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THE US AMBASSADOR to Warsaw apologised after being summoned by the foreign ministry over comments by the head of the FBI that Poland shared responsibility for the Holocaust with Germany.
Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski said the comments in an opinion piece by FBI director James Comey were an “insult” to Poland.
Controversy
Comey wrote in the April 16 Washington Post article:
In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil
After meeting with Poland’s deputy foreign affairs minister, US ambassador Stephen Mull told reporters the Nazis bore sole responsibility for the Holocaust, which left six million European Jews dead in World War II.
“I made clear that the opinion that Poland is in any way responsible for the Holocaust is not the position of the United States,” Mull said in Polish. “Nazi Germany alone bears responsibility.”
I now have a lot of work before me to make things right in this situation.
Foreign ministry spokesman Marcin Wojciechowski wrote on Twitter that Mull would “receive a note of protest and a summons for an apology” over Comey’s comments.
Marcin Wojciechowski / TwitterAmbasador @SteveMullUSA zostanie wezwany do @MSZ_RP w zw. z wypowiedzią dyrektora FBI. Otrzyma notę z protestem i wezwaniem do przeprosin.
— Marcin Wojciechowski (@maw75) April 19, 2015
Komorowski told public television that the FBI head’s comments showed a “lack of historical knowledge” and “this requires a reaction from the Polish state”.
They were an “insult to thousands of Poles who helped Jews”.
Mull was quick to offer an informal apology at memorial ceremonies in the Polish capital on Sunday marking the 72nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
“Any suggestion that Poland, or any other countries other than Nazi Germany, bear responsibility for the Holocaust, is a mistake, harmful and insulting,” Mull told reporters.
Six million Polish citizens were killed under Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland during World War II. While half of the victims were Jewish, the other half were Christian.
Historical records show instances of Poles turning against their Jewish neighbours, either killing them or giving them up to the Nazis. Poles also risked their lives and families to save Jews.
Regret
In 2012, US President Barack Obama caused outrage in Warsaw when he labelled a World War II Nazi German facility in occupied Poland used to process Jews for extermination a “Polish death camp”.
He subsequently expressed “regret”.
Poland’s government keenly watches the global media for descriptions of former Nazi German death camps as “Polish” because it says the term — even if used simply as a geographical indicator — can give the impression that Poland bore responsibility for the Holocaust.
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Handy distraction from the 100th Anniversary of the first day of the Armenian Holocaust. Turkey owes the head of the FBI a drink.
You’d swear this was intentional. A few groups benefit from this.
And yet the Nazis had collaborators in every country they occupied – that should not be forgotten amidst the outrage.
And in the 1930s ireland refused to take in jewish refugees, refused to take in jewish children from Germany – some of whom, no doubt, died in the holocaust.
Which is precisely what Comey was referring to, but nothing like a bit of faux outrage. We know Poland was occupied, e know the German authorities set up camps outside their borders for a reason, but we also know that the polish politicos and local leaders worked with them for self preservation. No one got hurt by noticing this and putting it in an article, so those “outraged” need to read up on their history and not whitewash over it.
We had just emerged from a famine that took out half of our population, in fairness.
“[We] know the German authorities set up camps outside their borders for a reason”
My knowledge of the Holocaust is quite limited, but as I understand it the number of Polish Jews killed FAR exceeded the number killed in Germany. As in, well over 10 times as many. Of all the countries controlled by the Nazis, Poland had by far the largest Jewish population. Sadly, of course, that was no longer the case after the war.
So the fact that Ireland had suffered huge loss meant that we couldn’t help others? That’s a perverse logic – surely our suffering should have given us some empathy. In addition – that was 70 years prior.
The situation was pretty complex – of course there were Poles who were happy that their neighbours had disappeared, that they could take over the now abandoned houses and land. Poland was unique, in that it was the only place under Nazi control where aiding a Jew was punishable by death. In spite of this, many Poles risked their lives to save their fellow Poles, by hiding Jews, and helping them escape the Nazis.
The fact is that most European countries did at best little, and some collaborated on huge scales (France and Hungary in particular). The only countries in Europe that come out with some credit are Denmark (where a secret fleet of fishing boats brought Danish Jews to Sweden), and Bulgaria. Every other country in Europe, including Ireland, could have done more – but didn’t.
Faced with a situation of ethnic cleansing and chemical warfare in Syria, what has been our response?
Actually the Nazis found many willing collaborators in every country the occupied who were eager to help with the extermination.. Plenty of dirty hands here.
Actually the Poles collaborated very little in comparison to other countries, Poland never had any official organised collaboration unlike in most other occupied countries, in fact Poland technically never surrendered to the Nazis and their resistance network was the largest in Europe and the Polish army through fighting as part of other countries armies was the fourth largest Allied army.
Very few Poles were given positions of authority within occupied Poland because the Nazis didn’t trust them, most of those positions went to members of the German minority who had been living in Poland prior to the war. There were probably some collaborators in Poland but their numbers were comparatively very very low, a fact Poland takes great pride in, and understandably they take great offence when it is forgotten.
Poland was also one of the only countries to have an armed resistance that met the Germans in head on battle, culminating in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 (when the Red Army sat outside the city so as to let the Germans and non-Communist Polish Home Army wear one another out).
The history of collaboration and resistance is a highly complex and intermingled web. The French police rounded up many Jews on behalf of the Germans, and Anne Frank was pulled out of her attic by a Dutch policeman. The Danes maintained a collaborative government, but they saved most of their Jewish population by actively moving them into Sweden when they got word of deportations to come. The Hungarians were an Axis ally of Germany, but made deals with the Germans to buy them off from deporting their Jews; until the relationship broke down and Germany effectively invaded the country. In Poland there was rampant anti-semitism in places, and fanatical resistance to the Germans including escaped Jews and others singled out for victimization in other parts.
The one thread running through all of this, however, is Germany. It was the Germans and their Nazi regime that tore down the edifices of civilization across continental Europe; organised the slaughter of so many, including but by no means limited to the Jews; and ensured that it carried on right into the final days of the Third Reich.
@Fiachra @Aaron – Great points. Well done!
@Fiachra @Aaron Many of your points are true – but the history is murky – there were many more instances of collaboration than officially acknowledged by the Polish authorities – it’s understandable how they would want to minimise any Polish involvement in the holocaust.
http://www.amazon.com/Hunt-Jews-Betrayal-Murder-German-Occupied/dp/0253010748
However what happened the Polish Jews who survived the death camps? Why did they flee to Israel?
After the war, there were still pogroms against the Jews – this time led by Poles. Of course the situation was chaotic, with Polish/German/Ukrainian/Jewish ethnic cleansing on a wide scale – however in many cases Jews were chased out of their homes and some were killed by mobs.
“Iron Curtain” – by Anne Appelbaum (Polish/American and wife of ex foreign minister of Poland) is an excellent account of the chaos and terror that was eastern Europe after WW2, and details many of these events. She also has a response to the FBI director
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/04/19/fbi-director-got-it-wrong-on-the-holocaust/
Another source is the film “Shoah”, especially where the polish residents of what used to be jewish villages and houses are asked what happened to the owners of the land they now live on.
David I’m not saying Poland was free from anti-semitism and collaboration, but it was relatively low in fact Israel has recognised that more Poles saved the lives of Jews than any other country and the Israel War Crimes tribunal has also recognised that collaboration amongst the Poles was very low. The numbers helping Jews definitely far exceeded those who sold them out.
I’m sure a lot of Jews left Poland due to anti-semitic intimidation after the war, but that wasn’t the only reason a lot of them left because they had nothing left for them in Poland many of their relatives had been murdered their communities torn apart, and many of them didn’t want to live within a Communist regime. The idea of a Jewish State that welcomes all jews would have been a very attractive option and they would have thought that would be the safest place to live, for fear of another Holocaust sweeping through Europe.
You’re not wrong in some of what you say, David. But I suppose the point is more one of nuance – For every tale of antisemitism, there is a tale of people saving Jews. And there are certainly far more cases of resistance than collaboration in Poland.
The Second World War is a wound that can be torn open at any moment by simple comments, and spark fierce debate. It’s fortunate that Europeans figured that out early on after the war, and created a system to prevent us from doing the standard European thing about these rows – More war.
Wish the Americans would learn their history. We must keep the facts alive and true as a tribute to all whose lives were taken and who gave their lives. There is no fudging history.
unless we need to unfudge the history that has already been fudged.
Sorry Deborah, do you mean that you think there wasn’t collaborators in Poland and Hungary?
Keeping ‘facts’ alive and true is difficult when they change depending on who interprets them.
@David
No one is saying there weren’t any collaborators, but the single fact remains, it all started with Nazi Germany’s Endlösung.
As such Nazi Germany bears sole and full responsibility for the atrocities of the Holocaust, and I say this as a German, who is ashamed of this dark part of my country’s history, it should never be forgotten.
Any chance we could blame the individuals instead of the countries they came from? He said “Poland has” responsibility. He used the present tense. How is my postman responsible for the holocaust??
Exactly. I am quite sick of people holding others to blame for things that they personally had nothing to do with. I met an adult the other day, about 40 years old, who told me honestly that he felt uncomfortable every time he met a German because he believed that they should apologise and/or feel regret for what they did. A 16 year old, or a 30 year old, or even a 5 year old should feel guilt over acts that has nothing to do with them.
It’s ridiculous and wrong to blame te Germans of today for the crimes of the holocaust in the same way that it would be made to blame prince William or his baby for the famine.
Germany and their allies, Austria, Italy, Japan.
-There is active and passive collaboration.
- in the case of Ireland it was passive collaboration mostly because of our conservative catholic power structures many of which were anti semitic.
- The Polish were betrayed on all sides in WW2. Despite this the Poles have an incredible brave record of fighting the Nazis and did not collaborate with the Nazis subsequently during occupation.
- it is incredible hard to understand who such a buffoon could rise to be director of the FBI.
Dont beat yourself up over it Larissa, instead of thinking about the holocaust try looking at like Nazi Germany saved the rest of Europe from communist rule. Feel better?
Shows how stupid the FBI are with a director like that- a big mouthed git will not solve many crimes-
Polish artists response for FBI director James Comey which touched on Poland’s alleged responsibility for the Holocaust.
The Krasnals ask – if America really feels not guilty while it refused to help to save Jews from concentration camps, and actually accepted them. Is it ethical to accuse Poles who lived under German occupancy, the threat of the death penalty, and the West was ignoring their desperate asks for preventing Jews from extermination.
http://thekrasnals.blogspot.com/2015/04/america-didnt-save-jews-so-what.html
have your say