On Tuesday, the 26th of July, Chargé d’Affaires a.i. in Dublin Agnieszka Skolimowska sent an official letter to the Editor-in-chief of the Irish Times after the newspaper published a letter accusing the Polish state of collaboration with Nazi Germany in the extermination of Jews during WWII. 

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In a letter published last week by the Irish Times, reporter Oliver Sears implies that Poland and Poles actively took part in the arrest and mass killing of the country’s Jewish population between 1939 and 1945. 

In the letter titled “Poland must come to terms with its past”, the author, Oliver Sears, tells the story of his grandfather, Pawel Rozenfeld, who was arrested in November 1939 in Łódź by the Gestapo and „Polish policemen.„

Sears used many of the widespread lies circulating around the world, claiming Poles were actually endorsing Nazi Germany’s genocidal policies targeting Jews. He even claimed that if he were to express his views in Poland, he would „land in jail.„

On Tuesday, Agnieszka Skolimowska set the record straight in an official letter to the Irish Times, in which she reminded us that “Poland never collaborated with the Nazi Germans, unlike other governments in Europe”. 

She underlined that from September 1939, Poland was under German occupation. “The General Government for the Occupied Polish Region was run by Germans and German local government […] Poland is not responsible for the Holocaust. Acts of collaboration […] were condemned and severely dealt with by the Polish Underground State and Polish Government-in-Exile,” – Skolimowska emphasised. 

She continued by reminding us that the death penalty for helping Jews avoid certain death was applicable only in Poland and that despite this fact, the Poles are the most numerous Righteous Among the Nations of Yad Vashem.   

Image: Unsplash

Author: Sébastien Meuwissen