Why I Focus on the Villains, Not Just the Heroes

Polish history is filled with incredible bravery, from the Home Army fighting off the Blitzkrieg in 1939, to the underground sabotaging the German war machine for six brutal years of occupation, to the civilians who fought against impossible odds in the Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and City Uprising of 1944, to people who survived the worst massacres in WWII such as Wola in Warsaw and Khatyn in Belarus, to men like Witold Pilecki who dedicated his life to the freedom of Poland and the Polish people. 

But in the shadows of these heroes were the monsters. The devils in human form. Men in SS uniforms, police insignia, and collaborators’ armbands who turned entire neighborhoods, villages, and even cities into killing fields.

This is where my focus lies as a guide, a researcher, a vagabonder and a storyteller. To tell the story of the butchers of Wola, the hunters of Belarusian and Polish partisans, the looters and rapists of Ochota, and the commanders who left Warsaw burning. Men of the SS so vicious they were despised even by other SS and Wehrmacht units, their reputations whispered as warnings to even the most hardened soldiers.

Most history tours want to give you a hero story with a neat ending...

But this is not the case in Eastern Europe, This is a story of suffering, brutality, and betrayal. Everyone talks about the heroes, I choose to tell you about the men who stood against them. The men who often escaped justice, like Mengele, Bach-Zelewski, Himmler, Reinefarth, and many more. My tours will tell you about these “men” and their units; the Dirlewanger Brigade, SS RONA, Kampfgruppe Reinefarth, the most feared killers of the war and their exploits in Eastern Poland, Belarus, Slovakia, and Warsaw. 

Because without knowing who the monsters were, we can never fully understand what the victims endured. Or what Warsaw, and Poland, survived. This is why I walk these streets, telling the stories of the men and units who tried to erase Warsaw from the earth, so their crimes and the voices of those they silenced, are never forgotten.