"I could not, of course, eliminate all lice or all Jews in only a year, but in the course of time this will be attained."

If I were to come to the Fuhrer and say, "My Fuhrer, I have to report that I have annihilated another 150,000 Poles," he would reply, "Magnificent!"

"What are we to do with the Jews?" Do you think that we shall settle them in Ostland? Why all the prattle? In short, liquidate them by your own means. We must take steps to exterminate them.

"We have indulged in the most horrible utterances - my own diary bears witness to me...a thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased."

He called himself Der Reichsleiter. His official pronouncements and the abominations which were written in his own hand and kept in a leather-bound diary mark him as history's greatest criminal. He was the very soul and spirit of the monster that was Nazi Germany. His name was Hans Frank. And every drop of blood which was shed by a Pole during the German occupation can be found staining his hands.

It is significant that when he was brought to judgment, those who listened to the statistics of his outrages could not grasp their full meaning. Only when testimony is reduced to individual experiences of individual survivors of the Polish Holocaust did the stench of death and the cries of the tortured echo in the consciousness of those who heard their tales. Still no tribunal could have heard all those who could have testified.

This is the story of Krana Jankowski, a beautiful young blonde woman. She tells her story in a mater-of-fact, underplayed manner which is typical of those who have suffered so much that they need no false dramatics or wildly purple prose to relive their experiences. In the starkly graphic manner of her narration is the ultimate in horror:

The Nazis came to her land in September of 1939. At the time she was preparing to return to the University of Krakow for the fall term. But right from the start it was obvious that the Germans had a special treatment planned for her. The Germans even gave it a name - Ausserordentliche Befriedigungs Aktion. Translated to English this means Extraordinary Action of Pacification. It became known as Action A-B. Krana did not comprehend its full terror at first. That came to her gradually.

One day in September she went to her druggist. The windows of his store had been shattered. There was broken glass all over the pavement. Obscenities had been scrawled across the wall of his store in yellow paint. The druggist's seven year old son stood in the doorway of the wrecked store. He stared into the street with large unblinking eyes.

"Your father?" she asked. "Where is your papa?" The boy stood mute. "Your mama. Go get your mama. Tell her I want to help." Krana exclaimed. Silently the boy motioned the young woman to enter the store. Inside the smashed room it smelled of urine. Everything had been battered to pieces. As her eyes adjusted to darkness she saw a slim foot protruding from behind the counter. She felt like she was experiencing a nightmare, while being wide awake.

Krana had seen dead people before. They had been in the cathedral where the embalmer had done his work. She was not prepared for what she saw when she made her way behind the counter.

The dead woman was naked except for her skirt which had been pulled up over her face. Her hands were bound behind her back. Her thighs were spread wide where purplish marks showed where the Germans had used their cigarettes. More burn marks traversed her exposed breasts and belly. Rigormortis had already set in freezing the woman's brutalized body into a grotesque position.

Krana choked back her anguish as she reached for the woman's skirt and pulled it down to cover her shame. A red mass dropped out of the skirt's folds. Coagulated blood covered its roots. Even as she lifted it off the floor Krana knew it was the dead woman's tongue. The Nazis had ripped it from her living throat. Instinctively Krana gathered the little boy to her breast, hiding his eyes from the site of his mutilated mother. Together they staggered into the open air.

For three weeks she hid the child in her basement. She was afraid to confide her secret to anyone. To Poland's everlasting shame not all Poles were anti-Nazi. Already some of them were banding together in violent anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic N.S.Z. More than willingly they collaborated with the Germans in Action A-B.

One day while Krana was in the streets foraging for food, a man approached her. He shoved a crumpled piece of paper into her hand and then ran off. She waited until she returned home before looking to see what the paper contained. It read: "The child's father has escaped from the Nazis. He is hiding in the Ponar Forest. Tonight I will come to collect the boy and lead him to safety through enemy lines." The note was signed Stephan Lasko, Armea Ludowa.

Momentarily gripped by panic Krana wondered how she and the child had been betrayed. Her first inclination was to flee with the boy, but where could she go? Who could she trust? The one reassuring portion of the note had been the notation Armea Ludowa. She knew that this named underground organization was one that could be trusted. Perhaps, she felt, it would be alright after all.

Near midnight that same evening she heard a soft knocking at her door. Breathlessly she opened the door, still not knowing for sure that she had not been betrayed. The man she had seen earlier brushed past her into the room. He whirled and stood poised to dart away if needed. His face was thin. There was a strong quality to it, an alertness in his eyes told her she had nothing to fear.

Krana stood, backed against the door, her heat beating rapidly in her breast. The man, Stephan studied her closely. "How do you come to know of the child?" she whispered.

"We have ways of finding things out." His voice was deep and low. It gave off sparks of self assurance. "You are a brave girl. Poland has need for brave men and women," he said. Reaching for her face Stephan's hard and calloused hand gently caressed her cheek.

"When will you go?"

"Tonight. I have a truck waiting."

"Will the child be all right?"

"Who can say? He will be safe for the moment. If fate is kind he may grow to be a man."

"And you?"

"I will come back to Warsaw. There is much work to be done here."

Strongly taken by Stephan's strong continence the girl found herself amazed by her next question which sprang unchecked from her trembling lips. "Will I see you again?"

Stephan's thin lips parted in a smile that showed his even white teeth. "When I get back we will talk more."

That was the beginning of Krana's association with Armea Ludowa. Three days later Stephan returned to visit her again. He carried good news, the boy and his father had been reunited in a dense portion of the Ponar woods. All of the emotions had been bottled up with her since the day she had stumped into the druggist's shop suddenly came seething forth. She fell to her knees sobbing her relief. For long minutes she was unaware of Stephan's strong hands on her shoulders...

At this point in the story the action described closely resembles what you might expect to find in a woman's romance novel. Not the sort of fare you expect to find in a 1960's era Men's Pulp. (Interestingly the hero's name, Stephan, is changed during parts of this segment indicating perhaps that it may well have been plagiarized from that same romance novel.) I will spare you that portion of the tale and pick up the story again later when your interest may be more effectively spiked.

Krana's work with Armea Ludowa carried her time and again into the heart of the ghettos the Nazis had set up for Jewish people of Warsaw. She found herself many times leading groups of mute, terrified children through the rat infested sewer system to the safety of a waiting lorry. She would put a pistol under her clothing as she made repeated journeys into the ghetto, sneaking the weapons past the Nazi guards. It would give her a sense of pride. She knew she was helping a gallant people prepare to fight their terminators to the death. No matter how many times Hans Frank's goons drove innocent Jews into the night with their whips and truncheons, they would not be able to snuff out the flame of freedom and courage that burned within the hearts of all who resisted them.

How soul shattering it was for her to witness Frank's goons doing their evil work. She recalled one instance where a young girl, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, was dragged from her home. A group of drunken Nazis surrounded her. They spat in her face and besmirched her clothing in the foulest ways. While people on the street were forced to watch, the girl was stripped of her clothing. She was ordered to lay in the gutter. When she didn't move quickly enough to satisfy the Nazis, they beat her with their fists until she sank to her knees and rolled over onto her back.

Then two of them held her arms pinned against the cobblestones while the others waited in line to rape her. The girl never uttered a sound. She was rolled from side to side and blood gushed from her nose where it had been smashed. But she never said a word. Even when they bound her arms behind her and strung her up by her ankles from a street light, she did not whimper. Even when their whips began flaying the living flesh from her back, she did not plead. Her life's blood splashed to the pavement below sounding like the pelting of a rain shower. Her body jerked spasmodically causing the rope which held her to quiver. Yet she made no sound. She died with a dignity that mocked her killers.

That was the type of courage we needed. The courage which allowed us to stand and do nothing when to have fought would have been a hopeless expression of false heroics.

For the most part Krana and the other members of Armea Ludowa were like machines. They moved through the city under cover of night. Always it was the same. A young mother pressing an infant into the arms of an Armea Ludowa collaborator, staring at its tiny head for a moment before turning away, too filled with emotion to weep. Or a man testing the contraband weapon smuggled in to him, sighting down its well worn barrel, nodding in satisfaction with the weapon and stuffing it under his shirt.

But for Krana, destiny was working against her. She was not working for Armea Ludowa at the time it happened. She was on a street that had been suddenly cordoned off by the Nazis during one of their lightning raids. Dozens of German soldiers came marching towards the center of the street. Their rifles were slung over their shoulders. Above their coal shuttle helmets attached bayonets glinted in the afternoon sun. Some of the soldiers held back huge lunging Dobermans on heavy leashes.

Suddenly a heavy hand fell on her shoulder propelling her forward. She twisted her head around to find a helmeted Nazi grinning at her.

"Move!" he shouted, "Quickly or you'll feel my bayonet making love to you!"

The German blasted his knee into the girl's back sending shockwaves all the way to her toes. "Clasp the hands behind your neck! Move! Schnell!"

When Krana did not move quickly enough the German stepped back and slammed his short whip across her hips. The pain of the whip strike felt like the heat from a burning brand penetrating her shirt and panties.. Her body reacted to the pain twisting to one side only to open the front of her body to the wrath of the Nazi. Sweat clouded her vision as the whip struck again. This time it ripped across the front of her blouse. Blood tricked down between her full breasts.

There was commotion all around. She ran at full speed before the Nazis. Around her other women and girls were being herded toward a waiting truck. One man, obviously the father of one of the girls, tried to step between his daughter and the Nazi who'd seized her. A muzzle flashed from a Nazi's gun and the man clutched at his belly while screaming and trying to keep his intestines from leaking out. He sank slowly to the pavement. As the Nazis passed by the man, they stomped his face into a jelly-like mass of broken bone, mucous and blood.

When Krana reached the truck she was ordered to climb onto the high tail board. The Nazis whipped her repeatedly across her hips and lower back as she tried to climb into the truck. She was blind with pain and terror. Other girls clawed at her in their haste to get into the safety of the truck. She found herself pressed down beneath the struggling women, her face and body pressed down against the foul smelling floor boards. Then there was a grinding of gears and the vehicle started to move, bouncing harshly over the cobblestone street.

Several minutes later the truck stopped in front of the door of a large house. The high tailgate was lowered and the captive girls were told to jump down from the truck. For the first time Krana got a chance to look at her assemblage. All of the girls were young, a few were as young as sixteen, while most appeared to be their early twenties. All of the captives were remarkably beautiful.

Twelve or thirteen girls were taken into the main holding area where they were lined up with their backs against the wall. Several minutes later a group of high-ranking Nazi officers swaggered into the room. They had been drinking. Their uniforms were in disarray. One of them was boasting to the others. "I did it!" he shouted over their derisive laughter. "At Janow. If you don't believe me, you can ask Wilhaus."

"Five Thousand Reichmarks says you can't do it again with one blow."

"You're on!"

"Take your pick."

The boasting officer moved down the line of cowering girls. He stopped for a moment in front of Krana. His eyes roved over her curvaceous body, seeming to strip every shred of clothing from her. Then he moved on and selected a tall, slim blonde who stood two places away.

"You!" he shouted, his saliva bathing her. "Remove your clothing. All of it. Schnell!"

Whimpering in terror, the girl began to undress. The Nazis surrounded her, hurling the vilest obscenities at her. When she was finally naked, she was kicked and prodded into the middle of the room and forced to kneel before the men. Then her hands were tied behind her and bound to her ankles.

A huge axe was brought in - the kind used in felling trees. At the sight of it, the girl began screaming. She hurled herself ineffectively against the ropes that held her.

"Quiet, you bitch!" the boaster ranted. "Get on with it!"

Before the captive's horror-struck eyes, the Nazi who had made the bet lifted the heavy axe. It came down in a tight arc. At the last possible instant, the girl fell over onto her side. The blade missed its mark and imbedded itself in the soft flesh of her thigh. Her scream was frightful to hear.

Enraged at having lost his bet, The Nazi stood over the defenseless girl, flailing away at her with the axe. Her blood splattered against the walls of the room. After inflicting several gruesome wounds into the girl's soft body the Nazi finally succeeded in cutting off her head. He took the severed head and hurled it at one of his taunting cronies. Then he grabbed a petite long tressed brunette and dragged her from the room by the hair.

All of the atrocities that occurred in that house cannot be described. They were overtly vile and repugnant. Krana was strung up from a chandelier by her thumbs and whipped mercilessly until she finally lost consciousness. When she regained her senses she was made to partake in the most hideous aberrations a woman can endure. All the while the shrieks and moans of the girls who were tortured to death around her. The drunken Nazis were very through in "Cleansing the world of Polish offal."

Three day later a squad of German soldiers in full battle dress assembled in the courtyard of the house. The few remaining girls still alive were brought out. Their hands were tightly bound behind their backs while they were paraded through the streets of Warsaw to the marshaling yards. There the girls were joined by more captured women who were prodded at bayonet point aboard a boxcar for "shipment west."

For several day Krana remained locked in an air-tight car almost suffocated by the stench of human excrement. Without food or water and unable to sit of lay down she somehow survived. Before reaching her appointment with the death camp her train was attacked by members of Armea Ludowa who blow up the tracks to stop the train. The force of the blast lifted the railcar from the track and tossed it into the air. There followed a screeching of steel and shrieks of the terrified women. Krana was pulled from the tangled wreckage by one of the Polish attackers and led away to safety. She was one of very few who survived to tell their story.