The Editor, The Times,
1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TA.
London 7th Oct.2008
I make no apology for referring once more to the scurrilous article in your newspaper by Giles Coren in your issue of July 26th 2008. Had such an article been written by a Pole or anyone else about Jews, there would have ben uproar. I don't think that it should be the function of a serious newspaper, which I take the Times to be, to spread racial hatred against any nation. I can tell Mr Coren what the fathers of Polish workers in Britain today were doing;
They were fighting in the Warsaw uprising, in the Battle of Britain where arguably their participation aved this country. They were fighting in Monte Cassino, Tobruk, Northern Europe and elsewhere whilst those who remained in Poland, like my father in law, were fighting in the Home Army. Others, caught in the Soviet occupied East, were being deported en masse to Siberia or murdered out of hand. My wife's grandfather was murdered by Red Army soldiers who were told where he was by local Jews.
Mr Coren ought to realise that Jews were very prominent in the NKVD(KGB) as was stated in the Heatherington report to Parliament. Something like40% of the NKVD who undertook mass deportations in the Baltiic states and Eastern Poland were Jewish. This is a statement of fact and should not be taken to justify or excuse the Murderous Nazi holocaust in which the Polish state had no part.It is further not true that the extermination camps were in Poland because the Poles were more anti Jewish than the Western nations of Europe. The reason was quite simple. There were far more Jews in Poland than in any other part of Europe and so, they didn't have to be taken so far. Arguably, the French were more anti Jewish than the Poles asis evidenced by the fact that the French Gendarmerie actually helped the Germans to round up local Jews.
Mr.Coren's reference to Radovan Karadzic's arrest -"Serbia, so near to Poland" is so outrageous that it almost defies comment. You might as well say "Germany so near to Britain" In both cases,, only two countries away.I pass over Mr.Coren's ill mannered sneering at the Polish Ambassador in his answer to her letter but as he refers a lot to his own family in his article, let me say this. Recently, when I was in Poland, I was shown a photograph of my wife's family,taken in 1939 in what was then Eastern Poland. Of something like fifteen people in the photograph, only four survived the Soviet invasion. Jews were certainly victims of the second World War, but many of them were also perpetrators' mostly in Soviet uniforms.
As Mr.Coren, by his own admission, has never been to Poland and appears to know little of the country's history, I would remind him that, in 1903, there was no Polish state. His great grandfather was fleeing from occuppied Poland. Many Christian Poles fled the occupations too. He refers to the Kielce massacre of 1946.In that unfortunate incident thirty Jews and two Christians were murdered. Twelve civilians were arrested and tried by Court Martial of whom nine were executed by firing squad. The whole process ,from the original murders to the executions, took place within ten days which time scale must set something of a record for a murder trial. It is widely suspected that the authorities, whoo had just lost a referendum and needed to cover this fact up, instigated these murders and that the nine people executed by firing squad were innocent. It was in Stalin's interest, at that time, to stir up hatred between Jews and Poles. He would certainly were he alive, commend Mr.Coren's effort in your newspaper!
Your Faithfully
Lord Belhaven and Stenton
