Via Reuters:
Polish lawmakers approved a bill on Thursday that would impose jail terms for suggesting Poland was complicit in the Holocaust, drawing concern from the United States and outrage from Israel, which denounced “any attempt to challenge historical truth”.
Look guys, I like you, I really like you. I have a forthcoming magazine article about the Polish 1st Armoured Division in the war. I regard Pope John Paul II as one of the greatest men of the 20th century. Heck our next book is, you know, The Battle of the Polish Plain. Its really pro-Polish.
But you have come to grips with this. Halik Kochanski tried and failed in a really weak chapter in her otherwise excellent history of Poland in WWII, The Eagle Unbowed.
In 1939 three million Jews lived in Poland. Eight thousand live there today. My question for these 8,000 Polish Jews is this, what are you doing there?
Poland was traditionally the most anti-Semetic country in Europe. During the Holocaust most of the country was at best indifferent to the fate of the Jews, at best. At worst they helped the Germans round up Jews and laughed as Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto flung themselves from burning buildings.
They still hate Jews there, by the way.
There's a line from Berel Jastrow in Herman Wouk's, The Winds of War, "There is a good Polish and then bad Polish".
ReplyDeleteAh....Wouk.
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