Zdzislaw Zakrzewski
705 Hydra Ln.
Foster City CA 94404
July 17, 2001
Mr. George F. Will
c/o Newsweek
Dear Mr. Will,
I am deeply chagrined by your latest column [Newsweek, July
9, 2001]. As usual, your logic is impeccable and conclusions insightful,
however, all this excellent work largely wasted simply because it was based
on a mendacious source: Prof. Jan Thomas Grossı pamphlet "Neighbors."
You certainly had every right to trust your source; one does
not treat work of a New York University professor printed by the respectable
Princeton University Press as academically suspect. Unfortunately that
does not change facts of the matter.
Of course I do not expect you to accept my statements as
a proof of fraud by the good Professor. Therefore all I will attempt to
do is to point some suspicious information in the book and the existence
of other sources, which refute Mr. Grossı outrageous claims. The assault
was so unexpected, that only now the allegations have been adequately studied
and suitable rebuttal prepared in Polish only. I hope English editions
will be available soon because the unanswered lies are being widely distributed
and generally accepted as truth.
One of the new sources referred to above is the work of Prof.
Robert Nowak: "100 lies of Prof. Gross". There is also a report by the
National Commission on WW II Atrocities, which investigated the allegations
by Gross. It subpoenaed surviving eyewitnesses of the Jedwabne events [a
total of 9 Jews and 18 gentiles] and dug-up the site of the killings to
exhume victim bodies, with official Jewish representation present. The
report is also in Polish and I only saw excerpts as offered by press: One
can only hope the full text will soon be available both in Polish and English.
The conclusions seem to be as follows.
- All witnesses reported, that the German unit occupying
the town at the time has committed all the killings with no Polish participation.
- 89 empty shells were found at the site: ammunition for
standard German Mauser carbine and a few from Walter pistol as used by
the officers. The shots were presumably fired at victims who tried to resist
or escape.
- Only about 150 bodies were uncovered and it is now estimated
there could not be more than 200 to 250 victims at all. It is a far cry
from the 1,600 claimed by Gross. There was simply no barn large enough
in the whole country to squeeze in that many people and there were not
that many Jews in Jedwabne at the time.
- Money, jewelry and gold were found on some bodies denying
Grossı claim that the victims were robbed prior to murder.
The exhumation process was suddenly interrupted by request
from the Jewish representatives, claiming religious prohibition against
further disturbance of the bodies. Did they realize they should expect
no evidence of Polish complicity? Not a single corroboration of grizzly
details of savagery described by Gross and based primarily on the revelations
of a single "eyewitness": the former Polish communist Secret Police member
Wasserstein, who, as a Soviet KGB functionary, actually escaped from Jedwabne
before arrival of German and was at the time somewhere in Russia.
Wassersteinıs and the communist regimeıs interest in Jedwabne
was based on the need to provide "facts" which would help to break the
spirit of recalcitrant Poles who rejected their system; by proving their
bestiality through phony investigation and forced "confessions", they hoped
to obtain a weapon to shame and deride their unhappy subjects .
One would expect present Polish authorities to promptly distribute
the new findings, which effectively rebut those horrible allegations -
throughout the world, but instead we have a spectacle of the Polish President
issuing formal apology for the uncommitted crime, which must be interpreted
as the confession of guilt.
One possible explanation of this anomaly may be the needs
and plans of what Norman G. Finkelstein calls the "Holocaust Industry"
in his latest book under this title. After hitting Germany and Switzerland
for "reparations" the Jewish community leaders have Poland in their cross-sights
and are preparing the world opinion for the assault; smearing Poles to
look like degenerate barbarians equal to Nazis may seem to some unscrupulous
operators as a clever approach. If this is true, then present leaders of
Poland [many of them with Jewish roots] may be afraid to cross such a powerful
juggernaut.
Of course nobody denies isolated cases of brutality and crime
against Jews and not just by criminal elements present in all societies.
A country brutalized by a merciless war, with German and Soviet troops,
partisans of all possible denominations: Polish nationalist and communist,
Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish all fighting against each other, all preying
on the peasants for food. Little wonder there were killings on all sides.
In all this confusion, however, the Jewish case had a very special twist
to it. To make it easier to understand let me use an example.
Try to imagine that Japanese-Americans were not incarcerated
and Japan managed to land troops on our West Coast subjecting the occupied
population to their routine sadistic regime. Suppose further, that the
local Japanese-Americans not only welcome the invaders with flowers and
banners, but also became their most enthusiastic collaborators: knowing
language, customs and people they soon became the bedrock of the occupational
administration, denouncing their former "neighbors", settling petty, private
accounts, etc.
Would you not consider them worse than the brutal aggressors,
feel bitterness, rage and contempt for the traitors? Thatıs exactly what
happened to the Polish Jewish relations under Soviet occupation, which
I witnessed personally in 1939.
As militarily trained 20 years old student of engineering
I was among thousands sent by Polish authorities towards eastern border
where our forces were supposed to reorganize. Most of the small towns inhabitants
in the area were 70% or more Jewish. The reorganization plans ended promptly
with the unexpected attack of the Red Army, Sept. 17, 1939. I was appalled
to see masses of Jews parading with communist party buttons, building welcome
gates for the Soviets, greeting them with flowers and eventually volunteering
for the new administrative offices under the KGB. I walked surreptitiously
toward the Rumanian border and passed through at least a dozen of villages
and small towns during the first week of the occupation and dealt with
these new officials did not notice one non-Jewish face among them. I
will not bother you with many details, but let me add just one more pertaining
fact.
In 1944 I have finally met with my sister for the first
time in almost six years. She has survived Soviet "gulag." At that first
meeting she said, that KGB came looking for me within few days from occupying
my hometown Lwow. Their guide was my colleague from the high school days,
a Jew, who described me as an "enemy of the people." As I deduced later
this was because of a paper [in 1935, or 36] I prepared as a homework,
which dealt with communism and in unfavorable terms. They did not get me
of course, but a few months later they came for my family: my Father was
taken separately, never to be heard from again; my Mother and two sisters
were deported to Kazakhstan only the two girls survived and miraculously
got out. There were approx. two million deportees from Poland and most
of them went through that hell thanks to their "neighbors." Since Jedwabne
was under Soviets occupation before 1941 it is fair to assume that local
Jews left similar memories. That explains why most of them escaped with
the Red Army after German assault and only about 500 decided to stay home
according to residents. How come Newsweek, Time and even venerable The
Wall Street Journal rush to repeat the lie of 1,600 murdered? Is checking
the facts before jumping on the grizzly bandwagon and smearing the name
of an ancient nation out of fashion?
Under the above assumed scenario the Japanese troops on
the American soil - do you suppose that many Americans would be willing
to defend the Japanese traitors from local population to the point of risking
their own lives, after Japanese troops were ejected from the country?
In Poland 150,000 people gave their lives trying to harbor
and defend their Jewish "neighbors" regardless of their transgressions.
Other thousands succeeded; some of them even won a formal recognition and
there are thousands of "Polish" trees at Yad Vashem. We are a Catholic
nation and nobless oblige
I personally agree with D. Goldhagen: In every school there
are natural bullies who canıt desist the desire to torment the weak and
the helpless. History proves that Germany is such a bully for Europe and
Hitlerıs role was indeed just a "mere catalyst" as you put it.
It seems a case could be easily made that Jews also fit this
image: as predominant personnel in the Soviet Union repression apparatus
as well as in Polish Security during communist regime they have shown extreme
cruelty towards their victims. Add to this their attitude towards Palestinians
and other Arabic nations marked with utter disrespect for human rights
and lack of empathy for other human beings and you have a typical prototype
of a born "bully". But that is an entirely different subject.
I apologize for imposing on your time with such a long letter
and hope you will consider it an expression of respect for your integrity.
The conclusion is that unfortunately one has to be watchful all the time
and especially if confronted with a "mind boggling story" regardless of
the source any one of them could be deceiving. And if I may end with
a request: please kindly refrain from comparing Germans with any Christian
nation and especially with their notorious victims Poles.
Respectfully yours,
The
Summit Times
Salski@dnai.com
İ Copyright 2001 by
Andrzej M. Salski
THE
SUMMIT TIMES