Everybody, it seems, hates genocide.  But not everybody owns up to it.

FBI Director James Comey recently found this out firsthand.

On April 16, he published an Opinion piece in the Washington Post: “Why I Require FBI Agents to Visit the Holocaust Museum.”

It was the following paragraphs that touched off an international uproar:

“In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil.

“They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do. That’s what people do. And that should truly frighten us.”

On April 19–three days after the editorial appeared–Poland’s Foreign Ministry urgently summoned Stephen Mull, the U.S. Ambassador to Warsaw, to “protest and demand an apology.”

The reason: The FBI director had dared to say that Poles were accomplices in the Holocaust!

Poland’s ambassador to the United States said in a statement the remarks were “unacceptable.”

And he added that he had sent a letter to Comey “protesting the falsification of history, especially…accusing Poles of perpetuating crimes which not only they did not commit, but which they themselves were victims of.”

But at least one Polish citizen was not offended by Comey’s editorial.

Jan Grabowski  50, is a graduate of Warsaw University and is currently a history professor at University of Ottawa.  He is also the son of a Holocaust survivor.

Jan Grabowski

He has suffered death threats, is boycotted in the Canadian Polish community where he lives today, and is not always welcome even in his homeland.

But he will not be intimidated from speaking and writing the truth about those in Poland who enthusiastically collaborated with Nazis to slaughter Jews during World War II.

Over the years, he has published several books on this subject.  And his latest one is certain to outrage many of his countrymen.

His new book, Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland, was published in October, 2014.

“I tried to understand how only very few of those Jews who decided to hide were able to stay alive until 1945,” said Grabowski in an interview with The Times of Israel.

“The purpose of my research was to discover the condition of the Jews who managed to avoid being sent to death camps and chose to live in hiding. My research brought me to the level of individual cases of people who chose to hide.

It took Grabowski more than three years to research and write his book.  He interviewed Holocaust survivors and local residents, primarily in Poland, Israel and Germany.

“It is more complicated than just blaming the Poles for betraying their Jewish neighbors,” Grabowski.

“On the one hand there were extraordinarily brave Poles who risked their lives to save Jews, and on the other hand there was no great love between Poles and Jews before World War II.

“During the war these relationships became even more hostile. A large segment of the Polish population was displeased with their neighbors’ help to the Jews during the war, and for many it seemed even as an unpatriotic step.

“Therefore, some segments of the Polish population took an active part in the hunt for the Jews, and that is what the new book deals with.”

Click here: Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland: Jan Grabowski: 9780253010742: Amazon.com: Books

Ironically, even as many Poles aided the Germans in shipping Jews to extermination camps, the Nazis were turning Poland into a graveyard for non-Jewish Poles.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library:

“Of the 11 million people killed during the Holocaust, six million were Polish citizens. Three million were Polish Jews and another three million were Polish Christians.”

Many Poles still refuse to face up to the ugly truth about the collaboration of so many of their countrymen with the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

It’s a role often played by nations that don’t want to acknowledge their past criminality.

During the Nuremberg war crimes trials, Russian judges representing the Soviet Union successfully lobbied to conceal a vital historical truth.

While they readily charged Nazi Germany with aggressively invading Poland on September 1, 1939, they balked at admitting the role the Soviet Union had played in this.

In late August, 1939, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had negotiated a “non-aggression pact” with Adolf Hitler.

But a secret protocol of that agreement dictated that Germany could conquer only the western half of Poland. The eastern half of that country would be occupied by the Red Army.

Similarly, the Katyn massacre remained–until recently–one of the great mysteries of World War II.

The Nazis announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest of Poland in 1943.  The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000.

Of these, about 8,000 were officers taken prisoner after the Soviet invasion.  Another 6,000 were police officers, and the rest were members of the intelligentsia.

NKVD secret police

The USSR blamed the Nazis, and denied responsibility for the massacres until 1990.

The executioners belonged to the NKVD, the Soviet secret police (later renamed the KGB).

Its chief, Lavrenty Beria, urged the execution of all captive members of the Polish Officer Corps.  And Stalin had approved.

As long as politicians’ fragile egos are at stake, genocide will continue to be a matter of state policy–and a disowned one.

“Genocide” is defined by the Merriman-Webster Dictionary as “the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group.”

And the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines it as “the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.”

While dictionaries have no trouble agreeing on what “genocide” means, nations do.

Consider these two examples:

Example 1:  Turkey

One hundred years ago, in what’s been called the first genocide of modern times, up to 1.5 million Armenians died at Turkish hands in massacres and deportations.

But don’t tell that to the Turks.

Turkey has long insisted that the wartime killings were not genocide.

According to the Turks, those killed–mostly Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks–were victims of civil war and unrest as the Ottoman Empire collapsed during World War I.

“The Armenian claims on the 1915 events, and especially the numbers put forward, are all baseless and groundless,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. “Our ancestors did not persecute.”

Naturally, Armenians see it differently, viewing Turkey’s denial as an affront to their national identity.

“There is a question of political recognition of the genocide, but ultimately, it’s about the Armenian story and history being incorporated into the collective memory of the countries where we live,” said Nicolas Tavitian, director of the Armenian General Benevolent Union.

Armenians protesting Turkish genocide

The United States has long recognized the genocide of the Holocaust–and even opened a U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.  But its position on the Armenian slaughter remains one of–silence.

As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama pledged to use the term “genocide” to describe the mass killings of Armenians. As president, he’s avoided the word.

Why?

Because Turkey remains a member of NATO–and one of America’s few reliable allies in the Islamic world.

Both the Pentagon and State Department have argued that Turkey plays a vital role in fighting the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.  And the safety of American diplomats and troops in Turkey would be compromised.

Example 2:  Poland

On April 16, the Washington Post published an Opinion piece by James Comey, director of the FBI, entitled: “Why I Require FBI agents to Visit the Holocaust Museum.”

FBI Director James Comey

Click here: Why I require FBI agents to visit the Holocaust Museum – The Washington Post

Comey wants them to see the horrors that result when those who are entrusted with using the law to protect instead turn it into an instrument of evil.

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

And he wants agents to “see humanity and what we are capable of.”

“Good people helped murder millions.

“And that’s the most frightening lesson of all–that our very humanity made us capable of, even susceptible to, surrendering our individual moral authority to the group, where it can be hijacked by evil.

“Of being so cowed by those in power. Of convincing ourselves of nearly anything.

“In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil.

“They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do. That’s what people do. And that should truly frighten us.”

It was these paragraphs that landed Comey in diplomatic hot water.

On April 19–three days after the editorial appeared–Poland’s Foreign Ministry urgently summoned Stephen Mull, the U.S. Ambassador to Warsaw, to “protest and demand an apology.”

The reason: The FBI director had dared to say that Poles were accomplices in the Holocaust!

Poland’s ambassador to the United States said in a statement the remarks were “unacceptable.”

And he added that he had sent a letter to Comey “protesting the falsification of history, especially … accusing Poles of perpetuating crimes which not only they did not commit, but which they themselves were victims of.”

Shortly after Poland’s announcement, Stephen Mull, the U.S. Ambassador in Warsaw,  told reporters he would contact the FBI about the situation.

“Suggestions that Poland, or any other country apart from the Nazi Germany was responsible for the Holocaust are wrong, harmful and offensive,” he said, speaking in Polish.

And he emphasized that Comey’s remarks didn’t reflect the views of the Obama administration.

In fact, Comey’s remarks were dead-on accurate.  And Mull’s were a craven act of Political Correctness.

But at least one Polish citizen was not offended by Comey’s editorial.

Jan Grabowski  50, is a graduate of Warsaw University and is currently a history professor at University of Ottawa.  He is also the son of a Holocaust survivor.

He has suffered death threats, is boycotted in the Canadian Polish community where he lives today, and is not always welcome even in his homeland.

But he will not be intimidated from speaking and writing the truth about those in Poland who enthusiastically collaborated with Nazis to slaughter Jews during World War II.