Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Rossolinski-Liebe. 2024. Polnische Buergermeister under der Holocaust by Damian Sitkiewicz, as reviewed by Damian Sitkiewicz. 2025. POLISH-JEWISH STUDIES, NR 6, strony 509-555 (English version 411-457)

Blaming-Poles on Steroids: Erasing History, Whitewashing Germans

Author Damian Sitkiewicz is a historian affiliated with the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw. Rossolinski-Liebe (hereafter RL), a Polish-German historian, has taken the shifting of blame from Germany unto Poland to new heights of absurdity.  Contrary to some apologists, RL is not some kind of marginal character. He has the FULL AND DIRECT SUPPORT of leading Holocaust-promoting Jewish and German organizations. Sitkiewicz comments, “He (RL) has also received scholarships from many institutions, including the Claims Conference, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Foundation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, and the International Institute for Holocaust Research, which is part of Yad Vashem.” (p. 412, English version). Notice especially the active support of the Claims Conference, which is the heart and soul of the Holocaust Industry. It figures!

Archives? As with Jan Grabowski, RL frequently misrepresents archival information to support his falsehoods. (p. 429, 432-433, 442-444). See also:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2026/02/21/judenjagd-judeocentric-fabrications-gontarczyk/

After the expose of his lies, RL has played the victim card (as Grabowski and Engelking did earlier). These three are, at worst, no more victims of persecution than are the academic Holocaust deniers like David Irving. Note the Talmudic-style dual morality: Polonophobes hide behind academic freedom to lie about Poland, while Holocaust deniers get no academic freedom, and are banned from lying about the Jews.

BLAMING-POLES ON STEROIDS: THE DISAPPEARED 1939 GERMAN CONQUEST AND OCCUPATION OF POLAND

Sitkiewicz brings RL back to reality, as he writes, “the GG, as part of the Greater German Reich, did not constitute a legal successor to the Second Polish Republic.” (p. 421). Also, “The Germans did not preserve the state structures of pre-war Poland, and the GG, as a German creation, completely broke with the Polish state and broadly understood Polishness.” (p. 416). Also, “The application of Polish law by the Germans against the will of the Poles does not make it German-Polish law. These decisions were driven by pragmatic concerns, not by any effort to preserve even the vestiges of Polish statehood.” (p. 421). Finally, “Ethnic Polish officials had no influence over legal provisions within the GG. Nevertheless, the author frequently uses terms such as ‘Polish-German administration’ and even ‘Polish-German legislation.'” (p. 420).  Sitkiewicz pointedly asks, “…ethnic Poles were employed only as officials required to obey unconditionally. In this context, it is worth asking the author: were the Jewish Councils, Judenrats, a Jewish-German administration?” (p. 415). Touche!

BLAMING-POLES ON STEROIDS. FACT IS, POLISH ACTS WERE INVOLUNTARY. PERIOD

Village mayors were strictly order-fulfillers of German commands. (p. 415, 418, 420-421, etc.). Disobedience could mean death. (p. 423).  Historian Sitkiewicz adds, “The sources cited by the author, and especially their creative and manipulated interpretation, which in many places is riddled with lies, DEFINITELY DO NOT CONFIRM THAT POLISH MAYORS PERSECUTED JEWS ON THEIR OWN INITIATIVE…The thesis that mayors created their own legislation…demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of the realities of the German occupation.” (p. 452. Emphasis added).

RL also attempts to transfer German guilt to Poles by vaguely invoking “modern bureaucracies” (p. 417), as if these somehow abolished the reality of unilateral German authority.  RL also asserts that the Polish mayors voluntarily supplied the horse-carts used to transport Jews (p. 444), which is a lie that revives the Jew Marian Marzynski and his movie, SHTETL, in which he implied that the Poles freely chose to supply the horse-drawn carts that took the local Jews to the trains to Treblinka. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/10/11/polish-soltys-and-german-made-holocaust/

BLAMING-POLES ON STEROIDS: “POLES GOT RICH OFF DEAD JEWS” FALSEHOODS YET AGAIN

WARNING: Holocaust Industry propaganda ahead. RL revives Jan T. Gross old bogus arguments about Poles profiting off Jewish deaths. Sitkiewicz comments, “The author distorts the reality of the German occupation by portraying it as a rivalry between Germans and Poles over Jewish property, thereby placing the occupiers on the same level as the occupied. In doing so, he not only omits the harsh realities of Polish suffering under brutal German rule – including wide-spread robbery – but also suggests that both nations engaged in some kind of rivalry as if they were equals.” (p. 454).

RL also resorts to Orwellian language, “When he [RL] writes about Poles who took property belonging to Jews, he uses the words ‘stole’ or ‘looted.’  When he refers to the same actions by Germans, he writes about ‘transporting’ to warehouses and ‘storing.'” (p. 454). Clever.

An ironic fact: Jews benefitted from the Polish property that the Germans had confiscated from Poles in order to create the ghettos for the Jews. So much for the “Poles profited from Jewish losses” insinuation.

BLAMING-POLES ON STEROIDS: CONCLUSION

Putting Germans and Poles on the same level is as farcical as putting the motives and actions of the gunman (who demands money) on the same level as those of the victim (who hands over his money). There is no nuance here! The apportionment of guilt is not 50%:50% or even 80%:20%. It is exactly 100%:0%.

Put another way, Jews insist that Holocaust denial is not a matter of debate, is not something that has “another side” and is most definitely not an academic school of thought. It is simply false. In exactly the same manner, and contrary to RL and his likes, Poles sharing German responsibility for the Holocaust is not a matter of debate, is not something that has “another side”, and is most defintely not an academic school of thought. It is categorically false. Period.