Timothy Garton Ash (whom I know and respect of old) bangs on again about the UK Conservative Party’s engagement in the newly formed European Conservatives and Reformists formation within the European Parliament:

The farce of David Cameron’s Latvian legion becomes more ridiculous by the day. Last month, I deplored the fact that Cameron has led his members of the European parliament out of the mainstream, influential European People’s Party (EPP) grouping into a much smaller new faction (sic), now christened the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).

The article dwells in part on antisemitism in Poland, a phenomenon he links explicitly with ‘the Right’.

Yet, of course, it was the Left which drove forward antisemitism in Poland for decades. From 1945-1989 the ruling communist party’s attitude to Poland’s remaining Jewish population and Jews within its own ranks echoed the Soviet communists’ line: at best ambiguous, at worst openly antisemitic.

During that period the number of Jews in Poland dwindled from some 200,000 to not more than a few thousand, although now the numbers are edging up again. This in part is a result of Poles unearthing family papers which show that they have Jewish origins, facts long suppressed by their parents or grandparents for obvious reasons.

Plus successive democratic Polish leaders from all sides, notably Presidents Kwasniewski and Kaczynski, have made a lot of efforts to urge Poles to look honestly at the country’s past and at the rich contribution of Jews in Polish history.

A new and impressive new Museum of the History of Polish Jews is being built in Warsaw to celebrate how Jews lived and flourished in Poland, not only the fact that they died in such numbers in World War Two. Poland’s relations with Israel are warm and busy.

Jews of course were murdered by the Nazis in such vast numbers in Poland because there were so many Jews living there for many centuries. This Wikipedia article gives a reasonable summary of the ebb and flow of the Jewish population, and the rise of official antisemitism in Poland before World War Two as part of a wider Europe-wide phenomenon.

What unites and enfuriates Poles across the political spectrum now is the insinuation via such phrases as ‘Polish concentration camps’ that in some way the Polish state and nation was implicated in the Nazis’ murderous policies towards Jews, many of which were implemented in death camps sited on occupied Polish soil (Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek and so on). Polish diplomats are under strict orders to respond strongly to any such implication in media or other statements round the world.

All this history and far more remains highly controversial, not least because it suits a lot of people with things to hide to keep things that way. 

What if any conclusions one way or the other might be drawn about the massacre by local Poles of some 400 Jews at Jedwabne in 1941? Or the fact that so many Poles were executed by the Nazis for protecting Poles? Or the later Kielce pogrom in 1946 – a horror inspired by the communist secret police?

Was/is modern antisemitism in Poland some sort of aberration reflecting wider European intellectual trends?

Or was it something much deeper in the Polish national psyche, waiting for its horrible chance to erupt?

Is Poland better or worse in these respects than eg France or Germany?

What about the role of individuals such as Helena Wolinska-Brus? She was an unrepentant post-WW2 Stalinist prosecutor from a Polish Jewish family who left Poland in the antisemitic Party campaigns of 1968 and ended up in the UK. Until her death last year she successfully fought extradition back to democratic Poland to face justice on her Stalin-era judicial crimes, mendaciously citing Polish antisemitism as one reason she would not get a fair trial.

And, indeed, what about basic nomenclature?

Just as the denizens of Republika Srpska call themselves ‘Bosnian Serbs’ rather than Serbian Bosnians, thereby emphasising their ultimate Serbitude rather than their Bosnian-ness, should we be talking about Polish Jews or Jewish Poles?

What counts as national loyalty today in Europe with its a violent history, in which ethnicity has been so much emphasised and intellectualised?

(Too many questions – Ed)

OK. Bottom Line.

These issues are not all about Right and Left in any meaningful sense.

And any article which sells the implication that Polish antisemitism = Right Wing to make some points about the tedious goings-on in the European Parliament is, alas, not really helping us much.