“Crime without punishment”1… a laconic description of German crimes
against Polish children presented in the second chapter of the present
monograph by Andrzej Kołakowski. Crime without punishment would not
be possible if it was not for Th e Forgotten Holocaust2 of the Polish Nation
during World War II.
When a person having a certain degree of knowledge on historic events
in Europe listens to the contemporary academic, publicist, or political discourse,
they are faced with a great lie on the topic of World War II,
which consists, among others, in narratives using the phrase “Polish death
camps” and accuse Poles of participation in the Holocaust of Jews. Th is
assumption, held by modern Western people, contradicts historic facts
and yet appears to be so common that even the President of the United
States, Barack Obama, spoke of “Polish death camps”. Th e Western world
of the present day does not seem to notice that these camps were built by
the Germans within Polish territory under occupation; that
it was the Germans who exterminated, first and foremost ,
Polish citizens of various ethnic origins: Polish, Jewish, Roma, and
others; it is also hardly ever mentioned that the fi rst prisoners of Auschwitz
were Poles.