Director

James Comey

Federal Bureau of Investigation

935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

Houston April 18, 2015

Dear Director Comey

I am deeply disappointed by your remarks delivered at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual National Tribute Dinner on April 15, 2015.

In your remarks you said  “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”

Your remarks suggested that Poland had assisted and had helped Nazi Germany in the organized and systematic murder of the Jewish People known as the Holocaust.

Poland was the first country attacked on land, from the air, and from the sea, on September 1 1939.  This started World War II.  The 17^th of September 1939, marked the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland, following the prewar Soviet-German nonaggression treaty known as the Ribentrop-Molotow Pact.

Poland was occupied for 6 years by Germany and two years by the Soviets. It was the policy of both occupiers to eradicate the Polish elite. One million five hundred thousand Poles from the Eastern part of Poland were forcefully relocated to the labor camps in Siberia where half of them perished.  Germans occupied Poland with terror, fear, public executions, and unimaginable suffering. The Nazis built the concentration camps where they sent Jews, Gypsies, and Poles as well. Six million Polish citizens lost their lives during the War including three million Polish Jews.

Nearly each street or square in every Polish city bears a plaque or monument commemorating fallen soldiers of the underground Polish Army, resistance fighters including Polish Scouts as well as ordinary people who helped their neighbors, went to church, and gave money to charity.

Helping Jewish neighbors was punishable in occupied Poland by death, not only to the person extending a helping hand, but to his or her family as well. Yet in spite of this thousands of Poles hid their Jewish neighbors in attics and cellars, risking their lives and the lives of their family members, to help them survive the dark times.  Thousands of Jewish children were saved by good people placing them in Polish convents.  Unfortunately, there were some Polish people influenced by evil, and usually by the prospects for personal gain, who denounced their neighbors to the Germans.  This often resulted in sending them to Death Camps or to Gestapo prisons where they were tortured and murdered.

Poland and her Nation fell victim to the German and Soviet occupation during World War II.   Her soldiers though, never laid up their arms.  The underground Polish Army fought with Allied forces until the end of the WWII witnessing Germany’s capitulation, yet Poland was left behind the “Iron Curtain” for two generations.

The Holocaust was genocide of an unimaginable proportion that brought suffering and terror to Polish and European Jewry. Every Jewish family in Europe was affected.  The Holocaust Museum commemorates and remembers six million Jews who perished during the war; it educates the public concerning this event in order to prevent it from happening again.

t was Nazi Germany that occupied Poland, that planned and implemented Jewish genocide during WWII, and that built German concentration camps on Polish soil. The occupied Polish Nation did not corroborate with the Nazi government, nor did it  assist, nor did it aid the implementation of genocide.  The Polish Nation defied the occupation.

Since the historical Declaration of Independence, Poland has been one of the closest allies of the United States.  Poles have always fought the battle “For Our and Your Freedom”.  Now Polish Americans who have made significant contributions to the United States are deeply disappointed by your, Director Comey, understanding of the Holocaust. As friends, we understand that anyone can make a mistake, and we want to believe it was not your intention, We therefore ask you to reconsider the implications of your speech and provide the Polish community with an apology.

For the Polish American community of Houston.

Zbigniew Wojciechowski

Honorary Consul of Poland in Houston