Nazi victims from Poland: survivors criticize concept for memorial in Berlin

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September 1, 1939: German soldiers break a barrier on the Polish border - this is how the invasion of the Wehrmacht in Poland was staged in a famous picture

Photo: dpa / picture alliance / dpa

Stanisław Zalewski's kidnapping by the Nazis is still visible on his left upper arm: 156569. Zalewski was a Polish resistance fighter.

Until the Gestapo arrested him.

And he became a number.

In the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, Zalewski saw people dying next to him. How inmates in the sick camp clung to the bed in pain. One of them was beaten by the elder in the room, he said in an interview with SPIEGEL. The two of them dragged him to the toilet. "When he was still showing signs of life, they hung him on the doorknob with a belt," says Zalewski. "So that he strangled himself."

Zalewski survived.

The number stayed.

He is now 96 years old and is active as chairman of the Polish Association of Former Political Prisoners of Nazi Prisons and Concentration Camps.

When he heard that Germany was planning a memorial for Polish Nazi victims, he was initially skeptical.

"I am opposed to the erection of monuments," he says.

“Unless they're monuments that extend beyond our generations.

Only then would they serve their purpose. "

Today Zalewski is disappointed.

From his point of view, the memorial planned in Berlin pursues “political goals of the day”: “The preservation of witnesses is not preserved by laying a wreath or making beautiful memorial speeches,” says Zalewski.

"Flowers and wreaths wither quickly."

The project shows how difficult political relations between Poland and Germany are to this day.

And how complicated memory work can be.

In October 2020, the Bundestag decided to erect a memorial site for Polish victims of National Socialism in Germany: a “place of remembrance and encounter” should be created in Berlin that would do “justice to the character of German-Polish history” - so it says in the Application.

The place is intended to commemorate the victims of the German occupation in Poland from 1939 to 1945.

Historians assume around six million deaths.

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Victims of National Socialism: Dispute over RemembranceBy Klaus Wiegrefe

The memorial is to be the first of its kind;

so far there is only one "monument to the Polish soldier and German anti-fascist" in Berlin-Friedrichshain.

But the project, coordinated by the Federal Foreign Office, was controversial early on.

Poland's right-wing national party PiS campaigned for the memorial and demanded reparation payments.

Critics feared a "nationalization" of the memorial site.

And some countries felt left out.

Andrij Melnyk, Ambassador of Ukraine in Germany, called for a separate memorial to be erected for Ukrainian victims of the Nazi era.

Gesture to Polish victims

In 2020, the Bundestag passed the resolution for a further memorial site: According to Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters, a "documentation center" should "process the history of the German occupation in greater detail" - regardless of nationalities.

A first draft for the memorial for Polish Nazi victims is now available.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and Rolf Nikel, formerly the German ambassador to Poland, presented the concept on Wednesday in Berlin: For a long time, the suffering of the Polish civilian population was "only a fragment in the work of remembrance," said Maas.

The place of remembrance is therefore "important as a gesture to Polish victims".

It is still unclear where the memorial will be built.

The expert commission put forward two proposals:

• either at Askanischer Platz in Kreuzberg - there are already several museums and documentation sites in the area, including the "Topography of Terror".

• Or at the former place of the Kroll Opera House, not far from the Reichstag building.

  Adolf Hitler gave his speech there on September 1, 1939 to justify the attack on Poland ("They have been firing back since 5:45 am!").

Educational work is planned, especially for young people, says Nikel.

Now the Bundestag has to decide on the proposal.

After an architectural competition, the construction project should start in the coming legislative period.

For the concept, the team spoke to scientists, but also to those affected.

A video shows participants in the Warsaw Uprising such as Leszek Zukowski or Witold Lisowski.

Nonetheless, Polish victims' associations are now expressing criticism for being excluded from the planning by the Commission. In an open letter to Heiko Maas and Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters, several associations filed a complaint on June 14th: they were "irritated" that survivors of Nazi persecution and former concentration camp prisoners were "not invited to work". This lack of participation must be "corrected".

The signatories include representatives of the Polish Association of Former Political Prisoners of Nazi Prisons and Concentration Camps, the Association of Roma in Poland and the International Auschwitz Committee, including Stanisław Zalewski. Memorial sites such as the “Poland Monument” are indeed “honorable initiatives”, but minorities such as Jews and Roma are “special victims” of Nazi politics, the letter says:

»Jews and Roma were persecuted not because they were citizens of a political community, but because the ideology of Hitlerism degraded them to 'subhumans', who were robbed not only of all civil rights but also of the right to be human.

Their extermination was part of a racist plan implemented across Europe, but carried out with particular cruelty on the territory of the German-occupied Republic of Poland, where they lived, worked and whose diverse and rich culture shaped them over the centuries. "

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Kamil Majchrzak: "No pigeon fanciers association"

Photo: Michal Pawlik

Kamil Majchrzak told SPIEGEL that he approached the Federal Foreign Office with victims' associations in February.

He signed the letter for the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee and Commands.

Majchrzak explains that he had been referred and then there was no more answer: “A substantive cooperation was systematically prevented.

We should be towed by this very thin concept. «It was only after the open letter that the Foreign Office invited to two virtual meetings in June.

"We didn't find out much more there than what was already known through the media," says Majchrzak.

Idea of ​​a Holocaust survivor

SPIEGEL has received another letter to the Foreign Minister and the Minister of State for Culture.

In it the associations write that they have been informed "neither about the composition of the commission of experts or the political advisory board, nor about the proposals negotiated there and the arguments exchanged".

However, the experiences of the victim groups persecuted must be "adequately represented".

"It is unacceptable that the fate of the Polish Roma is ignored or negotiated without their legitimate representation," says Roman Kwiatkowski, co-signatory and founder of the Association of Roma in Poland.

"This also contradicts the recommendations of the most recent anti-gypsy report."

The former ambassador Rolf Nikel defended the approach: "It was clear that there would be more interest than places in our expert commission." The team tried to "informal consultations with a wide variety of groups".

One of the most important demands was incorporated into the concept: "We expressly recommend the participation of these groups in future committees," says Nikel.

The memorial is also intended for all Polish victims, says Peter Oliver Loew, Director of the German Poland Institute, the SPIEGEL - for "Jewish, Christian Poles as well as other civilian victims."

Poland played a special role because of the high number of victims: "We have to make this clear to the German public."

The idea for the memorial site came from Władysław Bartoszewski, a Holocaust survivor.

"At that time I experienced hatred of Poles, not of Jews," said the former Polish Foreign Minister in a 2013 interview with Deutschlandfunk, "people were incited".

Polish history must therefore be particularly "honored".

Bartoszewski died in 2015.

Two years later, the »Polendenkmal-Initiative« started a public appeal, which was signed by not only historians but also well-known politicians such as the former Bundestag presidents Rita Süssmuth (CDU) and Wolfgang Thierse (SPD).

Victims' associations fear that their voice could now go under.

"Of course we are part of a large memory society," says Majchrzak.

“Nevertheless, we cannot simply be subsumed like a pigeon fanciers association.

We are the main victims. «He sees the memorial site primarily as a political project, and there is» no real exchange with survivors «.

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Marian Kalwary: »Monument to Repentance and Humility«

Photo: Kamil Majchrzak

"This memorial was intended to be a memorial to the repentance and humility of the Germans for the genocide of Polish citizens between 1939 and 1945," says Marian Kalwary, chairman of the Association of Jewish Combatants and Victims of World War II. He survived the Warsaw and Wołomin ghettos. Kalwary would like intensive educational work and “adequate space for exhibitions”.

The committee of experts announced the first educational work for 2022, for which 200,000 euros should be available. Kamil Majchrzak does not believe that victims' associations will be involved in the future; the answer to the letter to Heiko Maas and Monika Grütters has not yet been received. "The so-called concept does not mention the Shoah or the Holocaust of the Sinti and Roma," says Majchrzak. “The area of ​​memory remains marginal, education vague and banal.” Majchrzak fears that the memorial will become an “artificial million dollar grave”.