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Th e Polish Holocaust Law: Why Should We Care?

W

the Nazis and Soviets committed geno-
orldwide efforts are under
cide. Repressing nationalists apparently
way to transform the
also constitutes genocide.
Holocaust into anything
What is important to note is
other than the specific targeting
that we are likewise witnessing
of the Jewish people for geno-
today actions by world bodies
cide, together with widespread
where the revision of Jewish
attempts at erasing European
history is reaching scandalous
collaboration with the Nazis,
heights, and the Jewish nation’s
both on the national and local
4,000-year-strong identity to
level.
the Land of Israel is disavowed.
That is why is it so important
Backed by the United
to denounce Poland’s current
Zahava Englard
Nations, the Arab world is
law criminalizing any claims of
Shapiro
appropriating the Jewish
their population’s collaboration
people’s indigenous and histori-
with the Nazis in implement-
cal ties to Israel, nullifying our
ing the “Final Solution” against
connection to Jerusalem and
the Jews. Poland is not alone in
the Temple Mount. At the same time,
its efforts to separate itself from Nazi
they are accusing the Jewish state of
atrocities. Other countries in Europe
Israel with the contemptible lie of being
have done the same. Similar laws were
passed in Lithuania, Ukraine and Latvia. a colonialist enterprise.
The Nazis and their European collab-
This is not a new phenomenon.
orators failed to annihilate the Jewish
Revising the facts of the Holocaust
began almost immediately after the end nation completely, though certainly
not from any lack of trying. The cur-
of World War II.
rent attempt to corrupt the truth, revise
In Soviet Holocaust memorials, the
our history and ultimately erase us as a
victims were typically referred to as
people is proceeding at full speed.
“Soviet citizens,” obscuring the fact
Poland’s latest law elicited an out-
that Soviet Jews had been singled out
rage that is highly emotional, backed
for extermination and that many of the
by an enormous amount of eyewit-
murderers were also Soviet citizens.
ness accounts by Holocaust survivors
In one of its very first independent
attesting to the Poles’ complicity and
actions since declaring independence
collaboration. Driving the point even
from the USSR, Lithuania’s parliament
further is the fact that the Nazis estab-
formally exonerated several Lithuanian
lished on Polish soil all the main killing
nationalists who had collaborated in
centers (six in total), where nearly all
the Holocaust and had been convicted
the prisoners were Jews, exclusively for
by Soviet military courts after the war,
the efficient and quick mass murder of
turning them instead into national
Jews. They recognized that it was fertile
heroes.
ground to carry out the genocide of
Lithuania, Poland and other Eastern
the Jewish people and were correct in
European countries embrace a “double
assessing that the surrounding popula-
genocide” theory that posits that both

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tion would not protest.
On the contrary.
Poles stood watch outside the ghettos
waiting to capture any Jews attempting
to escape. They went into the forests
and countryside hunting down Jews
and turned on their own neighbors who
did help the Jews. Yad Vashem counts
the righteous Polish gentiles at approxi-
mately 6,500, out of a population of 25
million. Others who hid Jews did so by
extorting whatever valuable posses-
sion the Jews may have had. And when
the money ran out, they betrayed them
to the Nazis. Out of 3 million Jews in
Poland, fewer than 10 percent survived.
However, if one reads any account
about wartime Poland in Wikipedia, one
would be hard pressed to find any facts
on the collaboration of Poles with the
Nazis. The wartime population is shock-
ingly presented as having been generally
helpful to the Polish Jews, with only a
small minority who were not. However,
while Wikipedia can be adjusted to the
point of distortion, the testimonies of
survivors archived at Yad Vashem can-
not. The voices of the Holocaust survi-
vors will never be erased.
One may hear Polish declara-
tions attesting to the greater barba-
rism toward Jews on the part of the
Ukrainians, Latvians and Lithuanians.
But this isn’t a damn competition. They
were all vile.
In Lithuania, 200,000 Jews, more
than 95 percent of Lithuania’s Jewish
population, were murdered — a higher
percentage of destruction than befell any
European country.
In Ukraine, the Einsatzgruppen (German
mobile killing units) and local Nazi col-
laborators murdered 1 million Jews.

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In Latvia, the Einsatzgruppen, togeth-
er with Latvian and Lithuanian auxilia-
ries, massacred most Latvian Jews.
Unlike Denmark, the nation where
massive local resistance to the Nazi
occupiers saved the lives of most Danish
Jews, in Lithuania, Ukraine, Latvia and
Poland, zealous local collaboration
hastened the near extermination of the
Jews in their territory. As Nazi Germany
occupied or allied with almost every
European country, it depended on other
governments at the national level, as
well as police forces, railroad personnel
and individuals at the local level to help
carry out their “Final Solution of the
Jewish Question.”
Although there was some level of
resistance to Nazi Germany, rarely was
it directed at helping the Jews. When
resistance did occur, it was a very small
minority. Without widespread collabo-
ration, the murder of 6 million Jews in
just four years would not have been
possible.
What did make it possible was a cli-
mate of Jew-hatred in Europe almost
2,000 years strong. Europe will have to
work very hard indeed to whitewash
its long history of Jew-hatred and its
wicked treatment of the Jewish people.
Try as they might, we, the Jewish nation,
will never forget.
So why should we care about the new
Polish law?
The voices of all our murdered people
command it. And our future demands
it. •

Zahava Englard Shapiro is an Israeli-based author
and writes articles on Israel for several online pub-
lications. This article originally appeared in Mida
and was provided exclusively to JNS.

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