In front of you the Righteous I bow. I recommend it as…

Dotyczy kłamstwa prof Jana Grabowskiego opublikownego w THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN/ AUGUST 17-18 (INQUIRER)

Concerning the lie of Prof. Jan Grabowski published in THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN/ AUGUST 17-18 (INQUIRER). Article titled „HIJACKING HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST”

In front of you the Righteous I bow.

By Chaim Chefer

I hear this title and it makes me think

About the people who saved me.

I ask and ask “Oh, my dear God,

Could I have done the same thing?

In a sea of hate stood my home,

Could I shelter a foreign son in my home?

Would I be willing along with my family

Constantly be threatened by certain evil?

Sleepless dark nights watching out for noise

Hearing footsteps of certain evil.

Would I be able to understand every sign,

Would I be ready for this, could I walk like this

Among those who would betray

Not one day, not one week, but so many years!

There a suspicious neighbor, there a look,

and here a sound

– For that one – warm – brotherly clasping of my hand…

Not having any pension – not having anything for this.

Because a person to person must be a people.

Because a people comes at this time through

– So I ask you and ask you once more –

Could I have done the same if I was in their place?

It was they who went to war every day.

It was they who made the world a place for me.

It was they, the pillars, the Righteous brother,

Who this day this world is founded by.

For your courage, and for your warm extended hand

In front of you the Righteous I bow!

And thousands of other, most often nameless, Poles. I bow to them !!!

Mr Jan Grabowski and Gentlemen from the Australian Press Council, please read this

. Concerning the lie of prof. Jan Grabowski published in THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN/ AUGUST 17-18 (INQUIRER). Article titled „HIJACKING HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST”. According to this decree, (above) those knowingly helping these Jews by providing shelter, supplying food, or selling them foodstuffs are also subject to the death penalty. This is a categorical warning to the non-Jewish population against: 1) Providing shelter to Jews 2) Supplying them with Food 3) Selling them Foodstuffs

Few people know that among all the countries occupied by the Third Reich during the Second World War (1939-1945) only in Poland was any kind of help to a person of Jewish faith or origin punishable by death.

This penalty was widely announced by the occupying authorities. What is more, this punishment was quite often imposed not only on the rescuer, but also on his/her family, often on neighbors, and on whole towns or villages. The Germans believed in collective responsibility, trying to eliminate as many Poles, and Slavic people, as possible, making them the most terrorized populations after the Jews and the Gypsies. Close to three million Polish Christians lost their lives by execution, torture, starvation, or overwork in more than 2,000 prisons, forced labor and concentration camps.

The occupiers persecuted not only the intelligentsia, (educated classes) and opponents of the new regime but all potential opposition leaders, including simple peasants.

Millions were deported to Germany for forced labor. Millions of Jews and Poles were expelled from the Western provinces, which had been annexed to the Third Reich, a territory that included the site of the death camp Auschwitz, where approximately 80,000 Poles were killed.

According to the AB German Plan, Poles were to become a people without education, slaves for the German overlords. Secondary schools were closed; studying, keeping radios, or arms of any kind, or practicing any kind of trade were prohibited under the threat of death.

In 1988, the public prosecutor, Waclaw Bielawski, from the Main Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against the Polish Nation, issued a list of 1,181 names of Poles who had been killed for helping JEWS during World War II. In 1997, the Main Commission – The Institute of National Memory and The Polish Society for The Righteous Among the Nations in Warsaw, published Part III in the series Those Who Helped: Polish Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. It reduced the list of 1,181 names to only 704, by accepting only those whose accounts could be independently corroborated and verified fifty years later. The publication also included the names of more than 5,400 Poles, who have been recognized by the Israeli Yad Vashem Institute – The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remem brance Authority in Jerusalem, as “Righteous Among the Nations.”

Those who were executed are not usually recognized as “Righteous.”

They were generally murdered with the Jews they harbored, so there were no Jewish witnesses, while the Polish witnesses were not taken into consideration. Only in very rare cases (25 that were known in 1999), when a Jew managed to escape death and lived long enough to make the proper deposition in an Israeli consulate or at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, (the State Tribunal of Israel) could the rescuers be recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations.”

Saving Jews was very difficult, as about 85% of Poland’s Jews either did not speak Polish or spoke a dialect. In many cases, Jews were distinguished by their appearance.

Poland, under the Soviet imposed communist regime that lasted from 1948 until 1989, was cut from the West. Poles lost contact with the Jewish persons they saved, most of whom left the country.

Many Polish Jews changed their names, either under the occupation or after settling abroad. Furthermore, it was dangerous to maintain correspondence with the West. Many of the rescuers also changed their addresses, due to the massive migration from the eastern part of the country, incorporated into the Soviet Union, to the western territories that passed to Germany after the war.

The stories of the rescuers are a shining example of the most selfless sacrifice, surpassing in its heroism that of all the soldiers on the battlefield, whom we commemorate each November. In fact the soldier must fight; he cannot refuse. He is sustained by the entire military organization and his efforts are mostly limited to battles that have a clear beginning and end. He is paid and given the food, supplies and weapons that he needs.

Rescuers of Jews in Poland were alone, often deprived of their pre-war means of livelihood, expelled from their farms, factories, businesses, offices and even homes, most of them living in dire poverty. All found it virtually impossible to earn a living. They were under no legal obligation to risk their own lives and, even more, those of their families and neighbors. Their help most often lasted days and nights, weeks, months, even years, always in secret, and always risking discovery.

Who of us would do it today, especially in the above mentioned conditions?

Based on the text by ANNA PORAY

ADDITIONALLY/ Source: Tomaszewski, Irena & Werbowski, Tecia, „Zegota: The Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland 1942-45”. Price-Patterson Ltd. Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1999; Ewa Kurek, „Your Life is Worth Mine”, Hippocrene Books, New York, 1997.

^ ONE OF MANY – I bow my head before them! Mr. Jan Grabowski, can you afford such a human gesture?

During the German occupation, Henryk Bagiński was the parish priest in Łapy. He saved many Jewish children from certain death. Together with Maria Kuzin, he issued false birth certificates for Jewish children. They were then placed in Catholic families. Many of them survived the war; After the war, Maria Kuzin was awarded the Yad Vashem medal „Righteous Among the Nations” – 1966.

ATTENTION: The photos from the above-mentioned article do not show any Poles! Next to the victims are their persecutors – Germans!!!

Gentlemen from the Australian Press Council. We Poles living in Australia, which is hospitable to us, are also Australian citizens and our generation has already grown up here, which treats Australia as its hospitable adopted homeland after their fathers. We support Australia with social work and our taxes. What the Australia-Grabowski relationship is like, we are not interested in that. But we demand from such a serious institution as the APC, a more serious treatment of such a serious matter. We simply demand a public apology – in accordance with journalistic ethics – that the accusations of prof. Jan Grabowski do not contain truth.
With respect
Editor Nasze Pismo bimonthly and naszepismo.pl on the INTERNET
Antoni J. Jasinski

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