Anti-Polish sentiment
Polonophobia, anti-Polonism, and anti-Polish sentiment are terms for a variety of negative attitudes, prejudices, and actions against Polish people and Polish culture. These include racial prejudice against Poles and persons of Polish descent, ethnically-based discrimination, and state-sponsored mistreatment of Poles and the Polish diaspora. This prejudice led to mass killings and genocide or it was used to justify atrocities both during and after World War II, most notably by the German Nazis, Ukrainian nationalists and Soviet communist authorities.
Nazi Germany's Directive No.1306 stated: "Polishness equals subhumanity. Poles, Jews and gypsies are on the same inferior level." Nazi Germany killed an estimated 1.9 million ethnic Poles, of which over 70,000 were murdered in Auschwitz.
Anti-Polish sentiment includes defamation and derogatory stereotyping of Poles as unintelligent and aggressive, as thugs, thieves, alcoholics, nationalists and anti-Semites. It also includes rising workplace discrimination and criminal violence against Poles.
Features
Forms of hostility toward Poles and Polish culture include:- Organized persecution of the Poles as a nation or as an ethnic group, often based on the belief that Polish interests are a threat to one's own national aspirations;
- Racist anti-Polish sentiment, a variety of xenophobia;
- Cultural anti-Polish sentiment: a prejudice against Poles and Polish-speaking persons – their customs, language and education; and
- Stereotypes about Poland and Polish people in the media and popular culture.
At present, among those who often express their hostile attitude towards the Polish people are some Russian politicians and their far-right political parties who search for a new imperial identity.
Anti-Polish stereotypes
In Russian language, the term mazurik, a synonym for "pickpocket", "petty thief", literally means "little Masovian". The word is an example how Vladimir Putin's liberal use of colloquialisms has been catching attention of the media.The "Polish plumber" cliché may symbolize the threat of cheap labor from poorer European countries to "overtake" jobs in wealthier parts of Europe. On the other hand, others associate it with affordability and dependability of European migrant workers.
Drunkenness is associated with Polish people in several European cultures; the French language has the phrase ‘drunk as a Pole’, while German uses the phrase ‘drunk as a Pole on pay day’.
In Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture, American-Polish author Danusha Goska focuses on the relationship between the "twin" stereotypes of the anti-Semitic Shylock and the anti-Polish 'Bieganski', who is "strong, stupid, violent, fertile, anarchic, dirty," and whose "special hatefulness is epitomized by their Polish anti-Semitism." She says that 'bestial' Poles have become more vilified as killers of Jews than the 'elite' German Nazis themselves.
, 1795
Anti-Polish sentiment to 1918
Anti-Polish rhetoric combined with the condemnation of Polish culture was most prominent in the 18th-century Prussia during the partitions of Poland. However, anti-Polish propaganda begins with the Teutonic Order in the 14th century. It was a very important tool in the Order's attempt to conquer the Duchy of Lithuania which eventually failed because of Lithuania's Personal union with the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Christianization of Lithuania to Catholicism. The first major thinker to openly call for the genocide of the Polish people was the 14th century German Dominican theologian John of Falkenberg who on behalf of the Teutonic Order argued not only that Polish pagans should be killed, but that all Poles should be subject to genocide on the grounds that Poles were an inherently heretical race and that even the King of Poland, Jogaila a Christian convert, ought to be murdered. The assertion that Poles were heretical was largely politically motivated as the Teutonic Order desired to conquer Polish lands despite Christianity having become the dominant religion in Poland centuries prior.Germany, becoming more and more permeated with Teutonic Prussianism, has never since abandoned these tactics. For instance, David Blackbourn of Harvard University speaks of the scandalised writings of German intellectual Johann Georg Forster, who was granted a tenure at Vilnius University by the Polish Commission of National Education in 1784. Forster wrote of Poland's "backwardness" in a similar vein to "ignorance and barbarism" of southeast Asia. Such views were later repeated in the German ideas of Lebensraum and exploited by the Nazis. German academics between the 18th and 20th centuries attempted to project, in the difference between Germany and Poland, a "boundary between civilization and barbarism; high German Kultur and primitive Slavdom". Prussian officials, eager to secure Polish partition, encouraged the view that the Poles were culturally inferior and in need of Prussian tutelage. Such racist texts, originally published from the 18th century onwards, were republished by the German Reich prior to and after its invasion of Poland.
Frederick the Great of Prussia nourished a particular hatred and contempt for the Polish people. Following his conquest of Poland, he compared the Poles to "Iroquois" of Canada. In his all-encompassing anti-Polish campaign, even the nobility of Polish background living in Prussia were obliged to pay higher taxes than those of German heritage. Polish monasteries were viewed as "lairs of idleness" and their property often seized by Prussian authorities. The prevalent Catholicism among Poles was stigmatised. The Polish language was persecuted at all levels.
After the Polish–Russian War in early 1600s, Poland was greatly antagonized by the Russians as the cause of chaos and tyranny in Russia. The future House of Romanov, who would found the Russian Empire after taken power from the Rurik dynasty, used a number of distortion activities, describing Poles as backward, cruel and heartless, praising the rebellion against Poles; and heavily centered around the Orthodox belief. When Tsardom of Russia invaded Poland at the Russo-Polish war of 1650s, the Russians caused a number of atrocities, and destroyed most of Eastern Poland, sometimes joining destruction with its Ukrainian ally led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Swedes in the parallel Swedish invasion. The war was held as a Russian triumph for its attempt to destroy Poland.
Sweden, which developed anti-Polish sentiment due to previous Polish–Swedish wars in hope to gain territorial and political influence, as well as dispute with the Polish Crown because of Sigismund III Vasa, launched an invasion known as the Deluge. Swedish invaders, joined force with Russian invaders in the east, together destroyed Poland and took away many of the Polish national treasures, as well as causing atrocities against Poles. The Poles were treated very brutally by Swedes, and as a result, Poland lost its wealth and was reduced in its development. Similar to Russia, Sweden hailed the destruction of Poland as a national triumph.
At 18th century, Russia as an empire attempted to make Poland disintegrate by using liberum veto, creating chaos and prevented reforms, as by Russian accords, was against the ideal of Imperial Russia's future plan to partition Poland. Russia often sent troops and created atrocities on Polish civilians. When Poland adopted its first ever Constitution of 3 May 1791, the first Constitution in Europe, Russia sent troops and brutally suppressed Polish people.
When Poland lost the last vestiges of its independence in 1795 and remained partitioned for 123 years, ethnic Poles were subjected to discrimination in two areas: the Germanisation under Prussian and later German rule, and Russification in the territories annexed by Imperial Russia.
Being a Pole under the Russian occupation was in itself almost culpable – wrote Russian historian Liudmila Gatagova. – "Practically all of the Russian government, bureaucracy, and society were united in one outburst against the Poles." – "Rumor mongers informed the population about an order that had supposedly been given to kill and take away their land." Polish culture and religion were seen as threats to Russian imperial ambitions. Tsarist Namestniks suppressed them on Polish lands by force. The Russian anti-Polish campaign, which included confiscation of Polish nobles' property, was waged in the areas of education, religion as well as language. Polish schools and universities were closed in a stepped-up campaign of russification. In addition to executions and mass deportations of Poles to Katorga camps, Tsar Nicholas I established an occupation army at Poland's expense.
The fact that Poles, unlike the Russians, were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic gave impetus to their religious persecution. At the same time, with the emergence of Panslavist ideology, Russian writers accused the Polish nation of betraying their "Slavic family" because of their armed efforts aimed at winning independence. Hostility toward Poles was present in many of Russia's literary works and media of the time.
Pushkin, together with three other poets, published a pamphlet called "On the Taking of Warsaw" to celebrate the crushing of the revolt. His contribution to the frenzy of anti-Polish writing comprised poems in which he hailed the capitulation of Warsaw as a new "triumph" of imperial Russia.
In Prussia and later in Germany, Poles were forbidden to build homes, and their properties were targeted for forced buy-outs financed by the Prussian and subsequent German governments. Bismarck described Poles, as animals, that "one shoots if one can" and implemented several harsh laws aimed at their expulsion from traditionally Polish lands. The Polish language was banned from public use, and ethnically Polish children punished at school for speaking Polish. Poles were subjected to a wave of forceful evictions. The German government financed and encouraged settlement of ethnic Germans into those areas aiming at their geopolitical germanisation. The Prussian Landtag passed laws against Catholics.
poster from 1920 showing a Teutonic knight being attacked by Poles and socialists as the caption reads "Save the East"
and directed at Cieszyn Silesians
Toward the end of World War I during Poland's fight for independence, Imperial Germany made further attempts to take control over the territories of Congress Poland, aiming at ethnic cleansing of up to 3 million Jewish and Polish people which was meant to be followed by a new wave of settlement by ethnic Germans. In August 1914, the German imperial army destroyed the city of Kalisz, chasing out tens of thousands of its Polish citizens.
Interwar Period (1918–39)
After Poland regained its independence as the Second Republic at the end of World War I, the question of new Polish borders could not have been easily settled against the will of her former long-term occupiers. Poles continued to be persecuted in the disputed territories, especially in Silesia. The German campaign of discrimination contributed to the Silesian Uprisings, where Polish workers were openly threatened with losing their jobs and pensions if they voted for Poland in the Upper Silesia plebiscite.At the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, British historian and politician Lewis Bernstein Namier, who served as part of the British delegation, was seen as one of the biggest enemies of the newly independent Polish state in the British political environment and in the Polish territories. He falsified the earlier proposed Curzon line by detaching the city of Lwów from Poland with a version called Curzon Line "A". It was sent to Soviet diplomatic representatives for acceptance. The earlier compromised version of Curzon line which was debated at the Spa Conference of 1920 was renamed Curzon Line "B".
soldier knocks a caricatured Polish general off backs of peasants armed with rocks
poster urging vigilance. Villain in shadow wears a Polish uniform.
, western Ukraine, with graffiti in Ukrainian: "Death to Poles!", November 2011
In the politics of inter-war Germany, anti-Polish feelings ran high. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg observed that for many Germans in the Weimar Republic, "Poland was an abomination", Poles were "an East European species of cockroach", Poland was usually described as a Saisonstaat, and Germans used the phrase "Polish economy" for a situation of hopeless muddle. Weinberg noted that in the 1920s–30s, leading German politicians refused to accept Poland as a legitimate nation, and hoped instead to partition Poland, probably with the help of the Soviet Union.
The British historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote in 1945 that National Socialism was inevitable because the Germans wanted "to repudiate the equality with the peoples of eastern Europe which had then been forced upon them" after 1918. Taylor wrote that:
"During the preceding eighty years the Germans had sacrificed to the Reich all their liberties; they demanded as a reward the enslavement of others. No German recognized the Czechs or Poles as equals. Therefore, every German desired the achievement which only total war could give. By no other means could the Reich be held together. It had been made by conquest and for conquest; if it ever gave up its career of conquest, it would dissolve."
During Stalin's Great Terror in the Soviet Union, a major ethnic cleansing operation, known as the Polish Operation, took place from about 25 August 1937 through 15 November 1938. According to Soviet NKVD archives, 111,091 Poles, and people accused of ties with Poland, were executed, and 28,744 were sentenced to Gulag labor camps, for a total of 139,835 Polish victims. This number constitutes 10 per cent of the officially persecuted persons during the entire Yezhovshchina period, with confirming NKVD documents. US historian Timothy D. Snyder says: "It is hard not to see the Soviet "Polish Operation" of 1937-38 as genocidal." Simon Sebag Montefiore presents a similar opinion, Prof. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Dr. Tomasz Sommer, and others. The prosecuted Polish families were accused of anti-Soviet activities. Michael Ellman has said in the context of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that Stalin's Polish Operation "might well qualify as genocide" but because there has been no legal tribunal to try the crimes of Stalinism, there is no authoritative ruling on the legal characterisation. Karol Karski argues that the Soviet actions against Poles are genocide according to the international law. He says that while the extermination was targeting other nationalities as well and according to the criteria other than ethnicity, but as long as Poles were singled out basing on their ethnicity, this makes the actions to be genocide.
Outside the Germans and Russians, the Lithuanians also developed a very strong anti-Polish hatred, partly due to historical grievances. For the Lithuanians, the Polish–Lithuanian War of 1920, which costed the capital of Vilnius to be on Polish hand, cemented anti-Polish sentiment. Virtually throughout the inter-war, anti-Polish had been omnipresent in Lithuania, and Polish minority in Lithuania faced a very harsh repression by the Lithuanian authorities. The 1938 Polish ultimatum to Lithuania led to the establishment of relations, but it remained extremely difficult as Lithuania still refused to accept Vilnius as part of Poland. In Lithuanian propaganda, Poles were portrayed as "lazy, poor and uneducated".
Ukrainians were also another people with strong anti-Polish hostility. The Polish–Ukrainian War of 1919 resulted in Ukraine crippled militarily and, though Poland did assist Ukraine in the eventual conflict against the Bolsheviks, but was unable to prevent an eventual occupation by the Soviets. This had led to enmity against Poland by Ukrainian nationalists, which resulted in the establishment of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the beginning of Ukrainian problem in Poland. Assassinations of Polish officials by Ukrainian nationalists became increasingly frequent from 1930s onward.
Invasion of Poland and World War II
Nazi propagandists stereotyped Poles as nationalists in order to portray Germans as victims and justify the invasion of Poland; the Gleiwitz incident was a Nazi false flag to show that Germany was under Polish attack, and the killing of Germans by Poles in Bromberger Blutsonntag and elsewhere was inflated to 58,000 to increase German hatred of Poles and justify the killing of Polish civilians.In October 1939, Directive No.1306 of Nazi Germany's Propaganda Ministry stated: "It must be made clear even to the German milkmaid that Polishness equals subhumanity. Poles, Jews and gypsies are on the same inferior level... This should be brought home as a leitmotiv, and from time to time, in the form of existing concepts such as 'Polish economy', 'Polish ruin' and so on, until everyone in Germany sees every Pole, whether farm worker or intellectual, as vermin."
Historian Karol Karski writes that before World War II the Soviet authorities carried out a discreditation campaign against the Poles and describes Stalin as Polonophobe.
During World War II Poles became the subject of ethnic cleansing on an unprecedented scale, including: Nazi German genocide in General Government, Soviet executions and mass deportations to Siberia from Kresy, as well as massacres of Poles in Volhynia, a campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out in today's western Ukraine by Ukrainian nationalists. Among the 100,000 people murdered in the Intelligenzaktion operations in 1939–1940, approximately 61,000 were members of the Polish intelligentsia. Millions of citizens of Poland, both ethnic Poles and Jews, died in German concentration camps such as Auschwitz. Unknown numbers perished in Soviet "gulags" and political prisons.
Reprisals against partisan activities were brutal; on one occasion 1,200 Poles were murdered in retaliation for the death of one German officer and two German officials. In August 2009 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance researchers estimated Poland's dead at between 5.47 and 5.67 million and 150,000, or around 5.62 and 5.82 million total.
Soviet policy following their 1939 invasion of Poland in World War II was ruthless, and sometimes coordinated with the Nazis. Elements of ethnic cleansing included Soviet mass executions of Polish prisoners of war in the Katyn Massacre and at other sites, and the exile of up to 1.5 million Polish citizens, including the intelligentsia, academics, priests and Jewish Poles to forced-labor camps in Siberia.
In German and Soviet war propaganda, Poles were mocked as inept for their military techniques in fighting the war. Nazi fake newsreels and forged pseudo-documentaries claimed that the Polish cavalry "bravely but futilely" charged German tanks in 1939, and that the Polish Air Force was wiped out on the ground on the opening day of the war. Neither tale was true. German propaganda staged a Polish cavalry charge in their 1941 reel called "Geschwader Lützow".
Inexperienced Royal Air Force commanders initially stereotyped veteran Polish fighter pilots as inept and reckless, refusing to let them fly combat missions until they chose to do so against orders; they went on to achieve a celebrated record in the Battle of Britain. British military commanders Bernard Montgomery and Frederick Browning scapegoated Polish troops and command for their defeat at the Battle of Arnhem, stereotyping them as 'difficult' and 'incompetent'. Later military commentators have generally concurred that the Poles had a distinguished role in the battle and that their commander's ideas could have won it for the Allies, while the allegations of Montgomery and Browning were hypocritical, self serving and even political, given the Great Power politics of the day.
Poland's relationship with the USSR during World War II was complicated. The main Western Powers, the US and UK, understood the importance of the USSR in defeating Germany, to the point of allowing Soviet propaganda to vilify their Polish ally. The western Allies were even willing to help cover up the Soviet massacre at Katyn.
Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, the Catholic co-founder of Zegota, the Polish resistance group which risked the German death penalty to save Jews, and who herself was sent to Auschwitz, stereotyped Jews as haters of Poles even as she characterized Poles who remained silent in the face of the Holocaust as complicit:
Post-War Era
With the conclusion of the Second World War, Nazi atrocities perforce ended. However, Soviet oppression of the Poles continued. Under Joseph Stalin, thousands of soldiers of Poland's underground eg. Home Army and returning veterans of the Polish Armed Forces that had served with the Western Allies were imprisoned, tortured by Soviet NKVD agents and murdered following staged trials like the infamous Trial of the Sixteen in Moscow, Soviet Union. A similar fate awaited the "cursed soldiers". At least 40,000 members of Poland’s Home Army were deported to Russia.In Britain after 1945, the British people initially accepted those Polish servicemen who chose not to return to a Poland ruled by the communist regime. The Poles resident in Britain served under British command during the Battle of Britain, but as soon as the Soviets began to make gains on the Eastern Front both public opinion and the Government of the UK turned pro-Soviet and anti-Polish. Supporters of the socialists falsely and deliberately made the Poles out to be "warmongers", "anti-Semites" and "fascists". After the war, the trade unions and Labour party played on the fears of there not being enough jobs, food and housing. There were also anti-Polish rallies.
In 1961, a book was published in Germany entitled Der Erzwungene Krieg by the American historical writer and Holocaust denier David Hoggan, which argued that Germany did not commit aggression against Poland in 1939, but was instead the victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy against the Reich. Reviewers have often noted that Hoggan seems to have an obsessive hostility towards the Poles. His claims included that the Polish government treated Poland's German minority far worse than the German government under Adolf Hitler treated its Jewish minority. In 1964, much controversy was created when two German right-wing extremist groups awarded Hoggan prizes. In the 1980s, the German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte claimed that in 1939 Poland was engaged in a campaign of genocide against its ethnic German minority, and has strongly implied that the German invasion in 1939, and all of the subsequent German atrocities in Poland during World War II were in essence justified acts of retaliation. Critics, such as the British historian Richard J. Evans, have accused Nolte of distorting the facts, and have argued that in no way was Poland committing genocide against its German minority.
During the political transformation of the Soviet-controlled Eastern bloc in the 1980s, the traditional German anti-Polish feeling was again openly exploited in the East Germany against Solidarność. This tactic had become especially apparent in the "rejuvenation of 'Polish jokes,' some of which reminded listeners of the spread of such jokes under the Nazis."
Western-media references to German death camps in German-occupied Poland
The expressions offensive to Poles are attributed to a number of non-Polish media in relation to. The most prominent is a continued reference by Western news media to "Polish death camps" and "Polish concentration camps". These phrases refer to the network of concentration camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland in order to facilitate the "Final Solution", but the wording suggests that the Polish people might have been involved. Even Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria, Germany was described as in Poland.The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as Polish organizations around the world and all Polish governments since 1989, condemned the usage of such expressions, arguing that they suggest Polish responsibility for the camps. The American Jewish Committee stated in its 30 January 2005, press release: "This is not a mere semantic matter. Historical integrity and accuracy hang in the balance.... Any misrepresentation of Poland's role in the Second World War, whether intentional or accidental, would be most regrettable and therefore should not be left unchallenged."
On 30 April 2004, a CTV News report made reference to "the Polish camp in Treblinka". The Polish embassy in Canada lodged a complaint with CTV. Robert Hurst of CTV, however, argued that the expression, "Polish death camp", is common usage in news organizations including those in the United States, and declined to issue a correction. The Polish Ambassador to Ottawa then complained to the National Specialty Services Panel of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. The Council did not accept Hurst's argument and ruled against CTV stating that the word ""Polish"—similarly to such adjectives as "English", "French" and "German"—had connotations that clearly extended beyond geographic context. Its use with reference to Nazi extermination camps was misleading and improper". CTV broadcast the decision during prime time. The Polish Ministry of Foreign affairs has stated, "That example of a successful campaign against the distortion of historic truth by the media – and in defense of the good name of Poland – will hopefully reduce the number of similar incidents in the future."
A similar example was the phrase "Polish Nazis" used in relation to non-Polish paramilitary groups operating on German-occupied Polish soil during World War II, disseminated by Norwegian State Broadcasting Corporation, NRK. The Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem officially considered this claim by NRK a falsification "offensive to historical truth".
In Polish-Jewish relations
Cardinal Józef Glemp in his controversial and widely criticized speech delivered on 26 August 1989 argued that the outbursts of antisemitism are a "legitimate form of national self-defence against Jewish anti-Polonism." He "asked Jews who 'have great power over the mass media in many countries' to rein in their anti-Polonism because 'if there won't be anti-Polonism, there won't be such antisemitism among us'."In November of the same year, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Poles “drink in with their mother’s milk.” Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki said that “these blanket statements are the most destructive actions imaginable,” and that they “do irreparable harm” to people seeking Polish-Jewish reconciliation.
Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, a Polish anti-Nazi resistance fighter said in 2001: "I took these words of Shamir as an insult to the memory of my mother, who was deeply religious and who taught her sons from childhood that displaying contempt to another person because of his origin, religion, or race is a mortal sin that violates the injunction to love one's neighbor. Those Poles who have fought racial prejudices their entire life must also take Shamir's words the same way." He also said: "there are Jewish counterparts of belligerent Polish anti-Semites. They see Poles, all Poles, as the most anti-Semitic nation in the world. They seem not to perceive the symptoms of this social disease in Russia, Germany and other countries of our region." In Rethinking Poles and Jews, Robert Cherry and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska said that anti-Polonism and anti-Semitism remain "grotesquely twinned into our own time. We cannot combat the one without combating the other."
In Rethinking Poles and Jews, Robert Cherry and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska said that anti-Polonism and anti-Semitism remain "grotesquely twinned into our own time. We cannot combat the one without combating the other."
The term "anti-Polonism" is said to have been used for campaign purposes by political parties such as the League of Polish Families or the defunct Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland and organizations such as the Association against Anti-Polonism led by Leszek Bubel, leader of the Polish National Party and a former presidential candidate. Bubel was taken to court by a group of ten Polish intellectuals who filed a lawsuit against him for "violating the public good". Among the signatories were former Foreign Minister Władysław Bartoszewski and filmmaker Kazimierz Kutz.
According to writer Joanna Michlic, the term is used in Poland also as an argument against the self-critical intellectuals who discuss Polish-Jewish relations, accusing them of "anti-Polish positions and interests." For example, historian Jan T. Gross has been accused of being anti-Polish when he wrote about crimes such as the Jedwabne pogrom. In her view, the charge is "not limited to arguments that can objectively be classified as anti-Polish—such as equating the Poles with the Nazis—but rather applied to any critical inquiry into the collective past. Moreover, anti-Polonism is equated with anti-Semitism." Adam Michnik wrote for The New York Times that "almost all Poles react very sharply when confronted with the charge that Poles get their anti-Semitism 'with their mothers' milk'." Such verbal attacks – according to Michnik – are interpreted by anti-Semites as "proof of the international anti-Polish Jewish conspiracy".
For the 1994 anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, a Polish Gazeta Wyborcza journalist, Michał Cichy, wrote a review of a collection of 1943 memoirs entitled Czy ja jestem mordercą? by Calel Perechodnik, a Jewish ghetto policeman from Otwock and member of the "Chrobry II Battalion", alleging that about 40 Jews were killed by a group of Polish insurgents during the 1944 Uprising. Unlike the book, the actual review by Cichy elicited a fury of protests, while selected fragments of his article were confirmed by three Polish historians. Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz accused Cichy of practicing a 'distinct type of racism,' and charged Gazeta Wyborcza editor Adam Michnik with 'cultivating a species of tolerance that is absolutely intolerant of antisemitism yet regards anti-Polonism and as something altogether natural'." Michnik responded to the controversy, praising the heroism of the AK by asking: "Is it an attack on Polish people when the past is being explored to seek the truth?". Cichy later apologized for the tone of his article, but not for the erroneous facts.
"Polish jokes"
"Polish jokes" belong to a category of conditional jokes, meaning that their understanding requires knowledge of what a Polish joke is. Conditional jokes depend on the audience's affective preference—on their likes and dislikes. Though these jokes might be understood by many, their success depends entirely on the negative disposition of the listener.Presumably the first Polish jokes by German displaced persons fleeing war-torn Europe were brought to the United States in the late 1940s. These jokes were fueled by ethnic slurs disseminated by German National Socialist propaganda, which attempted to justify the Nazis' murdering of Poles by presenting them as "dreck"—dirty, stupid and inferior. It is also possible that some early American Polack jokes from Germany were originally told before World War II in disputed border regions such as Silesia.
There is debate as to whether the early "Polish jokes" brought to states such as Wisconsin by German immigrants relate directly to the wave of American jokes of the early 1960s. A "provocative critique of previous scholarship on the subject" has been made by British writer Christie Davies in The Mirth of Nations, which suggests that "Polish jokes" did not originate in Nazi Germany but much earlier, as an outgrowth of regional jokes rooted in "social class differences reaching back to the nineteenth century." According to Davies, American versions of Polish jokes are an unrelated "purely American phenomenon" and do not express the "historical Old World hatreds of the Germans for the Poles. However, Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s imported the subhuman-intelligence jokes about Poles from old Nazi propaganda."
For decades, Polish Americans have been the subject of derogatory jokes originating in anti-immigrant stereotypes that had developed in the U.S. before the 1920s. During the Partitions of Poland, Polish immigrants came to the United States in considerable numbers, fleeing mass persecution at home. They were taking the only jobs available to them, usually requiring physical labor. The same ethnic and job-related stereotypes persisted even as Polish Americans joined the middle class in the mid-20th century. "The constant derision, often publicly disseminated through the mass media, caused serious identity crises, feeling of inadequacy, and low self-esteem for many Polish Americans." In spite of the plight of Polish people under Cold War communism, negative stereotypes about Polish Americans endured.
Since the late 1960s, Polish American organizations have made continuous effort to challenge the negative stereotyping of the Polish people once prevalent in American media. The Polish American Guardian Society has argued that NBC-TV used the tremendous power of TV to introduce and push subhuman intelligence jokes about Poles using the repetitive big lie technique to degrade Poles. The play called “Polish Joke” by David Ives has resulted in a number of complaints by the Polonia in the US. The "Polish jokes" heard in the 1970s were particularly offensive, so much so that the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs approached the U.S. State Department about that, however unsuccessfully. The syndrome receded only after Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope, and Polish jokes became passé. Gradually, Americans have developed a more positive image of their Polish neighbors in the following decades.
In 2014, a German speaker claimed during the European Aquatics Championships, that the Polish team would be coming back home in "our cars".
Today
United Kingdom
Since the EU enlargement in 2004, where ten new countries joined in the single-largest expansion to date, the UK has experienced mass immigration from Poland. It is estimated that the Polish British community has doubled in size since 2004; with Poland now having overtaken India as the largest foreign-born country of origin in 2015. There have been some instances of anti-Polish sentiment and hostility towards Polish immigrants. The far-right British National Party argued for immigration from Eastern Europe to be stopped and for Poles to be deported.In 2007, Polish people living in London reported 42 ethnically motivated attacks against them, compared with 28 in 2004. The Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski, of Polish origin himself, said that the increase in violence towards Poles is in part "a result of the media coverage by the BBC" whose reporters "won't dare refer to controversial immigration from other countries." Kawczynski voiced his criticism of the BBC in the House of Commons for "using the Polish community as a cat's paw to try to tackle the thorny issue of mass, unchecked immigration" only because against Poles "it's politically correct to do so."
In 2009, the Federation of Poles in Great Britain and the Polish Embassy in London with Barbara Tuge-Erecinska raised a number of formal complaints – including with the Press Complaints Commission – about news articles that defamed Poles. The PCC arranged a deal between the Federation and the Daily Mail, which ran the articles. The Embassy also questioned the veracity of The Guardian report by Kate Connolly about an alleged "storm of protest in Poland" in response to a film about a Jewish underground resistance movement. The Polish Embassy stated on 11 March 2009, disproving the claim: "This embassy has been in touch with only distributor in Poland, Monolith Plus, and we have been told that this film has not experienced any form of booing, let alone been banned by any cinemas." The Guardian was also forced by PCC to publish an admission that another article by Simon Jenkins, from 1 September – which accused Poles of wartime suicide – "repeated a myth fostered by Nazi propagandists, when it said that Polish lancers turned their horses to face Hitler's panzers. There is no evidence that this occurred."
The Guardian has been noted for a number of other controversies. On 14 October 2009, Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff alleged that: "the second world war narrative has been distorted since independence and the transition to democracy to make it more palatable to their electorate and to minimize the role of local collaborators in Holocaust crimes." On 20 October 2009, The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland said: "We are meant to be friendly towards the newest members of the European Union. But the truth is that several of these "emerging democracies" have reverted to a brand of ultra-nationalistic politics that would repel most voters in western Europe. It exists in Poland". In response to the above attacks Timothy Garton Ash wrote in the same paper on 23 December: "In my experience, the automatic equation of Poland with Catholicism, nationalism and antisemitism – and thence a slide to guilt by association with the Holocaust – is still widespread. This collective stereotyping does no justice to the historical record."
Writing in The Guardian, then-UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband described Poland's governing Law and Justice party as "far right". His language sparked a protest by Daniel Hannan of The Daily Telegraph, who said on 29 October 2009, that the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband should apologise to the people of Poland. Hannan wrote that Miliband's "increasingly unhinged allegations have been greeted with horror in Poland."
A Daily Telegraph article by Julian Kossoff on 13 November 2009 spoke of the "anti-Semitism embedded in Polish history," an "episode of Polish bloodlust and nightmarish slaughter" and "the unspeakable guilt of the Polish collaborators." The Daily Telegraph's Gerald Warner complained about Kossoff's "insulting attack on Catholics and Poles which grotesquely misrepresents historical fact and which, if leveled at almost any other targets, would probably be characterized as a 'hate crime'."
Also in 2008, the Polish ambassador sent an official protest to the Press Complaints Commission about The Times. On 26 July 2008, Giles Coren published a comment piece with the ethnic slur 'Polack' used to describe Polish immigrants. He accused Poland of complicity in the six million Jewish deaths of The Holocaust, prompting not only an official letter of complaint to The Times, but also an early day motion in the UK parliament, followed by an editorial in The Economist. The ambassador, Tuge-Erecinska, explained that the article was "unsupported by any basic historic or geographic knowledge," and that "the issue of Polish-Jewish relations has been unfairly and deeply falsified" by Coren's "aggressive remarks" and "contempt". Coren reacted by telling The Jewish Chronicle: "Fuck the Poles". The case has been referred to the European Court of Human Rights. However, the case was unsuccessful as Poles are not classified as an ethnic minority. The editor of The Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, commented on 6 August 2009: "There are few things more despicable than anti-Semitism, but here's one of them: using a false charge of anti-Semitism for political gain."
On 6 October 2009, Stephen Fry was interviewed by Jon Snow on Channel 4 News as a signatory of a letter to then-Conservative Party leader David Cameron expressing concern about the party's relationship with the right-wing Polish Law and Justice Party in the European Parliament. During the interview, Fry stated: "There has been a history, let's face it, in Poland of a right-wing Catholicism which has been deeply disturbing for those of us who know a little history, and remember which side of the border Auschwitz was on..." The remark prompted a complaint from the Polish Embassy in London, as well as an editorial in The Economist and criticism from British Jewish historian David Cesarani. Fry has since posted an apology on his personal weblog, in which he stated: "It was a rubbishy, cheap and offensive remark that I have been regretting ever since... I take this opportunity to apologize now." On 30 October 2009, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, complained about this new British political row playing on a "'false and painful stereotype that all Poles are antisemitic', whereas the truth was that the problem was around the same there as elsewhere in Europe."
Before the UEFA Euro 2012, British Broadcasting Corporation published a documentary criticizing Poland, called Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hate and stereotyping Poles as racists. This had been heavily criticized in Poland as well as even in Britain as an example of British racism and hypocrisies. Eventually, there was no sign of Polish racism and violence throughout the competition.
In January 2014, a Polish man, whose helmet was emblazoned with the flag of Poland, claimed he was attacked by a group of fifteen men outside a pub in Dagenham, London. Photos were taken of him and his motorbike. The victim blamed xenophobic speeches of the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.
During the same month in Belfast there was seven attacks on Polish houses within ten days, in which stones and bricks were thrown at the windows.
In November 2014, Lidl supermarkets were exposed by the BBC for threatening staff with termination of employment for speaking Polish during work and at their tea breaks.
Following the British referendum of EU membership, there were more cases of Polonophobic attacks including anti-Polish leaflets distributed in Huntingdon and graffiti against the Polish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith. The death of a Polish man in Harlow was initially reported as being a possible Brexit-related hate crime, but this was discounted at the subsequent trial.
Central and Eastern European pupils, including the Polish ones, have experienced increased levels of racism and xenophobia since the Brexit vote.
Israel
The politician Yair Lapid claimed that his father's grandmother, who was killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp, "was murdered in Poland by Germans and Poles". Lapid also wrote that there were "Polish death camps".In a 2018 interview, Anna Azari, the Israeli ambassador to Poland, said that "We need to work to reduce anti-Semitism, but work is also needed for there to be less anti-Polish sentiment" and "Anti-Polonism occurs not only in Israel, but also in Jewish circles outside Israel."
In February 2019, Poland's prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki canceled plans for his country to send a delegation to a meeting in Jerusalem on Monday after the acting Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz said that Poles "collaborated with the Nazis" and "sucked anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk."
Zvi Bar, an Israeli brigadier general and politician, said that Katz was speaking as a 'student' of Yitzhak Shamir, "the father of Polish genetic theory" and said: "All right, there were Poles and Hungarians who collaborated, there were and are anti-Semitic Poles and Hungarians. But why generalize? Why be racist, why accuse these nations and attribute to them inherent anti-Semitic characteristics?
On 15 May 2019, Poland's Ambassador to Israel, Marek Magierowski, was spat on and attacked outside the Polish Embassy in Tel Aviv by 65-year-old Israeli architect, Arik Lederman who was subsequently arrested following the assault. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki described the event as a “xenophobic act of aggression” on Twitter. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said: "We express our fullest sympathy to the ambassador and our shock at the attack,” while the suspect apologized and said he had been provoked earlier by a Polish Embassy employee using an anti-Semitic slur against him. The Polish embassy in turn disputed the man's account, and said it has CCTV evidence to disprove it.
United States
On 14 November 2007, Fox aired an episode of Back to You created by Christopher Lloydand Steven Levitan called "Something's Up There", which contained a controversial anti-Polish slur. The slur involved Marsh trying to convince the show's lone Polish-American character, Gary, to go bowling after work by saying: "Come on, it's in your blood, like kielbasa and collaborating with the Nazis." Fox later apologised on 20 November 2007. It vowed never to broadcast the line of dialogue again either in repeats and/or syndicated broadcasts. Fox stated that, "The line was delivered by a character who is known for being ignorant, clueless, and saying outlandish things. Allowing the line to remain in the show, however, demonstrated poor judgment, and we apologise to anyone who was offended."
Russian Federation
In August 2005, a series of alleged organised attacks against Polish diplomats took place in Moscow, which prompted the then-Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski to call on the Russian Government to stop them. An employee with the Polish embassy in Moscow was hospitalised in serious condition after being assaulted in broad daylight near the embassy by unidentified men. Three days later, another Polish diplomat was beaten up near the embassy. The following day the Moscow correspondent for the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita was attacked and beaten up by a group of Russians. It is widely believed that the attacks were organized as revenge for the mugging of four Russian youth in a public park in Warsaw by a group of skinheads, several days earlier.Lithuania
The former "Solidarity" leader and Polish President Lech Wałęsa criticised the Lithuanian Government over discrimination against the Polish minority, which included the enforced Lithuanization of Polish surnames and the removal of bilingual Polish language street signs in municipalities predominantly inhabited by the Polish-speaking population. In 2011, Wałęsa rejected Lithuania's Order of Vytautas the Great.Ukraine
In 2007, David R. Marples noted that there were "no Ukrainian organizations and press organs that specialize in anti-Polish propaganda.Different interpretations of bitter events regarding Poles and Ukrainians during World War II have led to a sharp deterioration of the relations between the nations since 2015. In April 2017 the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance forbade the exhumation of Polish victims of the 1943 massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia as part of the broader action of halting the legalization of Polish memorial sites in Ukraine, in a retaliation for the dismantling of a monument to UPA soldiers in Hruszowice, Eastern Poland.
Polish President Andrzej Duda expressed his concerns with appointment to high Ukrainian offices of people expressing nationalistic anti-Polish views. The Ukrainian foreign ministry stated that there is no general anti-Polish sentiment in Ukraine.
In 2017, Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski announced plans to bar Ukrainians with anti-Polish views, as a reaction to the disrespect to the Polish cemetery in Lviv.
Germany
Following the ascension of Poland to the European Union, relationship between Germany and Poland has largely improved. However, anti-Polonism remains a concern.In 2016, Martin Schultz, a German Social Democrat, criticized the Duda's government in Poland and referred it as a "coup". This had led to criticism in Poland, although Polish government had downplayed the issue to maintain a fair relationship with Germany.
In 2019, a German entrepreneur was sentenced to prison in Poland for spreading anti-Polish hate speeches. Also in the same year, increasing anti-Polonism has been reported to be on the rise in Germany.
In 2020, President of Poland Andrzej Duda accused German media of misinterpreting his words and the German government for being Polonophobe regarding coverage about 2020 Polish presidential election.