'We don't need fake friends'

„I am a great-grandson of Piotr Leszczynski from the village of Poręba- Kocęba in Mazovia, who was murdered on May 15, 1943 for helping Jews. I represent the third generation of Poles who lost loved ones for helping Jews.” – Andrzej Terechnauta, a descent of those who were murdered for helping Jews, wrote in a letter responding to the Statement of the Holocaust Research Centre Team.

The full text of the letter:

My great-grandfather Piotr, the father of five children, together with his friend Antoni Prusiński in the village of Poręba in Mazovia, were helping a Jew hiding in a nearby bunker. All three were murdered on May 15, 1943, by German military police from Ostrów Mazowiecki. My great-grandfather Piotr, together with Antoni Prusiński, were interrogated and beaten with clubs by the German gendarmes. When they lay on the ground beaten, bleeding and half-conscious, the gendarmes killed them with shots to the head. The same gendarmes dragged the Jew out of the bunker and shot him in the woods. The three were all unarmed civilians. The entire tragedy unfolded before the eyes of the residents of our home village and the surviving members of our families.

Except for the prosecutors of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, no one contacted my family. When the initiative „Called by Name” (“Zawołani po Imieniu”) appeared, it brightened our spirits. Finally, there was someone who remembered, arranged and organized everything. Our families arrived at the ceremony even coming from distant places. We stood in front of the commemorative stone together with the residents moved, and for the first time – proud! The Jewish burial site was commemorated with a stone and a plaque with a Hebrew inscription. All three victims have regained their human dignity, which the Germans had stripped away.

Then, becoming increasingly baffled and bewildered, we repeatedly observed the growing attacks on the „Called by Name” program on the pages of „Gazeta Wyborcza” and the „OKO Press” portal. The field stones with the plaque were referred to as: „monuments to Polish virtue” and „an attempt to distort” the Holocaust. Is this an expression of respect for the heroism of our ancestors? Is this how the heroes of the war years should be depicted?

These attacks, unfortunately, remained without any response from you.

An exhibition about „Called by Name” in Warsaw’s „Dom bez Kantów” presenting profiles of Poles who died for helping was mockingly described – not elsewhere – but on the pages of the yearbook of the Holocaust Research Centre!

In this review you reproach us for having a sense of injustice because of the crime committed. Yet murdering a father of five children for helping another human being – is not a crime and a huge injustice?

Today, the same Centre, rushed to defend its colleague Prof. Barbara Engelking by appealing to the respect and heroic attitude of our ancestors, who died for helping others! The Statement reads: „It is also [writing about mass aid] belittling the heroism of the Righteous who helped the Jews – especially those who lost their lives at the hands of the Germans for doing so.” A more perverse position would be hard to find. I have not heard anyone claim that the aid was on a mass scale, but as the great-grandson of a murdered person, I experienced my great-grandfather’s story being hushed up and then mocked.

For many years after the fall of communism you did nothing to honour the memory of Poles who died for helping Jews, all the more so today you should not destroy this fragile memory.

You should not judge other Poles for not helping when their own and their family’s lives were in danger. Nor should you have the right to speak on our behalf or invoke the heroism of murdered Poles when you are rightly criticized.

We do not need fake friends.

The letter was signed by Andrzej Terechnauta, Andrzej Leszczyński, Jerzy Leszczynski, Grzegorz Leszczyński, Anna Leszczyńska, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Piotr Leszczynski from the village of Poręba-Kocęba, who was murdered by German gendarmes and commemorated on June 9, 2019, together with Antoni Prusiński and an unknown Jew, as part of the „Called by Name” program.

The contents of the „Statement against attacks on Prof. Barbara Engelking,” published on April 21, are available on the website of the Holocaust Research Centre of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Science.

Tłum. K.J.

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