HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS’ FOUNDATION USA STATEMENT ON U.S. AMBASSADOR THOMAS ROSE’S REMARKS ABOUT POLAND AND THE HOLOCAUST
November 25, 2026— As Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors, we are dismayed by the recent speech by U.S. Ambassador Thomas Rose in which he stated: “the persistent belief that Poland shares guilt for the barbaric crimes committed ‘against it’ is a “grotesque falsehood and the equivalent of a blood libel against the Polish people and Polish nation.” Amb. Rose’s statement is deeply offensive on several levels, and an insult to the memory of hundreds of thousands of Jews murdered by Poles during the Holocaust.
The complicity of massive numbers of ordinary Poles in the capture and murder of Jews is not a debatable subject. After the Nazi invasion, Poles were handing over Jews for a bag of sugar. Even after Auschwitz, after returning home, Jewish survivors hid in basements because the Holocaust itself did not diminish many Poles’ hatred and violence toward Jews. Were there good Poles? Yes, a small percentage. But the United States’ ambassador should not validate the denial of Holocaust realities.
In response to Poland’s public redemption campaign in 2018, Yad Vashem’s historians repudiated the arguments that the Ambassador is resurfacing:
[B]road swaths of Polish society were complicit in the murder of the Jews throughout the war and even wider segments improved their situation and even enriched themselves from the “disappearance” of the Jews. Economic gain from the Jews’ demise and the possibility of dispossessing them figured importantly among the motives for Poles’ mobilization against their Jewish neighbors.
The Ambassador also corrupts history by implying that Polish resistance fighters protected Jews. As Yad Vashem’s historians report: “sizable elements within the Polish resistance not only failed to help Jews, but were often actively involved in oppressing them. . . . Polish resistance fighters, who were willing to resist the German occupier devotedly and courageously, made a contribution to a certain aspect of the Nazi policy in occupied Poland and its sweeping success: murdering Jews.”
There were Poles who risked their lives trying to help their Jewish neighbors. “The 6,863 Poles whom Yad Vashem and the State of Israel have recognized as Righteous Among the Nations are a small and impressive minority.” But the researchers emphasized: “Any attempt to magnify aid to the Jews and present it as something that was widespread, and to minimize the role of Poles in persecuting Jews, contradicts historical truth and is an affront to the memory of the heroism of the Righteous Among the Nations.”
Perhaps Ambassador Rose should re-watch Claude Lanzmann’s incomparable film Shoah and consider what Mr. Lanzmann wrote in his memoir: “As to Polish anti-Semitism, it was not something I invented: the opinions expressed by some of the villagers of Treblinka and Chelmo were enough to make you shudder, but I had not solicited them, they had no problems expressing themselves, and I found it difficult to believe what I was hearing.” We are also deeply offended by the Ambassador’s use of the term “blood libel” in this context. The term “blood libel” is well-known to describe the vicious antisemitic lies employed for centuries to stoke actual and deadly violence based on the core falsehood that Jews murdered Christian children and used their blood for Passover matzah. The blood libel is one of the enduring falsehoods that contribute to anti-Semitism from all quarters, including the Poles’ deadly prejudice in World War II, to the false charges of “genocide” and “starvation” against Israel in the Gaza war. Using “blood libel” to lighten the burden of history on Poles for their participation in the Holocaust amounts to a form of Holocaust denial that is contrary to historical and moral truth, and contrary to everything the United States stands for.
The Ambassador’s statements are jarring and inappropriate at any time, but especially as we are experiencing a resurgence of antisemitism and Holocaust denial and violence against Jews at levels not seen in decades – with no end in sight. We trust that the current administration, which has engaged in an important and concerted effort to expose and oppose antisemitism throughout the country and the world, will repudiate the Ambassador’s speech.