JEW YOUTH SHOULD CLEAN UP THEIR ACT IN POLAND

That is in direct conflict with what the Judeo-Christian god imagined.
Very unchristian ;)

That may be but common sense should prevail. Dariusz, go and watch the Bill Hicks sketch where he asks the Christians for forgiveness, priceless!!

Move on, yes. Forgive, no.


I don't know what they teach in your country, but in mine they teach that the germans (includes austrians) perpetrated the holocaust with the active help of ukrainians, lithuanians, latvians, rumanians, hungarians and vichy french. The poles are thought of in a separate class - on the one hand they were occupied and were enemies of the germans. On the other hand they were anti-jewish from before the war, benefitted from the holocaust by inheriting the property of the dead jews, and were hostile to jews who returned to their home towns after the war. So israeli kids who visit poland react to that history. There are no school trips to germany at all. Most parents would not allow their kids to go there. I wouldn't.

Doesn't Judaism teach that forgiveness is divine?

That sounds christian to me.
Judaism teaches that both revenge and forgiveness are up to G-d, not us. Just because we didn't take revenge doesn't mean we forgave them.

I was trying to elicit a specific response from you. If sb killed my family on purpose, I'd never forgive them and I believe in many Christian tenets. Reality is different from biblical writings anyway.

My response was specific. I don't forgive the Germans or any of their collaborators.

But most of those Germans have died, yehudi.

Yehudi, there was anti semitism throughout Europe and in the US at the time. Poland isn't out of context there, sorta going with the flow of the rest of the world. People today have got to go back and time and apply yesterday's standards to the situation or it's impossible to understand.

What's outstanding is that Poland was never an actual ally of the Nazis and it would have been far easier to just be an ally and not fight. That would have been the easiest way but it didn't happen. Yehudi, perhaps jewish people could focus on that aspect of Polish history a bit more. It's easy to feel hostility and anger about the situation but try to remember key points, like, the fact the Poles were never officially on the side of the Nazis. Shouldn't the Jews appreciate them profoundly just for that? They were surrounded by a sea of Nazi supporters yet they stayed with the British and have been criticised for that. Jews should show a little appreciation for that.

Well, it's more to the point that many Poles were not in a position to help Jews on any meaningful scale. Some were able to, as has been documented in various literature.

Also, spare a little thought for Yehudi. To my knowledge, he doesn't support the broader Zionist plans and also had 6,000,000 of his people die. The main reason Americans die is by fighting needless wars.

True. But Poland was where it mattered most. That's was the biggest concentration of Jews in the world. So that's why we're more aware of polish anti semitism on the 1930s than, say Canadian anti semitism.


We're aware of that. Poles who actively helped Jews are appreciated profoundly.


True. They were also in no position to be allies of the Germans either, since the germans relegated Poland to slave status. Ukrainians and Latvians, for example, were accepted as allies of germany and they were enthusiastic killers of Jews. Poland wasn't even given that option. Different Polish groups and individuals did what they did. I appreciate those who helped us. I understand those who didn't. And I don't forgive those who helped the germans. I think a lot of Israelis think that way.

Sounds fair enough to me.

I won't defend them for that, Yehudi. Still, try to feel their fear, they were under pressure and not true supporters of Hitler's cause. You know that and they were short of options. They couldn't escort many Jews out of the country that easily. Many Poles stayed to fight and spent more time defending their own walls.

Yeah, Torq, that was a fair commentary by Yehudi :) I agree.

Why were there so many Jews here?.
It reads like Poland had the least anti-Semitism, if there were so many Jews here.

Yehudi, there were plenty of American Jews experiencing anti semitism here. They teamed up with blacks and started the civil rights movement. It was a factor throughout the world. People discriminate against each other based on differences. It's part of the human condition and it's only when there are mitigating factors that it doesn't get out of control.

There's a mob mentality in every nation, every race, every ethnic group. Anywhere people share commonalities a mob mentality can develop.

The Jewish presence in poland started in the late middle ages. At that point the nobility invited jews to settle because they filled a certain role in the medieval economy and Poland was probably the best place in Europe for Jews to live. But that was then. Just cause the nobles 600 years ago wanted Jews to run their estates doesn't mean that the ordinary Poles liked the Jews. Until independence it was less of an issue what ordinary people wanted. But once Poland became independent after WWI it mattered very much. Polish nationalists saw the Jews as a competing and problematic entity. So a lot of them used latent anti-Jewish feeling as a way to whip up support from the masses. Laws were passed limiting Jewish economic and education opportunities and there were riots. By the 1930s Jews wanted to leave but no one would take them. That's why there were still so many Jews there when the Nazis came.

Interesting, I did not know this.


So it was not just in Poland but as you said before, Poland had the biggest concentration.

Why were the Jews hated everywhere?.

*edit* I know that last question is very strong, but why have the Jews been persecuted almost everywhere and for so long?.
This question probably takes a few years of research to fully explain, so I don't expect a simple answer.

The Jews weren't really hated in the US. Yehudi, I think the US is the one country the Jews have been most successful.
But at the same time you can say that about any ethnic group from Europe. They all became more successful in the US :D
It takes some self reflection to figure out why a minority does badly in a country because all of them don't follow that trend. They have their free will.

Perhaps you could clarify this?.

Are you saying that of all the countries Jews were hated, America hated them less?.

And why were the Jews hated in America?.

Numerus clausus - a rule saying that Jewish students can constitute only 10%
of the overall number of students of a given university was introduced in Poland
in 1937.

Before the numerous clausus was introduced, there were 20-40% of Jewish students
in most Polish universities. Paradoxically - it saved lives of many young Jews as they
went to study abroad after not being accepted on Polish universities.

Poland wasn't the only country to introduce numerus clausus. Russia introduced it
in 1887, Hungary in 1920, Romania in 1926 and in United States they had numerous
clausus for Jewish students from the 1920's until late 1950's. Especially in north-east
part of the country (e.g. Harvard and Columbia) where the limit for Jewish students
varied from 12 to 17%. So nothing specifically Polish here.

Also paradoxically - the numerus clausus rule, was eventually good for Jewish students,
as there was a very harsh selection and only the best could make it to a Polish university.
This resulted in many of the Poland's best lawyers, doctors and economists being Jewish,
and it was very hard to find a Jewish specialist that wouldn't excel in his field.
Of course, it led to jealousy and xenophobic feelings toward Jews, but that's another
subject.

It's because our society is used to dealing with immigrants all over the world and we welcomed them, not always the best welcome, but usually someone somewhere welcomed them, even if others oppose their arrival. They come here and they want to have a better life. Everybody shares this philosophy and optimism and so many have succeeded. They can be very proud of that fact.

There's a few ethnic groups like blacks and latinos that haven't done as well but everyone from Europe generally did alright.

I think I understand what you mean now.

before you edited the above post, it read differently.

I think the reason that Jews and other immigrants did well in the US is that it's not a nation state. You can be an american if you're polish, hungarian or Jewish because there's no "american" ethnic group. But in a country like Poland that's based on polish ethnicity, a non-Pole is seen as an outsider. The more successful he is, the more people will hate him. You have to stay below the radar, and we didn't do that.


My opinion is that when a foreign ethnic group settles in any country and refuses to blend in, keeping its own religion and customs, it's going to be resented. Add to that the Church teaching that we killed Jesus, which didn't help.

Then there are the theological explanations, that G-d exiled us for our sins and caused us to be hated, and that he eventually will deliver us and bring us back to our homeland to renew our relationship with G-d and rebuild our land, and become the light unto the nations that we were meant to be. It's all in the Bible (Deuteronomy).

Do you know that Iranians generally receive you well? You have voting and drinking rights there.

Drinking rights!? Since when was that ever a Jewish issue?
I'll be sure to get over there one day and try out the bars.

I personally have very mixed feelings about this,
On one hand, it is admirable that after so many centuries of not having a country and being displaced all over the planet, that a people maintain their culture.

On the other hand, I do not like when foreign ethnic group goes to another country and defiantly does not mix, it is a very bad thing and creates tensions.


I never understood that, Jesus was a Jew.


What did you do?.


Ah, I am not religious.

Well but in the past the Polish nation completely assimilated large numbers of foreigners and not only Eastern Slavs of various kinds but also completely different ethnic groups like Scots, Tatars or Armenians. Yours didn't assimilate because they didn't want to assimilate.

The thing is, Yehudi, that happens everywhere. In the US, especially. People resent the geeks who do better than everyone else. The majority resent the minority who do excellent on their SATs and get a 4.00 GPA every year of high school and maintain that GPA after being accepted to an Ivy League college or MIT.

Resentment, bias, jealousy, envy, and hatred are everywhere. They affect us all.

You're both right. We didn't want to assimilate and that creates tension. But from our point of view we had no choice: We were thrown out of our homeland by the Romans and we saw this as a temporary glitch in history. We still considered the land of israel as our homeland and the situation of exile as temporary, and we believed that we were bound to live by the Torah wherever we are and that we had to maintain our identity and religion so that we wouldn't disappear in exile and never return home. It might sound crazy to you, but we did it. We paid a heavy price, but we still did it.

Well, very antisocial behaviour.