2018 Top Fifteen Worst Global Anti-Polish Incidents
1.
On April 23, 2018, two American congressmen of the Democratic Party, Rep. Ro Khanna and Rep. David Cicilline, blackened Poland in an offensive open letter to Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan. They claimed that Poland is“glorifying Nazi collaborators and denying the Holocaust”. The derogatory letter was signed by 50 US congressmen. It was one in the series of hostile anti-Polish moves of the US Congress which paved the way for infamous and illegal, anti-Polish Act S. 447 calling for the restitution of a so-called “heirless property.”
Polish Americans educated congressmen to vote against Act S. 447 but the US Congress abandoned democratic rules and pushed it by an undemocratic voice vote.
2.
On May 3, 2018, Steve Fulop, Mayor of a Jersey City (New Jersey) publicly called the Speaker of the Polish Senate, Stanisław Karczewski (3rd person in Poland) an “asshole, anti-Semite, white nationalist, and Holocaust denier.” His arrogant and uncouth attack was a reaction to the words of Karczewski protesting against planned removal of Katyn Monument from the prestigious Exchange Place in Jersey City. This truly magnificent Statue commemorates a series of mass executions of 22,000 Poles, mainly officers, by the Soviet NKVD in April and May 1940. However, Fulop didn’t expect that Polish Americans along with Poles around the world and other ethnic groups in Jersey City will launch a series of assertive actions to defend the Monument. Fulop lost the battle.
3.
In February 2018 the US Ruderman Family Foundation opened an online petition urging the US to suspend ties with Poland over Anti-Defamation law. The foundation released also a video showing Jews saying ‘Polish Holocaust’ and thus attributing the complicity in the Holocaust to Poles. After numerous protests from Polish and Jewish organizations and individuals, the offensive video was removed from the Internet but reemerged later again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REW7CJlMdMI
4.
Professor Jan Grabowski from the University of Ottawa spread all over the world his myth of “200,000 fugitive WWII Jews” apparently killed by Poles. On February 8, 2018 “Times of Israel’s” journalist Amanda Borschel-Dan wrote: “According to a 1970 article, 200,000 Jews died at the hands of their Polish neighbors,” adding, “A new law in Poland could make it difficult to publish these findings today.” The article quoted by Borschel-Dan was a document of the Polish-Jewish scholar Szymon Datner from „Biuletyn ŻIH” 1970, nr 75, s. 28–29, that was cited to her by Jan Grabowski. However, the article by Szymon Datner does NOT mention 200,000 fugitive Jews killed by Poles. Actually, Datner’s document quoted by Borschel-Dan states the following:
“…the Jews who either refused to enter ghettoes and went into hiding on the Aryan side, or had suffered ghetto conditions and tried to escape, or – last but not least – those who sought to flee extermination at the actual moment of slaughter sweeps or from death transports. Their total number was far from negligible. In one of my works, I estimated the number of surviving Jews – chiefly thanks to assistance provided by Polish residents – at approximately 100,000. According to further estimates, another 100,000 people were seized by Nazi authorities and murdered.”
Polish Media Issues filed a complaint with the University of Ottawa but the university rejected it.
5.
On February 19, 2018 swastikas and obscenities were found drawn around the entrance to the Polish Embassy in Israel. The mainstream media all over the world, among them CNN, reported on the incident.
6.
On February 8, 2018, angry Israeli protesters broke into the Polish embassy in Tel Aviv and shouted slogans like “Poles, we remember what you did.” The demonstrators came from a nursing home in Tel Aviv financed by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ). The head of ICEJ is Jürgen Bühler, son of Albert Bühler, a Wehrmacht soldier who spent years in a Russian POW camp after World War II.
7.
On January 27, 2018, Yair Lapid, an Israeli politician and chairman of the opposition party Yesh Atid made the following statement: “I utterly condemn the new Polish law which tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust,” and added “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.”
He also accused Poles of killing her own grandmother during the Holocaust. His false claims made headlines in the mainstream media. However, the lies were quickly exposed. In 2006 the German news magazine “Der Spiegel” interviewed his mother Shulamit Lapid, who admitted that both grandmothers of Lapid survived the Holocaust.
8.
In January 2018 the whole Poland was shocked by reportage of the US-owned Polish TVN station, according to which Polish neo-Nazis were to pompously celebrate „Adolf Hitler’s birthday.” The event took place in May 2017 in the forest near Wodzisław Śląski. In January this year (after eight months and few days ahead of the debate in the Polish parliament on Polish Anti-Defamation Act!), the recording of the Neo-Nazi event was revealed by the „Superwizjer” programme of TVN. A few weeks ago, the Polish news website wPolityce revealed material showing that the reportage was probably a staged anti-Polish provocation. TVN denied the reports. The public prosecutor investigates the case.
In January TVN broadcast secret footage exposing a group of Polish neo-Nazis celebrating Hitler's birthday. Now the cameraman, who went undercover as a Nazi, has been informed that he himself must appear at a hearing on suspicion of propagating fascism https://t.co/6SvnvmfKST
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) November 24, 2018
9.
Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labour Party, had the gall to call Poland an anti-Semitic country, although according to all surveys Poland is the safest place for Jews in Europe. Actually, the UK is the worst and Corbyn is considered a deadly threat to British Jews.
10.
In June 2017, British Labour MP Alex Sobel (member of Corbyn’s anti-Semitic party) launched a misplaced debate in the House of Commons on Polish Anti-Defamation Act and Polish anti-Semitism. He charged Poland with falsifying history by denying alleged complicity of the Polish people in the Holocaust. The debate turned out to be Sokol’s big mishap. PMI reported on it.
11.
In November 2018, numerous mainstream media called the Independence March in Warsaw commemorating the 100th anniversary of regaining independence by Poland a gathering of 200,000 far-right extremists (or Nazis). The leaders of the offensive news coverage were the American Associated Press and the Swiss journalist Fabian Eberhard. In the latter case, PMI filed a complaint with the Swiss media regulator Presserat.ch.
12.
In June 2018 the Belgian press regulator RVDJ rejected PMI’s complaint condemning the use of the derogatory term “Polish concentration camp” (Auschwitz) by the Belgian Dutch-language newspaper Nieuwsblad. RVDJ didn’t see any reason to regulate the use of the historically false term “Polish camp.” At least two council members of RVDJ were employed by Mediahuis, the owner of Nieuwsblad – it is not known if the recused themselves. The Belgian press council also created a series of artificial obstacles in order not to launch an investigation of the case. For instance, they asked PMI to participate in a Dutch-language hearing in Brussels. Astonishingly, PMI got no support from the Polish Embassy.
13.
In December 2018, the authorities of Lviv region (Ukraine) decided to name 2019 the year of Stepan Bandera. Bandera was a leader of the terrorist activity of Ukrainian nationalists and a mass murderer who was involved in horrible crimes against Jews and Poles. Figures such as Bandera and Roman Shukhevych are seen in Ukraine as “heroes who fought for Ukraine’s independence,” but both killers are responsible for massacres of dozens of thousands of Poles and Jews. The massacres in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia resulted in more than 100,000 Polish deaths.
The Israeli ambassador to Ukraine protested against the decision. Polish authorities left it without any comment. Polish activists like Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, a Polish Roman Catholic and Armenian Catholic priest, condemn the rise of ultranationalism in Ukraine.
14.
Jack Rosen, the chairman of the American Jewish Congress in an op-ed in Jerusalem Post: “… legions of Poles who, by turning a blind eye to or through direct cooperation with German wartime crimes, enabled the Holocaust.”
15.
Lahav Harkov, senior editor of the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post on Polish Anti-Defamation law.