{#February 29th. 1936 cardinal Hlond, primate of Poland issues a pastoral letter calling for discriminatory measures against the Jewish People. This incites a series of coordinated assaults on Jews in Poland.}
My responses to those numbered by jeffrey will be annotated {#01 – #15} and captions I present will be {#between}
There are 6,992 non-Jewish Poles who are Righteous Amongst the Nations so it is difficult dealing with those who deal in obfuscation. For my part. Nowhere have I ever stated that all non-Jewish Poles are guilty. What I have said, in line with the factual truth, and there is a deficit in moral probity, which you are lacking, and it is that not all non-Jewish poles are innocent. I undertook my visits to centres which seek to promote such education, as many Polish Survivor Jews were adamant they could never return to Poland as they were betrayed. I have found Poland willing to tackle what Poland needs to, which is the forms of distortion you are presenting over my words. I, as an Historian am willing to qualify all I have said, and have every proof I have ever uttered to back it up. You, on the other hand. Can never suggest you have been other than slanted in your view and absent in its presentation. I have sought the Truth for myself. If there is any untruths in any of the words of any one of my Books, I have not done my research.
The whole point to my effort, 6,000,000 Slaughtered Jews of Europe, 3,000,000 of whom are Polish Jews. That fact alone should compel Poland to correct the grave wrong in legislating against History. The distortion of any part of that truth will corrupt every part of Polish History. I have no bias here, merely a sought after truth, the facts of which contain the veracity I deliver. That truth ensures that while not all victims in WWII were Jews, All Jews in The Holocaust are the 6,000,000. I also hold with the fact that not all non-Jewish Poles are guilty, but neither are All non-Jewish Poles innocent. [#March 3rd. 1937. Polish government seeks to revoke Citizenship of Polish Jews in Germany.} Herein lies the lack of truth that is being presented on a site called Polish – Jewish Dialogue Committee and I detail the communication I have been engaged in with one Jeffrey Cymbler.
{#June 16th. 1937 “..No place for Jews in Poland.” General Lucjan Zieligowski.}
Patrick Dempsey wrote the following comment:
“..3,000,000 Polish Jews were Murdered. What did Poland do to stop this!”
I tried to respond to Patrick but my response was too long to post. So I am posting it now here. Delighted to have anyone comment upon or add items to this list:
Patrick, as an historian, I am certain that you know that “Poland” ceased to exist when in September, 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union invaded and conquered Poland. The Polish government was exiled. The government-in-exile was based in France during 1939 and 1940, first in Paris and then in Angers. From 1940, following the Fall of France, the government moved to London, and remained in the United Kingdom until its dissolution in 1990.
{YES. I know all of that!}
{#In 1938 alone, 40% of all Property in Warsaw was Jewish owned with 40% of all non-Jewish poles employed in Jewish owned industrial concerns. 80% of skilled workforce in Poland were Jews.
1. From its headquarters in London, the Polish Government in Exile commanded the underground Polish Home Army. The Polish Home Army sent detailed intelligence communications back to London about the Holocaust. Lack of international effort to aid Jews resulted in political uproar on the part of the Polish government in exile residing in Great Britain. The government often publicly expressed outrage at German mass murders of Jews. The Polish Government in Exile then compiled and published and disseminated in 1942 at the beginning of the implementation of the Final Solution the book “The Extermination of the Jews in Nazi Occupied Poland”. The world, including your beloved Churchill, ignored this information.
{#01From September 1st. 1939 the formative Einsatz was engaged in the obliteration of a Jewish presence within Poland. As we all know, the Polish Home Army, the AK (Armia Krajowa) was formed in February 1942. Polish Jewry was being decimated for almost 30 months. As for the ‘booklet’, issued December 10th. 1942 arrives much after what was happening to Polish Jewry to continue.}
2. In December 1942, the Polish government in exile pleaded with the Allies to halt the execution of the remaining 2/3 of the Polish Jewish population. That plea made it to only PAGE EIGHT of the Jewish New York Times.
{#02 Here we have Poland pleading to save what was left of 3,650,000 Polish Jews. 1,000,000 had already been annihilated}
{#03 “..never in ..history of mankind ..never anywhere in ..realm of human relations did anything occur to compare with what was inflicted on ..Jewish population of Poland.” Jan Karski.}
3. In 1942 Jan Karski was selected by Cyryl Ratajski, the Polish Government Delegate’s Office at Home, to perform a secret mission to prime minister Wladyslaw Sikorski in London. Karski was to contact Sikorski as well as various other Polish politicians and inform them about Nazi atrocities in occupied Poland. In order to gather evidence, Karski met Bund activist Leon Feiner and was twice smuggled by Jewish underground leaders into the Warsaw Ghetto for the purpose of directly observing what was happening to Polish Jews.
{#03 As we know Jan Karski met with representatives of Polish Jewry to gain first hand proof of what was well known about The Final Solution of The Jewish Question. We know too that Jan met with Menachem Kirszenbaum and Leon Fajner and undertook trips to both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Camp at Izbica, and not Belzec as has been said.}
4. Jan Karski met with Polish politicians in exile including the Prime Minister, as well as members of political parties such as the Socialist Party, National Party, Labor Party, People’s Party, Jewish Bund and Poalei Zion. He also spoke to the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, giving a detailed statement on what he had seen in Warsaw and Belzec. In 1943 in London he met journalist Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon.
{#04 As I have stated, I clearly doubt Jan visited Belzec, though the Camp at Izbica was close by?} {#On a monthly basis during 1941, and in the Warsaw Ghetto alone, and excluding those Jews being ritually Murdered in the Ghetto, the totality of Jewish Death through Starvation and Disease is: January 900,
February 1,023,
March 1,668,
April 2,655,
May 5,821,
June 4,290,
July 5,550,
August 5,560,
September 7,545,
October 4,614,
November 4,841, and
December 4,966.}
5. Karski then traveled to the United States, and on July 28, 1943 Karski personally met with Roosevelt in the Oval Office, telling him about the situation in Poland and becoming the first eyewitness to tell him about the Jewish Holocaust. During their meeting, Roosevelt asked about the condition of horses in Poland. Roosevelt did not ask one question about the Jews and did not give a shit about the Jews.
{#05 There is nothing Jan can have told FDR that the OSR’s had not already informed him of hitler’s clear intention}
{#”..Poland ..home of ..largest Jewish population in Europe ..chosen by Hitler as ..central slaughter house for all Jews driven there from other countries and as ..greatest concentration camp for Jews. In Poland Hitler established ..arena where ..doomed Jews were subjected to ..most cruel manifestations of his antisemitic ..racial theories and where ..sadistic instincts ..were let loose without restraint. ..facts show ..Poland ..selected as ..country where promise of ..extinction of European Jewry should be fulfilled.” Jacob Apenszlak.}
6. Karski went on to meet with many other government and civic leaders in the United States, including Jewish Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Cordell Hull, William Joseph Donovan, and Rabbi Stephen Wise. Frankfurter, skeptical of Karski’s report, said later “I did not say that he was lying, I said that I could not believe him. There is a difference.” You want to blame a government? Blame the USA!
{#06 “..In November and December 1941 began ..slaughter of Jews in ..Warthgau. ..slaughter ..by means of gas. ..a special gas chamber car ..used ..90 people ..loaded at one time. ..victims buried ..Lubartow Forest. ..1,000 ..gassed daily. In Chelmno ..November 1941 to March 1942 all .Jews from Kolo ..Dab ..Bugaj ..Izbica 5,000 in all ..with 35,000 from Lodz Ghetto and a number of Gypsies ..gassed.” Szmul Zygielbojm.}
7. Karski presented his report to media, bishops of various denominations (including Cardinal Samuel Stritch), members of the Jewish Hollywood film industry and artists, but without much result.
{#07December 1941 “..Jews receive half ..food which ..poles receive. ..poles receive grams of bread daily ..Jews receive 100 grams ..every other day.” Dr. Witold Majewski.}
{#“..There is a difference between ..German orchestrated systems of terror against ..Poles and ..Jews. ..Germans want to ruin ..Polish state as a state. ..with regard to ..Jews ..they want to devastate ..biological substance of ..Jewish Nation. If ..Germans do not change their method of dealing with ..Jewish population ..if there is no effort at Allied intervention ..whether through reprisals or other action ..barring some unforeseen circumstance ..within 18 months of ..time I left ..Homeland ..Jewish People of Poland will cease to exist.” Jan Karski.}
8. The Provisional Committee to Aid Jews (Polish: Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Zydom) was founded on September 27, 1942, by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz. The founding body consisted of Polish democratic Catholic activists associated with the Front Odrodzenia Polski, Polska Organizacja Demokratyczna, Zwiazek Syndykalistów Polskich and PPS-WRN. The Provisional Committee was financed partly by the Department of Social Services (Departament Opieki Spolecznej) and the Department of Internal Affairs (Departament Spraw Wewnetrznych) of the Polish Government in Exile. The Provisional Committee may have been the first formal institution in modern Polish history to be operated in an atmosphere of mutual trust by Polish and Jewish organizations of a broad political and socioeconomic spectrum. One of its vice-presidents was a member of Bund, Leon Feiner. Its secretary was Adolf Berman, who represented Zionist organizations. The Provisional Committee comprised Polish underground organizations that recognized the authority of the Government in Exile. Therefore, it did not include the communist Polish Workers’ Party (PPR), which provided similar aid to Jews. {#08 It was necessary to create ‘an atmosphere of mutual trust by Polish and Jewish’ organisations even though there seems to be some insistence that Polish Jews were not treated as a separated out entity.}
9. On September 27, 1942 Zegota – full codename: the “Konrad Zegota Committee” was the Polish Council to Aid Jews with the Government Delegation for Poland (Polish: Rada Pomocy Zydom przy Delegaturze Rzadu RP na Kraj) was founded. It was an underground Polish resistance organization and part of the Polish Underground State. It is estimated that up to 60,000 Jews were saved by Zegota. Operatives of Zegota worked in extreme circumstances – under threat of death by the Nazi forces, and sometimes in the midst of a hostile population. Their work required exceptional bravery, and many were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations after the war. Zegota was the brainchild of Henryk Wolinski of the Home Army (AK). In 1963 Zegota was memorialised in Israel with the planting of a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem. Zegota was supported by the Home Army, which provided facilities for forging German identification papers. Zegota also forged about 50,000 other documents such as marriage certificates, baptismal records, death certificates and employment cards to help Jews pass off as Christians. Zegota’s children’s section in Warsaw, headed by social worker Irena Sendler, cared for 2,500 of the 9,000 Jewish children smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto. Many were placed with foster families, in public orphanages, church orphanages, and convents. Zegota repeatedly asked the Polish Government-in-Exile and the Government Delegation for Poland to appeal to the Polish people to help the persecuted Jews. The Government in Exile gradually increased its funding for Zegota throughout the war.
{#09 September 27th. 1942 The Council for Aid to Polish Jews, known as ‘Zegota’ was founded by both Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz.}
{#”..beginning of October 1942. In two and a half months ..in one district ..Nazis had committed 300,000 murders.” Jan Karski.}
10. Witold Pilecki was a Polish cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader. Pilecki was a co-founder of the Secret Polish Army resistance group and later a member of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa). He was the author of Witold’s Report, the first comprehensive intelligence report on the atrocities committed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Pilecki volunteered for a Polish resistance operation that invo Awwww lved being imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp in order to gather intelligence. At Auschwitz, he organized a resistance movement within the camp which eventually numbered in the hundreds, and secretly sent messages to the Western Allies detailing Nazi atrocities at the camp. Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich writes in The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery: “When God created the human being, God had in mind that we should all be like Captain Witold Pilecki, of blessed memory.”
{#10 Septemeber 1940 Witold Pilecki (aka Tomasz Serafinski) enters Auschwitz. On March 18th. 1941 Pilecki reports to Polish Government in Exile, London, on Auschwitz Camp Conditions. Information which had previously been dispatched to Zwiazek Organizacji Wojskowej, ZOW and onto Warsaw through October 1940.}
11. Aleksander Lados was a Polish diplomat, who 1940–45 headed the Legation of Poland to Switzerland. Lados was a member and de facto leader of the Lados Group, also known as Bernese Group, a secret action by the Polish diplomats and Jewish organizations who helped save several hundred Jews from the Holocaust by providing them with illegal Latin American, mostly Paraguayan passports. During his de facto ambassadorial post in Bern, Lados headed secret operation “Passport Issues” aimed to provide Jews in German-occupied Poland with Latin American passports strictly co-operating with representatives of the Jewish organizations in Switzerland. The blank passports were bought between Dec. 1941 and Autumn 1943 from the honorary consul of Paraguay Rudolf Hüggli and filled out by Lados’ sub-ordinates, consul Konstanty Rokicki and sometimes also by a Polish-Jewish diplomat Juliusz Kühl. Lados himself intervened directly with the Swiss Federal Counselor Marcel Pilet-Golaz to turn a blind eye to the illegal procedure. Other people included in the clandestine Lados Group included Lados’ deputy counsellor Stefan J. Ryniewicz and Jews Chaim Eiss and Abraham Silberschein, members of Jewish organizations whose main task was to smuggle lists of beneficiaries and copies of illegally-obtained passports between Berne and German-occupied Poland.
{#11 No one doubts the very brave interventions of individuals in saving Jews. Aleksander Lados, a member of the Bern Group is amongst The Righteous Amongst Nations which clearly acknowledges this and why 6,992 individual non-Jewish Poles are recognised.}
12. Polish Delegate of the Government in Exile residing in Hungary, diplomat Henryk Slawik known as the Polish Wallenberg, helped rescue over 30,000 refugees including 5,000 Polish Jews in Budapest, by giving them false Polish passports as Christians. He founded an orphanage for Jewish children officially named School for Children of Polish Officers in Vác.
{#12 Again! No one doubts the very brave interventions of individuals in saving Jews. Henryk Slawik is amongst The Righteous Amongst Nations which clearly acknowledges this and why 6,992 individual non-Jewish Poles are recognised.}
13. in 1943 a Jewish affairs section of the Polish Underground State was set up by the Government Delegation for Poland; it was headed by Witold Bienkowski and Wladyslaw Bartoszewski. Its purpose was to organize efforts concerning the Polish Jewish population, to coordinate with Zegota, and to prepare documentation about the fate of the Jews for the government in London.
{#13 The vast majority of the 3,000,000 Slaughtered Polish Jews had been eviscerated in the x6 Death Camps placed in Poland, Auschwitz/Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka.}
14. The Polish government and its underground representatives at home issued declarations that people acting against the Jews (blackmailers and others) would be punished by death.
{#14 July 22nd. 1943 In a Radio Broadcast Zegota reported that few Jews remained in Poland.}
15. General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces, signed a decree calling upon the Polish population to extend aid to the persecuted Jews; including the following stern warning. “Any direct and indirect complicity in the German criminal actions is the most serious offence against Poland. Any Pole who collaborates in their acts of murder, whether by extortion, informing on Jews, or by exploiting their terrible plight or participating in acts of robbery, is committing a major crime against the laws of the Polish Republic. Warsaw, May 1943”
{#15 July 22nd. 1943 In a Radio Broadcast Zegota reported that few Jews remained in Poland which makes Sikorski’s letter rather superfluous.}
The guilt of the Polish nation is not in question, in the same way as the guilt of the German nation is not in question.
What Shouldn’t happen is denial. The German acceptance of history is total, hence Holocaust Memorial Centre in Berlin. Germany has no possibility of denial, yet there’s no doubt some German citizens and even military didn’t agree with the Holocaust idiology.
Poland were indeed invaded by the Nazis and so the possibility of denial presents itself. Your blog presents the evidence of Polish Antisemitism prior to the invasion. There was complicity amongst the populace after invasion too. Whether through idiology or self preservation, this is attested to in many survivors’ testimonies.
Unless anyone can prove zero Polish people wanted the Jewish presence removed (and the evidence in your blog is compelling that even so-called Christian folk called for it) then the Polish nation should realise it owes an apology to the Jewish people for the actions of SOME of its ancestors. There is no claim in the Berlin centre that all Germans were Nazis. Similarly, the Polish government don’t need to concede its entire populace were collaborators with the Nazi. A simple acceptance that some of its people didn’t do enough to prevent attrocities on its soil would be enough
Thank you. You appreciate the meaning of my words.