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David Harris Oped featured in
Gazeta Wyborcza [link removed]
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Dear John,
Polish-Jewish relations are fraught with bitter challenges, as
American Jewish Committee (AJC) CEO David Harris knows firsthand from
four decades of front-line experience. But the commonalities of the
two peoples, spanning more than 1,000 years, inspires him to believe
that the deep wounds must be healed to the extent possible, and
cooperation expanded. In an oped published today in Gazeta Wyborcza,
considered "
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The New York Times of Poland," Harris explains why Poland and
Israel, and Poland and the Jewish people, should be the most natural
of allies in today's world.
Best wishes,
Kenneth Bandler
AJC Director of Media Relations
Poland and Jews: Coauthors of History?
Gazeta Wyborcza
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By David Harris
February 3, 2021
When I read about the appointment of a new Polish Deputy Minister of
Education, Tomz Rzymkowski, who asserts that Jews have too much power,
I shuddered.
And when I read the results of the CBOS survey, conducted by scholars
at Krakow's famed Jagellonian University and funded by the
Polish National Science Center, that one in five Polish respondents
believes it is a good thing that World War II led to fewer Jews in
Poland, even as a majority disagreed, I shuddered again.
Indeed, I wonder at such times if one of my lifetime dreams - to
help heal the wounds in Polish-Jewish relations and write a bright,
consistent new chapter in those ties - will ever be realized.
Some on both sides of the relationship question the goal. There remain
deep pockets of hostility in each community. They were on display
three years ago when Poland regrettably adopted the IPN law. Indeed,
it was hard for those committed to the relationship to be heard above
the verbal fireworks.
So, with all the minefields, all the periodic eruptions, all the
choruses of skeptics, and, yes, all the battlefield scars, why do I
persist, for four decades now, through my work at American Jewish
Committee?
The answer is simple and straightforward.
I am not naive about the complex history of Polish-Jewish relations,
or the accusations emanating from both sides. Yet I believe, as the
son of parents who suffered at the hands of both Berlin and Moscow,
that what we share in common far exceeds what divides us. And those
commonalities are profoundly important in our contemporary world.
First, Polish history is filled with pride. It is also filled with
pain. So, too, is Jewish history.
Poland disappeared from the world map for 123 years. Israel
disappeared for 1,878 years. But neither Poland nor Israel ever
disappeared from the collective consciousness of our respective
peoples, not for one single moment.
We both understand that predatory nations exist, the security of
smaller states is always potentially at risk, and navet and
appeasement are not strategies for survival.
Second, our histories are intertwined.
One cannot speak about Jewish history without speaking about Poland.
Some estimates suggest that as many as 80 percent of American Jews
trace their roots, in whole or in part, back to Poland. And the number
of Israelis with a Polish connection, beginning with none other than
David Ben-Gurion, a native of Plonsk, is considerable.
Likewise, one cannot speak about Polish history without speaking about
Jews over the span of some 1,000 years. On the eve of World War II,
fully ten percent of Poland's population was Jewish, as well as
more than one-third of Warsaw's. Jews were engaged in virtually
every aspect of Polish life.
Third, as the survivors, liberators, underground fighters, and
eyewitnesses disappear from our midst, who will protect the memory of
the war?
Who will challenge the revisionists? Who will teach younger
generations about what happened in those fateful years and its
enduring lessons?
These are not simply academic questions. Russia has unleashed a
campaign to essentially extinguish the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop
Agreement from the history books, and instead to blame Poland -
the first target of the German army on September 1, 1939, followed by
the Soviet army on September 17, 1939 - for the war's
outbreak.
And too many in the media, wittingly or unwittingly, continue to refer
libelously to "Polish death camps" rather than
"German death camps."
Meanwhile, the Holocaust, in which three million Polish Jews (and
three million other Jews) perished at the hands of Nazi Germany and
its collaborators, is a permanent target of denial, rationalization,
trivialization, distortion, and instrumentalization.
Fourth, our histories both lead us to create a special place for the
United States.
America is the home of millions-strong Polish and Jewish communities
that have benefited from the blessed freedom and opportunity they have
been afforded.
In addition, we both understand that the safety of democratic
societies - and the security of reliable allies like Poland and
Israel - are enhanced immeasurably by a strong, outward-looking
America.
Finally, Poles and Jews both know what abandonment looks like.
For Poland, Yalta embodies the sacrifice of a country's
sovereignty on the altar of big-power machinations. The result, of
course, was that Poland went from German to Soviet occupation,
resulting in a total of 50 years of foreign domination, until the
dramatic events of 1989, when Poland heroically led the efforts, begun
by a Polish pope and by Solidarity and KOR, to break away from the
Soviet bloc and communist tyranny.
For Jews, the Holocaust embodies the catastrophic loneliness and
vulnerability for those trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe, despite the
heroic efforts of a few, including, in the case of Poland, several
thousand Righteous Among the Nations, such as the legendary Jan
Karski, Witold Pilecki, and Irena Sendler.
In other words, whatever the differences might be today, or might have
been in the past, it's time to focus on what unites us and
marginalize the shrill voices that would continue ad infinitum to
divide us.
And, thankfully, we are not starting from scratch, as much has been
achieved in the past three decades, including, notably, the rebirth of
a small but vibrant Jewish community on Polish soil, and the opening
of the Warsaw-based AJC Central Europe office in 2017.
Poland and Israel should be the most natural of allies in
today's world. So should Poland and the Jewish people.
Together, let's speak out against historical revisionism,
appeasement, wooly-eyed thinking, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, and
the rebirth of illusions about either Nazism or socialism.
It's high time, in other words, to move forward as co-authors of
history. We have no more time to lose.
David Harris is the CEO of American Jewish Committee (AJC). Please
join 79,100 others and follow him on Twitter @DavidHarrisAJC.
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