Sir, – Polish ambassador Anna Sochanska’s letter (July 22nd) criticising my recent article “What we must do to save liberal democracy” is hardly surprising (Opinion & Analysis, July 20th).
But as the saying goes, she is entitled to her own opinions, but not her own facts. There is not a little irony that she enjoys the freedom to have her views published here in Ireland. If I expressed my views in Poland, especially on the subject of Poland’s wartime collaboration with the Nazis, I would land in jail.
Holocaust denial and distortion are embraced by most populist governments and the current Polish government has enacted laws to shield it from independent research on Polish actions during this period; disturbing, dangerous and undemocratic.
I’d like to thank the ambassador for highlighting the fate of my grandfather, Pawel Rozenfeld. I know that she is aware of him as she attended The Objects of Love exhibition in Dublin Castle which tells my family story. For the record, a Gestapo officer accompanied by two Polish policemen came to arrest him at his factory on November 11th, 1939. The Germans had reinstated the Polish police force on October 30th, 1939, and they were known as the Blue Police on account of their uniforms. Pawel’s name was given to the Gestapo by the Polish authorities.
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The Polish state may have been under occupation but the only Polish citizens to lose their identity were Jews.
It’s true that Pawel’s factory was taken over by the Germans, along with his home but successive Polish laws starting in 1961 exclude the possibility for my family to claim them back. Part of President Duda’s re-election campaign in 2020 ran on a new law to make any restitution to Holocaust survivors almost impossible, using the rhetoric of “the Jews want to make the Poles pay for the crimes of the Germans”.
I long vowed that if I ever received a penny from my grandfather’s estate, I’d use the money to promote democracy in Poland. It’s urgently required. – Yours, etc,
OLIVER SEARS,
Holocaust Awareness
Ireland,
Dublin 2.