Poland’s litmus test shows red

Comment on the article The Volunteer: Jack Fairweather’s Auschwitz spy thriller wins Costa prize, by David Sanderson, The Times, January 29 2020. Polish version: Polski test lakmusowy ma wynik czerwony.


Lech S Borkowski comment in The Times 29 January 2020
Lech S Borkowski, comment in The Times 29 January 2020

29 January 2020

Five years ago, Pilecki’s son and daughter have not been invited by the Polish authorities to the 70 anniversary of the liquidation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. This is a litmus test of who runs Poland. They showed that they indeed are Communists, because only a Communist could do such a thing.

Polish authorities did everything possible to humiliate Pilecki’s children. They contacted them only in the morning of January 27 2015, several hours before the event. They used different excuses. They said that the PM’s chancellery couldn’t find the phone number to Pilecki’s daughter Zofia.

I am pretty sure they knew the number perfectly well.

They called to someone from a non-governmental organisation, trying to obtain Zofia’s number. The official from the PM’s office allegedly did not know the exact spelling of Pilecki’s surname. A lie of course. Then he allegedly asked if Pilecki’s children are still alive and if they are capable of attending the ceremony. Again, a typical Communist lie.

Zofia Pilecka refused to accept this last minute pseudo-invitation, as this would be accepting the humiliation.

Grandson of the Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Hoess was invited to the event and participated. Apparently, the Polish government had no problem finding his phone number.

This is not an isolated incident. My wife Małgorzata Głuchowska and I were both expelled from out jobs in Polish state institutions in 2015 for political reasons. My parents were imprisoned in Communist concentration camps in the Soviet Union after WWII. My wife’s grandfather was imprisoned by the Communist secret police in 1947, upon his return from England. He was held as a POW in the Soviet Union in 1940-41. He later fought in the Allied forces on the western front.

I am proud of my family’s heritage and my parents’ unwavering stand against the Communist butchers. Firing my wife from her job at the State School of Music in Zielona Góra and me from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań is their act of revenge. I know you read silly stories about transition to democracy in Poland. Those stories are not true.

I will close this comment with reference to Rafael Lemkin, Polish-Jewish lawyer, who coined the term ‘genocide’ and was the force behind United Nations resolution on genocide. His person was completely erased from public life in Poland and other countries as well. I learned about him from the Internet. He was very critical of Communist crimes, hence the erasure.

P.S. Pilecki was not a spy. He was a member of the Polish resistance.

@LechSBorkowski