Danusha V. Goska

Rewriting Holocaust History

This is Danusha Goska.

The history of the Holocaust is one of the most important stories that our civilization has to tell. It is vital that it be told accurately. Unfortunately, a three-word phrase typifies one trend in rewriting Holocaust history. That phrase is "Polish concentration camps," alternately, "Polish death camps."

Nazi concentration and death camps were located in Poland because, as per Nazi plan, Poland itself became one large concentration camp during WW II. All Poles were thus terrorized. Too, the Nazi goal was to eliminate Jews, and most of Europe's Jews lived in Poland.

Poles did not initiate Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz. Poles did not run them. German Nazis did these things, after invading and occupying Poland, in a campaign informed by Hitler's stated goal: to quote, "kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language." For the first eighteen months of its existence, Auschwitz was dedicated to destroying anyone in Poland, teachers, priests, activists, who might lead a resistance. Estimates of how many Christian Poles died at Auschwitz run between seventy and one hundred forty thousand.

It must always be emphasized that the ultimate fate of the Jewish community was far worse, and of a different order.

But this historical fact must not be erased: after Jews and Gypsies, Christian Poles were the third worst targeted national group in the Third Reich. Given Poles' suffering under the Third Reich, the phrase "Polish concentration camps" is not only inaccurate, it is obscene.

For Speak Your Mind, this has been Danusha Goska.

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