Apparently there’s a brouhaha over a speech that James Comey delivered last week at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. The FBI director dared to hold the Nazis’ accomplices liable. He made specific mention of Poles and Hungarians. Cue: Polish and Hungarian diplomats livid at being lumped together with Nazi criminals.
It’s hard to face the truth, isn’t it?
Comey did not, for a second, suggest that all Poles, all Hungarians, all Croats, all Romanians; the list could go on and on, for each of these countries had elements at abetted the Nazis. Comey made the accurate observation that the Nazis did not act alone. This cannot be disputed. Let’s just take one example: the Arrow Cross in Hungary, which was responsible for rounding up the masses of Hungarian Jews in 1944 who were then transported to Hungary and gassed.
Shame on the US ambassador to Poland for apologizing for Comey’s honest and reflective words (his speech actually focused on the importance of Holocaust education). Ambassador Mull, in groveling to the rules of diplomacy, gave all the accessories a free pass with his statement: “[The suggestion that] Poland or any other country other than Nazi Germany bear responsibility for the Holocaust is a mistake…Nazi Germany alone bears responsibility.”
Wrong. False. Nazi Germany may bear full responsibility for conceiving and planning the Holocaust. But Nazi Germany did not execute the Holocaust in a vacuum. Is the example of the Arrow Cross not enough evidence?
Worse, Hull’s statement provides support for the desire of some European nations to absolve themselves of any responsibility regarding the Holocaust. Cue the statement of Poland’s ambassador to the US, Ryszard Schnepf: Poles did not commit the Holocaust, but “where victims of [it].” Of course, Poland was a victim of Nazism. There were also many Poles who saved Jews. Still others abetted the Nazis in their endeavor to erase European Jewry. These things are not mutually exclusive.
Thanks, ambassador. You’ve just taken Holocaust education back to the Dark Ages.
[UPDATE] As of April 24, Comey has himself issued an apology, saying he regrets mentioning specific country names and that the “The Polish state bears no responsibility for the horrors imposed by the Nazis.” How anyone listening to his speech could think Comey was referring to the modern nation-states of Poland and Hungary we’ll never understand. What a shame that Comey’s very insightful and important point about complicity has been thrown under the bus in the name of diplomacy.
