Holocaust denial
in Poland A
scandal has erupted in Poland surrounding a new
book whose publication represents what some see
as the first serious case of Holocaust-denial in
the country. A POPULAR professor at the University of Opole
[formerly Oppeln, Germany] in southern
Poland, Dariusz Ratajczak, was suspended
from his teaching post following protests over his
book, "Dangerous Topics," in which he writes
sympathetically about published material that
denies the Holocaust. Legislation that came into
effect in January makes Holocaust denial punishable
in Poland, and the state prosecutor's office
has begun an investigation into the case, according
to Stanislaw Krajewski, a leader of the
Polish Jewish community and the American Jewish
Committee's consultant on Poland. In his book, Ratajczak
appears to agree with Holocaust deniers who
claim that for technical reasons it was not
possible to kill millions of people in the Nazi
gas chambers, that Zyklon B gas was used only
for disinfecting, that there was no Nazi plan
for the systematic murder of Jews and that most
Holocaust scholars "are adherents of a religion
of the Holocaust." Krajewski described the book as "shocking." "Until recently there was no attempt at
Holocaust denial in Poland," he said. "The
proximity of that tragedy and the abundance of
witnesses suggested it would never occur, even
among extreme anti-Semites. But finally the
distance in time has produced similar consequences
as the distance in space did for Westerners." He said that several months ago a group of young
neo-Nazis published a book that included
translations of articles by Holocaust revisionists
in the West. Ratajczak's book drew swift and
vociferous protests from numerous sources,
including the director of the museum at the former
Auschwitz death camp and
respected Sen.
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, an Auschwitz
survivor himself. For his part, Ratajczak sent a
statement to Poland's leading newspaper, Gazeta
Wyborcza, in which he denied being an
anti-Semite. He said the Holocaust revisionist material he
included in his book did not represent his views,
adding that "as an honest person, I render an
homage to the Jewish victims of World War
II."  | 
A
write
to David Irving