Polish Ambassador to Israel Marek Magierowski was interviewed by "The Times of Israel"

Polish Ambassador to Israel Marek Magierowski was interviewed by „The Times of Israel”. We publish the most important (in our opinion) statements of Mr Magierowski:

I have worked here as ambassador for seven months now and I have yet to meet someone who has not been to Poland recently, for a holiday or on a business trip. And all talk about Poland highly: it’s safe, friendly, modern. Israelis appreciate high living standards and excellent food. Many are truly bewildered: “I expected a drab, post-communist, gray landscape. And suddenly I encountered a Western country in Eastern Europe.”

There’s another intriguing parallel: the astonishing economic growth of both Poland and Israel over the last three decades. Polish startups and young entrepreneurs are seeking new opportunities in the Israeli market. Israeli companies have heavily invested in Poland, mostly in real estate, the retail sector and high-tech, lured by the stable business environment and highly educated workforce. No wonder that all those flights between Poland and Tel Aviv are fully booked…

The infamous term “Polish death camps” is just the tip of the iceberg. Let me give you an example of another blatant semantic distortion. “Germans” are no longer “Germans.” They are “Nazis.” Unless you read a story about, say, a “German woman who rescued a Jewish family.”

Whereas when you read about Poles who collaborated with the German occupiers and denounced Jews, they are invariably “Poles.” Unless you read a story about a Pole who rescued a Jewish family. Then this Pole, quite mysteriously, becomes… “a non-Jewish neighbor.” It’s a gross manipulation.

Poland was invaded and occupied — by Germany and the Soviet Union. Polish soldiers fought the Germans on all fronts. There was no Polish puppet government. No Polish [Vidkun] Quisling, no Polish [Phillipe] Petain. No Waffen-SS division composed of Polish nationals.

We lost six million citizens, approximately half of them of Jewish descent. We lost cities, villages, infrastructure, artworks. Poland was devastated. This is the not-so-unimportant context that is too frequently missing from the spectacular headlines about the alleged “Polish complicity.”

And yes, some of my fellow countrymen committed abominable crimes against their Jewish brethren. Before, during and after the war. I have no reservations in saying that they were Poles. Not “bandits,” not “criminals,” not “non-Jewish neighbors.” No need to conceal their nationality. They were Polish, they spoke Polish, they were born in Poland.

And they “excluded themselves from the Polish society,” as Polish President Andrzej Duda once famously said [in a July 2016 speech], referring to the perpetrators of the pogrom in Kielce in 1946. We must not forget the painful past, but it is also our moral obligation to tell the whole truth, no matter how complex, in all its aspects.

MK, KJ