SACRAMENTO, California (Press Release) – Responding to a disturbing spike in hate rhetoric and anti-Semitism, the State Assembly voted overwhelmingly with unanimous bipartisan support to demonstrate its commitment to Holocaust education Tuesday and called on Congress to urge Poland to abandon a gag rule that seems to encourage revisionist history.
More than 60 Assembly members joined Assemblymember Marc Levine, D-Marin County, as co-authors to Assembly Joint Resolution 35. The resolution establishes formal opposition to a recently adopted Polish law that threatens a three-year prison sentence to those who suggest Polish complicity in Nazi crimes against humanity during World War II.
Auschwitz, perhaps the most notorious and widely known of the death camps, was in Poland. A recent survey of young Americans found that most 2 out of 3 had never heard of it.
“There is no denying that 90% of Poland’s Jewish population and millions of other innocent Poles were murdered during the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis. Yet, new generations of young people don’t understand this history,” said Assemblymember Marc Levine, D-Marin County. He is chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and lead author on AJR 35. “Poland’s law limiting speech about the Holocaust is a gross misjudgment that dooms us to repeat the horrors of the past.”
That level of historical ignorance seems to parallel a rise in hate. Instances of anti-Semitism rose 57 percent from 2016 to 2017 in the United States, the largest single-year jump on record, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
That hate has been on vivid display in recent years, notably in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August of 2017, where white supremacists chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” In France, which also has experienced a wave of anti-Semitism, Parisians were horrified in March when Mireille Knoll, an 85 year-old Holocaust survivor was brutally murdered in her apartment in an apparent anti-Semitic attack.
This troubling surge has not gone unnoticed by Congress. A group of United States Senators penned a letter on May 16, 2018, urging the President to appoint a Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism at the U.S. Department of State – a position, they noted, that has remained vacant for over 15 months. After the letter, the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee approved a bill with wide Jewish organizational backing that would not only require the President to nominate someone for the position within 90 days of its passage, but would also elevate the position to ambassador level. Another bill, named after Elie Wiesel, would make combating genocide a U.S. policy. Both were approved on May 17 with bipartisan support.
The resolution was adopted by the Assembly on Tuesday morning and will now move to the Senate.
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Preceding provided by the California Leislative Jewish Caucus
Indeed, Auschwitz was “in Poland,” albeit German-occupied territory which was annexed directly into the Third Reich. The first prisoners were ethnic Poles. Until the implementation of the Final Solution in 1942, they were the largest group of victims. By war’s end, their number was exceeded only by Jews of many nationalities. Please refrain from making misleading insinuations. It would also be a good idea to actually read Poland’s anti-defamation law before purporting to know about it.
This is ridiculous. The California Senate or any government body in America or any other nation has NO right to dictate to a sovereign nation like Poland. Just like how America has no right to pass laws that attack Poland like the “JUST” act S.447 which just was passed by the American government. The Un-Just act S.447 is meant to extort Billions of dollars from Poland for WW2 Jewish property in Poland…..and given to Special Interest Jewish American groups who had no relations to WW2 Jews other than common ethnicity and tribe.
This unjust act against Poland violates International law on property restitutions. Under American law, Polish law and laws of most Western nations….the property of heirless citizens of a nation go to that NATION. Not to Special Interest groups outside of that nation who claim they “deserve it” because they are of the same tribe of the deceased people in another nation.
This unfair California Senate motion against Poland, as well as the American unjust “JUST” act against Poland….shows that Anti-Polish Bigotry is alive and well.
Shame on the California government and American government for pandering to Anti-Polish Special interest groups.
Poland is understandably alarmed and upset by the way it is being moved into the Axis Camp and being held responsible for the crimes of its Axis occupiers.
The Polish army fought on the Allied Side during WW2, and all Poles were targeted under Nazi race laws. Yet, again and again, there are articles re-defining Nazi concentration camps as “Polish”. This law is designed to stop that. Clearly this is not acceptable to California.
I have no idea why. Revising the history of WW2 seems like a very bad idea to me But what a powerful lesson this is in the wisdom of staying neutral and staying out of it. The countries that managed to do so during WW2 did not suffer as Poland did, are not blamed for anything, and, as far as I know, California does not interfere with their legislature.
And I realise what a dreadful position Poland was in at the time, with Hitler and Stalin in (un)cosy alliance against it. But isn’t it a lesson well worth taking forward?
By the way, I am not a Nationalist, and of course Poland has to take its fair share of blame for the crimes of the Allies.
Nor am I in favour of these Thoughtcrime laws we now have. I would rather see them repealed than extended.
However, if we are now in a situation in which some countries may have them but others may not, have we out-Orwelled George Orwell?
Is it a case of: All Thoughtcrime laws are equal, but some are more equal than others?
“Auschwitz was in Poland”. Not possible, Poland was dismantled by USSR and Nazi Germany in 1939.
Marc Levine is a good example of the success of “Holocaust studies” brainwashing.”That level of historical ignorance seems to parallel a rise in hate” explains Marc’s hatred for Poland. He indeed has been brainwashed to a point of no return. He seems to have little knowledge about the Polish and Jewish experience in Poland during WWII. He should learn more what the Ghettos in Poland were. In many towns, the Jews were a majority of the populations and lived their lives separate from their Polish neighbors. The Jewish sections of town could have been called Jewish automatous area. These communities, had their Jewish Councils and some laws which only applied to that community. There lies the answer to the question how the SS succeeded in separating Jews from the rest of Polish population and why did the Councils subordinated themselves to the SS?
The real story of the Holocaust is the destruction of Polish Jews and not the Jews of “Europe”. The stories of the Warsaw Ghetto and many others Ghettoes are the real Holocaust and not the current narrative which centers around Auschwitz II extermination camp and the fate of European Jews. The first phase of the Holocaust involved German, Polish and Czechoslovak Jews and started on Sept 1, 1939. It was not until 1943 that the Jews in Western Europe were targeted. By then 80-90% of Polish Jewish victims already perished. The deportation of Hungarian Jews did not begin until the spring of 1944. Those could have been stoped by the Soviets. But, according to the Holocaust narrative, Soviets are the “saviors” of the Jews.
What Levine and the Holocaust crowd are asking Poles to do is accept the false Soviet and Zionist inspired narrative about the Holocaust as the “history” of the Jewish Holocaust and Polish Experience during WWII. That is a false history propagated today by the Holocaust cabal including the Holocaust Museums and Holocaust Studies programs. The Holocaust crowd is ordering Poles to stop telling the truth because it undermines their false narrative. What the Poles are asking the Holocaust crowd to do is to stop lying about the Polish experience during WWII.