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To: aruanan

That’s amazing. Of course we here in America have pretty much cleansed our schools of history as well.


18 posted on 02/05/2012 6:01:38 PM PST by gorush (History repeats itself because human nature is static)
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To: gorush
That’s amazing. Of course we here in America have pretty much cleansed our schools of history as well.

Just the other day, I saw a video on this site in which a high school student in the state of Washington told an interviewer that the US won its independence in the Korean War--so Korea must have ruled us before we became independent.

20 posted on 02/05/2012 7:56:53 PM PST by Fiji Hill
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To: gorush; aruanan
aruanan is absolutely correct. The Japanese are not taught about the evils their country did. The Germans in contrast are taught about it in each grade. Well, it's hard to forget it -- I love history and knew about the horrors of what the Germans did, but you never realize it until you live in Poland

In warsaw on every street corner there is a memorial that says "on this spot Nazis killed xx amount of people in 1939/1944"

And then you see pictures of what Warsaw was like after the Nazis finished with it -- rubble, rubble, everything destroyed, churches, building, even the cobblestones ripped up. The only thing standing was the Prudential building (still standing on ul. Świętokrzyska) and then you come to a stretch east of the cemetary -- and there is no rubble there, just scorched earth -- this was the Jewish ghetto.

Even if you travel to the Polish countryside, go to remote villages like Łomnica (south of Kraków) and in small passes you'll see monuments to the numbers of people killed by the Germans.

I've asked my wife how can Poles forgive this? She says it is hard, but even harder for those who lived through the war -- for those folks 80+ now), even hearing German is like hearing sounds of hell.

there's a story of a Polish jewish lady who was but a child when in Treblinka. She survived and became an author and then in the 70s moved to Germany (don't ask me why) and she was on an crowded escalator and the German guy behind her wanted to move ahead and he was initially polite, but then got impatient and finally, rudely said "Raus".

immediately her hands went up in a gesture of surrender... the man behind went red with embarassment (he knew) and he apologized.

I think we should not blame the present-day Germans for the sins of their grandfathers, but I think it is so hard to forgive -- I find it hard to forgive and I'm not even Polish.

The Germans tried to obliterate Poland from existence -- Christians and Jews. They aimed to reduce it to utter rubble and erase it from memory. And they were coldly efficient in this - if they won at Stalingrad, they would have done this, just as the Mongols wiped out the states of Bactria and Sogdiana.

24 posted on 02/06/2012 4:11:00 AM PST by Cronos (Party like it's 12 20, 2012)
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