News / US slaps Poland in the face (Comey Poland) [92]

I agree. Sadly, this still isn't the case. While visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau only a few months ago, a relative of mine who speaks a little Polish merely asked a groundskeeper on the site of the concentration camp where the information office was, only to be met with "Why do you people always have to keep reminding us?!", whereupon my aunt barked back "Because you people will never let us forget!"

Tit for tat.

News / US slaps Poland in the face (Comey Poland) [92]

I might ask you the same question there, Vox! Your ripostes are far more infantile; they defy both simple logic as well as historical fact:-)

You might want to consider to stop trolling!!

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Look up/google search Jedwabne and Kielce, buddy! If you know how to read, you'll understand perfectly:-) Once again, you're entitled to your own opinions, but NOT to your own factsLOL

News / US slaps Poland in the face (Comey Poland) [92]

@Ziemowit

Sadly so, and yet I would HOPE we'd challenge ourselves to do the right thing, even under such pressures to cave and do wrong!

Can all posters address the thread title please as I have just had to remove all the off topic posts regarding the Channel Islands

News / US slaps Poland in the face (Comey Poland) [92]

"All that is necessary for evil to take root is for good people to do NOTHING." - anonymous

Far too many Poles were bystanders. Others active participants. Same in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania:-)

News / US slaps Poland in the face (Comey Poland) [92]

Try telling them that!

History / How come Poles like Russians but not Germans? [216]

My feeling is still that deep down where they live, Germans on the whole have a healthier respect for the Russians than for the Poles. Germans are an achievement oriented people, a little small on "soul" (dusza), but big on material accomplishments! In this regard, the Russians, with the largest single continent/country on earth, a long history of military tactical supremacy, plus the folks who "beat" Germany in WWII, have earned the begrudging praise of the Germans. Furthermore, their artists, composers, top-flight ballerinas, cinema, scientists, physicists, cosmonauts etc.... have won them a place in the world.

The Poles and Poland continue to remain a backwater society for Germany at large, unfair (as well as plain UNTRUE!!!) as this assertion may be:-)

News / US slaps Poland in the face (Comey Poland) [92]

Problem is that for years, as with Austria, Poland saw herself almost completely as victim of Nazi aggression, i.e. especially Jewish persecutions, rather than as a partially willing participant. As Austria had to eventually confront its gung-ho Anschluss with Grossdeutschland, Switzerland too was forced to admit complicity in closing off her borders to incoming Jewish refugees, even Holland had finally to do some skeleton in the closet clearing about the presence of Dutch Nazis (a topic long taboo in public discussions with the outside!) etc.

All Comey meant was a need for greater transparency. The fact that the wonderful USA was heavily Nazi leaning during the '30's, e.g. Lindberg, the America Firsters, the American Legion, Watson and IBM he never denied:-)

History / When will you Poles give back German land and the cities which you robbed? [557]

Seems to yours truly that the shoe should be on the other foot:-) Land and cities the Poles stole from GERMAN territory??!
A large number of Polish towns have both native side-by-side German names as well, e.g. Bytom/Beuthen, Kołbrzeg/Kolberg etc. How many German towns which DON'T share the border with Poland by contrast have Polish names alongside the native German ones, huh?

Methinks somebody's got things a bit backwardsLOL

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Vox, you seem not to understand sufficiently the history on which you pretend to expound! Jews did indeed do what was expedient in a number of cases. So too the Germans. It was called becoming a Nazi, i.e. joining the party even if one didn't necessarily believe everything Hitler espoused!!! A large number of Poles merely jumped on the very lucrative bandwagon of self profiteering and to be sure got plenty out of the deal.

This is not to say that there were not a lot of right-minded and selfless Poles who hid Jews, asked for nothing in return and risked their own lives as well as those of both the hidden and their families:-)

@
Vox, ol' fella, if post-War pogroms don't belong in a thread about the Holocaust, where then, pray tell??

I use basic examples as instances of the Polish mentality vis-a-vis Jews living in their midst, and in their country, AFTER WORLD WAR II! Was it necessary to round up stray Jews, herd them together into an abandoned barn and burn them?!

Don't see how ya can riggle outta that one:-)

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Vox, you make it seem as if the Jews volunteered out of willingness. This is clearly not so. While there are bad apples in every batch of humanity, the exception doesn't confirm the rule! The rule was that EVERY Jew in occupied Europe was an intended target by the Nazis and their henchmen. As the US government at the close of the 19th century was clearly responsible for the massacre of at least a quarter-million Native Americans, Poland too must come clean and admit her sometimes complicit involvement in the Shoah.

For anyone, Pole or not, Jew or gentile, to honestly assert that the post-War pogroms in Jedwabne and Kielce were somehow justified because many Christians believed in the blood libel etc.., is almost like saying that the Turks were justified in slaughtering scores of mostly innocent Armenians, allegedly because the Ottoman regime feared Armenian complicity with the Russians ad infinitum. It's idiotic at best, criminally negligent at worst!

History / How come Poles like Russians but not Germans? [216]

Apparently you've never heard of neulogisms in any language which might not appear in a standard dictionary. My word was clearly Southern derived.

Back on topic, indeed it may have been a slip, yet racism does cut both ways!

Poland was at one time for Russia a sort of land grab. Both Germany and Russia have always fought over territory, were in fact the only major European powers capable of waging war:-)

History / How come Poles like Russians but not Germans? [216]

The word I used IS INDEED German, merely a sort of slang with which you're perhaps unfamiliar:-)

Secondly, the anti-Defamation League is dedicated to rooting our racism whereever it may be. Whilst I surely don't always concur with what is said, Poles, like many other European nations, have had a long history of anti-Semitism, aided and abetted I might add, by the good ol' Catholic Church!!

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

So we're blaming the Jews for being victims of their own making then, is that it? I think there's a difference between doing someone else's dirty work or risk being rounded up and executed compared with initiating the dirty work and rounding up innocents who never did anyone anything special, except happen to be Jewish.

Had the situation been reversed and it had been the Jews who'd been in power in German under different circumstances naturally, would the same argument apply??

You're simply reiterating double standard logic, that's all.

History / How come Poles like Russians but not Germans? [216]

Indeed, weegie! Let's remind certain of one's fellow countrymen that the clock ain't stopped:-)

History / How come Poles like Russians but not Germans? [216]

Since even longer before WWII, Germany has muscled her way into Eastern Europe, both militarily (The Polish Corridor) as well as culturally (German was made a semi-official language of the Polish intelligentsia - after French, of course), leaving the distinct feeling, much like today, e.g. in the eyes of little Greece, that Big Brother Germany is shoving her weight around ONCE AGAIN!

Russian hegemony was more or less a matter of course. Her land mass for one thing and her common Slavic roots for another, always made Russia a place which Poles might have been in awe of, yet sensed a historic link. Such a link was far less so with the Germans, even though curiously, the Poles have considerable Germanic mixed with their Slavic makeup:-)

Hitler, as with many other German speakers, then and now, called the Poles "peasants", "stupid, drunken simpletons", going so far as to call them "Untermenschen", lit. "sub-humans". Although his feeling for the Jews was especially venal, he wasn't crazy about the Poles either. This feeling sadly is shared even today by even a lot of younger Germans I've encountered, whose nickname for Poles is, unfortunately, "Dodelkoenig" i.e. king of slowpokes:-)

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Vox, again, the Jews who joined the Sonderkommando, the Kapos and the Ghetto Brigades (not to mention the Judenraete) did so in order to survive! The analogy is not appropriate. The Jews were not all angels, neither were the majority of Germans, need we omit here, that virulently anti-Semitic epicenter of Poles.

There were good and bad on both sides of the fence! However, the war against the Jews was not one which the Jews waged against themselves.

You and that chap Irving ought to sit down and have a historical relativism contest. You'd both come in tiedLOL

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

The difference here, Harry & TheOther, is that the Jews were forced into concilliating with the enemy! They were fueled by fear and survival. What fueled those collaborationist Poles and others??? Primitive anti-Semitism, "fear" that the Jewish blood-libel myth was true!

There's no comparison.

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Vox, afraid it is you who are confused! Poland had NO puppet government during the Nazi period, and well into her occupation! She also had a strong Jewish as well as gentile resistance movement, similar to the Weisse Rose in Germany and the individual resistance movements in Denmark and Norway! Poland to be sure had plenty of Nazi sympathizers, not to mention her share of anti-Semites!

The Holocaust however was masterminded by the Nazis, specifically messrs. Heydrich, Himmler and Eichmann! These are historical realities which cannot be erased by wishful thinking:-)

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Hayel, we're all of us entitled to our own opinion, but NOT to our own facts:-)!!!

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

DerAndere,

Although perhaps not the majority of Germans knew about the camps, a sufficient number living near and around, knew all too well.

It's the same anywhere. All it takes for evil to take root is for good people to do nothing.

And that's exactly what happened. Furthermore, in much of society at large, only the rarest of rare exceptions will risk it all for
a stranger because it's the right thing to do. If most Germans didn't even pay lip service to the incomparable evils of Hitler, to expect them to have done the "Christian" thing's expecting just a bit too much, don't you agree?

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Only for different reasons.

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

After the War, the so-called "Werwoelfe" (Werwolves) roamed the bombed out countryside areas of Germany in bands. These were diehards who presumably still believed in the cause!

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

No dice, as we say in English, Haylel!

The ritual murder stuff's right out of the Middle Ages, mister! You excuse fellow Poles involved in the Kielce affair for being just ignorant slobs who grew up with hostility to Jews as with their own mother's milk??? I'd think a condemnation and call for re-thinking past brutalities would be a more appropriate response:-)

The Germans have been re-thinking and re-evaluating their past non-stop now for nearly seventy years counting. When will the Poles start? When the last Jew living in Poland is dead and buried??

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Agreed, one-hundred-and-one percent, JollyRomek!

No serious student of history, much less literate being, would even have the temerity to intimate that Hitler "invented" virulent anti-Semitism. Like the Reagan "Revolution" starting round about 1981 here in the States, Hitler was simply an enabler, he didn't create the ghastly stuff. In the latter case, the stuff was Jew hatred, in the former, unbridled, crony capitalism which brought out the bully businessman in us all.

Germany's already tenuous joke of a democracy (the late, lamented Weimar Republic, may she rot in peace!!!), paultry understanding of multi-culturalism, and, according to Prof. Helmut Plessner, lack of true Judeo-Christian roots, allowing Germany to easily descend into pagan barbarism, were all the true culprits in creating that which The Fuehrer merely exploited.....but oh' sooooooo easily.

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Right on, dude!

Even as late as several years ago, a Jewish acquaintance of mine from Warsaw, having recently returned to Poland, remarked that Polish Jews don't usually let on that they're Jews,for fear of having their car tires slashed!!! This was in 2009.

@Haylel,

The fact that Poland didn't have a puppet gov't. installed by the Nazis such as Vichy France, Horthy's Hungary, Seyss-Inquart in Austria, Hacha in Czechoslovakia or Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard in Romania, even Norway's Quisling nevertheless scarcely excuses a large number of Poles from fomenting Jew hatred within their own cities and towns!!

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

.....but even the all-powerful Nazi juggernaut couldn't have succeeded with the same ruthless efficiency with which it had, were it not for the able assistance from far too many willing accomplices!! While it is true that many were forced into committing heinous acts, even against their own, e.g. the kapos, members of the Sonderkommando (forget the Judenrat itself which tried to meet personally with Hitler and discuss their fate!), what pray tell forced normal, run-of-the-mill Poles AFTER THE WAR WAS OVER to herd Jews into a barn and burn them all, or to massacre innocents in a pogrom, e.g. in Kielce, huh??!

Sorry, but by '47, the "evil" Germans (sic) were long since out of commission; the Poles did it on their own.

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Amen!

Levi, to be perfectly honest, I'd post less and READ more if I were you:-) Your text is filled with half-truths, every one bent to fit your personal rant.

Spare us, please.

@Levi, if an Armenian were fortunate enough to escape from Turkey, unlike in Nazi-held Europe, the Ottoman Empire is far from an analogous example! Her tentacles didn't extend throughout the know continent of Central Asia at the time, and if an Armenian slipped through their fingers, they wouldn't likely be returned to Turkey itself and then executed.

I'm not minimizing any horror, merely placing it in it's correct historical perspective.

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Noooo, not exactly! The statute of limitations according to your own Basic Law/ post-War Constitution is determined clearly by the government of the Federal Republic:-) Israel to this day continues fighting for the extradition (Auslieferung) of any number of "former" German Nazis, e.g. Alois Brunner, accused of war crimes. Merkel has said on more than one occasion, both to the Jewish Claims Conference International as well to her own parliament, that she does NOT intend to make this debate an issue in ther campaign any longer.

Apologies myself! Posted message before reading your latest reply. SorryLOL

A general addendum to this most engaging thread!

Over the past two decades, I've had the sad duty to attend a number of Yom Hashoah Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies, both in Israel and at the UN Headquarters in New York. German, Austrian, Hungarian and Russian consular representatives each came up to speak regarding their country's complicity if not direct involvement in the Shoah. Not ONE (1) time did a representative from Poland come up to speak. While I'm not speaking about before a specifically Polish venue, I wondered for a long time, why at the former venues, the Poles stood silently while others spoke.

And I still don't have an answer.

History / Was the holocaust by Germans in Poland the worse genocide in history? [210]

Obviously, JollyRomek! On this I concur wholeheartedly, if merely from the perspective of historical accuracy!

The big issue after the War was whether crimes committed by Germans in "occupied" territory, i.e. NOW no longer technically German, could be ascribed to the present government of the that-time fledgling Federal Republic of Germany, i.e. (former) West Germany. This remains a question as fewer and fewer survivors from that period are still with us and actual first-hand memory of the period has already begun to fade, will the proverbial "statute of limitations" (Verjaehrungsfrist) run out and will therefore culpability too become a mere talking point.