Poland balks at FBI chief’s op-ed, demands apology

The Polish government will demand an apology from US Ambassador Stephen Mull on behalf of the American government for an article written by FBI Director James Comey, which they believe accuses Poland of perpetrating the Holocaust, according to the Reuters news service.

On Thursday, Comey wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, explaining why he feels it is important that all FBI agents visit the Washington, DC, Holocaust Museum.

The crux of the matter for Comey, he explains in the piece adapted from an address he gave earlier that week, is that those carrying out the genocide were convinced that their actions were proper.

“Good people helped murder millions. And that’s the most frightening lesson of all — that our very humanity made us capable of, even susceptible to, surrendering our individual moral authority to the group, where it can be hijacked by evil,” Comey wrote.

“In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil,” he went on. “They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do. That’s what people do. And that should truly frighten us.”

The Polish government took offense at that paragraph saying that it wrongly implies the country was complicit in the murder of six million Jews.

A spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Marcin Wojciechowski, has already called for Mull to appear in the ministry.

In addition to the country’s official response to Comey’s op-ed, many Polish citizens have taken to social media to demand an apology from the FBI director.

Poland's unsurpassed resistance to Hitler is not a "footnote" to history. 6 million Polish citizens died under Nazi rule, half of them Jews.

— John Schindler (@20committee) April 18, 2015

https://twitter.com/rochbaranowski/status/589742219051012096

Poland’s ambassador to the US in a statement called the remarks “unacceptable.” Ryszard Schnepf, the Polish ambassador also sent a letter to Comey personal to protest “the falsification of history, especially … accusing Poles of perpetuating crimes which not only they did not commit, but which they themselves were victims of.”