"Follow me" signals Dr. Jacek Konik. "We are standing in the center of Warsaw at the place where the Jewish ghetto used to stand, near a memorial to the fighters of the ghetto uprising. Konik, a history professor, and Aharon (Albert) Stankowski, the director of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, currently under development, lead me beyond a row of trees to a grass field where a compound is closed off by a metal fence. Konik opens the lock, pushes open the gates, and says in Hebrew, "zeh" ("this").
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I'm thrown back to a dramatic moment in Warsaw's history. In the middle of a green field, under a gray and drizzling sky is the basement where Jews hid during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in October 1943, when, for the first time, Jews took their fate into their own hands and fought the Germans. I see the rooms of the bunker, the passages leading to nearby buildings, the electricity networks, and water and sewage pipes painted gray, the color that testifies to the huge fire that in the end consumed the entire ghetto to the very last building. Not far from the place where we are standing, fighters of the Jewish Combat Organization raised the Polish and Zionist flags when the uprising began. It was from the building that stands above the basement that they threw grenades and opened fire on the SS brigades sent to put down the Jewish rebels.
"We found many findings that reveal how life was here," says Konik, who is leading a dig at the site. "Tefillin, candlesticks, cups for ritual washing of hands, and other items."
The excavation has been going on for several months, organized by the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, one of several new initiatives by the Polish government to research and memorialize the Holocaust. The museum will be housed in Warsaw's former Jewish Hospital on the other side of the ghetto, about a 10-minute drive from the dig site. It was supposed to open in the spring of 2023 to mark the 80th anniversary of the uprising, but the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine have delayed plans by about three years.
We drive over to the Jewish hospital, a building that has a fascinating history of its own and was operational until 2007. When the municipality failed to sell the building, it was selected as the site for a museum of the Ghetto Uprising. Museum director Stankowski showed me a temporary exhibit of images of life and death in the ghetto, before, during, and after the war. The building has yet to be opened to the public but throughout its rooms, there are hundreds of domestic items: plates, bottles, cutlery, and metal wires. There's nothing there that is even reminiscent of weaponry, but there are burned remnants of holy books. The tefillin (phylacteries) found in the basement are locked in a separate safe in the museum's temporary offices.
Walls that have become a memorial
At present, Stankowski is planning just one more dig in the enormous area that was once the ghetto. After the Germans burnt it to the ground, the Russians bombed anything that was left to prevent looting. That was the fate of most of Warsaw and that is the reason that only remnants of the ghetto are left. But despite the destruction, Warsaw, like Berlin, doesn't hide the horrors of the Nazis from visitors. On the contrary, the few walls of the ghetto that remain have become memorial sites. A monument to Janusz Korczak stands right by the Palace of Culture and Science, a massive hi-rise building that looks out over the city. Driving along Próżna Street, by number 12, I notice a huge mural with letters in Hebrew that shows Jewish life that used to exist here. It was painted as part of a large project in which the municipality hired young artists to paint a picture of what Jewish life was like in Warsaw before the war.
One of the main entrances to Warsaw is called Jerozolimskie or Jerusalem Avenue which cuts through the city until it reaches the ghetto. According to my guide, Michael, the city's intent is to remind its residents about the Jews who were murdered and the ghetto that was destroyed. Located in the heart of Warsaw is the "POLIN" museum which tells the story of one thousand years of Jewish life in the country. It was established and is run with state funding. Twice a year, sirens are sounded as a mark of national memory – albeit not throughout the country: on April 19, the date the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is marked, and on August 1, when the Polish uprising against the Nazis began in 1944.
Poland holds far more remembrance ceremonies than Israel does, marking various chapters in the destruction of the Jews by the Nazis. For example, my two-day visit as a guest of the Polish Institute was part of a ceremony to mark 80 years since Operation Reinhard, the main chapter in the Nazi murder of 1,700,000 Jews, most of them Polish Jews from March 1942 to November 1943.
"Poland is one of the most progressive countries in Holocaust remembrance. The museum that we are establishing to memorialize the Ghetto Uprising is a positive example of this," Stankowski tells me. He is Jewish, wears a kippah, and speaks rudimentary Hebrew. He is a child of Holocaust survivors; his father remained in Poland, unlike most survivors who fled to Israel because of the pogroms conducted by Poles against Jews after the war, and others who were deported by the Communist government in 1968. He is a frequent visitor to Israel, both for work and to visit his relatives. He has several Israelis working with him on the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, among them Prof. Daniel Blatman from the Hebrew University, the museum's chief historian. In a conversation held at the museum's temporary offices, he lists the memorial remembrance sites that are currently being built at death camps across Poland. "A new educational center is being built at Treblinka and an impressive museum is in the works at Sobibor, all financed by the Polish government."
Q: Doesn't it bother you that the Poles have enacted a law that determines what can and what cannot be said about Poland's role in the Holocaust?
"Up until this law was passed people wrote and said, 'Polish death camps.' The Polish government said, 'say whatever you like, but base whatever you say on facts and evidence.' Today as a result of the law, it is clear that the death camps were German death camps established on Polish soil, and nobody says this [Polish death camps] anymore. Just as not all Israelis are to blame if one Israeli killed a Palestinian, the same goes for Poles and Jews. There are differing facets to history; not everything is black and white. Jews lived in Poland for one thousand years. [Menachem] Begin and [David] Ben Gurion and many others were born here. That is a side we need to show as well. We have to show the whole spectrum. People simplify history. Not all Poles are antisemites. Not all the Poles killed Jews. There were also seven thousand Poles recognized as Righteous Gentiles. And thanks to one of them who saved my father, I am alive."
In addition to the Polin Museum and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, another Jewish project is The Jewish Historical Institute, also known as the Ringelblum Museum after the historian, Emmanuel Ringelblum, who with extraordinary talent and insight documented the Nazi horrors in real time and managed to preserve information in order for it to be discovered after the war, which is indeed what happened. Despite his well-developed historical sense, Ringelblum only understood in retrospect how wrong his opposition and that of most of the Jewish leadership to a revolt against the Nazis had been. This realization came too late. He and his family were captured after the Ghetto uprising and eliminated. The museum that bears his name describes the history of Polish Jewry, with an emphasis on the destruction, and tells the story of the Oyneg Shabbos group, which worked with him to document the horrors. The institute is located in a historic building belonging to the Jewish community, one of the only buildings in the city to survive both the Nazis and the Communists.
"Here, near the community building was the Great Synagogue of Warsaw but the Germans bombed it in revenge for the Ghetto uprising," attorney Monica Krawczyk, the director of the Ringelblum Museum tells me. In the lobby of the building there are still signs of fire on the floor, the fire that started when the Nazis burned the ghetto to the ground. The building was gripped by flames but not destroyed.
The Ringelblum Museum is also funded by the Polish government. "We have no reason to complain," says Krawczyk, who is also Jewish, describing her connections with the Polish establishment. "We have a research division that includes fifteen academics who study primarily the period of the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath. They have complete freedom, without any restrictions. We cooperate with Yad Vashem [The World Holocaust Remembrance Center] in Israel and also with the Yakov Herzog [Jewish Studies] College."
Q: There's criticism in Israel of the fact that the Poles blur their role in the murder of Jews and that this is not included in the study curriculum at schools.
"The struggle here is about the number of hours of history students study in general and about these studies including the Holocaust. So you asked me about the specific issue of the role of the Poles in the murder? I would suggest that whoever said that leave the issue of the Polish school curriculum alone."
Q: And if one of your researchers wants to study the role of the Poles in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust or afterward, can they do so freely?
"The answer is an unequivocal 'yes.' But there are a lot of issues and aspects that can be researched. How did the Jews survive in the ghetto? What were their lives like? What was the connection between the Jewish resistance and the non-Jewish resistance? What you are talking about is just one of many issues and you are raising this because, in Israel, people have claimed there are restrictions on academic freedom and freedom of expression here in Poland. I believe there are no such restrictions today."
A new law to shape historical consciousness
Krawczyk's complex answer testifies to the highly charged, volatile, and emotional debate on the issue between Israel and Poland. Unlike most disputes between states, this one does not deal with the past, it deals with the present. For Israelis, the Poles are to blame. Some 90% of Polish Jewry, which numbered 3.3 million before the war, were murdered, a number equal to half of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Most of the destruction of European Jewry was carried out on Polish soil, but Poles too see themselves as victims of the Nazis, no less than the Jews, Some six million Poles were murdered by the Germans. The German death camps were built in Poland because under Nazi theory, the Poles were seen as a lower race and the Nazis did not want to defile German soil. And then there were thousands of Poles who saved Jews during the war.
The conflict between Israel and Poland has a clear birth date: January 27, 2018. It is the day the world marks the liberation of Auschwitz and it is the day when the Polish parliament in Warsaw legislated the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, which governs the activities of the institute, but more importantly was aimed at shaping the way the Polish people sees its past. One of its major clauses prohibits the use of the terms "Polish death camps'' and "Polish concentration camps" for the camps operated on Polish soil by the Nazis and went as far as stipulating a three-year prison sentence for anyone employing those terms.
The law caused great consternation not just among the international community and in Israel but also in Poland. itself. Israel's foreign minister at the time Israel Katz said in response to the law that the "Poles suckle antisemitism with their mother's milk." The European Union, which is no fan of Poland's right-wing government, accused it of restricting freedom of speech and academic freedom and said that Poland's democracy was on a slippery slope. Poland's strongman Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tried to fend off the criticism. "It will not be seen as criminal if someone were to say there were Polish perpetrators – as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators, as there were Ukrainian.... not only German perpetrators."
Morawiecki, who as a youth fought the Communist regime, has two Jewish aunts: One of them survived the Holocaust thanks to a Polish Righteous Gentile. His statement meant to say that the law prohibits any generalization against Poland itself but does not prevent the mention of crimes committed by those who the Poles describe as "individuals." His claim that the Jews are as guilty of the Holocaust as other people only inflamed the criticism against his government. Later, Polish President Andrzej Duda added fuel to the fire when he said that Katz's comments had caused an increase in antisemitism in Poland.
That fire was extinguished by then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Morawiecki who put out a joint statement formulated by experts from both countries that both sides could live with, but the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center and many others condemned this statement, which was not free of politics. Another step on the way to solving the crisis was the annulment of jail sentences for using the term "Polish death camps." Under pressure from Netanyahu, this sanction was removed from the law. The Poles understood they had made a mistake.
The relative calm did not last long, however. In the summer of 2021, the Poles passed an amendment to the country's property law under which claims for the restitution of property seized by the Communists would be declared void after 30 years. The law aimed to put an end to the property claims that have been ongoing in Poland since the beginning of the democratic era in the country in 1989. It was not solely aimed against Jews but at least according to some interpretations, it could have limited restitution of Jewish property. At around the same time, Israel's then-new Foreign Minister Yair Lapid came into the position full of fighting spirit. Lapid decided that he would "educate the Poles" as he put it in closed conversations. "We aren't afraid of antisemitic threats, and we will not blink in the face of Poland's anti-democratic government." he declared. In response to the law, Lapid instructed that Israel's new Ambassador to Poland Jacob Livne remain in Israel and recommended to the Polish ambassador to Israel not to return from a vacation in Warsaw. Thus, a small dispute became a major crisis.
At the same time, Israel suspended youth delegations and educational tours to the death camps because of Polish intervention in the content of the tours and because of "security issues." Later, Israel decided to resume the youth delegations, but now the Poles are refusing to allow them to take place, and they continue to insist that there is no justification for the presence of armed Israeli security guards on Polish soil. Israel's position is that every official delegation to almost anywhere in the world is accompanied by armed guards. The Poles view this as an insult and stress that Poland is safer for Jews than Western Europe, and for that matter, safer than Israel itself. Israel's demand that it take responsibility for security on Polish soil is seen as a way of broadcasting a message to Israeli youth that Poland remains unsafe for them even today.
Many in the European Union and in Israel believe that the Polish government has built a historical narrative aimed at serving its purposes. One indication of this is the change of directors at the museums and memorial institutions, where veteran professionals have been replaced by younger and politically well-connected persons who aren't always historians. Many see this as the politicization of memory. In Israel, but elsewhere as well, many claim that in today's Poland, it is not possible to speak freely about the role played by Poles in the Holocaust. On the other hand, Polish government representatives insist this is a complete fallacy. During my short visit to Warsaw, I tried to find answers; I'm not sure that I succeeded.
Secrets in the National Archive
In a compound of warehouses in south Warsaw lies the Polish State Archives, where documents are kept at carefully controlled temperatures behind heavy doors, with the entrance codes known only to a select few. My hosts lead me deep into the ground to an archive that tells the story of Poland from 1917 – a year before it regained independence – to 1990, a year after the end of the Russian-Communist occupation.
The years are not coincidental. The way the Poles see it, the German invasion in 1939 and the Russian occupation beginning in 1944 are one catastrophe split into two chapters. The Polish narrative is that without the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement that divided Poland between Germany and Russia, Hitler wouldn't have dared invade Polish territory and start a world war. The Polish government nurtures the nationalist motif and that is one of the reasons that, along with Hungary, it is considered the "bad child" of the European Union. Many Poles today dislike the Germans and the Russians to the same degree.
The first item presented to me in the archives is a map of a planned Soviet invasion of Europe from 1970. Blue balloons mark where nuclear missiles were to fall. A few hours after my visit, shrapnel from a missile fell in Eastern Poland – collateral damage from the fighting in Ukraine: The historical map comes to life.
But my interest is in the way Poland remembers the Holocaust and I ask my guide to take us to the relevant part of the archives. The Poles, it transpires, define as "war criminals" anyone who collaborated with the Nazis or the Communists. A million documents about these criminals are kept in the archives. After the Holocaust, the Communist regime put on trial all the Poles who were known to have been involved in the murder of Jews. From the Polish perspective, they wrought justice on Polish civilians who took part in crimes against Jews. That at least is the official version.
We come to a room where documentation pertaining to the destruction of the Jews is kept. A nice young man by the name of David Juma, who is responsible for the department, pulls out of the long draws documents about Adolf Eichmann, Ana Frank, and a young Jewish girl called Lota Eckstein, whose family fled Germany for Poland in 1938, but was murdered in 1941. "The red cross on her file is the sign that she died," explains David.
He also tells us that when Israelis file for Polish citizenship their requests come to the archives in order to confirm the Polish relatives listed in their requests. Juma notes that many of those killed by the Communists were Jews.
Are there any restrictions on the use of documents that testify to crimes committed by Poles against Jews? Absolutely not, David responds. Would anybody looking to research such crimes receive your full assistance? David's answer this time is an unequivocal yes, and we bid each other farewell.
Dr. Mateusz Szpytma, a deputy president of the Institute for National Remembrance is responsible for the archives. The institute has been at the center of an international storm since the law that established it was passed in 2018. At the beginning of our meeting, Dr. Szpytma tells me about the history of his family and the bloody price they paid when they tried to save eight Jews during the Holocaust. "Unfortunately, everyone was killed, the Jews and my relatives who tried to save them. But for that reason, I have always been interested in the fate of the Jews and in Polish-Jewish relations," says Szpytma, who adds that he has visited Israel eight times. He continues: "I have been working at the Institute for 28 years. I began from the bottom up and I have published many papers. At the moment I am in an administrative role that does not enable me to do research. But if we list here in our conversation, all the projects connected to the memory of the Jews, we will be talking for a long time. The initiative to conduct a memorial ceremony for Operation Reinhard was mine."
I put to him that the dispute is not about the memory of the Holocaust and that there is no disputing that Poland has done much to memorialize the Holocaust, but it is about the way Poland has handled the role played by Poles who collaborated in murdering Jews.
"We see no problem in admitting what individuals did but we want to speak about this in the context of the war because, without the war, those people would not have done these things," Szpytma replies.
To make his case and show that there is no contradiction in what he says, Szpytma shows me the book "Half-Dark" which deals with trials conducted in the 1940s against Poles who were involved in the murder of Jews. "The book was published in Krakow in 2022. These things happened in my village as well, where my relatives were killed because they were denounced by someone from within the village, so I know very well what happened. But we want everyone to know that none of this would have happened without the war."
Q: But Poland experienced antisemitism and pogroms before and after the Holocaust.
"There was antisemitism before the Holocaust, but there was no organized murder of Jews in Poland. The overall responsibility for what happened was of the German occupier during World War II; the individual responsibility is of everyone who committed a crime. Those who collaborated in the murder of Jews operated against the orders of the Polish resistance and violated the laws of the Polish government in exile in London. This government, unlike the Vichy regime in France, for example, refused to cooperate with the Nazis."
Q: In the resistance as well, at least in some cases, Jews were murdered, or the resistance refused to cooperate with them.
"There was no policy on the part of the resistance [the official Polish resistance] to murder Jews; the intention was to save Jews, just as the intention of the Judenrat was not to murder Jews. Of course, there were cases where Jews were murdered but this was in violation of orders."
Q: Criticism of you in the West concerns restrictions on freedom of expression and academic freedom.
"I haven't heard of even one case of somebody being put on trial or convicted because of what they said about Polish responsibility. But I know of cases where punishment has been handed down for Holocaust denial. Poland didn't allow the Holocaust denier David Irving to enter the country."
Q: Nobody has been put on trial because of the law, but the environment the law created was one that restricted the discourse.
"I agree with you on this. The law sought to deal with the lies that appear in the press about the Holocaust, such as expressions like 'Polish death camps' or generalizing that all Poles took part in the destruction. But it was not prepared properly and was not presented properly and therefore the reactions to it are completely wrong. It's not that I don't agree with the law, but don't get me wrong, I'm also not trying to protect it. In any event, the law exempted researchers and historians and therefore the impression that it restricts academic freedom is simply wrong."
Q: How will the crisis end?
"Relations between Poles and Jews are deep and thus this crisis will not harm them. From my perspective diplomatic disagreements in recent years occurred because of too many unnecessary statements from the Israeli side; in particular from the former Prime Minister Yair Lapid that were very impolite."
Q: But Yad Vashem and the Israeli Ministry of Education also disagree with you.
"These disputes are restricted to very specific fields and I hope that a dialogue will take place. Perhaps we won't agree on everything, but it's always better to sit around the table and talk. We were in a similar situation with the Holocaust Museum in Washington until a delegation came to visit our museums here in Poland and I traveled there. We didn't agree on everything but we created a solid foundation to work with. In Israel as well, despite the tensions and the crisis, I participated in a foreign ministry delegation to Jerusalem and after a few hours, it was clear that it had been well worth meeting and talking. I hope the same thing will happen with Yad Vashem."
The professor who went into exile in Canada
Last summer, decades after Israel and the West, the Polish government submitted a huge reparations claim against Germany for the enormous damages caused to it in World War II. The Poles see themselves as a free Western country. But it may be that what appears free to them is not seen in this way by the West. That is the position of the esteemed Polish historian and author, Jan Grabowski.
He was born in Poland to a Jewish father who was a Holocaust survivor. He too fought in his youth against the Communist regime. In the late 1980s, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Grabowski left for Canada and since then he has specialized in Polish-Jewish ties in the Holocaust era. Grabowski's research verifies the gut feeling of most Israelis. Grabowski, a professor at the University of Ottawa, says that while there were thousands of Poles who saved Jews, they were the exception. According to his research, during the Holocaust, and after it, many Poles murdered a very large number of Jews, whether directly or by denouncing them to the Nazis. To be fair, one has to note that a Pole caught trying to save Jews during the Holocaust was at risk of execution himself. Many of those who turned in Jews feared for themselves and their families. Moreover, it should be said that not all Holocaust scholars agree with Grabowski about everything. Danny Blatman, the Israeli Professor working at the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, differs with Grabowski on many issues.
What is certain is that Grabowski's findings, published in the book, "Hunt for the Jews", have made him a reviled figure in Poland. The Polish League Against Defamation filed a libel case against Grabowski, most likely with the assistance of the authorities. He has received death threats and has been the subject of malicious articles and attempts to remove him from his academic posts in Poland and in Canada. But Garbowsky will not be silenced, including not on Polish soil where he takes care of his elderly mother and from where he speaks to me freely in the middle of the day.
"They (the government) tried to harm me in a number of ways. They approached the university in Ottawa, demanding my dismissal. The [Polish] embassy put on an exhibition against me. They tried everything. But that just strengthened my standing in Canada," says Grabowski, who just a week before our conversation received another prestigious prize for his work.
You say that the polls are trying to silence you but the fact is you are speaking to me from Poland completely free and attacking the government while doing so.
"I have Polish citizenship and Canadian citizenship so I can allow myself to speak freely. In general, academics here can still publish whatever they want to say as the government has yet to significantly attack the universities. But everybody in the education system is under pressure most of the time. Nobody goes to prison but people who don't toe the government line are fired, including personal friends of mine who worked at the Institute for National Remembrance."
Q: The Polish government claims that criticism of it is political and that Poland is a Western democracy with no restrictions on freedom of expression. It says that it is proud of its efforts to memorialize the Holocaust, and says this is an expression of its reflection of its battle against antisemitism.
"It is true that they have invested a lot of money in proving that the Germans did terrible things to the Jews. But the question is what are they doing about the part played by Poles? The answer is that they don't want people to know about the role played by the Polish population in the murder [of Jews]. They shine a light on what the Poles were not involved in. In my view, this is an attack on the history of the Holocaust, because it serves them for political purposes and not for bona fide historical research."
Q: Government representatives have told me that, for example, anyone who wishes to research how many Jews were killed by Poles in Krakow can do so. Is this not true?
"Yes, it is true. You can conduct research, but there will be a price to pay. You will suffer media campaigns against you. You will be the subject of hate messages. Your reputation will be damaged, and they may try to fire you. That is what has happened to my colleagues. That is what happened to my co-author and me when we wrote our book "Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied" Poland. So people ask themselves, why should I get involved?"
Q: Historical research always gets mixed up with politics. At Yad Vashem too, there is probably politicization of memory
"I don't want to step into the field of Israeli politics. I can just say that when Netanyahu signed the agreement with Poland in June 2018, and the governments agreed that antisemitism is equal to anti-Polonism, Yad Vashem condemned the prime minister. I don't automatically rely on everything that Yad Vashem says but I will be glad if you give me an example of a state-funded Polish institution that condemned the Israeli government. By the way, Netanyahu signed a technical declaration despite everyone knowing that it is not true: There are no conspiracy theories against Poles purely because they are Poles."
A possible solution: Youth delegations commencing their visits in Germany
How will this situation come to an end? The question of youth delegation visits to the death camps and whether they will be accompanied by Israeli security guards is one that raises a lot of emotions. The Shin Bet, which is responsible for the security of delegations overseas, is insistent on this, while the Poles propose that local armed guards accompany the Israeli youth delegations.
This complex situation has an out-of-the-box solution that will satisfy the Poles. Instead of creating a distorted view among Israeli youth that Poland is the land of the Holocaust, the Israeli education ministry and the IDF should start their trips in Germany at the Wannsee Villa, just a 5-hour drive from Warsaw. After all, it is there that the Holocaust began, in Berlin, and it was only executed in Auschwitz. That is something we often forget to tell the story of.
The Israeli security demands are identical in both Germany and Poland and that way the Poles will not feel that they are being singled out. Most importantly, adding Germany to the itinerary will begin a long and necessary process of correction of Israeli memory; instead of blaming the Poles and treading lightly with the Germans, as the Israeli state does today, historic justice will be done.
The story of the destruction of the Jews will be told as it was – planned and conceived in Germany; executed on Polish soil.
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