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Postscript by The Scriptorium:
65 Years Later
"But I already know today exactly what the other nations will say to all of
this:...What else could the poor Poles do but get rid of [the German minority] as
quickly as
possible - seeing as now they were being attacked not only from the front, but
also from within! The fact that their anger at
this treacherous attack led to some excesses, well, who could possibly blame
them for that..."
That was what Dr. Kohnert predicted in September 1939 (Chapter 13). And how did reality turn out?
The following article from February 3, 2003, published in a prestigious
mainstream German news periodical, gives a glimpse:
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Poland
Compensation
for Death Sentences?
The Federal Republic of Germany is facing a new wave of demands for compensation
for Nazi crimes - this time from Poland. Before the
Wehrmacht marched in to the city of Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) in September 1939,
the city had been the scene of attacks by Poles on members of the German
minority
(in Nazi-speak: "Bloody Sunday of Bromberg"). After the occupation, Nazi
judges quickly passed several hundred death sentences, which were usually
carried out immediately. Surviving
family members now hope to achieve the legal vindication of those who were
executed. "The sentences were passed in a perversion of justice and must be
rescinded," says Cologne attorney Andrzej Remin. German
authorities had paid up to 10,000 Marks compensation in a similar case two
years ago. The money went to the surviving family members of the defenders of
the Polish Mail of Danzig who had been sentenced to death by National Socialist
courts and for whom Günter Grass created a literary monument in his
book The Tin Drum.
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Any further comments would be superfluous here.
Scriptorium, September 2004.
  
Death in Poland
The Fate of the Ethnic Germans
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