Forgotten History-Poles Furious Over FBI Chief’s Holocaust Comments
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The Poles are upset with America’s FBI, in particular Director James Comey, for putting blame where it belongs. During the occupation of Poland and Hungary by the Germans during WWII, citizens from these conquered nations were employed as guards at concentration camps and at the Polish ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.
Survivors have testified that they were every bit as eager as the SS to torment, torture and murder camp inmates, especially Jews. Today, however, it appears they would prefer not to be reminded of that little bit of historical unpleasantness.
Here’s the story from Newser:
Angry Polish leaders have demanded an apology from the US ambassador after some ill-judged remarks on the Holocaust from FBI Director James Comey. “In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil,” Comey wrote in a Washington Postcolumn. “They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do.”
Many Poles are infuriated by the suggestion they shared the blame for Nazi crimes, reports the BBC, which notes that around 6 million Polish citizens died during the 1939-45 occupation. “Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of World War II,” says Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz. “I would expect full historical knowledge from officials who speak on the matter.”
The American ambassador in Warsaw says suggestions that any country other than “Nazi Germany was responsible for the Holocaust are wrong, harmful, and offensive,” adding that he thinks Comey’s wider message was that there were people, even in the US, who “aided the Nazi criminals, or there were people who did not respond sufficiently,” reportsReuters.
In another Washington Post column, Anne Applebaum writes that it’s wrong to call Poles “accomplices” because after the 1939 invasion of Poland, it was Germans who created “a lawless, violent world, one in which anyone could be arbitrarily murdered, any Jew could be deported—and any Pole who helped a Jew could be shot instantly, along with his entire family. Many were.”
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“created ‘a lawless, violent world, one in which anyone could be arbitrarily murdered…'”
So a military invasion and occupation led to chaos and the collapse of society and civilized behavior. An environment that fostered hatred based on differences including religion.
Seems like that would be a good thing to remember.
Your point is well taken Daniel.
No doubt they would rather forget.