Salomon Morel
Encyclopedia

Salomon Morel was a Polish
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...

 Communist official and an accused war criminal. After the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he became the commander of the infamous Zgoda labour camp
Zgoda labour camp
The Zgoda labour camp was a concentration camp for Germans, Silesians and Poles, set up in 1945 by the Soviet NKVD in Świętochłowice, Silesia. It was controlled by the communist secret police until its closure by the Stalinist authorities of Poland in November of the same year.Between 1943 and...

. During the rule of the Polish United Workers' Party
Polish United Workers' Party
The Polish United Workers' Party was the Communist party which governed the People's Republic of Poland from 1948 to 1989. Ideologically it was based on the theories of Marxism-Leninism.- The Party's Program and Goals :...

, Morel rose to the rank of colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...

 in the political police, or MBP and commanded a prison in Katowice
Katowice
Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Kłodnica and Rawa rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about north of the Silesian Beskids and about southeast of the Sudetes Mountains.It is the central district of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, with a population of 2...

.

In 1994, soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...

, Morel was indicted by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation. It specialises in the legal and historical sciences and...

 for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the "revenge killings" of 1,500 ethnic German prisoners. After his case was publicized by the Polish, German, British, and American media, Morel fled to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 and was granted citizenship under the Law of Return
Law of Return
The Law of Return is Israeli legislation, passed on 5 July 1950, that gives Jews the right of return and settlement in Israel and gain citizenship...

. Poland twice requested his extradition
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...

, but Israel refused to comply, citing a lack of evidence.

Youth

Salomon Morel was born on November 15, 1919 in the village of Garbów
Garbów
Garbów is a village in Lublin County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Garbów. It lies approximately north-west of the regional capital Lublin. The village has a population of approximately 2,000...

 near Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...

, Poland, the son of a Jewish baker. During the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

, the family business began to falter. Therefore, Morel moved to Łódź where he worked as a sales clerk, but returned to Garbów following the outbreak of war in September 1939.

World War II

Morel's family went into hiding during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 in order to avoid being placed in the ghetto
Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
This article presents a list of locations where the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland were established during World War II. The ghetto system had been imposed by Nazi Germany roughly between October 1939 and July 1942 in order to confine Poland's Jewish population of 3.5 million for the...

. According to his own story of courage in the face of German occupation
Occupation of Poland
Occupation of Poland may refer to:* Partitions of Poland * The German Government General of Warsaw and the Austrian Military Government of Lublin during World War I* Occupation of Poland during World War II...

 – that was told by Solomon Morel himself while in Israel ("mandolin with him... In his other fist was his Mauser") – Morel's mother, father and one brother were killed by Polish collaborators during Christmas of 1942. Solomon Morel and his brother Izaak survived the Holocaust hidden by Józef Tkaczyk, a Polish Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

. In 1983, Józef Tkaczyk was designated as one of the Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....

 by Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....

 for saving the Morel brothers.

There are somewhat divergent Polish accounts of Morel's wartime activities however. According to the Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation. It specialises in the legal and historical sciences and...

, at the beginning of 1942 Salomon Morel and his brother Izaak organised a criminal band to commit robberies in the surrounding villages. Their criminal activity ended when during one of their robberies they were captured by members of the Polish People's Army
Armia Ludowa
Armia Ludowa was a communist partisan force set up by the Polish Workers' Party during World War II. Its aims were to support the military of the Soviet Union against German forces and aid the creation of a pro-Soviet communist government in Poland...

. To avoid punishment Morel placed the blame on his brother, and then joined the Soviet partisans
Soviet partisans
The Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....

 in the Parczew
Parczew
Parczew is a town in eastern Poland, with a population of 10,281 . Situated in the Lublin Voivodeship , previously in Biała Podlaska Voivodeship . It is the capital of Parczew County.-History:...

 area (see also Parczew partisans
Parczew partisans
The area including Parczew and Włodawa counties near Lublin in the General Government became one of the primary battlefields of the Jewish partisan movement. An area of forests and lakes, with few passable roads, the Parczew forest was an ideal location for partisan activity. Notable partisan...

), where he worked as a janitor and a guide through the forests. His two brothers died during the war, one in 1943, another in 1945.

The Israeli mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...

 and government presented yet a different version of his life. The Israeli letter rejecting extradition states that Morel joined the partisans of the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 in 1942, and was in the forests when his parents, sister-in-law, and one brother were allegedly killed by Polish Blue Police
Blue Police
The Blue Police, more correctly translated as The Navy-Blue Police was the popular name of the collaborationist police in the German occupied area of the Second Polish Republic, known as General Government during the Second World War...

. According to a number of media sources, Morel claimed that he was at one point an inmate in Auschwitz and over thirty of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust.

As the Eastern Front advanced, Morel and other communist partisans came out of hiding. In the summer of 1944, Morel organized the Citizen Militia in Lublin. Later, he became a prison commander at the Lublin Castle
Lublin Castle
The Lublin Castle is a medieval castle situated in Lublin, Poland, adjacent to the Old Town district and close to the city center. It is one of the oldest preseved Royal residencies in Poland, established by king Casimir II the Just.-History:...

, where many soldiers of the anti-communist Armia Krajowa
Armia Krajowa
The Armia Krajowa , or Home Army, was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...

 (Home Army) were imprisoned and tortured.

Zgoda labour camp

On March 15, 1945, Morel became the commander of the infamous Zgoda camp in Świętochłowice. The Zgoda camp was set up by the Soviet political police, or NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

, after the Soviet Army
Soviet Army
The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...

 entered southern Poland. In February 1945 the camp was handed over to the Communist Polish secret service, the notorious Urząd Bezpieczeństwa. Most of prisoners in the camp were Silesians
Silesians
Silesians , are the inhabitants of Silesia in Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic. A small diaspora community also exists in Karnes County, Texas in the USA....

 and German citizens, while a small part were also people from "central Poland", and about 38 foreigners.

Sometimes children were sent to the camp along with parents. Prisoners were not accused of any crime, but were sent by decision of Security Authorities. Authorities tried to convince society that prisoners were only ethnic Germans and former Nazi war criminals and collaborators. It is estimated that close to 2,000 inmates died in the camp where torture and abuse of prisoners were chronic and rampant. The camp was closed in November 1945.

Post-1945 career

Morel continued his career in the prison services, reaching the rank of a colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...

 as the head of prison in Katowice
Katowice
Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Kłodnica and Rawa rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about north of the Silesian Beskids and about southeast of the Sudetes Mountains.It is the central district of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, with a population of 2...

 in 1968. In 1964 he defended his Master's Degree on "The prisoners' labor and its value" at Wrocław University's Law School. Over the course of his career, the communist government awarded him the Cavalry Cross of the Polonia Restituta
Polonia Restituta
The Order of Polonia Restituta is one of Poland's highest Orders. The Order can be conferred for outstanding achievements in the fields of education, science, sport, culture, art, economics, defense of the country, social work, civil service, or for furthering good relations between countries...

 and the Golden Cross of Merit. In 1990, after the fall of communism, the General Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation, precursor to the Institute of National Remembrance, started investigating the abuses carried out at the Zgoda camp. In 1992, Morel immigrated to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

.

Extradition controversy

In 1998, Poland requested that Morel be extradited for trial, but Israel refused. A reply sent to the Polish Justice Ministry from the Israeli government said that Israel would not extradite Mr. Morel as the statute of limitations
Statute of limitations
A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...

 had expired on war crimes.

In April 2004, Poland filed another extradition request against Morel, this time with fresh evidence, upgrading the case to "communist crime
Communist crime
Communist crimes , is a legal definition used notably in Polish criminal law. The concept is also used more broadly internationally, and is employed by human rights NGOs as well as government agencies such as the Foundation for the Investigation of Communist Crimes, the Institute for Information on...

s against the population." The main charge against Salomon Morel was that, as commandant of the Zgoda camp at Świętochłowice, he created for the prisoners in this camp, out of ethnic and political considerations, conditions that jeopardised their lives, including starvation and torture. The charges against Morel were based primarily on the evidence of over 100 witnesses, including 58 former inmates of the Zgoda camp. In July 2005 this request was again formally refused by the Israeli government. The response rejected the more serious charges as being false, potentially part of an antisemitic conspiracy, and again rejected extradition on the grounds that the statute of limitations against Morel had run out, and that Morel was in poor health. Ewa Koj, a prosecutor with the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, criticized the decision, but the Polish Foreign Ministry decided not to press the matter further. Morel died in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

 on February 14, 2007.

See also

  • Czesław Gęborski
  • Helena Wolińska-Brus
    Helena Wolinska-Brus
    Lt. Col. Helena Wolińska-Brus born Fajga Mindla Danielak, was a military prosecutor in Poland with the rank of lieutenant-colonel , involved in Stalinist regime show trials of the 1950s. She has been implicated in the arrest and execution of many Polish anti-Nazi resistance fighters including key...

  • Nachman Dushanski
    Nachman Dushanski
    Nachman Dushanski was an officer of Soviet security agencies in the Lithuanian SSR for over thirty years. He was heavily involved in suppression of the Lithuanian partisans, who fought against Soviet occupation of Lithuania...

    , Lithuanian SSR
    Lithuanian SSR
    The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Lithuanian SSR, was one of the republics that made up the former Soviet Union...

  • John Sack
    John Sack
    John Sack was an American literary journalist and war correspondent. He was the only journalist to cover each American war over half a century.-Biography:...

    , An Eye for an Eye: The Story of Jews Who Sought Revenge for the Holocaust

External links


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