U.S. Ambassador to Poland Tom Rose said something true, necessary and long overdue: Poland did not perpetrate the Holocaust. Nazi Germany did.
And Poland—unlike France, Norway, Hungary and so many others—never collaborated at the national or governmental level with Hitler’s regime. There was no Polish Vichy. No Polish Quisling. No initial alliance with the Reich, like Russia. Poland fought the Nazis from the first day of the war until the last.
History, however, is complicated, and honesty requires we acknowledge the full picture. Not to smear Poland, not to invent a “Polish Holocaust”—a grotesque and historically illiterate phrase—but to understand the reality of what happened on Polish soil under six years of unimaginable German terror.
What Rose got absolutely right is that the state of Poland and the Polish Nation did not choose, design or execute the Final Solution. Poland was Hitler’s first victim, not his partner. But to defend that truth credibly, we also have to acknowledge another truth: Some Poles, thousands of them, did participate in the destruction of their Jewish neighbors. Acknowledging that reality does not undermine Poland’s heroism. It strengthens it—because historical courage includes moral honesty.
No country in Europe suffered like Poland. No country resisted for as long. From 1939 to 1945, Poland fought continuously—through the invasion, through occupation, through the Warsaw Uprising, through the Polish Home Army (the AK), through the Polish government-in-exile in London that never surrendered and never collaborated.
Compare that with the rest of Europe:
- France collapsed in six weeks and built the Vichy regime, which sent 80,000 Jews to Auschwitz using French police, not Germans.
- Norway produced Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling, whose very name became synonymous with treachery.
- Hungary was Hitler’s eager ally and deported 437,000 Jews to Auschwitz in a few months.
- Denmark, to its everlasting credit, saved its Jews but militarily surrendered after six hours of fighting.
- And the Soviet Union, which later sacrificed heroically, began the war as Hitler’s co-conspirator under the 1939 Ribbentrop Pact, invading Poland from the east and helping partition the country.
Against this backdrop, Poland’s refusal to collaborate wasn’t just admirable. It was unique.
More than 7,000 Polish non-Jews have been formally recognized by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations,” more than from any other Nazi-occupied land. And because so many rescuers died, were never recorded or never submitted documentation, historians estimate the real number is far higher—possibly 100,000 to 200,000 people who risked torture, deportation and execution to save Jews.
No other country even comes close.
Saving a Jew in occupied Poland meant automatic death—often, for your entire family. Yet tens of thousands did it anyway. This is a staggering moral legacy.
Acknowledging Polish collaboration is not “anti-Polish.” It’s simply truth.
Rose’s speech, while right in its overall message, must also address this painful aspect. I believe that a later a date, he will offer a more complete picture. I have known Rose for more than two decades, and he is one of the finest men with the highest integrity that I know. But it’s important first step, especially as becoming America’s top diplomat in Poland, was to make it clear to the Polish people that we honor their sacrifice and suffering.
We also especially honor the incredible job they do in memorializing the 6 million Jews, at least half of whom we’re murdered on their soil by the Nazis. The Holocaust was a German Nazi project, but some Poles added to the suffering, and their victims’ memories demand recognition.
Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking, in Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied Poland, argue that in the regions they studied, two-thirds of Jews hiding outside ghettos were killed—often because Poles denounced them or handed them to the Germans. Grabowski estimates the total number at up to 200,000.
These numbers can be debated, but they cannot be dismissed.
Thousands of members of the Polish Blue Police—local police under German command—participated in hunting Jews, assisting roundups and stealing Jewish property. Not all, but many. To deny this is to distort history.
The szmalcowniks—extortionists who hunted Jews in hiding—cast a terrible shadow over wartime Poland. They threatened, blackmailed, turned in Jews or bled them dry financially. They were a minority, but a real one, and Jewish survival often depended on escaping both Germans and szmalcowniks.
Jedwabne and Kielce
Yes, there were Polish pogroms during and after the war—namely, in Jedwabne (1941), where hundreds of Jews murdered by their Polish neighbors; and in Kielce (1946), where 46 Holocaust survivors murdered by a mob. These atrocities must be remembered.
But they cannot and must not be used, as some do today, to claim that “Poland was responsible for the Holocaust.” That is historical slander. It is also a grave contravention of Jewish values which honors sacrifice, bravery and courage. The simple fact is that amidst having many traitors and collaborators in its midst, Poland, overall, was one of the most courageous countries to fight the Nazis in the entire second world war and paid and incalculable price for doing so.
France collaborated institutionally.
Norway collaborated institutionally.
Hungary collaborated institutionally.
The Netherlands, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia—all had official involvement.
Poland stands apart for one reason: The Polish state never collaborated. The Polish government never surrendered. The Polish nation never aligned with Germany. That distinction is not semantic. It is moral.
Poland was the only major European country invaded in 1939 that fought the Germans continuously for six years—from the September invasion to the Warsaw Uprising to the Home Army’s sabotage and intelligence operations that changed the course of the war.
The Holocaust was genocide by German Nazis—conceived, executed and industrialized by Germans. And Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek were German camps on occupied Polish soil. Poland did not build or run them. Poland was enslaved by the people who did.
To blame Poland for the Holocaust is morally perverse, like blaming the rape victim for the crime committed against her.
Yes, some Poles committed crimes against Jews. Yes, we must acknowledge this fully. Yes, we must teach it truthfully. But the collective accusation—the notion that “Poland” bears responsibility for the Holocaust—is a moral and historical travesty.
Poland’s government-in-exile warned the Allies about the Holocaust earlier and louder than anyone. Polish couriers like Jan Karski risked their lives to bring the West the first eyewitness reports of extermination. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising remain symbols of human resistance unmatched anywhere else in Europe.
Poland was not a perpetrator. Poland was a victim. Poland was a resistor. Poland was a battleground soaked in Jewish blood, but blood spilled by German hands.
The truth is not a weapon. It is a duty.
We honor Poland’s resistance by celebrating its unparalleled courage. We honor Jewish memory by acknowledging the Poles who betrayed Jews and the Poles who saved them. But we must reject—unequivocally—the lie of “Polish complicity” as a national phenomenon.
The Holocaust was German. The killing was German. The Final Solution was German.
Poland deserves historical justice: It fought Nazism longer than any country in Europe, and it did so while being carved open from both sides.
Ambassador Tom Rose was right.
Now let’s tell the whole truth—without distortion, without whitewashing and without fear.
