Let's ignore Gross’ latest essay à thèse, and simply state the obvious. Contrary to Hibberd’s fawning portrayal of him, Gross is neither dispassionate, nor detached historian writing in delicate prose. In fact, he is an attention-seeking sociologist turned into a very passionate publicist, constructing and promoting his own social theories thinly disguised as interpretations of results of objective academic research.

Let me instead focus on some disturbing aspects of J. Hibberd’s "review". In his opening salvo at the "Polish racism", "Polish hypocrisy", "Polish anti-Semitism" he refers to his impressions from his visit in 1969 to the former German concentration camp Auschwitz. He was struck by the lack of Polish visitors and instead greatly impressed by presence of weeping and contrite Germans.

Let me remind Hibberd and "Review’s" readers that some twenty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest but by far not the only death camp, set up by German Third Reich, there were hundreds of thousands Poles imprisoned in this and similar camps or relatives of those who were murdered there. How many times has one to remind that from the summer of 1940 until the summer 1941 Auschwitz served as concentration camp initially solely for Polish prisoners and then Soviet POWs, and only after that period was expanded as an instrument of "final solution".

How, psychologically, could one expect Poles in those days to rush to this repository of concentrated evil. One often reads about the feelings of Jewish survivors of the war and the Holocaust who took many years to overcome their very own emotional and psychological barriers before they could visit or revisit Auschwitz. Why does Hibberd demand different psychological reactions from Poles?

Were he to visit Auschwitz today he might see many young Poles taking part in the March of the Living along young Jews from around the world.

Hibberd’s claim that the Polish Government-in-Exile and the Polish Underground State did not assist Jews who were being harassed or hounded by some degenerate criminal elements of the Polish society during German occupation is simply not true.

There is enough well documented evidence that the Polish Underground State, a phenomenon unique in its scale and nature in German-occupied Europe, had tried, sentenced and executed, along with most collaborators, criminals found guilty of extorting money, betraying members of the Polish Resistance and Jews hiding from the murderous German Nazi oppressive apparatus.

Your reviewer’s ignorance of all this is not an excuse to make such misleading comments.

Worse, Hibberd’s reference to Jerzy Kosinski’s (Nikodem Lewinkopf’s pen name) "Painted Bird" as literary proof of wartime Polish anti-Semitism borders on absurd.

He seems to be oblivious to the fact that after his exposure as a fraud, and before taking his own life Kosinski had confessed to the hoax, recanted, withdrew his allegations, and paid tribute to Polish peasants who neither plundered nor abused him and his parents, but hid him throughout the German occupation. What does this tell about intellectual integrity of the reviewer?

The level of his ignorance of historical facts is also demonstrated by the description of year 1946 in Poland as the time "well after cessation of hostilities". While the Third Reich had capitulated in May 1945, Poland was the scene of resistance by the Underground loyal to the Government-in-Exile, of fierce fighting against Ukrainian National Army (UPA) and degenerate remnants of post-Nazi German Werwolf.

In fact, there was a civil war in many parts the Poland. Many lives were lost and many tragic episodes unfolded well until the late 1940ies. In deepest sense for us Poles, WW II had ended only with the collapse of the Soviet empire, one of Poland's butchers in September 1939.

Allow me also one general observation closely related to the subject, namely the terminology used by Hibberd and, indeed, the majority of English-language media and academics writing on WW II history.

Whereas German Third Reich, its founders, leaders and followers are universally referred to as anonymous Nazis, a term disguising their nationality, ethnicity and cultural background, anti-Semitism is always "Polish". In the same vane, German Nazi concentration and "labour" camps and ghettoes in German-occupied Poland, which were all set up and operated by the repressive apparatus of the Third Reich are all too often called "Polish death camps", "Polish ghettos", etc.

Finally, let me ask whether Hibberd and others, who are so easily levying a collective charge of anti-Semitism against all Poles would dare to use the same kind of language and style of writing about another nationality or ethnic group? Who give him a license to a have a field day for racial slur and inflammatory language directed against Poles?

As a representative of the postwar generation let me state in plain English, that like the majority of my fellow Poles I firmly reject Hibberd’s insinuations of any Polish "existential or dual bivalent fear" of Jews, or for that matter any other nationality or ethnic group. Such deconstructivist "narrative" demonstrated by your reviewer can only evoke my deepest repugnance.

Sincerely,

Jerzy Wieclaw
Ambassador for Poland
Canberra

www.poland.org.au