Mr. James Hoge, Jr., Editor September 14, 2002
Foreign Affairs
58 East 69th street
N. Y. C., NY 10021
Dear Mr. Hoge:
In your letter of September 9, 2002, to Mr. Moskal, you refer to me by name, therefore, please, allow me to answer some of your basic contentions.
You treat the massacre of Jedwabne of 1941 as a Polish national crime - a serious misrepresentation of the history of Poland. It is a tremendous disappointment to see the editor of a prestigious publication having taken such a dubious and unsupportable position.
It is a well-established historical fact that the Germans were in charge and controlled the commission of their atrocities at gun point. The Brumberg-Gross contention that the secondary roles in German crimes by people who were held at gun point, represent Polish national responsibility is absurd.
You apparently share with Abraham Brumberg his contention of Poland's "discredited heritage" (quoted in your letter).
Abraham Brumberg denigrates and belittles the fact that more Poles than
members of any other nationality sacrificed their lives in saving Jews from the
Nazis. About 100,000 Poles were executed by Germans for helping Jews. Ironically
many thousands of Poles were imprisoned and sent to the Gulag
under the false accusation that they had collaborated with the Nazis. In reality
their real crime was that they were a threat to Stalin's complete domination of
the Polish state. The fact is that during the war
and its aftermath a greater number of Polish Christians were killed than Polish
Jews. Poland apparently lost the great majority of her pre-war patriotic Jewish
intelligentsia which would now be speaking up in
defense of Poland's good name.
I am unaware of any organized Jewish efforts to save Polish lives at the time when Jews were in disproportionally favored position within the Stalin's terror apparatus as members of Polish government. Poles, who know their history, are outraged by having the crimes of Nazi invaders attributed to them.
Until the site of the atrocity in Jedwabne is fully exhumed and thoroughly examined by forensic scientists, you are not justified in accepting a Brumberg-Gross version of events.
These authors as well as self serving opportunistic politicians in the Polish government and their supporters have their reasons for propagating their version of events, which is largely contradicted by reliable eyewitness accounts and lacking in scientific evidence.
The size and nature of the two graves at Jedwabne make impossible the assertions of J. T. Gross and Abraham Brumberg
The long term friendship of two peoples can not be based on Voltaire's notion that history is a lie agreed upon.
Sincerely,
Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, a survivor of 64 months of Gestapo prisons and
Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin (number 28865), is the
author of "Poland, an Illustrated History" (Hippocrene Books, New York,
2000),
Prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, , 2002-09-14