The Deprogram

I can acknowledge that some Poles were Fascist collaborators while also condemning the Fascist colonisation of Poland, much like how I can acknowledge that some Jews were Herzlians, heterosexists, antiziganists, anti-Sephardi, or outright Axis collaborators, yet condemn the Shoah anyway. I have the common sense to tell that populicide is not the appropriate penalty for someone’s bigotry or other mistakes.

Then again, maybe anticommunists deny or excuse Polish antisemitism because they believe that merciless extermination is the only answer to someone’s bigotry. Given how often they bring up (and overstate) Palestinian heterosexism as if that somehow justifies the IOF’s extermination campaign, that does not sound like too cynical of a suggestion.

interwar era Poland , as basically all of Europe was quite antisemitic , so much so that a Polish diplomat in writing stated :

that he [Hitler] is guided by the idea of ​​settling the Jewish issue by emigration to a colony, in consultation with Poland, Hungary, and possibly Romania, (on this point I told him that if he found a solution, we would install for him a beautiful monument in Warsaw).

source & translation

Poland claim to not have collaborators comes from nonexistence of the Polish military formation, for example, in SS. It is correct, but the only reason for that was that Hitler incredibly hated Poles and refused when creation of Polish formations was proposed by Himmler for example.

But it of course isn't the entire picture:

• Polish police collaborated, called "blue police"
• Volksdeutsches, quite numerous due to historical ties and partitions, were counted as Germans and thus served like Germans, including wehrmacht. They were also expected to go above to prove their Germanness so they very often were members of organisations like SA or supported nazi regime in various other ways
• Some Polish minorities like Kaszubs, Pomeranians, Mazurs or Silesians (called "Wasserpolen") were deemed German enough and recieved lower class German citizenship automatically in 1939, and with it of course duties like conscription to Wehrmacht (for example grandfather of current PM Tusk was consripted in this way in 1943 even though he was enslaved by nazis before).
• One minority, Polish Highlanders, actively collaborated (called "Goralenvolk"), although the extension of it was hard to tell, presumably the idea was not very popular since there were only 300 volunteers to organise highlander Waffen SS unit.
• A lot of antisemites, russophobes and opportunists aligned with nazi germany and supported it in various ways, for example infamous "szmalcownicy" who were denouncing hidden Jews for rewards, or the later forest bandits who engaged in pogroms of Jews and communists while nominally belogning to organisations like AK.

art spiegelman depicted poles as pigs in maus