Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Against a Brick Wall. Interventions of Kazimierz Papee, the Polish Ambassador at the Holy See with Regard to German Crimes in Poland, November 1942–January 1943

2008; Linguagem: Inglês

10.32927/zzsim.83

2657-3571

Dariusz Libionka,

Eastern European Communism and Reforms

On 2 January 1943, the president of the Republic of Poland, Władysław Raczkiewicz, sent a telegram to Pius XII via the Polish Embassy at the Holy See. In dramatic words he described the intensifying German terror in occupied Poland and appealed for moral support: “The last weeks of the previous year brought new shocking information from Poland. The terror that afflicted all strata and segments of Polish society has taken on terrifying forms, not only in the refined cruelty of methods applied, but also in its sheer scale. The extermination of the Jews, including many Christian Semites, turned out to be the first attempt at a systematic and veritably scientific mass murder.” The fate of Polish Jews was to herald the physical extermination of the Polish nation, as proved by the deportations from the Zamość region ...