Over 6,000 Poles are honoured at the Yad Vashem institute in Jerusalem for assisting Jews during WW II. photo - PG

The opposition Law and Justice party has drafted a resolution in tribute to Poles “who were killed by German occupying forces in retaliation for saving Jews from the Holocaust,”, in reaction, they say, at “lies” directed at Poland in foreign media and the forthcoming book by controversial historian Jan T. Gross. 

The draft has been presented at a press conference by Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński and comes days before the release of Golden Harvest by Jan Gross, which recounts how many Poles gained financially from the persecution of Jews during and after WW II.

According to the party,  the largest in the lower house of parliament (Sejm) such a resolution would be a fitting tribute to the memory of  the family of Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma who were executed  with their seven children in the village of Markowa, south-eastern Poland, for sheltering a group of Jews on their farm, sixty seven years ago this month.

The draft speaks of the heroism of many Poles which was an expression of solidarity with representatives of the ‘Jewish nation’ which has lived on Polish lands for almost one thousand years.

The resolution pays respect to the clergy and nuns who saved Polish Jews  and recalls the many appeals by the WW II Polish government-in-exile to the allied governments on behalf of persecuted Jews.

Law and Justice MPs say that a memorial to Poles who saved Jews should be erected in Warsaw and the Ulma Family Museum should be set up in their home town of Markowa.

Lies

MP Kazimierz Maria Ujazdowski said at a press conference on Monday that the resolution should also serve as a response to the lies that are unjustly directed against Poland.

“This refers not only to the oft-repeated references to ‘Polish death camps’ [in various foreign media] but also to some books – and definitely those by Professor Gross,” he said.

On Thursday, Jan Tomasz Gross’s book, Golden Harvest, is launched in Poland. It tells how some Poles living close to German Nazi death camps such as Treblinka stole from the corpses of murdered Jews and enriched themselves by taking their houses and belongings.

The book has been criticized by many Polish historians and politicians, including Władysław Bartoszewski, a former Auschwitz prisoner and foreign minister and currently a minister of state in the Prime Minister’s chancellery, for giving a one-sided account of the post-war years in Poland. (mk/pg)