Polish Independence Day is officially November 11, 1918 the same day World War I officially ended. But war did not end then as German troops and the Polish army continued to fight the Bolsheviks for two more years. Victorious in stopping the new Soviet army, German soldiers returned home to a Germany that was paying the price of the first World War. Disgruntled by their treatment they were ripe to help form the core of the Nazi party. Less than 20 years later the bitterness and nationalistic fever produced the Ribbentrop-Molotov treaty between the Soviets and Germans. In September 1939, the Nazi invasion began in Westerplatte, Gdansk (aka Danzig). The Soviets took the east and begin their colonization and resetting of culture by purging and executing Polish leadership. The expansion of the World War II continued when Germany attack the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa. Beginning with pogroms and eventually organized death squads, Poles, Gypsies, undesirables and Jews were rounded up to form the core of the slave labor and then eliminated. When the Warsaw uprising occurred, memorialized by Andrzej Wajda "Kanal” the Soviets sat back until the Germans pulverized the city.

Mankind’s darkest hour is remembered at the Nazi German concentration and death camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau. Memorials to the slaughter in the Katyn forest, the Warsaw uprising and the wholesale genocide by occupying forces can be found throughout Poland. No sunshine can make these places anything else but what it is. The clouds and rain that fell only emphasizing what I only wished to portray in black and white.