Jedwabne/Kaminski: Edward McMillan-Scott MEP Daftly Brushes The Facts

Update: welcome Iain Dale readers.

Loftily principled Edward McMillan-Scott (MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber) weighs in on the Kaminski saga:

On July 14, in Strasbourg, I stood and won against a Polish MEP, Michal Kaminski, for the post of Vice-President of the European Parliament, because he symbolised the rise of disguised extremism in Europe…

It has now been disclosed, as Kaminski should have done to the Conservative Party when nominated for Vice-President, that he has had fascist links – he was a member of Poland’s notorious fascist National Revival (NOP) – and he tried, as its MP, to cover up one of the worst anti-Jewish atrocities in wartime Europe.

On July 10, 1941, Poles rounded up hundreds of Jews and put them in a barn on the outskirts of the village of Jedwabne. Egged on by the SS, the barn was set on fire. In 2001, the then president of Poland organised a national apology, but Kaminski opposed it.

… When I attended the ECR’s inaugural meeting, in Brussels, on June 24, we had been joined by 15 MEPs from Poland’s controversial Law and Justice party, which had incorporated MEPs from the ultra-Catholic Motherland Party. I said that I was "uncomfortable" and that I hoped that there was no-one in the room "who has had links after 1989 with extremist groups like Poland’s NOP".

The rise of "respectable fascism" must be stopped. The people who advised Cameron have been used by those who seek respectability through links with the Conservative Party. It is not me who should be expelled – it is Kaminski.

Let’s leave the politicians to howl about the various factions in the European Parliament like P G Wodehouse’s aunts, mastodons bellowing to each other across a primeval ooze.

What about the very specific claim that Michal Kaminski tried to ‘cover up one of the worst anti-Jewish atrocities in wartime Europe’?

Another Conservative MEP gives a rather different picture:

The second accusation, that Micha