The entrance to the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau with the lettering 'Arbeit macht frei' ('Work makes you free') in Oswiecim, Poland. Credit רויטרס
AFP: Polish PM says Hitler's Germany responsible for Holocaust, not Nazis
Hitler's Germany was responsible for the Holocaust, not the Nazis, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Sunday, as Poland marked 74 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
"Hitler's Germany fed on fascist ideology... But all the evil came from this (German) state and we cannot forget that, because otherwise we relativise evil," said Morawiecki at an official ceremony at Auschwitz.
"The Polish state acts as the guardian of the truth, which must not be relativised in any way," he said.
"I want to make a promise here to (preserve) the complete truth about that era," he added, in a speech in the southern city of Oswiecim to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
Sunday's ceremony at Auschwitz was attended by a number of former prisoners at the camp.
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WNU editor: For those who are new to the blog. My father fought on the Soviet side in Second World War, and was in Germany when the war ended. His military duties during the war was to command an artillery unit, and at the end of the war he commanded a military police unit in East Germany to make sure that the occupying Soviet soldiers respected the law. One of his favourite stories was the following. For four years he fought against soldiers who spoke mainly German, and who following the orders of a political party in Germany that called themselves National Socialists. Nazis for short. At the end of the war he found himself in Germany for over a year, but during that whole time (as he always enjoyed telling me), he never met a Nazi.
The Polish Prime Minister is correct when he says that the German state was responsible for the holocaust. As a nation they embraced this Nazi ideology, and this ideology in turn filled many of them with the hate and contempt that helped lay the foundation for the establishment of the death camps. Fortunately .... I think many in Germany understand this. As a nation they have pursued a policy of compensation, atonement, and reconciliation. Unlike the Japanese who have pursued a policy that is completely opposite to what Germany has done, and is still doing.
