The Germans appropriate the Polish experience of victimhood, and the debate on collaboration reveals colonial patterns of thinking, wrote the head of the Pilecki Institute in Berlin, Hanna Radziejowska, and her deputy, Mateusz Fałkowski, in an article published on Wednesday in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”.
The authorities of this institution took part in a debate on the book by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe “Polish mayors and the Holocaust. Administration, occupation and collaboration.”
The managers of the Pilecki Institute found the debate “bizarre because it operates on a strongly distorted image of the German occupation of Poland, as well as a distorted image of the Holocaust.” As the authors of the polemical article against the book emphasized, the critics of this publication are presented by Rossoliński-Liebe and prof. Jan Grabowski “either as Polish nationalists or cowardly German historians.”
“Rossoliński-Liebe describes the Holocaust as a 'transnational genocide'. He draws these radical conclusions based on the analysis (behavior) of 35 mayors in occupied Poland (including four Volksdeutsche), whose actions were allegedly the result of anti-Semitism. He sees such a causal relationship even in extremely complicated situations, when a given official works with the Polish underground or is sent to a Gestapo prison, and he and the closest family of a given mayor (wife and sister) hid Jews. He writes that this group of officials had a significant impact on the course and extent of the Holocaust,” we read in “FAZ.”
Radziejowska and Fałkowski expressed their belief that Rossoliński-Liebe “is so sharpening his thesis that he even includes members of the Jewish Sonderkommando in German extermination camps among the perpetrators and collaborators.”
They noted that Rossoliński-Liebe describes “the nature of the relationship between the occupiers and 'occupied' officials as 'camaraderie' and claims that for one German perpetrator there were nine 'colleagues' from occupied countries.”
“How can such proportions be statistically calculated on the basis of 35 biographies? And where is this alleged relationship of camaraderie when a given official is sent to a Gestapo prison? In Rossoliński-Liebe's case, everything is subordinated to the thesis of 'transnational genocide'” – we read further in “FAZ”.
The managers of the Pilecki Institute regret that “German society has no knowledge about the Holocaust in occupied Poland.” To confirm this thesis, they cited the German IPSOS study from 2024, which shows that 59 percent Germans believe that German Jews are the largest group of Holocaust victims.
“The current debate shows a mechanical copying of the image of occupation from Western Europe and projecting it onto Eastern Europe. A noteworthy mechanism is emerging in which the experience of occupied Poland, the scale of terror and crime begins to become part of the German culture of remembering themselves as victims,” Radziejowska and Fałkowski put forward.
“Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe develops the thesis that Eastern Europe is made up of nationalists who cannot stand in the truth and prevent research on collaboration. Meanwhile, let's look at the facts – the entire international scientific debate on collaboration in occupied Poland is based primarily on sources created as part of post-war processes in Poland, stored and made available in Polish archives,” the authors of the article emphasized.
Radziejowska and Fałkowski noted that “tens of thousands of officers of the huge German terror apparatus have not been held accountable for their crimes.” “No more than 400 people were convicted for crimes committed in Poland during the German occupation in post-war western Germany. In post-war Poland, the number of collaborators, Volksdeutsch, sentenced in 1946-49 amounted to up to 20,000 people,” they noted.
“Isn't it the case that the lack of sufficient accountability in Germany and Austria for the crimes committed in occupied Poland contributes to the shift of German political responsibility for the crimes to other states and nations?” – representatives of the Pilecki Institute ask the question.
Finally, Radziejowska and Fałkowski wrote that they were surprised to find that the Pilecki Institute “has already been mentioned several times in published texts as a nationalist institution close to Law and Justice.”
“Significantly, no one presents any facts that would justify this characterization: not a single project, program or activity that was of a political or party nature was indicated. The mere fact that the institution (either in Poland or Germany) was established during the rule of a specific party cannot be the basis for assigning political affiliations to the people working in it,” emphasized the managers of the Pilecki Institute.
They called for a debate on “what impact the German occupation and the destruction of state structures in Eastern Europe had on the course of the Holocaust.” “It is also worth starting a discussion about Polish mayors. We should conduct this debate in a pluralistic way, without claiming an interpretive monopoly and developing theses based on sources,” they appealed.
On March 3, the Topography of Terror museum in Berlin hosted a presentation of the book “Polnische Buergermeister und der Holocaust. Verwaltung, Besatzung und Kollaboration” (“Polish mayors and the Holocaust. Administration, occupation and collaboration”). The author explained to the approximately two hundred people gathered in the auditorium that it was “a kind of collective biography.” He said that “in every Nazi-occupied country, one German official or policeman collaborated with ten local colleagues” and that “the Holocaust was a transnational genocide in which Germany played a leading role.”
During the questions, Damian Sitkiewicz from the Institute of National Remembrance, the author of a critical review in which he accuses Rossoliński-Liebe of lacking the context of the terror in which the mayors functioned, took the floor. Sitkiewicz asked whether Rossoliński-Liebe would comment on the review. He received the following response: “You will not receive a response from me to your review. The review has been published in a scientific journal, but it is not a scientific review, and I do not respond to this type of review.”
From Berlin Mateusz Obremski (PAP)
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