To Biglarry, Ned, whoever.
I started off reading this thread a bit astonished by the anti-semitic posters in this thread who as one no doubt slightly embarrassed Pole felt the need to point out were mostly not Polish.
At first I agreed with you, but boy did you cross a line. In fact cross it so far that I as an irregular non-polish contributor to this forum felt the need to respond in this quite possibly over long rant.
But, I guess that's why Poland is where it is today and why the Western Europe and America are where they are.
So you are saying that Poland falls behind Western Europe because they are anti-semites?????????? Not because post WW2 after giving the fourth biggest contribution of all countries to the defeat of the Nazis, they wound up, more so than the Germans, actually losing the war and instead of democracy and the Marshall plan ended up with Communism and selling their coal to the Soviets for 10% of the market value??? Man you better read some history books.
Well, sometimes you reap what you sow
So you’re saying the Poles deserved what they copped? Just out of interest how would you react if someone used the same phrase about Jews during the holocaust. It would be horrifically anti-semitic right???? Like Ishtathu (who also sledged the anti-semites in this thread) said, you are a hypocrite.
Now given that you seem to believe that the Poles are nothing more than a bunch of murderous anti-semites (and don’t deny that you strongly implying this especially with this quote
It seems to me most of Poland has long been ready for a collective therapy.
~~)
I feel the need to mention a book I have just completed reading. The book is Secret City by an author called Gunnar Paulsson. It is about Jews hiding in Warsaw during WW2.
Now this book contains enough incidences of anti-semitic instances even atrocities to enable you to keep your smug “I am so superior to Poles” attitude. But the conclusions the author draws, I am tipping you won’t like.
He after careful examination of hundreds of memoirs written by Jews and other sources comes to the conclusion that in Warsaw alone somewhere between 70 to 90 thousand Poles were risking their lives to protect Jews during WW2. Against this he claims that between 3 to 4 thousand Poles in Warsaw were basically “Sczmalcownik” who would look for Jews not normally to denounce them but to blackmail them into paying money for not doing so. And the other 1 million or so Polish residents of Warsaw??? Well shock, horror, gasp they acted like most normal people, whether anti-semitic or not, in their situation would. They would neither risk their and their families lives to save a Jew but nor if they saw someone they suspected of being a Jew in the street would they denounce them.
Now the numbers I have quoted above seem to be straight out of some Polish propaganda site. Except there are two problems with dismissing them that way. One is that the author, Gunnar Paulsson, is Jewish. This is only a very minor obstacle to dismissing these figures especially as members of his family were saved by Polish catholics so he might be excused for a pro Polish bias. But the main obstacle to dismissing the figures is that he researched all sources for years and that when I search on the internet I cannot find one serious academic attempting to deride the what seem to be very controversial figures he has come up with. Maybe some academic does seriously challenge his figures. However I have got to say he has keep his challenges on an obscure part of the internet.
Now undoubtedly in the horrible circumstances that existed in Poland during WW2, there were many Poles that acted in a shameful way towards the Jews. However I cannot help but seriously question your apparent belief that all Poles are somehow infused with some murderous anti-semitic virus. Or that they deserved to put up with Stalinism – especially after their huge contribution to the defeat of Nazism.
I have decided to cut my rant at this point but believe me I could add heaps more............
And joepilsudski - unless that's your real name, I would appeal to you to use another nick - while you are free to hold any views you like, associating them with Piłsudski is distasteful at best.
I tried to make this point much earlier in this thread. The real Pilsudski had a Jewish wife and was very against anti-semitism. I have got to say to say that some of his remarks are the equivalent to a poster calling himself "Mahatma Gandhi" demanding war.