Those who murdered Jews in 1941 are preaching morality to us in 2025

From the President’s Desk
The Anti-Semite Corner of the Week

A single sign at a soccer stadium ignited the outrage of an entire nation that sees itself as an eternal victim. But history teaches us: The Poles murdered, robbed, took no responsibility, and now they’re preaching morality to us

By: Anat Vidor, WIZO President

The soccer field reflects the world around it, and the anti-Semitic tsunami currently washing over the shores of civilization receives constant reinforcement in the sports sections as well. Maccabi Haifa, which was drawn to play two games in a European tournament against a Polish opponent, found this sign in the Polish fans’ section: “Israel kills and the world stays silent.” The world stayed silent upon seeing the sign, and so did the European Football Association, the one that fights to keep politics out of stadiums—they ignored it. The Poles’ last memory of the Jews is of bowed heads and resignation to their fate, but heaven help us: in the return match a week later, the response came when Haifa fans prepared their own sign: “Murderers since 1939,” directed at the Poles’ role in the Holocaust.

Oh, what an uproar arose! An entire nation of Poles, led by their royal president, took organized offense. The deputy prime minister of the offended responded: “We will not agree to historical lies against our nation,” the head of the local federation added with Polish composure: “This is a terrible attack on the Poles” (the sign, yeah?), and Polish journalists are demanding diplomatic intervention and Israel’s suspension. Or its destruction. The Polish public also had its say in their familiar language from the old days, and after the match carried out a lynching on the bus of Israeli fans, with that familiar old flavor.

“Historical lies”? Here’s some historical truth: 1939 was the year the Germans conquered Poland with relaxed ease. But in fact, antisemitism in Poland wasn’t born with the Nazi occupation, but much earlier. Blood libels, decrees, exclusion and riots against Jews had been part of local life since the Middle Ages, in a place that always excelled in the antisemitism-per-capita category. In the 20th century, even before World War II, Polish soldiers killed Jews in Lublin, Minsk and Przemyśl. In the 1930s, antisemitism raged in street riots, exclusion of Jews, boycotts of Jewish businesses, and seating Jewish students separately from the rest.

The Nazi occupation gave free rein to Polish antisemitism, which had lost the thin veneer of European politeness it had before. The Jedwabne massacre (1941), which occurred even before the systematic extermination of Jews in camps began, through the Kielce pogrom (1946), a year after the Nazis’ defeat, when Poles set out to murder with Hamas-like bloodlust the remnant of Jews who had survived the extermination. In between, they willingly hosted on their forever-cursed soil the most terrible bloodbath in history, called the “Holocaust,” which included the murder of 3 million of their Jewish citizens.

We can more easily forgive the Germans, who excelled at the job, if only for the simple reason: they asked for forgiveness, took responsibility, and compensated the victims. The hypocritical Polish nation, in contrast, which largely supported the Nazi extermination machine with enthusiasm, never took responsibility, but continues to claim it’s actually the victim deserving sympathy. The Polish nation never returned the vast property it stole, the money it confiscated, and the assets it appropriated, and only managed to turn the extermination sites into profitable tourist attractions.

Two generations later, and guess who’s preaching morality to us. The Polish sign is doubly false: “Israel kills”? There has never been a state that feeds and waters its enemies during combat, that refrains from eliminating the enemy army only out of concern for harming civilians, and that employs every humanitarian measure against an enemy that sees humanity as weakness. And the second lie: the world is definitely not silent. It’s silent about disasters, murders, abuse, and bloodshed everywhere else in the world. When it comes to Jewish crimes, it has plenty to say.

And to the current generation of Poles, the grandchildren of the golden generation of antisemitism, I have one message: You think we’ve forgotten. But we haven’t. You won’t teach Israel morality, you won’t tell us how to respond to the murderous pogrom that Hamas carried out against us, and how to prevent the next bloodbath. We haven’t forgotten what you did, without shedding a tear, to millions of Jews. Whether the world stays silent or not – you’d better stay silent.

A Story for Dessert

Meanwhile in England, at Oxford University’s graduation ceremony, graduates were seen going up to receive their degrees while waving PLO flags, covering themselves with them. The English think this is a threatening message toward Israel. Don’t tell them- the threat is actually against them.