Long time lurker, first time poster. Hope I did it right.
So I was reading the wikipedia page called "The Holocaust in Poland" and it has this paragraph under the header "Antisemitism":
"Polish antisemitism had two formative motifs: claims of defilement of the Catholic faith; and Żydokomuna (Jew-communism). During the 1930s, Catholic journals in Poland paralleled western European social-Darwinist antisemitism and the Nazi press. However, church doctrine ruled out violence, which only became more common in the mid-1930s. Unlike German antisemitism, Polish political-ideological antisemites rejected the idea of genocide or pogroms of the Jews, advocating mass emigration instead.[a] Joseph Stalin's occupation of terror in eastern Poland in 1939 brought what Jan Gross calls "the institutionalization of resentment",[169] whereby the Soviets used privileges and punishments to accommodate and encourage ethnic and religious differences between Jews and Poles There was an upsurge in the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews as Communist traitors; it erupted into mass murder when Nazi Germany invaded Soviet eastern Poland in the summer of 1941. A group of at least 40 Poles, with an unconfirmed level of German backing, murdered hundreds of Jews in the racially aggravated Jedwabne pogrom. There was a rash of other massacres of Jews across the same formerly Soviet-occupied region of Łomża and Białystok around the same time, with varying degrees of German death squad incitement or involvement: at Bielsk Podlaski (the village of Pilki), Choroszcz, Czyżew, Goniądz, Grajewo, Jasionówka, Kleszczele, Knyszyn, Kolno, Kuźnica, Narewka, Piątnica, Radziłów, Rajgród, Sokoły, Stawiski, Suchowola, Szczuczyn, Trzcianne, Tykocin, Wasilków, Wąsosz, and Wizna.[170]"
The text straight up blames Polish antisemitism and violence on Stalin and the Soviets. Obviously, this made me very suspicious. Does anyone know what it refers to, what the supposed evidence that the Soviets stoked antisemitic violence is, and have any alternative sources I can read?
Thanks!
EDIT: link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Poland#Antisemitism
The Polish government was explicitly anti-semitic but of course the Poles had nothing to do with the holocaust :very-smart:
The Holocaust was done by the Germans and the Germans only. Everyone else was just minding their own business when the Soviets came to oppress them.
This makes me think of the type of historian that will put "class enemies" in scare quotes when writing about Soviet repression of rightwingers.
And it was only the bad Germans, who completely disappeared after the war and were never seen again.
Someone correct me if I am wrong here, but isn't it basically a crime in Poland to say that Poland contributed to the Holocaust (which, as a Polish-American with family who were in the camps, is objectively true).
yup
The Polish government was a flawless bastion of liberty, democracy, peace, and tolerance. I have been told as much by many, many Polish nationalists on Twitter, usually after I mock them for complaining that Stalin didn't let Hitler exterminate them.