Anti-Slander Informing

From the BBC:
"Poles told to report 'anti-Polish slander' to diplomats"

Poland's top senator, Stanislaw Karczewski, has urged his compatriots worldwide to notify diplomats about anyone who slanders the Polish nation. Senate Marshal Karczewski's plea came in an open letter condemning "insults" suggesting Polish complicity in Nazi Germany's World War Two atrocities. A controversial new Polish law makes it illegal to accuse the Polish nation or state of any complicity in Nazi crimes. Critics fear the law could stifle the truth about the role some Poles played. "Please document and react to all anti-Polish hostility, expressions and opinions that harm us. Notify our embassies, consulates and honorary consuls of any slander affecting the good reputation of Poland," Mr Karczewski's letter said (in Polish). "I call all our compatriots... to document and gather any testimony of atrocities and crimes against humanity committed during World War Two." He said that, before the surviving witnesses to the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities die, "it is necessary to record their memories, in order to remember all and any wrongdoing against Jews, Poles, Romani people and any other victims". The Nazis murdered an estimated six million Jews - mainly in death camps in occupied Poland - and millions of other people they considered to be "racially inferior". Among the biggest groups were Poles and Soviet prisoners-of-war. Mr Karczewski's letter says "six million Poles died, including three million Polish Jews". Opponents of the Polish nationalist government's drive to revisit history, including Israel and the US, worry that it may distort the truth, glossing over cases of Polish anti-Semitism and other Polish abuses.  

^ Sadly, this sounds more like returning to the days of people going to the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (the Polish equivalent of the KGB) and informing on others. Poland is a great country (I was supposed to visit it along with some Polish relatives later this year, but had to cancel) and doesn't need to have to do things like this. I worked at the USHMM and have studied the Holocaust and the European Theater of World War 2 - especially regarding Poland. The Germans occupied half of Poland from September 1939 - June 1941 and all of Poland until 1945. The Germans committed horrendous war crimes against all Polish citizens (Christians, Jews, the Romani, Communists and anti-Communists, the Home Army  - Armia Krajowa - the intellectuals, etc.) Every territory that was occupied by the Germans (from the British Channel Islands to the Soviet Union) had German collaborators. Poland was one of a few occupied countries that did not have a National Government that collaborated with the Germans. With that said there were Polish Christians as well as Polish Jews that individually collaborated with the Germans. That shouldn't be forgotten. What also shouldn't be forgotten is that Poland has the most individuals that received the Righteous Among the Nations Award from Yad Vashem even when German law in occupied Poland stated that any Pole that helped the Jews would be killed - along with their whole family. I can understand that Poland (like any other country) does not want to be associated with crimes  - much less war crimes - especially when the majority of them were carried out by the German occupiers in German-made and run camps, but no country should forget those that aided the Germans (no matter how small their number was.) I hope to go to Poland soon - not this year as I already said - and hope to meet my Polish relatives. Hopefully I won't get "reported" on by any of them or from any other Pole to the authorities for showing the full picture because that would seem like a return to the days of informing to the German Gestapo or the Polish and Soviet secret police. One Polish-made TV series that I really like and have written about in a previous post that shows a well-rounded and accurate portrayal of Poland occupied by both the Germans and the Soviets as well as those that fought them, sided with them and were their victims is "Czas Honoru" (Time of Honor.) I would recommend people watch that to see a very interesting, well-made and historically correct  - yet also entertaining - series. ^

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43131898