Not all truth leads to reconciliation in Poland

Guardian Unlimited ^ | David Hearst | David Hearst

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Not all truth leads to reconciliation in Poland

As one city reclaims its past, reminders of Poland's role in the second world war remain, says David Hearst

David Hearst in Lodz

Tuesday November 7, 2006

Guardian Unlimited

Even today, the Nazis' compulsion to document their crimes is breathtaking. Imagine the scene - it is September 1 1944, the Soviet army is 60 miles away and approaching fast. The game in this part of the Third Reich is almost up, but you have still got 76,000 Jews - then the largest concentration in eastern Europe - labouring in the Lodz ghetto of Poland. Himmler has ordered its liquidation and the population is being deported to Auschwitz.

And still, someone sits down to record, in meticulously legible black ink, the surname, forename, address, date of birth, marital status and profession of each Jew about to enter the cattle truck at Radegost station. The modest black wooden hut and small strip of concrete platform - through which passed more than 150,000 Jews, bound for their deaths in Chelmo and Auschwitz - were swept under the rug of history by the Soviets. Mainline trains passed it, unaware of its heritage. It was re-discovered and reinstated as a memorial only relatively recently.

Jerzy Kropiwnicki, the mayor of Lodz, presented himself and his city with a moral dilemma two years ago, with the 60th anniversary of the end of the second world war: "It was a problem for many Polish people. We were not the victims and we were not the villains. 'Let the Jews do what they want with it,' many felt. I decided it was a problem for everybody forced to witness these events. It's an everlasting challenge. You must either lie and be silent, and then you are part of the crime,

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