Polish Law on Holocaust Draws New Attention to Anti-Semitism in Poland’s Past and Present

There is no doubt that Polish Jews were not the only ones singled out for terror, persecution and murder by the Nazis during the German occupation of Poland that began in 1939 and lasted until 1945.

As Hannah Arendt reported from the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1962, the judges in Jerusalem had before them the minutes of two conferences of senior Nazi officials, from September 1939 and January 1940, in which “the fate of the entire native population in the occupied territories was discussed — that is the ‘solution’ of the Polish as well as the ‘Jewish question.'”

“Even at this early date,” Arendt noted, “the ‘solution of the Polish problem’ was well advanced; of the ‘political leadership,’ it was reported, no more than three per cent was left; in order to ‘render this three per cent harmless,’ they would have ‘to be sent into concentration camps.'”