should be expected even with the current Polonophobia. It wasrnthe Soviets who openly encouraged the brutal revenge on thernGermans, after moving territorial Poland to the west and grabbingrnits eastern lands. Moreover, the Western allies gave in tornthe Soviet plan for a reconstituted Poland, including getting ridrnof Germans from what had been German lands, in the PotsdamrnAgreement of July 1945. Needless to say, Soviet-endorsedrnatrocities do not have the moral gravity of those that can be attributedrnto Polish Catholics without acknowledged Soviet complicity.rnRecycled communist versions of history work becausernenough haters on both sides of the ethnic divide are all too happyrnto slug away. Anti-Semitic writings have multiplied inrnPoland in the wake of the new indictments and after Jewishrngroups had demonstrated against the presence of a Garmeliternconvent at Auschwitz. At the time of that controversy, CardinalrnGlemp stirred the cauldron of discord by charging that Jewsrnhad inflated holocaust figures. Not to be outdone, anti-PolishrnJewish activists Avi Weiss and Alan Dershowitz organizedrndemonstrations against Glemp during his visit to New York inrn1991. Both Weiss and Dershowitz expressed anger aboutrnGlemp’s statements concerning Jews in 1989, and despiternpromises to keep demonstrations peaceful, the New York PostrnCourmayeur, Italyrnby HoUey CamprnAnd if we cannot come to transcendrnour fast food squares, paved places,rnthe bare string of gas stations—rnNotre Dame de la Guerison, lendrnonly the image of you. Tell usrnif men two hundred years ago,rnweary from wide steps climbing,rnabandoned their worry and strivingrnin the sad square houses belowrnand, rising to your craggy perch,rnto frescoes unmarred by snow,rnsmiled to enter the steep piece of you,rnmute on the chin of Mont Blanc;rnif your hollow beauty and wordlessness,rnlaid bare, for a time, on a ledgernerased for them then the levelnessrnof their lonely village pathsrnso that, on some future shuffle in lanes,rneyes down at unimportant steps,rnthey might remember, look up and senserna small truth in your gravity’s denial:rnto hug humbly to your own landscape,rnto house nothing but your God.rnreported that on October 8 menacing crowds had huded obscenitiesrnat the Polish primate, including “you Nazi bastardrnCatholic.”rnAllow me to conclude this gloomy account of ethnic hostilityrnby noting two other features of recent anti-Polish outbursts.rnFirst, not all of those who propagate these truncated historiesrnare Polish Jews, and the publishers and editors of those Canadianrnnewspapers that have put out the worst slanders have identifiablyrnWSP names. Why such people would take sides in anrnunseemly war between the first and second most victimizedrngroups of the Nazi era may seem at hrst blush a bit baffling, butrnthe explanation may be that like most WSPs of my acquaintance,rnthese particular journalists have a desperate desire to bernp.c. Confessing to anti-Semitic crimes that one has not committedrnhas become a litmus test of who is or is not a rightthinkingrngoy, and for a bien-pensant WASP, the most convenientrnway to perform this penance is to call attention torninsensitive ethnic Catholics. That way two birds are killed atrnthe same time, engaging in liberal self-flagellation and stickingrnit to a group whom WSPs have always disliked far more thanrnJews. Thus publishers and reviewers, not all of them Jewish,rnpraised the veracity of Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird, a pseudo-rnautobiography by a bogus holocaust survivor, which firstrncaused a stir in the 1960’s. The vivid accounts of Polish peasantrnatrocities against Jews hiding from the Germans were here inventedrnout of whole cloth. The real Kosinski and his family hadrnbeen protected by Polish Catholic neighbors in Sandomierz andrnhad supported the Soviets when they occupied their town inrn1944. Last Easter the Toronto Star demonstrated my thesis ofrnWASP atonement by warning Christians not to be too pleasedrnabout the Resurrection of their Savior. “The message of thernResurrection,” explained this editorial, had led to massacres ofrnJews in the past, as had been the case in Catholic Poland. Thernbest documented refutations of these charges against the Polesrnthat I have seen did not get published in the Star’s letter section.rnThey might have interfered with the p.c. penance beingrnperformed at the expense of those despised by liberal Protestants.rnSecond, the new anti-Polish World War II revisionism isrnbased on bizarre judgments about some victims and victimizers.rnFor example, the U.S. Holocaust Museum has moved thernPoles, save for “some Polish intellectuals,” from the first categoryrnto the second, while homosexuals have been raised in its literaturernand displays to covictims with the Jews. One can bernsure that the Brownshirts and Hermann Goering would appreciaternthis posthumous tribute. Some Nazi bigwigs, one may assume,rnmight even be eligible for other victimological honors, inrnview of their drug-dependency and penchant for little boys.rnNote that the group having the most nefarious record of Nazirncollaboration, the Bosnian Muslims, now gets much betterrnpress than the once victimized Poles. The professional holocaustrnsurvivor and Hillary Clinton-companion Elie Wieselrnclaims not to use the term lightly (and certainly not for thernNazi slaughter of Poles), but he has wailed about a new holocaustrndescending on the Bosnians. Such a catastrophe shouldrnbe distinguished from the earlier unmentioned one that occurredrnin the Balkans, after the Bosnian Muslims had volunteeredrnto form two Waffen S.S. divisions. This selective amnesiarnis so striking that even I, an Austrophile critic of the Serbs,rnnote it with astonishment. Are human memories as selective asrnthe reconstructed World War II victimology seems to suggest?rnThis question is, of course, rhetorical. £rn14/CHRONICLESrnrnrn