Truth about Poland tougher than fiction

To the editor:

The aritcle published in the most recent Jewish Star about the new museum in Poland was riveting [“New museum unveils rich story of Jewish life in Poland, Oct. 31]. The importance of such an institution cannot be emphasized enough.

At the same time, some of the comments that I read were disturbing and need to be critiqued.

Shmuel Afek’s rejection of the “standard narrative’ of Poland being a center, if not THE center of European antisemitism in the period between the World Wars, is a piece of revisionism that will probably continue to grow with the demise of the last survivors over the next few years. ANYONE who lived there in that era will tell you that the Poles were overtly Jew hating, with anti Shechita laws being instituted there by the Polish government well before Hitler did. The masses of Polish citizens had no love or sympathy for the Jews and the choice of Poland for the Death Camps WAS clearly related to the tacit approval of the locals to render Poland Judenrhein.

A real appreciation of Pope John Paul II needs some clarification, too. The 1998 Shoah document, issued by the Vatican during his papacy, is a whitewash of the Church’s responsibility during the Holocaust. To claim that Jewish hatred defies the teachings of the Catholic Church, and that those in history who persecuted the Jews in the name of the Church were erring individuals who misunderstood the Scriptures is nothing less than utter nonsense. A well meaning but deceitful statement.

To claim that Nazi ideology is neopaganism with no connection to this historical hatred that the Church fanned against the Jews is a “washing of the hands” that cannot be taken seriously by anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of modern antisemitism.

The canonization of Edith Stein (Theresa Benedicta of the Cross) in 2000 by John Paul, as a martyr of the Church with her death in Auschwitz is an attempt to paint the Church as also a victim of the Germans.If you are the victim, you cannot possibly also be the persecutor. Edith Stein died because she was born Jewish, and despite her apostasy, “Vos is geborn a Jud, bleibt a Jud.”