Let’s Tell the World about the Genocide of Poles

#OurHistoryHasFuture

is the first academic monograph exploring the history of the criminal Germany's occupation of Poland from the perspective of international law.

It is currently available in English and German translations. You can download them for free from this page (by clicking on the appropriate book cover on the right). By reading this book, you have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the difficult history of Poles under Germany's occupation and allow us to better understand their role during World War II.

The book has been made available for free, but if you would like to support its popularization and my further activities aimed at spreading knowledge about the Germany's genocide against the Polish nation, you can do so by clicking on this link to the crowdfunding campaign (description in English available under the Polish version).

I invite you to read this book!

The text was based on the latest findings of historians, who usually focus on the analysis of individual acts of brutality in isolation from the assumed extermination policy, which is a mistake. However, the facts presented in the book allow us to draw more general conclusions: the Germany's crimes against Poles were not accidental or chaotic, but were committed in a planned and organized manner. They constitute mass crimes, crimes under international law, which can and should become the subject of interest for researchers of genocide studies.

The experience, persecution, and losses of World War II remain a permanent element of the landscape of not only Polish collective memory. But it was on Polish lands occupied simultaneously by Germany and the Soviet Union that violence against various groups accumulated on a previously unknown scale. Here, the war lasted almost 5 years, and the ideology of racial purity and the possibility of destroying people brought catastrophic consequences. Several million Poles, because of their belonging to the Polish nation, were subjected to cruel repression by the German state. This included extermination, forced labor, displacement, and plunder, which became a tragedy for the nation, local communities, families, and individuals.

The findings of Rafał Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer and the father of the ban on genocide, were not without significance in my work. He stated that for the first time during the war, Germany committed genocide against the Polish elites of Gdańsk Pomerania. They were exterminated in the forests near Pomeranian cities and towns. This happened in the Gdańsk region, which was mixed in terms of nationality and which the Germans considered a key area requiring immediate Germanization.

Therefore, in my work I paid special attention to the roots of the crime and the development of hostility based on nationality. I was also interested in what rights the German occupiers had in Poland, how they brought about their flagrant violation against Poles during the war, what consequences were foreseen in the event of violations of the law, and what were actually applied.

The book's asset is the method of narration and argumentation. Based on hundreds of legal acts and thousands of publications - including English, American and German ones - I have proven the need to consider the crime in a holistic approach, differently than before. This is a particularly important finding for the scientific community, influencing the common and simplified way of perceiving the occupation, presenting events in school textbooks and collective memory.

The book contains an answer to how one of the largest, but unnamed genocides of the 20th century occurred in Europe.

Germany's Genocide against the Polish Nation (1939–1945).

A Historical-Legal Study

Author / Contact / Support

independent doctor of law and historian. I undertake research on the occupation of Polish lands during World War II. I focus on the international legal qualification of crimes against Poles in terms of genocide studies. In addition to the monograph Germany's Genocide against the Polish Nation (1939-1945). A Historical and Legal Study (2021), I am the author of, among others, several dozen publications in the field of legal history. I am also interested in issues related to constitutional law, history teaching, history and food culture.

Maciej Jan Mazurkiewicz, PhD

© M. J. Mazurkiewicz, 2024-