The Polish and the Holocaust: What Churchill Knew
Polish firing squad of one
Mr. Paul Bonowicz staged a one-man protest against Churchill in South Ruislip, Middlesex. He denounced “the lies in British books about Winston Churchill. I am Polish and we know he betrayed Polish people.” He added: Churchill “knew about the Holocaust. He knew Jewish people were dying, but he didn’t help. After the war there was a deal between Churchill and Stalin, and the price was Poland. Part of my country went to the Soviets. It was Churchill who decided which part, not the Poles.” —Uxbridge Gazette.
Churchill did know about the Holocaust, and alone among allied leaders, he tried to do something about it. As to the alleged Polish betrayal…
Virtues and mistakes
In 1938, the Teschen District of Czechoslovakia was absorbed by the Poles, who happily took it, as a result of the Munich Agreement. In 1939 Polish parts not taken by Hitler went to the Soviets. Toward war’s end Churchill first protested, then acquiesced, and ultimately agonized over the shifting of Poland to the west. An eastern slice went to Russia and the Poles received part of Germany. In August 1945 Churchill told Parliament: “I think a mistake has been made, in which the Provisional (Communist) Government of Poland have been an ardent partner, by going far beyond what necessity or equity required.” (Churchill By Himself, 179). “There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess—and there are few mistakes they have ever avoided.”
The matter has ben raised more recently in the modern round of Churchill criticism. It is difficult to comprehend what Churchill, and Roosevelt for that matter, could have done abut the land shift. By 1945 the Red Army occupied all Polish territory. The Anglo-Americans hoped (forlornly) that Stalin would make good his promise of free elections. Some Poles have never forgiven them, although Churchill was first to predict Communism’s fall, thanks to patriots such as Lech Walesa.
3 thoughts on “The Polish and the Holocaust: What Churchill Knew”
The Teschen District was invaded by Chechoslovakia in 1919 when Poland was fighting the war with Soviet Union. According to Versailles Treaty that District was awarded to Poland based on majority of Polish inhabitants. Poland in ’39 just retook what was belonging to Poland in the first place.
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Not so. Teschen (Cieszyn) was divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia at Versailles. You can look it up. Both countries were signatories, both owed their post-1919 existence to Versailles, both agreed to settle border disputes peaceably, as many countries did between the World Wars.
“Frisking up at the side of the German tiger with yelpings not only of appetite—that can be understood—but even of triumph…” Churchill said that of Mussolini, but it applies as well to Col. Beck’s government snatching Czech victuals from the table in 1938, only to itself become the victuals less than a year later. A line of Churchill’s in another context is apposite in my opinion: They had a choice between war and shame; they chose shame, and got war into the bargain. This is no reflection on the heroism of the Polish people in a grim century. Everyone makes mistakes. —RML
In 1988 I was visiting Poland helping to deliver aid to the Catholic church there. We were advised to take dollars with us and to change them on the street, rather than in a bank. In Warsaw my friend and I were approached by a local whom we assumed wanted to change our dollars for zlottys. Instead, after asking if we were British, he said “I would like to thank you for going to war for us in 1939.” It was remarkably moving.
The courage and character that Churchill pledged for Britain had already been demonstrated by Poland. It was the first country to experience the terror of the Nazi Blitzkrieg, the first to fight back, the first to say — and mean — “We shall never surrender.” Poland fell in October 1939, but its government and military refused then, and refused for the rest of the war, to capitulate. In a remarkable odyssey, scores of thousands of Polish pilots, soldiers, and sailors escaped Poland — some on foot; some in cars, trucks, and buses; some in airplanes; some in ships and submarines. They made their various ways first to France, thence to Britain to continue the fight. For the first full year of the war, Poland, whose government-in-exile operated from London, was Britain’s most important declared ally. Sadly promises made by Churchill to the Poles could not or would not be kept. Of all of Britain’s allies in the early years of the war, the Poles have the most grievances for Churchill’s failure to keep his promises.
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“There are few virtues the Poles do not possess.” -WSC. The Polish 303 Squadron, RAF, flying Hawker Hurricanes, claimed the largest number of aircraft shot down in the Battle of Britain, even though it joined the fray two months late. As for grievances there are also the Balts, as I remember bicycling Latvia on VE-Day+50. When we said Churchill, they said Yalta. Still, rational consideration of circumstances is valuable. -RML