She Saved More Jews Than Schindler

From the New York Sun, Nobel Prize Is Sought for Polish Heroine (Excerpts from a lengthy article.) By ALEX STOROZYNSKI

A class project by four high-school girls from Kansas has spurred a
grassroots movement to nominate for a Nobel Peace Prize a woman who
rescued 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis - a move endorsed last week
by the deputy prime minister of Israel, Shimon Peres.

A Polish social worker, Irena Sendler, who turns 97 next month,
smuggled children out of the Warsaw ghetto and refused to disclose their
whereabouts even after being tortured. Gestapo officers crunched her
legs in a vice and smashed her bones with hammers.

Mrs. Sendler stashed the identities of the children she saved in jars
and buried the jars under an apple tree. Her plan was to dig up the jars
after the war and reunite the children with their families....

...Mrs. Sendler's story was buried when the Soviet Union imposed communism
on Poland. And even though Mrs. Sendler was honored in 1965 by Yad
Vashem as one of the righteous who saved Jews, it took four Protestant
girls from Pittsburg, Kan., to teach Catholic Poland about the story.

In 1999, three Union High School ninth-graders, Megan Stewart,
Elizabeth Cambers, and Jessica Shelton, and an eleventh-grader, Sabrina
Coons, entered a history project after their teacher Norm Conard showed
them an article about "Schindler's List," which mentioned others who
rescued Jews from the Nazis. Surprised that Mrs. Sendler saved twice as
many people as Schindler, the girls researched her life and wrote a play
called "Life in a Jar."...

...A social worker in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland, Mrs. Sendler
and her friends set up soup kitchens when the Nazis ordered her agency
to cut off support for impoverished Jews. When the Gestapo corralled
450,000 Jews in Warsaw into a cramped ghetto and the prisoners began
starving to death, Mrs. Sendler obtained a pass to enter under the guise
of preventing an epidemic of infectious diseases. Once inside, Mrs.
Sendler told the Jews the Nazis were planning to murder them and
convinced them to hide their children.

Mrs. Sendler used an ambulance to smuggle children out of the ghetto in
burlap sacks and coffins. A barking dog on the front seat would
sometimes drown out the cries of children in the back who had been
separated from their parents. She received help from her friends and
Zegota, the Polish Council to Aid the Jews. More children were smuggled
out in garbage cans, toolboxes, and through a church on the edge of
ghetto.

In October 1943, Gestapo officers arrested Mrs. Sendler and tortured
her for three months before she was sentenced to be shot by firing
squad. But Zegota bribed a Nazi guard who helped her escape. [More]

If you'd like to sign an online petition promoting Irena Sendler for a Nobel Peace Prize you can do so here.

Special thanks to my friend Bernardyna who made me aware of this article.

Holocaust Records Remain Unavailable to Researchers

Nine months ago I wrote an article, Holocaust Records to Be Made Public. Here's an update on that story. Here's a hint... it's not good news for genealogy researchers.

Opening Holocaust archive may take years By Melissa Eddy, Associated Press Writer from Tri-City Herald. (Excerpted sections of a rather lengthy article.)

Despite pressure from U.S. lawmakers and frustration among Holocaust survivors, a unique Nazi-era archive remains off-limits to researchers, and officials say it could take years before the millions of documents become available for study.

Eight months have passed since the 11 countries administering the vast storehouse of log books, transport lists and death registers agreed to open the archive for research. For nearly a decade, the group had wrangled over objections that disclosure would violate the privacy of some victims.

When German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries announced in Washington last April her nation's decision to drop its resistance, she told reporters that agreement among the member states should take no more than six months. Expectations that the archive would be accessible to researchers by year's end soared.

But that agreement was just the first step in a lengthy legal process to amend a 1955 treaty governing the archive of the International Tracing Service, or ITS, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the German town of Bad Arolsen.

Only Israel and the United States have so far fully endorsed the amendments adopted last May by the 11-nation International Commission....

...But scholars and groups representing the elderly survivors are exasperated at the pace, contending that urgent access to the material is needed to help refute Holocaust deniers, and that the legislative process can - and must - be expedited...

...Of the other member nations, only Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland have indicated they would ratify the agreement before the International Commission's annual meeting in May. Belgium, Britain, France, Greece and Italy are the remaining commission members.

Legislators from both houses of the U.S. Congress have written to other member states to speed up ratification.

Your country ... stands in the way of access to the truth and implementation of the agreement," wrote Sen. Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in letters last month to the ambassadors of those countries. "Fulfilling the intent of the agreement requires immediate action."...

...Pending ratification, the arduous process of scanning and digitally rendering the documents is about 63 percent complete, said ITS spokeswoman Maria Raabe.

...Once the agreements are ratified, each of the 11 countries will be eligible to receive a digital copy of the archive, but its use must be closely supervised. The agreement specifically rules out publication on the Internet.

The archives, set up by the Allies after World War II, have been sheltered from public scrutiny for 60 years, except for use by the Red Cross to trace missing people after the war, and later to validate victims' compensation claims. The records contain 17.5 million names.

Historians who rejoiced at last year's announcement are wondering what secrets could be revealed. [More]

This is such very disappointing news. The delay is frustrating. But even more disappointing is the news that this valuable information will not be made available via the internet. I feel sorry for the Holocaust survivors and their families. I feel sorry for all Polish genealogy researchers. Not everyone is aware that a large number of non-Jewish Poles were executed by the Nazis too. I personally have Polish Catholic family members who were executed by the Nazis and was hoping to find out more about the circumstances of their deaths. I wonder how the U.S. will make this information available to researchers.

The Trail of the Polish Emigrants in Michigan, Part 1

The Trail of The Polish Emigrants in Michigan, Part 1
by Dr. Stephen Wloszczewski from Poles in Michigan, Vol. 1

[First Emigrants - The Kashubs - First Traces of Polish Settlements in Michigan - Andrew Kaminski Marries in Detroit in 1846 - Polish Volunteers in the Union Army - Father A Wyszowski in 1835 - Interesting Conversation of Father Kruszka with Texas Schoolchildren - First Polish Settlements - Historical Sources for Michigan Poles]

There were fewer Poles in the State of Michigan in the very beginning of its existence - in the 18th century - than in New Holland on the banks of the Hudson, or in Pennsylvania. Contemporary Polish settlers had not yet advanced towards the Great Lakes.

However, after the Napoleonic Wars, in the 19th century, Michigan began to attract Polish emigrants. They began to settle Detroit itself, although, at that time, our present metropolis was a small town with only a few hundred small houses, several larger dwellings, and a few thousand inhabitants.

The first Poles to reach Detroit were Kashubs and Pomeranians. They were sea-faring folk following in the footsteps of their German neighbors already emigrating to America in large numbers.

Among them were some Silesians as well as Prussian Mazurians, mainly Protestants. Restless, adventurous, young noblemen or townsmen from Poland's Western Provinces or Eastern border were rarely found among these first settlers, except where larger groups of warrior patriots drifted over to America, forced to leave the Old Country because of the defeat of a conspiracy or political compromise in a national insurrection.

It is now impossible to establish the exact number of the first Polish settlers in Michigan, and especially in Detroit. However, some traces of them have been found by such persistent researchers as Dr. C. Barzyk, Maria Remigia Napolska, Sister of the Order of Felicians, Vincent Smolczynski, and others.

Those old Polish settlers of the early years of the 19th century were certainly good Catholics, since Poland was "Semper Fidelis." The faded records of the oldest Catholic churches in Detroit were the very sources which could be used to trace the names of some of these settlers. Sister Napolska and Dr. G. Barzyk believed so, and they were the first to knock at the door of the oldest Catholic church in Detroit - St. Anne's, once a French church.

Some Polish names were recorded there. Typically Polish names occur as early as 1808, 1817, 1820, 1823, 1834, and 1837 in the old parish registers of baptisms. Alongside appear names which might be of Polish origin, but were misspelled in the records.

Under the date of July 13th, 1846, an entry can be found in St. Mary's, the oldest German church. This was a note of the marriage of Andrew Kaminski to Christine Gibels. Two years later the baptismal register displays a notice of the christening, on October 15th, of twin boys - Andrew and Stephen born to this couple.

Owing to the industrious research of the three above named scholars and of some others, such as Mieczyslaw Haiman and Father Waclaw Kruszka, the greatest amount of personal data found was about this same Andrew Kaminski, a soldier of the 1831 Polish uprising of whose life I shall write in another article.

In the oldest Polish cemeteries - in Parisville near Port Huron, and at Posen near Alpena - there are graves of those who were born toward the end of the 18th century, and who arrived in America between 1820 and 1830. They must have stopped at Detroit, which represented an important junction in the St. Lawrence River's waterway system.

The so-called Prussian Mazurians - Polish Protestants from East Prussia - were probably wandering in the direction as early as the very beginning of the 19th century. German influence was strongest among them, and the fashion of emigrating to America, then prevailing in Germany, set an example for them. Father Waclaw Kruszka, in his monumental memoirs ("Seven Times Seven Years" - two volumes) describes his accidental meeting with the purely Polish Mazurian Protestant settlements in Wisconsin.

Recruiting agents of the growing industrial concerns, especially of the railway trusts, were already extending their tentacles toward Europe. Philip Jasnowski, a Detroiter of the 1850's, a good cabinet-maker, must have been signed by one such recruiting agent, probably in England. Thus, in New York, about which the contemporary Polish life centered at this time, the State recruiting agents directed Polish emigrants to the Middle West. Alexander Bielawski, who later became a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln, for example, was recruited in New York and commissioned to work on the construction of railroads in southern Illinois.

Mieczyslaw Haiman, after a thorough search of historical documents (see his "History of Poles in the Civil War", published in 1928), found the names of 36 Poles who joined the Union forces in the State of Michigan alone. This number of typically Polish names figures in the "Annual Report of the State Adjutant-General." There must have been many more Polish volunteers with German or misspelled names who cannot be traced with the help of this list, but who hailed from the same State.

Finally, the "Catholic Almanac" informs us that Father A. Wyszowski visited Detroit from time to time between 1835 and 1847. He must have been ministering to a flock of Poles centering in Detroit and vicinity.

Look for Part 2 of this article for its conclusion.

What's Popular on My Blog?

Do you ever wonder which of your blog posts are the most read? As a webmaster I spend a good bit of time looking at reports of my customer's web site content to see who is visiting what pages, when, for how long, and where from. Occasionally I even look at my own ;-)

Today I looked at the report for my blog and as usual I was surprised at which of my blog posts was the most visited. For the week of January 25th-31st, the most visited specific page (article) on my blog was Jasia Revealed. Of all the posts I made to my blog last week the most visited one was not about genealogy, photography, or creative writing. It was about me! Even more weird is that the Jasia Revealed post was created on January 18th and should have been "old news" by this reporting period. Go figure. I guess inquiring minds want to know ;-)

What's popular on your blog? You might be surprised!

Reflections on The Peasants

I just finished reading The Peasants, by Wladyslaw Reymont. I first mentioned the book in a blog post last October. Since then I've written about it here, here, here, here, and here. I've been reading it for months now (it's a long book) and it feels like I've just said goodbye to a whole community of people I've come to know rather well. I've lived with the characters through autumn, winter, spring, and summer... the book covers a complete year of life in a Polish village in the late 1800s. I thought I would share with you some of my reflections about the book and the insights I've gained from reading it.

First off, I was intrigued by village life. For the most part, people were born, grew up, and died in their own little village with little opportunity or desire to venture beyond it. There was a sort of cast system that was dictated by the amount of (or lack of) land one's family owned. Those who didn't own land and had to work for others were one step above the beggars. Those who owned just enough land to sustain their families were second to those who were able to support their family and perhaps hire some additional hands to help out around the farm. Those who were trade merchants (i.e. miller, blacksmith, etc.) were more highly regarded along with the parish priest, the soltys (village administrator) and the wojt (village leader). Because the Catholic Church forbade its members to serve liquor, the Jews were the bartenders and money lenders. There was a strained relationship between the villagers and the Jews. They each seemed to think less of each other but at the same time recognize that their own well being depended on getting along with the other. I wouldn't say there was respect between them, more like a mutual tolerance and acceptance of the ways things had to be.

Today's soap operas have nothing on the scandals that went on in the remote villages in Poland. Adultery, thievery, slander, conspiracy... for a people who were so devoutly Catholic and had shrines on practically every corner they sure had their share of human foibles. I was appalled at how common place it was to verbally thrash one's neighbor or family member and then pray fervently for God's forgiveness only to do the same thing again the next day. Screaming was a way of life. I know the book is fiction but I have no problem believing this way of interacting was "normal". I distinctly remember some of my relatives discussing this years ago, they would have been first generation Americans. They would scream vile names at each other and if someone suggested that they didn't need to be so nasty they would look at them like they were nuts and say something to the effect of "I'm Polish, it's in my blood!". They were only repeating behavior they'd seen modeled for them.

It was interesting to see how ignorant and fearful they were of things like the weather. Poland typically doesn't get the extreme weather we get here in the U.S. Hurricanes don't happen there and tornadoes are extremely rare (I think the last one occurred in 2002). Even thunderstorms, while not exactly rare, are not frequent either. The villagers in the book were pretty fearful of storms and did a lot of praying during them. Some believed the weather was one of God's ways of rewarding them for good behavior or punishing them for their misdeeds. There was much they didn't understand about the world around them and as often as not what they didn't understand they attributed to God or the devil.

Within a family, those who were most able were most valued. It was almost shocking to see the rudeness and disregard shown to the elderly. When someone became too old to be of much use around the farm they were pretty much seen as a liability... another mouth to feed but no more hands to help. Some were encouraged by their grown children to go begging, essentially becoming vagabonds. Others left on their own accord not wanting to wait for the humiliation of being thrown out by their families. It made a twisted sort of sense in their world, so many went hungry due to not having enough land to support their large families. Still, it seems so harsh, so cruel.

Even when the peasants were free land holders and no longer "owned" by the estate Lords, they didn't trust them. There was an "us vs them" mentality that no doubt stemmed from the "haves vs the have nots" reality. It appeared that the peasants had long memories of the times they were treated unfairly by their keepers. Likewise, the nobility and landowning gentry avoided associating with the peasants unless necessary. I'm not sure if they feared them or just thought themselves better than them.

Voting was a joke. This story takes place in the Russian partition of Poland and the voting process was conducted by the Russians government officials. In the book the villagers of Lipka were asked to vote on whether or not to build a school in the village. The Russians told them they wanted one. The villagers said they did not. They wanted to learn to read and write in Polish not the Russian language that was mandated. They were threatened that if they didn't vote in favor of the school they might have a heavy price to pay. Then they voted against it but were told the final vote tally was in favor of a school. Slam dunk. Nothing they could do. They'd be taxed and have to attend a school they didn't want. The book may be fiction but I have no trouble believing this sort of thing really went on.

Reymont was a master at creating a setting so detailed you don't have to use much imagination to be there. He was born in the small village of Kobiele Wielke, and grew up in the village of Tuszyn both located south of Lodz. Lipka (Lipce), the village where the story takes place, is located east of Lodz, but all are in the same general vicinity. His own life experiences would have given him good reference material for writing about village life. He was obviously a good observer of human behavior and a keen observer of farm life though being the son of a church organist his family likely didn't do any farming of their own. Still, his writing makes you feel the boring drudgery of a village farmer who toils in the fields hour after hour, day after day. You could feel the hot sun burning down on the villagers as they made their way into the fields during the peak of summer and feel the bitter, biting cold winds that whipped around those forced to go into the woods for firewood in the dead of winter. The monotony of rain, day after day that forced everyone to stay indoors until they felt like climbing the walls of their one room huts was described so well it was hard to keep reading... you couldn't help but want the rain to end just so you wouldn't have to keep reading about it!

No doubt about it, I learned a lot about the lifestyle my Polish ancestors lived by reading this book. I also learned how the villagers feared the Russians and why they would consider fleeing to America to avoid being sent to work camps in Siberia (even those like my grandfather who being the eldest son stood first in line to inherit the large family farm). Their daily life was hard. They were oppressed by the Russians, and they feared storms, the Germans, and the wrath of God. They often went hungry and except perhaps during harvest never ate a balanced meal. They had no medicines beyond the herbs they could gather in the fields and woods. Most couldn't read or write. The one thing they clung to to get them through their dreary existence was their religion. It gave them forgiveness for their sins, belief in a better life after death, holy days to rest from their toil, and sacraments to celebrate life. They decorated their clothing and homes with bright colors and danced and drank vodka when life gave them an opportunity to celebrate. I watched them baptize their young, honor their dead, celebrate Christmas, marry, observe Lent, bury their loved ones, fight for what was theirs, celebrate Easter, and reap their harvest. It was educational, emotional, entertaining, and at times exhausting.

No wonder Reymont won a Nobel Prize for this book. It's quite a book.

My friend "V" was kind enough to lend me her VHS copies of the movie made of this book. I've been holding off watching them till I finished the book. Now I'll have to watch the movie to see how close the movie comes to the actual story. I can only hope it is as well done.

Pics and Privies

The Oakland County (Michigan) Genealogical Society has a couple of interesting meetings coming up...

3 Apr 2007 “Private Lives: A Privy Historian.” Tony Panepucci offers a unique perspective on the lives of our ancestors based on his research and the artifacts he has unearthed from outhouses and settlements from an earlier Michigan era.

1 May 2007 “Disasters Happen,” with William J. Priest. An outstanding program related to the rehabilitation of damaged photographs and documents. Based on lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, find out how to protect and recover damaged items. [More]

Could be interesting... eh? I might have to go and meet the privy historian just so I can blog about it ;-)

First Recipes

My sister-in-law stopped by this afternoon with a half dozen recipes for my cookbook. Yeah! These are the first ones I've received. It just so happens that two of them are recipes my mother gave her years ago when she first married my brother. They were recipes of a couple of his favorites, cinnamon buns and zucchini patties. I'm thrilled to have them!

I haven't made a decision on my cookbook software yet. I got some wonderful suggestions from folks who were kind enough to comment on my previous cookbook post. I've been reading a lot about them online (till my eyes glaze over) and I'm planning to download and "test drive" a couple programs in the next week. Thanks to all who've made suggestions! I really appreciate them!

Assumption BVM Parish Jubilee Books

Assumption BVM parish began in 1911 and closed in 1989, it's buildings were torn down soon afterwards. It was one of the "west side" Detroit Polish parishes, one of the smaller ones. It just so happens that my mother and her family were members of the parish. Active members. I have been trying for years to get a copy of the parish's silver jubilee book to add to my family history collection. I know that my mother and other members of her family were mentioned in the book because Ceil Jensen, who extracted the surnames for the PGSA database (and whose family were also members of this parish) was kind enough to share with me a photo from the book that included my mother. And while I am very grateful to Ceil for her kindness, it's not the same as having my own copy of the entire book for my collection.

I often look up Assumption BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) Church in online data bases, eBay, libraries, and used book sellers hoping to find the Detroit parish's Silver Jubilee Book. I've had no problem finding jubilee books for Assumption BVM. The thing is, it's the wrong Assumption BMV parish. You see, Detroit had two churches with essentially the same name. One was The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (my mother's parish) and the other one is Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The second church parish was begun in 1928, was a much larger church, is not Polish, and is still a vital and functioning parish. It happens that it has a grotto on the parish grounds so it has gotten tagged with the name Assumption Grotto over the years but that's not its official name. Inevitably, when I look up the jubilee book for my mother's parish I find lots of results for other parish but none for hers. The only copy I know of that I could access for her Assumption BVM parish is in the Polish Museum of America in Chicago. I keep intending to get there to look it up but it just hasn't worked out.

I had the same experience Friday night when I was online perusing the ANSWER database for the Library of Michigan . I did a search for Assumption BVM like I always do and I came up with pretty much the same results that I always get (results for the newer parish but not for the older one). This time I took a closer look as I scrolled through the results and what did I find? A copy of "Assumption Grotto Silver Jubilee book 1911-1937". Hmm. Wrong church name, right dates. It was late in the evening when I found it, too late to call and ask a librarian to check it out for me. Could it be that they had a copy but it had been improperly cataloged? I couldn't help but get excited about the possibility. I've been looking for this book for soooo long...

So yesterday morning I grabbed my camera, jumped in the car, and drove up to Lansing (little over an hour's drive) to check out the situation. It was my lucky day! While the copy they had wasn't an original but a photocopy, it was still more than I had been able to access anywhere else! And bonus... they also had a photocopy of the parish's golden jubilee book! I didn't even know the parish had a golden jubilee book... I'd never seen a reference to it before (guess it was mis-cataloged too)! It was hard to hold still long enough to photograph both books. I was doing the happy-dance (aka the "good-time-polka" for those of us of Polish descent ;-), you know, the one every genealogist does when they make a major find? Boy, it's been a while since I've been dancing to that tune!

So the good news is I now have complete copies of the silver and golden jubilee books for Assumption BVM parish :-) The only fly in the ointment, so to speak, is that the books are almost entirely written in Polish so I can't read them :-(