Are you aware that it was the English who started modern anti-Semitism in Europe? Are you aware that after killing many of them and stealing their property, the English expelled any surviving Jews from their island? Or that Jews could not legally return to Britain for over three hundred years? Are you aware that during the crusades (mostly involving English, French and German knights) the Jews were regularly attacked? Are you aware that the Russians invented the pogroms and the Germans ran the holocaust?

Are you aware that when almost the whole of Europe was killing and expelling their Jews, Poland was the one country to accept them? Are you aware that Poland was considered a haven that over the centuries, Jewish religious and cultural development flourished on Polish soil as nowhere else on earth?

Are you aware that half the Jews of Europe before WWII lived in Poland? Are you aware that it would be very strange for Jews to live somewhere they are so hated?

Are you aware the Jewish word for Poland is Polin? Are you aware in Hebrew it means “Here shalt thou lodge” or “Place of safe refuge”? Are you aware Sigmund Rolat (Holocaust survivor) said: “Poland was more than just a country where Jews took refuge, Poland was our home?”

Are you aware that a specially trained volunteer force of Christians entered the Warsaw Ghetto to fight alongside the Jews? Are you aware that on three occasions Polish Christians attacked the Germans in an attempt to break out the Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?

Are you aware Poland was the only country in occupied Europe to have an organization, “Żegota,” set up with the sole purpose of saving Jews?

Are you aware that Poland was the only country where the Germans found it necessary to issue the automatic death penalty for simply giving a Jew a glass of water? Are you aware not only was the person helping the Jew murdered but their family as well? Are you aware that failure to inform on a neighbor hiding Jews was punished by deportation to a concentration camp?

Are you aware that Poland has more Righteous i.e. those who aided Jews during the Holocaust) than any other country? Are you aware that a whole village (e.g. Markowa) sometimes worked together to save Jews? Are you aware that a Polish woman, Irena Sendler, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for saving up to 2,500 Jewish children?

Are you aware that Poland was one of only three occupied countries not to have a collaborationist government? Are you aware Poland, unlike most other countries, did not have a volunteer SS division?

Are you aware that Poland tried to publicize the deaths of Jews, but the Western Allies (i.e. the US and UK) suppressed it? Are you aware that even the American Jewish Congress did not believe the Polish government’s claims about the German mass murder of Jews? Are you aware Poland printed booklets and made radio broadcasts themselves trying to raise public awareness of the Holocaust during the war?

Are you aware Poland wanted to bomb the death camps but the Western Allies, i.e. the UK and the US, vetoed the idea? Are you aware Poland wanted to bomb the railway lines to the camps but the Western Allies (i.e. the UK and the US) vetoed the idea? Are you aware Poland suggested bombing German cities in reprisal? Are you aware Poland suggested executing German POWs in reprisal? Are you aware Poland suggested warning the Germans they would face war crime trials at the end of the war to hopefully deter them (again vetoed by the US and UK)?

Are you aware that Israeli President Shimon Peres said when honoring the Holocaust victims: “Millions of Jews lived here for a thousand years, and though their lives were not always secure, they sustained us as a people? It is very hard for me to stand here, but that is not the fault of the Polish people, rather it is the incomparable extermination (of the Jews) carried out by the Nazis”?

Are you aware that over six years, the ADL only detected eight incidents of anti-Semitism in Poland? Are you aware that 50% of all anti-Semite incidents listed outside the US occur in only four countries (France, the UK, Germany, and Russia)? Are you aware the official Israeli report on anti-Semitism around the world clearly stated that France and the UK is the center of current anti-Semitism? Or that Poland is hardly mentioned in the report?

Are you aware that the largest Jewish music festival is held in Poland, and attended mainly by Polish Christians? Are you aware that outside Israel, more people are studying Hebrew in Poland than anywhere else?

I am not claiming there was no anti-Semitism in Poland, but it is not as clear-cut as has been made out. Much is made, for example, of Poland limiting the number of Jews entering their universities between the world wars, but no-one talks about US and UK universities doing the same.

Are you aware that one of the founders of Żegota, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, was an anti-Semite? In Poland being an anti-Semate meant being a religious Catholic, hence they helped Jews as the Bilble commanded.

Please buy the brilliant DVD by the late Jagna Wright called The Other Truth. As the Independent, a major UK newspaper, said: “The conventional view of Poland as a nation of anti-Semites is definitively challenged.” I think the opening to the second DVD makes the point clearly. You have a teenage American Jew calling the Poles everything under the sun, and an elderly Polish Jew saying how life in Poland before the war was like a Jewish paradise. The teenager is the granddaughter of the elderly Pole. If only she and you would listen to those who know and were there, if only you were aware of the truth…

© David Jan Niechwiadowicz, June 16, 2019, published with permission.
See also: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Encountering.anti.Polonism/