Thousand Points of Light

[jimpres]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 7, 2008







A CATHOLIC AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR’S

THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT



Americans first heard about a “thousand points of light” from

George Bush Sr. when he was campaigning for the presidency

of the United States in 1988. Now, a Polish Catholic survivor

of Auschwitz is starting a different kind of campaign to promote

his own “thousand points of light.”



Michael Preisler feels “thousand points of truth” would be a more

precise description. What are these thousand points? They are a

thousand copies of Andrew Hempel’s book about a six-year period

Preisler lived through and its title is simply “Poland in World War II.”

It will be distributed by the Holocaust Documentation Committee

of the Polish American Congress where Preisler is co-chair.



“Nowhere else is Holocaust history as distorted and as misrepresented

as it is about Poland.” Whenever Preisler says this he speaks from his

own bitter experience which began when Germany invaded Poland in

1939 to start World War II. He fought against the Germans as a

member of the Polish underground resistance before being arrested by

the Gestapo and ending up as an Auschwitz prisoner for more than

three years.



Today, Preisler frequently visits schools to give students an honest

and balanced account of what the Christians and Jews of Poland were

forced to suffer under German occupation. He tells them of his own

experiences and the inhuman conditions German terror and brutality

created for the Polish people. Now he plans to leave behind one of

his “points of light” books whenever he lectures again.



Giving Americans accurate information about the Holocaust became

a driving force for Preisler some twenty-five years ago. That was

when he first noticed how the entertainment industry and other

media began to fictionalize and falsify history with an evident

anti-Polish prejudice.



For many years he had tried to erase all his painful wartime memories.

Now, this kind of manipulation of the historical record suddenly became

a grim reminder of the anti-Polish propaganda the Germans used to

demoralize and confuse the Polish people. The constant lying they

so cunningly devised created an ever-present sense of fear and suspicion

in occupied Poland.



Preisler would like to believe the media mislead the American public

simply because of ignorance or their carelessness in researching the

facts. But he suspects there is more to it than that.



“They try to blame the Polish people for atrocities the Germans committed.

They try to blame us for atrocities the Communists committed. They

prefer to call concentration camps like Auschwitz where I almost died

“Polish” concentration camps instead of German camps. The bad guys

are made to look like good guys,” he said.



Preisler noted it was Poland’s grave misfortune not only to have the

Nazis of Germany as an enemy in WW II. but also the Communists

of the Soviet Union (now Russia).



“I only wish the American government had been as careful with

investigating the background of ex-Communists who came to

the United States after the war as they were with the Germans,”

he said.



Knowing Preisler was an Auschwitz survivor, the U.S. Justice

Department’s Office of Special Investigations at one time came to

him and asked him to help them identify photos of former German

SS-men who might have sneaked into the United States.




Preisler says he was glad to help the OSI since he had a personal

score to settle with the SS and some other Germans besides.



“But the OSI never checked out the Communists like they did the

Nazis. They should have. The propaganda of these liars was just

as deceiving as the Germans’. They’re experts at it . I can’t help

wondering if one of them is behind it whenever I see the truth about

Poland get twisted today,” he said.



It’s feelings like these that keep driving Preisler to fight just the

way they did that day in 1939 when Hitler’s army crossed the border

and started killing the Polish people.



He is determined to see each one of his “thousand points of

light” enlighten the American public with the truth about Poland.



Contact: Frank Milewski

[phone] ext 105

[uncltim]

Is this book for sale now?

[kaima]

Interesting, Jim. I tried Googling a review of the book and for
THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT
and
A CATHOLIC AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR’S THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT

A CATHOLIC AUSCHWITZ SURVIVORS THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT

and found nothing but the normal topics concentrating on Jewish victims, and notably Catholic and Poland were mentioned (in the Google summaries) in primarily negative ways!

Kai, not Polish, not Jewish, just Curious

[jimpres]

Try googling Michael Preisler, Catholic

[jimpres]

Holocaust's other victims

About 5-million people, including Polish Catholics, died alongside Jews. Survivors want accounts to include them.

By SHERRI DAY, Times Staff Writer
Published October 21, 2007

Michael Preisler, 88, is a Polish Catholic survivor of German concentration camps. This photo shows when he was processed at Auschwitz, renown as the place of no return.

[Photo is from Frank Milewsk]
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Michael Preisler's arm still bears the signs of Auschwitz. He was number 22213.

Preisler doesn't fit the most common perception of Holocaust victims. He is a Polish Catholic, a group that scholars say represent 1.9-million of those killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Some scholars also estimate that a million Polish Catholic soldiers died in battles with German and Russian armies. As Holocaust survivors die, Polish Catholics across the country are stepping up efforts to get their stories and those of their ancestors reflected in history books, museums and in the larger public's knowledge.

Time is running out, they say.

"There are very few victims left," said Preisler, 88, who lives in New York City. "I'm fighting for the truth."

In the Tampa Bay area, Wallace M. West has led the crusade for recognition for a dozen years. As head of the American Institute of Polish Culture in Pinellas Park, he tries to educate the public about Polish contributions to society, including their role in the Holocaust.

"When you talk about the Holocaust, most people aren't aware that the Polish people suffered as well," said West, 86, a retired museum director who also visits local schools. "It doesn't lessen the fact that Jews suffered greatly and hideously. But attention ought to be paid to the fact that others suffered too."

Those who have taken up the cause find their work fraught with challenges. They fight a public knowledge gap as wide as the Grand Canyon. For some Polish Catholic activists, there are persistent worries about being labeled anti-Semitic for demanding recognition for their own heritage in an event widely associated with Jews alone.

"There's a certain fear that you'll be misunderstood," said T. Ron Jasinski-Herbert, editor of the Polonia Media Network, a media distribution service based in Chicago. "Every time I write an editorial about any of this type of thing, I always put a caveat in there that nobody is attacking the Jews. What we're trying to do is tell our story."

Anthony Cheslock, a Polish Catholic and bay area dentist, contends that publicly funded institutions and school systems have a responsibility to make their Holocaust teachings more inclusive because they receive public money.

"All we want is proper credit and not to be footnoted and ushered off the stage," Cheslock said. "It's like we're in the second tier."

As defined by historians and scholars, the Holocaust is the Nazi's systematic attempt to murder Europe's Jews. Six-million Jews died as a result of Adolf Hitler's campaign. Five-million other people perished as well.

Hitler's other targets included Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally challenged and physically deformed. Poles caught Hitler's attention because they were deemed ideologically dangerous, particularly the thousands of intellectuals and Catholic priests who could mobilize resistance among the masses, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Anna Adamczyk's grandmother faced death at the hands of the SS, the Nazis' special police, for hiding Jews in her family's barns and underground tunnels.

"I always tell what I know," said Adamczyk, who lives in Palm Harbor. "Am I going to change what's written in history? I can't do that alone."

At the 265,000-square-foot Holocaust museum in Washington, the stories of the other victims flow seamlessly into that of Jews. The museum's Web site also highlights other victims. "When the museum was created, the decision was made to tell the story of the Holocaust, the murder of 6-million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators," said Steve Luckert, the curator of the museum's permanent exhibition. "But we went beyond that to actually bring in the story of persecution of other groups."

But smaller museums and schools that lack the funding and space say telling the rest of the story often proves difficult.

In St. Petersburg, the Florida Holocaust Museum has five panels that deal with the individual history of victim groups other than Jews. Museum officials tout the panels, which went up last month as a starting point for docents to carry on more detailed discussions during tours.

"Kids get much more information than what's on the wall," said Erin M. Blankenship, the Florida museum's curator of Exhibitions and Collections. Still Blankenship admits that much of the Holocaust story is abbreviated.

"Do we want to tell more? Absolutely," she said. "We're not trying to purposefully exclude any victim group. I'm just glad we were able to give each victim group its own panel."

The museum also hosts temporary exhibits that concentrate on various victim groups in the Holocaust and devotes space to modern genocides such as Rwanda and Darfur.

Cheslock, the bay area dentist, says both the state museum and local school systems have given short shrift to the portrayal of Polish Catholics in the Holocaust. He wants them to make adjustments.

Pinellas County school officials say they teach according to state-mandated standards and adequately cover the Holocaust. They also offer Holocaust education electives for students and special training sessions for teachers, district leaders said. At Cheslock's request, the district purchased resource books on Polish Catholics and the Holocaust for its professional library.

"I guess I would suggest that if our curriculum is perceived as inadequate, that the fight is not necessarily with us," said Clayton Wilcox, Pinellas County school superintendant. "We're a local school system, and we rely on the expertise of state and national experts to help us define our curriculum."

Hillsborough County public school officials say they will investigate their curriculum to see if it comes up short. "If it's something that should be added into our curriculum, then we'll consider it," said Dennis Holt, the county's supervisor of secondary social studies.

Beginning the process of a more open and inclusive dialogue about the Holocaust represents progress to some in the Polish Catholic community, even if they reach only one person at a time.

"The Jewish community as a whole deserves a lot of credit for the fact that they have established a lot of Holocaust museums around the country," said West, the leader of the local Polish culture institute. "But they're emphasizing their suffering. ... We're just trying to place the emphasis on the fact that other people perished. We want them to know the full story."

Sherri Day can be reached at 813-226-3405 or [e-mail].

[uncltim]

German Catholics used forced labor in Nazi era
Nearly 6,000 workers exploited during World War II, new church report says

updated 11:42 a.m. ET, Tues., April. 8, 2008

BERLIN - Germany's Roman Catholic Church exploited nearly 6,000 forced laborers in the Nazi era, it said in a report Tuesday detailing a dark chapter in its history.

The church had in 2000 acknowledged its use of forced labor under Hitler and has paid 1.5 million euros in compensation to foreign workers, but the report "Forced Labor and the Catholic Church 1939-1945" is the most thorough look at the issue so far.

The 703-page official report documents the fate of 1,075 prisoners of war and 4,829 civilians who were forced to work for the Nazis in nearly 800 Catholic institutions — mainly hospitals, homes and monastery gardens to boost the war effort.

The church, which has financed over 200 "reconciliation" projects, said final numbers will never be known.

"It should not be concealed that the Catholic Church was blind for too long to the fate and suffering of men, women and children from the whole of Europe who were carted off to Germany as forced laborers," Karl Lehmann, the country's top Catholic prelate until mid-February, said at the book's presentation.

Catholics and Protestants were subject to oppression under the Nazis but aside from some notable figures from both churches who voiced opposition, they broadly went along with the regime.

Hitler's feared SS expropriated more than 300 monasteries and Catholic institutions between 1940 and 1942 and thousands of Catholics were sent to concentration camps, said Karl-Joseph Hummel, co-author of the book.

He told a televised news conference in the western city of Mainz the term "cooperative antagonism" summed up the church's strategy at the time.

The report said a large proportion of the workers — mostly from Poland, Ukraine and the then-Soviet Union — were forced to help the Nazi war effort in military hospitals which would not have kept going without their labor.

Millions toiled
Forced labor was an important tool for the Nazi regime during World War II.

Nazis shipped millions of people from conquered territories, especially in Eastern Europe, to toil for the war economy in poor conditions. Toward the end of the war, forced labor is estimated to have made up about a quarter of the work force.

Lehmann noted that the number of forced laborers for the church was a fraction of the estimated total of 13 million victims compelled to work for the Nazis.

And the conditions were not as bad as at some other organizations, noted Hummel. A program of "annihilation through work", for example, was not used, he said.

The revelations from the Catholic Church are the latest in a series of reports commissioned by firms, including Deutsche Bank, Volkswagen and Siemens, to expose their past.

The Protestant Church, roughly equal in size to the Catholic Church, has also acknowledged it used forced labor.

However, the church stressed that the new book did not draw a line under the grim period.

"This documentation, which scientifically works through this forgotten chapter of church history ... can and should not be understood as a final balance sheet," Lehmann said.