News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

If I were Polish, I would be embarassed by this thread. So much hatred over one news article. Don't worry. Jews don't want to come back to Poland. We have our own country now and we don't want yours.

I live in Israel and I know many people whose grandparents were from Poland. I know of only one who reclaimed his family's property. And that only happened when he got a bill from the Krakow Municipality for back taxes on his property from 1946.

Poles have been worrying about Jews returning and taking back their plundered homes ever since the end of the Holocaust, when they murdered returning survivors. Maybe this sensitivity is the result of a guilty conscience.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

Remember the ND party from the 30s. This was before the German occupation.

This from Wikipedia:

In the newly independent Second Polish Republic, the ND was represented first by Związek Ludowo-Narodowy (the National Populist Union), and from 1928 by Stronnictwo Narodowe (the National Party). A chief characteristic of ND policies was their emphasis on Polonization of minorities: ND politicians such as Dmowski and Stanisław Grabski contributed to the failure of Piłsudski's proposed Międzymorze federation and of the alliance with the Ukrainian leader Symon Petlura, and to the alienation of Poland's ethnic minorities. After Piłsudski's May 1926 Coup d'État, the ND found itself in constant opposition to his Sanation regime. To fight the Sanation movement, the ND created Obóz Wielkiej Polski (the Great Poland Camp).

Simultaneously the ND emphasized its anti-Semitic program, aimed at excluding Jews from Polish social and economic life and ultimately at pushing them to emigrate from Poland[citation needed]. Antisemitic actions and incidents ? boycotts, demonstrations, even pogroms ? organized or inspired by National Democrats mounted in the 1930s[citation needed]. The most notorious actions were taken by radical young NDs who formed the fascist-inspired, antisemitic National Radical Camp (ONR) [2]

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

And...
That shows that Polish people didn't become hostile to Jews as a result of the german occupation or any other excuse. They were hostile before that. Some reasons:

a- they saw the jews as competition, and b-because the jews were demonized by the polish church, and c- because polish nationalism was based on ethnicity which exccluded jews.

Just look at the comments in this forum to see irrational, paranoid attitudes toward jews even though there are practically none left in Poland.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

You quoted articles about meir Kahana, who was considered an extreist in Israel and was therefore banned from the parliament. Anyone can find a quote to justify any argument. That's meaningless. I'm talking about mainstream polish political parties in the 30s. Do you deny that the ND were antisemitic? They were very open about being against the jews.

But that's in the past. Let's talk about today: Why do some Poles (and you seem to be one of them) hate jews today when we are no longer living in poland and have no role at all in polish politics or economy? Isn't that paranoia?

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

What does that answer mean?

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

You're doing the same thing you think I'm doing: You think I'm rejecting your argument by labelling it "antisemitic". So you reject my argument by labelling it as an accusation of "antisemitism".

But I'm saying something factual: There are many Poles who still hate Jews even though no Jews are in Poland any more. What is their problem?

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

Matyjasz,
If this were a forum about Israel and I kept bringing up Polish attitudes about Jews you would be right - I would have a problem. But I entered this forum about Poland, and before I wrote a single post, all over the place i see posts that talk about Jews - that they want to come back to Poland, that the "commie Jews" are still in Poland, that we're not really Jews but Khazars... and list goes on. And it's mostly nasty stuff. So I'm reacting. I'm pointing out that some of you have a Jew complex. You stop talking about Jews and I'll stop. I came into this place to learn more about Poland. I already know about Jews.

Grzegorz,
I don't like Aaron Spelling either. I'll bring that up at the next meeting of the Elders of Zion.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

If most poles are not antisemitic that's good news.
Despite what you might think, I've been to Poland and have no complaints about the people I met. I had no experience with antisemitism (except for grafitti with a gallows hanging a star of david, and "Poland for the Poles" scribbles). I met a few Poles that were extremely friendly and hospitable, in Krakow, Lodz and in my grandfathers town, Warta. In speaking to some people I noticed a heavy pause, a hesitation, when they understood that I was from Israel. But no outright hostility. I don't need everyone to love Jews. But when I come across bigotry, as I did in some posts here, I confront it.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

Aren't from Poland? You don't sound so friendly to me.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

Do I sound hostile? I love Poland.
But enough about me...

You're from Gdansk, right? And you are part german. Does that mean that you are descended from the germans of Danzig when it was a german city?

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]


I don't remember writing that. But anyway, I know that many Poles are not. I've spoken to Poles who are wonderful friendly people and they knew I was Israeli. But you have to admit that historically there was hostility, as there was in germany, lithuania, ukraine, russia, rumania, hungary.... Poland is spoken of more because that's where there were the most Jews (10% of the population). I'm not saying you are to blame for what people did back then, but let's be honest about history.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

Pilsudski,
Using the phrase "The Jewish Bolsheviks" is demagoguery. The bolsheviks were anti-Jewish.
There were Polish communists too. So why don't you talk about "The Polish Bolsheviks".

There were Jewish communists who did terrible things. But they did them despite the fact that they were born Jewish, not because they were Jewish. Jewish communists were atheists who left the Jewish religion and broke away from their communities. People who remained Jews were persecuted by the communists. The communists dismantled jewish community organizations and sent the leaders to siberia. Then they forced three generations of Jews to abandon their way of life and assimilate. Stalin was a butcher who killed every ethnic group and even his wife. Some of his henchmen were ex-Jews and many more were ex-christians. "The Jews" as a group had nothing to do with starvation in ukraine. Individual Jews who were involved with stalin were all killed by him later. They were not mourned by the Jewish community.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

Lenin was Jewish?! Talmudic vengeance? Funded by Jews? You're spouting paranoid nonsense lifted from crackpot websites. Not worth answering.

Goodnight

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

I admit it. I killed the Czar. I also killed Jesus. I killed Kennedy too, and also Julius Caesar. I really got to stop doing stuff like that.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

About Israelis moving to Poland: It won't happen. Despite the news you see on TV, Israel is very good counbtry to live in and few Israelis are leaving. Those who do, go to the US, as people all over the world seem to be doing. So why are some trying to get Polish poassports? Simply to be able work and travel freely in the EU.

About Jews claiming pre-WWII property: That's more of an emotional issue (wanting justice or revenge) than a desire to move to Poland. It's not even a financial issue for most, since most of the porperties were just homes in small towns with little commercial value. Most of the Jewish property of pre war Poland has no claimants since the owners and their children were killed.

About Jews being a religion or an ethnic group:
We are an ethnic group that has its own religion. We all (except converts) descend from Jacob (also called Israel). It's all in the Bible, and our history is probably the most documented story in the world. Why is there so much variation in our appearance? Because we are not racially "pure". Converts who joined us over thousands of years brought in other traits to our genetic pool. Some of us have some Polish genes and some have some Perisan genes, etc. so that creates some cosmetic differences. But we all share the genes we got from the ancient Hebrew people who you read about in the Bible. Racial purity is not considered an important thing in our culture. As long as someone's mother is a Jew, that person is a Jew by Jewish law - no matter what other ancestors the person had.

About Communist Jews: As I said above, by Jewish law they are Jews. But what they did was not done by "THE JEWS" because they did it as renegades from the Jewish community and certainly from the jewish religion. Their philosophy was that Jews should disappear and assimilate with the other "workers". Communists wanted all national differences to disappear and become the "working class". This was all ******** of course, but Jewish communists were the first to give up their jewish identity (especially marx who hated jews). So blaming "THE JEWS" for what communists did is like blaming Poland for what the communists did.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

About your last question: We stem from one man and his children who married with canaanites, Ishmaelites and all kinds of other "ites". Jacobs wife was an Aramite.

As far as real stuff: Most historians accept the general historical picture that's in the Bible even if they don't accept the personal details. Religious Catholics would have to accept it if the believe that the Bible is from God. Anyway, I accept it (and I'm not even Catholic).

The Arabs in the ME are close to us genetically too. There have been studies where they look for a certain gene marker that's common to Jews and they see it in different ethnic groups in different amounts. Middle east people share it too. Arabs across the middle east are also not all the same. Some look completely white and some are black (Sudan). The Arab world is more of cultural thing than a racial thing.

Anyway, the Arabs and Jews are not of a different race from eachother. That's why it bothers me when Europeans think it has something to do with racism. It's simply a conflict between two ethnic groups, like there was between Poles and Ukrainians. Not every conflict is about race.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

About why some Jews were attracted to communism: In the 19th and 20th century, all of eastern europe was developing national awareness, based on ethnicity. So Polish nationalism centered around the Polish ethnic group and Catholicism (Polska dla Polakow!). Ukrainian nationalism centered around the Ukrainian ethnic group and their religion, hungarians, lithuanians, etc the same. Jews were squeezed out by this. They had no specific territory to become independent in. The other nationalisms defined themselves in opposition to the Jews. That's why Jews in Austro-Hungary were patriotic for the empire because that framework gave them a chance for a decent life, while ethnic patriotism left them out. But in Czarist Russia the government was blatantly anti-Jewish so the Jews couldn't root for them. What framework could Jews hope for (except emigrating to the US)?

Some felt that the only hope was our own national home in the only territory we had ties to: Israel. Others fell for the dream of a Europe without nationalism, where the "working class" would unite all people regardless of ethnicity and bring equality and freedom. The Jews who joined this movement did so in an attempt to erase their "separateness" and be not Jewish both in the religions AND the ethnic sense. This turned out to be a fake dream because the leaders, Lenin, Stalin and their henchmen, were interested in power and were no less ruthless than the czar. Stalin especially used anti-semitism as a tool whenever it suited him.

Pretty soon, most Jews became disillusioned. But some became enthusiastic participants. Among their victims were the Zionists, the Jewish labor movement (the Bund) and the masses of religious Jews. It's ironic and unjust that the crimes of these communists are blamed on the nation that they attempted to escape from.

You say that to blame the Polish nation for the crimes of individuals would be unjust as well. That's true particularly if those crimes were done against the interests and the feelings of the Polish nation, like those who collaborated with the germans. But the crimes of some Polish groups, such as the Endec before the war and the AK during the war, who both targeted Jews, even while fighting the Germans, were done in the name of Polish patriotism. Was this what Poles really wanted? The massacre at Kielce after the war seemed to say that it was. So Jews got the impression that after all they and the Poles went through during the war, nothing had changed. It was still "Polska dla Polakow" and certainly not a place for Jews to remain. Even though a new generation has grown up meanwhile among both peoples, it's an impression that takes a long time to fade away.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]


This is really amusing. If the Pope's mother was Jewish, then he was Jewish! I'll leave it to the members of this forum to chew on that for a while. I thought he was a nice man. So for my part, as a Jew, I accept him into the fold.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]


I don't understand what "crap" you are referring to. What I meant was that according to Jewish religious law a person whose mother was Jewish is considered a Jew, meaning that he has all the obligations and legal standing of a Jew. He is obligated to keep the laws of the Torah and can marry only another Jew, etc. In the spititual sense, he is part of the nation of Israel. If a person is not aware of his being Jewish then he's not held responsible by Jewish law for not having kept the laws. (Unlike Christianity and Islam, we don't believe that non-Jews are required to keep the rules of our religion, only the 7 laws of the children of Noah.)

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

Celinski,
I finally found something we have in common. Actually two things:
1. We both were frozen in time in the 1940s, in the sense that our attitudes toward Poland, Jews, etc is pretty much set by the situation during and after the war. Whatever changes have occured in Poland since then, especially after Communism fell, have little effect on the impressions we got as children learning from our parents and grandparents. In the long term, our perspective might be more accurate than people who judge the situation according to the past 10 years. And by the way, although it's true that there's more awareness of Jewish suffering than of Polish suffering, that's not because Jews suppress the Polish story. Who's stopping Polish people from writing books and making movies about Polish narrative? I would love to read more about that.

2. You have horses! I love horses and I go riding every other friday at a ranch near my town. I go with 2 or 3 people riding (western) in the orchards and fields of the Sharon valley. If you're ever in israel you are welcome to join us.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

Celinski, you say "When I do research for documents I have been unable to seach because I am not Jewish."
Are you saying that you've tried to do reasearch in a Jewish holocaust library or museum and they refuse to allow you to do research because you are not Jewish? That doesn't sound plausible to me.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]


Hmmm. Katz... Kaczorowska. Now why didn't i think of that before? Well that proves it! JPII was an alien from a Jewish planet who's been broadcasting radio messages to unsuspecting Catholics to make them like gefilte fish. The only way you could have known that is if you were a freemason yourself, Pilsudski! Don't think we don't notice that "joepilsudski" backwards spells "iks dus lipe oj", which is talmudic hebrew for "have a pleasant shabbes". We've got your number.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

Reply to Przemas:
Where it's possible to compensate for stolen homes and businesses, then compensation should be made - to Poles, to Jews - it makes no difference. (Germans are another story, since they caused the whole mess in the first place, so they deserve no compensation.)


Why is that? I honestly don't understand your point. Did we invade Poland? I wasn't aware that we had an army back then.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

I realize that. I was just pointing out what his status would be according to Jewish law. Of course his mother wasn't Jewish anyway, so it's not really important.

On the other hand, his head covering did look a bit suspicious to me...

• 
  popekippah.jpg
  

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

Actually there is a summer version. They have a lightweight long black jacket for the summers. I was wondering if there is a Polish origin for the "shtreimel" the fur hat worn by hassidic Jews on sabbath and holidays. Some of them (originally from Gora Kalwaria) have fur hats called "spodek". Any information on that?

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

That's the round fur hat, usually made of beaver pelts. The Spodek is a taller narrower shape, and the Shtreimel is wider and lower.

• 
  shtreimel.jpg
  
• 
  Spodik.jpg
  

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]


No, I haven't switched them around. These are well-known terms, and people still wear these hats in certain parts of Israel and in some neighborhoods of New York. But you're right, that one would think that the wide hat is a spodek. My great-grandfather had a workshop in Jerusalem back in the 1920s that manufactured these kind of hats, and my mother remembered helping him as a little girl, matching up the pelts.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

What we call the noachide laws are the commands given by God to Noah after the flood. They are as follows:

Do not murder.
Do not steal.
Do not worship idols.
Do not be sexually immoral.
Do not eat a limb removed from a live animal.
Do not curse God.
Set up courts and bring offenders to justice.

Since we believe all mankind is decended from Noah, we believe that these laws are binding to all mankind and are the basis of civil society. But we don't care one way or the other what religions non-Jews take for themselves. In answer to your question, which I hope wasn't facetious: Most Jewish legal authorities do not consider Christianity to be idolatry, and certainly don't consider Islam to be idolatry. We don't believe in these religions and Jews are forbidden to practice them, but we don't mind if non-Jews practice them. The penalties for idol worship referred to the foreign cults that threatened the Jewish religion in ancient Israel such as Ba'al worship. From the time of the Romans the Jewish courts had no juristicion over things like that and I know of no case where anyone was put to death for worshiping idols after biblical times, certainly no christian, since we were no longer soveriegn when the christian religion came into being.

So instead of bringing up a theoretical situation (of you being executed for idolatry) I would rather point out that untold numbers of Jews were put to death by christians for not being christian, from the middle ages onward till the 20th century.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]

Rape and plunder are more an issue of battlefield ethics (or lack of ethics).
My point was more about execution of civilians for religious "crimes" not in time of war.
I was trying to reassure Joepilsudski who seemed concerned about his personal safety.

News / 10,000 ISRAELIS READY TO CLAIM FOR POLISH CITIZENSHIP AND POLISH LAND! [628]


A few examples off hand:
the spanish inquisition, the crusades (Jews were massacred by local crusaders in the rhineland well before they came anywhere near the muslim enemy), the massacre at Cliffords Tower in York in 1190, various Easter day pogroms such as Kishinev in 1903. That kind of thing.