Treblinka memorial: wikipedia
A draft resolution originally proposed by conservative opposition party Law and Justice was debated on Tuesday during a session of the Parliamentary Committee on Culture.
Professor Pawel Spiewak, director of the Jewish Historical Institute, was present at the session yet he took issue with its priorities.
“This resolution is completely unbalanced,” he said of the first draft, as cited by the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
“Some 800,000 people died in the camp, and 800 were killed during the uprising, and there are one or two paragraphs dedicated to them [in the resolution], and yet there are six paragraphs about the Poles who helped them,” he said.
Professor Spiewak also questioned the number of Poles who allegedly helped Jewish fugitives.
“Of course, it is difficult to determine how many Poles helped Jews, but it is estimated that during the entire war, about a thousand Poles were killed for helping Jews, so talking about hundreds in this area alone cannot be true,” he argued.
Spiewak also recalled that “one of the dramatic elements of this history is the fact that Poles took part in catching these fugitives, and this was not taken into account.”
Law and Justice MP Arkadiusz Czartoryski in turn complained that Professor Spiewak had “undermined all the help given by the inhabitants of the Treblinka area to Jews fleeing from the camp.”
However, the committee ultimately passed a revised draft resolution, abridging the text from seven paragraphs to three.
The Treblinka death camp was launched near Warsaw by the Nazi German occupying regime in July 1942, and it functioned until October 1944. The vast majority of the inmates were Jewish.
On 2 August 1943, prisoners rebelled, and about 600 managed to escape, from which about forty survived the war. (nh)