What Yad Vashem posted is profoundly disrespectful to Poles and is written in a way that misleads more than it informs. The opening claim that “Poland was the first country where Jews were forced to wear a distinctive badge” is not only historically incorrect but shifts responsibility away from the actual perpetrator. It implies that something about Poland itself caused this measure, when in reality the policy was created, ordered, and enforced entirely by Germany.
Poland had been completely conquered by Germany in September 1939. The Polish state had been destroyed, the government was in exile, and the country was under the total control of German occupation authorities. The decree mentioned in the post was issued by Hans Frank, a German official, acting within the German Generalgouvernement. Every element of the armband requirement was German in origin, purpose and enforcement.
Failure to mention Germany even once in a message about a German policy carried out by a German governor on occupied Polish territory is not a minor oversight. It shifts the weight of responsibility from the perpetrator to the soil on which the crime occurred. It is similar to describing a lynching in Alabama as something “America” did without identifying who carried it out and who created the system that allowed it. Everyone would immediately see the distortion. The same standard must apply here.
The Germans imposed the armband rule on 23 November 1939. Poland had no legislative power, no ability to intervene and no control over any aspect of daily life. Presenting this as a “Poland first” event suggests that Poles or Polish society had something to do with the decision. They did not. They were themselves victims of occupation, mass terror, executions and forced labor. Millions of Polish citizens, both Jewish and non Jewish, were murdered by the same German regime.
It is deeply disappointing that Yad Vashem, an institution that should uphold the highest standards of historical precision, continues to allow these kinds of ambiguities. Its mission requires clarity, accuracy and moral responsibility. Yet again we see the same pattern of presenting German crimes on occupied Polish land as if they were characteristics of Poland rather than actions of Germany.
Hans Frank was German.
The Generalgouvernement was German.
The decree was German.
The penalties were German.
Poland did not order this.
Poland could not have ordered this.
Germany did this.
If the Holocaust is to be remembered truthfully, the perpetrators must always be named truthfully. To do anything less is not only misleading but disrespectful to the historical record and to the Polish victims who suffered and died under the same machinery of German terror.
An unacceptable statement by the Yad Vashem Institute.
A lack of knowledge about the German regulations imposed on Polish society enslaved by the German Reich (including Jews), or ignoring them, is unbecoming of institutions such as Yad Vashem.
1. It was Germany that invaded Poland, and it was on the German-occupied Polish territories that the system of marking Jews, creating ghettos, and the entire apparatus of terror was introduced.
2. Poland was a country occupied by Germany, and the scale of repression on its territory was among the most brutal in all of Europe.
3. In the German-occupied Polish territories, any assistance to Jews was punishable by death, often carried out against entire families (including the Ulma Family). Despite this, Poles provided the largest amount of aid to the Jewish population in the German-occupied areas, a fact confirmed by the Yad Vashem list.
4. The Polish Government-in-Exile, the institutions of the Polish Underground State in the German-occupied territories, and Polish diplomats in neutral countries all undertook significant efforts to help Jewish citizens of the Republic of Poland, who had been condemned to extermination by Germany.
The obligation to wear the Star of David, various forms of identification, and the penalties for failing to comply were elements of German racial policy, implemented by the administrative and terror apparatus created by Germany.
It kinda makes you sorry for all the poles that gave their lives for hiding jews from German nazis. Also, after centuries of Poland being safe heaven for european jews basically since middle ages,having more freedoms than everywhere, you gotta be a sorry bitch to spread such lies
He owned the mafia world but she owned him. With powers hidden behind a calm smile, she let him believe he was in control and soon, the most feared man in the city was on his knees for the one thing he could never command: HER