April 20, 2015
The Editor, Washington Post
This is to express our deep concern about the incompetence of the FBI director, Mr James Brien Comey Jr.
On April 16, The Washington Post published parts of Mr Comey’s speech in which he demonstrated an unusual degree of ignorance when pointing out to the Poles as co-perpetrators of Nazi crimes. It must be made clear that:
1. Nazism was a political ideology originated and practiced in Germany and by the Germans.
2. In the name of this ideology the Germans started the war which resulted in the German occupation of Poland.
3. During the years of this occupation and in the name of the Nazi ideology, the Germans murdered around 5 million Polish citizens including 2 million ethnic Poles and 3 million ethnic Jews, and also, millions of Jews from other countries, as well as people of different nationalities.
4. A considerable part of those crimes was perpetrated in concentration camps on the occupied Polish territories – the camps which were organized and run by Germans.
5. Poland was the only country in occupied Europe where protection of Jews was punished by death, a penalty dealt to, under a collective responsibility system, not only to the person hiding a Jew, but also to a whole family, neighbours, and in extreme cases – to all inhabitants of the area. Despite this, it was Poles who were awarded the greatest number of “The Righteous Among the Nations” medals (6532) in recognition of their role in saving the Jews.
6. Poland was the only country in the German occupied Europe where there never existed a collaboration network which would cooperate in any way with the Nazi Germany. There never was any Polish organization or institution which participated in the Holocaust. The Polish émigré government as well as the Underground State structures, including the Underground Army prosecuted and punished by death those who denounced the Jews in hiding. Polish Underground Army provided the arms to the members of the Jewish ghetto uprising in Warsaw. It was the Polish emigre government agencies that were the first to prepare reports on the German genocide of the Jews and tried to alert the public opinion of the civilized world.
(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Karski#Reporting_Nazi_atrocities_to_the_Western_Allies).
All these facts are unknown to the FBI Director. Through his ignorance he insults and falsifies the history of America’s loyal ally, Poland, who supported the US in the two wars in the Gulf and in the war on terror. And, above all, he provokes a question:
Is the US safe given that one of its most important security agencies is headed by a man who accuses of crimes the victims of those crimes?
What other facts could he fail to distinguish or identify? How much else is there that the FBI Director does not know or does not understand?
Prof. Ryszard Kantor – President of CAC in Kraków;
Prof. Michał Seweryński – President of CAC in Łódź;
Prof. Stanisław Mikołajczak – President of CAC in Poznań;
Prof. Artur Hugo Świergiel – President of CAC in Warszawa;
Civic Academic Clubs in university centers of Kraków, Poznań, Warszawa and Łódź bring together almost 400 professors from universities in Poland and abroad.