POLAND IS FIGHTING FOR THE TRUTH
Lidia Dudkiewicz, The Editor-in-Chief of ‘Niedziela’
In relation to the political commotion which was caused by enacting amendment to the Act by the Seym and then by the Senate of Republic of Poland, assuming fines for using the term ‘Polish death camps’ harming our nation, the whole arsenal of false terms was revealed and which are aimed at writing anti-Polish history. Here are false terms appearing in foreign media: ‘Polish holocaust, ‘Polish SS’, ‘Polish Auschwitz’, ‘Polish death factory’, ‘Polish ghettos’, ‘Polish Nazis’, ‘Polish genocide’, ‘Polish mass murders’, ‘Polish war crimes’, ‘Nazis Poland’. Only in 2017 did Polish diplomatic institutions intervene 258 times in order to stop the false records. The government decided to stop this wave of slandering us and sent a clear signal that it would not allow for further unpunished spreading lies concerning Poles – therefore the amendment of the Act about the National Remembrance Institute was prepared. However, it raised a diplomatic conflict in Israel. It was not noticed that the Polish records about the Act were based on the Israeli law. The Polish party undertook actions on various fronts aimed at de-falsifying history. The prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki invited correspondents of foreign media to the Museum named the Ulmów Family in Markowa, in order to show them evidence of the crime committed by the Germans on the Polish family for hiding the Jews from German Nazis. The prime minister announced that Poland would undertake a battle which had been started and would fight against the slanders till the victory of the truth. In this context I encourage you to read an interview published in the ‘Sunday’ with an attorney Stefan Hambura who suggests building a Polish information centre in the heart of Berlin, near the Brandenburg Gate, where Poland has got its property after the former embassy in NRD and move a copy of the Museum named the Ulmów Family there from Markowa and a copy of the chapel from the sanctuary in Toruń where there are tables with surnames of over thousand people, who had been murdered by the Germans for helping the Jews. The attorney Hambura also suggests purchasing billboards in Berlin and place true information about the Second World War in a few languages on them. It concerns preventing the false historical narration.
Among the recent disputes, and, in fact, manipulation of the historical truth, there is an important declaration of the German Foreign Ministry. In a statement of February 2018, the chief of the German diplomacy min. Sigmar Gabriel assured that Poland could be sure that Germany is taking on complete responsibility for Holocaust, and would condemn falsifying history or using such terms as ‘Polish death camps’. He emphasized that ‘a moral duty of this country’ is to analyze its own history, especially the crimes committed by the Germans, also in Poland. – There is no doubt as for the fact who was responsible for the death camps. This mass-organized murder was committed by our nation, not anybody else - emphasized min. Gabriel. He assured that he had never doubted that ‘the German death camps were not in Poland by accident’, as the Germans wanted to destroy both the culture of Poland and cause Jews’ death. May this attitude of the German minister, who decided to face the truth, get through as the last word in the process of de-falsifying history.
Translation: Aneta Amrozik
„Niedziela” 6/2018 (11 II 2018)