(ANSA-AFP) - WARSAW, 09 SET - The beatification of a Polish
family who sheltered Jews during the Holocaust has given the
government in Warsaw a chance to promote a one-sided narrative
about attitudes of Poles in the war, experts have said. Ahead of
a ceremony on Sunday bestowing the Catholic honour on the Ulma
family, who were killed by the Nazis, their story is being
widely shared in Poland, with exhibitions, concerts and new
books, including for children. Presidential adviser Marcin
Przydacz told Polish radio PR1 that the event has "a dimension
of building up the image of Poland, and of historical truth".
Six million Polish citizens, including three million Jews, were
killed by the Nazis. The Yad Vashem memorial, which is dedicated
to the memory of the Holocaust, honours 7,232 Poles as
"Righteous among the Nations" for helping Jews during the Nazi
occupation at a time when doing so was punishable by death.
Heroic and tragic - But historians say the sacrifice of
those who helped Jews cannot be used to whitewash the past. For
years the authorities have denied the collaboration of some
Poles with the Nazis and the indifference of a large part of the
population to Jewish suffering. "History is not a buffet where
you can pick and choose what you want but that is how
politicians are treating it," said sociologist Agnieszka Haska
of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research. "The story of the
Ulma is heroic and tragic but cases of Jews being saved were not
as numerous as politicised history now would have you believe...
The Righteous were an extreme, just like those who
collaborated," she said. Haska said that "as victims of the
Second World War, we are incapable of accepting that we were not
as noble as we think." For more than a year, the Ulma family hid
eight Jews of the Goldmann and Grunfeld families in the village
of Markowa in southern Poland. Turned in by a Polish policeman,
they were all executed -- including the children -- by Germans
on March 24, 1944. The mother was pregnant with her seventh
child and began giving birth during the execution. The baby did
not survive. In 1995, the family were awarded the medal of
Righteous among the Nations from Yad Vashem. Since 2016 there
has also been a museum in Markowa and the government has decreed
March 24 the "National Day of the Memory of Poles who saved
Jews". (bo/dt/lcm/cw) (ANSA-AFP).
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