For the Polish Government, Memory of the Holocaust Must Not Interfere with a Narrative of Polish Victimhood

Earlier this month, Andrzej Duda narrowly won another term as president of Poland. Among the symbolic issues bandied about in the campaign was the legislation to provide restitution for Jewish property stolen by Polish Gentiles during and after the Holocaust (Duda is opposed), and an admiring remark from Duda’s opponent about Benedict Spinoza (denounced by the government-owned television channel as an “anti-Catholic” statement in favor of a “Jewish philosopher.”) Ben Cohen comments:

According to the Polish president, the responsibility for restitution lies solely with Germany. There are a number of legal objections to Duda’s view. . . . But such technicalities cut little ice in Warsaw these days, chiefly because Duda’s government has “nationalized” the memory of the Holocaust. By that, I mean that the official depiction of the Holocaust by the state-run Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) would have us believe that Poles and Jews were equal partners in victimhood, and that the Holocaust was as much a Polish tragedy as a Jewish one.

Within the confines of this distorted narrative, there is no room to discuss the thorny issue of collaboration—the very word elicits fury in the corridors of the IPN—of ordinary Poles with the occupying German authorities. Any notion that Poles contributed directly to the slaughter of their country’s historic Jewish community is regarded not as historical fact, but as defamation.

For Poland’s current crop of leaders, it isn’t enough that the most serious Holocaust historians, along with Jewish and Israeli leaders, have recognized that the Poles suffered profoundly as a nation under the Nazis, and that many of the mechanisms for collaboration that existed elsewhere in Eastern Europe—like, for example, joining local units of the SS—were absent in Poland. It seems that nothing less than a title deed to the word “Holocaust” will suffice.

As wrenching as it is to say this. . . the legacy of two forms of totalitarianism—Nazism and Communism—continue to impact Poland, alongside its long, grim tradition of domestic anti-Semitism.

Read more at JNS

More about: Anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Poland

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa