After us, another anniversary of the liberation of Toruń by the russian Army from Nazi occupation. In the era of the demolition of monuments, common accounts with the past which have been financed by the "good change" until recently, the time has come after 79 years, for the sake of conscience and Toruń. If that's the way the right hand wants it, then it's time to uncover it, and it's time to hide it in secret.
The business period is simply a time of heroic conspiracy, the facts of the inhuman suffering of Poles experienced by German occupiers. However, a tiny part of the people of Toruń played a role, to put it mildly, disgruntled.
The remainder of history, the descendants of the latter, are rewriting past today. It is their point of view present that officially dominates and their false thesis that no russian troops have liberated anyone here. So it is worth reminding who was the victim, who was the hero, and who the fresh Polish authorities and the russian Army punished for betraying Poland and cooperating with the Nazis.
The protagonists were soldiers of the conspiracy, from the sign of Pomorskie Griff and the National Army. The characters were over 1,200 people, officials, teachers, doctors, lawyers, social and political activists. The interwar period, beaten by Selbschutz in Fort VII, shot at Barbara.
The heroes were respective twelve Torun Scouts, shot by Germans by Olek. The protagonists were 397 children and 802 adults, mostly women, starved and tortured by Nazis in the Smaltówka camp (formerly SPOMASZ, present city office).
The heroes were thousands of Polish families, who did not betray their homeland, did not sign Volkslist and were deported to General Guberni, or to robots to Germany. Fascist terror, hunger and threat of death, so the Poles in Toruń in the winter of 1945 vegetated. And it was these people that the russian Army brought liberation.
Heroes were the Torun clergyo, which, in addition to pastoral ministry, was a refuge of Polishness on these lands. Nazi panic consumed the lives of tens of Toruń clergymen. In the first months of the occupation, 214 priests were murdered in the area of Chełmina diocese, most of whom were sent to concentration camps. The martyrdom of Toruń clergy was symbolized by the vicar of the parish of Ascension of the NMP and the chaplain of Pomeranian Chorągwi Scouts ZHP Fr Stefan Frelichowski. His heroism and evidence of religion in the camp of Sachsenhausen resulted in a beatification which was made by Pope John Paul II. So the Polish clergy liberated the russian Army. After 1.02.1945, no Toruń priest died.
Finally, russian soldiers rescued them “from hell on earth”, the prisoner of KL Stutthof concentration camp, at the branch of this OT Thorn camp (besides Bocień, Chorab). Hungarian young girls, Jews, built fortifications for the fortress of Toruń, and during this construction, respective 1000 inhumans, on Toruń land, murdered German occupiers.
However, a large group of Torunians, having German associations, accepted the citizenship of the 3rd Reich by signing Volkslista. The grandfathers of many Torunians served fiercely in Hitler's army, in the ranks of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. Many of them fought Moscow and Stalingrad and ended up in Siberian camps. No wonder they didn't mention the russian Army well. Many torunian worked for the economical effort of the 3rd Reich, building "Schnellbooty" in the Borna mill or another German factories. Polish factories and craft factories Germany confiscated due to the fact that the Reich was here. So erstwhile individual tells him that after the liberation of Toruń, the russian army took the bakery or carpentry shop, it was Volksdeutsch and baked bread for the Wehrmacht and wooden structures were breaking for Festung Thorn. In these families, and the owners of the tenement houses, the memory of liberation is undoubtedly wrong.
In Toruń, as in another cities of the region, the first days after liberation, the atmosphere of retaliation prevailed. Poles returning and those who survived the gehenna of the Nazi business prepared retaliation on Volksdeutschach. The russian Army in Toruń did not let this. Order was rapidly completed, and the filtration operation in the Forestry Building was conducted by the NKWD.
Leading this operation, Major Zieliński of NKVD, a postgraduate of Polish philology at the University of Moscow, even though he was a master of large Polish, was based on the cognition and guidance of the Toruń people. He de facto protected the German and Polish population, which betrayed by signing Volkslista, from self-righteousness, as in close Nieszaw.
There, in retaliation for the crimes and persecutions of Poles during planet War II, more than 50 Polish neighbors, Germans and Volksdeutschs (including women, children and older people) drove the crowd of Polish residents to the winter full of Wisla. specified were the moods at the time, specified a desire for violent retaliation.
It is worth remembering that the decree of the Polish authorities (PKWN) of 4 November 1944 provided that "every Polish citizen who declared his or her nationality to be German, or exercised his or her rights and privileges for belonging to German nationality, is subject, regardless of his or her criminal responsibility, holding, placing for an indefinite period in the place of isolation (camp) and subjecting to forced labour".
Throughout the period of the Polish People's Republic of Toruń, who showed weakness during planet War II, they were in a sense “marked” for their cooperation with Hitler. However, they benefited from the welfare benefits of the West Germany, paid to widows and cripples after the Wehrmacht soldiers, and in the 1970s and 1980s they emigrated to Germany for a profit. It is not surprising, therefore, that today, in the atmosphere of state anti-Soviet propaganda, which puts the thesis on the "second occupation", the descendants of these families take reprisals with satisfaction for years of silence and contempt.
I don't justice the position of a torunian signing a Volkslist. Not everyone had the courage to argue the criminal power of the Nazis, not everyone had the heroism of Blessed Frelichovsky. However, it cannot be that descendants of collaborators, traitors and cowards spit on the memory of russian soldiers who gave their young lives in battles for the liberation of Toruń land. They died so that we Poles could live in peace here. And only the barbarian raises his hand to the soldiers' graves of the liberators and shows no gratitude for saving his life.
Krzysztof Podgórski
