Jews in the D

20 | DECEMBER 12 • 2019 

continued on page 22

T

hree million 
Polish Jews 
died during the 
Holocaust — more than 
any other nationality. 
Many died in Auschwitz-
Birkenau, the largest 
Nazi concentration 
camp, but others were 
killed near the villages 
where they lived.
Despite the 
Holocaust’
s devastating 
impact on Polish Jewry, 
Poland as a nation and 
many of its citizens have 
for decades waivered 
and backtracked on their 
roles in this tragedy. 
According to Dariusz 
Stola, a Polish historian, 
professor and scholar, the 
reasons include Poland’
s years 
as a communist state and a 
nationalistic emphasis on 
all Polish victims. Recurring 
anti-Semitism, sometimes 
shrouded in anti-Zionist 
sentiment, has been another 
issue.
Stola discussed Poland’
s 
complex response to the 
Holocaust on Oct. 23 at the 
Holocaust Memorial Center 
(HMC) in Farmington Hills. 
More than 200 individuals 
attended. Stola is a founder 
and former director of the 
Polin Museum of the History 
of Polish Jews, which opened 
in 2014 in Warsaw.
The connection between the 
HMC and Stola came through 
Dr. Edward Malinowski, a 

79-year-old survivor of the 
Warsaw ghetto and a retired 
cardiologist who lives in 
West Bloomfield. He and his 
mother and sister were able 
to survive the war although 
his father was captured by the 
Gestapo and never returned. 
After the war, they lived in 
Warsaw where Malinowksi 
became a physician and 
medical school professor. 
However, when the Polish 
political climate became anti-
Semitic in 1968, he and his 
family immigrated to Detroit. 
After the environment 
tempered, Malinowski visited 
Poland and met Stola, whom 
he later recommended to 
the HMC as a speaker. 
Malinowski is an HMC board 
member.

SHIFTING REACTIONS
Stola described Poland’
s 

shifting response to its 
role in the Holocaust as 
denial, discussion of some 
responsibility, shock at Polish 
attacks against Jews and then 
back to denial of complicity 
with the Nazis. The Nazi plan 
to kill European Jewry was 
known to senior officers in 
the Polish underground in 
1942; many Polish Jews had 
already been massacred, he 
said. 
After the war, there was 
some debate about the Polish 
role in the Holocaust; but 
there was also anti-Jewish 
violence, including a pogrom 
in Kielce, where 42 Jews were 
killed by Polish soldiers, 
police officers and civilians in 
1946. Discussion of the Polish 
role during the Holocaust 
ended during the late 1940s 
with the Soviet takeover. 
In 1968, Polish students 

organized a rebellion and 
the government accused 
protesters of anti-Zionist 
conspiracies. Some Jews 
lost their jobs and many 
left Poland. 
By the 1980s, the 
communist regime 
was gradually eroding, 
enabling a freer exchange 
of information. Stola 
cited the writings of 
Nobel prize-winning 
poet Czeslaw Milosz, 
a Polish American, as 
spurring discussion. Milosz 
was a witness of the Warsaw 
uprising and wrote an account 
titled “Poor Christian Looks 
at the Ghetto.” He asked the 
“universal problem of non-
Jews: Will we be counted 
among the helpers of death? 
Jews were dying a lonelier 
death because of things we 
didn’
t do.” 
Other Poles countered, 
“We did all we could do in 
these circumstances,” citing 
Nazi brutality toward anyone 
helping Jewish Poles.
The massacre of the Jews 
of Jedwabne, Poland, by 
their neighbors and others 
in 1941 was a “shock to 
the Polish public — many 
didn’
t know about it,” Stola 
said. Although there was an 
investigation and trial after 
the war, a book by historian 

JERRY ZOLYNSKY

Poland’s Struggle 
 
 

Poles continue to wrestle with guilt and denial
about their country’
s Holocaust role.

SHARI S. COHEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Rabbi Eli Mayerfeld,
Richard Herman, Deb Tyner 
and Dariusz Stola