The Polish government’s antisemitism was a major factor leading to the Holocaust

A remarkable document which is part of the memoirs of Jozef Lipski, the Polish ambassador to Berlin from 1933 to 1939, unwittingly provides the clue to the main motive: Poland was chosen because it shared with Germany as a national goal the elimination of the Jews from its midst. This official document reveals in a few short sentences far more than what many volumes on the Polish participation in the Holocaust could express.

In document 99, Ambassador Lipski transcribes for the Polish Foreign Minister Joseph Beck his conversation with Hitler in a meeting which took place in Obersalzberg on September 20, 1938, three months after the Evian Conference (June 6-15, 1938), where 29 nations had already made clear their unanimous unwillingness to grant asylum to the Jewish refugees.

Hitler, who was persuading the Poles to join Germany in his impending attack on Czechoslovakia, also referred to the Jewish problem. Speaking in his characteristic code language on “solving” the “Jewish question,” he told the Polish ambassador that: “he had in mind an idea for settling the Jewish problem by way of emigration to the colonies with an understanding with Poland, Hungary, and possibly also Rumania.”

The Polish ambassador was so impressed with Hitler's proposal on helping Poland get rid of its Jewish population that he responded enthusiastically, as described in the ambassador's own words: “I told him if he finds such a solution we will erect him a beautiful monument in Warsaw.” Hitler knew very well that nothing would gladden the heart of his Polish interlocutor as his plans on the elimination of the Jews. After all, it was Poland, not Germany which had come up one year before with the plan to exile the Jews to Madagascar.

(Emphasis added.)