"Polish TV Station Investigated Over Holocaust Scholar's Claim Poles Did Little to Help Jews in WW2"

Daniel Tilles at Notes from Poland ("founded in Kraków in 2014 by Stanley Bill, Director of the Polish Studies Programme at the University of Cambridge") reports:

Poland's broadcasting regulator has launched proceedings against the country's largest private TV network, American-owned TVN, following remarks on air by a leading Holocaust scholar, Barbara Engelking, in which she suggested that Poles did little to help Jews during the war….

In an interview on Wednesday evening with TVN presenter Monika Olejnik, Engelking said that "Jews were unbelievably disappointed with Poles during the war. They knew what to expect from the Germans, [who were] the enemy…but the relationship with Poles was much more complex".

"Poles had the potential to become allies of the Jews and one would hope that they would behave differently, that they would be neutral, kind, that they would not take advantage of the situation to such an extent and that there would not be widespread blackmailing [szmalcownictwa]," she continued.

"It seems to me that this disappointment plays a role, that Poles simply failed," continued Engelking, who is director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, which is part of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN)….

Following Engelking's interview, government figures including the education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, and the prime minister, Morawiecki, condemned her remarks and TVN for airing them. The station, which is often critical of the government, has regularly clashed with the authorities.

These were "scandalous words that have nothing to do with reliable historical knowledge" and are part of an "anti-Polish narrative in some media", wrote Morawiecki in a lengthy social media post accompanied by a photograph showing the names of Poles honoured by Israel for helping Jews during the war….

On Friday, Maciej Świrski, the head of the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT), a state regulator, announced that he was initiating proceedings against TVN over Engelking's interview.

"In Poland, everyone can, using freedom of speech, say any nonsense and lies," wrote Świrski. "[But] the job of journalists is to react to lies because the press law requires them to provide reliable information. If the guest on a programme is lying, the journalist must tell viewers that it is a lie."

"And finally, if Poles did not help Jews, the Germans would not have introduced the death penalty for helping [Jews]," added Świrski, a conservative figure who was appointed to the KRRiT by the government's majority in parliament….

There are similar stories in Haaretz (Ofer Aderet) and THEfirstNEWS. Thanks to the Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) MediaLawDaily for the pointer.

Comments

[SRG]

Certainly more Poles are represented in the Righteous Among the Nations than any other nationality, though this is partly a reflection of their population, but the persistent anti-Semitism in Poland – from that day to this – cannot be overlooked.

[Absaroka]

Frank Blaichman's bio "Rather Die Fighting" mentions both being helped by gentiles, and hunted by them for the reward. Of course, that happened to resistance fighters in many occupied countries regardless of religion.

But what really struck me was that after 1990, he returned to Poland and found a lady who had helped him. She begged him to keep quiet about it, lest her neighbors find out she had helped a Jew during the war.

[Leo Marvin]

Certainly more Poles are represented in the Righteous Among the Nations than any other nationality, though this is partly a reflection of their population, but the persistent anti-Semitism in Poland – from that day to this – cannot be overlooked.

Poland lost as many Jews as the rest of Europe combined, so that Righteous Among the Nations ("RAtN") representation doesn’t tell us much. There were more opportunities to be either righteous or evil in Poland than anywhere else. It would be more useful to know each nation’s RAtN representation as a fraction of its pre-war Jewish population, or of the number of its Jews lost.

[neurodoc]

Leo, please contact me.

[Noscitur a sociis]

At least they seem to be taking as a given that not helping Jews would have been a bad thing?

[Shamie Ervin iv]

For that matter FDR ignored the suffering of the Jews when he had notice they were being rounded up, their wealth ripped off, their homes seized; and then railroaded to concentration camps, enslaved, gassed with cyanide, abused in medical experiments by monsters like Dr. Mengele and otherwise treated with heinous disregard for their tribe and subjected to genocide. Others such as the Pope, ditto. Too many looked the other way when if they had intervened many innocent lives would have been saved.

[Absaroka]

"... if they had intervened many innocent lives would have been saved."

What kind of intervention are you envisioning?

[John F. Carr]

Early in the war William Shirer worried about what would happen if his diary were read by the Nazis, because the English-speaking public did not yet know what the Nazis were up to and the reports would make Germany look bad. Even by the end of the war people didn't want to believe. Ronald Reagan wrote about trying to convince people that the Holocaust was real in those early postwar years. His wartime job gave him access to film reels showing what Allied soldiers found.

[Absaroka]

"Even by the end of the war people didn’t want to believe. Ronald Reagan wrote about trying to convince people that the Holocaust was real in those early postwar years. "

Do you happen to remember where you read that? My googling hasn't been successful.

My anecdotal experience (relatives who lived through WWII) is that they didn't doubt the Holocaust. They might not want to believe it in the sense most of us on an emotional level don't want to believe Jeffrey Dahmer did what he did, while still agreeing he did what he did.

Here is some polling:

"In the summer of 1944, the New York Times ran reports on the mass killing of Jewish people under the Nazis. In November of that year, 76% of Americans in a Gallup poll said they believed the stories that Germans had murdered many people in concentration camps. When respondents were asked to estimate the number of people who had been killed in these camps, however, it was clear that the extent of the atrocity was not yet understood. While 33% refused to venture a guess, 36% thought the number killed was under 100,000, 8% between 100,000 and 1,000,000, and 24% thought a million or more. By May of 1945, more of the public had come to accept the truth of what had happened, though some still held doubts. Eighty-four percent of Americans in a Gallup poll said they believed reports that the Germans had killed many people in concentration camps or let them starve to death. In this poll, the median estimate of the number killed in the camps was 1 million, still far below the actual numbers as estimated by today’s historians."

So even in 1944 a solid majority believed their had been mass killings, although underestimating the scale. The first camp liberated was Majdanek in late July 1944, by the Soviets. The Soviets reached Auschwitz in January 1945, and US troops reached Buchenwald in April 1945, so it doesn't seem surprising the full scale would be in doubt in the summer of '44.

Sadly, the knowledge seems to be eroding: "A 1985 Time/Yankelovich, Skelly & White found that only 69% of respondents could say what the Holocaust was in their own words. When Americans were asked by the American Jewish Committee/Taylor Nelson Sofres in 2005 how many Jews died in the Holocaust, just 33% were able to select the correct number, while only 44% were able to identify Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka as the names of concentration camps."

[John F. Carr]

It was in Reagan's autobiography (actually ghostwritten), An American Life.

When I was in school some older teachers had fought in WW2. Holocaust survivors were not rarities. Eyewitnesses to the war are almost gone now.

[Absaroka]

"It was in Reagan’s autobiography"

Thanks!

[Bill Poser]

The record of Poland in the Holocaust is mixed, but it is a matter for scholarly debate. In a free society, it should be none of the government's business.

[kotodama]

You can't deny she's got her finger on the Poles of the nation.