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Readers React: Poland’s new law on Nazi atrocities is based on a lie, says a Holocaust surivor

Holocaust survivor Malkah Gorka holds a picture from her school days in Poland during a protest in front of the Polish Embassy in Tel Aviv on Feb. 8.
Holocaust survivor Malkah Gorka holds a picture from her school days in Poland during a protest in front of the Polish Embassy in Tel Aviv on Feb. 8.
(Gil Cohen-Magen / AFP/Getty Images)
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To the editor: Poland’s new law rewriting its World War II history about not having any involvement in creating concentration camps in their country is a lie. Three million Polish Jews died in these camps, and Poles were involved in helping the occupying Germans. (“Israelis slam Polish prime minister’s remarks about ‘Jewish perpetrators’ of Holocaust,” Feb. 17)

Polish people pointed out Jewish homes, where the Germans took whatever they wanted, and they helped with building and running the concentration camps. After the war, when about 200 Jewish survivors returned to the town of Kielce to claim their homes and businesses, the locals killed up to 42 of them. This was going on in other Polish cities to Jews who dared return to their homes after being liberated.

It is unfair for a law to be passed in a country that was deeply involved in killing so many Jews. I know because I was there — I am a witness, and I am a survivor.

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Ella Mandel, Los Angeles

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