Protest!

In the Warsaw Ghetto, behind the wall cutting it off from the world, several hundred thousand condemned await death. There is no hope of rescue for them, no help arrives from anywhere. Executioners run through the streets, shooting at anyone who dares to leave their home. They shoot likewise at anyone standing in a window. Unburied corpses lie scattered on the roadway.

The daily prescribed quota of victims is 8,000–10,000. Jewish policemen are required to deliver them into the hands of the German executioners. If they do not do so, they will die themselves. Children unable to walk on their own are loaded onto wagons. The loading is done so brutally that few reach the loading ramp alive. Mothers watching this go mad. The number of those driven insane by despair and horror equals the number of those shot.

Railway cars wait at the ramp. The executioners cram the condemned 150 people to a car. On the floor lies a thick layer of lime and chlorine doused with water. The wagon doors are sealed. Sometimes the train leaves immediately after loading, sometimes it stands on a siding for a day, two... It no longer matters to anyone. Of people crowded so tightly that the dead cannot fall and remain standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the living, of people dying slowly in lime and chlorine fumes, deprived of air, a drop of water, food — no one will survive anyway. Wherever and whenever these death trains arrive — they will contain only corpses...

In the face of such agony, a swift death would be a liberation. The executioners foresaw this. All pharmacies in the ghetto were closed so they could not supply poison. There are no weapons. The only thing left is to leap from a window onto the pavement. Thus, very many of the condemned escape their tormentors this way.

The very same thing happening in the Warsaw Ghetto has been going on for six months in a hundred smaller and larger Polish towns and cities. The total number of slaughtered Jews already exceeds one million, and this figure grows daily. Everyone is dying. The rich and the poor, the old, women, men, youth, infants, Catholics dying with the names of Jesus and Mary on their lips, as well as followers of the Old Covenant. All are guilty only of being born into the Jewish nation, condemned to extermination by Hitler.

The world looks upon this crime, more hideous than anything history has ever seen — and remains silent. The slaughter of millions of defenceless people takes place in an ominous, universal silence. The executioners are silent; they do not boast of what they do. Neither England nor America speaks up; even influential international Jewry remains silent, once so sensitive to any injury done to its own. Poles are silent too. Polish political friends of the Jews limit themselves to short press items; Polish opponents profess complete disinterest in a matter foreign to them. The dying Jews are surrounded only by Pilates washing their hands.

This silence can no longer be tolerated. Whatever its motives, it is vile. In the face of crime, one must not remain passive. Whoever is silent before murder becomes an accomplice to the murderer. He who does not condemn condones.

Therefore we speak out: we, Polish Catholics. Our feelings toward the Jews have not changed. We do not cease to view them as political, economic, and ideological enemies of Poland. Furthermore, we realize that they hate us more than they hate Germans, and hold us responsible for their misfortune. Why, on what grounds, remains a mystery of the Jewish soul; nevertheless, it is an ever-confirmed fact. Awareness of these feelings, however, does not release us from the duty of condemning this crime.

We do not want to be Pilates. We have no means to actively counter German murders; we can do nothing, save no one – yet we protest from the depths of our hearts, struck with pity, indignation, and horror. This protest is demanded of us by God, a God who commanded: Thou shalt not kill.

It is demanded by Christian conscience. Every being in the human race has the right to be loved by his fellow man. The blood of the defenceless cries to heaven for revenge. Whoever does not support this protest with us is not a Catholic.

We protest simultaneously as Poles. We do not believe Poland can derive any benefit from German atrocities. On the contrary. In the persistent silence of international Jewry, in the maneuvers of German propaganda already seeking to shift the odium for the slaughter onto Lithuanians and... Poles, we sense the orchestration of hostile moves against us. We know too how toxic the seeds of crime can be. The forced witnessing by the Polish nation of this bloody spectacle taking place across Polish lands may easily cultivate indifference to cruelty, sadism, and above all the sinister conviction that one may murder fellow human beings with impunity.

Whoever does not understand this, whoever dares to link the proud, free future of Poland with base joy over the plight of one's neighbour — is therefore neither a Catholic, nor a Pole!