Between Denial and Dialogue: Why Honest History Matters

The term Holocaust denial once had a clear and essential meaning.

It referred to rejecting the historical truth that Germany intentionally carried out the genocide of six million Jews during World War II. Over time, however, the expression has sometimes been used more broadly, even to silence people who discuss difficult or lesser-known aspects of wartime history.

For years I accepted a familiar narrative. I grew up in the United States, visited Holocaust museums, watched Schindler’s List, and heard stories that shaped how I saw the world. None of that was false, but it was incomplete. When I moved to Poland and began reading wartime diaries, underground reports, and testimonies from both Jewish and Polish survivors, I realized how much complexity had been stripped away in the way this history is often taught.

Wartime reality was filled with impossible choices. In every occupied society, whether Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian, or otherwise, there were acts of heroism, collaboration, fear, and moral compromise. In the ghettos, Jewish Councils (Judenräte) and the Jewish Police operated under German control. Some individuals believed that by obeying orders they could save others, some were corrupted by power, and many were simply trying to survive. These facts of collaboration are well documented by figures such as Emanuel Ringelblum, Peretz Opoczynski, and Chaim Kaplan, whose writings captured the daily tragedy of life under occupation, yet this history is hardly ever mentioned.

Acknowledging these realities does not mean shifting blame away from Germany, whose leadership planned and carried out the Holocaust. It means confronting how ordinary human beings respond to total terror, a truth that applies across nations and faiths. The Polish “Blue Police,” Soviet collaborators, and others faced similarly wrenching moral tests. Understanding these dynamics deepens rather than diminishes our understanding of human suffering.

Yet the conversation today often feels one sided. Many Poles, who built an entire underground state and created Żegota to save Jewish lives, are portrayed mainly through the lens of antisemitism. Meanwhile, the moral dilemmas within Jewish society during occupation are rarely if ever discussed publicly. When they are, the person raising the issue is often be accused of denial, antisemitism, or revisionism even when relying on Jewish sources themselves (I know and I have faced this numerous times). This narrowing of discourse does not protect history. It impoverishes it; it destroys the truth and as a historian I see how it corrupts the very nature of this subject.

Władysław Bartoszewski, who helped Jews as part of the Polish resistance and later became a historian, once wrote about this moral double standard. “While the Polish masses are condemned for their fear or passivity, Jewish leaders in the ghettos are excused on the grounds that they had no choice. But moral judgment must be the same for everyone.”

That, I believe, is the heart of the matter. We should be able to speak about all sides of history with compassion, honesty, and courage. The Holocaust was a tragedy for humanity, not a story owned by any one people. Remembering it truthfully means recognizing every dimension: courage and betrayal, resistance and collaboration, victims and rescuers alike.

The History becomes dangerous only when we stop asking questions. As Hannah Arendt warned after the Eichmann trial, the greatest threat is not evil itself but the refusal to think. I write and speak about these subjects not to provoke but to insist that truth, in all its painful detail, deserves to be heard, especially for Poland with so much revisionism and manipulation.

Edward Reid Facebook ; (https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=899993089209962&set=a.159252953283983)