History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


Sounds familiar. In Israel, the leftist parties tend to demonize the right wing parties, like Likud, by hinting that they are fascist... and we all know how that ended. What nonsense! There's no reason why a party can't be nationalist without being xenophobic and fascist, just like there can be a leftist party that's not stalinist. In the US, the republicans are saying that Obama is a socialist because he nationalized the failing banks and he wants to setup national healthcare. All these accusations, left and right, are simplistic and typical of demagogues.

About educating on the crimes of Communism. You say that


But I think that approach is inaccurate. That's what Nazism was about, but Communism was an evil of its own nature and it should be recognized for what it really was – a utopian scheme gone mad, because it was hijacked by vicious, power-hungry people and blood-thirsty tyrants. People should be educated to be very careful of movements that claim to want to liberate the common man, because they can end up enslaving the common man. Communists enslaved their own people just as much as other nations, so it's not about prejudice and tolerance. Communism and Nazism were two different diseases and it's important to diagnose each one accurately. A wrong diagnosis can fail to prevent an outbreak.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


He slurred Mel Gibson. Is he Polish?


As a foreigner I'm just guessing, but could that be because there were many Poles in the Polish communist party and they still have influence on how history is taught? Won't a public airing of that period make a lot of people in Poland uncomfortable?

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


Excuse me? That comment was a bit of an exaggeration! No one here has any hateful agenda against Poles. There's an overall assumption in Israel that the European-Christian world has prejudices against us and that in Poland it's part of the culture. That might be incorrect but it doesn't follow from that we have any hate against Europe or Poland. It's just a grudging acceptance of the fact that we're not always well-liked. If blacks in Alabama say that whites don't like them it doesn't mean the blacks have a Ku Klux Klan mentality.


I guess you mean the 1940s. In the '30s, before the german invasion, Poland had a generally anti-semitic environment – certainly in the political sphere. You might say that was not typical of most Poles, but that was the impression that stuck. I don't think there's any reason for Jewish-Polish hostility today and I don't think there really is any.

I would agree that groups of Israeli school kids who travel to Poland should be given a more accurate impression of current Polish attitudes. More contact between Polish and Israeli youth would be a good way of doing that.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


Other people's business? What 's that? Everything is everyone's business.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]

No.
Why would they think they are Jewish? It's very rare to see a Polish Jew in Israel under the age of 70. So a Polish tourist would clearly be non-Jewish, but assumed to be friendly to Israel.

If i saw a young Jewish tourist from Poland (which I never did) I would wonder why he lives there and not here.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


I don't understand the question.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


First of all let me clarify one thing - people in Israel don't normally go around talking about Poles at the breakfast table. There are more pressing matters going on here. But if you ask someone about Poles, they still think in terms of the 1930s and they'll say, "yeah, they hate us." That's because they've never been on the Polish Forum so they don't know any better.

If any of you on this forum were ever in Israel as tourists or on business, I'd like to know how people treated you. My guess is that they'd be friendly to Polish tourists because they would assume anyone visiting Israel is a friend.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


Jews don't hate Poles, but a lot of Jews assume that Poles hate us so they relate to Poles in that way. It's a reaction.


Hug a Jew.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


Do you bother to read anything I wrote?. If this is what you got out of it I can't help you.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]

The theological questions that come out of the holocaust have been discussed by smarter people than you or me, people who were there and people who weren't. I would stay away from that topic because it's a dead end.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


But Poles in the US and UK don't seem to realize that, so they say things like...


The fact that people discuss whether Poles saved or didn't save Jews from the Nazis indicates that Poles were in a different situation and were in a position to save Jews (at the risk of death) because they weren't targeted for extinction, yet.

If the Nazi plan to exterminate the Polish speaking people actually reached the stage of being implemented, then there would be no difference. But the Germans were defeated before that could happen, thank G-d.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


Of course it was much harder for Poles and Russians than for Americans or British because that's where the fighting was. And the german occupation was far more brutal to Poles than to the french. (And unlike France, Poland didn't have a collaborationist government). But my point is to explain that the Jews were not war casualties, but murder victims. And that's why Jews jump whenever we're told that not only Jews were killed.


It shouldn't be. That's an impression I'm trying to correct here. WWII was one catastrophe and the holocaust was another. The effects they had on each other are many and complex.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]

We Jews don't say that only Jews were killed or suffered the most in the war. Millions of people suffered. What was different about what happened to the Jews, what we refer to as the holocaust, is that they weren't killed in the war. What do I mean by that? I mean that the German program to exterminate the Jews was not part of the war – if anything it was hampered by the war. Had there been no war after the invasion of Poland, they would have killed every last Jew they got there hands on. The Germans started the program way before the war started, with severe persecution in the 1930s, and eventually declared the program's goal to be the extermination of ALL the Jews. Not just communists, not just the bankers, not just religious Jews, but every single Jew. The people who were gassed at treblinka were not war casualties, they were victims of a systematic program of extermination that was designed specifically for Jews and Roma and not any other ethnic group that I'm aware of.

The millions of Poles and Russians and others all over the world that were killed in the war were mostly casualties of a war that didn't distinguish between combatants and civilians. Some of them were murdered in camps for political affiliation or for opposing the regime – in other words, for their actions, not for the "crime" of being born. It was a human tragedy that they were killed, but it's a whole different event than what happened to the Jews. That's why we get frustrated and defensive when these arguments are brought up.

USA, Canada / Marriage laws: dual citizenship (Polish and US) preparing to get married to an American. [65]

Do you like living in Poland better than living in Amman?

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


There's nothing antisemitic about questioning the Jewish narrative. What's antisemitic is perpetuating stereotypes like this...


We Jews won't be satisfied till you give us our pound of christian flesh.

Food / Is carp indigenous to Israel? [39]


All I know about is St Peters Fish (which we call "Amnun") and I've also seen catfish near the restaurants on the shore, lapping up what falls in the water. But we don't eat catfish. There are also little fish that nibble at you when you swim there, but I don't know what they're called.


So I guess an appropriate symbol for christianity could be Gefilte Fish made of carp.

Food / Is carp indigenous to Israel? [39]


No.


Yes.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


That answers my question to Greg. Poles moved in, and I 'm not passing judgement on people who did that because it's behind us now. All this was a result of the holocaust and the war. But Greg seems to think that no Jews lost property as a result of the holocaust, and that there's no justification for a surviving Jew to reclaim his property.


To me? I have no claims anywhere in poland.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


No idea at all. But just answer this: After the Nazis emptied a town of its Jews, what happened to their homes? Specifically, after the war was over, who moved in, who assumed ownership of the property?

History / What British unit liberated Poland in 1945?? [445]


Because our religion is a national religion.We are a nation that has it's own religion and we're a religion that has it's own nation. Our nationhood was on hold because of the exile from the land of Israel, and so it took a different form, emphasizing the religion. Jews were absorbed (some more, some less) into the counties where we lived, so individuals like you, for example, can choose to identify as a Canadian of the Jewish faith. That's your right as an individual. But the core of the nation has never lost its identity. Now that we have a country again, the nature of our nationhood is shifting again, and it puts people like you in an ambiguous state. But these issues will iron themselves out over the next 200 years or so.

Food / Cabbage and Noodles of Poland - Golabki? [30]


We do that here in Israel too. We call it "Poika". I have no idea where the word comes from, but young people do this at campfires (without the bacon).

It's funny to hear that stuffed cabbage is called Halupki. In Yiddish it's called "Holopches", apparently derived from Halupki. Among Jews there is "Polish" style Holopches which is sweet and sour, and "Galicianer" style which is less sweet and has more salt and pepper.

Life / WHY ARE POLISH CALENDARS SKEWED? [42]

On my Mac calendar the week starts with Sunday.



You can thank the Jews for the whole idea of a 7 day week with a day of rest. We got the idea from G-d, Jesus kept shabbat, you guys got the idea from him, although someone changed it to Sunday, and the Muhamad liked the idea too and used it in Islam, changing it to Friday. The 7 day cycle has no astronomical logic. It was a gift from the creator.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]

There could be two people on the island, a Jew and a Pole. Each one votes for himself and then of course nobody wins. The Jew blames it on anti-semitism and the Pole blames it on a Jewish conspiracy. Then they would have to make a coalition which would carry out a policy neither one of them likes. In the end they both compain about how democracy is a sham.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


That's the problem we have in Israel's democracy. Politicians work to please their parties rather than the voters. So the citizen's influence is very indirect. So disregard my comment about democracies. I still stand by my comment about individual responsibility. The point is that when people start blaming an invisible hand for their troubles or their sins it's usually an excuse.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


Sounds like a way of evading responsibility. The man on the street may not be responsible for the situation of the world but he is responsible for his own behavior. In a democracy he's also responsible for choosing the "guy in the corner".

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]

Oh. Well, that clears it up.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


Is that a Polish expression? Why don't you explain it.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


It's discussed as a polish phenomenon here because this is a Polish forum. Also because everything that happened in the holocaust is magnified in Poland since that's where the most Jews lived and died. There's no question that the other nations you mentioned were notorious in betraying Jews to the Nazis and that French and Dutch participated in rounding up their Jews and that Ukrainians and Baltics took part in the slaughter. But this discussion is about Poland. If I would be on a Lithuanian forum I'd give them hell, but then what's more boring than a Lithuanian forum.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


Jews were shipped out of towns to be killed and their property was taken over by Polish squatters. The few survivors who came back to claim it after the war were driven away. Which is the part you don't understand?


Nobody says the government of Poland is responsible for Jedwabne. What people say is that Poles massacred Jews, because that apparently is what happened there. Whether that means Poles are anti-semites is for you Poles to discuss among yourselves. I don't care.


No. I use words like "often" when I don't have statistics. This isn't a court of law, so I don't don't need to bring numbers. My point is still valid, that the shocking thing is NOT the squatters in former Jewish property but the murders. I'm not talking about pogroms, which may have been isolated incidents, but murders of individual Jewish returnees. How many murders were there? Enough to be a phenomenon and not a freak incident.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]

vetala


I see. I didn't see the original quote on that website till now. But after reading what he wrote, what's the most horrible thing is not that people moved into his house (let's assume they thought the owners were dead), but that jews returning to their town were murdered by their former neighbors. And it's known that this happened in quite a few places. Is it any wonder that Jews who left Poland after the war are bitter about their former neighbors?