Main Entrance to Auschwitz. The view of the main entrance to Auschwitz. The gate bears the motto "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes one free). This photograph was taken in May 1945.

Prisoners at Forced Labour. Prisoners at forced labour constructing the Krupp factory at Auschwitz. This photograph was taken in 1942-1943, while the Nazis still occupied Poland.

Fathom: Do you think there was any particular reason why Poland was the site of so many concentration camps?

(2:00 min)

Prazmowska: There were accusations levelled against Poland, that there was a conscious decision made by the Nazi occupation administration to site the extermination camps on Polish land because of anti-Semitism. I don't think there is anything in that, simply because Poles had no decision-making over the siting of anything. They were as much victims, but in a different way, as the Jewish community was. So it is not as if they had been consulted. The transport of Jews for extermination to Poland did not involve any degree of co-operation or lack of it on the part of the Poles. They were brought in by trains directly to the camps and were exterminated within hours of arriving there. There is of course a different issue, which is that it has been revealed that the Jewish community felt that the civilian Polish community was unsympathetic to their plight. If one looks in greater detail at the matter one can say that they most certainly would have appeared unsympathetic because generally Poles were not willing to hide Jews who might have escaped ghettoes or who might have been in hiding. But the reason for that really was that in any apartment block or area where Jews were found to be harboured, everybody in the house would be immediately shot. So very few people were prepared to risk that. I am not trying to avoid the fact that there were instances of anti-Semitism and instances of Jews being exposed or hounded. That happened, but the siting of extermination camps and areas of extermination had nothing to do with inherent Polish anti-Semitism issue as such.

Fathom: Can you describe the Auschwitz controversy in Poland?

(3:51 min)

Prazmowska: In the 1980s the matter of Auschwitz became an international issue. It always was a focal point of debate, discussion and commemoration. But the reason for this particular controversy was that a closed order of Catholic nuns had requested permission to live in a building and they were going to concentrate on praying for the souls of those who had died. It was considered by the Jewish community as extremely insensitive because Auschwitz-Birkenau, the concentration-extermination camp complex, is seen as an area of Jewish martyrdom by the Jewish community and they do not wish to have nuns praying for their fate or salvation. What exacerbated the situation was the fact that around the surviving areas of the concentration camp were very obvious displays of Christian symbols of faith, which Jewish people did not welcome, nor had they been consulted. Furthermore they had not been given a place where they themselves could pray or contemplate.

se nuns came up the Poles were insulted because as far as the government and the Bishop of Oswiecim were concerned, this was an internal Polish matter. It became a scandal when the nuns were finally asked to leave the site because their occupation was not appreciated by the Jewish community; in fact, it was seen as an insult and it became more confrontational as the nuns refused to do so. It is a closed order, so one could say very unworldly, but I think pressure could have been put upon the nuns by the Polish episcopate and it was not done so. In Poland, public opinion generally took the view that the Jews were meddling in something that had nothing to do with them, and these were internal matters. Finally, as a result of Papal intervention the nuns relinquished the site. Simultaneously, and as part of this general confrontation, which was very unseemly and dragged on for about six years, a monk brought an enormous cross that had been used during one of the papal visits in Poland and erected it in a gravel pit just outside the boundary of the concentration camp and called for Christian Poles to rally about.

It became quite clearly a confrontation with the Jews, who these people saw as demanding that symbols of Christian faith should be removed from areas such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Although the nuns and crosses were removed, it was an unseemly confrontation which cast a very unpleasant light on Poland. Neither the church nor the Polish community really understood what it meant in the international arena and the Jewish point of view. They showed themselves to be profoundly intolerant of Jews.

Fathom: Do you think that Poles feel that their suffering has gone unrecognised in the aftermath of the war?

(3:00 min)

Prazmowska: There is an element of that. When one looks at the period immediately after the war, the Poles felt that as the cold war set in, they were seen as part of the Soviet bloc. For example, in the west those who had been victims of concentration camps or compulsory labour gradually got some kind of financial compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany. This was not the case in Poland. I was familiar as a child with people who had been in concentration camps and they had received no help other than that which the Polish government had given them. No form of assistance or compensation had been granted to Poland until the 1990s when agreements were signed. So there was among the victims of wartime atrocities, a strong sense of grievance that the world outside had turned its back on them. In fact, the federal republic of Germany had received assistance, money, and economic well-being prevailed there. Whereas Poles who had suffered and who had been as much victims of Nazi as well as Soviet occupation received nothing because of this political confrontation. That is an important element but I think underneath it all is a total insensitivity to the fact that the Polish Jews as well as the Jewish community see Auschwitz-Birkenau as an area of martyrdom. Poles just don't see that point of view; they see it as a Polish site and area. It is probably very difficult for the Poles, insofar as this is the only surviving concentration camp and that is only because the Germans failed to destroy it. The Poles found themselves with this huge complex, which presently as there is common agreement, needs to be maintained, whereas all the others had been destroyed. There is expense involved. There is a need to think about the site and the maintenance of the site. They don't feel that the world outside understands what is involved.

	Thinking Point
	Can you think of important centres of martyrdom in your country? Do you think all centres of martyrdom are contested?

Sometimes they make decisions that are crassly insensitive. For example, a few years ago a supermarket was going to be built close to the gate of the concentration camp, in a building that had been a warehouse. Local people said: "We live in a town. We don't just live next to a concentration camp. Occasionally we have to make decisions about urban matters and if we had to respect absolutely every building that had however indirect an association with the concentration camp then we would be paralysed."

They have a point here, but at the same time those who saw what had happened there would agree there is very little scope for compromise.

Fathom: To what extent do you think the Polish attitude can be attributed to anti-Semitism?

(1:28 min)

Prazmowska: I think that is the correct view. The phrase I keep using--"insensitivity"--is actually the fact that in Poland in the twentieth century, there has been a strong current of thinking that the Jews do not belong, that there is no such thing as a Polish Jew: they are outsiders. This is total nonsense because Poland had a well-settled and integrated Jewish community for centuries. Jews are not outsiders. They are people who had lived there for centuries as much as any other person. I think that anti-Semitism is really the issue. I frequently wondered why it is that Poland, unlike Czechoslovakia for example, has this strong undercurrent of anti-Semitism. I don't know. On occasion I have wondered about the economic circumstances but I have also pondered this question of the Catholic church's role in fomenting and exacerbating tensions. I wouldn't pinpoint the Catholic church as a whole, but individuals within the church being either not aware or not feeling responsible for the morality of their own parishioners, particularly in their approach to people of other faiths.

Fathom: Would Poland ever consent to Auschwitz being granted international extra-territorial status?