6/12/2005 - It revived painful memories for the speakers as well as those in their audience who came to New York City's Polish Consulate to discuss a recently released book about the Polish victims of the Holocaust.

Compiled and edited by Prof. Richard C. Lukas, “FORGOTTEN SURVIVORS – Polish Christians Remember the Nazi Occupation” contains the individual stories of 28 Christians who lived through the horrors of the reign of terror the Germans imposed on Poland after their invasion in 1939.

In a symposium sponsored by the Consulate and the Holocaust Documentation Committee of the Polish American Congress, four of the survivors featured in the Lukas book described some of their experiences to the guests.

With an audience that included several other survivors and children of such survivors, the message of the speakers rang loud and clear. Also present were teachers from public, private and Polish supplementary schools.

It was noted during the program that six million Polish citizens perished during the Holocaust years: three million Polish Jews and three million Polish Christians.

As he was preparing to launch his invasion of Poland, Hitler ordered his generals to kill “without pity all men, women and children of Polish race or language.”

Bozenna Urbanowicz-Gilbride quickly learned about the hardships her people would suffer after the Germans and Soviets invaded. She was only a little girl when she began to see how much the Nazis could hate. They forced her to endure the cruel drudgery and misery of two labor camps before the war finally came to an end.

Today, she devotes most of her time and effort to visiting schools and telling her story to the children, many of whom are the same age she was during the time of her forced labor.

Michael Preisler also visits schools to tell how he spent more than three years in Auschwitz. What troubles him so greatly these days are the omissions and deficiencies in the way the schools are teaching the Holocaust.

When he tells the students he survived Auschwitz, they seem surprised and usually say something like, “we didn’t know there were any Christians in
Auschwitz,” said Preisler. “If you’re going to teach something to someone, don’t teach it only with half-truths,” he insists.

Dr. Jan Moor-Jankowski fought with the Polish underground and provided Jews and other Poles with forged documents to help them get past the Germans.

He was captured and sent to Pawiak prison but was able to escape from there at the time the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was taking place.

After the war he became professor of forensic medicine at New York University’s School of Medicine for thirty years. For his role of resistance against the Germans, he received awards from the Polish and French governments. Now retired,
Dr. Moor-Jankowski lives in New York.

Wanda Lorenc was only sixteen when the Germans sent her to the women’s concentration camp in Ravensbruck and then to the camp at Spandau. To this day she can vividly recall the pain she felt after a Nazi woman SS guard kicked her in the face and knocked out her teeth after Wanda gave a piece of bread to a starving Jewish prisoner.

Mrs. Gilbride, Mr. Preisler, Dr. Moor-Jankowski and Wanda Lorenc are only four of the 28 Polish Christians covered in “Forgotten Survivors.” All four are members of the Downstate New York Division of the Polish American Congress.

After the close of the program, they autographed copies of “Forgotten Survivors” for anyone who purchased the book. All copies available that evening were sold out..

The book is available for $25.00 by calling Mrs. Gilbride at the Polish American Museum in Port Washington, N.Y. at (516) 883-6542. Leave a message for a contact. The book is also available from the Polish American Congress Chicago office at (773) 763-9944.

Contact: Frank Milewski
(718) 263-2700