Memos show US hushed up Soviet crime against Poland

Actually the thread is about the murder of army officers at Katyn - which was a war crime, but on a very very different scale to gassing 6 million people because of their race.

You still haven't apologised.

Yes, but only if one considers Jews to be proper humans: it seems that Peter does not.

Hardly. To compare a few people being a bit poorer than normal (while still being wealthy by world standards) with WW1/2 is naive, to say the least.


If they had a brain, they'd quit a huge trading bloc on their doorstep for a zone made up of what, exactly?

Stop lying and trying to put word in my mouth, Liar.

The issue is that Jon, apparently, does not consider the death of Poles on the same level as the death of Jews.

Where did I say I say Jews are not proper Humans?. I didn't, I said genocide is genocide, no matter if it was the Nazi's or your Soviet buddies, Mr Liar.

The Katyn murders were part of the Soviet genocide of up to a million Poles at the start of the war, before the Holocaust against the Jews truly started.

The death of millions of people due genocide and ethnic cleansing is tragedy, not a statistic (to twist Stalins words)

Jon apparently thinks a few tens of thousands or a hundred thousand or a million deaths is not important compared to his genocide, unless it below 6million its doesn't count.

So to you 22,000 (from a population of 35 million) is on the same level as six million (from a population of 8.5 million). You're nearly as good at maths as you are at telling the truth.


Do make your mind up with your lies: in another thread yesterday (or perhaps today, can't be bothered to check) you called me a Nazi and now the Soviets are my buddies. When your lies contradict each other, it's even easier for everybody to see that you're lying.

What a bizarre thing to say - the only explanations can be either ignorance or trolling. Or both.

Still waiting for that apology.


That's shocking.

22k was one part of the total deaths of up to 1million.

Do you think that chopping down 6million into little 22K chunks of death would make ok?

You think one dead person is ok, but Six million is not?

Are not every one of those six million, individuals who are equal victims?


Why should I apologies to someone who thinks anything less that a million dead people is... forgettable?

Your attitude is disgusting.

I think that saying the deaths of 22 thousand is the same as the deaths of six million is design to minimise and marginalise the deaths of six million.

But of course, if you want to say that numbers mean nothing and it is only the event that matter and that if the events are the same, they are the same regardless of the numbers, that will mean that you think the post-war concentration camps run by Poles for Germans (Potulice, Jaworzno, Zgoda, £ambinowice, etc, where a few tens of thousands were murdered) were exactly the same as the Nazi camps at Auschwitz and Treblinka and Sobibor and Belzec.

How much must you hate Poland to say that Poles ran camps which were the same as Auschwitz and Treblinka and Sobibor and Belzec.

We aren't talking about all of them, are we? We are talking about specifics.

And yes, you still haven't apologised.


Absolutely. It's horrific.

Its not 22 thousand, those were a specific group who were murdered as part of a larger genocide numbering around a million. You are ignoring the fact that it was genocide, a planned attempt by Stalin to solve the Polish problem.

I ask no more than you agree that genocide against any group is not something to dismissed as Jon did. Its not a football match where the highest score wins and losers don't count.

Genocide against Jews, Poles and Armenians were a crimes against humanity.

He also murdered a hell of a lot of his own officers not long before. That doesn't diminish the crime in the Katyn forest, but it puts his behaviour into perspective.

Indeed and unknown millions were killed in the Holodomor. Stalin is estimated to have killed more than Hitler, but as I said, its not a scoring match.

You seem to think it is, since you've mentioned the matter of numbers several times in the thread. Time to move on - perhaps even recognise the good side of the USSR instead of judging them solely on the excesses of revolution.

Now you have got me. What 'good side' is that?

So has everyone agreed that the mass murder in Katyn was part of a genocide or not?
I'm kinda lost on what everyone thinks (i am not going to weigh in at this point) and don't see where the discussion is really going otherwise.

its true that you could argue that theres no reason why Brits should know abut Katyn, compared to the example you gave
but since my school history books felt the need to tell me how much the poor USSR suffered in WWII i'd like a bit of balance.

i suspect that these anti- Polish distortions are still being propagated, My Mum recently got a accesible history book from the Library for herself, the title was something like WWII made easy it was written by some teacher and when it got to sept 39 it questioned why Churchill and Britain would want to support a country that "engaged in reckless diplomacy"

The lack of interest in Katyn is symbolic of this wierd anti- Polish viewpoint. that seems to persist in Academic circles.
i guess thats why it bothers me.

last month when that supposed historian Eric Hobsbawn died i was disgusted by the tributes he received from Politicians here, this man went to his grave defending the Molotov-ribbentrop plan and the invasion of Finland

it was left to Anne Applebaum to mention his support for Stalin.

One of the things i admire about Poles is that they don't constantly whine about their history like for example Armenians do, but theres a balance, you can educate people about Katyn without taking on a victim-stance and guilt tripping the world

Channel 4 has in the last few years shown some brilliant programmes about Katyn & the Polish Pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain.

I'm getting Halik Kochanskis book the eagle unbowed for xmas, anyone read it?

I see what you mean however there's a huge distinction between being 'anti-Polish' and simply adopting a different point of view to the one most current in Poland.

I simply couldn't stand your ugly, anti-semitic post.

I think posters deliberately taking this thread off-topic should be banned. It is not fist time they are doing it! Should keep in check their obssesions1

What would you call Poland's ultimatum to Lithuania? How about Poland joining the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, what would you call that?


Odd logic: you think that people are anti-Polish and at the same time display very little interest in Poland.


Your post is not in the slightest bit related to this topic and you are clearly trying to engage people in discussion about the content of your post. Your account should be suspended.

Do you have anything to say about the USA gov hushing up Soviet crime? You needed bother bring into it Jews! Your pro Soviet and anti-Jewish stance is well known! PF do not need racists and commies to tell them what whats.

As I said, you're unhealthily obsessed.

It's a good question. Poland was reckless - she had more or less implemented a new fascist constitution, it hadn't had a free election in years and they had forcibly annexed several territories as well as breaking promises made to an ethnic minority within her country. Poland was not the quiet, quite stable country that it is now - it was a big European country that had expansionist aims.

Sure wheres Soviets were perfect example of democratic state, not reckless diplomacy and peaceful intention. You are reckless indeed.
The only error Poland's diplomacy made was refusing Hitler's offer to become an ally.

And then Poland could have had Nazi help with it's 'Jewish problem'. I wonder how long it would have taken a combined Polish & Nazi thinktank to have moved from the Madagascar plan of the Polish government to the Nazi's Final Solution.

You are a disgrace to Poland and all of Hitlers victims.

Solely on excesses of revolution...and never-mind its entire fvcked-up existence? Here is a good article on USSR and its legacy:

Solzhenitsyn's widow, Natalya Dmitrievna, blames the leaders of modern Russia, including Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, for failing to make the country face up to its past.

"They didn't carry out any de-Stalinisation," she tells me. "On a state level, no-one ever declared communism to be criminal, or Stalin a tyrant who waged war on his own people. Now it's too late for words," she says.

"All Eastern Europe after the end of the Soviet Union tried to finish with the communist way of life, in Poland, in Germany, everywhere," recalls Korotich.

"But not here. We needed our Nuremberg, like in Germany. But we never had it. And until we start discussing the problem of communism on the level Solzhenitsyn started 50 years ago, we'll still live in this half-Soviet country which wants to be part of mankind, but is afraid of information about its own history."

bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20393894

I couldn't agree more

Soviets? Books have been written about their sheer incompetence from the foundation of the country through to WW2. But this is about Poland, not the Soviet Union. They certainly put Poland to shame when it came to idiotic politics, however.


It's scary to think that had Hitler been more 'whatever' towards the Poles, such a possibility could have happened.


Same goes for elements of Polish society, unfortunately.

compared to the world's geographically largest country whose population largely approves of Stalin and his legacy... wtf?? If I were you Delphi I would get some priority list happening... Russia is in the state of denial, autocratic as ever... Poland, so far, is on the right path.. down the road I wouldn't worry so much about those 'elements' of Polish society as they will largely go extinct. Russia, however, not owning up to her past misdeeds is much more likely to repeat them in the future and who would want that?

"According to a recent survey, 48% of Russians today believe that Stalin had a positive influence on their country. Only 22% consider it was negative."

you should write fiction or fairy stories!


Are you well? Would you said that about Stalin best allies?


The only other way was to become Hitler's ally.


Incompetency? It worked well for them and you cannot complain about their diplomacy. They started the war and then ended it as victors and the world power.


He was more "whatever" towards Poles but Beck was an gambler, idiot or something else1