Fighting and Suffering

Auschwitz | Fifty | Ninety | Twenty-Five

15 April 2022 - Oświęcim

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After my run this morning and breakfast I had some hours to kill before touring the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, so I decided to finish reading a book that I picked up last Summer in the WWII Museum in Gdańsk: Fighting and Suffering. The Polish Experience in World War II by Bogusław Kopka and Paweł Kosiński. Much like the Museum, the book details the Nazi and Soviet crimes in partitioning Poland and then seeking to exterminate its culture and population, as well as the heroic deeds of Poles fighting in the war. They really had a losing hand to play and the book is especially hard on Soviet collaborators and their role in the loss of eastern Polish territory as well as supporting the nearly half century of Soviet occupation that followed the war. Definitely worth getting the Polish perspective on this dark time in European history especially as Russia's latest dictator is following Stalin's example in trying to destroy Ukraine and Ukrainian culture.