Remembering the Holocaust

Sir, – Polish ambassador Sochanksa’s letter in The Irish Times (April 15th), condemning your own article about a deal struck between the Israeli and Polish governments regarding school trips by Israeli schoolchildren to Holocaust sites in Poland is to be expected. The Polish government employs hundreds of academics in its Institute for National Memory (IPN) to publish papers that distort history, including the relationship between Catholic and Jewish Poles during the Holocaust.

Effectively, a ministry for history, it is hard to believe that this exists in 2023 in a member country of the EU. Cosying up to Israel, signing up to a deal to expose Jewish children to a Holocaust narrative that promotes Polish martyrdom, is a new low for both countries where Holocaust memorialisation is concerned. As the son of a Polish Holocaust survivor, I feel a deep sense of betrayal that the Holocaust is being exploited so shamelessly.

Poland’s relationship with Jews is complicated and often tragic. I bear the name of my great uncle, Olek, who was hidden by his Polish friend, a priest in the crypt of a church until he was betrayed by another Polish priest. When the Gestapo came for him, his friend held the door long enough for Olek to shoot himself. His entire family was murdered except for his brother, my adoptive grandfather.

Victims, bystanders and perpetrators: this history is difficult and sometimes nuanced. It is not best served by the malevolent intervention of a populist government steadily eroding democratic norms, a government currently fined ¤1,000,000 a day by Brussels for breaking the rule of law and whose ¤36 billion covid recovery subsidy has been frozen. The EU is also withholding tens of billions of cohesion funds, granted in the 2021-27 budget. That should tell you much. – Yours, etc.