The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), James Comey, has commented on recent statements Poles contributed to the Holocaust, but no apologies were forthcoming.
While visiting an FBI site in Knoxville, Tennessee, Comey said that he regretted certain comments. He was asked by WATE TV (a subsidiary of ABC), whether he was willing to apologise.
“I don’t. Except I didn’t say Poland was responsible for the Holocaust. In a way I wish very much that I hadn’t mentioned any countries because it’s distracted some folks from my point,” he said.
“I worry a little bit in some countries that point has gotten lost. There is no doubt that people in Poland heroically resisted the Nazis, and some people heroically protected the Jews, but there’s also no doubt that in every country occupied by the Nazis, there were people collaborating with the Nazis.”
Last week Comey ruffled feathers with a speech which was published in the Washington Post that said: “In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil,” he said. ”They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do. That’s what people do. And that should truly frighten us.”
The comments that Poles contributed to the death of millions through the systematic killing by Nazi-German troops was condemned by Polish leaders, including President Bronisław Komorowski.
Komorowski said that it is essential that ''painstaking work on dismantling bad, inaccurate, harmful stereotypes about Poles'' is carried out. (rg)
Ewa Malcher
