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To: Happy Rain
Plenty of Jews did die in facilities located to the west of Poland. And many more died in Eastern Europe without being sent to the camps.

In any case, Auschwitz was in the General Gouvernment, territory under direct German rule that had virtually been annexed by Germany and only a short distance from what had been Germany proper.

The prewar Jewish population of Europe was overwhelmingly East of Germany. It was not hard for the Germany to kill off much of the Western European Jewish population without establishing death camps in the West.

Also, the Germans may have shared the common idea that the East was already savage and that mass murder wouldn't have aroused any protest there, and would have in the West. As it was, aside from Denmark, mass deportations and imprisonment didn't arouse protests in the Wests.

When peoples live separately but side by side for centuries, relations can be complicated and difficult. Your oversimplifications, though, don't help untangle things.

34 posted on 01/08/2013 10:06:10 AM PST by x
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To: All
“Beyond the effects of the economic situation, the Jews of Poland were the object of outright anti-Semitism. It found expression in every social class and wherever social intercourse took place, and it grew especially virulent during the 1930s as a result of domestic developments and the influence of Nazi anti-Semitism from abroad. Nothing was done to halt the anti-Jewish riots or the assaults on Jewish property, synagogues, and persons. By the same token, anti-Semitism found its way into the country's economic, social, and cultural life. In 1921, for example, Jewish students composed 24.6 percent of the student population in Poland: by 1938 only one-third of this number remained. Similarly, it was not by chance that the number of Jews employed in industry was so small. For quite a while before Hitler's rise to power in neighboring Germany, the Polish government had aspired to purge the economy of Jews—beginning in those sectors controlled by the state through a system of economic concentration known as etatism. As a rule, Jewish workers could find jobs only with Jewish employers, and there were few Jewish industrialists. When Poland was hit by massive unemployment, the authorities instituted a system of welfare allowances from which most of the jobless Jews derived no benefit because they belonged to the lowest classification of laborers, who were not compensated for the loss of their livelihood. Thus the economic condition of the Jewish masses steadily declined. The eligibility of Jews to join the free professions was increasingly restricted, and in 1938 the legal profession was closed to them altogether. A quota was placed on the number of Jews permitted to study in Polish secondary schools, while the government ignored the commitment (stipulated by the Versailles treaty) {the victorious WWI allies tried in vain to persuade Poland to abandon it's historic anti-Semitism as a condition for statehood} to fund independent Jewish education...” it goes on and on.

—”The Holocaust” by Leni Yahil 1987 pages 189-190

The 1930s fascist oppression of the Jews in Poland was a one step behind copy of Nazi Germany. The SS Realtors looking for friendly country to construct mass murder industrial complexes knew where to look because even though anti-Semitism was common in 1930s Europe, Poland was enabler perfect.
Poland is a great country and Poles are a great people—what they did to help Reagan bring down the Evil Empire can never be over appreciated. BUT as far as the Holocaust is concerned, they sucked big time...no spin just fact.

39 posted on 01/08/2013 12:57:48 PM PST by Happy Rain ("Banning guns over Adam Lanza would be like banning speech over Bill Maher.")
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