September 1939 and POW camp s.
Kalisz letter s. P ł ock letters
Summary
This volume consists of three parts containing material from the Ringelblum Archive covering a number of issues. The first part consists of documents relating to the German aggression against Poland in 1939, the other two parts are collections of letters.
Information about the course of the September campaign is found in many of the ARG materials, for example in the volumes devoted to Polish areas incorporated into the Reich, but also in accounts collected in the General Government and territories occupied in 1939 by the Soviet Union (published herein in the following Ringelblum Archive volumes: 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10). In this collection 31 texts have been selected, whose authors mainly describe the events of the first months of the war. They mostly cover warfare, but significant focus is also given to testimonies concerning the fate of Jewish soldiers – POWs. It is assumed that nearly 100,000
Jewish soldiers took part in the September campaign. About 7,000 of them were killed, including about 100 officers. Approximately 20,000 were captured by the Soviets, including 150 officers who were killed in the spring of 1940 in Katyn, Kharkov, and Mednoye. Many of the campaign participants (about 60,000) were taken into German captivity and spent several months imprisoned in POW camps; most of them were released in 1940. They were sent to ghettos in the General Government and later died in the subsequent deportations. Out of all POWS, the only ones to survive were officers imprisoned in Oflags (about 300 men).
The German aggression against Poland on September 1, 1939 not only started another world war but was also a prelude to the Holocaust. When they started the war, the Germans had not yet made a final decision regarding the treatment of the Jewish population in the occupied areas; however, one of the stated objectives of the aggression was gradual isolation, mass deportations, and concentration of the Polish
