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grade education; instead they were expected to help out on the farm and do
chores in the mainly agrarian society of a nation stuck in the past.
Poland was invaded in September of 1939 by Nazi Germany, Hitler's
precursor to his plan to dominate all of Europe with the start of WWII.
The battle to occupy Poland lasted 43 days with the Germany military on
tanks, sporting huge artillery and armament and the Poles on horseback with
simple outdated rifles (Lightbody). It was Hitler's intent in the invasion
and subsequent occupation in Poland "to completely subjugate its people,
destroys its buildings and infrastructure and have it forget its culture"
Hitler succeeded in destroying the cities and countryside; estimates
range that almost 45% of Poland was leveled. Warsaw alone was razed with
95% of its infrastructure and buildings gone by the end of the war. But
"Hitler never managed to subjugate its peoples or eliminate its culture"
When the war started in 1941, my grandmother was only two years old
and my grandfather was seven years old. They both lived their very young
lives during the war and its tragic aftermath. Their recollection is one
of extreme poverty, terrible non-ending fright and the specter of death
that surrounded them. Poland lost over five and a half million during and
after the war, approximately 17% of its entire population (Huener). Some
lost their lives through fighting the war, some through starvation and
disease and some from "just plain weariness and non-ending fright"
(Bukowczyk). Poland during the war became the "home" of the largest and
obscene extermination effort mounted by Hitler and the Nazis. It is
estimated that over three million people lost their lives in one of the
more than 430 concentration camps in Poland during the war. The most famous
of all the European concentration camps was Auschwitz, or by its Polish
name Oswiecim. Over 1.3 million pe...