#i sent my parents the doc im writing all these essay questions on

[bananasofthorns]

scholarship applications go to hell and DIE challenge

[wexhappyxfew]

hello!! happy trivia thursday, and happy landslide eve 🙇‍♀️✨💗 (who knows if this’ll be my only q tehe)

what’s been the most interesting/your most favorite thing you’ve learned about the polish resistance, polish history, or anything new while doing the research for landslide? and what’s something you wish more people knew about poland/the resistance during ww2? (if you have one!)

CATHERINE!!! AHHH HI QUEEN!! happy trivia thursday my friend and AHHH YES!!! happy landslide eve!! (and omg don’t worry i’ll be here to answer how ever many u send <3) and I PROMISE IM GETTING BACK TO YOUR MESSAGE TONIGHT!!! LOL!! 

and omg this question!! there’s so so many different things that i’ve learned within my time for research done prior to landslide i don’t even know where to start, but there’s one thing that has stuck in my mind ever since researching it that i found absolutely fascinating and was highly inspiring when writing!!

During the Second World War, the Polish Resistance was the largest underground resistance movement in ALL of Occupied-Europe. And MAN YOU SHOULDVE SEEN MY FACE. When I first read that I was so surprised and immediately fascinating! I knew I had to take that somewhere. The most fascinating aspect of what they did during their time, was that they were most notable for saving more Jewish lives in the Holocaust than any other Western-Allied organization or government. Those two simple facts drew me in and immediately made me entirely fascinated with each aspect of the Polish side of the war and ready to write a story for them. I could go on, but that would require essays at this point LOL 

Something I wish people knew more about Poland and their Resistance and what happened to them when they were initially invaded on September 1st, 1939 was something I heavily include in Landslide. Natia’s parents are Cultural Elites - the main topic I really want to discuss and I feel more people should know more about it. 

I’m going to put a cut here for this LOL it’s my summary of notes from one of my docs for the cultural elites :) 

CULTURAL ELITES - Poland WW2: known as the Polish Intelligentsia, Nazis began exterminating them by way of the military operations of the Special Prosecution Book-Poland, the German AB-Aktoin in Poland and the Intelligenzaktion, and the Intelligenzaktion Pommern. The Soviet union executed the Katyn massacre of 1940 during which university professors, physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers and journalists were murdered - it was to eliminate any possible resistance leader - because these were the most likely to form resistance groups and to stop the spread of culture (the culture of the Polish).

Special Prosecution Book-Poland: German (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polem) was the proscription list prepared by the Germans immediately before the onset of war (2 years), that identified more than 61,000 members of the polish elites: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, actors, former officers, and prominent others, who were to be interned or shot on the spot upon their identifications following the invasion. This was being secretly prepared nearly 2 years before the invasion compiled by the Zentralstelle IIP Polen or the Central Unit IIP-Poland unit of the Gestapo with help from some members of the German minority living in pre-war Poland. This unit was created by Reinhard Heydrich in order to coordinate the ethnic cleansing of all Poles in Operation Tannenberg.

German AB-Aktion in Poland: was a second stage of the Nazi German campaign of violence during WW2 to eliminate the intellectuals and the upper classes of the Second Polish Republic across the territories slated for eventual annexation. Most common was ‘forced disappearance’ but many were sent to concentration camps if not killed. 

Intelligenzaktion: or Intellgenstia mass shootings, was a, not always, secret mass murder conducted by Nazi Germany against the Polish Intelligentsia (teachers, priests, physicians, et al) The Operations were conducted to realize the Germanization of the western regions of occupied Poland before territorial annexation of the German Reich. September 9th, 1939 - 6 bodies were left out after a mass killing for 6 hours to terrorize the citizens. Operation Tannenberg was the anti-Polish extinction memento. 

Intelligenzaktion Pommern: was a Nazi German operation aimed at the eradication of the Polish Intelligentsia in Pomeranion Voviodeship and the surrounding areas at the beginning of WW2. Part of the larger genocidal Intelligenzaktion. It was pruposed to install Nazi officals from Sipo, Kripo, Gestapo and SD at the helm of a new administration machine. (my parents are in their final resting place with a hundred others in the middle of nowhere - that is no way to end a good life like their own) It was on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler, then carried out by Reinhard Heydrich bureau of Referat Tannenberg along with Heinrich Himmler’s SS-RSHA (Main Security Office).

Intelligentsia: is a status class of educated people engaged in the complex mental labors that critique, guide and lead in shaping culture and poltics of their society. As a statues class, the intelligentsia includes artists, teachers and academics, writers and the literary hommes de lettres. Individual members of the intelligentsia are known as intellectuals. This status of class arose int he late 18th century in Russian-controlled Poland during the age of the Partitions (1772-95). 

In the 19th century, the Polish Intellectual Bronislaw Trentowski coined the term intelligentcja (intellectuals) to identify and describe the educated and professionally active social stratum of the patriotic bourgeoisie who could be the cultural leaders of Poland, then under the authoritarian regime of Russian Tsarist autocracy, from the late 18th century to the early 20th century. This was part of the reason Nazis did what they did to exterminate the culture and spread of the Polish culture. In Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) the term intelligentsia described the status of class of educated people whose cultural capital (schooling, education, enlightenment - this is why Natia says she WAS happy, but now isnt - it was taken from her) allowed them to assume practical political leadership. In practice, the statues and social function of the intelligentsia varied by society. 

I hope this was a good enough answer for you!! The second I saw that second part I got so excited to share these notes with you!! But just to clarify - Natia’s parents are both Cultural Elites and because of the events above were eventually killed for these reasons (something I enjoyed intertwining with history and fiction) and Natia will mention quite a few times. I LOVED THESE QUESTIONS THANK YOU CATH!! <3