Against “Polish Holocaust”

 

Poland is sometimes falsely accused by international media, scholars, and politicians of co-responsibility for the slaughter of Jews during World War Two. It must be stressed, forcefully, that such accusations constitute a blatant distortion of history, a violation of basic ethical standards and an insult to the memory of the WWII victims. They also shift the responsibility for the Holocaust from Nazi Germany and their helpers in collaborating countries to Poland. Poland never collaborated with the German occupier. The price for the resistance of Poles to the Nazi totalitarian system was 6 million Polish victims, millions of displaced people and immense losses to the country’s infrastructure.

The isolated cases of Poles murdering or betraying Jews during WWII can in no way be misinterpreted as a co-responsibility for the Holocaust. Similarly, the slaughter of Poles by Jews fighting along Soviets cannot be misinterpreted as a Jewish co-responsibility for the genocide of 6 million Poles.

There are, for instance, scholars who deny the Polish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by falsely claiming that “Poland’s Elites Didn’t Try to Save the Jews During the Holocaust”, stereotyping the majority of Poles during the WWII as indifferent or hostile to the destiny of Polish Jews, despite the fact that up to 50,000 of Poles were executed by Nazi Germans just for offering help to Jews, and accusing the present Polish government of engaging in historical revisionism. Those scholars, like Jan Grabowski from the University of Ottawa, white-wash the Nazi German war atrocities, shift the blame for the murder of fugitive Jews entirely onto Poles and spread the unsupported number of 200,000 Jews allegedly killed by Poles during the WWII in the global media.

There are publicists making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Poles, including leading Polish politicians such as Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

There are politicians who have no knowledge of Polish history, but usurp the right to “name and shame”, point their finger at innocent people and twist them with German perpetrators.

The inaccurate and one-sided media reporting on Poland based on a gross and malignant misinterpretation of history paves the way for anti-Polish sentiments that shape public opinion and that are detrimental for a sound policymaking. We strongly condemn all attempts to falsify history and to damage the good name of Poland and of the Polish nation.