Poland's Progress

By Andrew Baker

New York Post
January 26, 2005

When Polish President Lech Walesa organized the 50th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz 10 years ago, he so angered Jewish leaders and survivors they held their own ceremony one day earlier. This year, world leaders will participate in one program coordinated with Jewish organizations and Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Museum. It benefits from President Alexander Kwasniewski's diplomatic skills and a decade of change in Poland and the region.

In 1995, the breaking point came when Walesa's aides refused to include the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, in the official program. It was symptomatic of insensitivity to Jews and an incomplete knowledge of the Holocaust.

In the West, Auschwitz was known as the death camp where 1 million Jews were murdered, its name synonymous with the Nazis' genocidal plan. But in Poland, it was seen as a place of Polish martyrdom. For decades schoolchildren were taught - erroneously - that a million Poles perished there, too, although the actual number, horrible in its own right, was a small fraction.

Walesa's missteps were criticized abroad, but they reflected the attitudes of many Poles. A 1995 American Jewish Committee survey found most Poles viewed themselves as equal to Jews as Nazi victims. Nearly 40 percent of Poland's population still harbored anti-Jewish sentiments. Polish officials bristled at demands for the return of Jewish communal property, while restituting far more extensive holdings to the church.

The difficulties of Poles in confronting the Holocaust were shared by their neighbors. Under Communism there was no open discussion of the role of local collaborators. After 1991, many viewed themselves as the primary victims. In the Baltic States, "genocide" became the term describing their treatment by the Russians, ignoring the fact that Latvian legionnaires and Lithuanian police battalions willingly assisted the Nazis.

In Slovakia, nationalists fondly recalled the wartime period of "independence" when a Nazi puppet state sent 70,000 Jews to their deaths. In Romania, people celebrated wartime leader Marshal Ion Antonescu, whose anti-Soviet pedigree obscured the fact that he ordered the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

But much has happened since. The three Baltic states established national historical commissions to examine the role of their citizens in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust and the anti-Semitic conditions preceding it. There are now official Holocaust remembrance days and educational programs.

Despite a history of anti-Semitism, most Poles saw themselves as victims with no role in the Nazi extermination of Jews. In 1995, 75 percent believed Poles did everything possible to help Jews during the Holocaust. This myth was challenged with the publication of "Neighbors," describing the 1941 pogrom unleashed by the citizens of Jedwabne on their Jewish neighbors. In 2002, President Kwazniewski spoke at Jedwabne's mass grave and begged forgiveness.

Romania appointed its own historical commission, chaired by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. Its findings, publicly accepted by the president in November 2004, established the culpability of the wartime regime of Antonescu and took to task the country's Holocaust deniers.

Every country in the region has taken some measures to restitute Jewish communal property or has begun the process. History texts are being corrected, and the enthusiasm for reviving wartime fascist leaders has waned. Equally important, each of these countries has established close ties with Israel and has experienced the salutary effects of trade and tourism.

Yet the record is imperfect and incomplete. Recent surveys in Poland show anti-Jewish sentiments are still held by a quarter of the population. Marginal but not insignificant political parties court voters with anti-Semitic appeals and the sale of anti-Semitic literature. Politicians in Hungary and Romania act similarly, while denying the facts of the Holocaust in their own nations. Restituting Jewish property in all of Eastern Europe remains an unpopular measure, giving pause to well-intentioned politicians.

Tomorrow's 60th anniversary commemoration at Auschwitz will likely be the last major ceremony with significant numbers of Holocaust survivors. Many had promised their dying relatives and friends they would remember, and they will take comfort from the unprecedented attention accorded this day. But they also know the work of insuring future remembrance and righting the wrongs of Holocaust-era injustices remains unfinished.

Rabbi Andrew Baker is the American Jewish Committee's Director of International Jewish Affairs.