We thought civilization had learned from this.  Yeah, right.

Sure, 75 years ago, Auschwitz was liberated.  Well, those very few that remained alive in the death camp were liberated.  Oh, wait- they were released from this concentration camp only to be incarcerated in the Allied version of hell- a resettlement camp.

Of course, there was no place in Europe that wanted the Jews back.  Because the Poles and the Germans- where the bulk of these souls had lived- had already usurped their homes, their art, their treasures, and their businesses.

President Roosevelt had no desire for them to come to America; no,  instead he demanded Prime Minister Atlee (Churchill’s successor) let the Jews go to Israel. But,  Atlee had no desire to have more Jews go there, either.

So, unless these folks escaped from the camps, many simply remained as prisoners.  (You can call it what you want- they were locked up no different than TheDonald locks up migrants hoping to escape the torturous conditions in Honduras, Guatemala, and other such places.)

Let’s not forget that the situation in Burma where the Rohynga are suppressed; the Bosnia situation of two decades ago; the Sudan… Oh, this is too depressing.

But, it’s just as devastating to see the mushrooming of anti-Semitism around the world.   From the left.  From the right.  From the elite.  From the uneducated.

The excuse is someone has to be blamed- why not the Jews?

Since America has presented the world with a President who routinely invents facts not in evidence, other countries feel free to create their own alternative histories. and, we’re not talking about how the Soviets used to airbrush previous heroes out of pictures as they fell out of favor. But, more like, Goebbels, the ultimate Nazi fabricator, who routinely invented his own version of propaganda.

And, don’t give me any crap for bringing up Geobbels. I know the ‘politically correct police’ demand we not equate the German atrocities and propaganda ministry with any current events. Except this comparison is way more than apt.

Poland, despite any laws they wish to pass to absolve their people and their history from ACTIVE compliance in the murder of Jews, is guilty.  Like passing a new law will absolve them of their guilt.  What does this new law stipulate? That we are not allowed to call all those concentration camps “Polish Death Camps”. (The definition of political correctness gone amuck). Punishable by a 3 year prison sentence- even for foreigners. Claiming that this is “contrary to facts”. (See why I brought up TheDonald. Because only alternative facts are allowed.) Or, that Poland is even co-responsible for war atrocities or crimes against humanity during World War II.

I am not saying that Polish people didn’t die at the hands of the Nazis. But, that fact has no bearing on Polish guilt and complicity in the Holocaust. Did not Germans, in their own country, die at the hand of the Nazis?

By 1937, BEFORE the Nazis took over Poland, anti-Semitism was once again reaching a fever pitch and quotas were imposed on college matriculation, national boycotts of Jewish shops and factories, outlawing the production of kosher food, and the ridiculous (unless you were Jewish and subject to the pogroms) Jewish Blood Libel were already the national zeitgeist.

No. As I wrote a few summers ago, after my son and I made a trip to Auschwitz (which required a journey to Israel to balance the trauma…

...[The Poles claim they had] no idea that Jews were being gassed and cremated (which, by the way, violated Jewish precepts).   Like one would not recognize the stench created when a single human being is burned- let alone the thousands each and every day of the week.

Or, the fact that the Polish people (who were evacuated from the immediate area of Auschwitz, but still lived nearby) who also claimed they had no idea.  (And, still claim that canard to this very day.) As they watched (and heard the cries of) Jews by the thousands being transported from every nook and cranny of Europe by train (80 to a car, which meant every human in the car had to stand erect for the entire journey) to their death at Auschwitz.

By the way, Auschwitz (just one of MANY Polish/German Death Camps) effected the slaughter of at least 1 million Jews. 1,000,000. And, 75,000 other folks. (Non-Jewish Poles, presumably.) Keep THAT data in mind.

Which should make the rest of you wonder.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—        Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

For those of you so inclined, today brings a new moon- and the month of Shvat שבט .  It’s also the Chinese New Year.

 

On the 23rd of January, the President of Poland took out a full page ad in the Washington Post.  Trying to whitewash Polish history- as the Poles have been doing since they ceased being part of the Soviet hegemony.  Yet, we Jewish people remember the facts.  I have included his ad- and below that with his verbiage – augmented by my some vital elucidations to the whitewash he tried to perpetrate upon the world.

Let us not forget that many churches find it appropriate to populate the buildings of Auschwitz, too.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January 27, 1945, Soviet soldiers liberated the German Nazi (here we go- make sure you now the German Nazi’s did this- omitting the complicity, no- the glee- that the population of Poland and Germany that accompanied these anti-Semitic deportations and murders) death camp KL Auschwitz. What they found there continues to sow terror and elicit unequivocal moral condemnation to this day.

Nearly 7,000 prisoners regained their freedom then. (Consider the fact that 1.3 million folks were housed here and over 1 million were gassed or murdered.  Over 5 years.  While the Polish citizens clearly knew what was going on behind these walls.  The smell of burning bodies could never be hidden.)  Previously, between January 17-21, approximately 56,000 prisoners were taken out of Auschwitz and its sub-camps, and forced on devastating death marches into the heart of the Third Reich. (Yeah.  Still Poland, but eastward from the Soviet advance.) Those who remained in the camp were but shadows of people, permanently mutilated by unimaginable physical and mental torture. They miraculously survived inhuman living conditions, hunger, frost, illness, slave labor, merciless beating, humiliation, and abuse from the henchmen. Some of them were victims of criminal medical experiments. Every day they would watch the death of their fellow sufferers: men, women, the elderly and disabled, and children. They were witnesses to numerous executions—including those carried out by members of the SS for cruel entertainment. Some prisoners were forced to move the bodies of those murdered into gas chambers and to burn them in crematoria, knowing that they would experience exactly the same fate.

This is only a brief description of the hell on earth, represented by the Konzentrationslager Auschwitz as it was, the place where more than one million Jews and thousands of victims of other nationalities (Don’t pass that by.  More than 1 million Jews and ‘thousands’ of others.  Trying to make it seem far more universal than it ever could be)  were slaughtered, including Poles, Roma, Sinti, and prisoners of war from the Red Army. The same fate was shared by millions of Jews murdered in other German Nazi death camps: Treblinka (what a surprise, also in Poland), Sobibor (yup, you guessed it- Poland, too), Belzec (d-uh), Kulmhof (of course), Stutthof (this is where Walesa was from, Gdansk- also Poland), and dozens of others. The authorities of the Third Reich planned and carried out the total extermination of the Jewish people. (With the active help of the Polish people who were only too glad to get rid of the Jews.)

That is why they created a network of camps operating as real death factories. Murders were perpetrated there as if in a cycle of industrial activity—by hundreds and thousands, efficiently, bearing in mind the time factor and cost of transport, keeping minute records. There had been no historical precedent for such extreme dehumanization and degradation of millions of innocent victims.

It is hard to put it into words, to read, to talk about it… In the biblical Book of Kohelet we find the following words: For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. Nevertheless, the effort must be made. This knowledge must be passed on to new generations even at the price of sorrow it causes. We must forge the future of the world based on a profound understanding of what happened more than 75 years ago in the heart of Europe, and what eyewitnesses continue to relate to us. What befell the nation of descendants of Leibniz, Goethe, Schiller, and Bach, when they were infected with the virus of imperial pride and racist contempt—may come as an everlasting warning. We must also not forget that the last, decisive step leading towards World War II, the war without which there would have been no tragedy of the Holocaust, was the secret pact between Hitler and Stalin of August 23, 1939. The agreement meant that Central and Eastern Europe were deprived of its freedom and sovereignty, and the ensuing close cooperation between the two totalitarian regimes lasted until the very last hours preceding the startling attack, which Nazi Germany launched on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

The truth about the Holocaust must not die. It must not be distorted or used for any purpose.(Yet, here he goes!) In the name of sacred memory of the annihilation of the Jews and out of respect for other victims of the 20th century totalitarianism—we cannot and we shall not condone it. We will not cease in our efforts to make the world remember this crime. So that nothing of the kind would ever happen again.

Very early on, the Polish resistance (The Polish Government in Exile, a small fraction of the Polish population- maybe.  But, the Polish Resistance generally resisted the help of the Jews, let alone took any actions to help the Jewish folks, who prior to the invasion from Germany was routinely persecuted by the Poles- and which they continued on their own over Poland while the Germans effected their mass murders.) movement took up the mission of uncovering the truth about the Holocaust and of supporting Jews threatened with extermination. The Polish Underground State, established on our occupied territories, tried to protect all those who until recently were citizens of independent Poland. In September 1940, Witold Pilecki, an officer of the Polish Army, acting in agreement with the underground authorities, deliberately let himself be imprisoned in Auschwitz. He escaped in April 1943, and subsequently produced and passed on a report on what was happening there. A passage from it reads as follows: “Those sick [with typhus], unconscious, but also those almost recovered (…) were packed into vans and taken (…) to the gas chambers. (…) One eight-year-old boy asked the SS man to leave him. He knelt before him on the ground. The SS man kicked him in the stomach and threw him into the van like a puppy.” Furthermore, Jan Karski, an emissary of the Polish authorities in exile, watched with his own eyes the horrors that occurred in the Warsaw Ghetto and in the German transit camp in Izbica. He prepared a memorandum on German systematic genocide of Jews. Since December 1942, he was presenting it to opinion leaders and to the top authorities of the Allied Pow of the Polish Government in London, addressed a note to the Allies that was adopted at the meeting of the Council of Ministers on June 6, 1942. There he reported: “…the destruction of the Jewish population takes place in unbelievable extent. In cities – po carries out mass executions in the ghettoes of Warsaw and Krakow every day. (…) Jews in Poland have suffered the most terrible persecution in their history.”

At the same time, the Polish Underground State established the Council to Aid Jews at the Government Delegation for Poland. (The Zagota Council was a major exception- they are among the Righteous of the Nations that are recognized by Yad V’Shem for their significant efforts to help the Jewish people.) That allowed nearly 50 thousand people to obtain documents, shelter, money, and medical care. Polish diplomats were organizing escapes for Jews to territories not controlled by Nazi Germany. A significant percentage of Holocaust survivors owed their lives to thousands of Polish Righteous Among the Nations. In our family stories, historical and literary documents, the memory of many people of Jewish origin hidden in attics, cellars and barns, is still alive. So are the memories of sharing a modest meal with Jewish fugitives or showing them a safe escape route. And it must be remembered that in Poland, every such gesture was punishable by death at the hands of German occupiers. And this punishment happened hundreds of times. Among millions of Poles there were also people who could have helped Jews in hiding, but did not do it, because they could not overcome their fear for their own lives and for the lives of their loved ones. (Oh, wait.  When the war was over, these same Poles would not let the Jewish folks take title to the homes and/or businesses the Polish folks appropriated.  Instead, they wanted the Jews gone from Poland.)  There were also those who, acting on a base impulse, handed Jews over to the German occupation authorities or committed disgraceful acts. Under dramatic circumstances of that time, the judiciary of the Polish Underground State condemned such criminals to death and have them executed.

German Nazi concentration camps built in occupied Poland were and still are an unbearable humiliation for us today. They stand in a stark contrast with our one thousand years’ long culture and history, with the Polish spirit of freedom, tolerance, and solidarity. (Gimme a break.  Anti-Semitism from the Polish people has a very long pedigree.)  Genocide of Jews, albeit perpetrated almost all across war-time Europe, came as a particularly heavy blow to the Polish state, which was for centuries multinational and multi-confessional. The Jewish community in pre-war Poland was one of the most numerous in Europe. Of the 6 million citizens of the Republic of Poland who died in the wake of World War II (over one-fifth of the total population), as many as 3 million were Polish Jews. And they were the largest group of Holocaust victims. The Jewish community, which lived and prospered on Polish soil for nearly ten centuries,

have almost disappeared within a few years’ time. Poland suddenly lost thousands of Jewish artists, researchers, doctors, lawyers and clerks, businessmen, craftsmen, merchants, and other valued professionals. Among those murdered were spouses, friends, neighbors, and fellow employees of the persons of non-jewish roots.(Typo?  Or a mental tic?) In our cities, memory persists about the martyrdom of Jews forced by the German occupiers into the prison-like ghetto districts. There are but a few pre-war synagogues left serving as houses of prayer today. Yiddish and Hebrew no longer resound in the surviving buildings of Jewish religious schools or in ritual baths. Within Poland’s current borders, there are nearly 1,200 identified Jewish cemeteries, but there are no people to visit the graves there. (Nor are they preserved nor protected from vandalism.) Jewish works of art and craft, antique books, prints, and manuscripts written by scholars, writers, and composers, were irretrievably destroyed.

The history of Jews in Poland and their annihilated world is now retold through publications and scientific conferences, festivals, exhibitions, concerts, and monuments, sponsored by state scientific and cultural institutions such as museums, theatres, archives, and libraries. Gradually, Jewish religious communities, community organizations, publishing houses, and magazines are being brought back to life. We support these actions, because German Nazism cannot have the final word in the narrative of the Polish Jews and their martyrdom.

Commemoration of the tragedy of the Shoah should be an important and lasting element in education for peace—as a story that sinks deeply into human hearts, bringing down barriers of prejudice, division, and hatred. It should be a lesson about how to show understanding and help those who are hardest hit by adversity.

It is in this spirit that we will mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. By decision of the UN General Assembly, for fifteen years now it has been commemorated on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. That is why in four days’ time, in the State Museum Auschwitz-birkenau in Poland, where the ashes of more than one million Holocaust Victims are buried, we will meet with leaders and high representatives of countries from all over the world. We shall be accompanied by venerable survivors. On the 75th anniversary of the symbolic end of the extermination, we will bear witness to the truth. Together we will call for peace, justice, and respect between nations.

Eternal memory and reverence to Those Executed in KL Auschwitz! Eternal memory and reverence to the Victims of the Holocaust!

We must forge the future of the world based on a profound understanding of what happened more than 75 years ago in the heart of Europe, and what eyewitnesses continue to relate to us.

President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda