When Auschwitz couldn’t speak for Israel, we had to cancel the trip.
While Polish support for Ukraine has been exceptional since day one, the parallels between what Ukraine and Israel are facing seem to have escaped Polish leaders.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
This is a guest essay written by David Harris, Executive Vice Chair of The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Together with a delegation from The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, I was supposed to go to Poland this month.
The purposes were twofold: first, to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and second, to explore the scholarly debates in Poland around Holocaust-related research and history.
Our delegation just opted not to go. It was a painful decision for me, as I will explain, but it was the right thing to do.
I had been the driving force for this mission to Poland. It fit with my decades-long history of engaging with post-communist Poland, even as I often met resistance in the Jewish world.
To state the obvious, Poland was, and is, an infinitely complex country for many Jews. For me, as well. But, unlike some, I chose to engage it, not shun it. I admired the Polish spirit and saw many similarities between Polish and Jewish aspirations.
Thus, during my years at the helm of American Jewish Committee, I chose to actively support Poland's bid for NATO membership, understanding this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure Poland’s place in the most successful military pact in history.
I was proud when veteran Polish diplomat, Ambassador Maciej Kozlowski, said of me: “The best friend of Poland we have had, and a man who in a sense ensured that we were accepted to NATO.”
What’s more, I spoke up in The New York Times when President Barack Obama made the unforgivable error of referring to a “Polish death camp” — rather than a Nazi German death camp in Poland — in honoring posthumously a heroic wartime figure and son of Poland, Jan Karski.
In 2017, I launched a pioneering American Jewish Committee office for Central Europe headquartered in Warsaw, when many suggested it would be more wisely located in Budapest or Prague.
And I constantly reminded those who needed reminders — and they were many — that Poland was the first military target of Nazi Germany, that Poles fought valiantly in the underground and in Allied forces, and that thousands of Poles have been honored for saving Jews by Yad Vashem1 — even as, yes, antisemitism in Poland was a fact of life before, during, and after the Second World War.
So why cancel a planned trip to Poland at this moment in time?
Because we did not believe that Poland right now is where we wanted to commemorate the Shoah2. It just did not feel right, though the ashes of millions of Jews are, of course, to be found there.
Poland has shown little understanding of, much less solidarity with, Israel since October 7, 2023, when a genocidal — yes, genocidal — war was launched against the lone Jewish-majority nation in the world.
That goes for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum as well, which was inexplicably silent for weeks after the barbarism of October 7th. Indeed, I tweeted at them 23 days later urging a statement for their huge following, which they only did afterwards — and, it appeared, quite reluctantly.
While Polish support for Ukraine has been exceptional since day one, the parallels between what Ukraine and Israel are facing seem to have escaped Polish leaders. Instead, unlike nearby Czech Republic and Hungary, Poland has shown virtually no willingness to stand with Israel in the European Union or in various United Nations bodies.
Moreover, the implied but unmistakable Polish threat to detain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under an International Criminal Court warrant, should he come to Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz this month, is beyond obscene, and again in stark contrast to some neighboring countries, not to mention the United States and France.
As it stands, the Israeli leader is confronting a war on seven fronts against jihadist forces, and, principally for that reason, would not even consider such a trip.
But imagine for a moment a scene in which the democratically elected leader of Israel, home to the largest community of Holocaust survivors in the world, would be held by Polish authorities on or near the hallowed and accursed grounds of Auschwitz, the largest Jewish cemetery in the world. The outcry would be thundering, the ramifications long-lasting.
And, surprisingly, the current Polish government has seemingly shown an indifference to surging global antisemitism that has not left Poland untouched. Few nations should understand the slippery slope of antisemitism, which can begin with words and end with annihilation, better than Poland. Its voice needs to be heard, loud and clear, both within and beyond its borders. Instead, there is largely silence.
So instead of Poland, where will The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy be this month to commemorate the solemn 80th anniversary?
Israel.
As Jan Karski, the Polish Catholic Righteous Among the Nations, memorably said when American Jewish Committee honored him in Washington more than 30 years ago: “There will never again be a Holocaust. Why? Because there is an Israel.”
How right his words were then. How right his words are today.
Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust
Hebrew for the Holocaust
Polish antisemitism is nothing new. There is a reason the last pogrom of WW2 was in Poland in 1946. They won't even accept their complicity in the Holocaust.
Poland, btw gives the world nothing. It never has. Well they gave the world Kemilnicki, and nationalist antisemitism. So the nazis learned good from the Poles.
They have also systematically dishonored what happened at Auschwitz for decades by trying to make Poland the victim rather than Jews. They are, and have always been, a nothing country.
I am just so disappointed by Poland's actions with respect to Israel.
Note, I did not write "surprised".