Tekst w nawiązaniu do szkalującej Polskę notatki dr Kevina McCarthiego pod tytułem “Poles can't deny role in Auschwitz” opublikowanej w Belfast Telegraph 16/09/2015.
There is an obvious truth: who hates is lost to the future, and the future is lost to himself.
I was born in 1975 in Poland, a time and place where war and all what it drags with itself were just within a hand reach, within a word of those who survive it. I have honour to know those people. In fact they were my parents and close relatives. So I may say that my knowledge comes from the core, and there is no better source of studying history than to explore it from the perspective of an eyewitness’s accounts.
Recently I had a dubious pleasure to read the Dr Kevin McCarthy short note entitled “Poles can't deny role in Auschwitz” published in Belfast Telegraph on 16/09/2015, stating that we “Poles” can not deny the role we played in the Auschwitz tragedy. More over Mr. McCarthy says that Poland, with its deep-rooted anti-Semitism was the only country under the German Nazis control who could accept the existence of such an extermination centre.
In my opinion, and how I think, in the opinion of most of my compatriots Mr. McCarthy’s claims are untruth, unfair and not enough to say – harmless. They also (in many instances) inscribe themselves in to the subjective and sometimes defamatory narration of J.T. Gross an author of disruptive books such as “Golden harvest” or “Neighbours”.
Thus, in a few words, I would like to explain why I accuse Dr McCarthy of spreading untruth. For that – excuse me – I need to recall perhaps for some maybe an obvious facts.
So… In course of Second World War six million Poles have lost their lives. More than one million of those were lost in Germans Nazis concentrations camps. As for the Auschwitz – it was not an only place of its kind in Europe by then –and not only a Jews were held there. In fact by March 1942, majority of the camp prisoners were of Polish origin. Apart from them we also can account Germans, Cheech, Yugoslavs, Gypsies from South and East of the Europe and after 1941 (when Third Reich Invaded the Soviet Union) also a Soviet POWs. It was not until April 1942 as Germans began to direct the transports of Jews from ghettos spread all over the Nazi-occupied Europe to Auschwitz. Besides, what is significant to this issue, and what Dr McCarthy seems to omit on purpose, it was a consequence of decisions taken at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 where “final solution of the Jewish question” was broth to reality by German Nazis officials.
If so (as alleged by Mr. McCarthy) Poles accepted the elevation of Nazi German concentrations camps on their land, and (according to the scientist - what is the cause of this acceptance) extermination of the Jews at the Auschwitz (after the April 1942), they also had to accept extermination of their own kind prior to above date. Oh… This is fundamentally wrong assumption, and Mr McCarthy knows it!
Despite of this he stubbornly claims that the Poland was an only and the ultimate place to build such a factory’s of death - and all this thanks to the Poles innate anti-Semitism, on which Dr McCarthy seems to have very good knowledge. Interesting how Mr. McCarthy reconciled his claims with the principle of an objective selection of historical sources?
Maybe like I or thousands of my countrymen, he had a relatives among the concentrations camps prisoners. Maybe his mother just like my at the age of thirteen was taken on snowy December night by the gestapo from her home - barefoot and in her nightgown. After six weeks of horror her mother (my grandmother) found her in a sewing factory distanced from their home a few dozen kilometres – at least she lived. Or maybe as my auntie, Mr McCarthy’s auntie was caught for distributing resistance press, and send straightaway to concentration camp. Or maybe his father as my one was an eyewitness of (what he recalls) a Kielce’s pogrom an event “of brutal proportion”. On this - lastly, I have to admit, he is right, but only this.
And just as we can not deny our history so none pogrom, or the cynical betrayal ending with giving up the Jews to the hands of theirs oppressors (on what we can not pass by and what we are ashamed of) we also can not associate victims with their executioners, we can not allow to equate them in the glance of the future for which, men like Dr McCarthy are already lost.
What a destructive and ugly input - acquired hatred. Hatred that leads to a lie. A lie upon becoming a ballad. A ballad becoming a turpitude.
How an honest person can defame a nation whose representative volunteers to a concentration camp, just to uncover the horrible truth to the unknowing world. (Captain Witold Pilecki 13 May 1901 – 25 May 1948)
How a righteous man can say about the Poland (without embarrassing himself at the same time) that it is anti-Semitic to the core, since most people honoured with the Yad Vashem Institute title: Righteous Among the Nations are in fact Poles.
If so this “honest” person had enough courage to spread the untruth, to bring harm on pages of the daily newspaper, to insult the memory and violate the dignity of those who have fought the Nazis, who never would cooperate with them, never would sympathize with them, never have any good thoughts towards them, and who never agreed to the horrors of Auschwitz and other concentrations camps – maybe this “honest person” would have the courage to apologise, and if this is too much, simply to admit that besides the obvious guilt there is also an obvious merit, where the ratio of one to the other absolutely falls in favour of merits.
Please note that Poland was an Ally, long before the Soviet Union and the United States of America have become one of them. Polish soldiers have fought from the very first to the last day of these war: in Poland, France, Norway, England, Soviet Union, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Germany, literally on every front, we lost one of six part of population, Polish capital was levelled to the ground, Hitler ordered to create in its place artificial lake just to make an example and for that reasons alone we ask for a little of respect, which Dr Kevin McCarthy from Kinsale, Co Cork was unable to prove.[i]
By Marcin Małek
20/09/2015
[i] For the sake of completeness: my mother Ida Małek (a child slave during the Nazi occupation) b.1928, maiden name Rogulska, returned home safely after the war, and so my auntie Bogumiła Chochorek (concentration camp inmate) b.1918, maiden name Rogulska. My father Marian Małek b. 1924 as a teenager fought against the Red Army, the Germans and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, in 1946 at the time of pogrom he stationed in Kielce as a lieutenant of Polish People’s Army.
