29 january 2012, the need for a rear view mirror

I do appreciate that holocaust memorial day tries to use the past to avoid a certain future. The same sentiment triggered my one personal outburst in nearly seven years in germany, although I was speaking at an event in warsaw. We were taken to a museum about the heroic polish resistance, in which the ghetto merited a single panel. On the return coach, the commentary continued and I couldn't help but stand up and inform the international assembled that there was more to this story than nationalist propaganda. Whilst the germans, I related, have tried to understand what happened, in education and society, I wondered if the poles, victims though they were twice over, had done the same. I told the story of my grandfather abraham (23 january), who left poland because of persecution. When the nazis came for the danish jewish community, the resistance almost magically spirited them away: 3 danish jews were killed in the war. In poland, it was 3 million; taken from every town, every village and every city. In many cases, poles helped, burning synagogues as they left. Many of the ghettos were not walled, as the germans knew how the poles would treat jews that tried to escape. The special commando units (einsatzgruppen) that killed some 800, 000 jews were often made up of a handful of nazis, and volunteers. Then there was kielce, where thousands of jews had lived for hundreds of years. When 150 or so of them returned in 1946, several were murdered, and the rest driven out in a pogrom. Getting the message loud and clear, the vast majority of 240, 000 survivors also left. Now though, I also risk being guilty of telling a one-sided story, as this whole narrative is much-contested (e.g. seeing kielce as a communist plot), one lively discussion being in the neighbours and the neighbours respond. I'm still awaiting a final word from someone I know and trust on this, jonah bookstein.