Polish Anti-defamation Law

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I rise as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Poland and as the first ever Polish-born British Member of Parliament.

The hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) alluded to the terrible suffering of Polish people who helped their Jewish neighbours and friends. I will start by giving a very personal account of what happened to my family. Jan Kawczynski, the brother of my grandfather, knew, as has been alluded to, that Poland was the only country in occupied Europe where helping Jewish people carried the death penalty, but he took that risk anyway. For those of us here who are fathers, I argue that it takes an exceptional man to put at risk the lives of his daughter and his wife. He took that risk, and he hid various Jewish friends and neighbours on his estate in western Poland.

He was coming back home to his farm one day when his neighbour stopped him and said not to go back because he would be walking back to his death. The Germans had realised something was afoot and had surrounded the farm. He said he had to go back because his daughter and wife were there. When he went back, the Germans first made him take off his officer’s boots. They then made him dig a grave, informing him that they would shoot his daughter and his wife, and then they made him watch as they shot his 12-year-old daughter and then his wife. Then they shot him.

I have never spoken about that in the House, although I have been a Member for 13 years, but a lot of emotion has already been expressed in the debate, and I hope hon. Members will realise from what I have said just how strongly I feel about this situation. I am grateful and pleased that I can pay tribute to Jan Kawczynski for the sacrifices that he made to do the right thing—to help his Jewish friends and neighbours.

Last year, I went to the zoo that the hon. Member for Leeds North West mentioned for an award ceremony at which my family was recognised for helping Jewish families. That ceremony was organised by a very good friend of mine, Mr Jonny Daniels, who runs a foundation called From the Depths, which is partly financed and supported by the British Government and which seeks to bring together Jewish and Polish communities in the modern era.

However, although my family have been recognised, we are typical of so many different Polish families who suffered as a result of helping their Jewish friends and neighbours. In actual fact, I have to say that the Polish underground resistance actually punished Poles who committed crimes against Jews. Of course, as has been said, Poland has the most members of the righteous among the nations for all the suffering that they went through in helping their Jewish friends and neighbours, as was recognised by the state of Israel.

Poland has great concern about the international media’s lack of care as to what happened in world war two. Poland was invaded in 1939 and brutalised by its German occupiers; 6 million people were slaughtered. Warsaw, the city of my birth, was completely destroyed, with 98% of the city flattened in 1944 by Adolf Hitler’s forces as punishment after the Warsaw uprising.

The United Kingdom suffered greatly during the second world war, and we made terrible sacrifices as well, but Poland uniquely suffered the abject brutality of the German invasion. Tensions and emotions still run high as a result of what happened at that time. Of course, being trapped behind the iron curtain after the second world war with an illegitimate Communist regime who tried to distort history through school rooms did not allow Polish society to discuss and debate these issues properly.

I hope that the BBC picks up on this point again, because I have a thick file of my correspondence with the BBC—the British Broadcasting Corporation—in relation to my numerous complaints to it about its misrepresentation of the situation in Poland during the second world war. I have to say that the BBC, which sells itself as a paragon of virtue and enlightened journalism, and with all the resources that it gets from the British taxpayer, should know better. I have counted many occasions when the BBC has referred to “Polish death camps”. Think to yourselves for a moment how you would feel as a Pole about a reference to something as a “Polish death camp”. There is no such thing as a Polish death camp. They were concentration camps set up by Germans in German-occupied Poland; they were run by Germans, maintained by Germans and initiated by Germans. Let us get that straight. However, despite my numerous requests to the BBC to show a little sensitivity and understanding on this issue, it continues to refer to those things as “Polish death camps”.

The narrative has moved on and there are constant references to Nazis doing these things. The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) and I have just returned from Minsk; we were part of a parliamentary delegation to Belarus. Of course Belarus, as we found out in the course of our visit, suffered enormously from similar types of brutality against Jewish people by the occupying German forces. I had the honour and pleasure of going round the museum of the second world war in Minsk with the hon. Gentleman, and we saw at first hand evidence of the appalling brutality and death meted out to Jews in Belarus by German forces. The guide repeatedly referred to Nazis, as if this was some sort of third entity descended from outer space—some unknown factor of people. They were German soldiers under the instruction of the German Government, the German dictator.

Germans invaded and persecuted Poles and Jews and killed millions. I want to say also that, as the Polish Prime Minister said very eloquently, “Arbeit macht frei” is not a Polish expression. Let us remember those sinister words at the entrance to the death camps: “Arbeit macht frei”. It still sends a chill down my spine when I read out those words, as I am sure it does to everybody in the Chamber. When I hear the words “Arbeit macht frei”, I think of the suffering and misery that those poor defenceless people went through. But “Arbeit macht frei”, as everybody here knows, is a German phrase.

We need to work together. I say to the hon. Member for Leeds North West that I have every sympathy for him. As I listened to him, the emotion and sincerity with which he spoke impressed me greatly. The all-party parliamentary group on Poland has a visit to Poland coming up in July. It will involve nine Members of Parliament. I very much hope that the hon. Member for Leeds North West might join us on that group. We are making a three-day visit to Poland, where we will be meeting Ministers and many others—media outlets and all sorts of civil society organisations. I very much hope that he will join us on that and that he will take the time to meet members of the Polish diaspora in the United Kingdom with me. One million Poles now live in this country. We have many events for the Polish community here in the House of Commons. Despite the hon. Gentleman’s concerns, I very much hope that he will give them the opportunity of giving their side of this very sad story.

I am conscious that other hon. Members wish to speak, but let me make just a couple of additional points. Paragraph 3 of article 55a of the law under discussion specifically ensures that scientific publication or research and artistic activity are exempt from the legislation. The law is not designed to protect individuals who were involved in crimes against Jews. As I have said, it is designed to ensure that Poland’s reputation is protected and to recognise the suffering of Poles who helped Jewish friends. That is very important to remember.

The Polish Prime Minister, Mr Morawiecki, and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have met on several occasions to discuss this issue, and a commission has been established to discuss how the two countries can go forward to ensure that it is resolved amicably and satisfactorily for both sides.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman has talked about forthcoming meetings. Does he agree that there needs to be clarity and certainty about what happened in the past and that what is currently happening in terms of anti-Semitic behaviour across the globe but particularly in western Europe needs to be highlighted? We need to get more information so that people can eliminate the perceptions and the paranoia that sometimes exist when talking about both Israel and Jewish activity; others seem to want to believe that there is a worldwide conspiracy, and the reality and the truth must be brought to bear on that perception.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Absolutely. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. There is a huge lack of information about what happened during the second world war. I saw yesterday some shocking figures about young people in the United States of America: many of them do not even know what the holocaust was. That is extraordinary when we consider that in my grandparents’ generation, millions of people were killed under fascism—purely because of their religion or background. In that sense, this debate is very important, and it is important that we continue to have these debates, because we have to keep re-educating the next generation on the barbarity and brutality of what happened and, of course, warning them—teaching them the lessons of what happened before. We must never allow a situation to occur in which people are discriminated against because of their religion or background—but we see it happening again. We see the rise of anti-Semitism in certain countries, which is breathtaking. We see the rise of far-right parties in certain European countries. I believe that in Austria now, a rabidly right-wing party is part of the coalition. That is extraordinary. One would have thought that Austria, of all countries, would have recognised and remembered the appalling difficulties created by voting for excessively right-wing people.

The law that we are discussing has been referred to the constitutional tribunal by the President of Poland, as the hon. Member for Leeds North West said, and we look forward to the outcome of that.

I am very proud to be the first ever Polish-born British Member of Parliament. Our bilateral relations with Poland are getting better and better. It is an incredibly important NATO partner of ours, and in the post-Brexit world we need to utilise and harness the million Poles living in our country to improve understanding between our two countries, increase trade and increase bilateral co-operation. I very much look forward to working with the hon. Member for Leeds North West in the coming weeks and months to ensure that he and his colleagues get a first-hand opportunity to engage with our Polish friends and allies on this very difficult subject.