World War II: keep it a history (Poland) | Page 7

into Germans' hands. Some Polish people were sent to work to Germany. People often escaped from such transports and that was the reason, why Germans bullied refugees' families and used tortures towards them. In Germany, Poles were forced to work in trenches. Germans completely destroyed the social and cultural life in Poland. During the occupation, Germans murdered many outstanding scientists and artists. They also closed almost all of Polish schools. In ones, which they left, they taught German and Maths. Germans liquidated the Polish press, bookstores and libraries. They destroyed many monuments and confiscated works of art, including monuments of folk and sacred art, which they took away deep into Germany. The occupiers stole from Cracow Vite Stoss' altar from St. Mary's Basilica and one of the most popular Leonardo da Vinci's painting Lady with an Ermine from the Czartoryski Museum. From Łazienki Park in Warsaw they took the monument of Fryderyk Chopin. The robbery of the works of art lasted to the end of the occupation. But some great works, as the