Poland has been a target of both ill-founded accusations that exploit the history of World War II and unfair interpretations of the relations between the Poles and the Jews for quite a while now. Every year sees wartime Poland being described in international media as Nazi Germany’s accomplice in the Holocaust.
However, in a recent piece from the New Yorker, its author Masha Gessen goes far beyond anything we have read or heard before. The op-ed seems to fit into a wider trend, one that deserves a closer look.
Gessen implies that Poland was complicit in the murder of 3 million Jews during World War II. After the New Yorker was slammed by the Polish Foreign Affairs Ministry, the director of the Auschwitz museum, and some major Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Committee, for posting the accusatory piece, the magazine amended the opening paragraph and made some cosmetic changes to a subheading, leaving the rest of the text unchanged.
So the initial wording of the lead — “To exonerate the nation of the murders of three million Jews, the Polish government will go as far as to prosecute scholars for defamation” — has been replaced with: “Scholars face defamation suits, and potential criminal charges, in the Polish government’s effort to exonerate the nation of any role in the murders of three million Jews during the Nazi occupation.”
And the part that once read, “The two historians’ legal troubles stem from the Polish government’s ongoing effort to exonerate Poland — both ethnic Poles and the Polish state — of the deaths of three million Jews in Poland during the Nazi occupation,” now reads, “The two historians’ legal troubles stem from the Polish government’s ongoing effort to exonerate Poland of any role in the deaths of three million Jews in Poland during the Nazi occupation.”
That is not much of a change, and it still does no justice to historical facts. It is still pushing a lie that the Poles in general and Poland were complicit in murdering the Jews.
A question remains whether the op-ed by Gessen is part of a wider trend in the international media to smear wartime Poland as the accomplice of Adolf Hitler in the extermination of Jews. Her article is just one of many attempts to throw suspicion on Poland. Every year, the Polish Embassies worldwide report dozens of articles and other types of content that falsify history with smears such as “the Polish death camps.” Every year, a fresh number of authors and historians, including the self-proclaimed ones, suggests that the Poles, most of all, murdered or robbed Jewish neighbors and collaborated with the German occupier.
These lies, however, do not trigger an international response. As absurd as it may sound, those who push them are well poised to gain international acclaim. The stronger the accusations they throw, the better for their popularity.
The narratives suggesting the complicity of wartime Poland in the Holocaust have long been there, growing more intense and powerful over time. This moment marks the crossing of a new red line behind which it has become possible, as shown by Gessen in her op-ed for the New Yorker, to accuse Poland and the Poles of having murdered 3 million Jews.
It is encouraging to see that Gessen’s lies were not left without an immediate answer. But that is today. How is it going to be in a couple of years?
The current smear campaign against Poland and its people will eventually affect the way history, including the history of the Holocaust, will be interpreted. There is a high risk that the international public opinion will one day take it for granted that Poland and the Poles were the sole perpetrators of the Final Solution.
This image, however, will not have anything in common with the facts or anything to do with the respect for the victims of the genocide inflicted by Nazi Germany. It is important to care about the historical truth on a daily basis and not only as a response to big lies or the most serious accusations.
Otherwise, if manipulations of history go unanswered, the green light is given for further activities of that sort.
Stanislaw Zaryn is the director of the National Security Department at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland and the spokesman for Poland’s minister-special services coordinator.
