Posted on 02/25/2018 6:27:41 PM PST by nickcarraway
Increasingly, ordinary Poles, caricatured as staunchly Catholic, simple-minded and chauvinistic, are positioned as the quintessential Holocaust perpetrator. That's far more comfortable than blaming 'elite' German Nazis
To many observers, not least those who are neither Polish nor Jewish, the highly critical press coverage of Poland's new Holocaust law which seeks to criminalize declaring the complicity of the Polish nation in the murder of Jews in WWII, appears both simple and clear.
Poles contributed enthusiastically to the genocide of six million Jews. Poles did so because they are staunchly Catholic, simple-minded and chauvinistic. Right-thinking observers must perpetually goad Poles to drop their defenses, acknowledge their guilt, and make amends.
Polish-Jewish relations are thus reduced to a calculation performed with black and white beads on one rod of an abacus. The black beads represent the bad, anti-Semitic Poles. The white beads represent the exceptional, prejudice-free Poles. A "true" historical retelling is only achieved when the black beads far outnumber the white beads. The token righteous white bead – Jan Karski – is the main concession to any semblance of balance. Karski was the Polish Home Army officer who brought the first eyewitness account of the Holocaust to Roosevelt.
The abacus approach dominates public discussion. But it is intellectually and ethically bankrupt, not just because it distorts beyond recognition a thousand years of Polish-Jewish interaction and the unique horror of 1939-1945. The abacus prevents historical clarity and ethical responsibility. And this debate matters very much in the era of Trump.
In my book "Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype", I explored how people talk about the Holocaust, its victims and its executors. Many, though not all, of those I interviewed talked about Poles quite differently from how they talked about Germans.
Visceral vocabulary and animal references were prominent. This trend can be found in Fania
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
Grievance rots the mind and soul. Take on leftist lies instead of becoming thier useful idiot my apologizing for antisemites
“who is a better Zionist than most of the staff at Ha’aretz”
That’s like saying
“who is a better baby caregiver than most of the staff at Planned Parenthood.
Horthy outlawed the Arrow Cross; they came to power towards the end of the war when Horthy was forced out in favor of a Nazi puppet. That is what I meant by some European countries not acting on their own in the murders; as in Italy, the Jews in Hungary were targeted after the Nazis had taken over their country - not while they were independently allied with Germany. Wallenberg’s work occurred at that point; there was no need for it before.
You said it better than I could have.
After they had been taken prisoner and passed by the front line troops to the rear. ....................... I can visualize the faces of the Wehrmacht Commanders looking at each other and commenting;Schauen Sie sich diese Linie von Gefangenen an, wo werden wir Sie hinstellen? Wer wird Sie füttern und Sie schützen? Wir haben nicht darauf vorbereitet. Ah yes the opportunities they had to take Russia and they dropped the ball. With the purges of the 30’s continuing in Russia, they took in all those prisoners when in reality they could have been turned and used to liberate Russia. Had they done that and won we would not be as we are today. Germany with access to Russia’s wealth of natural resources in their hands would have have fulfilled their age long dream of world power. Luck was on our side, as Ike said;”Hitler is our greatest secret weapon”. I loved IKE! Wish we could find another.
No threat of German reprisal a year after the war.
My point is that she is a Zionist
For Haaretz, the Poles’ biggest sins are that they rejected Communism, and they reject EU globalism and Islamism.
As far as ww2, just about everyone who was an adult then, is dead now.
Between teh wars tehre was vicious anti-semitism in the press yes, but little violence. The reasons for the anti-semitism in the years 1919 to 1939 were the same reasons as for the strong attempts at Polonization, the anti-polish sentiments in Lithuania etc. - because these nations had woken up in the late 1800s with ideas of exclusive lands for themselves and their nations and to assimilate others in their nations -- this started with the French revolution and the forced Franconization of Bretons, Corsicans, GAscons etc. and you had forced Anglicizations of Cornish, Welsh, Irish and forced Germanization, forced Russification etc.
This is not to condone the antisemitism but to poitn out that it was cultural not racial and it existed side by side with the awakening of Jews to move to Israel (Aliyah) - again, this does not justify the actions
In WWII the fact is that Poles were targeted next after Jews and Gypsies for death. The fact is that if a Pole helped a Jewish Pole in any way they and their family would be executed by the Germans
But after WWII Poland was betrayed by the Americans and British and French - Poles who had sacrificed everything and fought to free France and save Britain were tossed aside, not even getting a pension (General Maczek had to work as a bartender) because the West didn't want to say anything against Stalin
And The Germans were now allies, so there had to be another scapegoat to find -- so why not the Poles, stuck behind the Iron Curtain. It was also a convenient way to assuage Western guilt for leaving them to Stalin's tender mercies
So you have all the post war actions to blame Poles - and this was exacerbated by the communist action against Jews in the 50s and 60s, purging Jewish origin communists.
Now what I see in Poland is a horrifying escalation - Poles are constantly told they were evil, they were evil, ignoring their heroics, ignoring their own suffering, ignoring how they aided their fellow Poles of Jewish origin. After a point in time it gets irritating.
Then OBAMA comes and calls camps where Poles died, he calls them polish death camps -- no one is going to convince me that President teleprompter didn't know what he was saying.
That was sickening. To poles it was like the situation of a man with his family who gets his house invaded by a gang who proceed to rape his wife and daughters, then brings in other people to kill in the man's house. Later the gang splits into two and one group gets the police involved as long as the Police give them the house later. Finally when the split part of the gang is thrown out, the householder, trying to rebuild his life is accused of the actions that the gang did in HIS house to HIS family (and the Polish Jews were family) - can you imagine how frustrating that is?
Besides the dumb polack stereotype originates from teh partitions of Poland when the poorest, illiterate poles from Galicia (Austrian partition) moved to the states.
I don't think you'll find more than a couple of instances. The Poles were marked for extermination after the Gypsies and the Jews.
"Poles" who collaborated were in nearly all cases ethnic Germans who tied themselves to the nutzis.
“But not at all to the level that is suddenly the dernier cri to claim. “ — exactly. And actually the one group that suffered more than Jews were gypsies who were treated worse (boggles the mind, right?) in Auschwizt.
i’m not a Pole but have lived here 8 years. Your statements are EXACTLY what is needed. Poles don’t have a problem with being pointed out the bad things in their history. But they are fed up with being told over and over and over again (first by the communists and now they perceive by Westerners) that they were no good, they didn’t do any good and are just to be identified as antisemites
Because the programs had been taking place for years. It’s amazing there are any Russian Jews alive in Russia.
Actually Nick, they were located in Germany. From 1939 until 1945 Poland did not exist. The entire Western half was divided into various districts of Germany and the entire Eastern half into various districts of the USSR. The central area around warsaw was the General governate, a place to work poles to the death and then divide it into german districts
That may be true...I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there. I base that on the accounts told by many Jews (both native Polish and otherwise escaped Jews) who were nearly as concerned by encountering the general populace as they were of encountering Germans themselves for fear of capture.
I readily admit that it is likely they had reason to feel that way even if the percentage of Poles who would turn them in was relatively small.
As to why they don't talk about it -- I would say they DID talk about it before 1914. In fact in 1914, in Germany and in what would become Israel, Jews were pro-German against the Russians because the Kaiser's Germany gave them a lot of ability to grow and practices - if they assimilated as many did (read "Hanns and Rudolf"). In 1914 to a Jew it was clear - the Germans were civilized and would protect them from the Russians. It is incredible how attitudes changed in a few short years (with reason).
Anyway, so "fiddler on the roof" and various actions against the Tsarist regime happened. But the Tsarist regime was very good at keeping dissidents down (the Nutters learnt from them)
but remember that socialism promised a new beginning - where there was no discrimination against Jews. And to an oppressed people it seemed ideal. So many Jews were enamoured by it and fell for its false teachings (just as many non-Jews fell for it) - also add to the fact that the Soviets were our allies in WWII so to admit they were evil is to call into account our very belief system (to dance with the devil....)
Anyway, I digress, so that's why Israel and American Jews may not talk about Russia's past pogroms. Also the fact is that Putin and Netanyahu get along, so geopolitics may also come to play.
My own, unscientific, opinion is that Poles and Jews lived alongside each other for so long (1000 years) as friends, neighbors and they fought alongside each other many a time - so a fratricidal hatred, which can be the worse kind.
Not many could do that.
I read Exodus and Mila 18 before I came to Poland and I believed his view to be a fact. Then I read other accounts, from witnesses and others. I no longer wish to read any work of fiction like Dan Brown or Leon Uris
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