A Until the last decade, the main threat to the memory of the Holocaust was Holocaust denial, the assertion that the Holocaust never happened. Over the last 25 to 30 years, Holocaust distortion has become the new Holocaust denial. Distortionists don’t deny the factuality of Jewish tragedy. The problem is they say their own national group had nothing to do with it — it was the Germans and Germans alone, and the other hundreds of millions of Europeans were entirely innocent. Holocaust denial was fueled by strange individuals; Holocaust distortion is financed and run by the states, and this makes it very different. 

 

The Polish state finances distortion, and this Polish history policy has become a cornerstone of teaching in schools. What’s taught is that their society, during the difficult period of occupation, held high moral ground. For the most part, everybody tried to help their Jewish neighbours at their time of need. It’s also official policy in Poland to claim there were hundreds of thousands of Poles considered Righteous Among the Nations, which is nonsense. A few thousand have been recognized. Holocaust distortion is so dangerous because it’s anchored partially in truth: there were some gentiles who saved Jews. The problem is the Holocaust distortionists will tell you the entire nation tried to save the Jews. They didn’t.  These things acquire currency because nowadays there is a political problem linked to the Middle East. Teaching the Holocaust is seen by many as an attempt to legitimize the policies of Israel today, which it is not. This attack on the memory of the Holocaust comes from various political angles, making it so dangerous. We’re talking about six million innocent civilians. If you try to somehow obfuscate or push away this history, you are basically killing these people the second time.

 

I’m from Poland. My father was a Holocaust survivor from Poland. Given my family history, it was natural for me to navigate to this. I was bothered by questions of perpetual importance: What makes us do things or act the way we act? Why would you save a person that you don’t know, who you don’t even like? Who is a perpetrator? How do you avoid becoming a victim? These are the lessons that Holocaust historians bring to the fore. 

There’s a special responsibility to talk about these millions of innocent people who were removed from the face of the earth for no good reason. My students look at photographs, memorize names. In my books and articles, I try to insert names in the footnotes. If I find something in the archives and I’m probably the only person who will see these names, I want to bring them forward. 

 

A I’m a tenured senior professor in a Canadian institution, so my courage comes cheap, but it doesn’t mean it comes with no cost. I was never trained in my graduate program that you have to take it upon yourself to become a fighting public historian to maintain your integrity. Perhaps historians of the Holocaust should be taught how to deal with civil law.

 

Some of my students started to ask me strange questions. I found out there was a world of distortion on Wikipedia, one of the most heavily read websites in the world. It’s supposed to be a self-regulating medium, where people add their bits and somehow restore balance to a biased narrative. In the area of Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust, Wikipedia reads as if it were written by Polish nationalists, without any kind of control or supervision. I was truly shocked. How were there problems with the historical interpretation here?  How was it being done?

People who are committed ideologically with senior admin status can eliminate through intimidation and other techniques, and present their version of history as the true version of history.  With this admin status, people could edit areas with special protected status, which encompasses three areas: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Pakistani-Indian conflict, and Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War. These are a fertile field for conflict, and Wikipedia’s protections don’t work here. We have to be extraordinarily cautious. It’s not a source of credible information. 

 

Try to be faithful to your own convictions and never ever try to run with the crowd. 

The power of conformism is huge; we want to be liked, to be members of a group. We shouldn’t. Sometimes the price we have to pay for conformity is horrendous. It’s important to be able to stand up in the morning, look in the mirror, and like what you see. Perhaps you’ll lose material gratification, but you’ll be happy you did the right thing. 

 

The most wonderful thing is we can follow our good instincts. If you can, choose work which fulfills you. If you can find joy and satisfaction in your work, your life will be wonderfully changed.