Cynicism, malice and possibly the banality of evil may have lead Polish lawmakers just one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day to threaten to punish anyone who mentions Poland in the context of the crimes of the Holocaust. Any decent human being knows that Poland's roads are in a permanent state of mourning, its lands are soaked with Jewish blood, its skies unable to hide the black smoke billowing out of the crematoria and its rivers incapable of ever ridding themselves of the atrocities perpetrated on this cursed land.
The State of Israel was established in order to ensure the security and existence of the Jews. A Diaspora that lasted for millennia and ended in the terrible Holocaust taught us that defenseless Jews cannot survive in a hostile world. The world's hatred for one of its peoples, based primarily on the origins of Christianity, saw Jews humiliated, trampled upon and persecuted as proof of the righteousness of their faith. Israel also has another vital role to play: to not allow any other nation to shirk its culpability in the atrocities of the Holocaust whether through the revision of history or Holocaust denial. At a time when the number of Holocaust survivors living among us is dwindling, every effort must be made, whether by the media or through education and research, to preserve the memory of the Holocaust for future generations. The State of Israel and world Jewry will not allow the Polish government to escape the fact that its citizens' collaborated with the Nazis.
Nazi Germany was the principal party responsible for the murder of 6 million Jews, and among them a million and a half Jewish children. But there is no doubt that the Final Solution could only have been implemented with the help of nations who collaborated with them, among them the Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belgians, French and Poles. Among the Polish collaborators, there were those who went so far as to hunt Jews, and others who stood idly by as their Jewish neighbors tried to escape the extermination.
Professor Jan Thomas Gross has published a number of studies and books dedicated to the Poles' role in the massacre of the Jews. In his 2001 book "Neighbors," Gross exposed for the first time the Poles' July 1941 massacre of hundreds of Jews in the neighboring towns of Jedwabne and Radzilow, as well as the massacre of Jews in a number of other locations in Poland.
In his book "Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland," Professor Jan Grabowski claims some 200,000 Jews were killed as a result of Polish indifference to Jewish life ever since the liquidation of the Polish ghettos in 1942. One can conclude from Grabowski's book that from his perspective, the Poles were responsible for their deaths.
The leadership in Poland would be wise not to evade the Polish people's contribution to the implementation of the Final Solution. History cannot be rewritten. It is important for the dark periods of Poland's history to be taught in that country, and at the same time, for those Polish Righteous of the Nations who helped the Jews to be honored. Those who shirk their dark past are bound to find it will forever haunt them.
