Communist Poland and Jews

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Papago - 31 Aug 2004 15:22 GMT

Hello. I was hoping somebody here could enlighten me on something I
read online at this site:
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/resources/education/revision/#13

This is the passage I'm trying to understand:

"The figure of 3-4 million murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau was an
invention of communist officials in Poland (and the former U.S.S.R.)
which sought to blur the uniqueness of Jewish suffering at Auschwitz.
To do this, they purposely overstated the number of non-Jewish
casualties at Auschwitz-Birkenau by many times their true numbers. In
a clever attempt to disguise the subterfuge, the figures for Jewish
losses were inflated by nearly double, so that their losses would
still be larger than those of non-Jewish victims, though now by a much
smaller ratio. With the end of communism in Poland and the former
Soviet Union, officials at the Auschwitz museum finally lowered the
casualty figures in line with the estimates of historians who, for
years, have insisted that between one and 1 1/2 million people
perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 80 - 90% of them Jews."

Please tell me, why was communist Poland and the U.S.S.R so interested
in minimizing the losses of Jews as compared to non-Jews? Maybe I
misremember, but I thought that Communism and Naziism were at odds
with one another. Please help put this into historical perspective
for me.

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Madhusudan Singh - 31 Aug 2004 19:50 GMT

> Hello. I was hoping somebody here could enlighten me on something I
> read online at this site:
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
> with one another. Please help put this into historical perspective
> for me.

From what I have read, the Soviets practised a policy of repression against
the Jews as well, only not as overt or as ruthless as that of the Nazis.
Stalin himself had targeted Jews in his purges prior to the Nazi attack.

Persecution of Jews was not the reason USSR and Germany fought each other in
WW2, it was Germany's attack on the USSR (Operation Barbarossa) to grab the
latter's rich farmland and oilfields (as well as the policy of Lebensraum)
which led to perhaps the most brutal war in 20th century. It ended up
killing 20 million Soviets and millions of Germans as well. The only good
thing that came out of that war was the destruction of Nazi Germany (the
Soviets were the first to beat the Germans in a protracted battle in WW2
and were the only European country capable of taking the losses inflicted
by the Nazis and yet hitting back (with significant US help of course)).
Otherwise, Hitler would have ultimately succeeded in invading Britain as
well as held on in northern Africa. After that, it would have been next to
impossible to dislodge him from Fortress Europe.

Returning to your question, its a case of "enemy of your enemy might still
be your enemy".

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Papago - 31 Aug 2004 21:45 GMT

>Returning to your question, its a case of "enemy of your enemy might still
>be your enemy".

Thanks.

I have another question, maybe you know the answer. It seemed strange
to me that they would exagerate the non-Jew death toll so much that
they'd have to double the Jew death toll to keep things in the
preportion they wanted. It seems that it would have been simpler and
less glaring if they'd only increased the non-Jew death toll to the
ratio they wanted and leave the Jew death toll unchanged.

Was there a reason for this or was this a beaurocratic mess-up? I
recently had the idea that maybe they just wanted to exagerate the
Nazi death tolls in general because and make the statistics both more
anti-nazi and anti-holocaust, could that be the reason for it?

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History Forum / General / General Topics / August 2004

Communist Poland and Jews