Hi Group,
Sometime ago, somebody asked if there is some info about the subject soldier,
who was wounded at Palazzo del Cannone on the 8 of July. I sent a message to
Spendel (that's what I have in my notes) but it came back. I did some research
on the subject and unfortunately I did not find any info abour Antoni. On p. 152
of "Sitwa" - book describing activities of the Wilenska Brygada Piechoty where
was the 14 Battalion (Antoni was there) there is a note that Palazzo del Cannone
was taken in the course of fighting for river Musone. On Jyly 15 Germans tried
toretake it but were driven back. It is probably a small viooage north of Osimo
and west of Ancona, and the fighting was in the course of the battle for Ancona.
At that time, it was gen. Anders' plan to instead of assaulting Ancona along the
coast, we went around it. The Karpacki Pulk Ulanow simulated the frontal attack
along the coast and Germnans believed that this is it, and that was were they
had most of their anti-tank gear and panzers. Meanwhile, all our tanks were
groupped further west. Then, if I remember right, on July 6, we struck. Germans
were completely taken by surprise. They lost a lot of equipment and men. We went
all the way to Chiaravalle and of course, Ancona was taken. Germans gave us hard
time at the beginning but once their line was broken they did not have a chance.
Big success.
Regards
Romuald

Hello Antoni,

Yes, I know you had mentioned the passage of convoys
via the Elbruz mountains but I think I mentioned in an
earlier e-mail that when I had contacted Mr. Suchcitz
about these movements a couple of years ago, he wrote
back that I was mistaken, that there was no
documentation of convoys going FROM India to Persia
and certainly not to Russia.  So, when the Banasinski
papers were opened and I started looking through them,
many of them in English as well as Polish as Mrs.
Banasinski was involved with the International Red
Cross and the Polish Relief Committe sponsored by T.D.
Roberts, the Archbishop of Bombay, Mr. Suchcitz
actually looked astonished.  At that point, he went
back down into the basement and brought up a thick
file of old newspaper clippings and photos which he
said he had never had a chance to look through!  That
was where I found visual proof of these convoys,
complete with goods stacked on top of the army trucks
and turbaned Sikh drivers.

Later, at the British Library and the National
ARchives, I went through the Skrine collection.
Skrine was the British Consul at Mashed, Persia,
through which these convoys passed.  They went via
Quetta in what is now Pakistan - or at least the ones
I came across did.  It was from the Banasinski papers
in which passage through both Quetta and Mashed
appeared that I was able to then take the research a
step further, find out who the British Consul was at
Mashed then, and look for his papers.  As far as Mr.
Suchcitz was concerned, he had always been under the
belief that NO British transport had ever been allowed
into Russia during the war from the Middle East.
(There was mention of Russian drivers taking over in
Persia on some of the earlier convoys, but it was not
clear how long that arrangement lasted.  It almost
sounded as if each convoy was a separate nightmare of
red tape to arrange!)

Also, and please everyone excuse me if this
information has already been passed on, but I came
across a file on Polish Army in Russia and Persia
1941-45 full of names.  This file is located at the
National Archives (old PRO) in Kew, ref. no. WO 315/64
and contains many letters from a Brig. Gen.
Bohusz-Szysko, and hundreds of names of Polish
soldiers moving from Russia to Persia.  I mention this
in case anyone is still looking for relatives!

Linda




--- ANTONI KAZIMIERSKI <askazimierski@...>
wrote:

> Linda,
> It was many months ago I posted a note on this
> issue. The convoys organised by the British Indian
> and Persian Authorities vere sent to Russia, I
> believe late in 1941 via a treacherous route over
> Elbruz mountain range via Sari and Gorgan to
> Krasnovodsk in anticipation of the arriving Polish
> people to be taken back to Persia.The vehicles were
> part of the British Indian Army driven firstly by
> Sikh drivers and later helped by Persian Army
> drivers. It was a very difficult route and several
> accidents occured, as well as it was a very time
> consuming operation and even with the best
> logistical planning could not have succeeded moving
> all the Polish people out of Russia.The elevated
> roads were impassable and snowed up at that time of
> the year.
> I am not sure- and perhaps Romuald might be able to
> confirm-but some of the tents, tables, food, battle
> dress uniforms, hospital equipment and even
> medicine, were sent to the recruiting camps at
> Totskoje,Guzar, Dzal-al-Abad and even further into
> Russia via this route; as well as Krasnovodsk camp.
> Linda, it is just possible that some
> Poles/Ukrainians and others who were in India, and
> even further East-flleeing the Japanese advance-
> might have hitched a lift to unite with Poles from
> Russia. It is just a faint possibility "The Long
> Walk" has some speck of truth in its idea of a long
> trek, embelished a little by its author, who
> supposedly met the British Army finally in India.
> Probably no records exist of any movement of Poles
> up North to Russia as it might have been just
> 'casual' and the numbers very small.
> One possible place to look would be in the archives
> of the British Indian Commision either in Delhi or
> London. for that period.
> Regarding Pahlevi as we know it; this existed as a
> British or possibly a Russian base for a long time,
> as many will know, at that time Iran was
> administered by these two countries and there were
> many similar bases either in use or dormant.When the
> momentum of evacuation took place and Sea transport
> was arranged, the transit camp was opened.
> antoni530


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Hello Everyone:
There is a season for everything.  And this is my time to say Goodbye to
the Kresy-Siberia listserv.  I was very fortunate to find this resource
five years ago. I found the land and family that my father was forced from
and never saw again; my children discovered an heritage and a world
they never knew and would probably never wouyld have known without the
people on this listserv.  In matters as varied as proper gov't channels
re: citizenship, to pre-war maps to family customs and recipes this
listserv is priceless resource.  People helping people.  This is one thing
the Internet has facilitated greatly.
This is a place which offers healing as well as information.  It is a
forum for seeking truth and individual expression.  Thank you all for your
direct and indirect help.  To all the survivors of the Kresy-Siberia I
wish you peace, and know that what you have shared has brought comfort to
many of us searchers.
It is time for me to go forward, with the knowledge that I have gained
from this experience I am happier and wiser.

Thank you All and farewell,
Joe Zelwietro

Hi All,

Linder is having trouble posting messages with her computer, so she
asked me to post the following message on her behalf.....

HOL TRIP TO UKR 2006'

29TH August  -Stansted UK, to Rzeszow ok - 3 hrs flight, Ryanair
good, put watch 1 hr in front
Slav met us @ 11.30am, tiny/sweet little new airport, 4 tables cafe,
drink in cup & saucer!
1 x check-in, 1 x out again, onto Lviv George Hotel [put watch
another hr in front] - 60 miles +,
border [usually 5-12 hour wait + bribe payments, but with disabled
sticker through 2 sets border-crossings,
in 1 hour [no bribes], then 35 miles to Lviv  - 'George' hotel
is 'fawlty towers', 2 rooms + bathroom - rooms good,
service & food terrible, price $107 per night, no tea-making
facilities, water very slow, restaurant out
the side + round the corner. Porter disappears when he sees your
luggage!!.

Next am - 25 miles back in border direction to Nahaciv to family. No
made-up roads, just big pot-holes/no
pavements/street lights/phones/water or sewerage/folk's on horse &
carts/few cars,
but a 'bus-stop'! to next village . [This is why we don't stay at
family home, I'm too posh, I need
a water toilet] Many new houses of brick only/no window frames,
doors, but with roofs on. Folk's ran out
of money, some been there 10-20 yrs. But, they're built
fantastically well.
Very flat country land/ducks/geese everywhere. And a lot of very
tall chimney stacks.

Slav tells me that the area was very rich in SULPHUR, [chimneys
everywhere]so the Russian's wanted it
and built hundreds of small apartment blocks to house the Russian +
local workers, who worked in the
'Sulphur Quarries' Then, when the Russians went away, they took all
the 'quarrying' equiptment to Eastern
Ukraine, leaving the still empty apartment blocks, ugly things, made
of concrete blocks and cobwebs.

First stop - church, we see the church dome from a distance away.
Priest at school, kids first day back at
school. Find 1 cousin [living on the oldest peice of family land
[1886] and before. This, has the wooden house
dad born in, in 1914+ 40 yrs old 'new' house on it]
  4 family there, out of 8, rest in fields working and planting.
Make cam-film of important info, turn cam off, - have fun!,
Food/vodka/toast everyone and everthing,
about 6 hours!! [ no escape!]

Day 2 - church service for ring-blessing + family etc/all on 'cam-
film'
We had our new platinum rings made and engraved on the inside in
Cyrillic words,
Next, go to graveyard, /film all family graves/film area around
where dad worked for the old 'landowner' and dad pulled the
'horse-waggon into the lake as a 'joke' on drunken man asleep inside
etc - apparently, St. Andrew's Day is the one day
in each year that young men and ladies can play tricks on each
other. The drunken fellow did think it so funny and
chased dad all through the village with his 'sythe' [as in sythe and
sickle?] - this meant the Russian policeman was sent
for and dad carted off to jail in Lwow. From there, 'kangaroo-court'
and 10-20 yrs in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. These Russian's
can't take a joke, can they?
   go to priests house/more food + 5 barrel brandy [half bottle this
time only, [no vodka like last time]/swap pres [he has
  a 'sort-of' water-toilet! - family reckon he's a 'capitalist!]
  on to 'the pub in the woods'- this is an AMAZING place. Two rooms
and no toilet - well, it it in the woods!! [Ł8.50 for feeding and
watering 20 people] Before 1939, there was a large landowner in the
village and this  was the 'paymaster's' house. There were numerous
outbuildings/stables/barns for storage of food grown on the
lands/woods/ponds/sheds. One of these sheds was being pulled down in
the 1930's and the church books inside were being burnt. The
peasants couldn't read or write, so 'bonfire time!' The village
priest realised what
was happening and rushed over and saved just 3 books. ONE WAS THE
1914 BOOK - all my family in it!! So, 2nd stroke of luck for me!.
1st was  when Brian Lenius [Gazetteer of Galicia book]was helping me
look for dad as RC, Michal Stachnik - when he turned out to be
Protsko Stakhnyk GC. Brian had tried all RC churches in the area,
and in desperation, tried the GC priest in that village, asking
for the name Stachnik - priest said 'sure, they live over the road'
The proof was them showing old photo's dad sent them AND I have the
same ones in my attic!!

I digress - next day, another cousin's house - 21 reli's appeared
from the woodwork, weather great, so food outside under the 'grape-
vine'
The family is considered 'wealthy' by their standards. They have a
cow, in a cow-house and a pig in a pig-house and working horses.
There is
a cousin's daughter living there. She is 22 yrs old and must get
married before she's 24 - OR PIG GO BOOM! [as they say] One fellow
living there
makes 'moonshine vodka' blow your hat off stuff, add that to the
vodka for toasting everything - WOW. Ever seen anyone, in a w/chair,
going
across bumpy grass, in a zig-zag motion, after a lot of drink.??
Then, 6 men trying to lift me IN the w/chair into a mini-bus?? Good
job Slav stayed sober!!

Guess what? we did it all again the next day at another house and
took Ukr pals out to dinner at night too!! Went to the markets with
Slav, bought
so much stuff that Slav has had to send it back by 'courier' in a
big box.

I took presents for everyone and sent stuff on in advance to Slav's
home, now he's sent loads of stuff back.

Last job, go back to Rzeszow for the night, before early flight
home.
All in all, an amazing trip - 7 days seeing the other side of life -
priest wants us to have a 'proper Ukranian wedding' in dad's church
in 2010,
when the church is 100 years old. That would last 3 days, can I
stand it? Must practise doing all the drinking and eating, not too
sure about
the dancing though!

After a 2nd visit to them, I can't help but be amazed that they want
nothing from me, [we're all rich Westerners here] they are surprised
that some
'daredevil' reli, will travel to a Ukr village in a w/chair. They
tell me I'm just like dad - the daredevil prankster and if you stand
cousin Katya and me,
side by side, we look like twins!

Fab trip, will go again soon, with my hero SLAV, but, we need
a 'holiday' now - you know 'butt on sunbed/book/glass of something'??

4 days after returning, we were in London at Sikorski with Hania and
Jagna -this HRT must have 'speed' or something in it.
Off to Belgium and France on 16th Oct! Oh well, Just THINKING about
finding your past is silly - do it now!!

Linder

--- In Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com, l willis <lwil22000@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Antoni,
>
> Yes, I know you had mentioned the passage of convoys
> via the Elbruz mountains but I think I mentioned in an
> earlier e-mail that when I had contacted Mr. Suchcitz
> about these movements a couple of years ago, he wrote
> back that I was mistaken, that there was no
> documentation of convoys going FROM India to Persia
> and certainly not to Russia.  So, when the Banasinski
> papers were opened and I started looking through them,
> many of them in English as well as Polish as Mrs.
> Banasinski was involved with the International Red
> Cross and the Polish Relief Committe sponsored by T.D.
> Roberts, the Archbishop of Bombay, Mr. Suchcitz
> actually looked astonished.  At that point, he went
> back down into the basement and brought up a thick
> file of old newspaper clippings and photos which he
> said he had never had a chance to look through!  That
> was where I found visual proof of these convoys,
> complete with goods stacked on top of the army trucks
> and turbaned Sikh drivers.
>
> Later, at the British Library and the National
> ARchives, I went through the Skrine collection.
> Skrine was the British Consul at Mashed, Persia,
> through which these convoys passed.  They went via
> Quetta in what is now Pakistan - or at least the ones
> I came across did.  It was from the Banasinski papers
> in which passage through both Quetta and Mashed
> appeared that I was able to then take the research a
> step further, find out who the British Consul was at
> Mashed then, and look for his papers.  As far as Mr.
> Suchcitz was concerned, he had always been under the
> belief that NO British transport had ever been allowed
> into Russia during the war from the Middle East.
> (There was mention of Russian drivers taking over in
> Persia on some of the earlier convoys, but it was not
> clear how long that arrangement lasted.  It almost
> sounded as if each convoy was a separate nightmare of
> red tape to arrange!)
>
> Also, and please everyone excuse me if this
> information has already been passed on, but I came
> across a file on Polish Army in Russia and Persia
> 1941-45 full of names.  This file is located at the
> National Archives (old PRO) in Kew, ref. no. WO 315/64
> and contains many letters from a Brig. Gen.
> Bohusz-Szysko, and hundreds of names of Polish
> soldiers moving from Russia to Persia.  I mention this
> in case anyone is still looking for relatives!
>
> Linda
>
>
>
>
> --- ANTONI KAZIMIERSKI <askazimierski@...>
> wrote:
>
> > Linda,
> > It was many months ago I posted a note on this
> > issue. The convoys organised by the British Indian
> > and Persian Authorities vere sent to Russia, I
> > believe late in 1941 via a treacherous route over
> > Elbruz mountain range via Sari and Gorgan to
> > Krasnovodsk in anticipation of the arriving Polish
> > people to be taken back to Persia.The vehicles were
> > part of the British Indian Army driven firstly by
> > Sikh drivers and later helped by Persian Army
> > drivers. It was a very difficult route and several
> > accidents occured, as well as it was a very time
> > consuming operation and even with the best
> > logistical planning could not have succeeded moving
> > all the Polish people out of Russia.The elevated
> > roads were impassable and snowed up at that time of
> > the year.
> > I am not sure- and perhaps Romuald might be able to
> > confirm-but some of the tents, tables, food, battle
> > dress uniforms, hospital equipment and even
> > medicine, were sent to the recruiting camps at
> > Totskoje,Guzar, Dzal-al-Abad and even further into
> > Russia via this route; as well as Krasnovodsk camp.
> > Linda, it is just possible that some
> > Poles/Ukrainians and others who were in India, and
> > even further East-flleeing the Japanese advance-
> > might have hitched a lift to unite with Poles from
> > Russia. It is just a faint possibility "The Long
> > Walk" has some speck of truth in its idea of a long
> > trek, embelished a little by its author, who
> > supposedly met the British Army finally in India.
> > Probably no records exist of any movement of Poles
> > up North to Russia as it might have been just
> > 'casual' and the numbers very small.
> > One possible place to look would be in the archives
> > of the British Indian Commision either in Delhi or
> > London. for that period.
> > Regarding Pahlevi as we know it; this existed as a
> > British or possibly a Russian base for a long time,
> > as many will know, at that time Iran was
> > administered by these two countries and there were
> > many similar bases either in use or dormant.When the
> > momentum of evacuation took place and Sea transport
> > was arranged, the transit camp was opened.
> > antoni530
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
>

Antoni and Linda,

I believe that you are confusing Elbruz Mountain in Karachay-
Cherkesie Autonomous State in Caucasus, Russia, with Elburz Mountain
Range in Iran, between Resht and Teheran, that we travelled in 1942.

Romed46



--- In Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com, l willis <lwil22000@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Antoni,
>
> Yes, I know you had mentioned the passage of convoys
> via the Elbruz mountains but I think I mentioned in an
> earlier e-mail that when I had contacted Mr. Suchcitz
> about these movements a couple of years ago, he wrote
> back that I was mistaken, that there was no
> documentation of convoys going FROM India to Persia
> and certainly not to Russia.  So, when the Banasinski
> papers were opened and I started looking through them,
> many of them in English as well as Polish as Mrs.
> Banasinski was involved with the International Red
> Cross and the Polish Relief Committe sponsored by T.D.
> Roberts, the Archbishop of Bombay, Mr. Suchcitz
> actually looked astonished.  At that point, he went
> back down into the basement and brought up a thick
> file of old newspaper clippings and photos which he
> said he had never had a chance to look through!  That
> was where I found visual proof of these convoys,
> complete with goods stacked on top of the army trucks
> and turbaned Sikh drivers.
>
> Later, at the British Library and the National
> ARchives, I went through the Skrine collection.
> Skrine was the British Consul at Mashed, Persia,
> through which these convoys passed.  They went via
> Quetta in what is now Pakistan - or at least the ones
> I came across did.  It was from the Banasinski papers
> in which passage through both Quetta and Mashed
> appeared that I was able to then take the research a
> step further, find out who the British Consul was at
> Mashed then, and look for his papers.  As far as Mr.
> Suchcitz was concerned, he had always been under the
> belief that NO British transport had ever been allowed
> into Russia during the war from the Middle East.
> (There was mention of Russian drivers taking over in
> Persia on some of the earlier convoys, but it was not
> clear how long that arrangement lasted.  It almost
> sounded as if each convoy was a separate nightmare of
> red tape to arrange!)
>
> Also, and please everyone excuse me if this
> information has already been passed on, but I came
> across a file on Polish Army in Russia and Persia
> 1941-45 full of names.  This file is located at the
> National Archives (old PRO) in Kew, ref. no. WO 315/64
> and contains many letters from a Brig. Gen.
> Bohusz-Szysko, and hundreds of names of Polish
> soldiers moving from Russia to Persia.  I mention this
> in case anyone is still looking for relatives!
>
> Linda
>
>
>
>
> --- ANTONI KAZIMIERSKI <askazimierski@...>
> wrote:
>
> > Linda,
> > It was many months ago I posted a note on this
> > issue. The convoys organised by the British Indian
> > and Persian Authorities vere sent to Russia, I
> > believe late in 1941 via a treacherous route over
> > Elbruz mountain range via Sari and Gorgan to
> > Krasnovodsk in anticipation of the arriving Polish
> > people to be taken back to Persia.The vehicles were
> > part of the British Indian Army driven firstly by
> > Sikh drivers and later helped by Persian Army
> > drivers. It was a very difficult route and several
> > accidents occured, as well as it was a very time
> > consuming operation and even with the best
> > logistical planning could not have succeeded moving
> > all the Polish people out of Russia.The elevated
> > roads were impassable and snowed up at that time of
> > the year.
> > I am not sure- and perhaps Romuald might be able to
> > confirm-but some of the tents, tables, food, battle
> > dress uniforms, hospital equipment and even
> > medicine, were sent to the recruiting camps at
> > Totskoje,Guzar, Dzal-al-Abad and even further into
> > Russia via this route; as well as Krasnovodsk camp.
> > Linda, it is just possible that some
> > Poles/Ukrainians and others who were in India, and
> > even further East-flleeing the Japanese advance-
> > might have hitched a lift to unite with Poles from
> > Russia. It is just a faint possibility "The Long
> > Walk" has some speck of truth in its idea of a long
> > trek, embelished a little by its author, who
> > supposedly met the British Army finally in India.
> > Probably no records exist of any movement of Poles
> > up North to Russia as it might have been just
> > 'casual' and the numbers very small.
> > One possible place to look would be in the archives
> > of the British Indian Commision either in Delhi or
> > London. for that period.
> > Regarding Pahlevi as we know it; this existed as a
> > British or possibly a Russian base for a long time,
> > as many will know, at that time Iran was
> > administered by these two countries and there were
> > many similar bases either in use or dormant.When the
> > momentum of evacuation took place and Sea transport
> > was arranged, the transit camp was opened.
> > antoni530
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
>

NO , But I would be interested for the Polish Heritage Museum in
Auckland New Zealand..
Janek

My Museum was opened and running since 2004.  We are shifting to a new
place at the end of the year.  Photo attached.

Janek

Elzunia,

I understand your pain.  I completely agree that the memorabilia
from your father should have stayed in the family, or in a Polish
museum.  Sikorski Institute is a good choice, as are the various
museums that are in the various countries that the veterans settled
in after the war.

I think that this is a lesson for all of us.

Sentimentally, these medals, insignia and uniforms are irreplacable,
as they are physically.  I've tried to get replacement ribbons for
my fathers medals and the Polish ones are so far impossible.

Please take a moment and talk with your family to make sure that
what you hold dear does not leave the family.  Especially in
instances such as described by Elzunia.  Honestly, I doubt that he
is opening a musem or even if his name really is Kochan.

If you choose to send it to a museum, I suggest the Sikorski
Institute or, a credible museum in your country (IE SPK Canada is
slowly working on a museum), or, a military museum in Poland.

I grieve for Elzunia's loss.   I can imagine it is as if she has
lost her father.  Again.


z szacunkiem,

John Ferenc
London, Canada



--- In Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com, "Elizabeth Olsson"
<elzunia@...> wrote:
>
> Too late – she handed everything over last Sunday. He was about to
get on a
> plane back to USA.  He told her he was special forces and had been
in Iraq.
> He said the medals would be on a website in a few months. He
claimed to have
> known my Dad during the war and another friend of his from Wilno.
>
>
> We've googled him and he seems to be involved with OCS Army
museum – which
> seems to be a veteran organisation
> http://www.ocshistory.org/army_museum/class_lists/29oct79.html
> <http://www.ocshistory.org/army_museum/class_lists/29oct79.html>
> but can't see anything about Polish army
> they have a "Veterans History Project" going but seems to be for
Americans
> http://www.ocshistory.com/vhp/ <http://www.ocshistory.com/vhp/>
>
> He's also made a video film: "White Eagle in Borrowed Skies The
History of
> the Polish Airforce during World War II "
>
> But even if he is for real (which I very much doubt) I can't
understand why
> she would sell them anyway, they should stay within the family or
at least
> England (Sikorski Institute). My Father had been awarded the
Virtuti
> Military and the British Military Cross! There were only 10,000
Military
> Crosses given in WWII. He had some document showing that Barbarski
(in
> charge of the Sikorski Ins) was supporting this supposed museum,
so she
> believed him.
> pozdrowienia
> Elzunia Olsson
> Sweden
> Gallery Administrator
> http://gallery.kresy-siberia.org/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Kresy-
Siberia@yahoogroups.com]On
> Behalf Of Ronald Aksnowicz
> Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 1:52 AM
> To: Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: RE: [Kresy-Siberia] Gerald Kochan???
>
> Hello Elzunia;
> I'm answering you at once. Beware of such individuals who claim to
be
> opening museums. I'm a collector of Polish militaria for over
twenty years
> and have never heard of this man. I've known such people and the
museums
> never appear. He's most likely a private collector, maybe I'm
wrong but my
> gut instinct tells me otherwise.
> Try to get her to wait and see if this museum gets established.
> Ron
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Kresy-
Siberia@yahoogroups.com]On
> Behalf Of Elizabeth Olsson
> Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 6:03 PM
> To: 2. Kresy-Siberia
> Subject: [Kresy-Siberia] Gerald Kochan???
>
> Has anyone ever heard of a Gerald Kochan, who claims to be setting
up a
> museum in Texas of Polish military history?
>
> He has just persuaded my Mother (in London) to sell him all of
her's and
> Dad's medals, military documents, Dad's uniform and other stuff!!!
> I don't believe this! I'm very upset – don't know what to do …….
>
> pozdrowienia
> Elzunia Olsson
> Sweden
> Gallery Administrator
> http://gallery.kresy-siberia.org/ <http://gallery.kresy-
siberia.org/>
>

Hi Group,
In the attachment is an experience that I want to share with you
Romuald

--- In Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com, beemail27@... wrote:
Good idea, Barbara,

St. Anthony has helped me find many things which I thought were lost
forever and he has even helped my Mum-in-law who is non-Catholic.
She was amazed!

Val, Oldham,UK

Barbara said:
  >
> My heart goes out to you and I hope you can get your father's
things  back.
> I'll say a prayer to St. Anthony for you.  He's the patron  saint
of lost
> items and I think this qualifies.  Best of luck.
>
> Barbara Revoet
> Connecticut, USA
>

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0609/S00614.htm

Remarks at Groundbreaking of the Victims of Communism Memorial

Dr. Paula Dobriansky, Under Secretary for Democracy and Global
Affairs

Washington, DC
September 27, 2006

As we gather today to break ground for this memorial, we owe thanks
to those who made it possible. Dr. Lee Edwards, the Chairman of the
Memorial Foundation, along with the Foundation's national and
international members, gave generously of their time and effort in
leading this project, and we thank them. I am proud to recognize the
significant contribution made by my father, Ambassador Lev
Dobriansky, who preceded Lee as chairman. Members of Congress of
both parties, including Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Congressman
Lee Hamilton, and the late Congressman Jerry Solomon, played a
crucial role in enabling and supporting the Foundation's work.

Our breaking of this ground in many ways signifies the end of the
Cold War. This project has been guided by men and women for whom the
Cold War was a central reality for most of their lives. The memorial
built here will stand after we no longer do. It will educate future
generations about the misery caused by communism, the massive
resistance efforts, and the fortitude of those who were victimized
by it and who ultimately overcame it.

Communism corroded the human experience of the 20th century. The
sheer number of victims staggers and chastens us. Over a hundred
million people died as a direct, and often intended, consequence of
decisions made by Communist rulers. The innocent lost their lives in
Katyn Forest; in the frozen gulag; on the streets of Budapest; in
the fields of Cambodia. Those who did not die at the hands of
Communist rulers suffered terribly under totalitarian regimes. They
could not speak their minds; they could not travel freely; they
could not realize their inherent potential; they had no say in the
direction of their nation.

One of this country's great presidents, Ronald Reagan, stated
frequently that communism is contrary to human nature. All people
everywhere want to express their ideas, to worship as they see fit,
to work at a trade or profession of their choosing, to own private
property, above all to shape the future of their lives and that of
their country.


http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=5736

Ukraine memorial of Holocaust: Remember Babi Yar!

Ukraine memorial service for the Holocaust: Remember Babi Yar!

Over 1,000 religious and political leaders, in addition to members
of the public, marked the massacre of more than 34,000 Jews murdered
by National Socialist forces in 1941 in just two days. The memorial
took place on September 27 at a ravine near Babi Yar Ukraine where
Jews were systematically shot to death by Nazi forces from September
29-30, 1941. In addition, a conference on the Holocaust was
organized jointly by the Government of Ukraine, the Yad Vashem
Memorial of Israel, and the World Holocaust Forum.

Survivors recall that Jews in Ukraine were told 65 years ago to
gather warms clothes and belongings as if they were going on a
journey in the custody of their Nazi captors. They were instead
ordered to strip naked and then were machine-gunned in their
thousands by Nazi guards and their bodies left in a pit prepared for
them. Witnesses recall that Nazi soldiers laughed and taunted their
victims before murdering them. Some observers claim that the world's
silence in the wake of Babi Yar served to embolden the Nazi's "Final
Solution" and carry out further massacres, atrocities, and
mechanized death-camps.

At the memorial service, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, and
Israeli President Moshe Katsav, solemnly processed behind an honour
guard of Ukrainian soldiers bearing flowers to mark the place where
the victims fell. Both of the dignitaries spoke to the assembly,
while witnesses, liberators, and survivors – as well as some now
recognized as Righteous Gentiles by the Israeli Government – were
also on hand. Representatives from other countries were also
present. The memorial was the brainchild of Russian Jewish
businessman and founder of the World Holocaust Forum Vyacheslav
Moshe Kantor. "Most people today simply don't know what happened
here", said Kantor who added that the idea for the memorial came to
him some years ago when he noticed children playing soccer at the
site of the massacre. Some observers express misgivings that the
site is now used as a park for picnickers and children's sports. The
September 27th memorial was held at a Soviet era monument, while a
more private memorial service was held by Jews at another nearby
monument in the form of a menorah.

Sixty-five years ago, Nazis murdered some 33,771 persons at the Babi
Yar site, while during the balance of the Second World War, a total
of perhaps 100,000 including many non-Jews were annihilated there.
Before invading Russian liberators reached the Ukraine in 1943, Nazi
captors ordered survivors to unearth and burn the remains of all
those buried at the site. The total count of the murdered remains a
mystery. The Soviets did not mark the site afterwards and were long
apprehensive about marking the sites of murdered Jews, just as they
were loathe to mark the burial site of Polish army officers the
Soviet Union murdered at the Katyn Forest in Poland during the
Second World War. It was not until 1961, after Russian poet Yevgeny
Yevtushenko published his poem "Babi Yar", that the Soviet regime
decides to erect a monument at the massacre site. Officials in
Israel calculate that only 20 percent of the former Soviet Union's
victims during the Holocaust have been accounted for, while in
Western Europe the figure stands at 90 percent. Soviet leader Josef
Stalin, who died in the mid-1950s, was himself an anti-Semite.

In August 2006, a secret mission to find Jewish graves in Eastern
Europe discovered a site near Lvov Ukraine where the remains of
1,800 Jews were found in a mass grave. The search for the graves was
initiated by the Roman Catholic liaison to the Jewish community in
France. It is now believed that there are some 500 mass murder sites
in Ukraine yet to be discovered. Pope John Paul II visited the site
in 2001.

Lvov had a Jewish population exceeding 110,000 before the outbreak
of the Second World War. During the war, the Jewish community there
was bolstered by some 100,000 Jewish refugees. Ukrainian
nationalists, in cooperation with the German National Socialists,
began the series of mass murders in July 1941. In 1943, the Jewish
ghetto in Lvov was leveled by the Nazis and its remaining Jewish
population of 65,000 deported and murdered.

Was there an Islamic "Genocide" of Hindus?

http://www.kashmirherald.com/main.php?t=OP&st=D&no=138

"The Partition Holocaust": the term is frequently used in Hindu
pamphlets concerning Islam and the birth of its modern political
embodiment in the Subcontinent, the state of Pakistan. Is such
language warranted, or is it a ridicule-inviting exaggeration?
To give an idea of the context of this question, we must note that
the term "genocide" is used very loosely these days. One of the
charges by a Spanish judge against Chilean ex-dictator Pinochet, so
as to get him extradited from Great Britain in autumn 1998,
was "genocide". This was his way of making Pinochet internationally
accountable for having killed a few Spanish citizens: alleging a
crime serious enough to overrule normal constraints based on
diplomatic immunity and national sovereignty. Yet, whatever
Pinochet's crimes, it is simply ridiculous to charge that he ever
intended to exterminate the Spanish nation. In the current
competition for victim status, all kinds of interest groups are
blatantly overbidding in order to get their piece of the entitlement
to attention and solidarity.

The Nazi Holocaust killed the majority of European Jewry (an
estimated 5.1 million according to Raul Hilberg, 5.27 million
according to the Munich-based Institut für Zeitgeschichte) and about
30% of the Jewish people worldwide. How many victim groups can say
as much? The Partition pogroms killed hardly 0.3% of the Hindus, and
though it annihilated the Hindu presence in all the provinces of
Pakistan except for parts of Sindh and East Bengal, it did so mostly
by putting the Hindus to flight (at least seven million) rather than
by killing them (probably half a million). Likewise, the ethnic
cleansing of a quarter million Hindus from Kashmir in 1990 followed
the strategy of "killing one to expel a hundred", which is not the
same thing as killing them all; in practice, about 1,500 were
killed. Partition featured some local massacres of genocidal type,
with the Sikhs as the most wanted victims, but in relative as well
as absolute figures, this does not match the Holocaust.

Among genocides, the Holocaust was a very special case (e.g. the
attempt to carry it out in secrecy is unique), and it serves no good
purpose to blur that specificity by extending the term to all
genocides in general. The term "Holocaust", though first used in a
genocidal sense to describe the Armenian genocide of 1915, is now in
effect synonymous with the specifically Jewish experience at the
hands of the Nazis in 1941-45. But does even the more general
term "genocide" apply to what Hinduism suffered at the hands of
Islam?

Complete genocide
"Genocide" means the intentional attempt to destroy an ethnic
community, or by extension any community constituted by bonds of
kinship, of common religion or ideology, of common socio-economic
position, or of common race. The pure form is the complete
extermination of every man, woman and child of the group. Examples
include the complete extermination of the native Tasmanians and many
Amerindian nations from Patagonia to Canada by European settlers in
the 16th-19th century. The most notorious attempt was the
Nazi "final solution of the Jewish question" in 1941-45. In April-
May 1994, Hutu militias in Rwanda went about slaughtering the Tutsi
minority, killing ca. 800,000, in anticipation of the conquest of
their country by a Uganda-based Tutsi army. Though improvised and
executed with primitive weapons, the Rwandan genocide made more
victims per day than the Holocaust.

Hindus suffered such attempted extermination in East Bengal in 1971,
when the Pakistani Army killed 1 to 3 million people, with Hindus as
their most wanted target. This fact is strictly ignored in most
writing about Hindu-Muslim relations, in spite (or rather because)
of its serious implication that even the lowest estimate of the
Hindu death toll in 1971 makes Hindus by far the most numerous
victims of Hindu-Muslim violence in the post-colonial period. It is
significant that no serious count or religion-wise breakdown of the
death toll has been attempted: the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi
ruling classes all agree that this would feed Hindu grievances
against Muslims.

Nandan Vyas ("Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan", Young India, January
1995) has argued convincingly that the number of Hindu victims in
the 1971 genocide was approximately 2.4 million, or about 80%. In
comparing the population figures for 1961 and 1971, and taking the
observed natural growth rhythm into account, Vyas finds that the
Hindu population has remained stable at 9.5 million when it should
have increased to nearly 13 million (13.23 million if the same
growth rhythm were assumed for Hindus as for Muslims). Of the
missing 3.5 million people (if not more), 1.1 million can be
explained: it is the number of Hindu refugees settled in India prior
to the genocide. The Hindu refugees at the time of the genocide,
about 8 million, all went back after the ordeal, partly because the
Indian government forced them to it, partly because the new state of
Bangladesh was conceived as a secular state; the trickle of Hindu
refugees into India only resumed in 1974, when the first steps
towards islamization of the polity were taken. This leaves 2.4
million missing Hindus to be explained. Taking into account a number
of Hindu children born to refugees in India rather than in
Bangladesh, and a possible settlement of 1971 refugees in India, it
is fair to estimate the disappeared Hindus at about 2 million.

While India-watchers wax indignant about communal riots in India
killing up to 20,000 people since 1948, allegedly in a proportion of
three Muslims to one Hindu, the best-kept secret of the post-
Independence Hindu-Muslim conflict is that in the subcontinent as a
whole, the overwhelming majority of the victims have been Hindus.
Even apart from the 1971 genocide, "ordinary" pogroms in East
Pakistan in 1950 alone killed more Hindus than the total number of
riot victims in India since 1948.

Selective genocide
A second, less extreme type of genocide consists in killing a
sufficient number who form the backbone of the group's collective
identity, and assimilating the leaderless masses into the dominant
community. This has been the Chinese policy in Tibet, killing over a
million Tibetans while assimilating the survivors into Chinese
culture by flooding their country with Chinese settlers. It was also
Stalin's policy in eastern Poland and the Baltic states after they
fell into his hands under the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact, exemplified
by the massacre of thousands of Polish army officers in Katyn.
Stalin's policies combining murder of the elites, deportation of
entire ethnic groups and ruthless oppression of the survivors was
prefigured in antiquity by the Assyrians, whose deportation of the
ten northern (now "lost") tribes of Israel is attested in the Bible.

During the Islamic conquests in India, it was a typical policy to
single out the Brahmins for slaughter, after the Hindu warrior class
had been bled on the battlefield. Even the Portuguese in Malabar and
Goa followed this policy in the 16th century, as can be deduced from
Hindu-Portuguese treaty clauses prohibiting the Portuguese from
killing Brahmins.

In antiquity, such partial genocide typically targeted the men for
slaughter and the women and children for slavery or concubinage.
Thus, in 416 BCE, the Athenians were angered at the Melians'
reluctance to join the war against Sparta, and to set an example for
other client states, Athens had Melos repopulated with Athenian
colonists after killing its men and enslaving its women. Another
example would be the slaughter of the Jews of Medina by Mohammed in
626 CE: after expelling two Jewish tribes, the third one, the Banu
Quraiza, were exterminated: all the ca. 700 men were beheaded, while
the women and children were sold into slavery, with the Prophet
keeping the most beautiful woman as his concubine (she refused to
marry him).

Hindus too experienced this treatment at the hands of Islamic
conquerors, e.g. when Mohammed bin Qasim conquered the lower Indus
basin in 712 CE. Thus, in Multan, according to the Chach-Nama, "six
thousand warriors were put to death, and all their relations and
dependents were taken as slaves". This is why Rajput women committed
mass suicide to save their honour in the face of the imminent entry
of victorious Muslim armies, e.g. 8,000 women immolated themselves
during Akbar's capture of Chittorgarh in 1568 (where this most
enlightened ruler also killed 30,000 non-combatants). During the
Partition pogroms and the East Bengali genocide, mass rape of Hindu
women after the slaughter of their fathers and husbands was a
frequent event.

At this point, however, we should not overlook a puzzling episode in
Hindu legend which describes a similar behaviour by a Hindu
conqueror: Parashurama, deified as the 6th incarnation of Vishnu,
killed all the adult male Kshatriyas for several generations, until
only women were left, and then had Brahmins father a new generation
upon them. Just a story, or reference to a historic genocide?

Genocide in the Bible
For full-blooded genocide, however, the book to consult is the
Bible, which describes cases of both partial and complete genocide.
The first modest attempt was the killing by Jacob's sons of all the
males in the Canaanite tribe of Shekhem, the fiancé of their own
sister Dina. The motive was pride of pedigree: having immigrated
from the civilizational centre of Ur in Mesopotamia, Abraham's tribe
refused all intermarriage with the native people of Canaan (thus,
Rebecca favoured Jacob over Esau because Jacob married his nieces
while Esau married local women).

Full-scale genocide was ordered by God, and executed by his
faithful, during the conquest of Canaan by Moses and Joshua. In the
defeated cities outside the Promised Land, they had to kill all the
men but keep the women as slaves or concubines. Inside the Promised
Land, by contrast, the conquerors were ordered to kill every single
man, woman and child. All the Canaanites and Amalekites were killed.
Here, the stated reason was that God wanted to prevent the
coexistence of His people with Pagans, which would result in
religious syncretism and the restoration of polytheism.

As we only have a literary record of this genocide, liberal
theologians uncomfortable with a genocidal God have argued that this
Canaanite genocide was only fiction. To be sure, genocide fiction
exists, e.g. the Biblical story that the Egyptians had all newborn
male Israelites killed is inconsistent with all other data in the
Biblical narrative itself (as well as unattested in the numerous and
detailed Egyptian inscriptions), and apparently only served to
underpin the story of Moses' arrival in the Pharaoh's court in a
basket on the river, a story modelled on the then-popular life story
of Sargon of Akkad. Yet, the narrative of the conquest of Canaan is
full of military detail uncommon in fiction; unlike other parts of
the Bible, it is almost without any miracles, factual through and
through.

And even if we suppose that the story is fictional, what would it
say about the editors that they attributed genocidal intentions and
injunctions to their God? If He was non-genocidal and good in
reality, why turn him into a genocidal and prima facie evil Being?
On balance, it is slightly more comforting to accept that the Bible
editors described a genocide because they wanted to be truthful and
relate real events. After all, the great and outstanding thing about
the Bible narrative is its realism, its refusal to idealize its
heroes. We get to see Jacob deceiving Isaac and Esau, then Laban
deceiving Jacob; David's heroism and ingenuity in battle, but also
his treachery in making Bathseba his own, and later his descent into
senility; Salomon's palace intrigues in the war of succession along
with his pearls of wisdom. Against that background, it would be
inconsistent to censor the Canaanite genocide as merely a fictional
interpolation.

Indirect genocide
A third type of genocide consists in preventing procreation among a
targeted population. Till recently, it was US policy to promote
sterilization among Native American women, even applying it secretly
during postnatal care or other operations. The Tibetans too have
been subjected to this treatment. In the Muslim world, male slaves
were often castrated, which partly explains why Iraq has no Black
population even though it once had hundreds of thousands of Black
slaves. The practice also existed in India on a smaller scale,
though the much-maligned Moghul emperor Aurangzeb tried to put an
end to it, mainly because eunuchs brought endless corruption in the
court. The hijra community is a left-over of this Islamic
institution (in ancient India, harems were tended by old men or
naturally napunsak/impotent men, tested by having to spend the night
with a prostitute without showing signs of virile excitement).

A fourth type of genocide is when mass killing takes place
unintentionally, as collateral damage of foolish policies, e.g.
Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward inducing the greatest man-made
mass starvation killing 20 million or more, or the British war
requisitions causing the Bengal famine of 1943 killing some 3
million; or as collateral damage of other forms of oppression.
Unlike the deliberate genocide of Native Americans in parts of the
USA or Argentina, the death of millions of Natives in Central
America after the first Spanish conquests was at least partly the
unintended side-effect of the hardships of forced labour and the
contact with new diseases brought by the Europeans. In contrast with
Nazi and Soviet work camps, where forced labour had the dual purpose
of economic profit and a slow but sure death of the inmates, there
is no evidence that the Spanish wanted their Native labourers to
die. After all, their replacement with African slaves required a
large extra investment.

The Atlantic slave trade itself caused mass death among the
transported slaves, just as in the already long-standing Arab slave
trade, but it is obvious that purely for the sake of profit, the
slave-traders preferred as many slaves as possible to arrive at the
slave markets alive. Likewise, the Christian c.q. Islamic contempt
for Pagans made them rather careless with the lives of Native
Americans, Africans or Hindus, so that millions of them were killed,
and yet this was not deliberate genocide. Of course they wanted to
annihilate Pagan religions like Hinduism, but in principle, the
missionary religions wished to convert the unbelievers, and
preferred not to kill them unless this was necessary for
establishing the power of the True Faith.

That is why the mass killing of Hindus by Muslims rarely took place
in peacetime, but typically in the fervour immediately following
military victories, e.g. the fall of the metropolis of Vijayanagar
in 1565 was "celebrated" with a general massacre and arson. Once
Muslim power was established, Muslim rulers sought to exploit and
humiliate rather than kill the Hindus, and discourage rebellion by
making some sort of compromise. Not that peacetime was all that
peaceful, for as Fernand Braudel wrote in A History of Civilizations
(Penguin 1988/1963, p.232-236), Islamic rule in India as a "colonial
experiment" was "extremely violent", and "the Muslims could not rule
the country except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm --
burnings, summary executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive
tortures. Hindu temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On
occasion there were forced conversions. If ever there were an
uprising, it was instantly and savagely repressed: houses were
burned, the countryside was laid waste, men were slaughtered and
women were taken as slaves."

Though all these small acts of terror added up to a death toll of
genocidal proportions, no organized genocide of the Holocaust type
took place. One constraint on Muslim zeal for Holy War was the
endemic inter-Muslim warfare and intrigue (no history of a royal
house was bloodier than that of the Delhi Sultanate 1206-1525),
another the prevalence of the Hanifite school of Islamic law in
India. This is the only one among the four law schools in Sunni
Islam which allows Pagans to subsist as zimmis, dis-empowered third-
class citizens paying a special tax for the favour of being
tolerated; the other three schools of jurisprudence ruled that
Pagans, as opposed to Christians and Jews, had to be given a choice
between Islam and death.

Staggering numbers also died as collateral damage of the deliberate
impoverishment by Sultans like Alauddin Khilji and Jahangir. As
Braudel put it: "The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one
catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics
capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was
the constant counterpart of the conquerors' opulence."

Genocide by any other name
In some cases, terminological purists object to mass murder being
described as "genocide", viz. when it targets groups defined by
other criteria than ethnicity. Stalin's "genocide" through organized
famine in Ukraine killed some 7 million people (lowest estimate is 4
million) in 1931-33, the largest-ever deliberate mass murder in
peacetime, but its victims were targeted because of their economic
and political positions, not because of their nationhood. Though it
makes no difference to the victims, this was not strictly genocide
or "nation murder", but "class murder". Likewise, the killing of
perhaps two million Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge was not an attempt
to destroy the Cambodian nation; it was rather an attempt
to "purify" the nation of its bourgeois class.

The killing of large groups of ideological dissenters is a constant
in the history of the monotheistic faiths, of which Marxism has been
termed a modern offshoot, starting with the killing of some
polytheistic priests by Pharaoh Akhenaton and, shortly after, the
treacherous killing of 3,000 worshippers of the Golden Calf by Moses
(they had been encouraged to come out in the open by Moses' brother
Aaron, not unlike Chairman Mao's "hundred flowers" campaign which
encouraged dissenters to speak freely, all the better to eliminate
them later). Mass killing accompanied the christianization of Saxony
by Charlemagne (ca. 800 CE) and of East Prussia by the Teutonic
Knights (13th century). In 1209-29, French Catholics massacred the
heretical Cathars. Wars between Muslims and Christians, and between
Catholics and Protestants, killed millions both in deliberate
massacres and as collateral damage, e.g. seven million Germans in
1618-48. Though the Turkish government which ordered the killing of
a million Armenians in 1915 was motivated by a mixture of purely
military, secular-nationalistic and Islamic considerations, the
fervour with which the local Turks and Kurds participated in the
slaughter was clearly due to their Islamic conditioning of hatred
against non-Muslims.

This ideological killing could be distinguished from genocide in the
strict sense, because ethnicity was not the reason for the
slaughter. While this caution may complicate matters for the
Ukrainians or Cambodians, it does not apply to the case of Hinduism:
like the Jews, the Hindus have historically been both a religion and
a nation (or at least, casteists might argue, a conglomerate of
nations). Attempts to kill all Hindus of a given region may
legitimately be termed genocide.

For its sheer magnitude in scope and death toll, coupled with its
occasional (though not continuous) intention to exterminate entire
Hindu communities, the Islamic campaign against Hinduism, which was
never fully called off since the first naval invasion in 636 CE, can
without exaggeration be termed genocide. To quote Will Durant's
famous line: "The Islamic conquest of India is probably the
bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its
evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose
delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any
moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or
multiplying within." (Story of Civilization, vol.1, Our Oriental
Heritage, New York 1972, p.459)

Hinduism's losses
There is no official estimate of the total death toll of Hindus at
the hands of Islam. A first glance at important testimonies by
Muslim chroniclers suggests that, over 13 centuries and a territory
as vast as the Subcontinent, Muslim Holy Warriors easily killed more
Hindus than the 6 million of the Holocaust. Ferishtha lists several
occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-1528)
killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a minimum goal
whenever they felt like "punishing" the Hindus; and they were only a
third-rank provincial dynasty. The biggest slaughters took place
during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi (ca. 1000 CE); during the actual
conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants (1192
ff.); and under the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The Moghuls (1526-
1857), even Babar and Aurangzeb, were fairly restrained tyrants by
comparison. Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population
declined by 50 million under the Sultanate, but that would be hard
to substantiate; research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did
to India is yet to start in right earnest.

Note that attempts are made to deny this history. In Indian
schoolbooks and the media, an idyllic picture of Hindu-Muslim
harmony in the pre-British period is propagated in outright
contradiction with the testimony of the primary sources. Like
Holocaust denial, this propaganda can be called negationism. The
really daring negationists don't just deny the crimes against
Hindus, they invert the picture and blame the Hindus themselves.
Thus, it is routinely alleged that Hindus persecuted and destroyed
Buddhism; in reality, Buddhist monasteries and universities
flourished under Hindu rule, but their thousands of monks were
killed by Ghori and his lieutenants.

Apart from actual killing, millions of Hindus disappeared by way of
enslavement. After every conquest by a Muslim invader, slave markets
in Bagdad and Samarkand were flooded with Hindus. Slaves were likely
to die of hardship, e.g. the mountain range Hindu Koh, "Indian
mountain", was renamed Hindu Kush, "Hindu-killer", when one cold
night in the reign of Timur Lenk (1398-99), a hundred thousand Hindu
slaves died there while on transport to Central Asia. Though Timur
conquered Delhi from another Muslim ruler, he recorded in his
journal that he made sure his pillaging soldiers spared the Muslim
quarter, while in the Hindu areas, they took "twenty slaves each".
Hindu slaves were converted to Islam, and when their descendants
gained their freedom, they swelled the numbers of the Muslim
community. It is a cruel twist of history that the Muslims who
forced Partition on India were partly the progeny of Hindus enslaved
by Islam.

Karma
The Hindu notion of Karma has come under fire from Christian and
secularist polemicists as part of the current backlash against New
Age thinking. Allegedly, the doctrine of Karma implies that the
victims of the Holocaust and other massacres had deserved their
fate. A naive understanding of Karma, divorced from its Hindu
context, could indeed lead to such ideas. Worse, it could be said
that the Jews as a nation had incurred genocidal karma by the
genocide which their ancestors committed on the Canaanites.
Likewise, it could be argued that the Native Americans had it
coming: recent research (by Walter Neves from Brazil as well as by
US scientists) has shown that in ca. 8000 BC, the Mongoloid Native
American populations replaced an earlier American population closely
resembling the Australian Aborigines -- the first American genocide?

More generally, if Karma explains suffering and "apparent" injustice
as a profound form of justice, a way of reaping the karmic rewards
of one's own actions, are we not perversely justifying every
injustice? These questions should not be taken lightly. However, the
Hindu understanding of reincarnation militates against the doctrine
of genocidal "group karma" outlined above. An individual can
incarnate in any community, even in other species, and need not be
reborn among his own progeny. If Canaanites killed by the Israelites
have indeed reincarnated, some may have been Nazi camp guards and
others Jewish Holocaust victims. There is no reason to assume that
the members of today's victim group are the reincarnated souls of
the bullies of yesteryear, returning to suffer their due punishment.
That is the difference between karma and genetics: karma is taken
along by the individual soul, not passed on in the family line.

More fundamentally, we should outgrow this childish (and in this
case, downright embarrassing) view of karma as a matter of reward
and punishment. Does the killer of a million people return a million
times as a murder victim to suffer the full measure of his deserved
punishment? Rather, karma is a law of conservation: you are reborn
with the basic pattern of desires and conditionings which
characterized you when you died last time around. The concrete
experiences and actions which shaped that pattern, however, are
history: they only survive insofar as they have shaped your psychic
karma pattern, not as a precise account of merits and demerits to be
paid off by corresponding amounts of suffering and pleasure.

One lesson to be learned from genocide history pertains to Karma,
the law of cause and effect, in a more down-to-earth sense:
suffering genocide is the karmic reward of weakness. That is one
conclusion which the Jews have drawn from their genocide experience:
they created a modern and militarily strong state. Even more
importantly, they helped foster an awareness of the history of their
persecution among their former persecutors, the Christians, which
makes it unlikely that Christians will target them again. In this
respect, the Hindus have so far failed completely. With numerous
Holocaust memorials already functioning, one more memorial is being
built in Berlin by the heirs of the perpetrators of the Holocaust;
but there is not even one memorial to the Hindu genocide, because
even the victim community doesn't bother, let alone the
perpetrators.

This different treatment of the past has implications for the
future. Thus, Israel's nuclear programme is accepted as a matter of
course, justified by the country's genuine security concerns; but
when India, which has equally legitimate security concerns,
conducted nuclear tests, it provoked American sanctions. If the
world ignores Hindu security concerns, one of the reasons is that
Hindus have never bothered to tell the world how many Hindus have
been killed already.

Healing
What should Hindus say to Muslims when they consider the record of
Islam in Hindu lands? It is first of all very important not to allot
guilt wrongly. Notions of collective or hereditary guilt should be
avoided. Today's Muslims cannot help it that other Muslims did
certain things in 712 or 1565 or 1971. One thing they can do,
however, is to critically reread their scripture to discern the
doctrinal factors of Muslim violence against Hindus and Hinduism. Of
course, even without scriptural injunction, people get violent and
wage wars; if Mahmud Ghaznavi hadn't come, some of the people he
killed would have died in other, non-religious conflicts. But the
basic Quranic doctrine of hatred against the unbelievers has also
encouraged many good-natured and pious people to take up the sword
against Hindus and other Pagans, not because they couldn't control
their aggressive instincts, but because they had been told that
killing unbelievers was a meritorious act. Good people have
perpetrated evil because religious authorities had depicted it as
good.

This is material for a no-nonsense dialogue between Hindus and
Muslims. But before Hindus address Muslims about this, it is
imperative that they inform themselves about this painful history.
Apart from unreflected grievances, Hindus have so far not developed
a serious critique of Islam's doctrine and historical record. Often
practising very sentimental, un-philosophical varieties of their own
religion, most Hindus have very sketchy and distorted images of
rival religions. Thus, they say that Mohammed was an Avatar of
Vishnu, and then think that they have cleverly solved the Hindu-
Muslim conflict by flattering the Prophet (in fact, it is an insult
to basic Muslim beliefs, which reject divine incarnation, apart from
indirectly associating the Prophet with Vishnu's incarnation as a
pig). Instead of the silly sop stories which pass as conducive to
secularism, Hindus should acquaint themselves with real history and
real religious doctrines.

Another thing which we should not forget is that Islam is ultimately
rooted in human nature. We need not believe the Muslim claim that
the Quran is of divine origin; but then it is not of diabolical
origin either, it is a human document. The Quran is in all respects
the product of a 7th-century Arab businessman vaguely acquainted
with Judeo-Christian notions of monotheism and prophetism, and the
good and evil elements in it are very human. Even its negative
elements appealed to human instincts, e.g. when Mohammed promised a
share in the booty of the caravans he robbed, numerous Arab Pagans
took the bait and joined him. The undesirable elements in Islamic
doctrine stem from human nature, and can in essence be found
elsewhere as well. Keeping that in mind, it should be possible to
make a fair evaluation of Islam's career in India on the basis of
factual history.

--- In Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com, beemail27@... wrote:
Good idea, Barbara,

St. Anthony has helped me find many things which I thought were lost
forever and he has even helped my Mum-in-law who is non-Catholic.
She was amazed!

Val, Oldham,UK

Barbara said:
>
> My heart goes out to you and I hope you can get your father's
things back.
> I'll say a prayer to St. Anthony for you. He's the patron saint
of lost
> items and I think this qualifies. Best of luck.
>
> Barbara Revoet
> Connecticut, USA
>

Get your own web address for just $1.99/1st yr. We'll help. Yahoo! Small Business.

Hi all

Are you still having problems posting? I m not sure if it was just a
temporary glitch.

Stefan Wisniowski
MODERATOR

but now I am having problems - the last messages have bounced!

I'm sending this from the Yahoo site, see if it works better.

I've already got people phoning and faxing this guy so please don't
try to contact him yourselves, the poor man will be bombarded!
Remember it's quite possible that he is genuine.

  -- In Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com, "Elizabeth Olsson"
<elzunia@...> wrote:
>
> I'm not having any problems using the Reply button
>
> pozdrowienia
> Elzunia Olsson
> Sweden
> Gallery Administrator
> http://gallery.kresy-siberia.org/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Kresy-
Siberia@yahoogroups.com]On
> Behalf Of Eve5J@...
> Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 6:03 PM
> To: kresy-siberia@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Kresy-Siberia] Problems with posting to group
>
> Dear Group -
>
> I don't want to get into a long protacted discussion about this,
but I am
> having difficulties posting to the group.  I'm wondering if Linder
and I had
> the same problems?  I do belong to other Yahoo groups and have no
problem
> with them.  If I press "Reply to Group" from a post sent as email,
I get an
> error message and even freeze up.  What's going on?  Does anyone
know?  This
> happened yesterday and today when I was replying to Andy's post,
which I
> will do now.
>
> Eve Jankowicz
>

Hi Elzunia;
Giving this situation much thought and searching the net, I would say that
this man is genuine in his love of Polish history and culture. And good luck
to his plans for a museum in Texas. Your father's medals will be in good
hands.
Ron

-----Original Message-----
From: Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Elzunia/Elizabeth
Gradosielska/Maczka Olsson
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 9:11 AM
To: Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Kresy-Siberia] Re: Problems with posting to group


but now I am having problems - the last messages have bounced!

I'm sending this from the Yahoo site, see if it works better.

I've already got people phoning and faxing this guy so please don't
try to contact him yourselves, the poor man will be bombarded!
Remember it's quite possible that he is genuine.

  -- In Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com, "Elizabeth Olsson"
<elzunia@...> wrote:
>
> I'm not having any problems using the Reply button
>
> pozdrowienia
> Elzunia Olsson
> Sweden
> Gallery Administrator
> http://gallery.kresy-siberia.org/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kresy-Siberia@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Kresy-
Siberia@yahoogroups.com]On
> Behalf Of Eve5J@...
> Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 6:03 PM
> To: kresy-siberia@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Kresy-Siberia] Problems with posting to group
>
> Dear Group -
>
> I don't want to get into a long protacted discussion about this,
but I am
> having difficulties posting to the group.  I'm wondering if Linder
and I had
> the same problems?  I do belong to other Yahoo groups and have no
problem
> with them.  If I press "Reply to Group" from a post sent as email,
I get an
> error message and even freeze up.  What's going on?  Does anyone
know?  This
> happened yesterday and today when I was replying to Andy's post,
which I
> will do now.
>
> Eve Jankowicz
>






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  "Dedicated to researching, remembering and recognising the Polish citizens
  deported, enslaved and killed by the Soviet Union during World War Two."
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