Historians fear ‘censorship’ under Poland’s Holocaust law

Dear Mr Matthews, I feel compelled to respond to this uniformed commentary. It reads like this is probably the first time writing something on this subject The picture shown does not look like a 1939 picture but a picture of some Ghetto, judging by the wall. The victim looks emancipated. The fellow who is cutting off the beard, obviously for propaganda purposes, may be another Jewish victim and it is highly unlikely that he is a free Pole. But, who cares about context, let alone historical facts!

I believe we see German soldiers in September 1939, the situation designed by a Wehrmacht propaganda unit. It's a dirty trick to publish Nazi propaganda without explaqnation. There are many German accounts and pictures of Wehrmacht soldiers tormenting orthodox Jews, including comments by Stauffenber. Poles and Jews were bombed and shot in 1939. The place is allegedly Żydów, perhaps the one near Krakow. Germans murdered Jews in the region, eg. in Trzebinia.

The original caption says "Orthodoxem Juden wird, von drei deutschen Soldaten umstanden, von einem Zivilisten der Bart abrasiert, um ihn zu erniedrigen", so the three soldiers control the situation,

Mr. Matthews, without getting "deep into the weeds" about the IPN law itself, I have to say you are woefully uninformed about the brutal conditions imposed by the Germans in occupied Poland. One of the favored methods of terror used by the Germans was to force victims to carry out punishment on other victims. During a mass execution in my father's hometown in 1942, Germans used Jews to hang dozens of ethnic Polish victims. Does this make Jews the executioners? Rhetorical question. Please refrain from writing about subjects which you don't understand. This includes the IPN law, which clearly does not deny the fact of individual collaborators but aims to clarify that Poland, as a state and nation, was not a perpetrator of the Holocaust.

Sadly, this article is like many others in the mass media which is critical of Poland and it's new Holocaust Law. It FALSELY says things about this new Polish Holocaust Law. The following paragraph from this article is an example: "A new law in Poland that threatens those who say that Poles played any part in the Holocaust with up to three years in prison will create an atmosphere of “inner censorship” for the country’s historians, reminiscent of its communist past, critics have warned." This is FALSE. This law applies to people who say the Polish STATE/government collaborated with Nazi Germany and not individual Poles who collaborated. The new law does NOT threaten anybody who says that individual Poles played a role in the Holocaust. Polish leaders have repeated OVER and OVER that Poland acknowledges that there were bad Poles who collaborated with the Nazi Germans and that this law does NOT impact people who report stories on these individual bad Poles. But it should be mentioned that according to the Israeli War Crimes Council...only 0.1% of the Polish population collaborated with the Nazi Germans. So WHY is there this constant talk from the media about "Polish collaboration with the Nazi Germans"?? It appears this is meant to degrade and defame Poland. It's appalling that the mass media is always looking to find fault with Poland and smear it. And IF Poland was as anti-semitic as the media keeps accusing Poland of...then WHY did over half of the world's Jews CHOOSE to live and stay in Poland for 1000 years? Why doesn't the media give credit to Poland for allowing Jews into Poland for such a long time when most countries were rejecting Jews?? There is something very strange when the media only has bad things to say about a nation that fought so hard against Nazi Germany like Poland did. Outside of WW2 Poland, Polish squadrons like 303 turned the Battle of Britain in favor of Britain and Polish mathematicians were the FIRST to decode the Nazi German Enigma Code which shortened WW2 and saved millions of lives. Why doesn't the media ever have any positive stories like these Polish accomplishments in WW2?

More worryingly still is that at Antony’s College, Oxford has a Polish studies institute (POMP) that was set up and funded by a Polish Communist secret police agent turned oligarch. One employee also happens to be a hack at the Grauniad and writes propaganda aimed at harming Poland. He uses his position at Oxford (sponsored remember by a former agent of the Communist secret police) to go to Ivy League universities and create a new reality about Poland. For example, he argues against the proven role of the Stalinist secret police in the Kielce massacre of Jews in 1946, which formed part of a coordinated Soviet policy of forcing Jews out of Eastern Europe in furtherance of Stalin’s other plans.

More worryingly still is that St Antony’s College, Oxford has a Polish studies institute (POMP) that was set up and funded by a Polish Communist secret police agent turned oligarch. One employee also happens to be a hack at the Grauniad and writes propaganda aimed at harming Poland. He uses his position at Oxford (sponsored remember by a former agent of the Communist secret police) to go to Ivy League universities and create a new reality about Poland. For example, he argues against the proven role of the Stalinist secret police in the Kielce massacre of Jews in 1946, which formed part of a coordinated Soviet policy of forcing Jews out of Eastern Europe in furtherance of Stalin’s other plans.

More worryingly still is that at Antony’s College, Oxford has a Polish studies institute (POMP) that was set up and funded by a Polish Communist secret police agent turned oligarch. One employee also happens to be a hack at the Grauniad and writes propaganda aimed at harming Poland. He uses his position at Oxford (sponsored remember by a former agent of the Communist secret police) to go to Ivy League universities and create a new reality about Poland. For example, he argues against the proven role of the Stalinist secret police in the Kielce massacre of Jews in 1946, which formed part of a coordinated Soviet policy of forcing Jews out of Eastern Europe in furtherance of Stalin’s other plans.