text: "sbwhoeopMonday November 2 2009 6:23 PMHFYI: When you have a chance re: what Wm. Hague told you relevant undercurrent toEU debate. SidFrsOrn The TimesNovember 3 2009I suggest a night at the theatre Mr CameronA sop to the party's Europhobes has left the Conservative leader defending the indefensible. He should beashamedDavid AaronovitchOn Friday morning David Cameron called upon David Miliband to apologise. On Friday evening I went to see a play. Theplay was Our Class by the Polish playwright Tadeusz Slobodzianek.In a series of short ""chapters"" Slobodzianek followed a group of classmates in a small Polish village from 1925 to 2002.Like the village the class was half Catholic and half Jewish. In 1941 as the Germans replaced the Russians as theoccupiers almost all the Jews of the area were murdered in a single day. Slobodzianek shows what led up to themassacre and what happened afterwards. It is unbearable.Though the village is not named in the play it is based on real events that took place at Jedwabne on July 10 1941. AsPoland's Institute of National Memory concluded in 2002 on that day 40-50 Jewish men were forced to parade around thetown singing songs and were then led to a barn on the outskirts where one by one they were killed with knives axesand cleavers and then thrown in a pit. Then 300 or more women and children were led from the town square to the barnand locked inside. Kerosene was poured over the roof and walls and set alight. The screams could be heard from twokilometres away; no one survived.In 2001 it was finally acknowledged what many people had known all along. The murderers hadn't been Germans butlocal Poles as depicted in Our Class. Alexander Kwasniewski then the Polish President apologised to the dead Jewsand their survivors at a ceremony in Jedwabne ""in my own name and in the name of those Poles whose conscience isshattered by that crime"".History matters. Few believe that as much as the Law and Justice party of Michel Kaminski who leads the Tory-backedgroup in the European Parliament. The party's leaders have demanded apologies from the Russians for the massacre of21000 Polish officers at Katyn in 1940 and their references to terrible Polish historical suffering have constituted a bigpart of their political appeal.But despite his historical sensitivity Mr Kaminski the MEP for the Jedwabne area did not support the 2001 apology. Heopposed it vigorously associating himself with the ""Committee to Defend the .Good Name of Jedwabne"". Among itsleading members were the local priest Edward Orlowski who — asked by journalists whether he would be attending theceremony at which the President apologised — said: ""These are all lies. it is not my business. Germans are responsibleso why should we apologiSe?""Mr Kaminski developed a slightly different rationale. As he told an interviewer for a far-right newspaper Our Poland themurders — which he abhorred — were the work of a few outcasts and that he would only apologise if someone ""from theJewish side"" apologised for how ""the Jews"" behaved during the Soviet occupation from 1939 to 1941. Last month MrKaminski (who had denied giving the interview) confirmed this position. ""If you are asking the Polish nation to apologisefor the crime made in Jedwabne"" he said ""you would require the whole Jewish nation to apologise for what some Jewishcommunists did in Eastern Poland.""It is this argument that so incenses me•as it would anyone I think who had sat through Our Class. The idea of collectiveJewish Bolshevism was a major anti-Semitic trope before the war; it was a major element of self-justification after it.Mr Kaminski denied the apology denied the need for it equated the massacre to ""Jewish actions"" and allied himself withthose who denied the massacre altogether fulfilling the historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet's observation about patterns ofmassacre denial: ""it never happened it happened but was justified they did it to themselves they did it to us."" MrKaminski's view was described as disgraceful by Mr Miiiband. Having read an enormous amount on Jedwabne in the lastfew weeks I think Mr Miliband is completely right — it is disgraceful. And as he might well demand of Mr Cameron: ""Ishould apologise?""But more than that I find myself amazed by how Mr Cameron ever came to be in the position of demanding that a foreignsecretary descended from Polish Jews should apologise for possibly offending the sensibilities of a foreign politician whovehemently opposed there being an apology for the massacre of Polish Jews. I think of all the things that Mr Cameron hasgot right in his leadership of the. Conservatve Party and my mental jaw drops at the sheer wrongness of it.Now Tory columnists bioggers and activists are devoting their time to nitpicking sophistry about the nature of collectiveguilt and to attacking non-existent ""smears"" that they say have been attached to the unlovely person of Mr Kaminski.Why?It is true as embattled Conservatives have argued that many of the grand European coalitions contain people whosehistory is problematic. There are odds and sods in the big conservative grouping the EPP and in the socialist group. Butthese personalities are far outweighed by the parties of the IVIerkels and Sarkozys. The Polish member of the EPP forexample is the ruling free-market non-nationalist conservative party of Donald Tusk — almost certainly the party that MrCameron would join if he were a Pole. The new Tory grouping the European Conservatives and Reformists by contrastis all about odds and sods whom a continental Cameron would certainly shun bar one organisation — the BritishConservatives.So why get yourself into a position where you have to explain that the Latvian SS wasn't so bad really and that MrKaminski has an understandable position on collective guilt? And the answer seems to be that Mr Cameron promised hisEurophobes in his leadership campaign back in 2005 that he would leave the ""federalist"" EPP and that the logicaloutcome of this move has been the weird alliance that he now finds himself defending.Was it all necessary? No. Was it in Britain's interests? Absolutely not. is it in the interests of progressive Conservatism?You must be joking. So has this happened because Mr Cameron doesn't really care enough about Europe to thinkthrough the consequences of his own lightly given promises or because he's just as much a Euro-nutter as those sectsthe Hannanites the Cashists and the Redwoodians?This is the kind of advice I loathe but I'll say it anyway. Go to see Our Class Mr C. This is one hole you don't want tokeep digging."