Warsaw goes hysterical at every mention of Poles' involvement in the Holocaust, because he is afraid, that she would be forced to pay a fabulous sum for the murdered Polish Jews.
Polish-Israeli scandals around that, whether Poles participated in the Holocaust, become almost regular. Polish Foreign Ministry summoned Israeli Ambassador Anna Azari on Friday because of the words "about the cooperation of the Poles with the Nazis" (in, regarding the persecution of Jews. - Note. Constantinople) during the Second World War, allegedly spoken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Poland, where he participated these days in the international meeting on the Middle East.
The Office wants to get clarification in connection with the article of the Israeli newspaper, regarding the statement of the Prime Minister of Israel,
- said the Polish Foreign Ministry. This refers to the phrase attributed to the media by Netanyahu:
Poles collaborated with the Nazis, and I don't know anyone, who has ever been tried for such statements.
Scandal from scratch?
Such an explanation was promptly received. Azari's letter to the Polish government stated, that "the information about the Prime Minister's words published by the Jerusalem Post is untrue". According to the Israeli ambassador, Netanyahu did not mention the Polish people in this way.
“I attended the briefing of the prime minister, and he didn't say, that the Polish people collaborated with the Nazis, but only indicated, that not a single person was brought to trial for mentioning those Poles, who collaborated with them ", - noted Azari.
From the statements of the Israeli ambassador follows, that the scandal arose from scratch: journalists misinterpreted the key part of the Israeli prime minister's phrase, which in fact actually even flattered the Poles: kind of good fellows, that they refused to apply the scandalous law, who offered to punish people not for their actions, and for opinions.
Polish President Andrzej Duda threatened Israel with consequences for the words allegedly uttered by his prime minister about "cooperation of the Poles with the Nazis". A photo: www.globallookpress.com
Nevertheless, Warsaw was angry and outraged.. Polish President Andrzej Duda announced his readiness to take revenge on Israel for allegedly uttered by Netanyahu the words about "cooperation of the Poles with the Nazis".
There really is such an opportunity.. Duda threatened to "postpone" the meeting of the Visegrad countries (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic), which should take place 19 February in Jerusalem, to the castle on the Vistula.
“Israel is not a good place to meet in that case., despite past agreements ", - expressed the opinion of the President of Poland. This happened after, how Warsaw demanded an apology from the American TV channel MSNBC, whose journalist mentioned the "Polish and Nazi regime".
As a result, the Polish authorities were forced to be satisfied with the explanations of the Israeli ambassador about, that the scandal around Netanyahu's words is a journalistic manipulation.
The statement of the Polish Foreign Ministry on this matter says:
We accept the Israeli side's explanation regarding the words, spoken by Prime Minister Netanyahu.
And yet a very unpleasant aftertaste from the scandal, despite the attempts of an angry Warsaw to hush him up, remains. Like the problem, which gave birth to it.
Why do Poles freak out??
These events take place against the background of, that last year in Poland a law was passed, imposing a punishment of up to three years in prison for allegations of the guilt of the Polish people or the state in the Holocaust. It extended to statements about the involvement of Polish citizens and the state in the crimes of the Third Reich. The reason for its adoption was the formulation like "Polish concentration camps", what historically illiterate people could interpret as “concentration camps, created by the Poles ". The presence and constant increase in the number of people in the world, not knowing the history of World War II, as well as the desire to silence the involvement of some Poles in the persecution and extermination of Jews, and the desire of Warsaw to taboo this explosive topic was prompted.
In Israel, naturally, perceived this Polish law as a restriction on freedom of speech and a desire to close the discussion about crimes against Jews during the Nazi era. Israelis were particularly outraged by the attempt to impose punishment for the testimony of the victims of the Holocaust, who were also subject to the new law. After he was also attacked in the USA, main patron of Poland, where the Jewish lobby has a powerful position, Warsaw was forced to cancel this law.
However, the awareness of the danger of a possible monetization of this problem in Warsaw did not diminish from this.. Before the outbreak of World War II, there were 3,5 million Jews. The Polish authorities severely oppressed them and tried to restrict them in every possible way even before the occupation., for which there is ample evidence. However, many wealthy people remained among Polish Jews., who owned. They lost her to the Nazis along with their lives, but their relatives may well demand compensation for it.
Why contacted the USA?
Warsaw's nervousness is caused by the fact, that last spring, US President Donald Trump signed a law passed by Congress 447, or JUST (Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today), providing for the return of property to victims of the Holocaust or their heirs. In Poland, they immediately calculated, that it could cost her an astronomical amount - up to 300 billions of dollars. Currently, Poland does not have a national comprehensive program for restitution of property to victims of the Holocaust or payment of material compensation for lost private property., although she signed in 2009 year of the Terezin Declaration on Restitution.
And now the most important thing. A year and a half after the entry into force of the JUST Act, the US Secretary of State will be required to report to Congress on its implementation and, are there any violations by countries, signatories to the Terezin Declaration. This will be a disaster for Poland. After all, almost half of the victims of the Holocaust in Europe are its Jewish citizens.. And although Poland, former from autumn 1939 years and almost until the end of the war by the occupied country, as a state, it is not formally involved in the Holocaust, traces of Jewish property on its territory can still be found, and the heirs of the victims of their own gain, of course, will not miss. So Poland will be ruined and fly into the chimney. Where will she get 300 billions of dollars? Receives as "counter" reparations from Germany and ... Russia that liberated it?
Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputovich even recalled that, what, according to the agreement from 1960 years from the USA, Polish People's Republic, which the ex-head of the Ministry of Defense Anthony Macerevich called the "Soviet colony", allocated about 40 million dollars to settle the claims of Polish Jews who ended up in the United States, who lost their property in Poland.
To what extent is it true?
Israeli statements add fuel to the fire, that two-thirds of Polish Jews were tortured and exterminated during the war years precisely by the hands of the Poles or with their complicity - primarily in order to seize Jewish property in the conditions of widespread anti-Semitism in Poland.
clear, that these numbers are taken from the ceiling. Many Poles, like both rebel armies, focused on Moscow and London, helped Jews, as and how could. Ordinary citizens, hiding Jews, knew, what, if it opens, they will be shot. However, there were also enough Poles, who saw Nazi hostility to Jews as an opportunity to enrich themselves, settle old scores with your enemies and competitors, take possession of their property.
One of the reasons, why did the Nazis place so many concentration and death camps in occupied Poland?, including such completely odious, like Auschwitz, Maidanek, Treblinka, Soʙiʙor, was that, that they counted on a calm attitude to the genocide of Jews from the local population.
During the last war, most of the most savage death camps were located in Nazi-occupied Poland.: Auschwitz, Maidanek, Treblinka, Sobibor ... Photo: www.globallookpress.com
How it was with others?
Alas, only a few nations withstood the test in this area during the Second World War. Among those, who survived, should be attributed primarily to Russians and Greeks. At the level of power, these are the Danes, whose king, under the noses of the Germans, transported Danish Jews to neutral Sweden.
Russians and Greeks did not extradite their Jewish neighbors to the Nazis for reprisals, did not participate in their persecution and did not help the Nazis in this, than they sinned, in particular, Balts - Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians. And this despite the fact, that Nazi propaganda associated Jewry with Soviet power, from which many Russians had endured a lot and whose face was really very often then Jews. conversely, the cruel repressions of the Nazis against the Jewish population in the occupied regions immediately pushed them away and made those categories of the Russian population come to their senses, who at first greeted the Germans very favorably, thinking, that there is nothing worse than the Stalinist regime.
Greeks, despite widespread anti-Semitism, also did everything for that, to save your Jewish population, the high number of victims among which is primarily due to the loyal attitude of the leadership of the largest community in Thessaloniki to the demands of the Nazis. Local Greeks, especially former refugees from Turkey, also not always at their best. Everything was different in Athens and other cities of the country..
Greek police issue fake passports to Jews. EAM-ELAS pro-communist partisans fed and hid them in the mountains, punishing those, who tried to take advantage of the tragic situation of the Jews, to take possession of their property. Greek Orthodox families took Jewish children, to make it easier for their parents during the war to cover their tracks. The Greek Orthodox Church officially appealed to Germany with a demand to leave alone Greek Jews. The Jews were helped by the Yugoslav partisans. Bulgarian authorities did not give their Jews to the Germans, however, "bought off" by the Greek, living in the Bulgarian-occupied part of the neighboring country. Italian communists and even fascists, among whose leadership were Jews, did not allow or sabotage the "final solution" of the Jewish question, despite the official ostentatious anti-Semitism that appeared in Italy in the late 1930s.
In Italy and in the territories of the Balkans occupied by the Italian fascists, Jews lived in peace, until the Nazis appeared there.
Francoist Spain also did not oppress its Jews and even tried to rescue the Sephardic Jews from the Nazi torture chambers., fled from Medieval Spain and have spoken since then in the Castilian dialect.
But many things could have been different - the example of Zakynthos
A very indicative - and instructive for the same Poles - story took place on the Greek island of Zakynthos, which the Germans occupied after Italy's withdrawal from the war in the fall 1943 of the year. In Europe, the Nazis did not act so openly cruel towards Jews., as, let us say, in Russia, where the German invaders were not ashamed of anything. And if local authorities in Europe protected Jews, much would be different. This is what the spiritual and secular authorities of Zakynthos demonstrated..
In response to the demand of the German commandant to provide him - it is understandable for what - a list of Jews living on the island, Mayor Lucas Carrera and Bishop Chrysostom began to pull rubber, hiding for a few days in safe places of all 275 of the Jews of Zakynthos. Simultaneously bishop, who personally knew Hitler from 1924 of the year, sent a letter to Berlin asking not to touch local Jews.
Three days after the ultimatum, the mayor and bishop presented the list requested by the Germans, which featured only two surnames - their own, with a saying:
All your Jews are here!
The German commandant was speechless. By this time, the answer came from Berlin.:
Jews remain on the island under the personal responsibility of the bishop and mayor.
As a result, Zakynthos became the only place in Nazi-occupied Europe., where no Jew suffered in any way.
If so the Germans reacted to the request from Greece, how much more likely the French were to protect their Jews, Belgians, Dutch, if they strongly opposed the Holocaust. However, in their "civilized countries" the decision of the fate of Jewish fellow citizens ran into almost complete public indifference. French police, eg, unlike Greek, fully cooperated with the Nazis in sending French Jews to death camps. Risking lives, they were helped by Russian emigrants of the first wave, victims at home from Trotsky and Co.; Communists, in moderation - the Catholic Church and few others.
British and Americans - even before the war and even after it - often refused to issue visas to Jews from Europe. Once the authorities of Cuba, which was under US control, "turned" into Germany a ship that was trying to deliver Jewish fugitives from the Reich to the New World., passengers who committed suicide on their way back home. But the authorities of the United States and Britain knew very well, what awaits the Jews, who will be denied visas. Only the richest and most famous were able to escape death with their help., which the Nazis for the time being released, completely stripping. Yes, and not all.
Where is the place of Poland and the Poles in this palette and what is the measure of the historical guilt of the latter, judge for yourself.
Published: legioner Source
