Adam Rotfeld on the disregard for Polish history

The Polish media continue their critical discussion of the title story of the German news magazine Der Spiegel several weeks ago on the complicity of non-Germans in the Holocaust. The former Polish foreign minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld now writes in Der Spiegel on how Polish history is handled in Poland and abroad: "European history textbooks contain little information on the Polish contribution to overcoming communism. ... Poles fought on all fronts against the Nazis, from the first to the last day of the war. In terms of size, this was the largest army apart from those of the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain, the three major Allied powers. ... Poles consider the widespread ignorance of Polish history - not only, but especially among Germans - as contempt for, or even intentional falsification of their past. This is particularly the case when the Nazi death camps on occupied Polish territory are termed 'Polish concentration camps' in foreign media. ... In Poland such imputations are seen as deliberate, evil-minded attempts to rewrite Polish history."

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