Question about Post WW2 Polish Jews etc

I could never figure out how Jews gain so much wealth post World War II. Considering all there belongings had to be the ones they carried and they didn't have something like banking to hold onto there wealth.....where did it come from, how was it transported or made post WW2?

This going by the assumption Jews weren't much wealthier than there Polish/Russians citizens.

I've always been baffled by this. It's not like Poland somehow became wealthy post WW2 so how/where did this Jewish wealth come from?

Is it the cooperation with America and more precisely American Jews? This to me would make the most sense. Anyway I've never understood how two joined populations of people like Poles and Jewish Poles could go through something like the Holocaust together and the percentage that ends up emigrating to the Middle East of all places ends up being MUCH more wealthy years later.

This should be good....

Nothing from you?

Some of the responses are sure to be comedy gold and I dont want to start laughing before the joke has finished.

Walking around the streets of Warsaw (and other Polish cities) one only has to look at how the huge American investment in Poland in recent years has transformed the landscape since the collapse of communist economy. Maybe in another 25 years (which by then will roughly equate to the timescale since of the formation of the State of Isreal today) Poland will be equally as wealthy as Isreal is today but still 25 years behind. Russia with all its natural resources will of course outpace Poland and most other European economies.

Actually most of the investment has come from Europe. I'm struggling to think of even one large building or development in Warsaw which is American. Certainly none of the major shopping malls or skyscrapers here are American.

Wealth doesn't have to be inherited. Many wealthy people started with little more than ambition, ideas or dreams. Many also happened to live in countries where "old money" is worth less in status terms than "new money", ie. making money is at least, if not more important than just having money.


Natural resources are not always the best thing with which to generate wealth. Think of diamonds and minerals in Africa, oil in the Middle East. Think also of how many European countries have very little in the way of natural resources. It is people who make money, people with ideas and vision, but also ruthlessness.

How did you miss the new Arkadia Shopping Centre, which is considered Poland's largest shopping area, and was built with finance underwritten by J.P. Morgan-Chase of the US.

Source American Chamber of Commerce in Poland:

Over the past ten years, American investors played a leading role in the Polish market. U.S. companies have contributed 15 percent of total cumulative foreign investment in Poland: a total of US$ 56 billion between 1992 and 2001. U.S. firms were the leading source of foreign investment during the years 1993-1997, ahead of investors from Germany, France, and Italy. Every year since, American companies have ranked among the top three FDI sources in Poland.

Probably because it was built by a company named European Retail Enterprises BV. Not an American company. Same company behind the Wileńska centre in Warsaw. Although now I check I see that ERE is owned 35% by Simon Property Group (which is a US company) and 30% by the Peabody and Argo Group investment funds (which are managed by JP Morgan and the O'Connor Group).


That kind of proves what I said: if only 15% came from the USA, it is likely that more came from Europe (i.e. the countries of the EU, such as Germany, France, and Italy).

Surely, like Britain, didn't most European countries use European coal to fuel the furnaces of the industrial age to generate their industrial wealth and didn't these ecomomies benefit from metals and minerals exploited from conquered territories by the European imperialist empires of old?


Totally agree!


As you have noted US money paid the builders ;-)

With respect did you miss:


15% = the leading single source of investment. Full stop.

Yes. We agree that the USA has been the largest single source of investment. But you said "American investment", to which I pointed out that more has come from "Europe".

So we are both right.

Funny how nobody challenged the assumption that holocaust survivors are wealthy. You just can't get rid of the stereotype of money-grubbing jews, can you? I know plenty of holocaust survivors, I grew up with them, and I can tell you that most are not wealthy. Some are dirt poor, some are middle class and a few are very wealthy. If you honestly want to know how they became wealthy I would say that there was some "natural selection". In other words, a survivor was more likely to be resourceful. Another reason is that survivors had nothing to lose. You come out of Auschwitz with nothing, never having expected to live, so you're not afraid to take big risks. Some of the risks worked and most probably didn't. You only hear about the successes.

Now the attorneys for the "real victim's" are another story.

Typical thread full of bile.

If you want money, go and make some. If you want happiness, go and get it because it is out there in the world for those who really want it. What about the Jews who stayed in Poland after WWII? What about Jews who even stayed after 1968? What about 1968? What about those who adopted Roman Catholicism? The title of this thread suggests that these should be topics for discussion, not the usual typical claptrap.

Good point.

But I think part of the reason that these stereotypes persist is that to many, the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust appear to have had a greater voice and been better compensated by the German state than other victim groups such as non-Jewish Poles—millions of whom were also concentration camp survivors and victims of forced labour to the Riech; for example my own grandmother from Warsaw, a prisoner at KZ Ravensbruck in April 1941 and then at KZ Sachenshausen and KZ Gethin in October 1944. By mentioning non-Jewish Poles I am not excluding the tens of thousands of other nationals and persecuted groups such as Roma and Sinti gypsies that were also victims of the Nazi racist war.

One cannot argue that the world (and I use this term loosely) still sees the Holocaust as a wholly Jewish experience which to the millions of non-Jewish victims is not the whole truth.

Right on, thanks for the responses guys.

What the germans did to Poles, Roma and others was a horrible crime for which they should pay. None of that should be swept under the rug. The term "holocaust", however refers specifically to what they did to the jews, starting 1933. Its use is not meant to say that Jews were the only ones who suffered at the hands of the nazis. I think the reason the non jewish victims of the nazis were not as well known is because the communists turned the history of this era into "the struggle against fascism". This blurred the identity of the victims. They tried to erase the jewish identity of victims too. In Babi Yar the monuments referred to victims of Hitlerism and fascism and you wouldn't even know that they were Jews. But the communists didn't succeed in hiding the jewish identity of the victims because most Jews were outside the communist world and were able to publish books, articles and movies telling their story. The non-jewish victims for the most part were under the communist boot and were never given the chance to tell their story. The answer is to tell the story now, not to blame jews for getting too much publicity.

That is not my interpretation and I do not accept it. But that is my personal opinion and nothing more.


I agree but I believe this 'blurring' of the holocuast (by my definition) is also perpetuated today by Jews to the exclusion of other victim groups.

One cannot of course argue against the fact that the Nazi German policy of racial annihilation of the European Jews not the same as the racial policies against the Poles which was to be one of slavery rather than extermination. My grandmother, from Warszawa, was prisoner no. 5953 at KZ Ravensbruck in April 1941, then was transported to KZ Sachsenhausen and after some time to Außenlager Genthin in October 1944 (as recorded in USHMM) where mainly Polish women were worked to death at the rate of 900 a month. But if my grandmother was not a victim of the holocuast then what was she a victim of?

But if I can also demonstrate in a small way how distorted a view of the Holocaust I think the world has. And I do write it to not stir up animosity but ask for you thoughts?

The late Dr Józef Garliński, Polish author and historian, was in US and at a meeting mentioned that he was a former prisoner of Auschwitz. One of his audience guests said ' Oh I didn't realise you were Jewish?'

Showing the tatooed number on his forearm, Dr Józef Garliński replied he was not a Jew and they couldn't believe that non-Jews were ever in Auschwitz! I believe this misperception is still true for many Jews today, I have personally come across this several times. One only has to read about 'Polish Death Camps' in national papers in USA and here in UK.

Garliński also wrote a best selling book 'Fighting Auschwitz' which was the story of Captain Pilecki who volunteered to go into Auschwitz so he could report back to the Polish underground on conditions in the camp. He set-up a restistance movement in the camp, helped prisoners escape, built a radio in the Auschwitz hospital block from smuggled in parts. Smuggled reports about the extermination of Jewish transports to the Polish underground which were then sent to London. Pilecki himself also escaped from Auschwitz in 1943 when the allies refused to support his plan for the allied bombing of the camp to facilitate a mass break out of prisoners which he had planned with support of local AK units outside the camp. My point about telling this story is that Garliński was a approached by major US film company to discuss a possible film deal but there had to one proviso that Pilecki was to be portrayed as a Jewish character which he was not. Garliński politely declined.

What do you mean ? Generally most of Jew wealth was generated in America. They dominated some very profitable branches of economy like finances, media or Hollywood and as America was getting richer, so they did. Russia is a different case - many of the richest people in Russia are of Jew origin and generally they just stole ex-state owned assets but they aren't rather treated like "one of their own" by other Jews, so I don't think that their money should be included in the global Jew wealth.

Greg is right, excellent commentary. They are not part of the Jewish brethren according to the sages and real Jewry. The Torah and Talmud teachings oust/expel them.

Don't confuse normal Jews with Zionists. It is mainly the Zionists that have accrued 'dirty' money.

jewsagainstzionism is a real eye opener. I have just finished reading the central tenets of the Talmud and I learned some interesting things.

That's true but Jews worked hard to make that happen. Poles did very little, so now we shouldn't be surprised that others usually don't give a shit about our history. Just look, who is the best known "Polish" historian abroad - Norman Davis, a Welsh guy, that fact alone shows that something is a damn wrong here.

Not sure what he relevance of posting this picture is? Unless to promote some stereotypical image for an anti-semitic agenda?


Not quite true ..... up until 2001 almost 1,200 books (mainly Polish language) were published just about the Warsaw Rising 1944 alone....... but sadly there is no money for a film about elite battalion AK 'Parasol' (Umbrella) and its hard fought battle for the Cherniakow bridgehead.

Many people here believe that having this kind of stuff brings good luck in finances. Here are some more: obrazy-galeria.pl/p,pl,40,zyd+liczacy+pieniadze.html


And how many of them are well known abroad now ? One. Wrote by Davis.


GDP of Poland is a few hundred billion $ a year and Poles abroad have billions more. There is no money (either public or private) for such things because few people find It important enough and that's exactly my point.

Wajda? Didn't he made at least two renowned movies?

Really? In my opinion this just plays into the hands of the many that believe another archetypeal stereotype— that all Poles are anit-Semitic. Which like most stereotypes is not true.

Where do you think stereotypes developed from?


Every people has a stereotype. They didn't get those because they are the exact opposite or not true..

Actually, that isn't true. Nazis had a plan. In about thirty five years Poland would be nothing but Germans leben in their lebensraum. That was the plan. The plan was to kill everyone in Poland who was not German. It would have been a matter of time. The rest of Europe and the US intervened before they had a chance to implement their plan completely.

Put a chocolate bar somewhere war and let it melt a little, then carefully place it in his underwear. When he wakes up you can watch him squirm as he thinks he has shit himself.

Edited for the sake of decency. A rare thing in deed these days.

If you did that to me I would smack you one.