THE HOLOCAUST: the greatest mass murder in this century, perhaps in all history. A genocide crime, the consequences of which are profoundly troubling humanity almost half a century later. It is one event in modern history which, for the sake of the whole humanity, should never be forgotten or distorted.

Jewish American organizations are calling for the introduction of the Holocaust to the curriculum of our public schools. We, at the American Institute of Polish Culture, fully support this initiative. We believe that the history of Holocaust should be taught in its entirety, without omission of any nation or ethnic group subjected to the Nazi policy of extermination. The basic course on the Holocaust should be prepared by scholars specialized in the wartime histories of all Nazi occupied countries. Only such a comprehensive approach to this still painful, still sensitive subject, will guarantee the necessary fairness and accuracy. It will also assure that in its fundamental conclusions such a course should teach our youth that the only way to prevent such evil from re-occurring is to strive for mutual knowledge, understanding and brotherhood among peoples.

Poland lost, at the hands of the Nazis, close to six millions of non-combatant population, more than half of it her Jewish citizens. Despite the intense terror wielded by the Nazis in occupied Poland, where public executions and mass street roundups were the norm, we take pride in the historical fact that the extent of collaboration in Poland was marginal and that her underground Home Army was one of the most massive, best organized and most effective resistance movement in the occupied Europe, and that Polish exiles formed a powerful army which fought along with the allied forces in Africa and Europe.

Reflections on the subject:

"All persons, of whatever persuasion, are entitled to peace in their faith and to the protection of the government, and therefore we ordain freedom for all rites and religions in the Polish land, in accordance with the laws of the land."

Constitution of Poland, May 3rd, 1791.

"Murderers (Nazis) did this on our land - perhaps in order to dishonor it. One cannot dishonor a land by the death of innocent victims. Through such death a land becomes a sacred relic."

Pope John Paul II

"Speaking of the unprecedented extermination of Jews, one cannot forget and even less pass over in silence the fact that the Poles as a nation were one of the first victims of the same criminal racist ideology of Hitler’s Nazism." "...we cannot forget that we consider untrue and deeply harmful the use by many of the concept of what is called Polish anti-Semitism." We express our sincere regret for all the incidents of anti-Semitism which were committed at any time or by any one on Polish soil. We do this with the deep conviction that all incidents of anti-Semitism are contrary to the spirit of the gospel, as Pope John Paul II emphasized (on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the war) "and remain opposed to the Christian vision of human dignity."

A Polish pastoral letter on the Jews

"In those times there was darkness everywhere. In heaven and on earth, all the gates of compassion seemed to have been closed. The killer killed and the Jews died and the outside world adopted an attitude either of complicity or of indifference. Only a few had the courage to care. These few men and women were vulnerable, afraid, helpless - what made them different from their fellow citizens? What compelled them to disregard danger and torture - even death - and choose humanity? What moved them to put their lives in jeopardy for the sake of saving Jewish child, one Jewish mother? "And what of ourselves? What would we have done? Would we have had the courage to care? Who knows? We can only hope that our humanity would not forsake us."

From the Foreword to "THE COURAGE TO CARE" - by Elie Wiesel.
(New York University Press, New York and London)

"There were Poles who amid the crisis of disintegration and destruction of Poland, were indifferent to the fate of the Jews but there were also Poles who extended a hand to save Jews from the claws of extermination. These people showed by their action that even in era of eclipse and bestial darkness there are people who preserve the image of God, even at the cost of endangering their own lives."

Lech Walesa, President of Poland in a speech at Knesset

The occupation of Poland lasted nearly six years.

Professor Jan T. Gross described this occupation:

"It lasted longer then the occupation of any country during World War II. It was the most severe, as the result of the racial conceptions held by the Germans, who made an absolute distinction between Jews and Slavs, on the one hand, and the nations of the Western Europe on the other. Such views allowed little room for either compromise or accommodation between occupier and occupied"...

"To illustrate this strong, but academic vocabulary, some 6,028,000 citizens of pre-war Poland perished during World War II. Depending upon whose figures are cited, this was anywhere between 17% to 22% or approximately a fifth of the population of independent Poland. Only slightly more than 10%, 644,000 Polish civilians and military personnel, perished as a direct result of military operations, while 3.577,000 perished in extermination camps or as a result of pacification, executions, or ghetto obliteration. Another 1,266,000 perished in prison camps or in the other places of confinement, while 521,000 died outside of camps and prisons as a result of wounds, injuries, and the conditions prevailing in occupied Poland. And of the figure 6,028,000 approximately half were Polish Jews, citizens of independent Poland, while the other half were Polish Gentiles."

From "HOLOCAUST ILLITERACY" - by S.A. Blejwas, published in "Perspectives"
(Washington DC., September-October 1983)

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The fact that the Nazis issued a special warning (OGLOSZENIE - BEKANNTMACHUNG) to those who helped feed or hide a Jew - speaks for itself.

ANNOUNCEMENT

CONCERNING JEWS IN HIDING

It is necessary to issue a reminder, pursuant to Article 3 of the Ordinance on Residence Restrictions in the General - Government, issued on October 15, 1941 (GG Log, page 595), that Jews who leave the Jewish quarter without permission are subject to the penalty of death.

In accordance with this Ordinance, persons who offer the said Jews shelter, food, or sell provisions to them will also be punished by death.

1. Giving Shelter To The Jews
2. Supplying Them With Food
3. Selling Provisions To The Jews

Czestochowa, Sept. 24, 1942 General Administrator for the City, Dr. Franke English translation of poster displayed on the streets.

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There was courage to care, there were efforts to help - despite the threat of the Death Penalty. Poland was the only country in the Europe where the occupant issued such orders.

We will never know how many Poles were executed by the Nazis for helping their Jewish countrymen. We only know that almost 2000 (more than from any other nation) were honored at Yad Yashem in Israel for helping save the Jews.

"The Other Holocaust" is available at the American Institute of Polish Culture at $5.00 per copy.

Warsaw's Old Town in 1945.		Warsaw's Old Town after 1953

"…Almost as if trying to make up for their inaction toward the slaughter of European Jewry during World War II, the Jews of North America turned to the canonization of the Holocaust long after the cannons of that war went silent..."

Jerzy Kosinski - "The Second Holocaust",

The Boston Globe, Nov 4, 1990.

The London based Polish Government in Exile, and the Polish Underground in Poland, put tremendous efforts into alerting the world opinion about the Jewish genocide.

The Polish Government in Exile was responsible for publishing the "BUND" report (Jewish Labor Party in Poland), crying out about the massacre.

The following is taken from "THE FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST:

The Poles under German Occupation 1939-1944" Richard C. Lucas.

The University Press Kentucky,

"On June 9, 1942, Sikorski warned that the Jews of Poland were doomed to destruction in accordance with the Nazi pronouncements on destroying all the Jews regardless of the outcome of the war..."

"In 1940 and 1941, before the Nazis embarked upon the "Final Solution," the Polish government had informed public opinion in the West about the persecution of the Jews in Poland in 1940, it published a pamphlet entitled "PERSECUTION OF JEWS IN GERMAN OCCUPIED POLAND." In a diplomatic note, in May 1941, the Polish government drew the attention of western governments to German policy in Poland and the violence done to the Jews. In 1941 and 1942, the Polish government published several items, including the first edition of a Black Book in January 1942, which included the plight of the Jews with that of the Poles during the early years of the German occupation of Poland. Later in 1942, the AK (Underground Army) published "The Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto" by Antoni Szymanowski. Parts of it were reprinted in the West.

During two visits to Washington in March 1941 and again in March 1942, Sikorski asked for an American declaration against the Germans concerning their oppressive policies against the Poles and Jews. In March 1942, Sikorski especially emphasized the plight of the Jews and urged the United States to warn Hitler of reprisals if he continued his policy of extermination of entire groups of the Polish population."

Polish underground leaders met on many occasions with Jewish leaders in Poland who urged them to inform West (through Polish underground channels) about Jewish tragic situation. They called for retribution and efforts to exchange Jewish women, children, and sick for money.

Karski was urged to tell Jewish leaders that this is no case for politics or tactics. "Tell them that the earth must be shaken to its foundations, the world must be aroused." "These were unprecedented times," the Jews told Karski, "and the West, including Jewish leaders and organizations, must take unprecedented steps to save the remnants of the Jewish community." Karski also transmitted a message to Sikorski from Jewish leaders in Warsaw which indicated that most Poles sympathized with the Jews, but that there were criminals who blackmailed and denounced Jewish people in hiding. They asked that Polish underground authorities apply punitive measures, including executions, and publicize the identities and crimes of guilty Poles.

Karski met with Polish, Jewish, and British leaders in London, and later American and Jewish representatives in the United States.
John W. Pehl, who directed the War Refugee Board, said later that "the Karski's mission changed U.S. government policy from one of indifference at best to affirmative action." Thanks to Karski’s revelation, Roosevelt ordered the creation of the War Refugee Board which, in Pehl’s own words, "was a little too late." Karski’s mission acted as a catalyst in mobilizing the British and American governments to admit officially, on December 17, 1942, that Germans were in fact annihilating the Jews in Europe.

Before Karski's arrival in London, Polish and Jewish labor leaders Zygielbojm and Adam Ciolkosz participated in several public meetings demanding that the Nazi criminals pay for their crimes, and convinced the British Labour Party to call for assurances that the Germans guilty of war crimes would be dealt with after the war. On October 29, 1942, Premier Sikorski in a speech at Albert Hall affirmed:
"I warn the German torturers that they will not escape the deserved punishment for the mass crimes they have committed, primarily in our country which was and is the main center of resistance against German barbarism."

R.C. Lukas - "The Forgotten Holocaust," p.159

"But this history of the Jews in Nazi Germany would be little more than the story of a meaningless interlude of murder if we failed to place it in a larger context. If we do not bury these dead millions with honor, safeguard their dignity, and give meaning to their sacrifice, then future generations will regard them merely as so many sheep led to the "slaughter-bench of history," like the forgotten millions murdered by Attila. We must recognize the fact that Nazism was not just anti-Semitic but anti-human. Because Nazi beliefs of racial superiority had no basis in fact, Nazism was like a nightmare, unfolding without a past or future in an ever-moving present. Because none but German Aryans were qualified to live in the Nazis view, it stood to reason that everyone else would be exterminated. The chilling reality is that when the Russians overrun the concentration camps in Poland, they found enough Zyklon B crystals to kill 20 million people. Yet there were no more than 3 million Jews left in Europe. The ratio of contemplated mass killing was no longer 1.4 Christians for every Jew, but 5.3 Christians for every Jew. Nazi future plans called for the killing of 10 million non-Germanic people every year.

The world will perhaps disbelieve this as it once disbelieved the existence of gas chambers and death camps. The imagination of the rest of the Western world could not encompass such antihuman concepts, because the Western mind was still imbued with Jewish and Christian humanism and concerned with spiritual values, whereas in Germany these had been expunged by Nazism. If the Christian reader affected a few million Jews only, he has not merely shown dismisses what happened in Germany as something which his contempt for the 7 million Christians murdered by the Nazis but has betrayed his Christian heritage as well. And, if the Jewish reader forgets the 7 million Christians murdered by the Nazis, then he has not merely let 5 million Jews die in vain but has betrayed his Jewish heritage of compassion and justice. It is no longer a question of the survival of the Jews only. It is the question of the survival of man."

From "Jews, God and History" by Max I. Dimont.

"…Your threat was also our threat. Our threat did not have time to materialize in such a measure as yours have. This horrible sacrifice fell upon you, one can say, as for others, who were also destine for extermination…" POPE JOHN PAUL II at the meeting with Jewish delegation in Warsaw, June 14, 1987

"…At last the courage of Polish Catholic people on behalf of their Jewish compatriots, in Poland occupied by the Germans, is being recognized…

…I believe you should make sure that all the Jewish and Jewish American organizations see the film "Zegota" so they may finally understand what a great wrong has been done to all Poles in Poland and especially in the United States by Jewish senseless accusations…"

From a letter of Mrs. Blanka A. Rosenstiel, Founder and President of the American Institute of Polish Culture to Mr. Sy Rotter, Producer of the "ZEGOTA" film, Documentaries International.

The Polish Government representatives in Poland created a Council for Aiding the Jews (Rada Pomocy Zydom) - under the cryptonym ZEGOTA. The primary aim of ZEGOTA was to help the Jews. The Council strongly condemned and executed collaborators with the Germans, and blackmailers who preyed on Jewish misery.

ZEGOTA published several leaflets, even one in German for soldiers and officials in Poland, which reiterated allied warnings concerning the extermination of the Jews…

One of ZEGOTA’s publication reads as follows:

"Every Pole, who cooperated in their (German) murderous actions or blackmails or denounces Jews, or exploits their horrible situation or participates in plunder, commits a grave crime against the law of the Polish Republic and will be immediately punished, and if he manages to escape punishment, let be assured that the time is near when he will be prosecuted before the court of justice of reborn Poland."

"The Polish underground tried to deal with the problem of blackmail and denouncing Jews by making admonitions and warnings in the clandestine press. On September 17, 1942, the Directorate of Civil Resistance expressed sympathy for the Jews, condemned the atrocities against them, and promised that the executioners and "their henchmen will be held directly responsible for these crimes."

The Directorate of The Civil Resistance repeated its condemnation of blackmailers in more specific terms in Rzeczyspospolita Polska in March 1943.

"The Polish community, although it is itself a victim of frightful terrorism, looks with horror and deep sympathy on the murder by the Germans of the remaining Jewish population of Poland. It has put on record a protest against the crime, which has been made known throughout the world, and it has given such considerable help to the Jews who have escaped from ghetto or the concentration camp that the occupant has published a decree, threatening with death Poles who help the Jews who are in hiding. Nevertheless, there exist individuals, devoid of feeling and conscience, who find a source of original income for themselves by blackmailing Poles who are hiding Jews, or the Jews themselves.

The Directorate of the Civil Resistance gives warning that cases of blackmail of this are noted and will be punished with all the rigor of the law as far as it is possible in existing circumstances and in any case in future."

R.C. Lukas - "The Forgotten Holocaust," Page 118-119

"Good is scarce in history and therefore sacred so that we cannot allow it to be taken for granted."

"The Holocaust is an eternal warning to mankind: it reveals the magnitude of the cruelty that one human being can inflict on another - said rabbi Schulweis - but the significance of the Holocaust acquires a new dimension when we realize that under the Nazi terror the gentiles were faced with a basic choice. There were among the Christians those who came to the rescue of their Jewish brethren at the risk not only of their own lives but also those of their entire families. It is our honor and duty to recognize them and help those living in need."

Wojciech A. Wierzewski - "POWROT DO ALTRUIZMU" (Return to altruism) translated from "Nowy Dziennik" June 7, 1990.

"No precise data exists concerning the number of Polish collaborators during the war, but the number does not appear to have loomed large in relation to the total population." Emmanuel Ringelblum, the famous Jewish chronicler who lived through much of this period, said that the most of the denunciation and informing in wartime Poland was done by the Volksdeutches, who were considered traitors by the overwhelming majority of Poles. One report suggested that in period from January of 1943 to June 1944, underground authorities pronounced 2,015 death sentences on informers and collaborators.

Postwar statistics of the Israeli War Crime Commission indicated that only 7,000 Poles out of the population of over twenty five million ethnic Poles collaborated with the Nazi."

Richard C. Lukas - "THE FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST," Page 117

"The hoodlooms and criminals who committed crimes against Jews are not representing Poland - they were outcasts who brought shame on a proud and tolerant country, Poland!

The real Poland, the one which is so often omitted by writers, is the Poland of "charter of Kalish" given by Polish Duke Boleslaw the Pious in 1264, in which the Duke took all the Jews under his personal protection. This was at the time when Jews were slaughtered throughout Western Europe.

The real Poland was represented by Polish "positivists" with writers such like Sienkiewicz, Orzeszkowa, Konopnicka, and Prus, who called in their writings to help "Jewish Brothers" in becoming full-fledged citizens of Poland.

The real Poland was represented by the noble and courageous people, who acting against tremendous danger created an organization to protect and help Jews under the cryptonym "ZEGOTA" (under the command of Wladyslaw Bartoszewski - presently Poland's minister of foreign affairs) and issued a famous declaration in which they called upon all Poles to help Jews and warned against collaborants and blackmailers. The Polish underground pronounced death sentences and executed 2015 persons.

Please keep in mind, that the German murdered hundreds of Polish families who dared to help Jews without sparing small children and grandparents.

But, for real Poles this was not a matter of being pro or anti Semitic - it was a matter of common decency dictated and though by their Catholic faith. These people had nothing to do with barbarous pogroms and in a matter of fact they condemned them with their noble deeds.

The real Poland is represented by the Pope John Paul II (He lived through the German occupation in Poland) in His apostolic letter from November 1994 said:

"Lets us pray and work so that this does not happen again. Never again anti-Semitism. Never again the arrogance of nationalism. Never again genocide..."

From the letter to Editors of US News & World Report, April 3, 1995,

by the American Institute of Polish Culture. If you wish to receive more materials on the subject, please write or call.