The IPN’s briefing on the new publication concerning Polish-Jewish relations

The Holocaust & Polish – Jewish Relations

Correction continued?

The 2018 publication entitled Dalej jest noc. Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski [Night without an End. Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland] (vol. 1-2) by Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, and Polish-Jewish relations during the war and occupation have remained the subject of numerous polemics and manipulations.

On 14 September 2020 (Monday) at 12:00 at its seat at 18 Postępu Street, the Institute of National Remembrance is launching the publication entitled Korekty ciąg dalszy [Correction continued]. It isTomasz Domański’s reply to the comments and allegations contained in the responses by the editors and authors of the book Night without an End. Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland to the book Correcting the Picture? published by Domański in 2019.

Let us recall that in the Night without an End the thesis that “two out of every three Jews seeking rescue perished – most often due to their neighbors, Christians (…) the vast majority of Jews trying to save themselves died at the hands of Poles or were killed with the complicity of Poles” is put forward (from the introduction to the book).

In response to accusations of such large-scale  complicity of Poles in the Holocaust, the Institute of National Remembrance has been publishing reliable materials based on sources and set in the appropriate historical context. The immediate response to Night without an End was a thorough review of this book by Tomasz Domański, Ph.D. from the Kielce branch of the Institute of National Remembrance under the meaningful title Correcting the Picture? Some Reflections on the Use of Sources in  Night without an End. Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland.

The authors ‘and editors’ responses to Domański’s reviews mostly boiled down to a personal attack on this researcher who had “dared” to write a critical review. Here are some examples: The review was called an “wordy essay” (B. Engelking), an “essay” (D. Swałtek-Niewińska), a “treatise” and “Potemkin village” (T. Frydel) or even a “riposte”(A. Skibińska). According to Prof. Barbara Engelking the review is “an elaborate having the character of a libel”; or as Prof. Dariusz Libionka put it: “a commissioned study, aimed at […] discrediting and ridiculing editors and authors of texts, showing them as ignoramuses, swindlers and manipulators, as well as crooks who, only by means known to themselves, receive funds for their regrettable creativity hostile to all from the point of view of the interests of the state ”.

The new book is a continuation of the investigation by Domański in the area of analysis and interpretation of archival sources presented in Night without an End. In this review, the author quotes and discusses examples of over-interpretation (also in the area of commenting on existing literature), falsifications or the lack of a critical approach to the source material and building further myths and groundless theses on this basis. The new findings by Domański  confirm and reinforce his final observations contained in Correcting the Picture?: “Many of the phenomena and events mentioned should be described anew, taking into account the realities of the occupation and a thorough analysis of the sources”. https://www.youtube.com/embed/qUH-Y80k6QY

The Deputy President of the Institute of National Remembrance, Mateusz Szpytma, Ph.D., remarked on the reaction of the authors of “Dalej jest noc” [Night without an End. Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland] to the extensive review authored by Tomasz Domański, Ph.D., entitled Correcting the Picture?  –  “In my opinion, when we will be looking back over the years, this polemic will surely be considered as one of the most important points of the discussion on Polish-Jewish relations during German occupation (…) We must remember that without the participation of the Germans, without their plan of extermination and its implementation, no Jews would have been murdered, nor would there have been any need to help them” emphasized President Mateusz Szpytma.

In the responses formulated by the authors of Night without an End  there were a number of accusations against both the Institute of National Remembrance and the author of the review himself. These accusations could not remain unanswered.

“ After the online publication of the comments made by the authors of Night without an End  to Correcting the Picture?, the Institute of Sociology and Philosophy of the Polish Academy of Sciences offered to publish Domański’s reply. The IPN agreed to the proposal, but during the talks, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research withdrew its proposal and the publication finally did not take place” – said Mateusz Szpytma Ph.D.

Tomasz Domański’s replies:  

The issue of statistical data:

It is not that I disregard the data presented by the authors. I am, however, not taking up any discussion on the calculations presented  in their book for reasons which I have already mentioned in Correcting the Picture. Data presented without any source reference are simply unverifiable, making it impossible to analyze their credibility or examine the accuracy of the calculations in any way. The authors must be made fully aware of this. To enable polemics, specific sources or names of those Jews whose fate was used to compile the statistics ought to have been listed. This is essential if such materials are to aspire to the role of scientific data. In such an extensive work, in which the perpetrators of crimes against Jews have seemingly been meticulously enumerated, it gives the impression of deliberately preventing the scientific verification of these types of calculations”.

The issue of the choice of research areas:

“The words about comparing the extermination policy towards Jews as a determinant of the selection of research areas sound very unreliable if we take into account that four out of the nine” “counties” selected for analysis were, in fact, located within one district (Cracow). Thus, the whole analyzed area did not actually cover “different regions of Poland”, but various regions of the General Government (and one “county” of Bezirk Bialystok). Individual regional studies do bring important considerations on the course of the Holocaust, but almost exclusively (except Bielsko-Biała) within one administrative area. In this respect, Zapalec’s statement is unfounded: “If the reviewer believes that a ‘well-thought-through exemplification’, ‘ensuring that the choice is representative’ is possible, he should not hide it from the readers; I would like to know his standpoint on this issue” (answer, p. 3), and further: “Domański, on the other hand, could not contribute anything creative and constructive to the discussion, so he went on to criticize the authors of the book, instead”. (answer, p. 3).

A similar opinion was expressed by Dagmara Swałtek-Niewińska, for whom my comments regarding the lack of representativeness of research areas result from “a certain ignorance of the principles governing both statistics and the selection of research groups” (answer, p. 1). Anna Zapalec seems to have forgotten that it is not the role of a reviewer to act as the editor of a volume and to point out specific counties, and maybe even communes, which the authors should have analyzed. What is clearly noticeable in the comments of both authors is a considerable amount of ill will and reluctance, as they appear to have missed the following fragment of the review: “With the exception of Złoczów ‘county’, almost all of Poland’s eastern pre-war territories are not represented. All of Radom District (one of the five administrative units of the GG) and the

Polish territories annexed to the Reich have also been left out. An experienced Holocaust scholar is well aware that the Holocaust had different distinctive features in each of these regions and that a different social hierarchy of the conquered peoples existed there (e.g. Radom District had the biggest number of Jewish industrial workers in the GG)” (Correcting the Picture, p. 7). This is where I would search for “well-thought-through exemplification”. Usually, also in scientific publications or those aspiring to such, the comparative analysis of administrative units from different historical periods, having a different territorial scope and organizational structure, and additionally the same name, is  not carried out because it would inevitably lead to confusion, only imitating research coherence.’

An extract from Tomasz Domański’s reply to Dariusz Libionka:

The author of “The Miechów County” roars – to reflect the tone he uses – that, addressing the issue of sheltering Jews by Aleksander Kisiel and the searches for the hidden, I reproached him as follows, ” Of course it was irrelevant for the outcome of the search whether the Germans were alone or accompanied by their “Blue” Police subordinates, but it is not a norm in academia to make such additions to sources.” (Correcting the Picture, p. 46). I must admit that Libionka’s explanations of how the “Blue” policemen appeared in the quoted source baffled me: in his reply, he listed the Polnische Polizei (PP) stations in the area to make the presence of the officers in Kisiel’s buildings more likely, and then concluded, “It was not my intention to correct the sources. Kisiel’s account, like most reports in Fond 301 at the Jewish Historical Institute, was recorded by a clerk, and can’t be taken literally.” (Libionka’s reply, p. 6). What Libionka seems to be saying is, “Kisiel does not mention the “Blue” policemen? So what? There were PP stations nearby, so they could have been there.” They certainly could, but thinking in terms, “if something does not agree with the source, then so much the worse for the source,” is not the best of explanations. I am not sure whether Professor Libionka is fully aware of the meaning of his own words, because following his approach to written records, all testimonies, reports and interrogation protocols, as well as the quotations derived from them should be dismissed as nothing else than a form of an office record (made by a clerk), which “can’t be taken literally”. Such an extraordinary paradigm would make it possible to question all scientific research, including that of Professor Libionka, and, hopefully, that’s not what he meant. Yes, a researcher can alert the reader that the wording of the interrogation reports ought to be treated with caution – if the interrogators used torture, beatings or coercion, or the interrogated person had no influence on the accuracy the testimony was recorded with. Such caution must be applied when analyzing the files of the “August trials” (which, by the way, were extensively used in Night Without an End*, also by Libionka himself). However, the author can’t be suggesting that the testimonies collected by the Jewish Historical Institute were obtained in such a way.

*The book has yet to be released in English, but its English-language title appearing here is the one used by the publisher.

Domański reveals more examples of scientific over-interpretation by the book editor, Professor Grabowski:

It is also worth devoting some space to the memoirs of the “local prosecutor”, as they may be another example of the way in which Jan Grabowski uses materials already published. To understand this mechanism better, one needs to refer to fragments of Andrew Kornbluth’s article, because it was this researcher who found the memories of Władysław Grzymała (“local prosecutor”) from Siedlce. Fragments of Kornbluth’s text were, as it can be assumed, the basis for Grabowski’s probing into the nature of the judiciary at that time, which he included in Night Without an End. The phrase “can be assumed” is most appropriate here, because Grabowski, using Grzymała’s memoirs, only once directly refers to Kornbluth’s article in a footnote, and deprives the remainder of his argument of any reference (Night Without an End, vol. 1, p. 457). Since, as I mentioned, Grabowski does not indicate any other sources, I assume that the entire description was taken from Kornbluth, who described the aforementioned lawyer as follows, “Władysław Grzymała, a prosecutor working at the court in Siedlce since his university graduation in 1934, in unpublished memoirs revealed his hatred towards communists, asserting that before the war ‘most’ of his colleagues sympathized with National Democracy – a party that was deeply nationalist, anti-Semitic and far-right. At a 1948 meeting with fifty other prosecutors from all over Poland, he noted that they all belonged to the ‘generation of pre-war graduates, and were of the political affiliation represented chiefly by Roman Dmowski, [Roman] Rybarski, [Stanisław] Stroński, and therefore supporters of the national-radical camp’”. It can only be concluded from Kornbluth’s text that Grzymała’s colleagues belonged to or sympathized with the National Democratic Party, and that he introduced himself as an anti-communist. Yet, Grabowski’s portrayal of the prosecutor, based on the quoted excerpt, goes as follows: “Grzymała, a prosecutor with pre-war experience, an ardent supporter of the National Democratic Party, did not hide his political views [emphasis added].”( Night Without an End, vol. 1, p. 457). Is this a fair use of another author’s text?

When drawing conclusions regarding Grzymała’s proceedings against people charged with crimes against Jews, Grabowski treats the original source even more casually. The text published by Kornbluth reads: “Grzymała’s attitude to the prosecution of crimes against Jews was, to put it mildly, unenthusiastic. He wrote that the Poles persecuting Jews were just ‘few exceptions’, that ‘honest Jews, as less resourceful, died’ and only ‘scum’ survived who now craved revenge against Poland and the Poles. Consequently, he mentions working in collusion with judges to drop the charges against those of the defendants whose guilt he wasn’t certain of [emphasis added].” And here’s how Grabowski reconstructs this passage, “He [Grzymała] did not deny that the cases of the Poles charged with murdering Jews were not, to put it mildly, a priority for the judges. On the contrary, the Siedlce prosecutor wrote that among the Jews “the honest ones died out”, and what remained was just “scum craving to get back at the Poles”. For this reason, wishing to protect the Poles accused of murdering Jews, judges and prosecutors collaborated in order to drop the most serious charges’.”[emphasis added] (Night Without an End, vol. 1, p. 457).

Catalogue of the IPN publications on the extermination of Jews and Polish-Jewish relations during WWII:

https://ipn.gov.pl/pl/publikacje/katalog-publikacji/85062,The-Holocaust-and-Polish-Jewish-relations-during-the-Second-World-War-Publicatio.html

The full English version of Correcting the Picture? Some Reflections on the Use of Sources in  Night without an End. Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland will appear soon in the latest issue of Polish – Jewish Studies. 

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https://ipn.gov.pl/en/news/4577,Correction-continued-the-IPNs-briefing-on-the-new-publication-concerning-Polish-.html

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Admin Note:

“When we talk about the Holocaust people will often say, why didn’t more people save Jews?”

That’s really a courageous statement when you take into account all of the factors involved, especially in German-occupied Poland.
People might rethink that statement if they understood the situation, the risks involved and the consequences – especially if they were truly honest with themselves, OR FOUND THEMSELVES IN THIS CIRCUMSTANCES.

Everyone is likes to be hero, right?

During World War II in occupied Poland, both; ethnic Poles and Jews were being persecuted; Poles to a some lesser extent, not much less though, yet they faced their fair share of oppression with random round-ups for deportations and executions the Germans did every day many times over.

Life was very difficult.

One should also remember that for the first part of the war from 1939 to 1941 eastern Poland was occupied by the Soviets where the Jews had it relatively easy – easier than Poles and in many instances, they even collaborated with Poles enemies, the bolshevik Soviets.

So, during that time in the east, and yes, unfortunately, with the assistance of many Jews, Poles experienced mass deportations of about 1.7 million people to Siberia, with ⅓ of those perishing there, including the massacre of 22,000 Polish officers in Katyn; all at the hands of the Soviets, who supposedly were the West allies. This is something people often don’t hear about.
Shameful. All very one-sided.

Considering what Poles were up against and the fact that many times they actually tried to warn the West about the decimation of the Jews, Poles get a bad rap.
And I will state this;
It is wrong and historically false because overall, the Poles (estimated number of over one million), considering the situation they were in, did more than anyone else to assist the Jews .

It’s the West and their allies that did too little to help the Jews, so if you want to blame someone, blame them.
Even Jews in the West did little to help, for they would not believe the magnitude of jewish plight in Europe.

Remember this? – https://www.vox.com/…/27/14412082/refugees-history-holocaust

Pole Jan Karski actually snicked into the Jewish ghettos to observe the situation, wrote a report and went to the West to meet with other leaders begging for something to be done.
He was ignored by everyone, Roosevelt preferred to discuss Polish horses and the Jewish leaders thought he was exaggerating – so nothing was done.

Another Polish hero was Witold Pilecki, who actually got himself rounded up on purpose to go to Auschwitz.
Can anyone imagine this bravery?
His mission was to find out the situation in the camps, then made a daring escape and wrote a report in a hope, that either the Allies would come with an assistance or drop sophisticated weapons in order to organize a partizan’s assault on the camp. All was ignored.

Tens of thousands of individuals and their families made the ultimate sacrifices just like the Ulma family; Victoria and Józef Ulma with their six children were murdered for hiding 8 Jews. Victoria was pregnant with her seventh child, they were all killed together.
As the one mentioned above mentioned, this was not an isolated incident. Poles continued to hide Jews in the town of Markowa, where the execution took place.

After an investigation by the Home Army the traitor who tipped off the Germans, was found and executed, which was the punishment for any Pole or Jew, who collaborated with the Germans.
Out of all of Europe it was only in Poland, where one faced the death penalty for assisting the Jews. Sometimes, the Germans wiped out whole towns in order to find hiding Jews there or to intimidate the locals to give them away.

Another heroic Pole was a priest Maximillian Kolbe who died at Auschwitz camp. He at one time was also sheltering over two thousand Jews in his monastery, which the reason of his imprisoning.
While in the camp, some prisoners were sentenced to death by starvation in punishment for another inmate’s escape from camp. Kolbe volunteered to die in their place . Survivors of the camp testified that the prisoners could be heard praying and singing hymns for the priest.

The churches were also involved in saving Jews whenever they could. The Catholic church, their convents and monasteries in Poland were brutally oppressed by the Nazi Germans. Some nuns and priests were executed.

You may hear lately ( ‘lately’; but never soon after the war) in the media, that Poles collaborated en masse, which historically is nonsense, a false historical revisions and propaganda based on agendas, serving only the Holocaust Industry, constantly seeking for financial resources.

As mentioned, anyone who collaborated with Germans would be executed by the Polish Home Army.
And yet, Poles today are being negatively labeled as nationalists and even Nazis, when in fact, they are simply patriotic.

Holocaust was planned to be in Poland, because that is where the worlds largest population of Jews lived. Some were very wealthy, but most were just modest jewish families happily established there, not interested in migrating to Palestine.

If Poland was so bad, why so many Jews expelled from other countries ended up in Poland? This Polish King at the time was simply the most tolerant and possibly the most naive to accept such a large number of Jews.

During the WWII Poles even helped to set up a formal organization dedicated to saving Jews. It was called Zegota.

Many of its members were part of the Home Army, the AK, who today are labeled as antisemitic, which is funny, because Jews were actually in it too, and Irena Sendler was among Zegota’s first recruits.
She was an administrator in the Warsaw Welfare Department and had an invaluable network established with many medical and social workers. She succeeded in smuggling 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and hid them with many Polish and some Austrian families.

The main activities of Zegota dealt with forging documents for Jewish refugees. Some days, Zegota produced on average 100 forgeries. By the end of two years, they had secretly issued over 50,000 fake documents. Thanks to this organization 40,000 to 50,000 Jewish lives were saved.

A Polish man was caught tossing a sack of bread over the Warsaw Ghetto wall – he was spotted by German soldiers and instantly shot.
Throughout the war at least 20,000 members of Zegota were captured and executed by the Germans. Thousands more were imprisoned, tortured and sent to concentration camps.

It is impossible to determine how many Poles helped the Jews as not all wished to disclose it even after the war.
When the Nazi Germans discovered Jews hiding in Polish homes, they were shot along with the Poles sheltering them. Often entire families, friends and neighbors of the same apartment block were murdered too and no witnesses remained to tell the story.

Hollywood created movies in the likes of ‘Schindlers List’, who actually made money out of the hard working Jews in camps, yet they made a hero out of him.
In one instant there was an intention to commemorate Witold Pilecki, but the producers wanted to falsely portray him as of Jewish origin, therefore his family refused any co-operation with.

Of course, there was some justifiable antisemitism, especially when some Jews turned communists and collaborated with jewish controlled NKVD, working as spies, denouncing even their own to the Germans, in order to save themselves; (DELUSIONISTS) or to the Bolsheviks for siding with Poles.

Poles, who worked along with the Germans were usually criminals and hard core ex-prisoners/gangsters, released from prisons for that particular reason; they had no qualms, but it was a very small number, and they were just grub simpletons.

Jews who never assimilated into Polish society, however, for their own interest collaborated with both sides; German Nazis and the Soviets, even welcoming their grand entrance into Poland with banners.
It is estimated that 85 percent didn’t even know or speak Polish.

When you hear about Polish antisemitism today, there is a lot to think about and take into account.
Poles are now being blamed for the crimes of the Germans and the Germans, of course, don’t mind that at all, happy to have their war crimes shifted elsewhere. They paid up in huge compensations.
But Jews have a bad taste in their mouth about those tragic events taken place in Poland, which shouldn’t give them the right to blame Poles and their country for not doing enough.

Nobody invited German army there!
Nobody wanted to see their loved ones killed and the country totally destroyed, not mentioning the mass plunder !

Poles had to be so careful when sheltering some of their Jewish friends, because there were other greedy Jews, that worked with the Gestapo in trying to root out Poles, so that they could take over the wealth and/or assets, even identities or simply plunder the house/an apartment after the Poles were detained or exterminated.

Jews ran their ghettos, had their own administration and even their own police that was in charge of shipping other Jews off to the camps. But mentioning this, according to some Jews, could label one as anti-Semite. Some Jews, in fact, welcomed the idea of ghettos thus hoping for their autonomous region or council and status.

“The Polish-Jewish historian and Warsaw Ghetto archivist Emanuel Ringelblum has described the cruelty of the ghetto Jewish police as “at times greater than that of the Germans, the Ukrainians and the Latvians.” The Jewish ghetto police ultimately shared the same fate with all their fellow ghetto inmates.”
Collins, Jeanna R.
“Am I a Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman (review)”.
Mandel Fellowship Book Reviews.
Kellogg Community College.

Poles who chose not to help Jews simply could not afford to feed even their families ( as the food was rationed), let alone keep hiding additional people. They were not indifferent, they terrified of the dangers present at the time and concerned for the welfare of own their families.
One CANNOT expect everyone to act heroically in this circumstances.
Thousand of families were on starvation rations, barely making it.
Could you imagine some unknown to you people coming to your house expecting you to hide and feed them, knowing the risk? Not everyone had such courage. Would you ?

We must all search our souls deeply and ask ourselves; would I have risked my life and the lives of my own family to save people I don’t know or hardly know?

Would Jews have risked their lives to save Poles?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRk5QOKhjS0&t=3s

Would you be a hero?

As for gratitude there is practically none.

There is an organization that is supposed to honor the righteous who saved lives, but it seems they go out of their way not to honor Poles.
Yitzak Arad, director of Yad Vashem from 1972 to 1993 was actually involved in concealing war crimes committed against Poles by Jewish Soviet partisans.

There are approximately 7,000 trees planted for the Righteous, which absolutely does not cover the factual numbers from Warsaw alone!
Otherwise, there would been tens of thousands trees.
The estimated number of Poles who helped Jews is from a million to three million !
Polish diplomats tried save 8-10,000 Jews from deportation
https://www.jwire.com.au/polish-diplomats-tried-save-8-100…/

Another Jerzi Kosinski, a Jewish writer who had his life spared with the help of Polish Christians during the Nazi German occupation, in thanks wrote a disgusting, hateful, vile story, in the “Painted Bird” writing about his years as a victim of horrific cruelty and barbarism, not committed by the Nazis, but by peasant villagers, superstitious, ignorant and brutal.

Tell me, how not to get angry? Is a self-defense and the defense of Polish history an anti-semitism ?

Sadly, there is very little gratitude shown to these Poles, who risked their lives to save others. Only the Polish nation instead remember and honor those heroes on its own.

The Polish heroism and martyrdom instead of being promoted as an example for future generation as something to learn from is deceptively marginalized and even twisted.
Therefore, those who can, should carry their message and let the world know of their selflessness.

Those who are now slandering the Polish nation are spitting on many hero’s graves, who sacrificed their lives, including the now dead graves jewish survivors, who lived peacefully after the war thanks to such heroes.

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Related;

Polish diplomats tried save 8-10,000 Jews from deportation

Polish diplomats tried save 8-10,000 Jews from deportation

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How Jews Killed Jews In Order To Create The State Of Israel

https://gazetawarszawska.eu/2012/05/21/how-jews-killed-jews-in-order-to-create-the-state-of-israel/