Polish PM says Hitler's Germany responsible for Holocaust,

[JustJohn or JJ]

Polish PM says Hitler's Germany responsible for Holocaust, not Nazis

AFP News27 January 2019

Hitler's Germany was responsible for the Holocaust, not the Nazis, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Sunday, as Poland marked 74 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

"Hitler's Germany fed on fascist ideology... But all the evil came from this (German) state and we cannot forget that, because otherwise we relativise evil," said Morawiecki at an official ceremony at Auschwitz.

"The Polish state acts as the guardian of the truth, which must not be relativised in any way," he said.

"I want to make a promise here to (preserve) the complete truth about that era," he added, in a speech in the southern city of Oswiecim to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

Sunday's ceremony at Auschwitz was attended by a number of former prisoners at the camp.

Morawiecki's speech comes after last year's row over a Polish law that made it illegal to accuse the Polish nation or state of complicity in Nazi German crimes.

After protests from Israel and the US, Poland amended the law to remove the possibility of fines or a prison sentence.

Morawiecki appeared to be responding to an idea often mentioned in Poland, which claims that historians try to attribute responsibility for the genocide of Jews exclusively to the Nazis, without recalling the role played by the German state and Germans as a nation.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. With one million Jews killed there between 1940 to 1945, the camp has become a symbol of Nazi Germany's genocide of the European Jews.

More than 100,000 other people including non-Jewish Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and anti-Nazi resistance fighters also perished there.

Last February, Morawiecki had to defend himself against criticism from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who denounced "unacceptable" comments he made about the Holocaust.

Morawiecki's office insisted that he has repeatedly opposed Holocaust denial and anti-semitism in all its forms.

[karl]

J.J.

yes of course, this never ends. These people remember every thing, but have learnt nothing.

Karl

[Jaga]

John,

yes, that is true, although I would hope, like Karl, that this is over. The Nazi culture was really a product os German super-nationalism and superiority.

[pieter]

John/Karl/Jaga,

I agree with both Karl's and Jaga's comments. I understand where the words of the Polish prime minister comes from, but fact is that the Nazi's took over, purified (purged) the German state of non-Nazi's and that the Germans whom were not nazi failed to unite themselves against the Nazi's. The rivalry of the Social democrats and the communists was to big to be able to form a leftwing Peoples front like in France under the Popular Front government of the left from 1936-37 under Prime Minister Léon Blum (9 April 1872 – 30 March 1950). The SPD, Communists, Centre failed to form a united anti-Nazi front and thus Adolf Hitler won in the March 1933 German federal election with 33.09%. the Social democrats gained 20.43% and the communists 16.86%, the Roman Catholic Centre party 11.93%. Hitler started to nazify the German government and army immediately and after that the German state and society.

Communists and social democrats were soon put in the first concentrationcamps like Dachau concentration camp. Conservative Roman-Catholic and Lutherans, democrats and liberals who opposed Nazism had a hard time. Honest people like Zentrum politician Konrad Adenauer had a very difficult life under Nazi rule. the future Bundeskanzler Adenauer was several times in prison and his life was saved by the German communist Eugen Zander. In 1933, using his connections with the port and its ships, German future Chancellor Willy Brandt left Germany for Norway to escape Nazi persecution. In late 1946, Brandt returned to Berlin, working for the Norwegian government. In 1948, he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and became a German citizen again, formally adopting the pseudonym Willy Brandt as his legal name.

There were anti-Nazi elements in the German army Wehrmacht, in society (on universities, in the youth culture - the Swing Jugend- - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swingjugend -, in German resistance circles like the White Rose - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose -).

Cheers,
Pieter