Sir, – Further to “Remembering the Holocaust” (Letters, April 17th), Oliver Sears’s arguments don’t stand.
He acknowledges that Poles helped his family. What is wrong with telling the Israeli young about it?
How is this shameless? There is no distortion of history. History is not one-dimensional, as Mr Sears likes to see it.
Poles and Jewish Poles fought bravely during the second World War, resisting both Nazi German and Soviet aggression.
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On April 19th, we commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Poles were informing the world of the German cruelty, but the world remained indifferent.
The Polish nation was subjected to terror under occupation and yet acts of bravery and humanity were not uncommon. Poles kept fighting for “your freedom and ours”, only to be betrayed by the Western powers, denied their freedom and left behind the Iron Curtain, under the Soviet sphere of influence.
There was no one to tell the real story. Poles like General Stanislaw Maczek, liberator of Breda, were serving drinks in a Scottish bar, almost forgotten by history. Their bravery and courage are absent from the Western and Soviet narrative of history.
Historians, such as those at Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), are now uncovering documents and bringing them to light.
It’s high time for those like Mr Sears to stop blaming Poles for the tragedy that was inflicted upon us by the German and Soviet terrors. – Yours, etc,
ANNA SOCHANSKA,
Ambassador of the Republic of Poland,
Dublin 4.
