The neglected narrative: Polish Victims in The Shadow of The Holocaust

Before 1986, no American historian had written a systematic account of the Polish people under the German occupation.

Prior to that time, the story of ethnic Poles had been subsumed by the genocide of the Jews. Jewish historians, American and Israeli were and still are the foremost interpreters of the Polish wartime experience to American audiences – Poles were effectively silenced.

Their view of the Poles followed an astonishingly simplistic narrative, unfortunately that Poles were anti-Semitic and their hatred resulted in collaboration with the Germans against the Jews. This kind of history could only gain currency in a country where knowledge of World War II had been limited largely to the American role in fighting Germany and Japan on several military and naval fronts.

Americans had a better understanding of Western Europe and Italy, where American GIs fought and died, than eastern Europe, which was terra incognita. The flood of Holocaust literature in the United States in the decades following the war, which today has turned into an avalanche so huge that it eclipses the volume of writing on the American Civil War.

Since Poland was the principal site where the Germans implemented the Final Solution of the Jews, Holocaust writers saw Poles primarily as anti-Semites who at best were callously indifferent to the plight of the Jews, and at worst were collaborators with the Germans in eliminating them. The consequence was that Americans formed a negative impression of the Polish people. Writers on the Holocaust made no serious attempt to understand the magnitude of the tragedy that Christian Poles had experienced.

If Poles had been placed within that contextual framework, a more objective, balanced, and mature historical writing of the Holocaust of the Jews and the genocide of the Poles and other ethnic groups would have resulted. This has been the major issue faced by the Polish in the United States and how they are viewed.

There are Holocaust museums in every major city and all schools have mandatory curriculum to educate students on what Jewish administrators from the state Holocaust departments demand. In view of the negative image of Poland in Holocaust literature, the American media continued to peddle the insulting stereotypes of the 1970s in television specials in the 1980s and 1990s. Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, which ran a mind-numbing nine hours in length, appeared in 1985 and was followed by Marian Marzynski’s Shtetl in 1996.

Erroneously described by their producers as “documentaries,” both productions depicted Poles as stupid, boorish, and anti-Semitic. Worse were those like Jerzy Kosinski who literally smeared the entire nation, turning them into savages, although he was alive because of Poles.

Even “Schindlers List” is full of fallacies and deceptions about the Polish and considering how many stories there are about Poles saving Jews, the stories we know are about Germans saving Jews.

Historian Norman Davies gave his own example about his time in university on how he was taught that Poles were to be treated and described as “bystanders”, but now we witness them being labeled as victimizers.

Many of you witness this in the media and years of historical revisionism and lack of objective writing has taken its toll in the minds of the public. One of greatest writers on this subject, Richard Lucas has been repeatedly ignored and recently defamed.

In the last sentence of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the narrator reflects on Gatsby’s untimely death, saying;

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

In other words, we try to move ahead but the current of life flows backward and always into the past. That is it is an awesome responsibility for historians to treat the life experiences of ALL people who lived before us with sensitivity, fairness, objectivity, and respect.

That is the best we can do.

Added reference: Richard Lucas

By Edward Reid on Fecebook

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