Claims of Polish Holocaust complicity are ‘blood libel’ against Poland, says US ambassador

Helen Wright

Edited by: Matthew Day, Rafał Liedke

 23.11.2025, 04:57 | Update 24.11.2025, 05:32

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America’s ambassador to Warsaw has called narratives about Poland’s complicity in the Holocaust a “grotesque falsehood” and the equivalent of a “blood libel” against the Polish people in a strongly worded speech.

Speaking at the International Jewish Lawyers conference in Warsaw this week, Ambassador Tom Rose said it is “slander” that Poland “somehow bears responsibility for the crimes committed by others.” 

Nazi Germany systematically killed millions of Jews and other minorities during World War II, with much of the slaughter taking place in occupied Poland, notably in death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau.  

Due to their geographic location, the Nazi death camps have often been attributed as “Polish death camps” in the international media, which could imply Poland was also to blame for the genocide of Jews. 

Many Polish citizens have been lauded for helping Jews hide from the Nazis and Poland never had a collaborationist government. However, a small number of Poles are known to have colluded—a highly sensitive topic to this day. 

In August, a group of Israeli football fans provoked outrage by unfurling a banner calling Poles “Murderers since 1939.” It received widespread criticism, including from the U.S. ambassador, then a nominee to the role.  

‘Grave injustice’ 

On Thursday, Rose called such claims a “grave historical injustice” in an almost 9-minute-long speech.  

“It’s a grotesque falsehood and the equivalent of a blood libel against the Polish people and Polish nation,” Rose, who is Jewish, told the conference audience. 

The phrase “blood libel” refers to a long-held false and antisemitic accusation that Jews murder Christians to use their blood for religious rituals. It has been used to justify and incite violence against Jewish communities for centuries. 

“Poland was the only occupied country with no collaborationist government, and the only occupied country that never formally surrendered,” the ambassador continued. 

“It was the Polish government in exile and the Underground State that first tried to warn the world what was happening here,” Rose said. “They smuggled out intelligence from Auschwitz and issued the first appeal to an indifferent but admittedly preoccupied world.” 

Poland created the only government-sponsored underground institution in occupied Europe devoted solely to saving Jews, the ambassador added. 

A complex history 

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According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, around three million Jews in Poland—or about 90% of the country’s Jewish population—were murdered in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1945. 

Israeli institute Yad Vashem, which acts as the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, has recognized over 7,000 Poles as “Righteous Among the Nations” for helping save Jews during this period. 

While the ambassador highlighted Poland’s positive actions during the war in his speech, there is also evidence of collaboration with the Nazis, as well as Poles committing antisemitic acts.  

One of the most infamous incidents is the 1941 pogrom in the eastern town of Jedwabne, where 340 Jews were murdered by a group of nationalist Poles, incited by the occupying German forces. 

At the 84th anniversary of the massacre in July, Yad Vashem called for the removal of an installation by right-wing activist which denied Polish involvement. The U.S. ambassador, at that time a nominee to the post, called the disruption of the ceremony “shameful.”  

Some scholars have also accused Poland of whitewashing or manipulating history to portray itself more positively.  

Rose: Poles were ‘heroic’ 

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However, Ambassador Rose said that anyone in German-occupied Poland who offered a Jew “a crust of bread, a night in a barn, a forged paper” faced execution themselves. 

“These heroic Poles proved that even in their country’s bleakest night, multitudes of Poles chose conscience over fear and humanity over terror,” he said.  

Rose said it is “morally scandalous” to hold Poland responsible for the “genocide perpetrated by others on its soil against its people.” 

The ambassador also pointed out that Poland mandates Holocaust education at its own expense, restores cemeteries and synagogues, and has made Holocaust memory a permanent and national responsibility.

Source: https://tvpworld.com/90158811/us-ambassador-claims-of-polish-holocaust-involvement-slanderous

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What the Numbers Reveal: Jews Who Sought Help, and Poles Who Saved Them

The number of Jews rescued in the territory of German-occupied Poland has been estimated very differently by Jewish historians. Filip Friedman placed the figure at 40,000–50,000, while Józef Kermisz proposed a much higher estimate of 100,000–120,000. Norman Davies similarly stresses the complexity of the question. As he writes:

“Of the 3.35 million Jews in Poland in 1939, an estimated 369,000, or 11 per cent, survived. The largest group of survivors were those who fled or were incorporated into the USSR in 1939. In 1945–46 some 200,000 Polish Jews crossed into People’s Poland from the USSR. The rest [about 170,000] survived in Poland by living in barns, cellars and rafters, by assuming false identities or by the protection of peasants.” (Davies, God’s Playground, p. 744)

When assessing the scale of rescue, it is essential to understand that the number of Jews saved by Poles cannot be compared to the total Jewish population of prewar Poland. It must instead be compared to the number of Jews who chose to seek rescue outside the ghettos, rejecting both German orders and the directives of the Jewish administrations. Poles could not rescue people who did not ask for help or who chose to remain under ghetto authority. This fundamental fact shapes every attempt at estimation.

No historian possesses an exact number for either the Jews who escaped from the ghettos or those saved by Poles.

If we use mid-range estimates between 40,000 and 170,000 Jews rescued by Poles, and between 170,000 and 335,000 Jews who sought refuge among the Polish population, we reach an average scenario in which 202,500 Jews attempted to find shelter with Poles, of whom approximately 105,000 survived. That would mean over half of those who asked for help were rescued.

Even in the most pessimistic scenario, 335,000 Jews seeking refuge but only 40,000 surviving it would still mean that Poles saved roughly 10 percent of those who appealed to them for help. Even this lowest figure is immense when weighed against the scale of German terror and the death penalty imposed on any Pole who assisted Jews.

This can be contrasted with the fate of Jews under the Jewish administration of the Łódź Ghetto. Of the roughly 250,000 Jews living in the so-called “Jewish Autonomy” in Łódź in 1939, Chaim Rumkowski managed to save only 887 people, about 0.35 percent of the entire population.

Norman Davies estimates that 24 million Poles lived in postwar Poland. If one-third were children, that leaves roughly 16 million adults. Assuming that rescuing one Jew typically required the help of around ten Poles, then between 400,000 and 1.7 million adult Poles were involved in hiding and protecting between 40,000 and 170,000 Jews. Each of these people faced the threat of execution, and many did in fact lose their lives for helping Jews.

Recognizing the enormous scale of Polish assistance does not mean claiming that the entire Polish nation experienced a unified sense of solidarity with the Jews during the Holocaust.

Czesław Miłosz’s poem Campo di Fiori famously evokes the image of a carousel spinning just outside the burning ghetto of Warsaw. Perhaps the carousel truly was there.

Yet focusing solely on those who continued with their daily pleasures overlooks a broader reality: between 1939 and 1942, the Jews living in their ghettos and autonomous administrations did not universally suspend theater performances, concerts, or cultural life, nor did they rush to aid Poles who were being executed, sent to camps, or caught in mass round-ups.

Historical perspective requires balance. As the Jewish historian Szymon Datner calculated, for every ten civilians killed by the Germans in occupied Poland, nine were ethnic Poles. Both nations suffered immensely, and neither could save the other on a national scale. Rescue was always individual, always dangerous, and always carried out under the shadow of death.

Considering the circumstances, Poland’s performance in rescuing Jews was truly remarkable. When weighed against the lethal punishments imposed by the German occupiers and the overwhelming terror that governed daily life, Poland’s efforts far surpassed those of most other nations in occupied Europe. No other society faced such absolute, codified death penalties for the slightest act of assistance. Yet hundreds of thousands of Poles still chose to help, and tens of thousands of Jews survived because of them.

Sources:

Ewa Kurek, Poles and Jews – Beyond limits of Solidarity.

Filip Friedman, estimates for rescue numbers.

Józef Kermisz, estimates for rescue numbers.

Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, vol. II, Kraków 2003, p. 744.

Władysław Bartoszewski & Zofia Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej (He Who Saves One Life), p. 9.

Szymon Datner, calculations on proportional civilian deaths in occupied Poland.

Tomasz Szarota, “Czy śmiały się tłumy wesołe?” (Did the crowds laugh?), Rzeczpospolita, 28 February 2004.

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