"Polish death camp" controversy

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This article is about the controversy over the use of the term. For the camps in question, see German camps in occupied Poland during World War II.
"Polish concentration camp" redirects here. For another meaning, see Camps for Russian prisoners and internees in Poland (1919–24).

In World War II, German concentration camps were sited in present-day Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, and Slovenia. Germany built Operation Reinhard death camps only in occupied Poland.

"Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp" are misnomers[1][2] that have been a subject of controversy and legislation. Such terms have been used by news media and by public figures in reference to concentration camps that were built and run during World War II by Nazi Germany in German-occupied Poland.

When used in relation to the Jewish Holocaust or to the murder of Poles and other nationalities in German-operated facilities, these expressions have been used to refer to the camps' geographic location in German-occupied Poland. However, the expressions have also allegedly been used to undermine Germany's responsibility for the Holocaust, and can be misconstrued as meaning "death camps set up by Poles" or "run by Poland".[3] Polish officials and organizations, and private citizens in Poland and among the Polish diaspora, have objected to such expressions as criminally misleading.[4]

In 2018 the Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance was signed into law by Polish President Andrzej Duda. It criminalized false public statements that ascribe to the Polish nation collective responsibility in Holocaust-related crimes, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, or war crimes or which "grossly reduce the responsibility of the actual perpetrators". Exempted from such strictures were scholarly studies, discussions of history, and artistic activities.[5] It was generally understood that the law would have criminalized the use of the expressions "Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp".[6][7][8] The legislation was controversial; it lead to Israeli-Polish consensus-building, cooperation in re-writing the legislation four months later, and a joint statement condemning both antisemitism and anti-Polish sentiment.[9]

Historical context[edit]

Main articles: The Holocaust in Poland, Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), List of Nazi concentration camps, and German camps in occupied Poland during World War II
Borders of Polish areas before and after 1939 and 1941 invasions
Czesława Kwoka, a Polish Catholic girl, 14 when she was murdered by the Germans at Auschwitz. The Germans murdered 230,000 children at the camp, most of them Jewish.

During World War II, three million Polish Jews (90% of the prewar Polish-Jewish population) were killed as a result of Nazi German genocidal action. At least 2.5 million non-Jewish Polish civilians and soldiers also perished.[10] One million non-Polish Jews were also forcibly transported by the Nazis and killed in German-occupied Poland.[11]

After the German invasion, Poland, in contrast to cases such as Vichy France, experienced direct German administration rather than an indigenous puppet government.[12][13]

The western part of prewar Poland was annexed outright by Germany.[14] Some Poles were expelled from the annexed lands to make room for German settlers.[15] Parts of eastern Poland became part of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine and Reichskommissariat Ostland. The rest of German-occupied Poland, dubbed by Germany the General Government, was administered by Germany as occupied territory. The General Government received no international recognition. It is estimated that the Germans killed more than 2 million non-Jewish Polish civilians. Nazi German planners called for "the complete destruction" of all Poles, and their fate, as well as that of many other Slavs, was outlined in a genocidal Generalplan Ost (General Plan East).[16]

Historians have generally stated that relatively few Poles collaborated with Nazi Germany, in comparison with the situations in other German-occupied countries.[17][18][19] The Polish Underground judicially condemned and executed collaborators,[20][21][22] and the Polish Government-in-Exile coordinated resistance to the German occupation, including help for Poland's Jews.[10]

Some Poles were complicit in, or indifferent to, the rounding up of Jews. There are reports of neighbors turning Jews over to the Germans or blackmailing them (see "szmalcownik"). In some cases, Poles themselves killed their Jewish fellow citizens, the most notorious examples being the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom and the 1946 Kielce pogrom, after the war had ended.[23][24][8]

Poles publicly hanged by the Germans for helping Jews in hiding, Przemyśl, 6 September 1943

However, many Poles risked their lives to hide and assist Jews. Poles were sometimes exposed by Jews they were helping, if the Jews were found by the Germans—resulting in the murder of entire Polish rescue networks.[25] The number of Jews hiding with Poles was around 450,000.[dubious – discuss][26] Possibly a million Poles aided Jews;[27] some estimates run as high as three million helpers.[28]

Poles have the world's highest count of individuals who have been recognized by Israel's Yad Vashem as Righteous among the Nations — non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from extermination during the Holocaust.[29]

Occupied Poland was the only territory where the Germans decreed that any kind of help for Jews was punishable by death for the helper and the helper's entire family.[30] Of the estimated 3 million non-Jewish Poles killed in World War II, up to 50,000 were executed by Germany solely for saving Jews.[31]

Analysis of the expression[edit]

Supporting rationale[edit]

Defenders argue that the expression "Polish death camps" refers strictly to the geographical location of the Nazi death camps and does not indicate involvement by the Polish government in France or, later, in the United Kingdom.[32] Some international politicians and news agencies have apologized for using the term, notably Barack Obama in 2012.[33] CTV Television Network News President Robert Hurst defended CTV's usage (see § Mass media) as it "merely denoted geographic location", but the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled against it, declaring CTV's use of the term to be unethical.[32] Others have not apologized, saying that it is a fact that Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Chełmno, Bełżec, and Sobibór were situated in German-occupied Poland.[citation needed]

Commenting upon the 2018 bill criminalizing such expressions (see § 2018 Polish law), Israeli politician Yair Lapid justified the expression "Polish death camps" with the argument that "hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier".[34]

Criticism of the expression[edit]

Opponents of the use of these expressions argue that they are inaccurate, as they may suggest that the camps were a responsibility of the Poles, when in fact they were designed, constructed, and operated by the Germans and were used to exterminate both non-Jewish Poles and Polish Jews, as well as Jews transported to the camps by the Germans from across Europe.[35][36] Historian Geneviève Zubrzycki and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have called the expression a misnomer.[1][2] It has also been described as "misleading" by the Washington Post editorial board,[37] the New York Times,[38] the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council,[32] and Nazi hunter Dr. Efraim Zuroff.[24] Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem described it as a "historical misrepresentation",[39] and White House spokesman Tommy Vietor referred to its use a "misstatement".[40]

Abraham Foxman of the ADL described the strict geographical defence of the terms as "sloppiness of language", and "dead wrong, highly unfair to Poland".[23] Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Adam Daniel Rotfeld said in 2005 that "Under the pretext that 'it's only a geographic reference', attempts are made to distort history".[41]

Public use of the expression[edit]

As early as 1944, the expression "Polish death camp" appeared as the title of a Collier's magazine article, "Polish Death Camp", an excerpt from the 1944 memoir by the Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski, Courier from Poland: The Story of a Secret State (reprinted in 2010 as Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World). Karski himself, in both the article and the book, used the expression "Jewish death camp", not "Polish death camp".[42][43]

Other early-postwar, 1945 uses of the expression "Polish death camp" occurred in the periodicals Contemporary Jewish Record,[44] The Jewish Veteran,[45] and The Palestine Yearbook and Israeli Annual,[46] as well as in a 1947 book, Beyond the Last Path, by Hungarian-born Jew and Belgian resistance fighter Eugene Weinstock[47] and in Polish writer Zofia Nałkowska's 1947 book Medallions.[48]

A 2016 article by Matt Lebovic stated that Agency 114, which recruited former Nazis to West Germany's intelligence service during the Cold War, worked to popularise the term "Polish death camps", in order to minimise German responsibility and implicate Poles in the atrocities.[49]

Mass media[edit]

On 30 April 2004 a Canadian Television (CTV) Network News report referred to "the Polish camp in Treblinka". The Polish embassy in Canada lodged a complaint with CTV. Robert Hurst of CTV, however, argued that the term "Polish" was used throughout North America in a geographical sense, and declined to issue a correction.[50] The Polish Ambassador to Ottawa then complained to the National Specialty Services Panel of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. The Council rejected Hurst's argument, ruling that the word "'Polish'—similarly to such adjectives as 'English', 'French' and 'German'—had connotations that clearly extended beyond geographic context. Its use with reference to Nazi extermination camps was misleading and improper."[32]

In 2009 Zbigniew Osewski, grandson of a Stutthof concentration camp prisoner, announced that he was suing Axel Springer AG for calling Majdanek concentration camp a "former Polish concentration camp" in a November 2008 article in the German newspaper Die Welt.[51] The case started in 2012.[52]

On 23 December 2009, British historian Timothy Garton Ash wrote in The Guardian: "Watching a German television news report on the trial of John Demjanjuk a few weeks ago, I was amazed to hear the announcer describe him as a guard in 'the Polish extermination camp Sobibor'. What times are these, when one of the main German TV channels thinks it can describe Nazi camps as 'Polish'? In my experience, the automatic equation of Poland with Catholicism, nationalism and antisemitism – and thence a slide to guilt by association with the Holocaust – is still widespread. This collective stereotyping does no justice to the historical record."[53]

In 2010 the Polish-American Kosciuszko Foundation launched a petition demanding that four major U.S. news organizations endorse use of the expression "German concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland".[54][55]

Canada's Globe and Mail reported on 23 September 2011 about "Polish concentration camps". Canadian Member of Parliament Ted Opitz and Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney supported Polish protests.[56]

In 2013 Karol Tendera, who had been a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau and is secretary of an association of former prisoners of German concentration camps, sued the German television network ZDF, demanding a formal apology and 50,000 zlotys, to be donated to charitable causes, for ZDF's use of the expression "Polish concentration camps".[57] ZDF was ordered by the court to make a public apology.[58] Some Poles felt the apology to be inadequate and protested with a truck bearing a banner that read "Death camps were Nazi German - ZDF apologize!" They planned to take their protest against the expression "Polish concentration camps" 1,600 kilometers across Europe, from Wrocław in Poland to Cambridge, England, via Belgium and Germany, with a stop in front of ZDF headquarters in Mainz.[59]

The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage recommends against using the expression,[60][61] as does the AP Stylebook,[62] and that of The Washington Post.[37] However, the 2018 Polish bill has been condemned by the editorial boards of The Washington Post[37] and The New York Times.[38]

Politicians[edit]

In May 2012 U.S. President Barack Obama referred to a "Polish death camp" while posthumously awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski. After complaints from Poles, including Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and Alex Storozynski, President of the Kosciuszko Foundation, an Obama administration spokesperson said the President had misspoken when "referring to Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland."[63][64] In May 31, 2012 President Obama wrote a letter[65] to Polish President Komorowski in which he explained that he used this phrase inadvertently in reference to "a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland" and further stated: "I regret the error and agree that this moment is an opportunity to ensure that this and future generations know the truth."

Polish government action[edit]

Media[edit]

The Polish government and Polish diaspora organizations have denounced the use of such expressions that include the words "Poland" or "Polish". The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs monitors the use of such expressions and seeks corrections and apologies if they are used.[66] In 2005, Poland's Jewish[67] Foreign Minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld remarked upon instances of "bad will, saying that under the pretext that 'it's only a geographic reference', attempts are made to distort history and conceal the truth."[41][68] He has stated that use of the adjective "Polish" in reference to concentration camps or ghettos, or to the Holocaust, can suggest that Poles perpetrated or participated in German atrocities, and emphasised that Poland was the victim of the Nazis' crimes.[41][dead link][68]

In 2017 the NGO Freedom House assessed Poland's media as "Partly Free", downgraded from "Free" the previous year, on account of the PiS government's policies. It stated that "the PiS government sought to undermine voices in the media that challenged its preferred historical narrative, which largely omits the involvement of Polish people in World War II–era atrocities."[69]

In 2016 historian Jan Grabowski published a paper criticising what he called "the history policy of the Polish state". He wrote that "the state-sponsored version of history seeks to undo the findings of the last few decades and to forcibly introduce a sanitized, feel-good narrative".[70] Some journalists have written of their experience of pressure from the Polish government after using one of these terms.[71]

Monuments[edit]

In 2008, the chairman of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (the IPN) wrote to local administrations, calling for the addition of the word "German" before "Nazi" to all monuments and tablets commemorating Germany's victims, stating that "Nazis" is not always understood to relate specifically to Germans. Several scenes of atrocities conducted by Germany were duly updated with commemorative plaques clearly indicating the nationality of the perpetrators. The IPN also requested better documentation and commemoration of crimes that had been perpetrated by the Soviet Union.[72]

Similar concerns prompted the Polish government to ask UNESCO to officially change the name "Auschwitz Concentration Camp" to "Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau", to clarify that the camp had been built and operated by Nazi Germany.[73][74][75][76] At its 28 June 2007 meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee changed the camp's name to "Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945)."[77][78] Previously some German media, including Der Spiegel, had called the camp "Polish".[79][80]

2018 Polish law and Israel-Polish consensus[edit]

Main articles: Laws against Holocaust denial § Poland, and Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance

On 6 February 2018 Poland's President Andrzej Duda signed into law an amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, criminalizing statements that ascribe collective responsibility in Holocaust-related crimes to the Polish nation,[5] It was generally understood that the law would criminalize use of the expressions "Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp".[6][7][8] Israeli officials and Jewish organizations criticized the legislation as an attempt to restrict discussion of anti-semitism in Poland and of the culpability of some Poles in the Holocaust.[81][82][83][needs update] Israel and Poland worked together on a re-phrasing of the law, and in a joint statement condemning both antisemitism and anti-Polish sentiment.[9]

The original 1998 Act had already specifically criminalized "public denial, against the facts, of Nazi crimes, communist crimes, and other offenses constituting crimes against peace, crimes against humanity or war crimes, committed against persons of Polish nationality or against Polish citizens of other nationalities, between 1 September 1939 and 31 July 1990"—such denial being punishable by fine or imprisonment for up to 3 years.[84]

Polish reactions[edit]

The 2018 Polish law, and what many Poles have considered an international over-reaction to it, have engendered strong feelings in Poland.

In January 2018, Israeli and Jewish comments about the Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance bill led, in Poland, to a spate of anti-Israel and antisemitic ripostes. State TV ran antisemitic crawls on a talk show; state-radio commentator Piotr Nisztor suggested that Poles who supported the official Israeli position might consider relinquishing their Polish citizenships; and TVP2 director Marcin Wolski remarked that the Auschwitz death camp might be called a "Jewish death camp", as Jewish Sonderkommando inmates had run its crematoria.[85][86][87]

On 29 January 2018 Polish President Andrzej Duda responded to official Israeli objections to the Polish bill, saying that Poland had been a victim of Nazi Germany and had not taken part in the Holocaust.[88] "I can never accept the slandering and libeling of us Poles as a nation or of Poland as a country through the distortion of historical truth and through false accusations." On 31 January 2018, before the Polish Senate vote on the bill, Deputy Prime Minister Beata Szydło said: "We Poles were victims, as were the Jews ... It is a duty of every Pole to defend the good name of Poland."[89]

On 8 February 2018 the Polish government opened a media campaign, in support of the Amendment, targeted to Poland, Israel, and the United States. Hashtags such as "#GermanDeathCamps" and "#PolishRighteousness" were spread by Polish government accounts, and a government-sponsored video went viral on Google, Facebook, and Twitter.[90][91][92]

On 14 March 2018 the Polish Bishops' Conference noted a rise in anti-Semitism stimulated by the controversy over the Amendment and declared anti-Semitism to be "contrary to the Christian tenet of loving one’s neighbor."[93]

Israeli reactions[edit]

Some Israelis accused the Polish government of engaging in Holocaust denial. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the legislation, saying:[81] "One cannot change history, and the Holocaust cannot be denied."

Knesset member and former journalist Yair Lapid has claimed that "[t]here were Polish death camps".[94] Other Israeli officials such as Education and Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett have termed the expression a "misrepresentation", although Bennett said of the proposed law "This is a shameful disregard of the truth. It is a historic fact that many Poles aided in the murder of Jews, handed them in, abused them, and even killed Jews during and after the Holocaust."[95]

After Poland's legislature began steps to outlaw use of the expression "Polish death camps", some Israeli officials expressed concern that Poland might try to whitewash its wartime history. "Those who see themselves as defenders of Poland’s good name are often quick to point out that in Poland there was no Quisling regime comparable to that which existed in other countries occupied by Germany — and that the Polish underground fought the Germans tooth and nail," the director of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, Laurence Weinbaum, wrote in The Washington Post in 2015. "The truth is that local authorities were often left intact in occupied Poland, and many officials exploited their power in ways that proved fatal to their Jewish constituents."[96][97]

However, Weinbaum was also highly critical of what he termed "the wild assertions of some of the Israelis who have weighed in with sweeping charges of Polish culpability for the Holocaust, and erroneous, disparaging declarations about the provenance of Auschwitz."[98] In a 1998 article he wrote that "Part of the hostility to Poland [in Jewish circles] is based on the entirely false impression that Germany chose occupied Poland as the venue for their death camps because they could count on Polish cooperation in carrying out the Final Solution. Although there is no historical evidence to support that contention, it has gained wide currency and credence ... Careless reference to 'Polish extermination camps', rather than German or Nazi camps, has also played a part in fostering this perception."[99]

Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, has opined: "There is no doubt that the term 'Polish death camps' is a historical misrepresentation [ ...] However, restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion."[39][100]

On 29 January 2018, Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted, "Of course they were not Polish. Those were German death camps. The issue is the legitimate and essential freedom to talk about the involvement of Poles in the murder of Jews without fear or threat of penalisation. Simple."[101]

Israeli political scientist Shlomo Avineri said young Israelis unintentionally associate the Holocaust with Poland, sometimes far more than with Nazi Germany. Writing in Haaretz, he called for a reappraisal of Israeli Holocaust education policy, to more greatly emphasize German culpability and Polish resistance during the March of the Living.[102]

Israeli president Reuven Rivlin said in Auschwitz that historians should be able to study the Holocaust without restrictions. He also stated "There is no doubt that many Poles fought against the Nazi regime, but we cannot deny the fact that Poland and Poles lent a hand to the annihilation".[103]

In protest at what she saw as the censorship and "borderline Holocaust denial" provided by the 2018 bill, Israeli journalist Lahav Harkov repeatedly tweeted the phrase "Polish death camps".[104][71][86]

Polish-American reactions[edit]

The 2018 law is supported by the president of the Polish American Congress.[105] It is opposed as counterproductive by the former president of the Kosciuszko Foundation, who launched a successful campaign to remove the expression "Polish death camps" from U.S. news publications.[106]

Jacek K. Matysiak, writing in the Polish-American newspaper Gwiazda Polarna, blames the current controversy on Benjamin Netanyahu's internal political struggles in Israel, and also sees it as related to Jewish claims against Poland for property lost by Polish Jews during World War II.[107]

Polish-Jewish reactions[edit]

In 2018 the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland said the legislation has led to a "growing wave of intolerance, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism", making many community members fearful for their safety.[108][109]

In 1998, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of Israel, the Jewish-Polish historian Janusz Sujecki received from the Israeli ambassador to Poland, Yigal Antebi, a prize recognizing Sujecki's "contributions to the preservation of Jewish culture in Poland". Twenty years later, in 2018, Sujecki returned the prize to the current Israeli ambassador to Poland, Anna Azari, in a "symbolic protest" against recent waves of "slander and libel" against Poland. Sujecki pointed out that, during the Holocaust, Poland had done all in her power to try to get the western Allies to stop the German mass murders of Jews, Poles, and other nationalities in German-occupied Poland. Jan Karski's report at a 1943 personal meeting with President Franklin Roosevelt brought no action, and Karski's personal report to Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise and other American and Jewish leaders brought only incredulity or indifference. Nor did Poland's western Allies react to appeals from the Polish government-in-exile in London, in 1944, to bomb the rail lines leading to the German concentration camps in occupied Poland.[110]

On March 15, 2018, a group of Polish rabbis thanked the Polish Bishops' conference for condemning a rise in anti-Semitism in the controversy, and said they would "continue to speak out against analogous attitudes among Jews."[93]

Other reactions[edit]

While the American Jewish Committee (AJC) has stated that it "has been for decades critical of such harmful terms as 'Polish concentration camps' and 'Polish death camps,' recognizing that these sites were erected and managed by Nazi Germany during its occupation of Poland", AJC has also said that, "while we remember the brave Poles who saved Jews, the role of some Poles in murdering Jews cannot be ignored", and that the AJC is "firmly opposed to legislation that would penalize claims that Poland or Polish citizens bear responsibility for any Holocaust crimes".[111][112]

According to Dr. Efraim Zuroff, use of the expression "Polish death camp" is misleading. He said "the Polish state was not complicit in the Holocaust, but many Poles were."[24][113]

On 3 February 2018 German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel tweeted: "I have been organizing youth travel to Auschwitz and Majdanek for 15 years as a group leader. That these camps were German - there can be no doubt! The use of the term "Polish death camp" is wrong."[114][115]

In February 2018 the Ruderman Family Foundation launched a campaign for the US government to sever its ties with Poland. The campaign included a YouTube video in which a group on-screen repeated the phrase "Polish Holocaust"; the video was removed after widespread criticism.[116][117]

Also in February 2018 a Washington Post opinion piece by Anne Applebaum emphasized the law's "stupidity and unenforceability", invoking the Streisand effect, but also argued that the Israeli government is using "this nasty little controversy for its own purposes."[118]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ a b Zubrzycki, Geneviève (2006). The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland. University of Chicago Press. p. 119. ISBN 9780226993058.
  2. ^ a b "White House 'regrets' reference to 'Polish death camp'". JTA. 30 May 2012.
  3. ^ Gebert, Konstanty (2014). "Conflicting memories: Polish and Jewish perceptions of the Shoah". In Fracapane, Karel; Haß, Matthias. Holocaust Education in a Global Context (PDF). UNESCO. p. 33. ISBN 978-92-3-100042-3.
  4. ^ "Lawmakers vote to outlaw references to ‘Polish death camps’"[dead link], Washington Post / Associated Press, January 26, 2018
  5. ^ a b Parliament of Poland (29 January 2018). "Ustawa z dnia 26 stycznia 2018 r. o zmianie ustawy o Instytucie Pamięci Narodowej – Komisji Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, ustawy o grobach i cmentarzach wojennych, ustawy o muzeach oraz ustawy o odpowiedzialności podmiotów zbiorowych za czyny zabronione pod groźbą kary]" (PDF). Parliament of Poland. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 February 2018. Retrieved 2 February 2018. [Anyone] who, in public and against the facts, ascribes to the Polish Nation or to the Polish State, responsibility or co-responsibility for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich,< ...> or who otherwise grossly reduces the responsibility of the actual perpetrators of said crimes, is subject to a fine or [to] imprisonment for up to 3 years. < ...> No offense referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 shall have been committed if the act was performed as part of artistic or scholarly activity.
  6. ^ a b Israel and Poland try to tamp down tensions after Poland’s ‘death camp’ law sparks Israeli outrage, Washington Post, 28 January 2018
  7. ^ a b Israel and Poland clash over proposed Holocaust law, Reuters, 28 January 2018
  8. ^ a b c The Controversy Around Poland’s Proposed Ban on the Term “Polish Death Camps”, Smithsonian.com, 29 January 2018
  9. ^ a b https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-poland-resolve-dispute-over-polish-holocaust-law/
  10. ^ a b "Collaboration and Complicity during the Holocaust — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". www.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2018-01-28.
  11. ^ Leslie, R. F. (1983). The History of Poland Since 1863. Cambridge University Press. p. 217. ISBN 9780521275019.
  12. ^ Carla Tonini, The Polish underground press and the issue of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, 1939-1944, European Review of History: Revue Europeenne d'Histoire, Volume 15, Issue 2 April 2008, pages 193-205.
  13. ^ Klaus-Peter Friedrich. Collaboration in a "Land without a Quisling": Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II. Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, (Winter, 2005), pp. 711-746.
  14. ^ Kaczmarek, Ryszard (2010), Polacy w Wehrmachcie [Poles in the Wehrmacht] (in Polish), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, ISBN 978-83-08-04494-0, retrieved January 29, 2018, Paweł Dybicz for Tygodnik "Przegląd" 38/2012.
  15. ^ Janusz Gumkowski and Kazimierz Leszczynski, "Hitler's War; Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe", 1961, in Poland under Nazi Occupation, Polonia Publishing House, Warsaw, pp. 7-33, 164-178.
  16. ^ Michael Geyer (2009). Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared. Cambridge University Press. pp. 152–153. ISBN 978-0-521-89796-9.
  17. ^ Carla Tonini, The Polish underground press and the issue of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, 1939-1944, European Review of History: Revue Europeenne d'Histoire, Volume 15, Issue 2 April 2008, pages 193 - 205
  18. ^ Klaus-Peter Friedrich. Collaboration in a "Land without a Quisling": Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II. Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, (Winter, 2005), pp. 711-746. JSTOR
  19. ^ John Connelly, Why the Poles Collaborated so Little: And Why That Is No Reason for Nationalist Hubris, Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 771-781, JSTOR
  20. ^ "Polish Resistance and Conclusions — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". www.ushmm.org.
  21. ^ "Opinion The Polish People Weren't Tacit Collaborators With Nazi Extermination of Jews". 24 February 2017 – via Haaretz.
  22. ^ Kermish, Joseph (1989). "The activities of the Council for Aid to Jews ("Zegota") in Occupied Poland". In Marrus, Michael Robert. The Nazi Holocaust. Part 5: Public Opinion and Relations to the Jews in Nazi Europe. Walter de Gruyter. p. 499. ISBN 9783110970449.
  23. ^ a b Foxman, Abraham H. (12 June 2012). "Poland And The Death Camps: Setting The Record Straight". The Jewish Week.
  24. ^ a b c It’s complicated: Inaccuracies plague both sides of ‘Polish death camps’ debate, Times of Israel, 28 January 2018, Cnaan Lipshiz
  25. ^ Wacław Zajączkowski, Christian Martyrs of Charity, Washington, D.C., S.M. Kolbe Foundation, June 1988, ISBN 0945281005, pp. 152–178. German military police in Grzegorzówka (p. 153) and in Hadle Szklarskie (p.154) extracted from two Jewish women the names of Poles who had been helping Jews, and 11 Polish men were murdered. In Korniaktów Forest, Łańcut County, a Jewish woman, discovered in an underground shelter, revealed the whereabouts of the Polish family who had been feeding her, and the whole family were murdered (p. 167). In Jeziorko, Łowicz County, a Jewish man betrayed all the Polish rescuers known to him, and 13 Poles were murdered by the German military police (p. 160). In Lipowiec Duży (Biłgoraj County), a captured Jew led the Germans to his saviors, and 5 Poles were murdered, including a 6-year-old child, and their farm was burned (p. 174). On a train to Kraków, the Żegota woman courier who was smuggling four Jewish women to safety was shot dead when one of the Jewish women lost her nerve (p. 170).
  26. ^ Władysław Żarski-Zajdler, Martyrologia ludności żydowskiej i pomoc społeczeństwa polskiego (The Martyrology of the Jews, and Aid Given to Them by Poles), Warsaw, ZBoWiD, 1968, p. 16.
  27. ^ Hans G. Furth, "One Million Polish Rescuers of Hunted Jews?", Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 1, issue 2 (June 1999), pp. 227–32.
  28. ^ Richard C. Lukas, 1989.
  29. ^ "Names of Righteous by Country | www.yadvashem.org". www.yadvashem.org. Retrieved 2018-01-28.
  30. ^ Chaim Chefer (1996). "Righteous of the World: Polish citizens killed while helping Jews During the Holocaust". Those That Helped. The HolocaustForgotten.com. Archived from the original on 2012-01-11.
  31. ^ Richard C. Lukas, Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust, University Press of Kentucky, 1989, ISBN 0813116929, p. 13.
  32. ^ a b c d Canadian CTV Television censured Archived 27 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine.
  33. ^ Poland may criminalize term 'Polish death camp' to describe Nazi WWII Holocaust sites, UPI, 17 August 2016
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External links[edit]

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