So far you thought that the Germans were taking Poles to forced labor and harnessing them to slave labor? It's one big lie! A Swedish SS man convinces readers of his memoirs that in fact the Nazis gave primitive Slavs a good job, taught them how to use soap, fed them well, and even organized performances and cabarets for them in their native languages. A real idyll!
Erik Wallin - Swedish volunteer serving in the Waffen-SS - even after the end of the war and the final defeat of Nazism, he did not say goodbye to his ideals. Years later, with the help of another SS man, Thorolf Hillblad, he decided to write down his memoirs so that everyone could find out how brave the supposedly "best military force since the Spartan Leonidas was" was until the last moments.
The Nazis are marching ... probably to help the Poles!
I will not speak of courage (probably many SS brawlers did not lack it, at least as long as they beat those weaker than themselves), but Wallin's account also contains extremely interesting remarks about Poles. When the SS men from the volunteer division "Nordland" withdrew through Pomerania and Brandenburg towards Berlin, they began to be bothered by night attacks by bands of armed Polish and Russian civilians.
Erik Wallin felt so agitated by their ingratitude that he decided to devote a whole page to "alleged" forced laborers. Without further comment, I invite you to read the stories about the great blessings that befell the Slavic primitives from the German masters:
They were individuals who had been torn from a meager existence in Belarusian and Ukrainian hovels - filthy, smelly, lousy and fleecy mud huts. They were deported to work in the German arms industry. For the first time in their colorless and hopeless existence they were given well-organized workplaces and human living conditions .
Their dirty and fleecy garments have been replaced with clean wetsuits from their host country's already slim stocks, and thanks to their previously unused hot soap showers (...) their lice and fleas gone into oblivion. Now they called themselves sklaven arbeiter, slave laborers, but they were paid, humanly accommodated (...) and fed with local, regional food from collective kitchens, served in clean canteens.
Erik Wallin with a friend on a civilization mission in Poland ...
They had evening performances, theater performances in their native languages, evenings with classical and folk music, and cabaret performances. Gradually, they learned how to use soap and water daily, as well as other basic personal hygiene behaviors. In short, they started living like humans (pp. 106-107) .
One might just wonder:how come none of these civilized Polish (and not only) workers presented the matter in a similar way? How come no one thanked the German gentlemen for making him a man? Maybe it wasn't like that after all?
Source:
The article is based on a memoir by Erik Wallin written by Thorolf Hillblad and entitled: Forsaken Gods. Memoirs of a Swedish volunteer from the 11th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Nordland" (Bellona 2011).
Unfortunately, this undoubtedly interesting historical source appeared in Poland without any preface, footnotes or publisher's comment, which may bring to mind the (unintended?) Promotion of neo-Nazism.