U.S. Ambassador to Poland, Thomas Rose, Invalidates a Longstanding Slanderous Accusation
Thomas (Tom) Rose, the new U.S. Ambassador to Poland and a Jewish-American, presented his perspective about Poland and the Poles that is rare among Jews around the world.
Ambassador Rose pointed out that Poland and the Polish people have long been wrongly accused by the Jewish community of sharing responsibility for Germany’s genocide of Polish Jews and Jews from other European countries.
In this YouTube video, he presents the facts that invalidate this slanderous accusation, which has long poisoned Polish-Jewish relations.
Rose presented his remarks at a conference in Warsaw hosted by the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists held during 19-21 November 2025. The topical theme of the conference was “Antisemitism and the Jewish People in the Aftermath of October 7th.”
October 7th, 2023, is remembered in Israel as the deadliest day in the nation’s modern history, when Hamas launched a massive surprise attack that killed over 1,200 people, wounded thousands, and took hundreds hostage. It is now seen as a defining national trauma.
The paragraphs below are the text of Ambassador Rose’s speech.
“For too long, this nation has been burdened with the moral stain that was never its own; the slander that Poland somehow bears responsibility for the crimes committed by others.
For decades, Poland has suffered a grave and historic injustice. The persistent belief, Harold, let’s be honest, by too many of us, that this slander, this stain, have burdened a people that was never its own.
The persistent belief that Poland shares guilt for the barbaric crimes that were committed against them. It’s a grotesque falsehood and the equivalent of a blood libel against the Polish people and Polish nation.
It’s not possible to catalog every act of rescue in Poland, so many were carried out in secrecy. In occupied Poland, any aid – this was unique in the annals of Nazi tyranny – Poland was the only nation in which any aid offered to Jew – a crust of bread, a night in a barn, a forged paper – meant automatic death for the rescuer and his family.
Poland was the only occupied country with no collaborationist government, and the only occupied country that never formally surrendered. On the contrary, the lawful Polish State fought on from exile, while at home a vast Underground State resisted the Germans.
More than half a million Polish soldiers served in World War II from the very first day to the very last day. On three continents and four theaters. Poland, despite having been conquered, was one of the largest Allied contributors to the war.
Now, within this lethal landscape, Poland, the government, clergy, ordinary citizens, managed the broadest, most decentralized rescue effort. It was the Polish government-in-exile and the Underground State that first tried to warn the world what was happening here.
They sent Jan Karski to London, and Washington. They smuggled out intelligence from Auschwitz, and issued the first appeal to an indifferent but admittedly preoccupied world.
Poland created the only government-sponsored, underground institution in all of occupied Europe devoted solely to saving Jews.
I met Sylvia earlier this evening, whose family was saved by Zegota, as a small child – I believe it was her mother – who was saved along with 3,000 other Jewish children who were smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto—to be hidden in convents, orphanages, Polish homes.
The Home Army itself, painfully short of weapons, gave what little they could to the Ghetto fighters. Was it enough – of course not.
The countless private acts of courage we can’t count – the hundreds of religious orders that sheltered Jewish children – whole villages that hid families in attics –and barns. The priests who forged baptismal certificates – the farmers that dug pits beneath their floors.
Thousands of Poles died saving Jews. Of course, it wasn’t enough – didn’t stop the slaughter. But they proved – these heroic Poles proved, that even in their country’s bleakest night, multitudes of Poles chose conscience over fear and humanity over terror.
No nation fought longer, suffered more, under German and then Soviet subjugation than Poland, which is why applying a debtor-creditor relationship between Poland and the world for a genocide perpetrated by others on its soil on its people, it’s historically false and I believe morally scandalous. For it holds the victim liable for the guilty crimes of the guilty.
Now, this gross affront has poisoned relations between Jews and Poles, between Israel and Poland, and between the United States and Poland for decades. Because it forces us to speak in terms that are so profoundly offensive to Poles. And because the premise is false, there’s no solution, because there’s no problem to solve.
No country outside Israel has done more to commemorate and sacralize the Shoah than Poland. Certainly not Germany, which committed the crime, nor Russia, which suppressed them. Poland preserves Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor, Belzec, and Chelmno, all six of the Nazi death camps as national historic memorials.
It’s Poland that funds museums, archives and documentation centers. It’s Poland that mandates Holocaust education, and at its own expense, restores cemeteries and synagogues. It’s Poland that supports institutions like the Polin Museum, where you were today, the IPN, that trains teachers, sponsors international study visits, and works with Yad Vashem and others.
It’s Poland that leads international remembrance efforts, hosts global forums, passes U.N. Resolutions, and marks mass grave sites for preservation. It’s Poland that has made Holocaust memory a permanent and national responsibility.
Poland doesn’t tolerate any organized movement dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish people or the Jewish State. When bigotry surfaces here, and it does, the Polish conscience responds, and Polish leadership acts.
The shared history of Poles and Jews runs deep. This was our home for 600 years. It was the center of the Jewish world. The Jewish story can’t be told without Poles. And the Polish story can’t be told without Jews. And in President Trump, the Jewish people have had a leader who has acted with unprecedented clarity and conviction, from extending civil rights protections to Jewish students. By the way, what is the safest country in Europe for a Jew to walk the streets? You’re in it. It’s Poland. He’s cut funding to institutions that tolerate harassment. He’s the first president to apply systemic application of U.S. civil rights law to antisemitism in education. He created the Justice Department’s Task Force to combat antisemitism.
And we know what he’s done abroad. He’s reshaped the Middle East, recognized Jerusalem as the capital, moved our Embassy there, affirmed Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights, forged the Abraham Accords, and supported Israel’s war to degrade Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program by deploying America’s most powerful non-nuclear weapon to destroy Iran’s most dangerous sites.
For decades, my president has lived by one principle; defending the Jewish people and the Jewish State is inseparable from defending freedom itself. And that’s why we all gather here tonight – Jews, Poles, Israelis, Americans – to fight the lies that distort history, to restore Poland’s rightful honor in her darkest hour – to strengthen the alliance that protects the Jewish people today, and to declare together, without hesitation, that if we need reminding, after 10/7, we must never again, hesitate to use all our might, and all our power, to defend ourselves against the evil schemes of our enemy. Nor must we ever apologize for defeating them. Only with that unity of purpose, can the Jewish future and the future of all free nations endure and prevail.
Thank you very much.”
