Polish watchdog criticises Italian daily's article for 'hate language'
Poland's anti-defamation watchdog, the Good Name Redoubt (RDI) on Wednesday wrote a petition to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, in protest against a recent article about Poland, which claimed the country bore "co-responsibility in the Holocaust".
In an article published on October 11, one of the newspaper's columnists, when discussing Poland, made claims about collaboration with the Nazi Germans during World War II and shared responsiblity for the extermination of Jews.
RDI's petition, available in Italian on the CitizenGo web portal, asked Corriere della Sera to correct the article in question or remove it altogether
The Polish League Against Defamation is an organisation also known as the Good Name Redoubt.
Urszula Wojcik, a spokeswoman for the watchdog, said "we know such actions are effective", noting RDI's success in forcing the Italian ANSA news agency to apologise and make up for writing about WW2 concentration camps as if they had been Polish.
In its petition, RDI pointed out "Poland was the only country without a pro-Nazi-German puppet government, while its underground authorities (see: NOTE 1, 2, 3) punished reporting of Jews (and the Polish people hiding them) to the occupiers with death".
The anti-defamation organisation also noted "the Polish then exile government, and the underground state it oversaw, took various steps to save the Jews from extermination".
As a result, and despite Poland being "the only country where the Nazi Germans put Jew-savers and their families to death", the Polish people are most widely represented among Israel's Righteous Among the Nations (see below).
"It takes exceptional ill will to make such invidious, sweeping generalisations on the basis of isolated cases, as the author of the article in Corriere della Sera has done", RDI concluded.
On Monday, the article was criticised by the Polish Embassy in Rome, which sent a letter of protest, calling the article's points "groundless and deeply incomprehensible", as well as "deeply unjust in relation to history and the dignity of people, Polish and otherwise".
The Righteous Among the Nations distinction is awarded by the Jerusalem-based Yad Vashem Institute, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Most trees planted at Yad Vashem to commemorate those who saved Jews during the war are dedicated to Polish people. In all, out of 26,000 Righteous Among the Nations worldwide, more than 6,700 come from Poland.
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NOTE 1: On the night of September 26, 1939, the Service for Poland's Victory (SZP) organisation was launched by a group of senior officers led by Gen. Michal Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, with the participation of Warsaw Mayor Stefan Starzynski. Later renamed the Union for Armed Struggle (ZWZ, see: NOTE 2), it became the nucleus of a nationwide resistance movement known as the Polish Underground State (see: NOTE 3), its armed wing being the Home Army (AK, see: NOTE 2).
NOTE 2: The Home Army (AK) was the main resistance movement in Poland when it was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II. It was formed from the Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ), which in turn evolved from a clandestine organisation called the Polish Victory Service (SZP).
The Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ) was an underground force formed in November 1939 from parts of the SZP organisation after Poland's invasion by Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939. On February 14, 1942, ZWZ transformed into the Home Army (AK).
The Home Army, whose allegiance was to the Polish government-in-exile, was one of the largest and best organised resistance movements in Europe, its soldier ranks numbering anywhere from 200,000 to 600,000.
In his book God's Playground. A History of Poland, prominent historian Norman Davies said that "the Home Army could fairly claim to be the largest of European resistance [organisations]". In "DPs: Europe's displaced persons, 1945–1951", Mark Wyman wrote "Armia Krajowa was considered the largest underground resistance unit in wartime Europe".
The Home Army (AK) was the armed wing of the Polish Underground State (see: NOTE 3). Along with various combat activities, the AK was also widely involved in rescuing Jews, among others, by means of the famous 1942-founded Council to Aid Jews (Rada Pomocy Zydom) codenamed 'Zegota' - the only organisation in Europe and a unique one on a global scale established to defend and provide help to Jews in ghettos and elsewhere.
The successive commanders of the AK were generals Stefan Rowecki (until June 30, 1943) Tadeusz Komorowski (until Oct. 2, 1944) and Leopold Okulicki (until Jan. 19, 1945).
The culmination of the AK's armed struggle came with the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, which broke out on August 1 at 1700 hrs sharp (so-called W-hour) as the biggest resistance operation in German-occupied Europe. Initially intended to last several days, it continued for 63 days before being suppressed by the Germans. The Uprising claimed the lives of 18,000 insurgents and around 200,000 civilians. The Red Army, stationing at the other side of the Vistula river throughout most of the Uprising, waited idly for the Warsaw insurgents to bleed out.
After the insurgents surrendered and the remaining 500,000 residents were expelled, the Germans methodically burned down and blew up Warsaw house by house. By January 1945, app. 90 percent of the buildings and city infrastucture was destroyed.
The AK's wartime losses totalled about 100,000 soldiers killed in fighting or murdered, and about 50,000 taken to the Soviet Union and imprisoned.
In early 1942, the Home Army had about 100,000 soldiers; by the summer of 1944 the number had risen to 380,000. These included 10,800 officers. Poland’s famous Silent Unseen elite special-operations paratroops (see: NOTE 4) were also part of the Home Army.
The Home Army's activities did not end with the end of WW II. After 1945, the AK's so-called Enduring Soldiers fought the Soviet regime.
Under communism, AK soldiers were persecuted by Poland's authorities, especially during the Stalinist period. Many of them were handed death penalties; others spent many years in prison.
NOTE 3: The so-called Polish Underground State, which operated from 1939 to 1945 and is still today looked upon by many as a model of conspiracy administration, was subordinated to the Polish government-in-exile, which was first based in France and subsequently in Great Britain. In Poland, the government-in-exile had an impressively developed administration with secret courts and prosecutors, underground schools and universities, even publishing houses.
According to Barbara Wachowicz 2002's release "Kamyk na szancu: gaweda o druhu Aleksandrze Kaminskim w stulecie urodzin", the term "Polish Underground State" was first "more widely" used on 13 January 1944 in the official underground publication of the Polish underground authorities, the Biuletyn Informacyjny. On the other hand, an alternative name for the Polish Underground State, namely, the Polish Secret State, is said to have been introduced by Jan Karski (see: NOTE 5) in his book Story of a Secret State, which was written and first published in the United States (1944).
Historian Janusz Gmitruk called the Polish Underground State, "a light at the end of the tunnel showing that the Polish people will not surrender to the Germans, that the banner of independence will remain up".
In Polish-American former US Air Force Brigadier-General Walter Jajko's opinion, as the defeat of the Warsaw Rising "essentially finished the Polish Underground State", Stalin knew that "the Underground State was an existing alternative government, organised throughout all of Polish society, that would prevent his Sovietisation of Poland". He added: "Stalin knew too that the Home Army was the force that would insist on Polish independence even unto war against the Soviet Union. Stalin's facilitation of the German suppression of the Warsaw Rising prevented the armed opposition to the Sovietisation of Poland (...) The Warsaw Rising showed that Nazis and Communists still had overriding interests in common. The moral equivalence of Hitler and Stalin, of Nazism and Communism, of Germany and Russia is striking".
NOTE 4: The first Polish so-called 'Silent Unseen' elite paratroopers (also called 'Silent and Dark Ones') landed in Poland on the night of February 15, 1941 near Skoczow in southern Poland after a long flight from Great Britain over Germany.
Serving first in the Union for Armed Resistance (ZWZ) operating in German-occupied Poland and later in the Home Army (AK), The Silent and Dark Ones were the elite of the "Fighting Poland".
The Silent and Dark Ones - Polish soldiers trained in Great Britain for special operations (sabotage, intelligence, communication and underground operations) - were first sent to German-occupied Poland from Great Britain, and from the end of 1943 from Italy. All of them volunteered to join the force.
Their parachute missions to Poland were organised by the Polish section of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) together with the 6th Chapter of the General Staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces responsible for contacts with the Chief Command of the Home Army.
The first drop, code-named Adolphus, took place on the night of February 15 and 16, 1941 near Skoczow in the Cieszyn Silesia region, in the Germany-annexed zone. A two-engine British Whitley bomber brought over Poland three paratroopers: captain Stanislaw Krzymowski (aka Kostka "Cube"), Jozef Zalbieski (aka Zbik "Wildcat") and courier Czeslaw Raczkowski (aka Wlodek).
The first flight to German-occupied Poland was organised as an experimental one but since the route over Germany was considered too dangerous, the entire operation was suspended for nine months. The mission was finally resumed with flights to Poland over Denmark or Sweden.
A flight to Poland and back took from 11 to 14 hours. Flights were organised only at night. First, paratroopers were taken to their occupied Homeland aboard Halifax planes, and later on board of American Liberators.
At the end of 1943, the Silent and Dark Ones' base was moved to Brindisi in Italy.
In all, 2,413 officers and soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces volunteered to join the elite unit. Only 606 successfully completed the rigorous training, 579 of whom qualified for the operation.
Three hundred and sixteen Silent and Dark Ones were dropped in Poland during 82 flights organised between February 15, 1941 and December 26, 1944. Out of 316 paratroopers flown to Poland nine were killed before their planes reached their destination (three were killed in an air crash near the Norwegian coast, three were shot down over Denmark, and three were killed in parachuting accidents).
Ninety-one took part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, 13 of them were killed. In all, 103 Silent and Dark Ones were killed during World War Two. Nine were murdered by Poland's communist authorities after the war.
NOTE 5: Jan Karski, birth name Jan Kozielewski, along with Witold Pilecki (see: NOTE 6), was the most renowned Holocaust whistleblower. As a young Polish Roman Catholic diplomat, during the early days of World War II, he witnessed first-hand the German Nazis' treatment of fellow citizens of Jewish descent in ghettos and concentration camps.
To learn the fate of Polish Jews, Karski was smuggled into the Warsaw ghetto by the Jewish underground and to the Belzec death camp in the disguise of a Ukrainian guard. He travelled across occupied Europe to England, and eventually to America. Karski personally reported to the Polish Prime Minister in London, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, Britain's Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, US President Franklin Roosevelt and many other prominent figures. His description of the systematic annihilation of European Jews was met with disbelief and passivity.
After having been given by Karski a recount of German death camp atrocities, then American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was quoted as asking the Polish messenger about "the situation in the Polish countryside", and how it was in Poland with... "the horses and cattle".
Karski remained in Washington, D.C. after the war, became an American citizen and taught at Georgetown University for nearly 40 years. He died in 2000.
He was decorated with Israel's Righteous Among the Nations medal (see: NOTE 6) and the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish distinction. Karski, widely regarded as the "man who tried to stop the Holocaust," was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian state distinction in the United States, by President Barack Obama.
During the fateful ceremony (30 May, 2012 - PAP) Obama in his address, while referring to German death camps, applied the term "Polish", for which misnomer he later apologised profusely.
NOTE 6: Witold Pilecki was a Polish soldier and rotamaster in the pre-war Polish cavalry. In German-occupied Poland he founded the Secret Polish Army resistance group in November 1939, subsequently joining the 1942-formed underground Home Army.
Pilecki, called "the bravest of the brave" was the author of the so-called Witold's Report - the first comprehensive account of proceedings in the German Auschwitz concentration camp and the Holocaust overall.
During World War Two, Pilecki volunteered for a resistance operation to get imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp, where he planned to gather intelligence, help inmates and escape. At Auschwitz, Pilecki organized a resistance movement and, as early as 1941, informed the Western Allies about atrocities taking place in the camp.
In the night from April 26 to 27 1943, after 2,5 years of imprisonment, Pilecki and two companions made a daring escape from the Auschwitz camp, whereupon Pilecki got in touch with the Home Army in Krakow (south Poland) and presented a detailed report on horror of mass extermination taking place in Auschwitz. Unfortunately, his plan of freeing the Auschwitz prisoners was not accepted in the face of German forces' dominating strength as well as passivity of the Allied side.
In 1944 Pilecki fought in the Warsaw Uprising against the Germans.
He remained loyal to the London-based Polish exile government after the communist takeover of Poland, and on May 8, 1947, was arrested on charges of working for "foreign imperialism" and after a show trial sentenced to death.
He was executed by a gunshot to the back of the head on 25 May 1948 in the basement of infamous Warsaw Mokotow prison. His body was most probably dumped into a nameless grave and has yet to be found. Information about his activities and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime until 1989.
As Pilecki's burial site remains unknown, he is among the communist regime victims whose remains are currently sought in countrywide exhumations by Poland's National Remembrance Institute (IPN).
Witold's Report, considered the world's first comprehensive intel on the Holocaust, was presented at the last International Book Fair in London, promoting Poland's "bravest of the brave" among both compatriots (with the support of the Polish Institute and the Polish Social and Cultural Centre), as well as foreigners at the fair in Olympia.
Pilecki was posthumously awarded Poland's highest decoration, the Order of the White Eagle, by late President Lech Kaczynski, and later promoted to the rank of Colonel.
