The irony of its timing is inescapable.
This past Friday marked the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz–Birkenau, the horrific site in Poland where more than one million Jews perished in barbaric murders beyond our imagination. Friday was also the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day meant to serve as an everlasting reminder to the world of the sin of silence in the face of evil and the crime of complicity associated with those who made German genocide possible.
And this past Friday the Polish government passed a law which would place fines or up to three years in jail for claiming that Poland bears any responsibility for crimes against humanity committed by Germany on Polish soil.
True, the bill still needs final approval from the Polish Senate as well as the signature of the president. But its intent is clear. Poland, in the words of Beata Mazurek, spokeswoman for Poland’s ruling Law & Justice party and deputy speaker of the lower chamber of parliament, proclaims with righteous indignation that “We have had enough of accusing Poland and Poles of German atrocities.”
In short, Poland, a land where three million Jews lived before the war and only about 380,000 survived, a country selected by the Nazis for six extermination camps – Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek – and more than 700 ghettos, dare not any longer be challenged for the role it played during the Holocaust!
Historians, beware. Authors, journalists, even diarists and survivors of Polish anti-Semitism – be prepared for dire and severe consequences for failure to adhere to the new narrative of Polish victimization by Germany comparable to the fate of the Jews.
In all fairness, about 6,700 Poles were commemorated by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial for rescuing Jews, the largest number in any country. Yad Vashem has also, for many years, acknowledged the possible misinterpretation of the phrase “Polish death camps” as referring not to location but to its creators – an unfortunate wording which does indeed need to be corrected to “Nazi death camps”.
Yad Vashem continues to make clear that it was Poles who made the Nazi Holocaust in Poland possible.
Yet at the same time Yad Vashem continues to make clear that it was Poles who made the Nazi Holocaust in Poland possible. Without the cooperation of the local citizenry, sometimes passive and many times enthusiastically supportive, a program of mass murder would simply have been impossible. “[With that in mind] restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people’s direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion,” Yad Vashem said.
Similarly, the United States Holocaust Museum concluded: “To carry out the Final Solution across an entire continent, the Germans required the collaboration and complicity of many individuals in every country, from leaders, public officials, police, and soldiers to ordinary citizens. In every country locals participated in a variety of ways—as clerks, cooks, and confiscators of property; as managers or participants in roundups and deportations; as informants; sometimes as perpetrators of violence against Jews on their own initiative; and sometimes as hands-on murderers in killing operations.”
That is what is so upsetting about Poland’s attempt for legal whitewashing.
Yair Lapid, a member of the Israeli Parliament and son of a Holocaust survivor, made the case strongly: “I utterly condemn the new Polish law which tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust. It was conceived in Germany but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. There were Polish death camps and no law can ever change that.”
Jan Grabowski
Polish anti-Semitism has a long and well documented history. The eminent Polish historian Jan Grabowski, also the son of a Holocaust survivor and currently a history professor at University of Ottawa, made it his life’s mission to expose the truth of Polish participation in the killings of their Jewish neighbors, even though for decades Polish society denied that anti-Semitism motivated the slayings. Winner of the 2014 Yad Vashem’s International Book Prize, his book Judenjagd tells the heart-breaking story of Jews who, having survived ghetto liquidations and deportations to death camps in Poland in 1942, attempted to hide "on the Aryan side" where the majority perished as a consequence of betrayal by their Polish neighbors.
It is a story with horrible sequels.
The by now famous story pictured in Claude Lanzmann's myth-shattering documentary film Shoah demonstrated that many Polish peasants were keenly aware of the Nazis' mass murder of Jews on Polish soil; “Neighbors,” by Polish-American sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross, which explored the murder of Jews by their Polish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne, documents how nearly all of the Jews of Jedwabne, Poland, were murdered on one day, most of them burned alive by their non-Jewish neighbors.
Following the script of the “new narrative”, in a mid-July interview on Polish public broadcaster TVN, Education Minister Anna Zalewska insinuated that the Jedwabne massacre, when Poles burned alive more than 300 Jews in a barn, was a matter of “opinion.”
What might be called a post-Holocaust sequel is the tragic story of the 200 Jewish survivors who returned to their homes in Kielce following the war. They began to slowly rebuild their lives. They established a synagogue, a kibbutz, and an orphanage. On July 4, 1946, a blood libel spread through the town, falsely accusing the Jews of kidnapping a Christian child. Kielce’s residents descended on the Jewish area. Repeating a scene so familiar to these Jews, the police and soldiers stood by and watched as the mob attacked them, murdering 42 Holocaust survivors and injuring scores more. No one could blame the remaining Jews who saw no other option but to flee the place they wrongly believed they could find a measure of peace and freedom. This was the beginning of a mass emigration of Jewish survivors from Poland.
True, Poland was not Nazi Germany and, although in Poland, it was not the Poles who conceived the concentration camps. Yet any serious historian recognizes Polish guilt. The guilt of collusion and complicity. The guilt of silence in the presence of open and well-known barbarity. The guilt of avidly taking for themselves the possessions of innocent neighbors who they witnessed being taken to their deaths. The guilt of joining in all too often in the evil all around them, at times with even more joy and pleasure than the Nazi perpetrators.
This guilt can’t simply be erased by a law which forbids expressing it. Alongside the commission of the crime itself, making it a crime to remember and record it is itself immoral and depraved.
(19) Patricia Sheppard, February 3, 2019 5:03 PM
Heart breaking
Unbelievable that people try to change an historical fact. People need to take responsibility for the way they act Or things never change. G D bless Isreal and the jewish people.
(18) Manuel, February 1, 2018 4:39 PM
Jewish ?? ...What ??
Have visited my Grandfather shtetl in Poland, if they tell me that aliens instead of Jewish people ever lived there, I believe them most, All Jewish traces in the area were wiped out.
(17) Adam, February 1, 2018 3:16 PM
So who is the judge?
Shalom my friends. I come from a mixed Anglo-Jewish-Polish family. I have often visited Poland. I was the first to cut away the overgrown bushes in many places where Jewish blood was spilt. First of all I would like to appeal not to shout over the graves of Jews, Poles and anybody else that lost their lives through the cruelty of WW2. My experience is that the vast majority of Polish express a real interest in and emotional support for the rich history of Jews and Poles in Poland. This is a great value and should be built upon. It is a sad fact that writing off whole nations (Jews, Poles, Armenians) is exactly what people like Hitler and his supporters would want. In a strange way - calling for any nation to be blanketly blamed for something an unknown number of individuals did - tells us that these men were successful in poisoning relationships between peoples. We should have no part in this. It is true, there were Poles who sold out Jews and anybody else to the German authorities for financial gain but it is equally true that there were Poles who gave their lives to save Jews. So what 'exchange rate' do we adopt to be able to arrive at a media-friendly summary that shows that the Poles were 'good' or 'bad'. 1 for 1? 1 for 10? It is also true that with amazing regularity, one does hear about 'Polish Death Camps' - (even President Obama used the term but some days later apologised) but the same media almost never use the word German, only nazi. By removing nationality in one case and putting it (albeit incorrectly)in place one the flip side of the same case certainly hurts. I advise a bit of understanding for the Poles who were the ONLY German occupied country not to have a collaborating government or ANY involvement in the German army and who not only paid dearly in human terms for the Soviet and German occupation of their country, but who also continued to be occupied by the Soviets until 1989. Shalom!
Ema, February 2, 2018 3:02 PM
I’m also, Mix family mix feelings.
Hi. I’m Japan-Korean mix. During WW2 Germany and Japan was allie. Japan occupied Korea. Now I live in Japan.
Are they Evil or victim? First time Makes me Confuse I was 13. Watch the video of military guys raping girls. In history class. (Video was stopped. So I’m not sure what happened) teacher said Japan did horrible things. but that not easy for me. I feel guilty and victimized. I can’t decide which one is ease.
Now I know during the war, something happened. But it’s over. Don’t happen again. Until we remember.
(16) Paul Levy, February 1, 2018 11:43 AM
Read Martin Gilbert’s Holocaust. And when you finish the 650 pages of methodical horror, chew on the last 50 pages describing how far too many of the few surviving Jews of Poland went home, tried to reclaim their homes and are killed by the Poles occupying their homes; of course without prosecution. How sweet it is, Ma!
Guy: David Myers of UCLA, and now the Center for Jewish History, thinks he knows you! Kol Tuv.
(15) Donna Holland, February 1, 2018 12:01 AM
The problem is that Poland wants to make their critics suffer under penalty of law.
I believe the civilized world during World War II bears the blame for the Holocaust. How could any one not want to help fellow human beings who were being segregated and ultimately tortured and murdered. It was an evil by all who did nothing and turned a blind eye to what was being reported. France, Poland, the US and the Vatican...along with all the others who did nothing to help as soon as they were aware.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, NO COUNTRY SHOULD BE ABLE TO CRIMINALIZE THE RIGHT TO DISSEMINATE HISTORY TO PROTECT ITSELF.
(14) Anonymous, January 31, 2018 10:12 PM
The proposed Polish law is certainly wrong but ...
... the article to a large degree misses the point., which in this discussion is being best stated by Len (5). In assessing responsibility, history falls on both sides. No, it cannot reasonably be argued that there was official Polish support for or indifference to the Shoah at a time when there was no independent Polish government. Neither, however, can it reasonably be argued that the bulk of action and inaction by the Polish people during the Shoah fell much harder on the side of attacks on Jews and complicity in the death camps than on the side of resistance. This is also true in a much larger context. What fair reading of history can equate the resistance to Nazi rule in Poland with that of France, Norway, Holland, Hungary or Bulgaria, to name a few? For all that, though, the real sneaky-Pete argument is made by the Polish legislation, which attempts less to protect the image of Poland today than to whitewash the behavior of Polish society, by and large albeit with noteworthy exceptions, at a time when Poland itself was severely victimized. The sad moral lesson is that a besieged and oppressed people can simultaneously commit and be complicit -- and should be held to account for -- even more grave moral wrongs against others in their midst.
(13) Adam, January 31, 2018 8:49 PM
There was no Poland during WW2 and 3 milion ethnic Poles were killed too!
This article confirms that proper education about WW2 among Jews is needed... Poland lost about 3 milion ethnic Poles and 3 milion Jews due to WW2 and Holocaust. Poland is no lesser victim of WW2 than Jews! Please do not ignore this.
Secondly, blaming Poland for Holocaust is just illogical keeping in mind that Poland was in fact occupied in 1939-1989, i.e. no Polish state existed during that time and Poland has never collaborated with Nazi Germany as other european countries did. Polish Institute of National Remembrance, that investigates crimes committed in 1939-1989 on the polish soil, clearly confirms that individual Poles (including Jews) took part in the killings of Jews and no one wants to deny this historical fact in Poland. A completely different issue is the culpability of the Polish state and its nation that should have installed relevant laws and armed forces to protect minorities but could not because of the war and its long-term PARAMOUNT consequences.
It must be reminded that Poland was invaded by the Nazi Germany in 1939 and after the war it was a Soviet puppet state until 1989. There was no democracy and freedom in Poland during this period. SHORTLY SPEAKING, POLES WERE NOT RULING THEIR OWN COUNTRY IN 1939-1989. The Nazi Germany and later Communists from USSR were controlling all armed forces (including police of course) and could easily instigate different sorts of incidents in Poland if this would help them politically, including building Nazi Germany concentration and extermination camps!
All in all, Poland as a state cannot be blamed at all for what has happened on its territory IN 1939-1989 BECAUSE THERE WAS NO FREE POLAND AND EXTERNAL FORCES (NAZI AND SOVIET) WERE IN FACT OCCUPYING POLAND AND DRIVING MOST OF THE MAJOR INTERNAL EVENTS. This is what the current polish government is fighting for. For historical accuracy and moderation. The author incorrectly alleges something different.
(12) MUZAFFAR, January 31, 2018 4:38 PM
Rightly to Remember
Whitewashing is too soft a word.Actually, it(actions / attitudes like these ),is perpetuation of the holocaust criminality mindset by other means & a seeking of participation ante the atrocities by a generation desiring justifications of a horrendous history.We are bounden to remember, recall & honour in our memories,words & actions those innocent souls in the right perspective & without denial of any part thereof if only to be reminded always that the line between humanity & inhumanity is always ever so thin.
(11) noname, January 31, 2018 1:42 PM
A few facts
I would like to add some facts:
1. In Poland as Gosia said people, who were hiding Jews were killed and people still decided to help them(of course not all but still many).
2.During war there were organisations to help Jews, for further information check: Żegota
3. People who were collaborationists and were blackmailing Jews or Poles hiding Jews were sentenced to death by Special Courts
4. Not only Jews were killed in death camps
5. It's not a Polish responsibility that camps were built here because the state was under German occupation
6. During the war there were unfortunately also Jewish colaborants with Germans, check: organisation Żagiew, Judenrat, Group 13
7. In June 1943 Polish dyplomat Jan Karski went to USA and asked for help for Jews but nobody listened him.
Nobody denies that like everywhere there were people who hated Jews and didn't help them but it's not a reason to blame the whole nation.
All facts are available on Wikipedia.
(10) Baruch, January 31, 2018 11:02 AM
The real truth
My father-in-law was asked by a young Poles about this. He said, Of course it's true Poles killed Jews, but you are looking at one they saved." Amazon has the book, "Life in a Bottle", a true story of Poles who sometimes died in the process of saving 2500 children while attempting to simultaneously preserve their Jewish identity. Any first grade teacher can explain why it is only after our people give fair air time to Polish heroes, can we expect any airtime to be given to Polish failures.
Margaret, February 2, 2018 2:19 AM
Irena Sendler Story
Read the story of this heroic Polish woman who smuggled 2,500 children our of the Ghetto and found non-Jews to hide them during the war. She kept their names and parents names hidden in glass jars which she buried so that, if she were found/captured an attempt could be made after the war to reunite living relatives. She must have lived her life in terror of being a Nazi prisoner which finally happened--but the children survived.
(9) תומאס, January 31, 2018 7:28 AM
Auschwitz–Birkenau - destination of creating
It would be nice if author will also mention for what reason was firstly created Auschwitz camp. In the first stage of second war world generally in Poland to Auschwitz was sent elite of society of Poland.In the same time was conducted information war against Polish Jews people amid Polish Catholics people. .Poland always was multi religion and multinational country and one the best rules to fight with Poland it was to use method:divide and conquer.
(8) Gosia, January 30, 2018 10:54 PM
Poles could not have prevented Holocaust
Although I would agree that some Poles did betrayed their Jewish neighbours for some gain or out of mere hate, I can't agree with the statement that Holocaust in Poland would not have happened otherwise. Unlike Western Europe Poland was subjected to ruthless reign of terror and death penalty for aiding / hiding its Jewish citizens. Auschwitz was created originally for Polish prisoners of conscience, intellectuals and clergy, and turned into an extermination camp in 1942.
Anonymous, January 31, 2018 1:26 PM
Poles were directly responsible for many of the atrocities. They went along willingly.
(7) Anonymous, January 30, 2018 6:58 PM
not surprising was in a taxi...
30 years ago in my twenties i was in a taxi in NYC & a young polish driver about my age was the driver. i asked him his view on the holocaust. He told me it never happened. His SCHOOL told him that the Jews made it up. Those students would be in their fifties now and some even in leadership roles. Since the courts ruled there WAS a holocaust, they can't claim it never happened anymore. Now they are just going to say its not our responsibility.
(6) Peter, January 30, 2018 4:15 PM
Poles still stink
3 Million Jewish citizens of Poland, along with more than another million Jews from other countries, well murdered in the killing machines in Poland. 99% of Poles did not lift even a finger to help a Jew and were more willing participants in the Holocaust than even the Germans. Poles quickly moved into homes of murdered Jews and stole their property. Most babies who were saved by Poles were converted to Christianity and never returned to the Jewish community. After the war, throughout Poland, instead of welcoming back surviving Jews, Poles acted like American Southern lynched mobs and murdered thousands of Jews, who were then forced to run to a displaced camp in Germany. The Germans admitted their crimes of the Holocaust. Now it is time for the Poles to do the same.
Anonymous, January 31, 2018 12:40 AM
READ:ON SUCH A BEAUTIFUL SUNNY DAY by Barbara Engelking
Read this professors extensive research and oral documentation...the peasants,farmers were complicit:they murdered Jews ,took their belongings and shot them behind their barns and buried them,,they worked together by turning their fellow Polish citizens to the Blue Police, the Nazis and the Gendarmerie...I know: I heard it all as a child of Holocaust Survivors who was left without family. There is still so much anti Semitism in Poland ...shame!
תומאס, January 31, 2018 1:12 PM
it was heavy times
I have heard that rescue of one Jewish life required help about hundreds people. In this situation if only 10 percent "Catholics" was not favorable for "Jewish" people it caused death of 90% of Jews.That times were bad for valuable people from Poland, for example: Boruch Steinberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Steinberg
)
(5) Len, January 30, 2018 3:01 PM
Nothing clears up history like open discussion
Enacting laws that make discussion illegal is no way to clear up history
Rachel, February 11, 2018 5:19 PM
I couldn't agree more
I imagine they will also ban art that reflects badly on some Poles, e.g. Sophie's Choice.
(4) Anonymous, January 30, 2018 2:36 PM
Duh!
You wrote:
In all fairness, about 6,700 Poles were commemorated by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial for rescuing Jews
What do you mean "in all fairness?" Duh! If the most Jews were killed in Poland than in anywhere else, so this is the country where you'll have the most Jews being saved.
(3) Anonymous, January 30, 2018 10:06 AM
The WWII started by the Germans, period.
The war broke out by the Germans invading Poland in September 1st, 1939 when Poland was barely beginning to stand on her own after 130 years of complete removal from the world map. Before the war, Poland was by far the biggest Jewish country in the world. If Poles were so evil, why are were there SO many Jews living in Polish soil?? What does this mean? During the war All Poles suffered and died in Auschwitz regardless of Jews or non-Jews, including the famous St.Kolbe. Let's admit that Jews consider Poles more evil than the Germans and now the Polish government wants to tackle against this wide spread lies. What is wrong with Poland straightening up the history?? Is this right for the people who saved the biggest number of Jews risking their own lives? Isn't Jews truth loving people??? How ungrateful!!!
harry cohen, January 30, 2018 5:21 PM
what the nazis did is deplorable,as so the POLES,Ramainians'Russian AND ALL OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES,SOUTH AMERICAN COUNTRIES,AND UNITED STATESs,
and ALL European countries and the blind eye of south america,and THE UNITED STATES. Still today in france,england, poland, the UNITED STATES, still have a long way to go.it is a pity ,no a sin,(that cannot be forgiven) that JEWS(hebrews,israelites,cannot live any where,with out any protection,or condemnation or punishment . yet ALL these places would condem Israel of protecting its own existance, just because some Arabs(ISLAMIC) peoples took over lands that did not belong to them! Yet all of the arab countries that exist today,will not give homes to their fellow islamic peoples.That all they want is TITAL DOMINATION and ANIILATION OF JEWS,BY THEIR OWN WORD. they do not want to live peacfully by a neighbor that would come to their aid if needed.
Instead would rather be subtugated by irrational rulers that want to keep their self delagated supeioraity over their own peoples.I WISH FOR ISRAELS NEIGHBORS TO LIVE IN TOTAL PEACE(SHALOM) and spend the time and money for good,instead of hate!,ANDas for the neo nazis,nazies, arians and KKK. be it known on this day I WILL PUNISH ALL WHO ARE HATE MONGERERS!!
Rob Porter, January 30, 2018 5:39 PM
Reply to anonymous
Where you are wrong is supporting the white-washing of Polish responsibility in the murder of Jews. Nobody is forgetting 6,700 cases of Poles who saved Jews, and neither do I forget the many brave Polish Roman Catholic priests who died in Auschwitz for opposing the Nazis, but that many Poles were complicit in the holocaust is the truth and harsh reality - just as the disgusting George Soros's complicity in the holocaust is truth and harsh reality, yet still in some Western societies he is treated with respect.
Rubin Katz, January 30, 2018 7:32 PM
Reply to Anonymous
1. Jews were sent to Auschwitz simply for being born of Jewish parents. But Poles sent to Auschwitz were political prisoners and not because who their parents were.
2. Poland had a large Jewish population because they had lived there for almost a thousand years and because of the Czarist Pale of Settlement when Jews from the Russian Empire were forced to move to Poland. Virulent Polish anti-Semitism and poverty forced them to leave for America, Canada, England Palestine and other places.
3. Poland did not save the biggest number of Jews. This is misleading, if one takes into account the number of people involved on both sides.
And finally, the current problem has arisen because too many people in Poland think like you. Dobranoc!
Jong, January 31, 2018 4:49 PM
Sorry, but which nation saved the biggest number of Jews then??
There are 6,706 Righteous among nations from Poland, the biggest number in the world, while there are only 5 from the US. A Polish Roman Catholic heroine like Irena Sendler who saved 2,500 Jews is hardly known among Jews. Besides, there are over 200,000 Polish civilians killed fighting against Germans during Warsaw uprising in 1944 and because of that Germans destroyed Warsaw COMPLETELY planting bombs in each and every building. This is a FACT. People do not recognize these facts or simply turn a blind eye. I cannot understand why Jews hate Poles more than the Germans. How sad....!!!
Anonymous, January 31, 2018 1:29 PM
It matters who started it, but it matters more who participated after it began.
MUZAFFAR, February 1, 2018 5:21 AM
EXACTLY!!!There can be no distinction between the initiators and collaborators of such horrendous atrocities.In fact,the latter may be more responsible.
(2) Ambrozia, January 30, 2018 4:57 AM
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal has advocated the following wise and balanced assessment of that tragic period which consumed millions of Jewish and Polish lives: "Then the war came. It is at times like these that the lower elements in society surface—the blackmailers who would betray Jews ... On the other hand, the 30 or 40,000 Jews who survived, survived thanks to the help of Poles. This I know. But whenever I am talking on this subject, I always say that I know what kind of role Jewish communists played in Poland after the war. And just as I, as a Jew, do not want to shoulder responsibility for the Jewish communists, I cannot blame 36 million Poles for those thousands of blackmailers.
Anonymous, January 30, 2018 7:44 PM
Most of the Polish Jews were not saved by Poles. Most survived by fleeing to the Russian lines and returned to Poland after the war, as well as those freed from camps.
(1) Alan S., January 29, 2018 12:52 PM
It's not nice to wish bad things, but....
For what it is worth (and I say 'not much') at least Germany acknowledged the crime of the Holocaust.
May those in Poland who promulgated this law in some capacity 'choke' on this law.
Kurt, January 30, 2018 2:52 PM
Good Point
If the death camps could be hidden, the Polish government wouldn't admin they existed. Because everything is in public view, this ruling is an affirmation the murders happened on Polish soil. Their attempt to distance themselves validates the notion that atrocities were committed. On that stand point it's a win-win situation for the Jewish nation.
Never Again!
Am Yisrael Chai
Anonymous, January 30, 2018 5:26 PM
forgiveness.
ADDED- thank you poles ,germans, and all europeans etc. as stated in above comment .I FOR ONE CANNOT FORGIVE,MAYBE ONE DAY G D CAN!!