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The Pogrom on Jews at Eishyshok (Ejszyszki) in Poland


1jola  14 | 1875  
10 Jun 2010 /  #1
A frightening article entitled "The Pogrom at Eishyshok" by Yaffa Eliach appears in today's New York Times (..)"

Eliach pulls no punches when he accuses the government of Poland of historic revisionism with respect to the pogrom at Eishyshok that took place on Oct. 20, 1944. Furthermore, Eliach was not simply reporting the result of research on the subject, he was an eye witness to the events of that day, events that took the lives of his mother and brother as executed by the nationalist Polish Home Army whose popular slogan was "Poland Without Jews."

h-net.msu.edu

Was there a pogrom of Jews by AK there or not? I will let you speak up before I do. Let's see what happened and then we can decide.
Bratwurst Boy  9 | 11629  
10 Jun 2010 /  #2
Here is the wiki link:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ei%C5%A1i%C5%A1k%C4%97s

It seems it were the Einsatzgruppen at it again, not a pogrom...
MareGaea  29 | 2751  
10 Jun 2010 /  #3
The matter is documented, hence proven. What are these Polis American groups arguing about? It's written down in contemporary documents, the perpetrators have been arrested and sent to Siberia. Case closed.

It seems it were the Einsatzgruppen at it again

The NKVD arrested the perpetrators. So I don't think it were the Einsatzgruppen.

>^..^<

M-G (nuff said)
Bratwurst Boy  9 | 11629  
10 Jun 2010 /  #4
The NKVD arrested the perpetrators. So I don't think it were the Einsatzgruppen.

I have only that (from Wiki):

...
On September 25-26, 1941, an Einsatzgruppen unit entered Eišiškės and killed 3,446 Jews from Eišiškės and about 1,500 Jews from neighboring towns and villages.[7] Men's bodies were buried in a trench, dug around the old Jewish cemetery to protect it from accidental cultivation by local farmers.[7]

The source: zydai.lt/lt/content/viewitem/619/
MareGaea  29 | 2751  
10 Jun 2010 /  #5
Yes, I've seen that, but the pogrom in question was in October 1944, when the area was already liberated.

>^..^<

M-G (nuff said)
aphrodisiac  11 | 2427  
10 Jun 2010 /  #6
Let's see what happened and then we can decide.

post the original from New York Times
OP 1jola  14 | 1875  
10 Jun 2010 /  #7
So, were the perpetrators German Einsatzgruppen or Polish Home Army?

Einsatzgruppen massacres were not called pogroms, so that is out. You boys are going to have to work a bit harder.

Note: Inviting other foreigners to help out M-G, and asking Poles to let me handle this one; I can handle it.

We shall keep this statement in mind:

The matter is documented, hence proven. What are these Polish- American groups arguing about? It's written down in contemporary documents; the perpetrators have been arrested and sent to Siberia. Case closed.

MareGaea  29 | 2751  
10 Jun 2010 /  #8
I also think that Dan Leeson is not fully informed as well, as he states that Yaffa Eliach is a man, while in fact she is a woman. But that as a side remark.

>^..^<

M-G (nuff said)
Bratwurst Boy  9 | 11629  
10 Jun 2010 /  #9
Yes, I've seen that, but the pogrom in question was in October 1944, when the area was already liberated.

My fault!
OP 1jola  14 | 1875  
10 Jun 2010 /  #10
Who is Yaffa Eliach who brought the news of this pogrom to the world?

Yaffa Eliach is an author and holocaust survivor. Dr. Eliach, Professor of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, is a pioneer scholar in Holocaust Studies and the creator of the acclaimed "Tower of Life" at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. She was the founder of the first Center for Holocaust Studies in the United States and served as its volunteer director until 1991. She received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in Russian Intellectual History. She is also a poet and playwright. Dr. Eliach is a contributing scholar to the Encyclopedia Judaica and to the Women's Studies Encyclopedia.

wiki

Yaffa Eliach, - "one of America's most respected Holocaust scholars."

How many people had died in this pogrom committed by the Polish Home Army(AK)?
aphrodisiac  11 | 2427  
10 Jun 2010 /  #11
well, if the Germans killed most of the Jews in 1941 (according to BB WIKI link) then, it could not have happened that in 1944 another 3000 Jews were killed because there were only 30 left.

Also, AK did not exist before 1942, so if those Jews were killed in 1941, then it was not them....
I am not sure why the historian mentions 1944.

That is my take on it, based on those two sources.
MareGaea  29 | 2751  
10 Jun 2010 /  #12
There is only mention of some of her direct relatives, her mom and her brother. It's not clear whether there are more ppl killed that night by the nationalistic wing of the AK, referring to Leeson's email. Later on the pogroms of 1941, 1942 and further pogroms after the liberation are mentioned. It's not clear by whom these later pogroms have been committed, but she asks the officials to search for the Polish murderers of some 2000 other Jews, which cannot have taken place as there weren't enough Jews by then.

When Eliach met with American officials, he asked for a copy of the official request from Poland.

OP 1jola  14 | 1875  
10 Jun 2010 /  #13
USN&WR in its July 8, 1996 issue, on page 24 published as follows:

During World War II, Eliach and her family were among 29 Jews from the then Polish village of Ejszyszki who were hidden by Christian Poles, enabling them to escape the Nazi slaughter of 4,000 other Jews in the community. After the Germans were driven out of Poland, Eliach says, she and her family returned home, where they were attacked by a band of antisemitic Polish partisans on Oct. 20, 1944. According to her recounting of the ordeal, gunmen shot and killed her mother and baby brother as she and a second brother looked on.

MareGaea  29 | 2751  
10 Jun 2010 /  #14
Polish-American fringe organizations have accused her of fabricating the tale of her mother's and brother's deaths to defame Poland.

That was to be expected. On what do they base this?

Edit: remember that when Jan Gross presented his book "Neighbours" in Poland, half of the audience walked away crying that it was all lies and a shame and so on, but the other half stayed.

>^..^<

M-G (nuff said)
OP 1jola  14 | 1875  
10 Jun 2010 /  #15
That was to be expected. On what do they base this?

Before we get to that, we must know what happened in this "pogrom." Was it a pogrom or is Dr. Yaffa a liar?

Polish-American fringe organizations

U.S. News & World Report, a major US publication, calling Polish organizations 'Polish-American fringe organizations' is suspect in itself, but not surprising.

The matter is documented, hence proven.

What happened in this proven "pogrom", muffin?
vetala  - | 381  
10 Jun 2010 /  #16
Why did you start a new thread for that? There are far too many threads about Polish-Jewish relations. I propose a new name for this forum: polishjewishforums.com
Rogalski  5 | 94  
10 Jun 2010 /  #17
U.S. News & World Report, a major US publication, calling Polish organizations 'Polish-American fringe organizations' is suspect in itself, but not surprising.

I think calling the extreme elements in a wide spectrum of organisations the 'fringe' is perfectly acceptable. They are not describing ALL US Polish organisations by this label.
OP 1jola  14 | 1875  
10 Jun 2010 /  #18
Why did you start a new thread for that?

This is not about Polish-Jewish relations. This is about the anti-Semitic Ejszyszki pogrom committed by the Polish AK soldiers. If you have something to add on the subject, please do.

I think calling the extreme elements in a wide spectrum of organisations the 'fringe' is perfectly acceptable. They are not describing ALL US Polish organisations by this label.

Is the Canadian-Polish Congress a fringe organization? I don't think so. But stay on track, and tell me why was it a pogrom and how many people died?
DariuszTelka  5 | 193  
10 Jun 2010 /  #19
The norwegian collaborators who actively helped the germans during the occupation were executed or jailed both during and after the war. They lost their citizenship, their properties, their work and many also their lives staring down the barrel of a gun held by a home-army soldier. Why? Because they helped the enemy.

Why would the jews' fate be any different in Poland? We all know that a majority of them didn't identify with the polish culture, language or way of life. They enlisted in droves into the russians terror-apparatus and hindered the polish patriotic resistance at every level. Even the poles that actually saved them, risking their own lives, were executed after the war by the jews. Like Captain Witold Pilecki of the home army.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki

The jewish people of Poland picked out poles in execution rows, took their lands and jobs and had a major hand in the torture and deaths of millions of poles before, during and even after the war. That you then will find/read/hear about jews being killed by poles on sporadic occations is not THAT incredible to fathom. Poland lost over 3 million ethnic poles, officially, how many actually died can be debated. That is among the nations who lost the most of their population, over 8%. And how many pogroms and shootings happended against poles that have never surfaced? Maybe one day when the russians open ALL their files we will know.

Read my post number 195 in the thread "Why did Hitler kill so many jew's in Poland?". I give some examples on why pogroms could have happened. Like the fact that;

"In prewar Poland," notes Wladyslaw Krajewski, a Polish Jew, "... the majority of Jews did not regard themselves as Poles. Growing up for the most part in Jewish environments, they observed only the Jewish customs and religion, spoke only Yiddish at home, and generally spoke Polish poorly." [Krajewski, 96-97] Norman Salsitz describes growing up in a Jewish community in a Polish town and discovering that many Jews did not even know what the Polish flag looked like. [Salsitz, N., 1992, 73] In 1936, Jewish voting patterns in Poland (in their self-governing kehillah organizations) revealed a 38 percent vote for the Bund party (...)"

If you in addition to what I show abover here, sign up with the executioners of Katyn, and help them murder the ethnic people of the country you are living in, then you can't blame it on "hate" and "anti-semitism", if you yourself reap what you sow.

But it is also clear that a lot of these pogroms have been exaggerated and even invented to try and cover up the fact that jews had such a big part in exterminating the polish population. Just look at movies like "The Bielski Brothers", a bunch of low-life criminals who killed, tortured and raped poles at every possibility, and today they get a Hollywood movie glorifying them. That is propaganda and falsehood on a grand scale. How can Poland compete with the biggest propaganda machine in the world? Well, we can start by putting people like MareGaea and other "pole-bashers" to the test here on this forum. MareGaea said in one post that he would like to bash in the head of people he didn't agree with, just like the jewish character did in the movie "Inglorious Basterds". That is quite evil if I dare say so, and shows the attitude of these posters.

Dariusz
MareGaea  29 | 2751  
10 Jun 2010 /  #20
I don't think there are any set rules to the number of dead Jews before one can call it a pogrom. Pogrom encapsules willfull murder of Jews in the broadest sense of the word. It doesn't matter whether there is one Jew killed or hundreds. The motives, that's what's important in this matter.

I haven't seen any motivation so far in Leeson's email, only that her brother and mother were killed. The article leaves us unaware of any further killings on the night of the 19th and the 20th of October, so we will leave it at the two we know about, according to the email. So on one hand there could be a pogrom as, if the info is true, two Jewish persons were killed, but on the other hand not as there is no clear motive given.

I think you're aiming at the remark of the 2000 Jews being killed after the liberation, which is not pssbl as there weren't even 2000 Jews left in the village after the war. Unless she is talking about the whole conglomerate of anti-Jewish violence in post-war Poland we can assume that this is not true.

But this does not rule out that the events which killed her brother and mother did not happen. The Polish fringe groups which are protesting the claims have only put forward her as a sufferer of the so-called "Holocaust-Survivor Syndrom" and furthermore, the email states that although the Polish government has been very forthcoming in other atrocities perpetrated by Poles on Jews in the post-war era, they haven't been so with regards to the events of the 19th and 20th of October, 1944.

So, it's a yes/no. We don't have all information, so we defintively cannot say what happened as we have no source outside miss Eliach's account, at least it's not given in the email. But the NKVD arrived on the scene, arrested the perpetrators and sent them to Siberia, and this has been documented.

>^..^<

M-G (nuff said)
OP 1jola  14 | 1875  
10 Jun 2010 /  #21
How can Poland compete with the biggest propaganda machine in the world?

Well, Darek, that is the point of this thread, to put to the test this "pogrom." The boys are slow in coming up with facts, but at least M-G has no doubt that it was one.

The matter is documented, hence proven.

He doesn't know what happened, how many Jews were killed, but if Jews say it was a pogrom, then it was, by golly.

I'm here to challange that. I hope that is considered anti-Semitic.
MareGaea  29 | 2751  
10 Jun 2010 /  #22
He doesn't know what happened, how many Jews were killed, but if Jews say it was a pogrom, then it was, by golly.

You just bypass my post in order to get your point pushed through, isn't it? What facts to this account have you shown us? One email by Dan Leeson and a part from US News and World Report from the 8th of July 1996. What facts as to this discussion have you brought forth?

sign up with the executioners of Katyn, and help them murder the ethnic people of the country you are living in

This is nonsense. There were at least 5 to 600 Jews amongst the ppl executed in Katyn.

I think you are a very ill and disturbed young man. First of all it wasn't meant seriously, but the likes of you cannot notice sarcasm even when he stumbles over it, secondly if you remember posts of me, remember them correctly and don't twist words. I said that I will adhere the Myer-Lansky approach to anti-semites, racists and neo-Nazis. Intolerant ppl in short. Furhtermore, I asked "when will tolerant ppl stop tolerating the intolerant ppl". Which is a very valid question as tolerant ppl always have tolerated the intolerant and in return got several insults over their heads. Well, my boy, I bite back. And I will keep doing that until you stop that nonsense. Next time when you quote some old post from my hand, pls quote it correctly. Thanks.

>^..^<

M-G (nuff said)
OP 1jola  14 | 1875  
10 Jun 2010 /  #23
In New York Times:

To the Editor:

Survivors of the Holocaust are grateful for Yaffa Eliach's account of the postwar killing of Jews, including her family, by Polish armed units (''The Pogrom at Eishyshok,'' Op-Ed, Aug. 6).

That well-documented pogromwas not an isolated incident but an organized campaign to complete the Nazi ''final solution of the Jewish problem in Poland,'' planned during the war by the anti-Semitic underground Polish Home Army and the national armed forces. The Home Army received arms and money from the Polish government in exile in London. (...)

nytimes

There is so much wrong with this text but I will just limit it to what is highligthed:

It is a known pogrom, committed by AK as part of the larger campaign to exterminate the Jews, yet it is denied by Polish Holocaust revisionists. It doesn't get more bizzarre than that.

Eventually we will see what happened exactly. Patience.

What facts as to this discussion have you brought forth?

A lot more than you who has never heard of it but you are participating in the discussion. I am not here to research for you, and if you want to participate, you need to know what you are talking about. Clearly, you don't yet.

Was it a pogrom or not?
nott  3 | 592  
10 Jun 2010 /  #24
N.K.V.D.

:) really, MG... NKVD sent some Poles to Siberia, after sentencing them by the NKVD tribunal, and you call it 'proven'?
OP 1jola  14 | 1875  
10 Jun 2010 /  #25
but the pogrom in question was in October 1944, when the area was already liberated.

Not surprising. He thinks NKVD were liberators. Many other Jews think this way also. Notice he also calls it a pogrom without knowing what happened. He assumes Jews were killed because they were Jews. I hope we are learning something.
MareGaea  29 | 2751  
10 Jun 2010 /  #26
Yeah we are learning sth, and that sth is: 1jola loves to skip entire txts and loves to take things out of context. That is what we are learning. Oh, I know which direction you are going, the same as it always goes with you. Where exactly do I say that I think the NKVD are the liberators? And, you simply skipped the definition I gave of a pogrom, or left it conveniently out of it as it doesn't suit you. Anybody, just read post #20 and you will see that I don't just call it a pogrom. But of course, admitting this would not suit Jolanda's target.

Jolanda's statements as usual are based on quicksand again as usual. Don't know what you are reading, but I'm sure you're the only one reading it like that.

NKVD sent some Poles to Siberia, after sentencing them by the NKVD tribunal, and you call it 'proven'?

Yet again, I base myself on the material that is handed over. You don't know as well as I don't know if these documents are forgeries or not.

>^..^<

M-G (isn't it a pity, Jolanda? Your little scheme does not work)
OP 1jola  14 | 1875  
10 Jun 2010 /  #27
Where exactly do I say that I think the NKVD are the liberators?

Here:

the pogrom in question was in October 1944, when the area was already liberated.

Who were the liberators according to you?
MareGaea  29 | 2751  
10 Jun 2010 /  #28
I don't say in that quote that I think the NKVD were the liberators. The area was liberated from the Nazis and the Russians were considered the liberators at that time. What later on happened, happened later on, but at that moment, the Russians were considered to be the liberators of Nazi occupied Poland. Poland did not liberate herself from the Nazis, like Yugoslavia did. Again, you're basing things upon your own assumptions.

The fact that the NKVD arrived on the scene implies that the Soviets were already in the area.

>^..^<

M-G (again: where do I state that I think the NKVD were the liberators?)
OP 1jola  14 | 1875  
10 Jun 2010 /  #29
but at that moment, the Russians were considered to be the liberators of Nazi occupied Poland.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Zero, yet you posting to display your ignorance. Do you have any idea where Ejszyszki are? Never mind, it wouldn't mean anything to you anyway.

Tell me more about this "pogrom." Jewish researchers say it is well known.
DariuszTelka  5 | 193  
10 Jun 2010 /  #30
This is nonsense. There were at least 5 to 600 Jews amongst the ppl executed in Katyn.

Yes, and if this is true, they were murdered because they swore allegiance to Poland and the Polish people! So, what is wrong with that? Good for them, Poland gave them a home, a place to live and to prosper. I respect them a 100%! I wish more Jews swore allegiance to Poland and not the communist murderers who butchered their way through our country!

I said that I will adhere the Myer-Lansky approach to anti-semites, racists and neo-Nazis. Intolerant ppl in short.

Meyer-Lansky approach is even worse than the one in "Inglorious Bastards", it includes garroting, shooting, beating with baseball bats, hanging, death by burning, torture and other niceties. Not unlike his ethnic counterparts in NKVD did to poles during and after the war. About the sarcasm, sorry, but it's hard to notice any such details in your ramblings about how hateful and anti-semitic the poles are. I wouldn't think you would manage to fit funny and ironic in such texts, but maybe all this is a game to you. Just to fekk with other people. At least your are successful in that aspect.

Nice that you are the judge and jury on who's "racist", "tolerant" and "anti-semitic"! Maybe you should get off your high horse? Here you attack Polish people and our history, and then you attack Europeans for trying to keep their culture and protect their reputation, while you bang on about the Jewish fate and attack anyone who tries to put things in perspective. (Has another view). You really have it all figured out. Remember, todays history class is pretty one-sided and only the "accepted" versions are printed and put to the movie screen. Nobody made the movie Katyn, until the Russians finally opened the archives. So now they have to rewrite the history books. How many other lies are out there?

I would call you anti-European and anti-Polish. But I wouldn't be violent to you because of that, and our democracy gives us the right to say and write pretty much what we want. Too bad you only stir sh*t up, and make people upset. About your sarcasm, well, I know personally that people on "the left" like to use violence on their opponents, and since I caught you on it, you protect yourself by saying it wasn't what you really meant, but you know what, I think you did mean it. Shame on you.

Dariusz

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