The Holocaust was a genocide perpetrated during the second world war by German Nazis in Germany and German-occupied lands. Any suggestion that Poland is to share the responsibility for the Holocaust (Editorial, 20 February) is wrong and demonstrates a lack of historical and psychological understanding of the profound tragedy that Poland, occupied by Germany, suffered during the second world war. Only in occupied Poland, any act of helping Jews carried a death sentence. There is no doubt that antisemitism was widespread among Polish society. It is true that there were some Poles who denounced Poles of Jewish origin and some who perpetrated evil murders. Also, there is no doubt that there were some Poles who carried out acts of bravery by hiding Jews – and many of them, together with their whole families, were murdered at the hands of the most brutal German Nazi regime. All of this is true, and all of this has to be fully acknowledged and talked about with a full sense of collective responsibility for all behaviours of all members of one’s nation, both in the past and the present. However, it does not imply any responsibility for the Holocaust on the part of Poland. Such allegations simply distort history and do not serve the purpose of honest debate about one of the greatest tragedies in human history.

Dr Anna Mlynik-Shawcross

Rowlands Castle, Hampshire

• Your editorial was nonchalant in attributing collective responsibility (not to mention neuroses) to nations, peoples and countries. At best, this is sloppy journalism. It is however possible to write with more precision about states than about nations. Those Poles who committed heinous crimes against Jews – sometimes for gain, but sometimes under threat of death – did so in defiance of their own state. The Polish state continued to exist throughout the Nazi German and Soviet occupations of Poland during the second world war, both as a government in exile and in its underground structures. In contrast to those numerous European states that collaborated with Nazi Germany and which were complicit in the Holocaust, the legitimate Polish state outlawed and severely punished the blackmail, denunciation and murder of Jews, as well as collaboration with the German occupants more generally. It also published The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland, a note addressed to the governments of the UN on 10 December 1942. The allied governments were not inclined to take note.

Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski

Professor of Polish-Lithuanian history, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

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