One in five Poles say that it is a good thing that the Second World War led to fewer Jews living in Poland, according to a new study, published to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day:
The survey also revealed that certain antisemitic stereotypes remain widespread in Poland, and that many Poles’ knowledge about the Holocaust is limited.
The survey was conducted by CBOS, a state-linked pollster, as part of a project on the Polish social memory of Auschwitz run by scholars at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and financed by the National Science Centre (NCN), a Polish state body for funding academic research.
The study revealed that certain negative attitudes towards Jews are still present in Poland. For instance, 19% of the respondents agreed with the statement that “war is a horrible thing, but it is good that it resulted in fewer Jews in Poland”. A large majority, 71%, disagreed, however…
Meanwhile, 11% of respondents supported the statement that “Jews had so many troubles during the war because God punished them for crucifying Christ”. A majority (55%) agreed that today “Jews have too much influence in the world” and 28% that “Jews have too much influence on Polish political life”.
The findings echo an international study on antisemitism published in 2019, in which 56% of Poles said that Jews have “too much power” in business and finance. Attitudes classified as anti-Jewish were more common in Poland than in any of the other 17 countries surveyed.
The new CBOS data also confirm previous findings showing gaps in Polish public knowledge about the Holocaust. For example, almost 20% of respondents claimed that more Poles died at Auschwitz than Jews, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
In fact, while around 70,000 ethnic Poles died at the camp, Jews – one million of whom died at Auschwitz – made up over 90% of its victims. Just over half of those surveyed by CBOS correctly stated that more Jews were killed there than Poles.
Only 11% of Poles were able to correctly identify the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust (around 6 million). Over 40% significantly underestimated the number of Polish Jews that died during the war, notes OKO.press.
“Poles generally do not know how many Jews died in the Holocaust,” Kucia told Catholic news agency KAI. But “almost all share the universalist meaning of Auschwitz as a symbol of total evil, a symbol of genocide”.
The researchers also asked about the role Poles played during Holocaust. They found that over 80% of Poles believe that their compatriots helped Jews “as much as they could”, while only 14% admitted that they could have done more.
Commenting on the findings, Kucia noted that “few Poles today deny the complicity of our ancestors in the extermination of the Jews…but half [try to] justify complicity in the Holocaust”.
The study found that exactly 50% believe that Polish involvement in the killing of Jews happened “only under duress and fear of the Germans”. Over 60% said that they get angry when someone speaks about wartime crimes committed by Poles against Jews, notes Kucia.
“These are not surprising results,” the sociologist told OKO.press. “They show how Poles perceive themselves as a nation of righteous people.”
Jews are wont to claim that antisemitism is caused by ignorance — allegedly only people who have never had encounters with actual Jews hold these negative views of them.
The problem with this theory of antisemitism is that Poland had the largest population of Jews in all of Europe — and Poles, more than any other people, have more experience living and interacting with Jews than any other people — and it is that centuries of experience that has led them to hold such wide-spread “antisemitic” views.
As Mark Twain once observed, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”
The same can be said of White Southerners who had much more experience living among Blacks than White Northerners — and yet Southerns were accused of being racist out of “ignorance”.
But Jews should be encouraged by the results of this survey — in that Poles are not more antisemitic than they apparently are — if anyone has reason to be antisemitic, surely the Poles do — considering that Jews are still trying to extort money out of them for not only “collaborating” with the “Nazis” to “murder Jews”, but also for property they allegedly lost under the Jewish-dominated communist regime.
Despite all that, most Poles — perhaps because they are a Christian people — are willing to let bygones be bygones — an attitude you’ll rarely find among “Never forgive-Never forget” Jews.
And contrary to the unflattering results of this survey — other surveys have shown that Jews have an overall favorable view of life in Poland for Jews — and Poland is more popular than ever as a tourist destination for Israelis — who are not going to Poland to visit Auschwitz.
There seems to be more to this “antisemitism thing” than meets the eye.
good for you poland.
I grew up hearing how horrible Polish people were to Jews, ” for no reason at all”. But , being a truthseeker at heart, I began to investigate the roots of Polish antisemitism. Jews in Poland as everywhere else it seems, practiced usury, besides controlling the alcohol trade, and functioned as tax collectors. Naturally, there was the usual Jewish aversion to working in a trade or agriculture….So its not too surprising Polish people became antisemetic.
‘They’ are not gone at all!
Some of them left in 1968 but only for one reason; to avoid justice for their crimes committed on Poles. The Soviet NKVD-ists.
In fact, they totally infiltrated the Polish government and now under changed names are occupying it.
Poland still is under OCCUPATION – judeic occupation.
The significance of Poland created after the First War was the agitation with Third Reich
to provoke the next war. Now Poland has increased with the taking of more of what was Germany like Schlesien, culturally and agricultural important.
Jews who live to instigate trouble and wars will not forsake this volatile region . When the jews from America were instigating war in Ukraine, Poland was an occupied staging place for jew troops. Where were the remonstrating Polish nationalists?
The jew cannot afford free press anywhere. “News” Poles receive is probably from jew scripted disinformation. America now is their choice for humiliation but the insatiable greed will not spare the inveterate, European victim of this parasite.
Katyn was the jewish murder of Polish nationalists. Have the Poles forgotten and forgiven?
Hello from Poland. I can tell you most people over 30 years old (about 95%) say: Well, Hitler, what he did to the Jews — bad. But then they always add: But it’s good there’re gone.
Speaking of Polish girls, I used to work with one in her early twenties who knew that Jews were behind the Katyn Massacre. The Poles know that if they throw the Jews down the well, their country will be free.
‘They’ are not gone at all!
Some of them left in 1968 but only for one reason; to avoid justice for their crimes committed on Poles. The Soviet NKVD-ists.
In fact, they totally infiltrated the Polish government and now under changed names are occupying it.
Poland still is under OCCUPATION – judeic occupation.
Polish Girl, that is a wonderful example of the Polish sense of humor–subtle, dark, playful and cutting. If any people understand the Jews, it’s the Poles. They have much to teach the West.
Am surprised and gratified that so many in any state in Europe would have the liberty to be honest. How many with different opinion were coerced to comply with official sentiment? Jews visiting Poland is ominous . Purchasing power Pole do not have and today land is not ethnic .It belongs to the plutocrat.
A million Jews died at Auschwitz? What about the gypsies et al. If Hitler was so contemptuous of east Europeans many of them must “have died” there too. Of course it’s mostly fictional.
my calendar from the holohoax museum says that “about one million people died there, most of them Jews”.
Where did the millions of Jews who lived in Poland go if they weren’t murdered by the Nazis in “death camps”, you ask? According to one rabbi in Los Angeles at the time, millions went East into the Soviet Union, while others went to England and America — and South America — and of course to Palestine. Think scattering rats fleeing a sinking ship.
Virtually all of them can be accounted for — the Red Cross stated that about 275,000 died in the camps, but only 40% of that total were Jews, so about 175,000 Jews died in the camps. For the rest, perhaps a million or so died, like all Europeans, in the war — through being killed, starvation, disease, or simply old age. The simplest explanation is always the best — which doesn’t involve complicated tricks like “gas chambers” disguised as showers, shaved heads and tattoos, mass graves that have never been discovered, etc.
Sadly, they moved on and became a burden to the United States.
We’d have had flying cars now had it not been for Jews. Instead, the country has descended into an authoritarian dystopia, with negroes as the ludicrous but potent foot-soldiers of Satan’s Chosen Judaic Children.