Polish Historian Who Said Nazi Invasion Not So Bad Is Honored
WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — A Polish historian who said the country’s Nazi invasion was not so bad for Jews on Friday received a medal from the Polish Minister of National Education “for special merits for education.”
Tomasz Panfil, who is responsible for education at the Institute of National Remembrance, earlier this month wrote an article in which he stated that “after the aggression of Germany into Poland, the situation of the Jews did not look very bad.”
In his opinion “although the [Nazi] occupation authorities took over, they ordered the wearing of armbands with the star of David, charged them heavy taxes, began to designate Jews-only zones only for the Jews, but at the same time permitted the creation of Judenrat, that is, organs of self-government.”
Panfil was criticized for that by the Institute of National Remembrance.
The Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper this week revealed that in 2014 he issued an expert opinion to a Polish court in which he wrote that the swastika is an ambiguous symbol – not only related to Nazism, but also symbolizes happiness in some cultures. He also claimed then that the NSDAP, or the Nazi party, was a leftist party.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO