As who is to truly blame for the Holocaust in occupied Poland during WWII, I suggest you read a very objective opinion by Adam Michnik titled, "Poles and the Jews: How Deep the Guilt?" in the NY Times a while ago when the Jedwabne incident was being debated. He is a Polish Jew residing in Poland, former Solidarity activist, and is the Editor-in-Chief of Poland's largest daily, "Gazeta Wyborcza" in Warsaw.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/17/arts/poles-and-the-jews-how-deep-the-guilt.html

Some excerpts:

"Do Poles, along with Germans, bear guilt for the Holocaust? It is hard to imagine a more absurd claim.

Not a single Polish family was spared by Hitler and Stalin. The two totalitarian dictatorships obliterated three million Poles and three million Polish citizens classified as Jews by the Nazis.

Poland was the first country to oppose Hitler's demands and the first to stand against his aggression. Poland never had a Quisling. No Polish regiment fought on behalf of the Third Reich. Betrayed by the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, Poles fought alongside the anti-Nazi forces from the first day until the last. And inside Poland armed resistance to the German occupation was widespread.

During Hitler's occupation, the Polish nationalistic and anti-Semitic right didn't collaborate with the Nazis, as the right wing did elsewhere in Europe, but actively participated in the anti-Hitler undergound. Polish anti-Semites fought against Hitler, and some of them even rescued Jews, though this was punishable by death.

Thus we have a singularly Polish paradox: on occupied Polish soil, a person could be an anti-Semite, a hero of the resistance and a savior of Jews.

But I am also a Jew who feels a deep brotherhood with those who were murdered as Jews. From this perspective, I assert that whoever tries to remove the crime in Jedwabne from the context of its epoch, whoever uses this example to generalize that this is how only the Poles and all the Poles behaved, is lying. And this lie is as repulsive as the lie that was told for many years about the crime in Jedwabne.

For these people who lost their lives saving Jews, I feel responsible, too. I feel guilty when I read so often in Polish and foreign newspapers about the murderers who killed Jews, and note the deep silence about those who rescued Jews. Do the murderers deserve more recognition than the righteous?"

I suggest reading all of it, it's a very balanced view.

I have no doubt that the Poles of today would have reacted the same as their parents and Grandparents of yesterday…but that hardly is going to affect the way I deal with them.