To the Web Editor

It is a precious contribution to the Polish thought and FEELING about the Holocaust that you are posting on the Foundation's Web site the article by Hanna Swida-Ziemba. Penetrating and thorough, and careful in its judgment I hope it will be read with care and evoke new understanding. I became aware of this important article only, when I was asked to translate it. The reading made a profound impression on me and it is sure to do the same for other Polish readers.

I am older than the author and I witnessed the war atrocities as an adult - in Warsaw while deeply engaged in underground resistance (AK). I was horrified by German brutality in their drive to overwhelm and subdue the occupied population and to deprive it of all leadership. We suffered terrible losses in lives and property, but we were able to resist with pride. We did sympathize with the Jews, when they were locked up and starved in the ghettos and then removed to the death camps for total annihilation. We sought to protect those who managed to hide among us.

But only Swida-Ziemba opened my eyes to the ASSYMETRY between the Polish and Jewish moral situations during the Holocaust. With empathy she described the HUMILIATION of a Jew who was rendered nonperson under the German terror. Isolation from the community, often from his family, his complete dependence on help from Poles, his insecurity and danger of exposure among the general population - all that DENIED HIM HUMANITY.

Poles today are not always aware of this inequality of fates, As hosts in the land that holds the ashes of the Jewish Nation, they have a moral obligation to welcome the Jewish pilgrimages to its places of remembrance with warmth and respect.

Danuta Hiż