Estimates of the Losses of Polish Jews in Hiding, 1942–1945: Revisiting Yehuda Bauer’s Observations

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Polish general elections of 2015 brought to power a right-wing, nationalistic party called PiS (Law & Justice). Since then, the nationalists have been busy dismantling the fundamental components of the democratic system, appropriating the entire machinery of the state, and attacking independent judges and journalists. However, their obsession with the defense of the so-called good name of the nation made history one of the most internationally visible areas of confrontation. And Holocaust studies, Holocaust research, and Holocaust education quickly found themselves at the very heart of this struggle over the past. In order to defend the myth of the alleged national innocence during the war, the Polish authorities have become one of the chief agents of Holocaust distortion worldwide. A number of institutions are now involved in a relentless campaign intended to prove that rescuing the Jews during the Shoah was the default position of Polish society. Driven by a phenomenon known as “Holocaust envy,” the official narrative multiplies the ranks of Polish Righteous Among the Nations and strives to present the Polish suffering, and the Polish physical losses, at par with the Jewish ones. The research into the scale of Polish complicity in the Holocaust therefore raises particular ire of the Polish state. Conservative estimates indicate that around 200,000 Jews were either killed or denounced to the Germans by the Poles.