Acknowledging Poland’s Gesture

Your editorial (“Poland Aims to Make a Point,” March 27) saluted Poland’s offer to fly Russian Jews to Israel. But at the same time, it implied that Poland was responsible for what happened to the Jews at the hands of Nazi and Communist occupiers. The people of Poland had nothing to do with the Nazis or the Communists or the governments imposed on them.

The Nazis killed 3 million Christian Poles and the Communists killed and imprisoned hundreds of thousands more. My family’s suffering was typical for many Christian families in Poland. My father’s parents died in German concentration camps. My father almost died in a gulag in Siberia. My mother’s father, brother and two uncles were murdered by Communists. My mother and her mother were imprisoned in a Russian forced-labor camp. Because of an inadequate knowledge of Polish history, this editorial salute turned into a brutal slap.

ROMAN J. ZAWADZKI