Photo of Michael Preisler taken by Hitler’s SS guards when he arrived
at Auschwitz in October, 1941.
Brooklyn, N.Y. .. It was expected Polish people would be offended when President Obama mistakenly referred to one of Hitler’s World War II concentration camps as “Polish” instead of German.
Ironically, the President ‘s gaffe happened at a Memorial Day White House ceremony honoring Jan Karski, a Polish Catholic officer in Poland’s wartime underground.
Karski was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for carrying out a secret mission at the height of the war to warn the British and the Americans that the Germans were murdering Jews inside their concentration camps. Karski is now referred to as “the man who tried to stop the Holocaust” because of his heroic efforts to help the Jews.
The Poles were upset that someone as high as the president of the United States would be capable of such a blunder. But Obama’s letter to Poland’s president expressing his regrets helped soothe the hurt feelings.
The loudest expression of irrational anger and outrage came from a source other than the Poles, however.
“It came from those in the forefront of the efforts to blame us for the crimes the Germans committed against the Jews. They feel comfortable with the public tricked into believing the Poles ran the camps and not the Germans,” said Michael Preisler, a Polish Catholic Auschwitz survivor.
“Obama’s mistake made this an international issue and put the spotlight on their attempts to deceive the public. Their immediate response was to step up their anti-Polish accusations to the point of absurdity.”
In a hysterical outburst, one prominent talk show host and columnist blustered that “Poles murdered millions of Jews and maintained several death camps.”
“If there was ever any doubt a Hate Poland movement exists, falsehoods like these show it does,” the Auschwitz survivor said.
Mr. Preisler is co-chair of the Holocaust Documentation Committee of the Polish American Congress in New York City. He admits his frustration with the media’s continual repetition of fraudulent charges against the Polish people. Calling Hitler’s concentration camps “Polish” was one of the most frequent.
“The Nazis always knew if you repeat a lie often enough the people will believe it. My organization has been fighting this problem and trying to get out the facts for more than twenty years. We were never able to get as much attention to the truth as Obama did for us with just one slip of his tongue,” he said.
Even though his committee has been in this battle so many years, Preisler vows to “never stop fighting the anti-Polish Holocaust liars who try to make the Jewish people hate us.”
His determination to stay in the fight to keep the Holocaust honest was re-energized after he received a copy of The Looking Glass column appearing in Time-Off, an Australian publication. It blamed Poland for killing “three or so million Jewish men, women and children.”
But the columnist writing this ignored the fact that the enemies of Poland were killing three million Polish Christians at the same time they were killing these three million Jews.
Also ignored was the fact that thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews during the German occupation. Israel honors these Christians at Yad Vashem as “Righteous.”
More Poles are honored at Yad Vashem than anyone else. More Poles were killed trying to rescue Jews than anyone else, according to the Holocaust Documentation Committee.
Branded with the number 22213 when the Gestapo sent him to Auschwitz, Preisler was disgusted that the Australian publication gave its readers such a ridiculous manipulation of Holocaust history.
“It appears the Hate Poland movement is a worldwide phenomenon,” he said.