Yad Vashem: Poland Holocaust declaration ‘contradicts historical knowledge’

In a statement, Yad Vashem comes out swinging against a joint Israel-Poland declaration from last week that critics say exonerates the Polish people from complicity by many Poles in the Nazi Holocaust.

The Yad Vashem statement reads:

“The [Israeli-Polish] statement contains highly problematic wording that contradicts existing and accepted historical knowledge in this field. The joint statement’s wording effectively supports a narrative that research has long since disproved, namely, that the Polish Government-in-Exile and its underground arms strove indefatigably—in occupied Poland and elsewhere—to thwart the extermination of Polish Jewry. As such, they created a “mechanism of systematic help and support to Jewish people” and even took vigorous action against Poles who betrayed Jews. Although the joint statement acknowledges that there were cases in which Poles committed cruelties against Jews, it is also says that “numerous Poles” risked their lives to rescue Jews.”

“The existing documentation and decades of historical research yield a totally different picture: the Polish Government-in-Exile, based in London, as well as the Delegatura (the representative organ of this Government in occupied Poland) did not act resolutely on behalf of Poland’s Jewish citizens at any point during the war. Much of the Polish resistance in its various movements not only failed to help Jews, but was also not infrequently actively involved in persecuting them.”