Pole-basher Gross up to old tricks

You should start a campaign against all the American GI's that brought back all that loot from Europe with tham.

The act of desecrating graves is in itself disgusting, agreed here, but technically, I'm not sure you can steal from a dead person. It seems that while an act of theft itself may indeed occur when an item is been taken out of the grave, but it is not a theft from the deceased person , but rather from the person's heirs, if there are any.

Lets see i'm still a Polish citizen like i've been since birth, all my ancestors as far as my family can trace are Poles, i live in America, compare the two sides what am I ? You're not even a Polish citizen and you're trying to say that Jews belong in Poland, if you love em so much move to Israel!!

yep and against the Polish, Russian, French and just about anyone else who did it too.

I'm not excusing anyone here.

Stealing things from a dead soldier is bad enough but stealing from the mass grave or any grave at all is even worse.


call it anyway you want, stealing or "taking away", it's still disgusting.

Who said anything about stealing from dead soldiers? Try stealing fro local population, museums and other public buildings, the things Germans looted from museums etc. It's not like they needed those things to survive they well well paid after all, just try to guess what their motivation might have been for that act. Certainly not an act of desperation, now is it?

One who has sworn that he has no allegiance at all to Poland, i.e. a traitor.


You live in America. You live there as a citizen of the USA. You have sworn allegiance to the USA. You have never sworn allegiance to Poland. You have renounced and abjured all allegiance and fidelity to Poland. You have never in any way renounced any allegiance to the USA. You are American because you choose to be: your Polishness comes purely from an accident of birth. You are not Polish: you are American.

In many ways you are more disgusting than the Poles who dug through the mass graves at the AR camps: they did what they did because they needed to survive; you betrayed Poland simply to make your life easier.


If you love Poland so much, move here.
On second thoughts, don't: we like it here and you'd only pollute the place.

I already said how I feel about stealing in general. I don't make any excuses at all but in this thread it is all about stealing from the dead and I find it way more disgusting.

I will post my statement again so you won't feel personally (as a Pole) attacked or bashed or whatsoever.

What I'm saying here is not directed against anyone in particular, it's my general opinion about it.

wrong argument. Consensus views are of insufficient value when it comes deciding whether something is true or not. There was once a consensus view about the Sun revolving around the Earth.


Finkelstein is much closer to being historian than Jan Gross, who is has a degree in physics and sociology.


Completely irrelevant. Both you and I can name any number of giants of science and intellect who never set foot in an Ivy League school. The ideas and achievements of those prominent scientists is taught in places like Princeton. Sadly, some of it but pretty mediocre types.

So is cannibalism yet things like that happen and there are plenty of examples in recent history of disgusting things people do in order to survive.

I'm not denying that those things did not take place in Poland but it is a taboo in Polish culture to do so. The individual cases that might have happen are certainly not on the mass scale that the American GI's committed, nor was the motivation for this act the same. One thing to throw stones and point fingers something you are good at but take a good look at yourself first before you do so.

You forgot about one detail. The US oath of allegiance is bogus. It ends with "so help me God", which in a State with the official separation of Church and State is equivalent to " just kiddin' ".

I didn't have to i was born there


How? my own country? I think 99% of Poles would see you a foreigner as the pollution not me LOL

Fine. So produce us a quote from somebody in the Princeton history department who says that Gross is not a historian good enough to work there. There are clearly plenty of people at Stanford who didn't think that Davies wasn't a good enough historian to work there. As you no doubt know, given that you keep diverting discussion about Poland's pet historian by raising the topic of the anti-semites' favourite political scientist.


Which explains why Gross is a professor of history at an Ivy League university and Finkelstein has never worked anywhere ever in any position involving being a historian. Oh, and remind me how many degrees in history Finkelstein has.


Really? Is that why your hero Finkelstein decided that Princeton would be the best place for him to get his Ph. D?

I think that the problem is that Gross actually went to prison in Poland for his political views and since being expelled from Poland has made a great success of his life. You on the other hand didn't and haven't. Never mind.


That isn't what witness statements of the time (and a lot later) say.

Perhaps, but do tell was it a common place assurance in Poland at the time? Did it happen all over Poland?

It didn't happen all over Poland (from what I know) but it certainly did happen at all of the AR death camps and at a number of the other AK camps. It also happened in Warsaw and also at a few other towns which used to have large Jewish communities. I haven't heard about it happening in other places but that may well be because I haven't looked when it comes to most places. It's not exactly something that is mentioned in the history section of a town's website.


And you also forget one tiny detail: the 'so help me God' is entirely optional. Nice try though.


And then you decided that you didn't want to be Polish and you wanted to be American. You could very easily have stayed where you were (i.e. the USA) and still been Polish. But you decided to become American and you live every day as an American. You are not Polish: you are an American traitor and a liar.


What have you ever done for Poland? Well, apart from making the country a far nicer place by leaving and not coming back. I do more for Poland every day than you've done in your entire life!

I did what Poles living in America have been doing for 200 years sending money back to Poland, to their families, visiting etc. billions of dollars every years.


I gotta send you a dictionary: Pole someone who was born, is a citizen, or is of Polish ancestry. I fit all 3 you NONE. Now take your medication and go to sleep.

It's also a hearsay and rumours not documented cases, anyway give me an overall estimate of participants in each case, point is it's a taboo to commit such an act so it did not happen on mass no matter how desperate the circumstances and temptation to do so would have been.

The issue is whether he is diligent or not. He is not and it doesn't require a person from the same school to show that. Facts are independent of where someone has his office.


As many as Gross.


Is the personal attack in a cowardly distraction from Chomsky's comments I linked to?


Don't encourage him. It's already damaged what he thinks is his brain.

So you mean that you have done precisely what I thought you have done: exactly nothing.


I can be a Polish citizen any time I want to. You on the other hand, live as an American in America. You got tired of living in Poland and then you got tired of living in America as a Pole. You are Polish than Anthony Sawoniuk!


No, it is well documented: just go to Belzec and ask at the museum. Check with locals (although none of them personally did any digging). Pay particular attention to why a farm was established on the site within months of the camp being closed. Go to Wlodawa and ask the director of the Sobibor museum what happened when there were archaeological excavations. Read pretty much any book about the post-war years at Auschwitz.

Alternatively just spout off here without knowing a damn thing: that after all is what suits you best.


So your position is that Princeton would employ a professor that they know not to be diligent. Interesting.


Not at all: I'd be quite happy to point out the same to your face.


And how is your lovely daughter?

Since we're discussing Gross' credibility, I'd just like to remind you all that no matter how respected he may be as a historian, there are other historians who are respected just as much as he is (Gunnar S. Paulsson, for one) and yet their view about wartime Polish-Jewish relations is completely opposite to that of Gross. Whose word should we accept as the truth, then?

In my opinion, it might be due to the fact that in every historical books there's only about 10% of facts and the rest is pure speculation and private views on the matter.

z darius wrote:


if you read my posts, you know exactly why I "flip" when people make certain comments about the USA.

They don't have to know it.


You still haven't uttered a word on the subject. I'm not surprised. It would push your self ridicule to the limits if you tried to discredit the academic qualifications of Chomsky.

But then, given some 3 decades of your brain on ventolin that wouldn't surprise me either.


So your reasons are better than others'.
OK, sorry, didn't realize that.

Well then clearly you should email them about it, seeing as you know better than the history department at Princeton who is and is not a diligent historian.


What is there to discuss? A political scientist who wasn't good enough to make tenure at a minor university may (or may not, you have yet to give us even a single word by Finkelstein about grave robbing at Treblinka) disagree about a point of historical fact with a tenured professor at Princeton. Only somebody as blinded by bigotry as you are would think that the political scientist is more likely to be right.


Actually, it was the three night in Wroclaw on (top of, mainly) something far more memorable, but you can talk about that over dinner tonight.

I would say cheap sensationalism. And need to make a buck, or two. Desperate people trying to survive after the brutal war: WOW, what a shocker!!

I totally agree with you there.

Like I said you don't see me denying it, however blindly taking the word of Gross as gospel and him alike is also not the way to go, sensationalism will only get you so far. You have admitted yourself he has an Axe to grind and his personal opinion is just that; as for his motivation, well we both know as to what it is.

As I said back in my first comment: "As for this book, I am absolutely astounded that anybody could write a book about something which is so utterly obvious."

Still trying to avoid the answer. Understandable.
After all, why should we believe your opinion of Finkelstein over that of Chomsky's.


Put these drugs away Harry. You may not get better but at least there is a chance you'll stop getting worse.


which is what Finkelstein says all along. Gross is yet another mediocre scribe trying to make a buck or two.

No: we just see you calling it "hearsay and rumours not documented cases" when in reality it is actually very well documented at all of the AR death camps and at Auschwitz as well.

One example: here is an extract from the testimony of dward Luczynski, a Pole who lived in Belzec "After levelling and cleaning the area of the extermination camp, the Germans planted the area with small pines and left. At that moment, the whole area was plucked to pieces by the neighbouring population, who were searching for gold and valuables.

That's why the whole surface of the camp was covered with human bones, hair ashes from cremated corpses, dentures, pots and other objects."

And here is a Russian photo taken at Treblinka circa 1944:

Did those bones dig themselves up?

I wonder what "sensational" discovery will be the topic of his next book? People like Gross and his "historical" books will be on garbage of history soon enough.

Probably 'pisssing off Poles sells lots of books and makes Polish idiots reveal themselves as idiots'.