Written between 2012 - 2014. Locked in a drawer until 2021 - dusted, reviewed and submitted to publishers. Sold in 2022. Published in 2025. Released August 5...
"Writing" a novel is, of course, only the final stage. A novel is seeded and germinates, sometimes for years or decades. This was the case with WITHOUT PITY. Growing up in Poland, as I did, one grows up with tales of WW2. It is inevitable in a country that lost 22% of its population due to German invasion and the ensuing 5 1/2 years of atrocities commited under occupation. Had the Nazis got their wish not a single Pole would be left alive.
Adolf Hitler: "Kill without pity or mercy all men, women and childen of the Polish race".
Heinrich Himmler: "All Poles will disappear from the world. ... It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles".
September 1, 1939. Blitzkrieg begins. After staging false-flag events claiming Polish aggression Germany attacks Poland. German tanks roll toward Warsaw. Chivalric Polish cavalry meets them in the plains of swaying wheat. The outcome is inevitable....
The front crumbles across the country. German warplanes bomb civillian targets. Government institutions evacuate and politicians flee eastward. But the mayor of Warsaw vows to fight on...
The edge-of-your-seat evacuation of Poland's gold reserves.
Soviets join the war, attack Poland from the East. Polish armies that retreated eastward from advancing Germans are ordered not to engage the Soviets. Meanwhile the top military command and the government cross the border into Romania, flee the doomed Nation...
Abandoned by Her Western "allies", attacked by neighbors from the West and East, Poland remains standing alone against Her enemies. With the political elites fled abroad, armies in disarray, more and more soldiers decide to cross into Romania in order to reach France where Polish troops are gathering for future war efforts. Warsaw is encircled. Civillians are starving. Harvesting horse meat becomes a common sight...
After the war the government ran a program involving the collection of trauma experienced by the children. Schools across the country asked their pupils to draw their memories of war and occupation. Here is one of thousands of examples, titled WARSAW IS BURNING...
"Warsaw: real hell. ... Our bombs and grenades did their job. No house has survived completely," Josef Goebbels, Die Tagebucher von Josef Goebbels.
"Warsaw makes a gloomy impression. There is not a house that did not suffer. Entire districts are in ruins or only rubble remains. … I'm ashamed to be German," Brigadier General Helmuth Stieff, letter to wife, November 21, 1939.
NEXTVarious posts related to Without Pity, its background and context. Historical events described here might not appear in chronological order
JACEKKROL.com is the best place. You can also find me on all major "social" media networks, keeping in mind my accounts had been shadowbanned (censored) because of WITHOUT PITY. I cannot respond to messages sent through "social" media. Say Hello...