Anti-Semitism in Poland

It comes in waves. The press carries articles about the horror of demonic anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland (Lipstadt’s column).

One should ask the author to be more factual and not use trifocal glasses to produce a distorted vision of Polish history.

Anti-Semitic graffiti are not alien to American society, as well as some anti-Semitic acts, occasionally violent in their expression. The same can be said about prejudice against other ethnic groups.

Those acts, however infrequent, do exist and no Draconian measures can extirpate them from our social organism.

But when it comes to Poland and Poles, every sporadic incident becomes grotesquely magnified and generalized upon the entire Polish society. How much derogatory graffiti did the author see in Poland? Sporadic acts are used for spilling the stain of anti-Semitism on everybody around.

It is true that Polish-Jewish relations in this century suffered a bad fate. Was it because one side--Poles--caused it? Lipstadt reaches to the New Testament, but omits the more recent history of the Polish-Jewish tragedy. Communism was forced on Poland with significant participation by Polish Jews. The terror followed.

And, of course, we should remember the small number of Nazi collaborators who betrayed Jews and Polish patriots to Nazis, but overall we should emphasize the much larger group of rescuers, those who survived their heroic acts as well as those forgotten by their demise.

TEODOR POLAK, Chairman, Polish American Congress, Anti-Defamation Committee, Los Angeles