The Polish press is marking the 27th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising by depicting it as a chapter in the Polish underground resistance movement against the Nazis rather than a specifically Jewish act of resistance. Polish newspapers are pointedly ignoring the Jewish role in the revolt and the official line is to discourage the idea that it was a Jewish event. The popular daily Warsaw Life published an alleged conversation between a commander of the Polish Home Army and a leader of the Jewish underground at the time in which the latter is supposed to have said that the ghetto fighters were fighting for Poland without mentioning that they were Jews. The paper did not supply the name of the Jewish underground leader.
Col. Sbygniew Gabinski, a leader of the Polish War Veterans, told a Warsaw Ghetto anniversary meeting that “thousands of Poles spilled their blood and sacrificed their lives in defense of the Jewish population” and “thousands of Jews were saved with the help of the Polish people.” He said the Warsaw ghetto fighters died “with the word Poland on their lips.” A speech along the same lines was delivered by Gen. Tadeusz Piczak, chief of information and propaganda of the Polish Communist Party in Warsaw. Edward Raiber, chairman of the Jewish Social and Cultural Association, made no reference to the ghetto revolt but attacked Israel’s “governing circles” for their “aggressive, grasping policy, supported by American imperialism which is bringing new calamities to the Middle East.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
