Polish Ambassador protests against The Washington Times article
In a letter to The Washington Times on Thursday, Polish Ambassador to the US Piotr Wilczek protested against using the "anti-Semitism of Poles" as an explanation for German concentration camps being located in occupied Poland.
Such a thesis appeared in a commentary published by the US newspaper on Tuesday. An article entitled "Why Poland's new Holocaust law is a mockery" was illustrated with an image of the Polish flag with a painter's roller blotting out the swastika on it.
The author of the article, Rabbi Menachem Levine from San Jose, California, called the amended law on the Institute of National Remembrance (which penalises suggestions that the Polish nation complied in Nazi-German war crimes, and especially the Holocaust - PAP) a "mockery" and "disgrace".
He wrote that "nearly all of the death camps in occupied Europe were built in Poland" and claimed that this was not by chance, because "the Nazis knew that Poland had been anti-Semitic for centuries". According to him, "the Germans were convinced that the Poles would not protest against the death camps for Jews on their soil." "As history shows, they were correct," Levine wrote.
In a letter published on the Washington Times website quoting a renowned Holocaust scholar Prof. Deborah Lipstadt, Ambassador Wilczek called Levine's arguments "balderdash" preserving the "enduring myth" that "Poles were worse than Nazis".
Wilczek notes that, as Prof. Lipstadt, a Holocaust scholar associated with Emory University in Georgia, and a former member of the board of the Holocaust Remembrance Museum in Washington, wrote, "many people, Jews primarily among them, believe the balderdash that the Germans put the death camps in Poland because Poles would be happy to see the Jews killed. They ignore the fact that to the Germans Auschwitz was German."
Wilczek agreed with the Washington Times' author that, as Voltaire wrote, "History demands truth and not tricks". Therefore, "we need to ensure that 'the enduring myth' does not become fact, and that Poland will not be blamed for Nazi German crimes which it did not commit," the ambassador appealed.
"One's support or opposition to Poland's anti-defamation legislation is not permission to spread falsehoods or hate," Wilczek argued, adding that the illustration created to accompany Levine's text was "vulgar and unacceptable". He noted that Poland endured five years under Nazi German occupation, and the Polish government-in-exile and underground state never ceased to resist Nazi Germany's evil policies. That is why this illustration "misleads readers and propagates the 'enduring myth'" - he writes.
The Washington Times daily was founded in 1982 by the Korean Sun Myung Moon (who died in 2012), the creator of the sect known as the Unification Church. Moon, who proclaimed himself a messiah, to continue the work of Christ, created a business empire, mainly in the hotel and media industries. Moon's church was often accused of indoctrinating members and extorting money from them, using suspicious recruitment practices, and opaque funding rules. One of the distinguishing features of the Unification Church is collective weddings, which usually take place in stadiums.
With a circulation of around 100,000, The Washington Times is not among the 25 most-read US dailies. (PAP)
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