Decent People Reject Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories.

A website called Poland IN is running a conspiracy theory about the Bieganski, Brute Polak Stereotype. The article is entitled "British Historian Unveils How Anti-Polish Holocaust Narrative Was Initiated." The article says it is recapitulating an account by Norman Davies in his autobiography. 

The article can be summarized thus: Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer is single-handedly responsible for negative stereotypes of Poles in relation to WW II. Bauer began the anti-Polish stereotype at a 1974 meeting at the Israeli embassy in London.

First: like every person of Polish ancestry, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Norman Davies. He wrote God's Playground, and we all love that book.

But the article's argument is nonsense. The argument, taken at face value, is also anti-Semitic.

I'm not saying that Norman Davies is anti-Semitic. I'm saying that this article is. It's also simply factually false.

Anti-Polish stereotypes have been promulgated by non-Jews. Some Jews have worked very hard against anti-Polish stereotypes. In fact there are plenty of Jews who have worked against these stereotypes more than many Poles.

The idea that one man, Yehuda Bauer, has the power to tell every newspaper, every magazine, every TV broadcast, every movie, every joke-teller, every teacher, how to depict Poles is by definition an anti-Semitic stereotype. It's the old idea that Jews are so superhuman that no one can resist them.

Finally, what about the Poles? Poles in Poland, Poles in America, Poles in England, Australia, Brazil? There are almost forty million Poles in Poland. There are about ten million Poles in the US. There are Poles in Canada, Brazil, the UK, France.

Poles can read and write and speak and make TV broadcasts, films, magazines, newspapers, textbooks, school curricula, novels, talk show appearances, syllabi, university lectures, no less than anyone else.

Poles can endow university chairs, can buy books, can put books on school curricula, can support their historians and story-tellers. 

I pity anyone who believes that one Jewish man was able to brainwash the entire world to believe negative stereotypes about Poles.

I pity those Poles who feel so impotent that they cannot tell their own story on campuses, in front of cameras and microphones.

The belief that one Jewish scholar could or would want to brainwash the world to think negatively about Poles is on its face an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.