As if it’s not enough that the Tories are now aligned in the European Parliament with the Latvian Waffen-SS Admiration Society, it turns out that yes, their current chair — Michal Kaminski from Poland’s Law and Justice party — is, if not an outright antisemite, not quite somebody who gets invited to a lot of Bar Mitzvahs:
Mr President should not take the guilt on the Polish nation, the whole nation that he should represent for what happened in Jedwabne and apologise in its name. I am ready to say the word: I am sorry but under two conditions. First of all I need to know what I am apologising for. I apologise for a handful of outcasts. Secondly I can do that if will know that someone from the Jewish side will apologise for what the Jews did during the Soviet occupation between 1939 and 1941. For the mass collaboration of the Jewish people with the Soviet occupier, for fighting Polish partisans in this area. And eventually for murdering Poles.
That was said by him in an interview with the Polish newspaper Nasza Polska, in the context of an official Polish apology for the atrocities that happened in Jedwabne back in 1941, on the sixtieth anniversary of the massacre there. As the Wikipedia article on Jedwabne makes clear this is a touchy subject for Polish nationalists, as it clashes with the image of Poles as innocent victims of nazi oppression and raises the question of Polish collaboration with the Holocaust. Every nazi-occupied country, including the Netherlands has had to deal with this of course, but we’ve had had longer to come to terms with this part of our past; during the communist era in Poland (and other Warsawpact countries) this was a taboo subject. No wonder than that rightwing nationalists like Kaminski are not too keen on this subject or too sympathetic to the Jewish experience in Poland during World War II.
Should David Cameron and the Tories, who after all do want to establish themselves as a modern rightwing non-xenophobic party, therefore be associated with him? What’s more, should Stephen Pollard, usually the first cock to crow at any hint of anti-semitism by anybody even vaguely associated with the left, be spending his time defending his man?
Well yes, better this than accusing others of anti-semitism…