A scandal of slandering Poles
LIDIA DUDKIEWICZ, THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF 'NIEDZIELA'
A few weeks ago, we used irony to write in ‘Niedziela’ that ‘The West can feel a relief: Germany is innocent’. We meant the crimes from the times of the second world war. Going further, we must think why Poles are anti-semites in the eyes of the western public opinion, who are responsible, like the Nazis, for murdering the Jews. The phrase ‘Polish death camps’ is used by leaders of western countries, and appears on pages of opinion-creating American, German, English or French newspapers. Recently, the ambassador of Russia in Poland has accused us of causing the Second World War. In the world a kind of a group lie has been rooted. And, as for now, we are losing a battle for the historic truth concerning Poland and Poles. We stop being victims and become executors. Investigators of this scandalous distorting the truth refer to a film of the French director Claude Lanzmann about Holocaust (‘Shoah’) from 1985. The film was called as a masterpiece, from the beginning it was willingly watched by people of western saloons, and the director received loads of rewards. Unfortunately, the thread of the film is a lie: it shows Poles as primitive anti-semites.
Falsifying history is led by German media, which present phrases: ‘Polish death camps’ and ‘polish concentration camps’ every day. With such a general insulting Poles and blurring the truth, corrections or apologies, which are enforced by our diplomatic institutions, are not enough, but it is necessary to submit the issues to the court. The scandal of burdening Poles for crimes of the Germans has been already taking a very long time. In addition, in Poland we did a harm to ourselves. In 2008, the ‘Sign’ published a book by Jan T. Gross ‘Fear. Anti-Semitism in Poland soon after the war. History of moral decline’, where the author put a thesis that anti-Semitism in Poland after the second world war was permitted by the society. Unfortunately, prosecutors in Cracow refused to investigate the issue connected with the publication of the ‘Fear’. Three years later, prosecutors in Cracow refused to investigate the issue concerning slandering the Polish nation and calling for hatred in the book by Jan T. Gross and Irena Grudzińska-Gross, entitled: ‘Golden harvest’.
For many years Gross was unpunished in Poland. His slanders were publicly fought back by Jerzy R. Nowak, but only now can he write in ‘Niedziela’ that there was the final disgrace of Gross, protected so far. For, on 13 September 2015 he even published his article on a website of the German daily ‘Die Welt’ in which he wrote: ‘a disgusting face of Poles comes from the Nazis times’. He also announced that during the Second World War Poles ‘killed more Jews than the Germans’. At once there was a reaction from the National Remembrance Institute and the Foreign Ministry, and the Embassy of the Polish Republic in Germany prepared a correction which was published. This time, there is finally an investigation started by prosecutors in the capital city, to which, after the publication of Gross, 125 messages about the crime were sent. Unfortunately, all this is a bit too late. There was no definite reaction soon after publishing the first Poles-attacking book ‘Neighbours’. It was really necessary to introduce good control so that the issue of Gross would be investigated by procurators till the end and his lies would be heard by the whole world. Whereas the task of this generation is build a real historic policy and finish this world scandal of slandering Poles.
AA
„Niedziela” 43/2015