Borukh Gorin, a spokesperson for the Federation of Jewish Organizations in Russia (FEOR), attacked comments made by the director of the Russian State’s Russian-Polish Center for Dialogue and Concord about how Jews have benefited from the Holocaust, saying “it is regrettable that the head of a state-sponsored organization in charge of building bridges between nations has argued that Jews and Armenians attempt to monazite their tragedy.”
The center’s director, one Yury Konstantinovich Bondarenko, on Sunday told Russian cultural and political magazine E-Vesti that “the vast majority of the Polish elite is largely set up to rewrite the history of the Poles, making out to be the most disadvantaged people in history, at least in Europe.” Bondarenko explained that “every tragedy, if desired, can be very profitable to monazite, to receive all kinds of benefits from Germany and many other countries.”
“Roughly speaking,” Bondarenko delivered his outrageous punch line, “the Poles pretend to occupy the same sweet and profitable place in all respects that the Jews currently occupy.” He then added the Armenians, too, to his list of “professional victims” the Polish elite wants to emulate.
“Such words are offensive to two peoples who have been victims of monstrous persecution,” Gorin added. “These statements demonize Jews and Armenians in the eyes of their neighbors, presenting them as soulless monsters ready to forget about the tragedy of their people for the sake of money. [They] weaken the international and interdenominational peace in Russia, and give ground to its opponents to claim about the supposed revival of xenophobia in Russia at the state level . I hope that the Russian authorities will take the necessary measures to ensure that such statements, saturated with national hatred, continue to remain a marginal phenomenon in our country.”
The Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding is under the auspices of Russia’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Despite its name, the center does not enjoy the support or collaboration of the Polish government, and its director, Bondarenko, has been using it to attack Polish society.
Since its foundation in 2010, the Center has published two books about Polish-Russian history.