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in
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Revising
History?
Children of survivors say new law
criminalizing Polish culpability
in the Shoah obscures the truth.
STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
F
amilies of local Holocaust survivors reacted with harsh
words to a new ruling by the Polish government that
makes it a crime to cast Poles or Poland in a culpable light
in terms of the Holocaust, concentration camps or Jewish geno-
cide that occurred on Polish soil during WWII.
On Feb. 6, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a law that
makes it illegal for people to discuss or accuse Poland of
Holocaust atrocities committed by the Nazis and from referring
to concentration camps as “Polish death camps.” The United
States and Israel harshly criticized the law passed by the far-
right government, which threatens even Holocaust survivors
with imprisonment for speaking or writing about Polish com-
plicity with the Nazis during WWII.
The ruling was then followed by another ruling banning the
kosher slaughter of animals for consumption, on the grounds it
was inhumane to animals. And, at press time, the Polish govern-
ment has decided to “re-examine” a draft bill for reparations to
Jews whose property was seized during WWII.
In a statement released by the Holocaust Memorial Center
in Farmington Hills, CEO Rabbi Eli Mayerfield expressed alarm
about the legislation and said now, more than ever, there is
urgency to the message of tolerance, education and learning les-
sons from the Holocaust.
“This is a dangerous precedent that distorts history and is
an attempt to silence serious conversation. The events of the
Holocaust have been documented and cannot be denied. Poland
and all nations have a responsibility to preserve the history of
the Holocaust and learn from this dark chapter in human his-
tory.
“We particularly stand together with the brave people of
Poland today, where a significant percentage of its citizens are
protesting this distortion of their history.”
The ruling has also drawn ire from second-generation survi-
vors including Charles Silow, president of Children of Holocaust-
Survivors Association in Michigan (CHAIM). Silow’s parents
were from Lodz, Poland. His mother was forced to live in the
ghetto and deported with other family members in 1944 to
continued on page 12
10
February 22 • 2018
jn
These railroad tracks
transported Jews straight
into Auschwitz, a Nazi
death camp in Poland.
Local Polish Survivors Give Testimonies
Though the current Polish government would
like to revise history with its new law that
would criminalize mentioning the Polish
nation’s role in the Holocaust, institutions like
Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the U.S. Holocaust
Museum in Washington, D.C., the Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Farmington Hills and
the archives of the Detroit Jewish News
Foundation serve as a testament to time. In
these places, accounts of Holocaust survivors
have been written down and recorded.
Courtesy of the Holocaust Memorial
Museum, here are just a few of many exam-
ples of survivors’ accounts of Polish brutality
during the Holocaust in their own words.
Morris Tugman,
born in Warsaw, 1915; died 2006
“We experienced quite a bit of anti-
Semitism as the Poles hated the
Jews and cooperated with the Nazis.
The Volksdeutsche (Pole/German)
neighbors fought with them and
called them names. … The Poles
hated the Jews and cooperated with
the Nazis.”
Date of testimony:
Dec. 12, 2002.