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It's Not Over Yet for KING & COUNTRY lyrics

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Born in the small town of Kamionka, Poland, on December 11, 1922, Frank Blaichman was 16 years old when the German army invaded the western and central parts of Poland in September 1939. The Blaichman family were among several hundred Jews living in the town. They were merchants; his grandmother owned a grocery store, and his father made a living buying grain from farmers in the area, selling it in nearby towns and in the city of Lublin. That was about to change.

Within months of the invasion, German officials issued a host of administrative decrees and regulations that were intended to isolate the Jews, deprive them of their livelihoods, and dispossess them of their property and force them to emigrate from the area, which was annexed to Germany. Jews were now required to wear armbands bearing the Star of David. They couldn't travel outside Kamionka without special permits. They were ordered to turn over any valuables, such as gold and jewelry. Their businesses were confiscated. And they were subject to being captured at random for forced labor.

Young Frank immediately began taking daring risks in an effort to help his parents and his six brothers and sisters survive. The family needed some way to make money, so Blaichman took to the road illegally. Blaichman, who had learned Polish from customers at his grandmother's store, rode his bicycle from neighboring farms and villages to Lubartow (six miles to the east) and Lublin (12 miles to the south) and began to buy and sell whatever goods he was able to obtain. Passing as a Pole, Frank bought honey, chickens, butter, grains, and meat from the farmers and sold these products in the cities, where he would buy tobacco, yarn, and saccharin to sell back to the farmers. The risks of traveling without papers or the required Star of David armband were enormous, but life for Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland was already precarious.

Month by month, life became harder. Jewish men were conscripted for forced labor, and Frank was assigned to work two days a week in the fields of a nearby estate where potatoes, sugar beets, and other crops were grown. Once again he took an incredible risk: he found someone he could pay to take his place in the field. By 1942, the situation was becoming dire. The community suffered from hunger and disease, was terrorized by harassment, raids, and random shootings, and heard more and more frequent rumors of mass killings and deportations to death camps. One of Frank's uncles was shot on the spot when the Germans made a surprise search and discovered fresh meat in his house; a cousin met a similar fate when fresh bread was found in her house.

In October 1942, when the Judenrat (Jewish councils forced to carry out Nazi orders) informed the Jews of Kamionka that they were going to be "resettled" in a ghetto in Lubartow, Frank escaped and hid in a bushy area outside of town. He was determined not to be imprisoned in the ghetto, even if it meant never seeing his family again. Frank knew many friendly non-Jewish farmers in the area. One of them invited him into his home, where the family greeted Frank warmly and fed him despite the German policy to shoot any Poles who gave assistance to Jews in any way.

Frank soon learned that Kamionka's Jews had not been relocated to the ghetto in Lubartow. The farmer told him that the Germans had put them on trains to some other, unknown destination. Frank realized that his family and many relatives, together with the rest of Kamionka's Jewish community, were on their way to die. Like thousands of other Jews throughout Eastern Europe, Frank fled to the forest.

In the woods, he discovered an encampment of more than 100 Jews sheltered in small bunkers dug into the sandy ground and padded with straw. At first the forest seemed like a haven, but Frank soon realized the encampment was in constant danger and began to organize a defense unit. Early one morning, German soldiers, acting on information given to them by Polish spies, attacked the encampment in the forest. Over 80 Jews were murdered. Frank was one of a lucky 22 who survived. Realizing that the small forest didn't offer enough protection, Frank's group began to seek shelter in the more secluded villages, splitting up into smaller groups, keeping on the move, and hiding in local farmers' homes and on their property. This turned out to be more effective than staying in the forest, especially during the harsh winter, as local farmers provided them with assistance, shelter, and cooked meals.

Early in 1943, Frank's unit grew to 60 members when they joined forces with refugees from the town of Markuszow. That spring the unit grew again when Frank met Samuel "Mietek" Gruber, who had escaped with 28 other men from a prisoner-of-war camp in Lublin. Gruber's group had fought in the Polish army before being captured by the Germans; they had experience fighting and knew how to handle explosives. Known as the Markuszow group under the leadership of Iser Eisenberg, they were becoming a disciplined fighting force. The expanded unit hunted spies and collaborators in the area, disrupted communication by destroying telephone lines, damaged dairy factories that produced food for the Germans, and ambushed German patrols. By September 1943, the expanded unit began working with Armia Ludowa, a communist-led Polish partisan group. Armia Ludowa provided Frank's unit with much-needed food and ammunition from their Soviet allies. Previously armed with old rifles and handguns, the group was able to obtain explosives, hand grenades, land mines, machine guns, submachine guns, mortars, anti-tank guns, and all the ammunition they needed. Just 21, Frank was the youngest platoon commander in the expanded unit and even was selected to escort the future prime minister of Poland to a secret meeting with Soviet high command.

"I'm very proud of what I did all those years," he says. "The reality was we had nothing to lose, and our way to survive was to fight."

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Born in the small town of Kamionka, Poland, on December 11, 1922, Frank Blaichman was 16 years old when the German army invaded the western and central parts of Poland in September 1939. The Blaichman family were among several hundred Jews living in the town.

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This would be the day the Germans invaded Poland and where Blaichman was living.

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Frank fled to a forest and found a camp of Jewish survivors and eventually they would go around sabotaging the Germans by breaking telephone lines, damaging factories, and even ambushing German patrols.

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During the Winter months they would hide in farmers houses where they were given shelter and food

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In order to help his family Frank would go out on his bike to buy and sell goods. This was risky because the Germans invading only allowed people to go outside if they had special permits.

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"Hitler Youths spotted on the street were challenged to fights; anti-Nazi graffiti dotted buildings; leaflets air-dropped by Allied forces were gathered and stuffed into mailboxes. Word spread that army deserters or camp escapees could find safe harbor in their homes. Eventually, the Pirates began organized raids on munitions factories. If a Nazi car was in sight, it was a likely target for sugar in the gas tank."

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growing long hair or listening to American Music. When they got out of it they would go on to sabatoge the Germans

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These adolescents, aged between 12 and 17, hang around late in the evening with musical instruments and young females. Since this riff raff is in large part outside the Hitler Youth and adopts a hostile attitude towards the organization, they represent a danger to other young people. -Nazi Party Report, Dusseldorf, Germany, July 1943

From the time Adolf Hitler rose to power and prominence in Germany, his mission had been to indoctrinate the next generation of citizens to be fearless, cruel, and unwavering-all the qualities he needed to combat democracy. The Hitler Youth organization was developed to satisfy his goals. Enrollment was mandatory; members played sports and contributed to Nazi-approved artistic endeavors. Military training followed.

But not all of Germany's adolescents were willing to be subordinates to Hitler's cause. A small but subversive number of teenagers severed ties with state-approved groups and rebelled both culturally and politically, listening to American music, growing their hair long, and eventually graduating to sabotage. They were known as the Edelweiss Pirates, and their delinquency would grow to become a very sharp thorn in the side of the Reich.

Regardless of social class, boys and girls under the age of 14 were expected to affiliate themselves with the German Youth Group. From 14 to 18-the age in which they became eligible for military service-teens were corralled into the Hitler Youth movement. Disinterest wasn't tolerated. If a child refused, Gestapo would threaten families with relocation to an orphanage.

Owing to either fear or loyalty, it's estimated that more than 90 percent of German children were enrolled in the groups. But by the end of the 1930s, a growing number of members began to feel the tug of teenage rebellion. With fathers off to war, parents killed for Communist activity, and bombing raids loosening adult supervision, kids began to resist the conformist status quo. They disliked being told how to think, what to wear, and where to go.

The Edelweiss Pirates, which named themselves after the edelweiss flower covertly pinned to their lapels as a sign of their affiliation, began as a loosely organized resistance in the working-class areas of towns like Cologne and Essen. Checkered shirts, white socks, and scarves distanced the boys (there were very few female members) from the sterile attire of Hitler Youth squads; they let their hair grow long and loose. Guitars and other instruments accompanied parodies of Hitler Youth songs that they sang while camping or hiking, away from the Gestapo constantly on the lookout.

Initially, the Pirates were meddlesome simply for leading by bad example: The SS was concerned their activities could influence youths that were already in line. Depending on the region, police waved them away as a nuisance. In other areas where officials were more concerned, the Pirates would be detained and beaten, their heads shaved to send a message.

The group met the increasingly violent response to their presence with an escalation of misbehavior. Hitler Youths spotted on the street were challenged to fights; anti-Nazi graffiti dotted buildings; leaflets air-dropped by Allied forces were gathered and stuffed into mailboxes. Word spread that army deserters or camp escapees could find safe harbor in their homes. Eventually, the Pirates began organized raids on munitions factories. If a Nazi car was in sight, it was a likely target for sugar in the gas tank.

While the Pirates grew to express open hostility, another faction-the Swing Youth, or Jazz Youth-rebelled by embracing the banned music and culture of the American enemy. Big band sounds would echo through dance halls that attracted up to 6000 attendees performing the jitterbug or other salacious moves. In contrast to the Pirates, the swing cliques were generally made up of upper-middle class teens who could afford contraband records, clothing styles, and audio equipment. When the Gestapo cracked down on public gatherings and violated curfews, they moved to private dances in their own homes. According to a report filed with the Hitler Youth about a February 1940 dance in Hamburg:

The dance music was all English and American. Only swing dancing and jitterbugging took place...The dancers made an appalling sight. None of the couples danced normally ... sometimes two boys danced with one girl...When the band played a rumba, the dancers went into a wild ecstasy ...They all 'jitterbugged' on the stage like wild animals.

Notorious SS official Heinrich Himmler told officers that anyone caught listening to jazz should be "beaten." But after a long stretch of dealing with both the Pirates and the swing members, Himmler decided to send a more serious message to anyone thinking of joining their movement.
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While captured Pirates being tortured and sent to "re-education camps" may have proved individually discouraging, Himmler felt the need to broadcast the Reich's distaste for free thinkers. In October 1944, he captured 13 agitators, including seven Pirates, and marched them to the gallows in the middle of Cologne. All prisoners were hung in full view of the public.

Other Pirates had been sent to forced labor camps, where they maintained a ritual of singing songs in protest of the Nazi regime. Before the war ended in 1945, at least one rebel, Herbert Schemmel, was able to retrieve his stash of confiscated records.

The Pirates and the groups affiliated with them were labeled criminals by the courts of the era. In 2005, German officials officially relabeled them as resistance fighters and honored the surviving five members still in Cologne. The Edelweiss Pirates had fulfilled Hitler's desire for German youths to be fearless and unwavering in the face of adversity. He just hadn't anticipated it would be pointed in his direction.

Additional Sources: "Opposition and Resistance in Nazi Germany" [ PDF]

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The German Teens Who Rebelled Against Hitler

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Allied forces had a secret ally: German teen gangs that resisted Hitler's messages, sabotaged their military, and embraced American culture.

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The Edelweiss Pirates were children who were put into the Hitler Youth Organization were teens that rebelled against it.

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When they were caught some of the would be beaten and some would be taken to re-education camps. Some of them were even hung.