Całość tekstu jest traktowana jako integralna całość, można ją cytować, ale zgodnie z prawem z podaniem źródła tzn. autora książki i jej tytułu, osoby udzielające wywiadu, no i tłumacza amatora:). Tłumaczenie jest moje, dlatego jest pewnie w nim dużo błędów:), pro publico bono, całkowicie bez wynagrodzenia.
Even a million Poles helped Jews
With profesor Jan Żaryn
Very often - in the context of the Second World War - Poland and Poles are vilified also even accused of complicity in the Holocaust. What are the consequences of such vicious and deceptive attacks?
This is due to the absence of Poland for many years after the WW2 as independent state and as a party that would speak in the name of the Polish nation in a sovereign manner. We didn’t have this sovereignty. Also historical policy of the PRL (People's Republic of Poland 1945-1989) didn’t have sovereignty. The People's Republic of Poland was supposed to be a state that promoted the Soviet vision of history which after the WW2 had enormous significance and huge consequences. This space undeveloped by the Polish story was thus built up by the story of someone else including the Jewish or German people especially the Soviets. A particularly important role was played by Jewish communities, a nation that survived a tremendous trauma and which from this trauma first came out through the silence and an attempt to kill the experience of the Holocaust. But then it changed. In the 1960s and 1970s when we were fully in the communist reality and at the same time real and deceitful propaganda was issued from the countr, Jewish scientific circles and those that influenced popular culture went outside with a clear, coherent story. This story, in which for decades there were no Poles, says that the Holocaust was exceptional phenomenon and the Jews suffered enormously from the Nazi, Germans, Hitlerite (in different periods this entity was changed) something like historical edge in Western civilization. Like the birth of Christ, a new era. This uniqueness in the dominant Jewish narrative meant, that all the other parts of the WW2 reality couldn’t have their autonomous story (with the reasons and the consequences) but were described in relationship with the Holocaust. Over the decades of scientific and pop culture research of this dominant Jewish narrative, one thing have certain regularity. And regardless of whether in the history of Poland and Poles corresponded to this rule, it had no right to exist as alternative to it. The foundation, that caused the extermination, was Christianity - system of values, stereotypes and references to the Jewish people, who were guilty of the death of Jesus Christ. In Jewish narrative that was source of hatred and anti-Semitism (stemming from Christianity) that lead to the zenith - the extermination of Jews. This logic immediately brought Christians, especially Roman Catholics, to defensive positions. This story and this emphasis on the environment of the Roman Catholic Church began from the mid-1960s. Further recognition by the Catholic side, especially by lay people, intellectuals, this Jewish narrative, only sustained its truthfulness and non-alternative. It was said then: "The other side pleads guilty and admits that anti-Semitism has emerged from the Christian doctrine. In that case, Christianity is responsible for the Holocaust”. That made the Pope Pius XII hostage of this lie who (in this narration) do too little for the Jews because was an anti-Semite under the skin. Also in this narration he didn’t reveal it cynically because the Catholic church itself was anti-Semitic. The Catholic church must apologize to the Jews. And the Poles were also introduced into this story ...
According to the Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide Pius XII saved about 900,000 Jews as the head of the Catholic Church. Adding to their number their descendants, this means that currently about 20 percent of all Jews in the world owes life to this person. At the personal command of Pius XII, the Vatican hid about 7,000 Jews whom the Germans wanted to deport from Rome. The Pope then allocated his own money to their support. Despite this he was not honored by the Yad Vashem Medal of the Righteous Among the Nations, but also he is understood today as responsible for the Holocaust.
This false tale of Pius XII and the Catholic Church has far-reaching consequences even though all pseudo - factual arguments have been precipitated. As you mentioned, it turned out that Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church helped as much as he could. Hitlerism, Nazism was pagan and wasn’t the continuation of Christian civilization in Europe. Nazism was even focused on the destruction of Christianity and the Church and because its followers departed from Christianity extermination could be born. Already in 1937, Pius XII predecessor, Pius XI said that ideologies such as Nazism or Bolshevism would violate fundamental human rights which was created in the likeness of God and for this reason these ideologies and the government practice should be condemned. Although all the arguments of this anti-Christian narrative have been precipitated (for example it turned out that the actual author of the drama “The Deputy” was a Soviet intelligence, tossing the false creator of this lying tale that spanned the entire western world), countered and far-reach criticized today the possibility of ending the beatification process of Pope Pius XII is (as can be seen from the consequences) impossible. Thus it can be seen that the myths accumulated around the Holocaust are good even if they are verified and refuted by scientific research. The Jewish primary tale is a dominant story, today supported not by Jews - but by those frightened by the potential accusation of "anti-Semitism".
Unfortunately, the entire WW2 - despite its various dramas - was reduced to the story of the Holocaust and how other nations and other communities referred to the Holocaust. It was necessary, therefore, to investigate how the Nazi helpers behaved. In principle every nation that was occupied by the Germans was filtered not through its own aspirations, achievements, or weaknesses but through answering the question of what was the attitude of this nation to extermination. They were Germans' helpers or they were able to resist this horrible crime? One of the important research questions for a large part of the world's scientific community has become the only one.
And so, before we regained independence in 1989, to the general pseudo-knowledge of the people from the West story about Poles from time of the WW2 were introduced. This story was supposed to be real, because it came from the world of truth and freedom, and joined the unknown for Poles (because we were isolated by iron curtain) stereotypes about us and our past. However, we didn’t know about it as a nation. We didn’t know how far in the United States and in Canada people acclimatized and became familiar with the anti-Polish narrative talking about the alleged participation of Poles in extermination, about the "Polack" - nothing worth, nasty anti-Semites. Nobody gave this opinion any additional reflection. Stefan Korboński or Kazimierz Iranka-Osmecki wrote about the real course of the WW2 on Polish land and they reached only to a limited number of people. Many others still believed in anti-Polish stereotypes funded by the authors of films and tapeworm serials. They even believed that they know all and must educate us on this subject. Simple, even primitive lies were used.
Poles, and so Catholics. Catholics, and so anti-Semites. Anti-Semitism, and so the Poles murdered Jews during the WW2. Everything was simple and logical for them. If the extermination camps were installed on Polish ground, it means that they were Polish and were created with the consent of the local population. Everything was obvious. The conditions of the occupation and the Polish sufferings under two totalitarian regimes were not known. Later Soviet occupation ended in the 1989 (last Russian soldier leave the Poland in 1993), so in this period the Poles couldn’t speak with their own voice. The biggest tragedy, however, was the fact that a large part of the Polish elite so much afraid of the effects of opposing the lie that she began to recognize them as truth. This applies to the period from the 1980s to the present day when the intellectual communist elite and departing from communism or after 1956, or only after 13 December 1981, mentally still stuck in the achievements of the People's Republic of Poland, managed the Polish narration. Now, over 20 years since regain the independence when the majority of Poles are proud of their past and shook off this shock wave our goal is to reach all the West people, young generations, with the truth about what really happened during WW2 in the Polish lands. Important is to show that the WW2 isn’t only the history of the Holocaust but also the history of Poles exceptionally and differently affected by the war than any nation.
The American historian with Polish origin, Richard Lukas, the author of the well-known book “The Forgotten Holocaust” telling about the persecution and murder of Poles said that: "Jewish historians are interested in only one subject from the entire history of the WW2. Suffering of Jews. They are not interested in anything else. All the lights are directed at the Jews everything else is remaining in the shadow. Since the suffering of Poles isn’t interested to them they do know nothing about these sufferings. And since they do know nothing about them it seems to them that they didn’t exist. And since they didn’t exist it means that Poles under occupation had a normal, peaceful life"16. Do we have any chance of breaking through this wall of indifference with our story of the WW2?
16 http://www.historia.uwazamrze.pl/artykul/932367//3.
Every nation, including the Polish nation, has the right to articulate his story about the WW2. We're trying to get back the lost time right now. I must point out, that the Jewish side no doubt listens our voice. It isn’t the case that the Polish side started telling stories about its war experiences after 1989 caused that the Jewish side immediately closed down and anchored in the existing stereotypes and didn’t see the possibility of dialogue.
However, deepening the self-consciousness of Jews is probably extremely difficult, tedious and ungrateful employ. Although Richard Lukas received from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Literary Award of Janusz Korczak. However when members of this organization realized that Lukas doesn’t describe the Holocaust from the Jewish perspective and writes about the sufferings of Poles and doesn’t accuse us of anti-Semitism they even wanted to take this award away from him. It ended up that instead of giving him the prize at the official banquet in New York (as was the practice) it was sent to him by mail. He also later met with ostracism from the American academic community. Another historian, Norman Davies, didn’t get a job at Stanford University because his book “God's Playground: A History of Poland” was considered too pro-Polish. Another example, Hannah Arendt form Columbia University, for raising the subject of participation and joint responsibility of the Jewish elite for the extermination of the Jewish nation has been for years in a Jewish environment censored. In connection with the "defiling of her own nest" (Laszon Ha-ra), her books headed by “Eichmann in Jerusalem" were translated into Hebrew more than twenty years after her death. Bearing in mind this embargo on a different version of WW2 history from version that Jewish Holocaust historians have drawn up, can our story enter one day to the mainstream?
Certainly it will be very difficult. The approach of the Jewish side to the story of the Polish side is fortunately evolving. In addition the Jewish side consists of many within existing pages. I have experience of talking with Shevah Weiss and many other Jews who have repeatedly signaled me that they need to know, how this WW2 reality is presented by the Polish side. They even point out that the conversion of Germans into Nazis as responsible for the WW2 is the foundation of a lie that Jews shouldn’t identify with (regardless of political commitments, financial reparations, etc.). I even think that they are even less interested applause to their narrative because they know her anyway and don’t need additional repetition. They see that there is a Polish side that claims it was different. It is therefore interesting. Therefore, the Jews want to know the Polish narrative and to see if it’s possible to work out a certain model in which dialogue can be undertaken. I hope that some Jewish intellectuals are a bit bored with a one-sided monologue and the ubiquitous voice of the clappers.
What is the Polish story about the WW2?
The Polish tale emphasizes that on September 1, 1939, the WW2 began which was caused by the German aggression and this aggression was caused by the fact that Poland didn’t want to enter into a coalition with Germany against anyone. We didn’t want to destroy the Treaty of Versailles but we were forced to defend our independence. The politics of pleasing the Germans caused earlier that they could take with more fragments of Europe without a single shot. Our war narrative also tells, that we had two equal aggressors Germany and the Soviet Union which got along with each other and the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact is in fact the direct cause of a world conflict that has claimed the lives of at least 55 million victims including at least 5.5 million Jews. In September 1939, Stalin realized Bolshevik goals from invasion of Poland in 1920 and Hitler liquidating the Polish state became part of the Prussian heritage and Bismarck's policy. These numbers already indicate that the Holocaust was a huge event that has its own right to be in exceptional history but there are more of these exceptional events in the history of the WW2. Among other things, this Polish experience is also exceptional. At least 3 million Poles died of Polish descent. Therefore We had two occupiers, Germans and Soviets, who shared Polish lands, and in addition both of them apart from their separate goals, had one common goal to exterminate of Polish elites that prevented them from acquiring these lands and making us slaves, cheap workforce. Hence from the Polish point of view, the first years of occupation it isn’t the Holocaust but the action of AB and Katyn. In addition to the fact, that the Germans are winning in Europe then and this is of course important it is in this stage of the war Germans, like the Soviets, deals with murdering Polish elites. Some of them do it in Katyń, Miednoje, Bykownia and 4 deportations to the East (expelling Poles from the Borderlands) while others in areas incorporated into the Reich - treating them as home areas - are physically exterminating Poles with the elite at the forefront (included the Polish Catholic clergy). In the Dachau itself, 861 Polish priests were killed. Several hundred thousand Poles from the lands annexed to the Reich were expelled to the East (without any private property) - to the General Governorship managed by the German police, Gestapo and gendarmerie units.
During the German occupation, almost 4,000 Polish priests were imprisoned in various concentration camps. According to priest Paweł Rytel-Andrianik, Germans murdered about 2,000 Polish priests and more then 600 Polish monks and nuns.
This number is incomparable to any other number of European priests who would perish in any part of Europe dominated by the Germans. The murdered persons accounted for over 20% of the priesthood; in addition the Soviets murdered more hundreds of priests all property was taken away from monks, parishes were liquidated, etc., according to atheistic state law. So it can’t be said that it was an accident. It was a deliberate act of both Germans and Russians who wanted to destroy the Polish elite in order to be able to freely incorporate Polish areas into their empires.
Formulating one coherent version of the Polish story of the WW2 which we could present to the world is very difficult. Some people with their statements even torpedo its creation. Jan T. Gross, for example, stated in the German daily that "Poles, who deservedly are proud of the resistance of their society to the Nazis actually killed more Jews during the war than Germans" 17. He points out, that the Poles killed "at most 30,000 Germans and from 100,000 to 200,000 Jews. " Director ŻIH (Institute of Jewish History), Paweł Spiewak, commented on Gross's words that Poles killed more Jews during the war than Germans stating that: "When his article were published in the German press Jan Tomasz Gross sent a kind of “denunciation to the Poles”. When he said: "Poles are also just as criminal and in addition, their unsettling crimes." he in some way absolved the Germans. Jan T. Gross isn’t the only person who can be invoked by Germany in his historical policy. Prof. Andrzej Zbikowski from ŻIH claims that: "During the war more Jews died at the hands of Poles than saved by them". However none of these gentlemen speculates in the media about how many Jews, for example, were murdered by the Germans thanks to the help given them by the Judenrats and the Jewish police. Similar speculations and divagations usually happen in one direction only in the media. What is the use of this type of historical journalism?
17 http://niezalezna.pl/71003-prokurator-zajmie-sie-grossem.
They don’t give any reliable numbers but they tell their stories. This has justification in the propaganda technique. There are assertions that are easily and permanently imposed on their recipients. They can be insert into general self-consciousness because they are easy to accept. Historically, they are false for a lot of reasons. However, in order to demonstrate this falsehood you need an hour-long lecture that isn’t easy to remember as one catchy sentence of Jan T. Gross. In order to show the falsehood of this sentence one must tell about the war of September 1939, about the Polish armed forces formed in the West, or Army of General Anders who fought at Monte Cassino or about General Maczek and his tank-men, or about Sosabowski and his paratroopers. Those 250 thousand Poles who were left in the West killed Germans on the fronts of the WW2, liberated Western European nations and didn’t murder Jews. Add to this the Polish army in the East so called Berlingers who killed the Germans and didn’t murder Jews. Let's also add the Home Army and the National Armed Forces the largest two underground formations in occupied Poland. The Home Army had nearly 400,000 soldiers and NSZ (at the moment of the largest extension) reached 90-100 thousand soldiers. All these formations were trained and built to fight the Germans. They shot and executed Germans and on people who collaborated with them. The story, then, that this great second-war machine in which Poles participate as soldiers who fight for independent Poland killed less Germans than Jews (there was no collective consent for killing, on the contrary wide spread help were prepared) it’s so far-fetched lie that you don’t know how to talk to its sender. Maybe it’s a man who understands nothing, or is a man who - I suspect - specifically introduces a lie to the main stream in which ignorance prevails. I omit in what context it was used although it’s important that the history of Poland is distorted to settle some political interests today. Germany has problems with emigrants. They woke up with their hands in the proverbial pee pot and therefore can’t manage with this topic. Jan Tomasz Gross lent them his alleged knowledge in order to strike Poles with statement that during the war they allegedly murdered Jews and were not eager to help them This is clear that they already have such a tradition and that’s why Poland doesn’t want to help and doesn’t want to accepts refugees. This is a neat lie. Broadcasters of lies are often very intelligent and brilliant people and know, just like Jan Tomasz Gross, the history of Poland and human psychology. They understand how to deftly and accurately strike on the one hand to cause irritation, and on the other hand, to properly achieve the goal, in this case, the disgust of the Polish nation in eyes of other nations.
Let me quote you one more word. This time, prof. Jan Grabowski. He claims that "the vast masses of Polish society joined the robbery of Jews. Poles gave them to the Germans, because there was no permission to hide them "18. Was there no consent in the Polish society to hide Jews?
18 http://www.tvn24.pl/wiadomosci-z-kraju,3/szerokie-rzesze-polakow-rabowaly-zydow,158522.html.
The main author of the memoir-historical publication about area described by Jan Grabowski is Adam Musiał. He described various attitudes of Poles in the Dąbrowa Tarnowska district. This publications shows, that many Poles evidently tried to help the Jewish community, and all kinds of tragedies faced by Poles were real. Germany, for example, forced to take part in its actions construction formations which were a form of replacement for deportation to Germany. Poles who wish to stay in GG and not be deported decided to work in these building formations. However, it was forced labor all the time. The Germans, therefore, forced them to bring Jews to squares, ridicule or buried their corpses. They had to take off the rings and jewels and later gave all of this to the Germans. Archbishop Adam S. Sapieha protested against this. Property plunder is a phenomenon devoid of racist context; property was stolen, not only Jewish. For example landowners property were stolen after they were expelled from Wielkopolska, or after the entry of the Red Army in 1939 or in 1944/1945. The theft of abandoned property has become a common pathology, eg. in winter periods when the fuel was out the furniture and frames of abandoned houses stood and pleaded to take care of them.
However instead of constantly answering this kind of statements which are formulated by Jan Tomasz Gross, Andrzej Żbikowski and Jan Grabowski we must finally focus on presenting our narrative to the world. I would emphasize the most that the help given to Jews began de facto in moment when the Holocaust began. In the last months of 1942, Jews in the ghettos realized and understood that deportations don’t consist in transporting them to places where they could work, but rely on their physical extermination. It became clear that the Jews needed help. Until now, only Polonised Jews, who have Polish families or friends have been looking for Poles. The remaining population chose to live in the ghettos, at home, hoping to survive with the Germans as their overseers. For most Jews the Polish-German war and the Polish-Soviet war until 1941 it was not their war. When the Polish underground became aware of the Germans' plans for the Jews, the rescue of Jews became immediately one of the main military goals of the Polish state. I don’t know all the acts appeals and documentation of the governments fighting against the Third Reich which didn’t lose their territorial sovereignty but according to available sources Poland was the only state in the world that officially set itself the goal of saving Jews. The structures of the Polish state inscribed saving Jews for their purposes alongside, of course, the main goal that is the full mobilization of citizens serving the regaining of independence. In addition to the most important goal which was the regaining of independence by Poland from the end of 1942 the goal of saving Jews became the second leading goal for the Polish state. This phenomenon has no equivalent in the contemporary world.
Who came out with the initiative of including rescuing Jews into the main agenda of the Polish state during World War II?
This initiative came from the outstanding Catholic writer and leader of the Front for the Rebirth of Poland, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka who published a protest in the underground in five thousand copies in which she demanded unambiguous attitudes condemning the phenomenon of murdering the innocent nation and civilian Jewish population by the Germans. The author saw the liquidation action of the Warsaw Ghetto which began on July 22, 1942. On the other hand, she immediately undertook remedial actions and created the Committee to Aid Jews. Żegota which was changed in December 1942 to the Council to Aid Jews, codename Żegota. This December is the most important date here because the Council to Aid Jews was not just a self-governing underground organization but it became an integral part of the structure of the underground Polish state. In short. The Council to Aid Jews, headed by Julian Grobelny and representatives of various Polish and Jewish politicians who formed this Council had their liaison Witold Bieńkowski appearing in literature and orders under many pseudonyms. Witold Bieńkowski was an activist of the Front of Poland Rebirth. On behalf of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka he served as a liaison for between Żegota and the Department of Internal Affairs of the Government Delegation for Poland. This department was directed in the underground by Leopold Rutkowski, ps. Trojanowski and also dealt with many other matters. It was like the Interior Ministry. He and his subordinates were dependent on the Plenipotentiary (Delegate) of the Polish prime minister to the country from General Władysław Sikorski and after his death in 1943, from Stanisław Mikołajczyk. Why I talk about it? Zegota was in the structures of the state and its budget, just like any other ministry and received money for its non-ordinary activities. Money from the budget prepared by the Polish government in London was distributed by the Polish state according to the objectives of the war. And when for many reasons the help for Jews became a very important task the support of the Department of Internal Affairs immediately appeared in budget. The department, accepted this money and shared it for the needs of the Council to Aid Jews. Of course there are historians who write that this money could have been transferred more, not only from the budget but also from Jewish organizations. And when you read Bieńkowski's reports you can sometimes see very deep irritation and even asking for more money because the needs were much greater. If there were so many needs related to the escape of Jews to the Aryan side it means that those Poles who helped these Jews also had to be many. This money went mainly to prepare the apartments and to rent them conspiratorially produce false documents, dye the hair at the hairdresser's for blond hair that the hidden person could move on the so-called surface, and therefore operate openly, not hide in 24 hours per day. Of course, there were many such hiding people.
This money had to be spent very effectively, since Żegota supposedly faked up to 40,000. various documents.
Yes. Her activity, however, was much wider and not limited to making false documents but she was active in all fields where Jews were helped. The Council to Aid Jews was therefore part of the government. However, not only this part of the government was responsible for helping the Jews. It can be said that the Council to Aid Jews was only responsible for that. However, many institutions of the Polish state were also involved in saving Jews although this was not the main reason of their existence. For example, dollars from emigration from London, could come to the country by couriers (Cichociemni) and crews of airplanes were needed. People on parachutes jumped over Poland. Part of them reached the target and part of them were murdered by the Germans. Those, who get safely to General Governorate (part of the occupied Poland) mainly jumped near Warsaw were accepted by the recipients of jumpers and were under protection of the Home Army or other structures that took them from this area. Couriers were dealt by the so-called aunts, women who have accustomed these people to the conditions of occupation (very different from conditions in UK). They had to unlearn reflexes, such as saluting on the street or speaking in English, etc. During this time, the transported money was conspicuously distributed on individual cells. For example, this money were transported by members of so called, blue police, because they could carry them by cars and the Germans didn’t revise them. Of course these policemen at the first place belonged, for example, to the Home Army. These imported money had to be converted into a black market for młynarki (Młynarki was the popular name for the currency notes of the General Government during World War II, issued by the German controlled Bank of Issue in Poland. They were named after the president of the bank, Feliks Młynarski - info from Wikipedia). This is only one part of the story. The second is what Jan Karski (and other people) did. He left as an emissary of the Polish government and thus as a man who from many months was prepared for this journey (by the command of the Home Army). He also came from the Catholic organization Front for the Rebirth of Poland. Please look, how many Catholics participated in saving Jews. In any case, Jan Karski met with many underground activists before the trip and was informed about the occupation situation so that he would convey messages to specific person on exile He had to have as much knowledge as possible about the various aspects of underground life. He had to provide information to various recipients from activists from the ONR, from the National Party and the PPS, and from other peoples and official representatives. Karski meet Jews, who want to cooperate with the Polish Underground State. He also enters to one of the ghettos has first-hand information about the ongoing extermination. Fulfilled with this information, he passes through communication routes led by Polish underground authorities from the occupied country to Great Britain. There he reaches the Polish deputy prime minister, and immediately Stanisław Mikołajczyk decides to share his knowledge about the Jews with the allies. After Karski arrives and recounts fragment of the report about the Jews extermination, Polish diplomacy disseminates this topic. Karski alone would have no chance to do this like the You or me if we were in London at this time. They would throw us out the door. He could meet the most important people on earth only thanks to the Polish government and diplomacy.
The most important were diplomatic relations kept with Great Britain and the United States. Edward Raczyński, the Polish ambassador to the British government, was responsible for these contacts. And he was this person who brought Karski to meet the representatives of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. No one would know about Karski without introducing him to the political salons by Polish diplomacy. Then the Polish diplomatic mission in Washington prepared his visit to the White House. I am not saying this to lessen Karski's roles but I am saying this in order to show that all these were actions taken not by one person but by official of the Polish state. Jan Karski himself writes, that he was a member of a larger organization which was the Polish state. This is indicated in the title of his work which he published in 1945. He never showed himself as a hero who fights the whole world like a lone rider. He was part of the Polish Underground State. This post-war propaganda made him a lonely hero.
It can be seen, that not only the "Zegota" members should be awarded the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations, but Yad Vashem should first and foremost honor the Polish state.
Sure. Although it must be said that Żegota is the only organization that received such a medal. There is a set of sentences that could be promoted by the Polish side as concise and true in the same time: "The goal of the Polish state during the WW2 in addition to regaining independence by Poland in 1942 was also saving the Jewish people from extermination. Every Pole who helped Jew could be killed by the German occupant. At least several hundred Poles were murdered for saving Jews and hundreds more were sent to concentration camps". This is a historical truth about the structure of the underground state that was filled with new tasks thanks to the perception of new needs and goals by the conspirators. No one can understand this if the essence of the Polish Underground State isn’t understood. Underground education, for example. At the end of September 1939 when the defensive war ends and the occupation begins teachers and potential students are aware that they need to learn more. There is no Ministry of Education. There is no Ministry of Science. There is no prime minister. Nonetheless the association of directors of secondary and junior high schools is trying to organize as well as the Polish Teachers' Union and the Union of National and Christian Teachers (fighting against each other before the war, as two structurally different structures) now preparing teachers for resumption of teaching. This teaching is resumed on the basis of schools and students who later will function in the structures of the Gray Ranks (codename for the underground paramilitary Polish Scouting Association during World War II – info from Wikipedia), or other organizations and even pre-war classes. So all elements of the school are created in a conspiracy, from bottom, connecting with each other without the participation of the minister. The Department of Culture and Education which is being created in the Government Delegation for Poland is expanding in 1940-1941. He acknowledges that there is an underground school and accept it administratively as a representative of the Polish state (certification of the school-leaving exams or completed studies). I would like to remind you that in the GG Germany only allowed to teach in common and selected vocational schools. This phenomena was described by the Tomasz Strzembosz in his book “Rzeczpospolita Podziemna” (Undeground Commonwealth). He describe there that the Polish Underground State was born with its civil and military structures as a grassroots initiative and was adapted from above by continuing the pre-war government on exile. These two realities converge among others. The consolidation of underground forces in conspiracy and the creation of the Home Army lasted until February 1942, and de facto throughout the entire period of the war. The Polish Underground State was not a tyrant who was destroying grassroots initiatives but supported and ordered them. The tension from above was directed to the need of the on common command. You couldn’t afford to break up the army..
Captain Witold Pilecki, went Auschwitz not as a ZWZ soldier (Związek Walki Zbrojnej - Union of Armed Struggle was an underground army formed in Poland following its invasion in September 1939 by Germany that opened WW2. It existed from 13 November 1939 until 14 February 1942 when it was renamed into Home Army – info from Wikipedia), but as a soldier of the Secret Polish Army that is one of many underground military structures that were spontaneously created at that time. When he returns from Auschwitz, TAP was already inside the Home Army. So we are talking about him that he was an emissary of the Polish underground but we can’t say that he was an envoy of the Home Army because the Home Army was not there yet.
Coming back to Jan Karski. Before he left for the West, he met a hundred people. During the war, the communications were in the hands of a peasant party (Polish Peasant Party), that is Zofia and Stefan Korbonski. It was similar in the Polish government in exile.
Communications were in the hands of very dominant figures at General Sikorski, Stanisław Kot. Many of the parties were not satisfied with the fact that the communication was taken over by the peasant party. They were accused of promoting only their own censoring news or slowing them down. Couriers dispatched from Poland carried all information from all sides of the Polish Underground State. Jan Karski had an amazing memory. He was like newspaper. His story of conversations with the Jews is very faithful although one can get the impression that he doesn’t identify with her. He was not supposed to be a lawyer one of the parties. His goal was to provide information. This information consisted in the fact that Jews (he met with the Bund and Zionists from the National Committee) said that the extermination of the Jewish people by the Germans was going on and it would last until the Germans felt that they would also face revenge. When Anthony Eden learns from Jan Karski about it, he tells him that among the RAF he will not find fliers who would drop bombs onto civilians. On the one hand, Eden has doubts and doesn’t believe Karski about the extermination of Jews, and on the other hand even if he believed he knows that the British were not Germans. The choice was not easy.
Israeli historians Yisrael Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski believe that "no one can deny that neither the Polish Underground nor the entire Polish society could do absolutely nothing to prevent extermination. The slaughter would be continued even if all Poles were warmly oriented towards their Jewish fellow citizens"19. Sometimes, however, the voices are raised that the Home Army should have blown up the tracks leading to concentration camps because it would slow down the extermination of Jews. It’s possible at all?
19 Yisrael Gutman i Shmuel Krakowski, Unequal Victims. Poles and Jews During World War Two, Holocaust Library, New York 1986, p. 69
In reality it has never been taken into account. German forces in Poland were so numerous that major military operations were impossible to perform, and armed units in general began to be formed in 1942-1943. The first that appear in the forests were communists, refugees - Soviet prisoners of war, as well as Jewish units. The Home Army was not a mass phenomenon at the beginning. These were officers of the Polish Army who removed their uniform in 1939 and went to the underground in which they began to create a variety of bottom-up structures. These were the officer's structures. You had to have soldiers. That is why a cadet schools was created which organized military exercises in the forest. From them young people were part of the structure of ZWZAK. However, in the following years, until 1944, the AK grew to about 380-400 thousand conspiracy soldiers and officers, older scouts from the Gray Ranks.
The attack on the track in a given place by the Home Army could cause the revenge from German side against Poles living in nearby villages. On the one hand, the military capabilities of Polish partisan units without sufficient weapons were limited, and on the other hand, security of the Polish civilian population had to be kept in mind.
We talked about Western Allies, they was not believed in Karski's account. Such crime couldn’t be imagined and for this reason thought about bloody retaliation or the bombing of concentration camps was accused. Jewish Zionists in America argued with the Jewish Left especially with representatives of the Bund who thought that it was necessary to stop the issue associated with the plan to settle in Palestine because now their nation was murdered. The Zionists responded that they are in the process of negotiating of the future Israel state and that is their priority. Until 1941, some Jewish communities seemed (about that Snyder wrote in one of his books) that it was possible to discuss this issue with the Germans since they would throw the English out from Africa and from the Middle East. If you don’t want Jews in Europe then in that case get rid of us but as a state. Thus, the Holocaust doesn’t reach many Jews, and the priorities were still in force.
In 1932, the Revisionist Zionists argued, that if national socialism were free from anti-Semitism they would be able to accept it. In 1934, Ben Gurion even called Włodzimierz Žabotyński Włodzimierz Hitler. Edwin Black, an American writer of Jewish origin (who recently appeared in defense of Yezidis and Christians exterminated by the Islamic State) in a book titled “The Transfer Agreement” describes a contract concluded between German Zionists and Nazis, under which after 1933 ca. 60,000 Jews left Germany for Palestine. So it's hard to be surprised, that in 1941 Abraham Stern offered Adolf Hitler an alliance under which in exchange for help in building a Jewish state Zionists-revisionists would join the war on the side of the Third Reich. Although Polish Zionists who were often saturated with Polishness was more important to fight for their own state than fidelity to Poland and the struggle for its independence. Thus, some Jewish armed organizations, whose members were previously trained and armed by the Polish Army fought during the WW2 in Palestine against the ally of Poland, Great Britain.
Before the Jews understood that the Germans were not meant to expel Jews but to murder them their political project continued which was opposed by the British. Their project was not immediately confronted with reality because this reality couldn’t reach the Jews. It became slowly a fact. It was too unbelievable and unimaginable. Either nobody wanted to do anything about the Holocaust or didn’t believe it. This is why Szmul Zygielbojm, a member of the National Council of Poland, committed suicide in London. It was a protest against the passivity of the world for the extermination of Jews. When all parties and Polish institutions learned about the extermination of Jews they clearly took the floor. The prime minister, the president and the National Council. The Catholic bishops also took the floor. There is a famous speech by Bishop Karol Radoński, who on December 14, 1942 in Radio London, said: "Murder committed on Jews in Poland, openly, even among the boasters and derision of executioners and their helpers, must arouse horror and disgust in the entire civilized world. (...) As the Polish bishop, I condemn the entire crime committed in Poland against the Jewish population with utter vigor! "
This citation quoted by you is in sharp contrast to the statements of some historians. Professor Jan Grabowski, for example, stated in one of his texts that "the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Poland in the "Jewish question" has kept a stony silence.
It's not true. Bishop Radonski, as the voice of the Polish Episcopate remaining in the free world even states that the Germans entered the Teutonic Shoe and thy are again destroying the innocent nation now the Jewish nation. All this is a clear condemnation by the Church of what is happening with the Jews in Poland.
I also looked at the records of sermons from the times of the WW2 of the Łomża bishop Stanisław Kostka Łukomski. There is no doubt that he and his priests spoke in their sermons about respect for another person who is defenseless, deprived and killed. He spoke about respect for someone else's private property. He couldn’t say straightforwardly that this applies to Jews because it was severe punished. Everyone, however, knew what he was talking about. The entire social aura forwarded by the Polish social authorities was supposed to cause that Poles wouldn’t participate in the smallest degree in the act of rape which was carried out by the Germans on Jews. This is clearly visible in the documents of Archbishop Adam Stefan Sapieha who writes that Poles can’t in any way be misled by the German propaganda thanks to which they would participate in any fragment of this crime. It was a protest of the Archbishop Sapieha addressed to the German authorities who tried to include Poles in their crimes and share responsibility for them with her. For example, by using building battalions to bury Jewish bodies or to remove rings from corpses. It was a shameful act of the Germans who forced Polish workers to work shamefully from the moral point of view. Archbishop Sapieha also stigmatized all German actions to force Poles to report on Jews hiding in the forests. The Germans demanded that Polish village leaders help them to hunt Jews. If they refused, the village would be burned. Poles were forced to blackmail into unethical behaviors and various forms of collaboration.
Many Jewish historians, however, think that the Polish Church could make much more for Jews during the WW2 than it did.
According to the research of priest Paweł Rytel-Andrianik we can prove that 13 of 15 living bishops in Poland (because the rest either was murdered or sat in concentration camps) not only proclaimed the Gospel and love of their neighbor as themselves, but also personally hid Jews. There is some doubt to two of them. In particular, for Bishop Czesław Sokołowski, a suffragan of the diocese of Podlasie, discussed today as collaborator with the occupiers. The attitude of Polish bishops during WW2 towards the Jews speaks more than words.
Someone of these thirteen bishops has been honored by the Yad Vashem Institute with the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations?
No, but it isn’t so important. Very many Poles didn’t get this medal. However, we have many Jewish testimonies that after escaping from the trains going to Treblinka the first thing the Jews did, they were looking at the horizon of the church tower with a cross because they knew that they would find help there. There are many examples of how priests behaved during confession. Of course, we don’t know this from the priestly account but from the other people. How morally did they influence people who had to have a dilemma: save a stranger and expose their own children to death?
You spoke earlier about the involvement of such Catholics in helping Jews as, for example, Jan Karski or Zofia Kossak-Szczucka. Also is known the appeal from August 1943 by conservative Catholics appearing as Polish Independence Organizations, in which you can read: "To the all Polish Society! Every Pole who interacts in any way with the murderous German action whether by blackmailing or denouncing Jews, or exploiting their tragic situation commits a big crime to the Republic and can be sure that in a short time in Reborn Poland will be held accountable". In these cases, however, we are dealing with Catholic intelligence and not with ordinary simple Catholics. What attitude did they usually take towards the Jews seeking help?
Before the war, the Jewish community functioned in a separate way which was accepted by them voluntarily. This distinction from the Catholic world and the Polish world was multispectral. It was evident that it was unimaginable for a pious Jew to have his daughter or son marry a gentile, i.e. a Christian. It was similar in Christian environments. In principle if a person didn’t come out of Judaism and didn’t become Polonised Jews it was difficult to believe that a Catholic would enter the Judaic family. The religious world influenced at the distance between Polish and Jewish families. In fact, the most common issues have Poles and Jews in schools they attended as well as in sports competitions or in scout organizations. But also those structures existed separately. Also the political circles of Polish Jews lived their own affairs and goals. There were of course especially in the 1930s relations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or with other structures but traditionally some Jewish circles sympathized with the Polish leftist community not only with the communists. There was a socialist Bund which had strong ties with the leftist PPS. So when the extermination of the Jews started in 1942 the Bundists from the Warsaw Ghetto who wanted to reach the Polish side couldn’t reach Zofia Kossak-Szczucka because they don’t know her personally. It was a completely separate and unknown world for them. The world of the underground PPS isn’t. It was the Polish side with they had contact. It isn’t surprising that the Council to Aid Jews was dominated by the people of the left. What's more, in Warsaw, in Żoliborz, many of Jews were hiding in the homes of the Warsaw leftist intelligentsia. It could be said that was natural. Knowledge brought the trust and the need to help. That how it was in the attorney and acting environment. Before the war,some of the people who worked in Polish cinematography have Jewish origin. They knew each other very well with Polish actors. If during the war Jew had a foothold on the Aryan side, he was referring to the person that he had previously known. In general, however, it was not so easy to prepare and perform the escape.
In the Warsaw ghetto, there were entire structures dealing with communication between the Jewish and Aryan side and for many weeks they were involved in organizing the escape. Money was collected to pay for a Jew from the Jewish police or a blackmailer (szmalcownik). On the Aryan side, false documents must have been waiting. Sometimes, however, nothing was planned and everything happened spontaneously such as escaping from a train going to Treblinka. Such Jew didn’t know where he is and what is waiting for him. He often had problem to articulate in Polish but his physiognomy give not any clue that he have Jewish origin. Sudden move to the Aryan side very often resulted in a meeting of people who were completely unknown. There are many testimonies in which this meeting can be seen. And I'm not talking about a szmalcownicy, who professionally lurked on their victims to blackmail and plunder. Here we come to the Catholic dimension of help. Many Jews understood, that the place where they can get something to drink, bread or soup is the church. So often they went to the presbytery to the parson and they tried to acclimatize there, although for half an hour. This is the primary help. She has a lot with Catholicism and Polish hospitality. We have relations in our Committee Commemorating Poles who save Jews, from which we learn that this hospitality at some point turns into a fear of the guest consisting a lack of trust in the host. And also the host's own fear, who is afraid for his life and the life of his families. This fear is the dominant reality and remains in the memory. Often, people who saved Jews also felt in a certain way under the specific occupation of their guest whom they are afraid of and which they can’t refuse. The Polish side receive visitors because it’s brought up in Catholic values Polish hospitality and can’t say "no". The person being accepted is so "stubborn to live" that he doesn’t want to leave. There were also compulsions to rescue where the Polish side was a weaker side and even if she didn’t want to help further because, for example, she didn’t have money even for her own family she could don’thing. At night comes to the house completely alien and unknown person for whom hiding threatens the death of the whole family. This acceptance is identified on a very large number of reasons. It can be said that most often Catholic education doesn’t allow refusal to provide help. This is one Polish attitude that is often visible in relationships. There are examples of such attitudes where you can see Christian love for your neighbor but it isn’t born right away. There are beautiful diaries of Mrs. Halina Zawadzka, a Jewess, “The Escape from the Ghetto” which tells how she escaped from the ghetto in Konskie. She talks about the shameful attitude of Poles who out of thoughtlessness or out of animosity towards Jews have done a lot of evil. But the author reached the person whom she once met accidentally in the ghetto and hence she get the address of that person. It was on a basis like we give someone an address during holidays, and here after a while such a person during the night suddenly stops in front of our door. This Jewess goes to Starachowice, and at known address the door was opened by unknown ladies. The Polish women didn’t expect her at all. At night, he hears a conversation, from which it appears that the mother asks her daughter to send beck a temporarily admitted and dangerous guest from the house. She hears from these women that after 48 hours she will have to find another place because they are not prepared for long-term help. This Jewish woman writes that in this moment she realized that she had appeared "in the peaceful stabilized life of these women, like a thunder from heaven, bringing a death sentence to their home". She recognize that she had the 48 hours to prove that she is necessary to them. And this is done on an ethical level. These women, Polish women, still can’t get her out of the home although they still don’t want her but slowly day by day they begin to understand that the temporary situation is becoming a new everyday life that they have good to do and she finally stays there. The circle of the initiated increases one of the family members - being in conspiracy - arranges the papers. They start to teach her the catechism and what it means to be a Polish woman. They dress her in Polish costumes. They go to church together. This Jewess says that she even went to the Midnight Mass, not quite yet understanding what she was participating in. When people knelt, she also kneeled. And she wrote in her memoirs: "Catholicism seemed to me a beautiful religion - it would be good to become a part of this Church. Belonging to him was a strong bond with the entire Polish nation. Catholicism gave the faithful hope that God hears, Christ loves, and God's Mother understands and protects us when necessary. However, I was still looking for a sign of God's existence. "
Only few people are aware that the world of that time wasn’t as anonymous as it is today. Nevertheless, only in Warsaw, where almost every tenement house had its own caretaker and in which various people lived, including Germans, during the war Poles hid from 25 to even 30 thousand Jews, where 4,000 from them received direct help from Żegota. About 90,000 people from around one million residents in Warsaw were involved in helping the Jews. This means that, statistically, every tenth, eleventh Varsovian risked his life and the life of his family for Jews. As for the number of blackmailers, Marek Edelman claimed that only one or two blackmailers fell on several hundred Poles. According to Gunnar S. Paulsson, in the millionth Warsaw there were during the war between 3 and 4 thousand blackmailers. All these proportions clearly speak in favor of Poles. For this reason, Marek Edelman claimed, that there was no other city like Warsaw in the world in terms of the scale of help to Jews and the risks that the citizens of Warsaw took on themselves.
Warsaw, in fact, almost whole lived in a conspiracy, surrendered to the atmosphere and guidelines of the Polish Underground State, and not to the occasional announcements and orders of threats. In the Polish nation there had to be something present that may be absent and incomprehensible today. The point is that the Polish nation understood most of what the conspiracy means. That is, you must not ask unnecessary questions and have more knowledge than necessary. In the capital as you say about 25 thousand Jews were hidden. Do we know such an ethnic minority, that would count ca. 25 thousand in a million city and those people were unrecognized? And in this moment we are talking about the German occupation, hid death for hiding Jews.
Did the years of the Partitions of Poland prepare Poles for this conspiracy?
Yes. The less I know, is better for me. There is no talk about things, that don’t have to be said. My parents were awarded the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations. I don’t know if all the inhabitants of the manor located near Warsaw in Seligi knew about Jews hiding there - certainly my parents and uncles, Olizar. My grandfather knew about another Jewish woman, Wiera Gran, which her husband, a doctor, was hiding nearby - in Babice. Sister Matilda Getter from the Congregation of the Family of Mary in Warsaw at Hoża Street asked my parents and my uncle to accept a young Jewish woman to help with the children. The nearest family knew that she was Jewish. I don’t know if the rest of the family knew about it. But I think so. My uncle employed a gardener there also a Jew, who was the husband of this previous mentioned woman that we adopted. The gardener had Semitic facial features so he didn’t appear often and slept in the shed. She had an Aryan appearance and helped in raising children. She lived in one room with the other service; as my aunt writes in her memoirs, ladies sometimes discreetly leave out the room, so that the spouses can meet in loneliness.
Did hiding the Jews by your family influence in some way the choice of your professional path and specialization in the history of Polish-Jewish relations?
In some sense, yes. It all started with Anna Wybranowska, a wonderful woman who lived for years in Montreal, Canada. She came to Poland in the mid-1990s. She collected us, various people. She also told how the history of Poland in Canada is falsified how much people living there including Jews, are deprived of knowledge about Polish heroes. She reached my mother, among others, and convinced her that she should try to the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations. My mother and her sister were the last living people of this generation. They said that they never thought about it. We had good contact with this Jewish family. Mrs. Irenka emigrated to the United States, to New York after the war. My sister when she escaped from the PRL and reached the United States she lived with them. It was such a rematch from their side for the WW2. Nobody, however, thought about any medals. These were private relationships. We were just friends. And Mrs. Anna, after learning that her mother saved Jews during the war, told her that it was not her private affair because everyone in Canada believed that she was murdering Jews and not saving them. "If you start to apply for a medal, you will start to make sure that the true memory of the Poles triumphs" - argued my mother. And Mrs. Wybranowska arrived in New York to this rescued Jewish woman, Irena Chobocka, who immediately issued a statement in this case. Since it was simple and obvious, this medal was given lightning fast.
From you words can be concluded, what helped Poles to save Jews (the ability to conspire and Christian mercy and humility), later caused that many of them were not honored by the Yad Vashem Institute, because they didn’t ask for it at all.
Exactly. In the times of the Polish People's Republic, no normal person would go to the Institute of Jewish History or the Israeli embassy in Poland to say that he was saving Jews. Polish people awarded the Medal of the Righteous Among the Nations are today over 6.6 thousand. On the one hand it sounds good and on the other hand untrue. Poles are the most rewarded in confrontation with other nations, but in fact it is only the top of the iceberg. Jews are also aware of this, but the procedures at the Yad Vashem Institute are quite rigorously followed; there must be a relation of the saved Jew.
Professor Teresa Prekerowa calculated that even 360,000 Poles helped Jews. Władysław Bartoszewski spoke about several hundred thousand people. According to various estimates, the Poles could save from 50 to 120 thousand Jews. As Edward Raczyński and Władysław Żarski-Zajdler enumerated, about 450,000 Poles helped from Jews. Is it a lot?
The forms of this help and those helpers were - in my opinion - hundreds of thousands if not a million or more. This is usually the story of anonymous help. In many relation both Jewish and Polish there is such awareness that a given person has been saved by several dozen people. But something stays in the memory: a "woman from the village", "a Pole met on the road," etc. Janina Hera wrote about these anonymous rescuers. That person, in a colloquial manner, move from hand to hand. And each of them didn’t present themselves. They were anonymous by name and surname but at the same time they were real people. In Jewish memory they also, as real people, remained. The fact that we don’t know their names and we can’t identify them doesn’t mean, that they didn’t help. Today, there is full agreement from the point of view of Polish and Jewish researchers that this 6.6 thousand doesn’t reflect the real scale. The question is that: it was 300,000 Poles, or it was a million Poles? It is a question that never could be verified. I think that it could have been a million or more. The forms of helping the Jews could be very different. There was food that the Jews hiding in the forest got from the village. There were manor houses in which even a several dozen people lived who knew about hiding Jews and could also suffer death for this. These were convent in which all the sisters knew about Jewish children. We have a personal list of 360 nuns who were directly involved in saving Jewish children. However, there was not only one sister who help the child in a given convent. It was 15, 20 sisters. They were often all involved in this help, because they looked after orphans, learner, etc. The repression would be applied to all sisters from a given convent or orphan's house not just one of them. The awareness that Jewish children were kept there was common in such a convent although it didn’t have to relate to the knowledge about the origin of a particular child - the questions were not asked. Nobody asked if this is Zosia or Magda. Again, no one asked questions, which doesn’t mean that the sisters didn’t know what was going on in their school, convent or orphan's house.
Did the Germans raid monasteries and orphan homes carry on by nuns?
Yes, but indeed it was possible to keep the monasteries without a German shoe. However, there were such raids and these children who were Jewish children were kept in previously prepared caches. Sometimes they couldn’t hide them, and these children were shown to the Germans as Polish children and somehow they succeeded. The child even if he was a gypsy or Jewish child was presented as a child of a Polish officer who died in the war of 1939. Of course there were papers and documentation that were specially prepared for that. Help from the Church was completely unselfish and resulted from the ethics of Catholic and Christian mercy.
Many Jewish historians, however, accuse Poles of earning money, when they help Jews.
Sometimes it happened. While examining the scale of help to Jews from the Poles, many questions must be firstly answered. Among other things, whether a Polsh boy smuggling food for the Jews into the ghetto, who acted on behalf of his father who did business with the Jews despite the impending death penalty for helping the Jews is a person who helps the Jews or not? The issue of money which is raised by Yad Vashem and is exclusive is in fact a completely irrelevant matter in the occupation. It was obvious that the Poles had to have money to survive themselves deprived of a pre-war workplace and living in poverty. Many Poles were deprived of employment as a result of the WW2. The pauperization of the nation was enormous. Limited cards for food. The black market was very developed but there were goods in different prices. Jews who were hiding by Poles of course, gave money to the common home budget. How should they not give if the Poles themselves had nothing to live on? Of course, sometimes it wasn’t needed. In my house, this Jewess and the gardener didn’t pay anything but they worked for it. There are also examples that Jew knows that the ghetto will be closed. Until this moment he went to the Aryan side with a wristband and he could do some things there. Sometimes, money was given to Ukrainian policeman and he turned his eyes when it was necessary. During this time various phenomena occurred such as, for example, moving things. The Jewish family in this way left their things in known Polish male or female, or in unknown Polish family. For storage. In this way property was saved but this family never returned. It was help? It was in danger of a concentration camp.
That was exactly the case with my family who lived during the war in Skierniewice. The Jewish family asked her to keep things for a while. Later, their alleged envoy came to them.
Exactly. Is this a form of help or not? In the German notices, the storage of Jewish things was forbidden. From this perspective it should be considered that it was help. After the war, those Jews who gave the Poles something to keep often didn’t return. In connection with this Jewish property became the property of Polish families after the war. This doesn’t mean that Polish families wanted to take it. They often took this wardrobe, or money and jewels. The Jews hoped that it would somehow survive and they would be able to pick it up. The confrontation with the Germans didn’t give them such hope. This scale of help is very diverse and difficult to describe. Anyone who doesn’t know the reality of the occupation can’t imagine it. Reality is very rich and diverse. When it comes to numbers, I try to prove that this million Poles participated in some way with the phenomenon of help. That is their gesture of good towards Jews fits into the category of helpers. The forms of this help could be different. From the slice of bread through acceptance of the storage of material belongings to immediate and permanent help. Most importantly, the person who gave such a slice of bread doesn’t know that she could save someone's life. In Jewish memories, this one slice will grow into a great life experience.
Germans allegedly complained that despite the use of permanent anti-Semitic propaganda, Poles still have a too positive attitude towards Jews and can’t be turned against the Jews. Among other things, this is why it was necessary to introduce such a draconian law that provided the death penalty for Poles who helping the Jews. It was also intended to completely separate Poles and Jews from each other in order to be able to carry out the extermination of Jews without any obstacles on the part of Polish society.
From 1941, Germany and Hans Frank in the General Governorship and in other districts make announcements in which they inform about the dangers resulting from providing any help to the Jews. Jews who illegally cross the border of the ghetto and pass to the Aryan side are subject to the death penalty. Poles helping Jews are subject to the death penalty. Poles who take over Jewish property are subject to the penalty of a concentration camp. Poles who don’t report to other Poles that they are hiding Jews or don’t report Jews on the Aryan side are subject to a concentration camp. In short, the only allowed attitude among the Poles, accepted by the Germans, is denunciation. This is the only category of citizen of the General Government allowed by the Germans. This legal reality meant that either Polish society submitted to this law or not. We know that many millions of Poles considered the law of the Polish Underground State obligatory not the law of occupation. The Directorate of Civil Resistance (one of the branches of the Polish Government Delegate’s Office during WW2 – info from Wikipedia) seemed appeals calling for pro-Polish and pro-Jewish attitudes. This is in many memories. Probably in the memories of Kazimierz and Marian Brandys we can read that because the Germans punished Poles for proverbial crossing the road at a red light then living in such absurdities, everyone broke the law because they knew that they could still be shot under any pretext. At one point, the Germans exaggerated. If nothing is allowed, then everything is allowed. Poles therefore entered the ethical code of civil war. And now sanctions. According to current knowledge, we recognize as historians that about one thousand Poles were murdered only because they helped Jews. As part of the IPN project under the name: “Index of Poles murdered and repressed by the Nazis for help to Jews” about 6,000 people have been gathered since 2006 and the publication describes about 550 cases of repression. These are not only cases of death but also cases of another German's preventiveness so that the Poles wouldn’t save the Jews. These are cases based on files of the cases of the German Special Courts (A Sondergericht was a German "special court" - info from Wikipedia). The source that was considered credible is the German court that sentences and in the sentence of the judgment says that a person is condemned just for breaking one of the announcements that we are talking about. In connection with this, it can be seen that this is a punishment for saving Jews. Of course, there were cases of killing and sending Poles to concentration camps for helping Jews without any judicial path. That is why it is so difficult to see this situation from the point of view of historical proof. However, we have for many years a Commission for Investigating Crimes Against the Polish Nation and the material it’s enormous. Thanks to this material evidence collected during the PRL by prosecutors including Mr. Bielawski, we know that the cases of Poles' murders for saving Jews were much, much more. At the end of the 1980s, an important book was also published in English by Mr. Wacław Zajączkowski, titled Martyrs of Charity. We are still verifying the data contained therein.
The President of the Association of Jewish Veterans, Arnold Mostowicz, once said that "no nation has offered such a hecatomb to victims on the altar of help as Poles, because in many occupied countries this help didn’t carry such a risk".
It is true. The most important examples of what the risk was, is the case of the Ulma family - the murder in Markowa in March 1944. This is for many reasons a tragic tale and at the same time because of human attitudes extremely touching and stimulating the reflection. Currently, the beatification process of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma is underway in the Catholic Church. The Germans murdered then their six children. Wiktoria Ulma was then 8 months pregnant. This case clearly shows the responsibility of Poles who decided to save Jews.
It is worth saying that in this Markowa, in which the Germans killed the Ulma family and the Jews hiding there the Poles continued to help and save twenty-one Jews. In this small town, which numbered three thousand people the murder of Ulm was widely known and understood which threatens to hide and not give Jews to the Germans. Nevertheless, nobody throw away these hidden Jews but they were hidden till the Soviets' entrance. It was known that this is risk for their children's lives. This is the story of the Polish and Catholic attitude of Poles towards Jews. There is no doubt that these Poles were afraid had dilemmas and didn’t know how to behave. Somewhere, however, the Christian conscience had to tell them that there was no way out and that Jews couldn’t be thrown out of their home.
However, Professor Jan Grabowski claims something completely different in this matter. Well, he thinks that the The Ulma Family – Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II in Markowa is an example of manipulation. Citing the testimony of Jehuda Erlich, who was supposed to be hiding in the town of Sietesz, near Markowa, he claims that the day after the Germans killed the Ulma family, which was given to them by a member of the blue police 24 Jews were found in the fields in Markowa who were murdered by Polish peasants. As Prof. Grabowski says in an interview to Adam Leszczynski for Gazeta Wyborcza,: "Five years ago, I submitted this document to the founder of the museum, Dr. Mateusz Szpytma, today the vice-president of the Institute of National Remembrance. There is no trace of this document in Markowa, no mention of this crime. There are also other documents known about raids on dozens of Jews who were made by the residents in 1942 without any German involvement! " Jan Grabowski also claims that: "Jews were murdered in the nearby area in March 1945! A few kilometers from Markowa there is the village of Kańczuga, where on March 31, 1945, the Poles murdered a dozen or so survivors of extermination. Similarly in nearby Kisielów. But visitors to the museum in Markowa will not hear a word about it. There is also nothing about the horrors of Poles committed to Jews in the nearby Gniewczyna Łańcucka - which was described not so long by Alina Skibińska in a shocking book. The whole is a gloomy proof of what the today historical policy can be leading to”. What do you think about the revelations of Professor Jan Grabowski about the inhabitants of Markowa and their alleged murders on the Jews they hide?
According to my knowledge, what comes from the research taken up some time ago by Mateusz Szpytma, prof. Grabowski is wrong, or mistakes dates. Today, it can be said that after the death of the Ulma the inhabitants of Markowa were still protecting the surviving Jews and some of them were talking with dr Szpytma; they live in Israel.
The whole world knows Lidice, a Czech village, which after the attack on Reinhard Heydrich, Germans destroy, and murdered all its inhabitants. Also known in the world is the history of the Greek village of Distomo, where the Germans murdered 218 people. These are the symbols of bestiality that Germans committed in the countries they occupied. Meanwhile, in Poland, such villages in which the Germans murdered the entire community, including women, the elderly and children is at least 84. The village, where as part of pacification, a significant part of their population was murdered, is around 900. In the village of Borów alone Germany murdered about 300 Poles. In spite of so many examples of cruelty of the German occupiers we still have a problem with proper exposure of these tragedies and presenting our losses and suffering to the world. Some postulate, therefore, as response to the excessive exposure in the history of Polish-Jewish relations of Jedwabne, the Kielce pogrom and events of March 1968, start to promote the history of the Ulma family in the world and invite Israeli youth to the Museum in Markowa. Do you think that this is the right solution?
That is what we are aiming for. However, as far as the history of Jedwabne is concerned, it is actually much less known than the one that is engaged, functioning in propaganda. In the true story of the Jedwabne Jews' drama there are more question marks than clear answers. Of course, Markowa as symbol, should be known as it is known - unfortunately - Jedwabne. The truth about Markowa, thanks to Matusz Szpytma, who was the first director of the Markowa Museum is well recognized in the historical sense. The creation of this museum isn’t only his merit but also the merit of Mrs. Elżbieta Rączy from the Rzeszów branch of the Institute of National Remembrance. A large contribution is also made here by Nizio's studio which prepared the project of this museum as well as the management and employees of the Łańcut Museum. Mr. Mateusz could also use the knowledge of the Program Council which I had the honor of being chairman. A lot is known about what happened in Markowa. However as far as the history of Jedwabne is concerned the truth about it is falsified and isn’t recognized historically. What prosecutor Radosław Ignatiew of the Commission in Białystok did, did in proper way. The BEP Institute of National Remembrance in which I worked also did a lot of good things in this matter. He published a two-volume book on this subject entitled “Around Jedwabne”. For reflection on what really happened there there is a very well-constructed documentary film by Mr. Artur Janicki “Jedwabne”, in which he shows not how it was because we don’t know it but focus on what we don’t know. He indicates there on the beginning of archaeological research under the direction of prof. Andrzej Kola. Archeological teams entered the area of the barn and the nearby area and open-cast works began. The professor of archeology who was conducting research there said in the film what he could read from this fragment of archaeological works to which he was admitted. However, the Jewish side protested and made objections about further work indicating that this disrupts the Jewish burial ceremonial and therefore it should be withdrawn from further research. President Lech Kaczyński, at that time acting as the Minister of Justice, unfortunately, succumbed to these tensions and ordered the discontinuation of research.
So Lech Kaczyński made a mistake then?
It was a decision that was made - as I understand it - without any negotiations with the Jewish side, and it was necessary to use factual arguments because from the previous research it appeared that they should be continued. It was necessary to negotiate with the Jewish side the conditions for further archaeological work including the further presence of Jewish representatives. We had to continue the work because we still face an unexplained historical mystery. There are so-called simple facts, which indicate that two parts of the crime took place in the barn. Firstly Germans killed men perhaps with a firearm and later killed and burned women, children and the elderly. On the spot, for example, milk teeth scorched human bones are found. The presence of scales can also be seen there. Not only one scales but many many scales. Opinions are divided, were they fired? Did they come from 1939? Or from later times? There are also many indications that they could be used in connection with this act of murder. You can therefore consider the hypothesis that the Germans were shooting Jews fleeing from this barn or killed them first and then set them on fire. Men were probably shot dead, and women, children and old people who were unable to defend themselves, the Germans decided to burn alive. These are, however, only hypotheses and question marks and I don’t know how it could have looked, because, unfortunately, research work was stopped. In any case, the scales that have remained in this land also scream for truth. Certainly, this is an issue that archaeologists should take care of. There is also a new ralation recorded by the Mr. and Ms. Kujbid from Canada (they lead a private television), with a person who was probably about 10 years old in 1941. She remember those tragic events; she underlines the constant presence of the Germans and the tragedy of the Jews, burnt, and still living in agony, the last breath of the spirit. It is difficult to suppose that this young girl is confabulating. It is too shocking to be false.
So archaeological research should be resumed and exhumations carried out to the end?
Undoubtedly yes. The biggest unresolved problem - because Polish testimonies are divergent here less then German testimonies - is that it’s not very clear who these Poles are who accompany this crime and what is their real participation (voluntary? Under coercion?). Probably they are people from this village from Jedwabne. However, there are different memories of the inhabitants of Jedwabne, according to which at that time people from outside of the northern border of the Second Republic of Poland appeared in the village. If they are strangers then who brought them to Jedwabne? If you look at the map, it seems that they were Mazurzy. They came from German sides. Perhaps they were brought to Jedwabne by the Germans to assist and help so that pictures could be taken to indicate that the local population was killing Jews. This fit the propaganda of Goebbels, who claimed that the Judeo-Communism is being destroyed even by the Poles themselves who experienced Soviet occupation. And now they are revenging, and Germany only supports this act of historical justice. All this is part of a certain narrative of Goebbels' propaganda. Germany shows that they enter the eastern part of the Second Republic of Poland and local people applaud and support their historical justice. Therefore, it seems that the events of July 1941 were directed by Germans who knew well the recent history of the Soviet occupation. How does Gross's book apply to this? Nohow. These are not any findings. His research was based on "sierpniówka" files, a case from the Stalinist era, concerning people accused of alleged involvement in the murder. This is an very unreliable source, also in this case; witnesses and accused changed testimonies, and the main witnesses lied that they were in Jedwabne in July 1941. The research was stopped and it isn’t possible to draw any final conclusions about Jedwabne. There isn’thing to put a dot above “i”, but it’s needed to know the facts about it, to not say one sentence too much. I also don’t know how it was, but I ask questions.
In that case, it should be acknowledged that the Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski also said about one sentence too much in this subject. In the end, he apologized to Jews for Jedwabne.
Under such pressure from a massive attack on Poland from the world more than one would apologize. There were also many apologies for the Kielce pogrom. In 1946, Pope Pius XII sent letters under the pressure of Jewish circles to Cardinal Augusta Hlond with a question about what happened and why the Catholic Church behaves this way doesn’t renounce these crimes in Kielce and doesn’t condemn Poles. The Pope asked the Polish Church a question that was formulated on the basis of anti-Polish and anti-Catholic propaganda, consisting of false information. It was claimed that the independence underground murders Jews, and the Church doesn’t see the need to condemn criminals. And the truth was different; everything indicates that the pogrom was organized by the NKVD and the Polish security forces (from the Ministry of Public Security of Poland was a postwar communist, secret police, intelligence and counter-espionage service operating from 1945 to 1954 under minister for Public Security general Stanisław Radkiewicz, and supervised by Jakub Berman of the Politburo – info from WIkipedia), and the murder was supposed to obscure the truth about the falsified results of the referendum (The People's Referendum of 1946, also known as the Three Times Yes referendum was a referendum held in Poland on 30 June 1946 on the authority of the State National Council - info from Wikipedia). To demonstrate by the way that the communists have a moral right to manage such rabble that is, Poles.
So the German occupant in Jedwabne and the Soviet occupiers in Kielce framed Poles for the murders of Jews and anti-Semitism?
Anti-Semitism itself was in Poland, but the only problem is that these anti-Semites often saved Jews during the WW2. An example of priest Marceli Godlewski and Zofia Kossak-Szczucka. After the war, many Jews were officially on the side of the new occupiers mocking the Polish right to independence; they entered the security apparatus and murdered Polish patriots. It is difficult for the prisoners of the Stalinist period to have a special love for the Jewish people. Cardinal August Hlond also said that the relations between Jews and Poles during the war were good when they suffered together but they started to go bad after the war and the blame for this should be imposed on the Jewish side.
Marek Edelman claimed that before the war he experienced Polish anti-Semitism, but "the road from anti-Semitism to the gas chambers is very long".
Exactly. In Poland before the war there was anti-Semitism and anti-Jewishness but it was completely different than the German anti-Semitism that underlies the Holocaust. The Germans were racists and there was no racism in Polish tradition. German anti-Semitism consisted of racist eugenics contained in Mein Kampf and contempt for Christianity. In this eugenic there were unworthy people: people with disabilities, homosexuals, Gypsies, Jews and then Slavs. To modernize humanity, they had to be exterminated. In Polish concepts, something like this simply didn’t exist because we were a Christian nation.
The ONR leader, Dr. Jan Mosdorf, helped his Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz. An activist of the National Party and an officer of the Home Army, Witold Rudnicki, kept escapees from the ghetto and issued an order to execute the death sentence on four Polish “szmalcownicy”.
The national camp which is most often accused of anti-Semitism it was based on Christian nationalism. He came out of love for his own people and not for hatred. They believed, however, that the Jews occupy monopolistic positions in selected profession or branches of the economy thus blocking access to intelligentsia for Poles with peasant origin. Farmers were to be defenseless against Jewish buyers and craftsmen who imposed prices in the years of crisis and phenomenon dangerous for rural households which were "price scissors" between agricultural and industrial goods and to the detriment of the former. Nationalists used shameful tools, attacking shops and breaking windows but it must be remembered that in the 1930s the Sanacja state developed methods of "political dialogue", arresting deputies, putting them in the camp, or sending troops of armed police against striking peasants. Dozens of people were killed then and several thousand were brutally arrested. This must be measured with the standards of those times. Returning to the Jewish minority, the nationalists but also the hierarchs of the Catholic Church stigmatized impious and pornographic literature the publisher of which were often Jews. Houses for harlots and incoming there youth student (including nationalists), hurt Polish public, Catholic and pious opinion. All this affected negative relations especially between the right-thought part of the Polish nation and the Jewish minority. During the war all these facts ceased to have any meaning, although in the lower social parts the resentment remained for a long time in memory.
Apparently the activity of Jewish pimps was a big problem for Poles. Because just before WW1, most of the more than 400 public houses in Rio de Janeiro were controlled by Jewish pimps and pimps from Poland, who belonged to the Varsovia Jewish Mutual Aid Societ (Zwi Migdal was a Polish Jewish 19th and 20th-century organized crime group, based mainly in Argentina, that was involved in the trafficking of Jewish women from the shtetls of Central Europe for sexual slavery and forced prostitution – info from Wikipedia) they were commonly called "Varsovians" and "Poles." Prostitutes, who were mostly Jewish women from borderland villages and towns because of their origin were called Polish women. This is how a negative stereotype of a Polish woman - an indecent woman who cultivates prostitution - arose in South America. In order to prevent prosthetics and prostitution from being associated with Warsaw and Poles the Polish Ambassador in Buenos Aires was even obliged to intervene at the end of the 1920s and asked the Argentine authorities to remove the reference to Warsaw from the Society's name. The problem with forcing women to prostitution was so great in the interwar period that in the report for the League of Nations the Polish authorities provided a list of over 500 female traffickers who supplied prostitutes to Argentine and Brazilian public houses. Most of the people on this list were Jews. Of course, they were the insults of the Jewish people and were fought by both Jews gathered in the Polish Bund, as well as by the Jewish diaspora in Argentina and Brazil which didn’t even allow Jewish prostitutes to be buried in cemeteries belonging to Jewish communities. The Polish Jew women Raquel Liberman contributed to the closure of the Society. However, the Jewish margin was undoubtedly affected by the image of all Jews.
This margin the nationalists often against the truth in the mythological way was attributed to the whole Jewish people. They claimed that the Jews themselves insisted on the region of the world in which Poland lies, to corrupt it. They don’t depose themselves, but they corrupt Christians. They were also accused of a trade monopoly. That they trade with peasants on the principle that a Polish peasant comes to them and wants to sell them to a cow. The Jew tells him that he will give him 20 zlotys for her and if he doesn’t want to let him go to another market. The peasant goes to another market and hears there from a Jew that he can buy a cow for PLN 15. So he returns to the first Jew and wants 20 zlotys, and he hears that now he can receive only 10 zlotys from him. This is the price monopoly phenomenon what Polish peasant meets every day. The peasant knows that each year for agricultural products receives less payment and can buy less industrial products, because in addition, the prices of industrial products at that time are growing. The national camp comes into this and says: "Where is the source? In the trading Jew!” Is this true? Yes and no.
In 1936, in Przytyk, the peasants attacked Jewish stalls and tried to beat the Jews because they could not stand mentally anymore. The prices of industrial products are growing, and Jews don’t want to buy food products at a relatively higher price. Is this anti-Semitism? Is this the Holocaust? No! It has nothing to do with this! In Poland there was eugenic society but it was not right-wing but left-wing. Dr Mikulski who was one of the main Polish eugenicists was at the beginning of 1940 the director of a psychiatric hospital in Gostynin. The Germans told him to fill the list of names of people to be exterminated based on his knowledge of eugenics so that he would recognize who was fit for life and who wouldn’t. Instead of fulfilling this order he took a gun and shot himself in the head. That's what we had eugenics scientists in Poland. When their theoretical eugenics were confronted with practice they knew that they were not capable of killing people. Their task was to heal, not to kill. So if someone would like to call a doctor Mikulski's anti-Semite or racist, he will be immediately accused of being a moron.
Do we have an idea how to change the perception of the WW2 in the world?
The ideas are, but we will have to wait tens of years for their results. The story of the Holocaust doesn’t last one day but decades. You have to wait patiently for the results after twenty, thirty, forty years. You will be the witness of these effects but I probably don’t. You will see that if each of us will be doing what is needed in his field and will not be a coward but he will fight to make the memory of our ancestors true then sooner or later we will manage. The Jewish side, apart from the fact that it has a lot of sentiment to Polish lands and Poles is a dialogue party. I remember various conversations with Jewish representatives. Ms. Janina Sacharewicz was a very good historian and archivist. With great precision, she collected information about Poles saving Jews. Mrs. Sacharewicz, carefully collected information about Marceli Godlewski and those files were in the Institute of Jewish History. When ZIH decided that it is complete enough and it can be directed to the Yad Vashem Institute so that was exactly done. In this file there were many reports of people he saved. However, it was received from the ZIH that they are not reports that Fr. Marceli Godlewski saved Jews. So I asked the Institute of Jewish History once for a briefcase of priest Godlewski, to find out why he was not awarded the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations. This was copied by us and from this set of relations and correspondence with the Yad Vashem Institute it appeared that Father Godlewski didn’t save the Jews, because, according to the Institute, he saved only Catholics Jews, and they were not Jews but Catholics. According to Yad Vashem, a Jew means a person of Mosaic religion. So religious affiliation was decisive, not racial-national. I didn’t want to investigate whether he also saved Jews, and there were no certificates. It didn’t hit me. It struck me that the Yad Vashem side didn’t understand the basic principle. I sent a letter as the director of the IPN Public Education Office, in which I wrote that not Jews or the Yad Vashem Institute decided who was a Jew during the war, but Germany and their racist law. For the Germans, regardless of religion, a Jew was anyone who had Jewish origin. In this connection, Catholics with Jewish origin were the same Jews as the followers of Judaism. Today, Fr. Marceli Godlewski has the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations. This is a small success, but the success of Polish-Jewish dialogue based on truth, not anti-Polish myths. This is an example that the Jewish side understands that it is necessary to dialogue with the Polish side, because they don’t know everything. However, they have the ability to understand things in a flexible way, because they are rational. The Jews are intelligent and can react to a properly argued position in the matter of a Pole saving Jews.
From the point of view of the Polish experience of saving Jews, many Jews saved by Poles had little in common with the traditional view of the pious Jew, his religion and morality. They were very often Poles who strongly adhered to Polish tradition. At the same time, however, they were Jews on whom death awaited.
The Yad Vashem Institute sent a letter to Father Józef Maj, in which he stated that there are no personal sources - in the form of testimonies of people being saved - confirming the help of Jews by Fr. Antoni Czarnecki, which makes it impossible to award him the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations. Is it possible that Fr. Antoni Czarnecki will received a medal from Yad Vashem?
This is a similar too situation that I have dealt with the case of Fr. Marcel Godlewski. One can guess that the main reason for the refusal to grant priest Antoni Czarnecki, the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations, was precisely the definition of the term "Jew." Father Antoni obtained from the Archbishop of Warsaw the right to be priest in the ghetto for Jews-Catholics, in the All Saints parish, whose parson was Father Marceli. The third priest, vicar Tadeusz Nowotko, also helped the Jews.
Maybe you will write a letter to Yad Vashem again?
I think it is a good idea. The extension the Jew definition must be reminded in Yad Vashem.
For sure it will be extremely difficult and in the near future we shouldn’t count on the fact that the general definition of “Jew” will be changed in the Yad Vashem conceptual dictionary. Possible deviations from the current definition will be limited to individual cases, as it was in the case with Fr. Godlewski. Of course, I would like to confuse myself in this matter. In Israel, however, and outside of it, the question of who is Jewish and who isn’t is the source of hot disputes on the political, legal and religious levels. An ultra-Orthodox rabbi from New York even claims that during the Holocaust less than a million Jews died, because the rest can’t be considered Jews. It smells a little denying the Holocaust, which was after all made primarily for racial reasons. In the end, Germany was based on the racist Nuremberg Laws, not the ultra-orthodox religious criteria.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t seek to extend the category of Jew by Yad Vashem. This, unfortunately, the Germans have identified and defined who belongs to the Jewish people and, if you don’t want to, you should accept it - in the context of the WW2 and the Holocaust of Jews. Zuzanna Rabska wrote in her memoirs why she didn’t enter the ghetto: "How can I be a Jew? My grandfather was in January Uprising in 1863. My father fought in Piłsudski's Legions and what, I am not Polish ?!" From the point of view of German racism, she was a Jew. In pre-war Poland there was a large group of people who had Jewish origin but were of Catholic confession or considered themselves Poles of the Mosaic faith. Historians, however, don’t treat this phenomenon as a massively developing one, because in Poland it amounted to 5 percent of the Jewish community.
At the initiative of the Committee to commemorate the Poles who saved Jews, in which you are the chairman in the Historical Commission, monument commemorating Poles who saved Jews during the WW2 is planned to be established in the future at the Grzybowski square in Warsaw. What will it differ from the monument that will stand in front of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews?
Our monument will have a completely different meaning. There is currently no monument in the world, which in its idea would be similar to the monument that will be erected at Grzybowski square. The monument to Poles saving Jews is a monument in honor of all those who, risking their lives, helped the Jews in an individual way, but also is an indication that helping Jews was the goal of the Polish state and its officials, with most important ones the President of the Republic of Poland to the lowest, for example, Witold Bieńkowski. The monument in front of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was to be devoted to the Polish Righteous. I don’t know if this idea is still alive. The definition of the Righteous Among the Nations, however, is from the Polish point of view a definition very far from the experiences of Polish families and the Polish state. Perhaps this is a correct definition from the perspective of the occupation of Western Europe by the Third Reich, or from the point of view of the Ukrainian, Lithuanian or Latvian people. From the point of view of the Polish nation, this definition is simply unfair, wrong and untrue. She says that the Righteous were the ones who had to fear their nearest neighbors first and foremost, because the aversion to Jews was stronger than the German occupation law. In the case of Poland, help for Jews took place independently of Polish-Jewish relations, which were complicated, and in which before WW2, and also during the war, there was mutual aversion. Both on the Polish side and on the Jewish side, which was particularly evident under the Soviet occupation. At the moment, however, when in 1942 the Holocaust began, this protest by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and the unambiguous attitude of the Polish Underground State and its propaganda, caused that among Poles, gradually and not in all cases, there was a natural compassion towards the Jews. The fact that the German people were in a conscience to murder innocent victims escaped human imagination. In descriptions of the Home Army, describing the public mood, it can be seen that compassion for the Jews prevailed. It was also a surprise that the Jews don’t defend themselves and go to death like sheep. The admiration grew in the days of the ghetto uprising, in April 1943, when - as it was said - the Jews behaved like Poles. However, there was no opinion prevailing in the underground magazines (also related to the national camp) that someone solves the Jewish problem for us. If something like that had already appeared, and there could have been trade circles in the pre-war environments, that was competition for Jewish trade, it was obviously exterminated in all possible ways.
The delation of Jews and szmalcownictwo was punishable by death, as can be seen reading the remarkable memoirs (based on own experiences) of the head of the Directorate of Civil Resistance, Stefan Korbonski. Poles who helped Jews, therefore, also listened to the Polish Underground State, that is, they were Polish citizens. They were not citizens of the occupation regime who introduced the death penalty for Jews crossing the ghetto boundary and introduced the death penalty for Poles for providing any help to the Jews and threatened the Poles with a concentration camp if they didn’t inform the German occupant about the fact of hiding the Jew by the neighbor. Knowledge of someone hiding a Jew and not sharing this with the Germans was punished. For the German occupant only the informer was a good citizen. We need to repeat this truth so that the world can understand what the German occupation of Polish lands was.
Who came out with the initiative to build a monument dedicated to Poles saving Jews?
If you brought the initiative of this monument to one name, then certainly the main initiator of its creation was Mrs. Anna Poraj-Wybranowska. She was a Polish emigrant from Canada, a great patriot who came to Poland in the 90’s and gathered a whole group of respectable people, like prof. Andrzej Rotermund, Stanisław Orsza-Broniewski, prof. Jan Dowgiałło, or prof. Tomasz Strzembosz. I also found myself in this group with my brother, Szczepan and my wife, Małgosia. We have introduced more people to this, such as Fr. infułat Zdzisław Król, parish priest of All Saints, who died on April 10, 2010 near Smolensk. Another person who became involved in this project is Eng. Czesław Bilecki, also the secretary of our Committee, Mirosław Biełaszko. Today the chairman of the Committee is prof. Adam Strzembosz.
The initiator of the construction of the monument to commemorate Poles who saved Jews during the German occupation, which is to stand at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, is one of the main donors of the Museum, a Polish-Jewish philanthropist Zygmunt Rolat, whose president Lech Kaczyński awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit Of the Republic of Poland, and President Bronisław Komorowski with the Commander's Cross with the Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. Although the Jewish site was the initiative of building this monument, so many people dealing with the Holocaust and anti-Semitism research said that building it near the Museum would be a “triumph of national complacency”. The protest letter regarding the construction of the monument near the Museum, was signed by the members and collaborators of the Holocaust Research Center: Barbara Engelking, Jan Grabowski, Jacek Leociak, Jakub Petelewicz, Alina Skibińska, Andrzej Zbikowski and many other people. Elżbieta Janicka, Bożena Keff and Helena Datner, who also protested against the location of the monument and its pronunciation, they ironically said that building a monument near the Museum is an exorcism of this space. In the Gazeta Wyborcza, they also wrote that "in the atmosphere of moral panic there is a pacification of history and the pronunciation of the place. (...) We already have here a square of Polish innocence with a sculpture park, which includes Karski's bench, two stones-obelisks in honor of Žegota, tree of Common Remembrance and a monument to German Chancellor Brandt. "The sanitary cordon of Polish memory", as historian Jan Grabowski called it, “is spreading ever wider. "
Let me quote you also a fragment of the Open Letter to the Committee for the Construction of the Monument to the Righteous at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, signed inter alia by Elżbieta Janicka, Bożena Keff and Helena Datner:
"This symbol stop the voice of the thousands existing Jewish testimonies and more numerous ones that have not been recorded, because their heroes have not survived, and which are not stories about the Righteous, but about blackmail, denunciations, exploitation, expulsion, tracing, robbing and death. We would like the Museum to be respected as a place of autonomous, independent Jewish narrative. We perceive the design of the location of the Righteous monument next to the Museum as a gesture in line with the earlier diasporal mode of action, when the Jews were in a situation of despised and really threatened minority. At that time, they felt often obliged, for their own security, to anticipate and fulfill, true or not, the expectations of the majority. These expectations were associated with acts of Jewish self-degradation, humiliation, and confirmation of the narrative and beliefs of the majority against their own reasons and emotions.
For those who are interested, the truth about the Righteous is known, but to most of society remains not clear. It is still not enough to say that they didn’t act on behalf of the Polish nation.
There were only few, and the biggest, deadly threat to them was other Poles; neighbors, acquaintances, often members of their own family, as well as members of national-oriented underground forces or those from any other formation who, with different political views, had strong anti-Semitic beliefs. Polish anti-Semitism was before the war ubiquitous and unscrupulous. Jews were treated with increasing hostility and contempt. This was the context of the Righteous who acted AGAINST, and not with the majority's consent, becoming a minority in their own country, with all what it means.
The Monument to the Righteous in the vicinity of the Museum is the presentation of an exception as a rule. The rescuers will cover - and in the dominant discourse are already obscuring - those who reported by whom they and their protégés died. Without explanation of the context, without emphasizing their uniqueness, civil courage and NON-REPRESENTATIVENESS, they all are mocked, history is mocked, survived and unsung Jews are mocked. Even if all Poles saved all Jews during the occupation (as is suggested by, for example, a monument by Czesław Bielecki in Łódź, where the eagle shields the Star of David), this location of the monument would be the worst possible as the intrusion into the space of Jewish narrative, as a kind of appropriation and manipulation.
In Poland, the stereotype propagated since March 1968 still dominates, making the Righteous majority delegates of all society, highlighting the number of several thousand so-called Polish trees in Yad Vashem (although the real percentage of the Righteous in society was dramatically negligible, and the extermination didn’t take place in other countries, so there is no basis for comparison). This stereotype is also funded by the myth of Jewish ingratitude. Some Jews performed and after March 1968 and earlier in defense of the so-called good name of Poland and Poles, following wishful thinking, conformism, sometimes (generalized) experiences of their own family and / or under pressure. Today, however, there are no real reasons why Jews would join the next official Polish image campaign, proving Jewish gratitude "20.
20 http://krytykapolityczna.pl/kraj/nie-budujmy-pomnika-sprawiedliwych-obok-muzeum-historii-Zydow-polskich/.
It is worth noting that the statement of people protesting against the location and meaning of this monument were not shared by the Auschwitz prisoner and member of “Żegota”, Władysław Bartoszewski, who in an interview for Gazeta Wyborcza asked:" if in the ghetto area were a place for the monument to a decent German Willy Brandt, why should there not be a place for decent Poles?"
What do you think about the reaction of the group of people associated with the Jewish Historical Institute and the Polish Center for Holocaust Research to the idea of building a monument dedicated to the Righteous Among the Nations at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews? The idea of building a Monument to Poles saving Jews who is going to stand at Grzybowski Square also met a similar reaction from this environment?
I don’t intend to speak about the monument in honor of the Righteous at the Polin Museum, because I am involved myself in the construction of a completely different commemoration of Poles who save Jews, that is, they fit in positively in the assumptions of Polish fighting in 1939-1945. It seems to me that this discussion is a reflection of the tensions taking place more inside the Jewish nation to which I don’t belong. Although Poles also take part in that discussion. This is interesting, therefore, shows the shift of the main narrative line, as well shows the barriers and environments that don’t want to leave the well-established position in the world's public opinion, created in times when the Polish sovereign voice didn’t exist, only communist propaganda using the truth and falsehood.
On the other hand, our project met with a cold reception from representatives of Polish Jews. It's hard. There is no reason, however, to not do your own thing. However, I always had the impression that the main opponents of the monument in Grzybowski Square are not Jews, but unfortunately very clearly defined Poles. They have ruled us recently.
Why the Monument to the Poles Saving Jews must to be at the All Saints' Church in Warsaw?
Because of a few reasons. First, because the monument is meant to show that for Poles who saved Jews, the entire Christian system of values was extremely important reference in which they grew up and functioned. Secondly because the priests working there during the WW2, ie priest Marceli Godlewski, priest Antoni Czarnecki and priest Tadeusz Nowotko intensively helped the Jews living there. Please remember that this parish was within the limits of the ghetto and apostolic administrator Archbishop Stanisław Gall gave the parish's vicar, priest Antoni Czarnecki, entitled to conduct pastoral work among Catholics of Jewish origin, which resulted in the fact that the parish became open to the core of the ghetto. However, priests from this parish supported not only Catholics Jews. The parish supported all those who need the help. There was a kitchen, Caritas, and the parish house itself was made available to Jews. It was also the only piece of freedom in the ghetto. Because of this small lawn and figurine of the Mother of God, which stood there, it was a place for prayer, concentration, but also a place of hope and rest for the Jews who came there. From there, the Jews were transported to Anin, to the home of parish priest residing by nuns.
In the basement of the temple there are lockers, in which Jews tried to hide. The Jewish police and Germans didn’t allow all but only Catholics to the temple. Anyone who sought for any help, however, tried to get there. This church was also very important when it comes to contacts with the Aryan side. Through the mediation of priest Marcel Godlewski and his secretary (we have his relation, Mr. Telesfor Wyrzykowski) falsified the baptism records that helped Jews survive on the Aryan side. The most famous figure who was saved by priest Marceli Godlewski was prof. Ludwik Hirszfeld, who in beautiful words immortalized the figure of priest in his moving memories.
What was the process of making false baptismal records and entering Jews into the parish registers?
This is complicated and for some reason not yet fully recognized. In short, it was based on the fact that a Jew was looking for a place in the existing book of births and the book of deaths. Ideally, a Catholic would be born the same year as a Jew seeking a new identity and that the Catholic would be able to die before the war. The Jew then entered the history of this Pole and took over his identity. This is the perfect condition. On the basis of such a resume, a document confirming the identity of the person was written. A similar function, like a chancellor in the church, was the registry department in the Warsaw City Hall, which included officers of the Home Army. There, they also tried to replace the dead person so that the Jew could move freely on the so-called surface. Such cases took place especially in Warsaw and Krakow. In Żegota itself, there was also a cell responsible for falsifying documentation, which cooperated with parishes and registry departments. In addition to issuing false metrics, there were also real conversions. Many Jews, under the influence of the Catholic Church's attitude and the behavior of a particular priest or religious congregation, remained later voluntarily in the Catholic Church. In the Warsaw ghetto itself, as I recall, the number of converts increased by 3,000 people. It meant that their names and surnames became their actual personal information, under which they often spent the rest of their lives. In the case of very small children, there were situations that only in adult life they learned their true identity and Jewish origin. They spent their childhood in a religious house under a foster name. This is a very complex thing, largely related to the priesthood secret. In the archives of the Metropolitan Curia in Krakow, there are supposedly such sources and such records that no one on the outside will ever be able to reach. You can’t disclose this data because these families don’t want it. So this is the conversion that is difficult to describe. It was not about the baptism itself, which they could receive from the hand, but about the baptism that they decided on. It is also worth emphasizing that falsification of record certificates - means falsification of church records - took place with the consent of not only pastors, but also bishops. The thing is unthinkable today!
Has there ever been a slip of a priest who falsified baptism records and parish registers in order to help Žydom?
I don’t know this case. However, I know the relation that concerns Archbishop Adam Stefan Sapieha. Perhaps it is mythologized because I can’t confirm it. According to this relativity, Archbishop Sapieha stated during meetings with priests that if any of the Germans would inquire about the record books and would like to receive insight into them, then it should be said to him that Archbishop Sapieha ordered them to be brought to the archives of the Metropolitan Curia and the only person to whom the Germans are to turn to is he alone. In this way, he was to protect priests from responsibility for helping Jews. As far as it is true, I can’t say that.
Let's move on to the pogrom in Kielce. You have often pointed out that the genesis of the Jewish murder, which took place on 4 July 1946 in Kielce, was an agreement between the NKVD and MBP. What could indicate that there was a communist provocation there?
First of all, it should be emphasized that the discovery of the truth on this subject depends on the discovery of the circumstances of this tragic event. The course of this tragedy is also very important. There are many question marks to this day. These question marks are especially important when analyzing a card letter from the Cardinal August Hlond addressed to the Secretariat of State. In this document from the autumn of 1947 (such a date appears on it), Primate August Hlond clearly urged by the Vatican to explain the Church's behavior in the matter of the pogrom, writes a comprehensive report using the data that he obtained from Bishop Kaczmarek. He also uses his information obtained from Stanisław Mikołajczyk. In this letter is given a sequence of events known to us also from other relationships. According to her, in the first phase of the pogrom, a group of people appeared in front of Planty 7, along with a militiaman and one officer trying to get inside, but the Jews didn’t let them in. Everything happens under the slogan that there was an allegedly detained Christian child. It comes to the first event. The question is, who first used the weapon. Whether Polish or Jewish officers who also had firearms. At some point, there is an attack on this building. The officer dies, which meant that the whole operation was out of control, because he was supposed to be allegedly mounted by Maj. Sobczyński from the local UB to oversee the course of this event. At that time, the parish priest of the Kielce cathedral, priest Roman Zelek wanted to know what was happening there and possibly ease the situation. On the spot, however, it turns out that the whole space around Planty 7 is surrounded by the officers of the KBW, UB, or militia, and they don’t allow priest Zelka, ordering him to return to the cathedral, because the case was allegedly controlled. This shows that someone is the director of this whole event, and the current security forces are not interested in putting out a fire. In the second stage of the pogrom workers from the Ludwików plant after the change, received the information that their wives and children are allegedly murdered by the Jews on Planty 7. They are arming, they are going, and indeed then there comes to this tragic pacification, as a result of which people are dying, especially on the Jewish side. In total, almost 40 people. All this is happening in front and within 500 meters of the powerhouses in the city, UB and KBW.
Some argue that the constant emphasis on the fact that it was a communist provocation serves to justify Poles who murdered Jews at the time. What do you think about it?
Nobody justifies this crime, but we must find out what happened there. It isn’t the most important whether we justify someone or not, but that we will find out who is to blame. For today, there is no doubt that regardless of the context, this specific hand of the man who killed the Jew is to blame. Nobody argues with it. Question, whose hand is it? And who launched it. The convicts in the trial most probably didn’t take part in the whole action, at least they were not its directors. They are victims selected by propaganda key. Spychaj-Sobczyński was removed from his post in Kielce, but then he was promoted in general, and in the 1960s he was awarded as the ambassador of the Polish People's Republic, probably in Bulgaria. The Soviets present in Kielce disappeared somewhere, and the next day, communist propaganda began to go crazy, accusing the Church and Gen. Anders' soldiers of the pogrom. However, problems begin when we try to understand what were the conditions that led to the fact that this hand was directed against the Jew. The description of that reality tells us that, on the one hand, the blame falls upon the communist regime, which wanted to pacify the Polish nation, and at the same time to accuse it of the world. One of the goals of pacifying the Poles was to prove that the Polish nation is anti-Semitic and capable of murdering Jews. In Krakow, Rzeszów also tried to carry out such a provocation, but there it failed to lead to such a finale as in Kielce. There, these hands moved away.
The fact that we determine that provocation was taking place in Kielce is more a hypothesis than a fact. We don’t have any documents and we will probably never have such documents that would indicate that, on that day, Poles should be provoked to murder several dozen Jews. We will not find such a document. However, this is historical inquiry - and this isn’t a prohibited method in the historian's workshop - to search for the entities that gained it after the effects of this phenomenon. The results, however, are such that a huge propaganda machine against the Catholic Church and the independence underground was launched by the communists - with Gomułka on the lead. These two structures, which are to symbolize Polishness, and thus the underground waiting for Anders and the Catholic Church, are the anti-Semitic structures, and we Communists - we are the ones who will order this nation. The crime in Kielce strengthened the legitimacy of the communists to rule Poland. All this takes place in the context of the referendum held on 30 June, and whose falsified results were announced on July 12. And then everyone was talking about Kielce.
According to Krzysztof Kąkolewski, provoking the pogrom could also have had the purpose of diverting the attention of public opinion from proceedings commenced on 1 July 1946 by the Nuremberg Tribunal the case of murder on Polish officers in Katyn. It is also pointed out that the pogrom could have been a pretext for a dissertation with the Catholic Church. For the provocation, the name was chosen specially on 4 July, that is, the Independence Day of the United States, because the information about the pogrom distributed by the communists was to have an increased propaganda destruction power. Certainly, all possible means were used to present Poles in a bad light. It is claimed that it was at that time that Poles lost the general sympathy of the world and lost the name of the greatest victims of the WW2 in favor of Jews, who, due to the great suffering, deserve special protection and support. There are also voices saying that provoking the pogrom could have been aimed at bringing Jews out of Poland to Palestine, where Israel was being created with the help of communists. In the end, Stalin was at the time favorable to the Jews. Similar pogroms took place then also in Slovakia, Hungary and Ukraine. Their course was to be analogous to the course of the pogrom in Kielce. On the one hand, it could have meant forcing some Jews to go to Palestine, where they would support the construction of a new state. On the other hand, it could also be a matter of persuading the remaining Jews in Poland to support the communists who created themselves as the guarantor of their security. Russian divide et impera in the communist edition. Which of the motifs presented by me most authenticates the theory of provocation?
It is difficult to answer this question. For sure, when the Jews left Poland, the communists might want to install their communist agents in Palestine. Counterintelligence of Great Britain was aware of that. Undoubtedly after this rout and shameful trial, there is an émigré wave, which isn’t a legal phenomenon from the point of view of internal and international law. At the same time, when the Ministry of Public Security is pursuing all persons from the independence underground who want to escape to the West, the border is opened, so that Jews could escape from Poland. There is a document at the Institute of National Remembrance, a copy of which can be found in my home archive. In this document, Colonel Luna Brystygier received an analysis of how the MBP must to react when people of Jewish origin cross the border. For these borders were carefully supervised then and it wasn’t allowed to cross them. In this case, however, Jews should have been allowed. So the question of whether the wave of Jewish escape from Poland caused the inability to stop this wave and to deflect against reality, because the MBP couldn’t cope with such a mass escape of Jews, or whether it is a consequence of adopting a strategic plan saying that MBP has don’t disturb in trips, because it serves someone. In a word, Moscow, which oversees the whole process and the Jews who pressed on Great Britain - assassinations and diplomatic means to open Palestine for Jewish emigres. At the same time, Jewish circles in the United States are strongly pushing Pius XII to say that Jews belong to Palestine in their own state. So there is an attempt to transfer this slaughter to the international forum as proof that the Jews have the right to their country, Israel, because Europe remains anti-Semitic after the Holocaust. This is a narrative that is developed for the needs of American Zionists. It is located in a project that has been implemented in various ways for many years. Now a new question arises, namely whether it is a conscious agreement between the Jews and the communist Moscow authorities headed by Stalin, who will only start repeating in a few years that the Jews are ruling over him and he will begin to exterminate them among his closest surroundings, or is it accidental coincidence, not being a conscious agreement. To be clear, there are no good answers. However, pretending that there are no such questions, or shouldn’t be asked, is to avoid the primary purpose of the historian, and thus to search for the truth.
Many people accuse the Kielce bishop Czesław Kaczmarek of not pushing the pogrom in Kielce, opposing him with the attitude of Bishop Czestochowa Teodor Kubina, who was to prevent the pogrom of Jews in Częstochowa. Is it true that bishop Kaczmarek wasn’t present in Kielce at all during the pogrom of Kielce, but he stayed at the time in Polanica Zdrój, and consequently, making him morally responsible for the pogrom is a calumny resulting from communist propaganda?
Yes, Bishop Kaczmarek wasn’t present that day in Kielce, he was in a sanatorium and the people of the Church were not allowed to prevent the pogrom or issue a soothing message. Bishop Kubina was manipulated by the media that issued his word in a manipulated way, because it matched the imposed narrative. Hence, during the next meeting of bishops it was made clear that Bishop Kubina made a mistake, not understanding that his words would be used in a bad case. In turn, the Primate of Poland a few days later spoke on behalf of the Episcopate to American journalists, and his statement was considered against the facts as anti-Semitic. Such an interpretation, not words, went into the world. It was evident that the game doesn’t have one father, and many from different parts of the world.
When Jews were thrown out of Poland in 1968, in December of the same year, Spain officially canceled the Edict of the Alhambra, under which in 1492 Sephardic Jews were expelled from it. In the eyes of those Jews who regarded Christians as the greatest anti-Semites, especially Catholics, Poles became one of the most anti-Semitic nations. Recently, Spain granted descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled Spanish citizenship in the 15th century. It is evident that in addition to the desire to perform the historical justice and satisfy the descendants of the Jews who were once driven out, Spain once again has used this event to improve its image on the international arena. In this context, I would like to ask you about the so-called Jews of March.
No Polish citizen - regardless of what he did - shouldn’t be deprived of citizenship. If we give today permission to receive Polish citizenship to communists, Nazis or Islamists, nobody can guarantee that one day such a precedent will not lead to the withdrawal of Polish citizenship to Catholics. Each stick has two ends. The acceptance of the principle of collective responsibility characterizing such totalitarianisms as Nazism or communism can always rebound and strike any ethnic, religious or ideological group. As for the guilt of Jewish communists, Polish courts are responsible for adjudicating the punishment. If the communist criminals again had Polish citizenship, then it would be easier to prosecute them and bring them to criminal responsibility. The restoration of Polish citizenship to March Jews could also be used to present to the world a true version of the events of March 1968 and to indicate its actual culprits. Do you think - if it is legally possible - to automatically restore Polish citizenship so-called the Jews of March?
Yes, but with a clear interpretation that it was done by communists who were the overseers of Moscow's raison d'état in Poland. In the case of the Jews of March, the problem is very complex. Joint - a Jewish American organization, in 1967, just before the break-up of diplomatic relations between the PRL and Israel, argued that considering the entire space of Central and Eastern Europe, the Jewish population has the most comfortable conditions of functioning in Poland and this is the relatively best place for Jews after this side of the iron curtain. Looking at the party-PRL apparatus, there were very many Jews among the communists at the time. This cleaning of communist structures from people of Jewish origin undoubtedly grew out of the interior of the Polish United Workers' Party, from a competitive faction of guerrillas led by Mieczysław Moczar. Some bandits threw away the other bandits. And by the way, also decent Jews were hit, who were put in a discomfort, the necessary choice: are you a Pole or a Jew? Choose. If, therefore, to restore the Polish citizenship to Jews of March, then all this should be said.
As reported by prof. Dariusz Stola: "By the autumn of 1969, 500 lecturers and researchers, 200 journalists and editors, including 15 chief editors, 60 radio and television employees, 100 musicians, actors, artists, 23 actors and directors, 176 employees of the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Public Security, 12 people former positions of directors of departments or Provincial Security Offices volunteered for the trip". 21 Only one in four migrant expatriate - known Zionist in the Communist propaganda - settled in Israel, the majority in the Scandinavian countries. In addition to communist criminals, such as Stefan Michnik, other people left Poland at the time for example the poet and satirist Natan Tenenbaum. Robert Stiller claims that in the 1960s anti-Semites were banished from the country big amount of own culture. What do you think about it?
21 http://www.academia.edu/1001572/Emigracja_pomarcowa.
As a part of the expulsion of Jewish bandits from Poland, many decent Poles of Jewish origin also fell victim who, like Poles, operated in various state institutions, but weren’t lovers of communism and didn’t constitute the main group of anti-Polish perpetrators. I am very sorry for these people and their children. One must ask, however, how these Jews forced to leave, longing for Poland, missed the PRL (Polish People's Republic), that is the type of totalitarian regime, and how much they missed Poland, whose vision differed from this communist vision. Poland real, independent. It can be also asked whether their Polish identity was a communist identity or an identity resulting from the Polish independence traditions. In my opinion, the vast majority were people from outside of Polish tradition. This doesn’t mean, of course, that all of them were equally involved in practicing anti-Polish politics by working in censorship, the party apparatus, or the Ministry of Interior. And there is such a thin line of responsibility for communism, those people thrown in 1968. All Jews can’t be responsible for the crimes of individual Jews. Certainly, they shouldn’t be covered by collective responsibility by Moczar group, who were the same or larger bandits, and certainly this shouldn’t include children who are by definition innocent and are not responsible for the actions of their parents. However, the false rehabilitation of many people of Jewish descent who have badly written down in this period the Polish history can’t be connected with the compensation for their harms. There can’t be said that the families of the Bermans, Mincers and others, such as the Baumans, Ms. Wolińska or Stefan Michnik, are deserved persons. They were communist torturers who brought death, destruction and a lot of evil in the 1940s. In 1968, however, people for Moczar group was not entitled to administer justice, but he was also grimy with Polish blood. Complicating the whole matter, it must be said that just as in the case of emigration in 1946 and 1956, so in the case of 1968, the communist intelligence treated these events as an excellent opportunity to include in this wave the forced emigrants of their agents, who behaved differently. Some broke this contact, and some continued to cooperate with the communists against the capitalists, including against Israel. There is a document from 1972, in which the agents were calculated, which turned out to be inefficient. Under the slogan of Israel there are many names with the date of departure, around 1968.
The year 1968 deprived many Jewish communists of illusions about the possibility of building communism. Instead of admiting himself to ideological failure, losing his pioneering enthusiasm, they cool down only a little. Their disappointed love didn’t bring them total sobriety, but it turned into aversion, and even hatred of Polishness and Poles, on which they shed responsibility for their love collapse and expelled them from Poland. Many of them later claimed that they didn’t escape Poland from communism at all, but from Polish anti-Semitism. They couldn’t accept that the battue they had experienced resulted primarily from the very essence of communism, the party games of the clique, seeking revenge, geopolitical conditions, and increasing of Russian nationalism marked by the anti-Semitic resentments. For sure, however, there was a fundamental change in the world, which was also noted by Stefan Kisielewski, who wrote in his "Dairy" that communism expelling Jews, its creators, is an unbelievable thing and must mean the transition from international politics to clearly Russian politics. It happened later, although many people don’t want to accept it.
Card. Karol Wojtyła after the events of December 1970, said: "events from 1968 and 1970 have to be seen together. You have to see them from the perspective of discreditation of the system in very influential international environments". Jews managing a certain sphere of consciousness of the then Western democratic world turned away from creating a positive image of communist countries with the USSR at the top, and this is actually the beginning of the end of the communist system. Not only it was discredited, but he lost the protector. And that doesn’t mean that Karol Wojtyla was an anti-Semite. The Pope tried in this way to simply understand the world political plans and one of their goals, which was the functioning of the communist bloc in the contemporary world that gave permission for the existence of atheistic Bolshevism fighting against Christianity.
February 8, 2016
P.S.
On 23 March 2017, the Institute of National Remembrance announced the start of a new project entitled Polish-Jewish Relations in the years 1918-1968. One of its elements is the Index of Poles murdered and repressed for helping Jews. Head of the Historical Research Bureau of the Institute of National Remembrance, dr hab. Mirosław Szumiło also informed that research on the crime in Jedwabne and the pogrom in Kielce in 1946 will be resumed.
- I have talked about it many times with historians and each of them was in favor of such an exhumation, because every historian wants to investigate everything to the end. That is from the scientific side. I am researching for carrying out the exhumation. At the same time, however, we can’t underestimate the position of Jewish circles and their religious objections, although it is worth noting that the Jews themselves are divided in this matter. In any case, the exhumation can help to fully explain this crime. Please note that thanks to the first and unfinished exhumations in Jedwabne it was possible to establish that the victims were about 400, not around 1600, as Jan Tomasz Gross wrote in his publications - said Dr. hab. Szumiło 22.
22 http://nowahistoria.interia.pl/aktualnosci/news-ipn-przyjrzy-sie-na-nowozbrodni-w-jedwabnem-i-pogromowi-kie,nid,2372758.
Najcześciej mówią mi Wodek. Nie jest to błąd, że nie napisałem "ł". Trudno inaczej zdrobnić imię Wodzisław:). Urodziłem się kilka dni przed zakończeniem stanu wojennego. Z lat 80' nic szczególnego nie pamiętam, a z 90' szkołę podstawową i kawałek technikum. Dojrzewanie i studia to już poprzednia dekada. Po 10 kwietnia 2010 roku zmieniło się bardzo wiele nie tylko do okoła mnie, ale także i we mnie.
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