POLAND: VILLAIN, VICTIM, OR BOTH? by Donal Kennedy

I write of the Polish State established when “British and French  bayonets rescued Poland  from the bondage of a century and a half” in 1920.

 

I quote Winston Churchill’s speech in the British House of Commons on October 5 1938 following

Poland joining Nazi Germany in grabbing territory from Czechoslovakia, when British Premier 

Neville Chamberlain’s kowtowed to Hitler at Munich. Poland’s Foreign Minister, Colonel Beck

comes in for condemnation by Churchill. Poland had signed a Treaty with Hitler in 1934.

 

Churchill was one of history’s great villains and his speech on Munich is reproduced in a volume

“Into Battle” compiled by his son Randolph and printed in 1940.

 

I picked it up years ago to read his condemnation (May 5 1938) of the Eire Bill following Eamonn

de Valera’s master stroke of clearing Cork Harbour, Bantry Bay and Lough Swilly of enemy forces without bloodshed and ending the Economic War waged by Britain on Ireland for the previous six 

years with profit to Ireland.

 

But I cannot fault Churchill’s analysis of the Munich Agreement.

 

Nor can I fault Soviet foreign policy in the years up to 1941.

 

For most of that time it was conducted by Maxim Litvinov and was dedicated to disarmament

and international peace.

 

Following Munich Litvinov was replaced by Molotov and in 1940 the Soviets made a non-aggression

pact with Germany. The Molotov -Ribbentrop Pact.

 

Apparently the EU has rewritten history to pin blame on the Soviets for the Second World War. This

is the kind of Great Lie long practised by British Governments and copied by an admiring Goebbels.

 

In 1920 THE TIMES reported that all of Poland’s 6,000,000 Jews wished to flee that newly independent

country, preferably for America, just as America was preparing to close its borders to the ethnically despised by American Wasps and their admirers.

 

By 1993 when “Schindler’s List” was filmed there were less than 4,000 Jews surviving in Poland.

Less than the Jewish population of Ireland, who have contributed much to Ireland, including

the country’s struggle for freedom, and whose faith is specifically recognised by the Constitution

enacted by its citizens and drafted by Eamon de Valera.

 

Poland like Ireland was from 1920 to 1938 and later an overwhelmingly Catholic country.

 

But has it a comparably more honourable record?

 

It seems to me that Poland was both Villain and Victim.

 

I do not expect readers to accept my understanding of these matters without giving them the

attention expected of juries in serious trials.

 

And if I have been unfair to anyone I hope I will be challenged with facts and factors which I

have either been unaware of or have overlooked.