Polish President Andrzej Duda’s decision to skip the Fifth World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem next week, which top world leaders will attend, highlights the crisis in Polish-Israeli ties.
Caroline B. Glick, ISRAEL HAYOM
Next Thursday is supposed to mark another diplomatic triumph for Israeli diplomacy. On January 23, the Fifth World Holocaust Forum will convene at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz death camp. According to Yad Vashem and the World Holocaust Forum, 45 heads of state will travel to Jerusalem for the conference as President Reuven Rivlin’s guests.
But unless something changes in the next few days, the event won’t be a diplomatic triumph. The conference, titled, “Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Anti-Semitism,” will mark the end of the golden era of Israeli diplomacy.
This isn’t the fault of the guests. They are an impressive lot. Along with Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Vice President Mike Pence, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prince Charles, French President Emmanuel Macron and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier are scheduled to deliver remarks at the event.
The problem is with who won’t be at the event. Polish President Andrzej Duda announced last week that he will not be attending. Duda’s decision doesn’t owe to lack of interest. He made no effort to hide how it important he felt it would be to attend the conference. Indeed, as Israel Hayom reported this last week, Duda was so eager to come that he was willing to leave the World Economic Forum early to fly to Jerusalem just for the conference.
And it isn’t that Netanyahu didn’t want him to come. Netanyahu wants very much for Duda to come because Israel has a profound interest in Duda’s attendance.
Were Duda to participate in the event at Yad Vashem conference, his presence would mark the end of the two-year crisis in Polish-Israeli ties. The crisis was precipitated in January 2018 with the Polish parliament’s passage of a law that criminalized criticism of Polish collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust. Lawbreakers were subject to up to three years imprisonment.
The law was widely reviled as a bid to rewrite the history of the Holocaust. Its passage provoked a massive outcry in the Jewish world. Israel joined the protests. A crisis in Polish-Israel relations ensued. It took months of delicate and complicated diplomacy led by Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to figure out a way out of the dispute. In June 2018 the Polish parliament amended the law and revoked the possibility of imprisonment for transgressors.
The crisis appeared resolved. Israel and Poland resumed their close bilateral relations, much to both sides’ satisfaction and benefit.
Poland is the most powerful member of the European Union’s Visegrad bloc which includes four formerly Communist central European states – Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. The governments of the Visegrad member nations are among Israel’s steadiest allies in the EU.
Led by Poland, the four governments successfully torpedoed several anti-Israel decisions in Brussels. For instance, in May 2018, the Visegrad bloc rejected a draft resolution condemning the US for opening its embassy in Jerusalem. In February 2019, together with the US, Poland hosted Netanyahu and Arab leaders at an international security conference in Warsaw that focused on the threat Iran poses to international security.
A week after the conference in Warsaw, the Visegrad bloc was scheduled to convene in Jerusalem – another diplomatic triumph.
But days before the summit was set to begin, following a Supreme Court decision prohibiting Netanyahu from continuing to serve as foreign minister, Netanyahu appointed Israel Katz to serve in his stead. On his first day in his new job, the veteran Minister of Transportation with little diplomatic experience managed to undo all of Netanyahu’s and Morawiecki’s painstaking efforts to resolve the crisis. In one fell swoop, Katz reinstated and deepened it.
In a media interview, Katz quoted late prime minister Yitzhak Shamir who said that Poles drink anti-Semitism in their mothers’ milk. The Polish government, predictably, was apoplectic. Morawiecki swiftly canceled Poland’s participation at the Jerusalem summit.
Last March, Hungary opened a diplomatic trade office in Jerusalem. Members of the Visegrad bloc have said privately that they are willing to open embassies in Jerusalem. They have also expressed willingness to call for the EU to abandon the nuclear deal with Iran. But no Visegrad bloc members are willing to take such major steps without Poland.
For its part, Poland won’t get in a fight with the Germans, the French and the EU bureaucracy in Brussels for an Israel that it perceives as insulting its national honor.
Following the US targeting of Iran’s terror master Qassem Soleimani two weeks ago, and Iran’s subsequent announcement that it is no longer abiding by the limitations on its nuclear activities dictated by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, (JCPOA), breaking the EU’s unanimity on the JCPOA has become a matter of strategic urgency for Israel.
If Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia were to announce they support reinstating the UN Security Council sanctions on Iran that were suspended with the implementation of the JCPOA in 2015 through the deal’s so-called “snapback” clause, their announcement at this juncture could have profound implications.
Consider the predicament of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. As Johnson seeks to conclude a Brexit agreement with Brussels, he doubtlessly feels compelled to continue to align his Iran policy with the EU’s pro-Iran policy. This is would explain why, just two days after the Iranians detained the British ambassador to Tehran, Johnson chose to remain in the deal and join the French and the Germans in calling for the implementation of the JCPOA’s dispute resolution mechanism to deal with Iran’s noncompliance. The EU-3’s move could lead to the reinstitution of UN sanctions at the Security Council. But that doesn’t seem to be the likeliest outcome or the intention. Rather, the EU-3’s initiative appears to be a cynical gambit to buy time and do nothing.
Johnson followed-up on that minimally significant move with a counter-productive one. He called to renegotiate the JCPOA.
If adopted by the Trump administration, Johnson’s call would effectively throw the ayatollahs a life preserver. Today, the Iranian regime is in the grips of an internal power struggle in the post-Soleimani era. It is faced with a revolutionary protest movement. And it is in the throes of a deep economic crisis induced by the US sanctions.
Nuclear negotiations are just what the ayatollahs’ doctor ordered. They would be protracted and lead nowhere. As the JCPOA made clear, the Iranian regime will never abandon its nuclear program. The only thing that nuclear talks would produce is pressure on the Trump administration to rescind US sanctions on Iran and so enable the regime to survive the current crisis and continue to build its nuclear arsenal.
In the midst of this EU-3’s current pro-Iran campaign, if the Visegrad bloc were to disavow the JCPOA, the pressure would mount on Johnson to align British policy with US policy.
Along these lines, Johnson would feel more compelled to act in accordance with the JCPOA and introduce a resolution at the Security Council to restore the UN sanctions on Iran. If those sanctions are “snapped-back,” (which Iran’s announcement that it is abandoning the JCPOA’s nuclear limitations, should have precipitated automatically), they will strengthen the current dynamic of regime instability, embolden the protesters in the street and discourage commanders in Iran’s armed forces or the Revolutionary Guard Corps from harming them.
This brings us back to Duda and his non-attendance at the Holocaust conference in Jerusalem next week.
For four months Duda asked to be permitted to speak at the conference. Last month those requests turned urgent.
On December 19, in a lecture in Saint Petersburg, Putin harshly attacked pre-war Poland. He accused the Poles of supporting the Nazis on the eve of the war and minimized the significance of the Soviet Union’s collaboration with Nazi Germany during the same period. Putin condemned Polish anti-Semitism in the 1930s, but ignored Soviet anti-Semitism. He failed to mention the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Germany that carved up Poland between the two powers and set the conditions for Germany’s invasion of Poland and the initiation of the genocide of European Jewry.
Israel and the US joined Poland in condemning Putin’s remarks. It was important for Duda to speak at the conference in Jerusalem in order to respond to Putin’s accusations. It was doubly critical for the Poles that Duda be afforded the right to speak because they rightly believe it likely that Putin will use his speech at Yad Vashem to double down on his historical revisionism.
All of Poland’s requests to the conference’s organizers to permit Duda to speak were rejected. Arguing that only the Germans and the allied powers were asked to speak, the organizers failed to take into consideration the damage their refusal would cause to Israel’s bilateral relations with Poland or to Israel’s strategic wider interests.
Earlier this week, Israel Hayom reported that at a meeting Duda held with representatives of Polish Jewish groups, Shevach Weiss, the former Israeli ambassador to Poland, former Speaker of the Knesset and chairman of Yad Vashem blamed the decision to deny Duda’s requests on Moshe Kantor. Kantor is a Russian Jewish businessman and philanthropist and President of the European Jewish Congress. Kantor is also the founder and president of the World Holocaust Foundation.
Weiss said, “The conference was organized by Mr. Kantor and he organized it like a merchant. But you can’t trade in history. You can’t do that.”
Senior officials in Washington involved in the dispute take issue with Weiss’s claim. It’s possible, they say, that Kantor lobbied for Duda to be barred from speaking. But the decision wasn’t Kantor’s to make. President Rivlin chose to deny Duda’s requests.
Rivlin, they charge, denied Duda’s requests not only against Netanyahu’s wishes but despite the Trump administration’s requests that he be permitted to speak. The administration views both Israel and Poland as key allies and is keen to see an improvement in their bilateral relations. They are hopeful that Rivlin will have a change of heart and belatedly approve Duda’s request.
For the past decade, Netanyahu conducted Israel’s foreign relations almost entirely on his own. Netanyahu knew not to base his actions on populist rallying cries or emotions. Instead, Netanyahu focused on identifying and cultivating common interests with other countries. Owing to his actions, Israel’s diplomatic position is stronger today than it has ever been. Key global powers and countries worldwide view Israel as a partner and ally because of Netanyahu’s respect for their interests and willingness to work with them. Israel, for its part, has only benefited from Netanyahu’s skillful stewardship of its foreign affairs.
Today, there are many nations that wish to work with Israel to advance common goals. Israel’s closest ally – America – believes it has an interest in improved Israeli-Polish relations. But now that Netanyahu is no longer alone in the ring, we are beginning to see what the post-Netanyahu future holds in store for us. Unless Rivlin changes his mind, next week will not be a triumph of Israeli diplomacy. It will be a missed opportunity of strategic proportions.
Claims by some Polish historians that Poles took great risks in helping Jews to survive and many Polish rescuers and attempted rescuers were killed as a result of their attemps to rescue Jews. From Wikipedia footnotes on article about the Holocaust in Poland.
From Wikipedia with photo graph of a man being hanged:
From Wikipedia.
From the footnotes to the Wikipedia article on the Holocaust in Poland. The article is very fair, and tells both sides of the story. Historians of the Holocaust disagree among themselves on the extent of Polish collaboration in the Holocaust and the extent of Polish rescue efforts on behalf of Jews. Nearly all historians agree that there were some Poles in both groups.
^
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Adam….The pogroms, one during the war and one after, are not exactly the whole story… There were other comparatively minor pogroms, which were swallowed up the the major continuing catastrophe, and either barely reported, misreported or unreported. I can’t recall where I read about this, but it was some person with a Ph.D. Also my Polish friends in Dublin, prominent, originally VERY wealthy Warsaw family, were kept informed, to some extent as to what was going on there, and it was as I say above.
It was so rare as to become negligible, that Polish a family handed back property which they moved into, owned by departed Jews. There were several court cases after the War in which the returned Jews tried…ALL unsuccessfully, to regain their property through legal means. I have a copy of the compete documents detailing one particular case involving the most prestigious complete block in Warsaw. By that time th Soviets were in control. The lengthy case was thrown out on spurious legal refutations. About 6-7 Jewish families were represented.
@ Reader:
Sorry for the duplicate comments but I tried many times and it didn’t work, probably because I didn’t know how to insert the links, etc. and then I had to recreate the comment.
This is untrue. Bulgaria was not a Catholic country, and its king wasn’t Catholic so the Vatican had absolutely no power to excommunicate him.
I know the true story but it will take too long to type.
Amazing! Especially since
The very 1st pogrom in the 19th century Europe was in Germany (Hep-Hep Riots in 1819), and it was so widespread, it could have been called countrywide if at the time there was a country named Germany.
About Netherlands, France and Belgium, see:
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/netherlands-greatest-number-jewish-victims-western-europe/
It seems that the actual mass murder of Jews is always initiated by the West but the East Europeans are eager to help when they get a chance.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
“They only allowed the remaining 20,000 to survive because Monsignor Angelo Guiseppe Roncolli, the Vatican’s director of humanitarian affairs and papal ambassidor to Bulgaria, (also the future Pope John XXIII, and posthumously declared St. John XXIII), threatened the king of Bulagaria with excommunication if he allowed any more Jews to be handed over to the Nazis.”
This is untrue. Bulgaria was not a Catholic country, and its king wasn’t Catholic so the Vatican had absolutely no power to excommunicate him.
I know the true story but it will take too long to type.
“There had been very few pogroms in Germany since the fifteenth century.”
Amazing! Especially since “Jews largely vanished from Germany after the 15th century, and only returned in large numbers in the 19th.”
The very 1st pogrom in the 19th century Europe was in Germany (Hep-Hep Riots in 1819), and it was so widespread, it could have been called “countrywide” if at the time there was a country named “Germany”.
“There didn’t seem to be any discernible pattern in how many Jews survived and how many were put to death in each occupied country. Perhaps chance factors played a role.”
About Netherlands, France and Belgium, see:
It seems that the actual mass murder of Jews is always initiated by the West but the East Europeans are eager to help when they get a chance.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
“They only allowed the remaining 20,000 to survive because Monsignor Angelo Guiseppe Roncolli, the Vatican’s director of humanitarian affairs and papal ambassidor to Bulgaria, (also the future Pope John XXIII, and posthumously declared St. John XXIII), threatened the king of Bulagaria with excommunication if he allowed any more Jews to be handed over to the Nazis.”
This is untrue. Bulgaria was not a Catholic country, and its king wasn’t Catholic so the Vatican had absolutely no power to excommunicate him.
I know the true story but it will take too long to type.
“There had been very few pogroms in Germany since the fifteenth century.”
Amazing! Especially since “Jews largely vanished from Germany after the 15th century, and only returned in large numbers in the 19th.”
https://voxeu.org/article/how-anti-semitism-interwar-germany-was-influenced-medieval-mass-murder-jews
The very 1st pogrom in the 19th century Europe was in Germany (Hep-Hep Riots in 1819), and it was so widespread, it could have been called “countrywide” if at the time there was a country named “Germany”.
“There didn’t seem to be any discernible pattern in how many Jews survived and how many were put to death in each occupied country. Perhaps chance factors played a role.”
About Netherlands, France and Belgium, see:
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/netherlands-greatest-number-jewish-victims-western-europe/
It seems that the actual mass murder of Jews is always initiated by the West but the East Europeans are eager to help when they get a chance.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
“the Bulgarians did hand over many Jews to the Germans. They only allowed the remaining 20,000 to survive because Monsignor Angelo Guiseppe Roncolli, the Vatican’s director of humanitarian affairs and papal ambassidor to Bulgaria, (also the future Pope John XXIII, and posthumously declared St. John XXIII), threatened the king of Bulagaria with excommunication .”
Completely untrue. Bulgaria is not a Catholic country, and its king was not Catholic so the Vatican had absolutely NO jurisdiction over Bulgaria and no right to excommunicate the king.
I know the true story but it will take too long to type.
“There had been very few pogroms in Germany since the fifteenth century. ”
Amazing, isn’t it. Especially that “Jews largely vanished from Germany after the 15th century, and only returned in large numbers in the 19th”
https://voxeu.org/article/how-anti-semitism-interwar-germany-was-influenced-medieval-mass-murder-jews
Remarkably, the 1st pogrom in Europe in the 19th century was in Germany (Hep-Hep Riots 1819), and it could have been called “countrywide” if there was a country named Germany at the time.
“Many Jews hate Poles, but few hate the Dutch. The foreign minister of Israel insulted the Poles, but not the Dutch. I wonder why so many Jews make this distinction.”
Maybe because most European Jews lived and died in Eastern Europe and most of them in Poland?
About Netherlands, France, and Belgium:
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/netherlands-greatest-number-jewish-victims-western-europe/
The initiative to mass-murder Jews seems to always come from the West but the East is usually eager to help.
“the Bulgarians did hand over many Jews to the Germans. They only allowed the remaining 20,000 to survive because Monsignor Angelo Guiseppe Roncolli, the Vatican’s director of humanitarian affairs and papal ambassidor to Bulgaria, (also the future Pope John XXIII, and posthumously declared St. John XXIII), threatened the king of Bulagaria with excommunication .”
Completely untrue. Bulgaria is not a Catholic country, and its king was not Catholic so the Vatican had absolutely NO jurisdiction over Bulgaria and no right to excommunicate the king.
I know the true story but it will take too long to type.
“There had been very few pogroms in Germany since the fifteenth century. ”
Amazing, isn’t it. Especially that “Jews largely vanished from Germany after the 15th century, and only returned in large numbers in the 19th”
https://voxeu.org/article/how-anti-semitism-interwar-germany-was-influenced-medieval-mass-murder-jews
Remarkably, the 1st pogrom in Europe in the 19th century was in Germany (Hep-Hep Riots 1819), and it could have been called “countrywide” if there was a country named Germany at the time.
“Many Jews hate Poles, but few hate the Dutch. The foreign minister of Israel insulted the Poles, but not the Dutch. I wonder why so many Jews make this distinction.”
Maybe because most European Jews lived and died in Eastern Europe and most of them in Poland?
About Netherlands, France, and Belgium:
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/netherlands-greatest-number-jewish-victims-western-europe/
The initiative to mass-murder Jews seems to always come from the West but the East is usually eager to help.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
“the Bulgarians did hand over many Jews to the Germans. They only allowed the remaining 20,000 to survive because Monsignor Angelo Guiseppe Roncolli, the Vatican’s director of humanitarian affairs and papal ambassidor to Bulgaria, (also the future Pope John XXIII, and posthumously declared St. John XXIII), threatened the king of Bulagaria with excommunication .”
Completely untrue. Bulgaria is not a Catholic country, and its king was not Catholic so the Vatican had absolutely NO jurisdiction over Bulgaria and no right to excommunicate the king.
I know the true story but it will take too long to type.
“There had been very few pogroms in Germany since the fifteenth century. ”
Amazing, isn’t it. Especially that “Jews largely vanished from Germany after the 15th century, and only returned in large numbers in the 19th”
https://voxeu.org/article/how-anti-semitism-interwar-germany-was-influenced-medieval-mass-murder-jews
Remarkably, the 1st pogrom in Europe in the 19th century was in Germany (Hep-Hep Riots 1819), and it could have been called “countrywide” if there was a country named Germany at the time.
“Many Jews hate Poles, but few hate the Dutch. The foreign minister of Israel insulted the Poles, but not the Dutch. I wonder why so many Jews make this distinction.”
Maybe because most European Jews lived and died in Eastern Europe and most of them in Poland?
About Netherlands, France, and Belgium:
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/netherlands-greatest-number-jewish-victims-western-europe/
The initiative to mass-murder Jews seems to always come from the West but the East is usually eager to help.
Explaining the differences in the number of victims when talking the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
Read full article at https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/netherlands-greatest-number-jewish-victims-western-europe/
90% of the Danish Jews survived the war because the local population helped saved them
https://www.history.com/news/wwii-danish-jews-survival-holocaust
I see a pattern when Jews got help from locals it helped them survive. When the locals helped the Nazis find Jews and participate in the murder the Jews chances for survival were greatly diminished. Unfortunately the Danish situation was not common enough.
My mother lived to almost 98 was an Austrian-Jewish refugee. She died in 2017
She was saved by Nuns in Italy who gave her a place to live and found her employment as a Seamstress.
Clearly there was historical antisemitism in the Catholic Church.
However, also clearly that there were good humane Catholics including those who saved Jews like my mother.
https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/final-solution-beginning/romania.html#narrative_info
Adam
All of these countries were badly effected by antisemitism and they all cannot face it. That is face their past. Poles no different.
@ Bear Klein: All fallacies. Almost half of all Rumanian Jews survived. The Jews of the Netherlands had always believed that their country and their neighbors were not antisemitic. Yet 90 per cent of them were put to death by the Nazis, yet many of them, as an article in today’s Arutz Sheva points, out, turned in by the Germans by their Dutch fellow citizens. The Bulgarians did hand over many Jews to the Germans. They only allowed the remaining 20,000 to survive because Monsignor Angelo Guiseppe Roncolli, the Vatican’s director of humanitarian affairs and papal ambassidor to Bulgaria, (also the future Pope John XXIII, and posthumously declared St. John XXIII), threatened the king of Bulagaria with excommunication if he allowed any more Jews to be handed over to the Nazis.
While it is true that many Italians protected Jews and 90% survived, the Church in Italy preached antisemitic doctrines for centuries. For centuries, Jews were forced to live in ghettoes, in Rome, Venice, and elsewhere. Jewish children were sometimes even kidnapped to be raised as Catholics.
Mussolini decreed antisemitic laws against Jews in 1938, at the insistence of Hitler. The Italian air force during the war bombed Tel Aviv civilian neighborhoods, killing more than 300 Jews. Yet it is true that many Italians, even Italian soldiers, protected Jews during the war.
Norway had never been seen as an especially antisemitic country. Yet Norwegian police under the direction of Nazi puppet dictator Vidkun Quisling helped the Nazis to round up half of Norways’s Jews and send them to the camps.
There had been very few pogroms in Germany since the fifteenth century. Between 1870 and 1933, Jews had equal rights as German citizens. Jews held prominent positions in business, the professions and journalism. Most Jews were patriotic Germans who felt safe in Germany. One third had Gentile spouses. Yet it was the German government, and its head of state Adolf Hitler, who conceived, organized and carried out the extermination of European Jewry. Most German Jews who didn’t succeed in getting visas to go to countries never occupied by the Nazis were put to death.
France had given Jews equal legal rights 135 years before the Holocaust. Jews were active in all spheres of French life. There had even been a Jewish Prime Minister right before World War II. Yet French police did turn over perhaps 40,00 Jews to the Nazis. The French government of Marshall Petain enacted antisemitic laws during the occupation.
There didn’t seem to be any discernible pattern in how many Jews survived and how many were put to death in each occupied country. Perhaps chance factors played a role. Antisemitism seems to have been pervasive in every European country, even in those where there hadn’t been much overt discrimination against Jews before the war, and where Jews felt themselves to be respected and safe. American Jews should take note of this.
There was no real pattern as to why more Jews survived in some occupied countries than in others.
T
@ Reader: From today’s Arutz Sheva:
Many Jews hate Poles, but few hate the Dutch. The foreign minister of Israel insulted the Poles, but not the Dutch. I wonder why so many Jews make this distinction. The percentage of Dutch Jews murdered was even greater than the percentage of Polish Jews murdered.
I noticed above the character assassination of Gross but I am presuming he is a peer reviewed scholar in the field of history. Belman take note re peer review of climate science.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Being a starving peasant doesn’t give you a license to murder people. There is no formula for figuring out who is more or less responsible for something.
@ Edgar G.:
All very valid points, Edgar. The British and American governments were responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Jews by denying them asylum in the lands that they ruled or controlled, including Israel/Palestine. Britain inflicted far more suffering on the Jews after the war than Poland did. And the Englishman and American officials who betrayed the Jews were not starving peasants like most of the alleged Polish collaborators. On the contrary, the were men who held the highest offices in American and British society, were wealthy, and lived in great security and comfort. America and Britain were, as nations, far more responsible for the Holocaust than Poland.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:Like I said you like the Poles are attacking Gross to try and invalidate his position with a character assassination and it is zero proof that his scholarly work on the Holocaust is not valid.
When one can not disprove the work shoot the author.
That he feels he wants to live in Berlin is his business. I would not live in Berlin. I know Israeli Jews (some also American) who also live in Berlin for the standard of living and professional advancement. Not something I would do or feel comfortable but then I believe in free will.
@ Bear Klein: As I have explained before, Grosz was one of the Polish-Jewish emigres who was granted asylum in the United States during th Gomulka purge of Jews from the Communist Party. Like all of the Polish emigre scholars who have alleged widespread complicity in the Holocaust, he has a grudge against Poland that relates to events long after the Holocaust.
After living in the United States for many years, Gross had no good reason to move to the epricenter of the Holocaust Berlin. If he was genuinely angry about the Holocaust, as he claims, he would certainly not have moved to its historic epicenter. And Berlin remains a city whereeven now where antisemitic assaults on Jews are a fairly commonplace occurrence. That Grosz would choose voluntarily to move to Berlin when he could easily have remained in his adopted country, the United States, tells us something about his motivations.
@ Reader:Gross moved to the USA longtime ago. His mother was Christian and his father Jewish. His mother who was Catholic helped save his father during the war.
It is safer for him in Berlin than Warsaw were it is dangerous for him because of his books and Holocaust studies. I have cut a bit about below of an article that gives an overview of his life. When in Poland he tries to dress so he will not be recognized.
https://dof.princeton.edu/about/clerk-faculty/emeritus/jan-t-gross
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Maybe Gross finds it acceptable (for him) to live in Berlin because Germany (unlike Poland) acknowledged her wartime crimes and and did her best to atone for them. Also, he might want to be in close proximity to the German archives.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
The vast majority of Polish Jews who actually survived, were imprisoned by the British in several concentration camp-like places, hemmed in by barbed wire fences etc.and were there for nearly 2 years, many of them, those who did not escape. Remember the EXODUS…..and several smaller endeavours. There was a huge outcry against the British then, for taking Jews who had survived the Nazi camps and imprisoning them again.
Do you remember Ernest Bevin, the DP Camps and the Exodus abomination.
You should refresh your memory on it. It brings back horrible times….
Gross is a historian and professor emeritus of Princeton University (New Jersey) who specializes in the history of the Holocaust
@ Adam Dalgliesh:You have proven nothing. Kindly stop commenting to me I am not all interested in your comments as they are generalities and your one specific source is Wikipedia which is not specific and highly suspect. Your main point seems to justify the ledge you climbed onto.
You have not specifically or credibly refuted any evidence by any of the cited historians about the Polish involvement in the Holocaust. You like the Poles trying to distort the history are just smearing the Historians and experts on the Holocaust history.
@ Bear Klein: If Gross is so upset by the Holocaust, why is he, like so many other Jews, now living in Berlin? It was Hitler’s capital, nu? Does he really think there are less antisemites there than in Poland? It just proves my point.
Germany is an economic and diplomatic powerhouse. So certain Jews treat it with respect. Poland is or seems to be a weak, inconsequential country. They see no need to treat it fairly. So people too scared to criticize the Germans, or who don’t want to sacrifice their share in the German economic miracle, relieve their feelings about the Holocaust by beating up on the Poles. Like the boy who is bullied by the big kid on the bloc who relieves his feelings by bullying the little kid a few houses down the street.
Poles have gone to great lengths to distort and hide the truth about Polish atrocities during and after the Holocaust.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:Seems like you have joined the Polish whitewash campaign about the Holocaust.
@ Bear Klein: These “estimates” have been criticiized by some historians for lacking any factual foundation. The “estimates” mainly originate with a small group of formerly Polish-Jewish scholars living now in the United States. Their critics point out that they base their “estimates” recollections of a few dozen Jewish survivors, many of them basing their narratives on things they were told by other people, Jewish or Gentile, rather than on what they actually saw or heard themselves. Their reports usually focused on particular villages where they had lived before or during the war. The Polish-Jewish emigre scholars who came up with these figures are accused of extrapolating from the narratives of this small number survivors about the behavior of Polish peasants in a handful of villages to come up with their “estimates” of what went on in every Polish village in the country. They didn’t consider the possibility that these villages were the exception rather than the rule for all of rural Poland, the critics say.
Another criticism of the anti-Polish Polish-Jewish emigre historians is that they have a personal axe to grind against Poles that hasnothing to do with the Holocaust. All of them are former members of the Polish Communist party, and/or the children of Polish-Jewish Communist part members, who were driven out of Poland by the antisemitic Polish Communist leader Wladislaw Goumulka. Jews had blayed a prominent role in the Polish Communist government between 1945 and 1967. After the Russians blamed Israel for the Six Day War and cranked up their ant-Israel and antisemitic propaganda, Gomulka, a Soviet puppet, took the opportunity to purge Jewish members of the Communist Party and force them to leave the country or face imprisonment in Poland. According to the emigre historians critics, they never forgave the Poles, any and every Poles, for their own exile from their native country, and extrapolated from their own bad experiences 22-23 years after the war to the Holocaust period. In effect, they are accused of backdating their own grievances against the Polish Communist government to the Holocaust years.
Poles many of them were involved in murdering Jews during the Holocaust or collaborating with the Nazis. The Polish government wants to whitewash this fact.
Yes, the Nazis were the main engine of the Holocaust but relied on their Jew hating collaborators in many countries including Poland to carry out the Holocaust.
Yes, there were brave Poles who should be commend for their actions including saving Jews. Many are among the righteous Gentiles recognized at Yad Vashem.
Polish propaganda has been attempting to whitewash Polish involvement in killing Jews rationalizing and distorting history during the Holcaust. It sad when Jews fall for these efforts by the Poles. Polish History is rife with antisemitism.
I had an Uncle who was a Polish Jew Izzy Fremd. He was one of 11 children and a twin. He was the only one of the 11 children who survived the Holocaust. For the memory of such murdered Jews and lessons of Jew hatred it imperative that Jews do not let others whitewash history.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Look, I am tired of reading your politically correct you-know-what. Germans did gauge the local reactions to Jew-killing and they determined that it would be very easy and convenient to set up their killing fields where most of the European Jews were located and where they were hated the most. Non-Polish Jews were also shipped to Poland to be killed there.
The prevailing Polish attitudes during the war (grass-roots) were “Let us suffer as long as the Jews suffer more” or total indifference.
I am not going to be rethinking “Poles and Jews” because most of my (very large) family perished in Poland (Lodz and Bialystock) and Lithuania in WWII. In addition, I heard and read personal accounts which support my opinion and not yours, Wikipedia’s or Debora Lipstadt’s. Soon they’ll be saying that the 6 million just killed themselves because dying in large numbers is a favorite Jewish hobby, and the righteous Poles desperately tried to prevent this from happening but failed.
I will never travel to Germany or to the blood-soaked Poland, and I don’t know how Jews can go there without having to keep throwing up the whole time.
As far as Russia and Ukraine – the Soviet (multi-ethnic) army had lost 600,000 soldiers freeing Poland from the Nazis only to discover that Poland didn’t particularly want to be freed from the Nazis.
As far as the general European antisemitism – well, what else is new but Poland was and still is the worst in this regard.
@ Bear Klein: Dreifuss has denounced Israeli Holocaust hisrian Daniel Blatmen for agreeing to head up a Museum of the Warsaw Ghetto in Warsaw, financed by the Polish government. Dreifuss claims it is intended as an instrument of Polish propaganda whose purpose is to absolve the Poles of allegation that there was Polish complicity in the Holocaust. Here is a quotation from a reply that Blatman published in Haaretz in December 2018, defending his decision to accept the Polish government’s invitation to serve as the museum’s director:
I don’t support all of Blatman’s opinions. But the exchange between Dreifuss and Blatman does suggest that the claims of Polish participation in the Holocaust tell us more about the present-day ideological conflicts between Jewish scholars in the present day than they do about what actually happened in Poland during the war.
@ Reader:
@ Bear Klein: Reader and Bear, do you think that Deborah Lipstadt is an antisemitic Pole? Here is what she wrote about the accusations of Polish participation in the Holocaust in 2007, before it became a big political issue:
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Wikipedia has come a long way since years ago when it was actually cited in serious books (I personally saw the citations) to its current near-total uselessness with its so-called “neutral” information and the 5th-grade level articles.
I watched (on YouTube, a few years ago) the Wikipedia founders being interviewed by a British (I believe) journalist about the upcoming changes in the way Wikipedia’s articles were to be written. The founder who did the most talking appeared scared to the point of almost stuttering, and he kept assuring the interviewer that all the future Wikipedia articles will be edited by the “elite” (the actual term he used) editors (this term might have been different) before publication.
The ostensible reason for the changes was their fear of being sued by some celebrities who didn’t like the way their biographies were presented on the website. However, you can call me paranoid, but the only way this proponent of the freedom of thought and information could be that frightened, to my mind, is by a visit from the security services demanding from him some sort of “political correctness” in his reporting.
@ Bear Klein: Wikipedia offers a much fairer and more balanced account of the role of Poles in the Holocaust during the German occupation of that unhappy country. This is a representative sample of Wikipedia’s lengthy discussion of both the Polish collaborators and the Polish heroic rescuers during the Holocaust:
Polish collaborators helped the Germans kill Jews during the war. Many Poles killed or fingered Jews for death in Poland. Yes there were good Poles who helped Jews but diminishing the crimes of Polish Jew haters is despicable.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Right.
And all Jews killed in Lithuania (98% of the total prewar Jewish population) were killed by the Germans while the noble Lithuanians were fighting both the Nazis and the Communists. Except the Jews started somehow getting killed before the Germans even showed up.
Same thing. Politically convenient whitewash.
@ Reader:Appalling falsehoods, Reader. These 3 million Jews were killed by Germans, not Poles. Documented evidence or eye-witness testimony that any significant number of Poles handed over Jews to the SS are completely lacking. There was one pogrom perpetrated by Poles in which Jews were murdered during the war. And there was one after the war ended. That was all. Clearly, these pogroms, horrible though they were isolated events that were perpetrated by a very small number of Poles. Most Poles during and after the war did not participate in pogroms.
The Polish Communist government after the war arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned many of the perpetrators of the postwar Kielce pogrom. Many of the Communist leaders of the Polish government during this period were Jews themselves. So were approximately 15 per cent of all Polish policemen during this period. The Polish government during this period did not drive the Jews out. Most left for Israel/Palestine because they did not want to stay in a country in which most of their relatives and neighbors had been murdered and most of the neighborhoods and towns where they had lived had been completely destroyed by the Nazis, along with all of their Synogogues, markets, factories, etc. This, too, was the work of the Germans, not Poles.
German citizens also saved Jews and died in concentration camps and during the Allied bombing but it doesn’t cancel out German war crimes and their program of extermination of Jews and others.
Yes, Poland was occupied by the Germans but you can make the same argument for all Germans that they were “occupied” by the evil Nazis.
Poland never came to terms nor acknowledged the indifference, collaboration and direct involvement of its citizens in the extermination of Polish Jews. I am not talking about what some people beyond the ocean did or failed to do, I am talking about the tens of millions of Poles who actually lived in Poland at that time.
The most murderous concentration camps were established in Poland and functioned throughout the war. Yes, ethnic Poles were also imprisoned in Auschwitz but, unlike the Jews, they did have a good chance of coming back home from the camp.
Every major city in Poland had a Jewish ghetto where people died of disease and starvation even before being shipped to extermination camps with hardly a reaction from the city dwellers.
There were pogroms in Poland after the war was over, and in the 1960s the remaining Polish Jews were hounded until most of them left.
Also, most Jews who were saved were the ones who had the money or goods to give to their saviors (which is kind of understandable, it being wartime, little food, etc.), and God forbid, in many cases, that they would receive the whole payment upfront or find out where the money was hidden because then they would take the money and kill the Jews who owned it.
So, on the balance, almost 3 million dead – 40 thousand saved (which is wonderful) = ?
@ Reader: Poland was not innocent in the events leading up to World War II. But the evidence that large numbers of Poles collaborated with the Nazis and turned over Jews to them is weak. That many Poles saved the lives of Jews is much more heavily supported by eye-witness testimony, including testamony from survivors.
The Germans killed around 1.9 million non-Jewish citizens of Poland, according to recent estimates by qualified historians. The Poles did not like the Germans.
The Polish foreign minister in exile in London and several Polish diplomats posted in Switzerlanddid attempt to rescue Polish Jews trapped in Nazi-occupied Poland. Their efforts were opposed to the British and American governments, which did not want to admit Jewish refugees to their countries or any countries under their influence.
The Polish government in exile even sent an emissary to Washington to ask the U.S. President to admit Jewish refugees from Poland. President Roosevelt absolutely refused.
The Polish army in exile in Britain, Italy and Palestine formulated a plan to parachute a joint mission of Polish and Jewish paratroopers in Aushwitsz in order to organize an escape of the Jews and Polish prisoners who were still alive in the camp. Again, Britain and the u.S. nixed the plan. The Polish exile government, along with many Jewish organizations, asked the British and Americans to bomb Aushwitz and the gas chambers, in order to enable some Jews to escape. Again the British and Americans refused. On balance, the Poles were better friends of the Jews during World War II than Britain and the u.S.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
I don’t know why Rivlin is so adamant about not letting Duda speak but I think that no diplomatic considerations can justify letting Poland whitewash its crimes against Polish (and other) Jews during World War II.
Caroline Glick doesn’t know whereof she speaks. Polish government at the time was extremely eager to join Germany in attacking the Soviet Union but Germany, unfortunately for Poland, had other plans. Poland was the first country in Europe to sign a pact with Nazi Germany in 1934 and it was quick to chop off a piece of Czech territory in 1938. Churchill called Poland “the hyena of Europe”.
While many Poles did save Jews, many more killed them, and the vast majority quietly collaborated with the occupiers. Now Poland is trying to rewrite history blaming everything that happened on the Germans, and Caroline Glick feels bad for Duda who got his feelings hurt by the Israelis and bad Putin.
Excellent article by Glick. Israel’s hostility to the present Polish government despite its efforts to be friendly to Israel, and Foreign Minister Katz’s publicly mouthing biased stereotypes of Poles, is to use a much misused word, deplorable. It never makes sense in international politics to turn down a hand offered in friendship. Especially for a diplomatically isolated country like Israel, that badly needs friends.
Allowing German and Russian representative to speak at the Holocaust Memorial ceremony in Jerusem, while denying the Polish president the opportunity to speak, amounts to refighting World War II on the wrong side. So is the emphasis by Netanyahu on Poles who turned in Jews to the Germans in World War II. There is little or no hard evidence that there were many Poles who did this. On the other hand, Yad Vashem has documented more than 40,000 Poles who saved Jewish lives during the German occupation.