarly, the Cossacks’ knout did not specify living conditions under the Russian tsardom.
The Stalinist period and infamous actions of Security Police associated with it...
deserves a separate judgment. However, since it is not allowed to this day to publicly mention who exactly stood behind these actions, then the question arises; under whose dominance are we now?
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