The article by Masha Gessen, a Russian-American journalist, opens by saying: "To exonerate the nation of the murders of three million Jews, the Polish government will go as far as to prosecute scholars for defamation."
Gessen referred to a private civil lawsuit brought against Polish historians Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, the editors of a two-volume work entitled "Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland."
According to Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk, Gessen's claim in the article is "mendacious and manipulative."
"The published text is scandalous. It insinuates that Poland is responsible for the deaths of three million Jews during World War II," public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency cited him as saying.
The Polish embassy in Washington has asked the New Yorker magazine to withdraw the article, according to IAR.
Gessen's article has met with extensive criticism from various bodies, including those critical of the Polish government led by the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.
The Polish Centre for Holocaust Research, headed by Prof. Barbara Engelking, mentioned in Gessen’s piece, published a critical commentary on its website.
The centre said: "In all ongoing debates about Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust (…) no one ever claimed or claims that Poles or the state are responsible for the death of three million Jews."
"This is not only inconsistent with historical facts, but simply a lie," the centre added.
Piotr Cywiński, the head of the Auschwitz Museum in southern Poland, issued a statement saying that "it is deeply disturbing to see a New Yorker article by Masha Gessen about the search for historical truth that begins with an outright historical lie."
According to Cywiński, "it is utterly shocking to assume that it is the nation (explicitly named in the same sentence that refers to the Polish government) responsible for the murder of 3 million Jews."
AJC Central Europe, a global Jewish advocacy organization, wrote on its Twitter account that although it was critical towards the Polish government over "sugar-coating the truth about Poles’ attitudes to Jews in WW2," the claim made by Gessen was a "Holocaust distortion."
"German-occupied Poland was not run by Polish state. It is wrong to put collective guilt for the Holocaust on Poland," AJC Central Europe’s tweet added.
Over six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the German Nazi campaign to eradicate Europe’s Jewish population.
Some 3.3 million Jews lived on Polish territory at the outbreak of World War II.
(ał/pk)
Source: IAR