Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto?

How is it then, that the Nazis tried to erect similar such sites in, among other places, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Scandinavia and France, yet failed in large measure to the extent of Austria, Germany, and Poland?? The Nazis had their greatest "success" in places such as Poland, Ukraine, above all, Latvia and Lithuania, traditionally seats of Jewish diasporic learning, today, graveyards for Jewish life. Why? Care to explain? Sheer coincidence, perhaps?

All it took for the Nazis to seize control of a given territory of interest, was for the local populace en masse to support them!!

Just remember the words of John Steinbeck: "My greatest fear would be to be condemned to be an anti-semitic dictator in Ireland, for fear of being laughed to death!"

Without grassroots support, albeit not nationwide, Auschwitz would never have become what it became and Oswiecim would merely have remained another sleepy Polish small town.

Anti-semitism etc. doesn't operate in a vacuum, spiritus. It's a disease which needs feeding as surely as you and I need water to drink, food to eat and air to breathe!!

L., you are making the common mistake of implying that only Jewish people were in those camps.

@Lyzko

You have got to be kidding me. There was no such conspiracy between poles and Nazis to kill jews and establish concentration camps. If poles did help build such camps its because an ss guy was ready to shoot them immediately if they refused to comply.

Here are several facts:

1. Polish people have the most 'righteous among the gentile' awards from yad vashem for saving the lives of jews
2. Poland was bombed to oblivion. Approximately the same amount of poles died as polish Jews within polish territory - roughly 3 mil poles died while the Jewish count in Poland is closer to 2.7 mil (according to wiki its literally one of the first sentences when searching for Nazi crimes against poland/ Nazi invasion of Poland.

3. The armia krawoja was one of the largest if not the largest underground army
4. The uprising in Warsaw was the largest insurgency in ww2 in Nazi occupied territory
5. There is very few attacks committed by poles against Jews. The most famous is jedwabne in which around 100 200 Jews died. A tiny number compared to the overall deaths of both poles and Jews.

6. Aushwitz held both poles and Jews. Saint max Kolbe perished there. He lived for nearly a month in a starvation bunker and still shared his tiny ration with fellow prisoners which wouldve undoubtedly been Jews.

7. Nazi Germany invaded Austria without a shot fired - the total opposite happened in Poland.
8. Poland was where most of Europe's Jews lived so it simply made logistical sense to open up concentration camps closest to the people the nazis were trying to exterminate.

9. Poland was the 1st country the nazis invaded - technically 2nd if you count czechy although the allies pretty much gave him part of the country but he felt like invading the rest anyway.

Then to top it off the Soviets invaded Poland and it became a commie nation for the next 50 years. Soviets and Jews were in charge of all the highest ministries and nearly half of the security services positions were occupied by Jews following the war. People such as michniks brother sentenced scores of polish ak patriots to death. While many Jews were keen to exact revenge on poles and do the Soviets bidding because for whatever reason they believed poles didn't do enough, eventually the Soviets started arresting and killing them too for not falling in line with soviet agendas.

Nonetheless, Poles most certainly did acquiesce to some degree, at least to the anti-Semitic decrees of their German overlords!!
The Nazis were evil, yet hardly fools. They counted on the intrinsic anti-Jewish hostility throughout much of Central and Eastern Europe, hoping that the local populace would join them in their racially-driven purges.

The fact that the Poles, certain Hungarians, Ukrainians, Norwegians etc. even resisted as much as they did, took the Germans by complete surprise.

Sure, if they didn't want to hand or have all member if their family shot, or all villages destroyed, with their population wiped out for not jumping high enough to German order, You can call it acquiesce and I can call you a moron or a troll.,

Giving direction to a Jew - dead
Giving him a piece bread - dead
Hiding a Jew in your house - dead to all the people in the house.
In your beloved Denmark those above weren't even offences except for the last one which carried a prison sentence in a nice Danish prison run by the Danish guards. So why don't you scram with you ignorant BS?

All populations were threatened by the Nazis. It was a question of how they dealt with the threat.

Even in "halcyon" times in Poland, according to Roman Visniac along with other older contemporaries, often in the smaller villages, a well-aimed rock through the window around Christmas, followed by "DIRTY JEWS!" wasn't far behind.

Then again, Jews DID often react to such by spitting on select religious icons in a local church, I won't say they didn't. The latter though, WAS to an extent understandable revenge for being attacked in the first place.

Jews aren't "saints" either, smart guy!

they weren't threatened equally, you missed an obvious clue in the examples I provided Mr Smart guy. What up? Your reading comprehension suck or you are gonna blame it on my English. eh?

Also a natural tension and grudges between different ethnical and religious group doesn't necessarily translate into general collaboration with Germans of the populace or mass murders committed by the Polish populace on Jews. What a factual evidence do you have to support your views beside your prejudice?

Name one Polish organization, a political movement, that postulated ethnic cleansings and murder of the Jews as a part of their programme!
If you can't you can go and suck on it. In a civilized society casting aspersions is considered a scummy behaviour and against the law.

I never contended that the "threat" (my word here, not yours) was in any way equal. What I said was that the manner with which it was handled varied considerably from country to country.

Hungary, for instance, had the infamous "Arrow Crossers", local bush league Nazi sympathizers and emulators who organized squads to murder the Jews of Budapest by throwing them into the Danube, shooting them first, then dumping their bloody corpses into the waters.

Denmark, by contrast, organized local citizenry EN MASSE to fight against, rather than overtly cooperate with, Hitler. Recall Kaj Munk's moving (and final) Sunday morning sermon, which he never finished, and began (paraphrasing from the original) "My fellow countrymen, it is high time we rose from the comfortable complacency of our pews this Sunday morning, returned to our homes and seized arms to fight against the common enemy!"

According to reports from the time, NOBODY lingered for a moment, and the church stalls were EMPTY within minutes as the populace, both young and old, left the building to act as their pastor had instructed.

Multiply thousands of Sochas Pileckis etc. by nearly every second Dane:-) Do the math, fella, the arithmetic's staggering!

Speaking of Hungary you also had people like Soros who admits to going around stealing his fellow Jews stuff. He says that was the happiest time of his life. This was during a 60 mins interview.

The Danes had their own government during ww2. Poland did not. They were in exile in the UK till communism collapsed. They could only give messages in secret. Also Denmark Belgium France etc weren't bombed to oblivion like Poland was.

Well, not entirely accurate, but yes, Poland did suffer physical damage, yet nowhere near the extent of cities like Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Munich or Guernica in Spain.

I think the real loss for Poland was indeed not buildings, but people.
20 percent of the civilian population gone!
Yes for example Krakow is still as it was.
Warsaw was destroyed.

Good example. Krakow and, I think, Warsaw as well. Check me on that one, I've no stats off the top of my head:-)

Oh, ok! Thanks for that.

Lyzko you need to read more history before you make inaccurate sweeping statements...:)

My statements are neither of the above! One rarely has all the prerequisite info at one's fingertips. Furthermore, I used to teach history. Does that surprise you? It shouldn't.

Recently, a Polish gentleman with an accent one could cut with a sierp(LOL), claimed he was an English teacher...not in Poland, but in (of all places) Boston, Mass.

In America, anything's possible:-)

yes you do, it's called 'google'..
you used to teach history? Well i suppose you would have done the reading before hand.

Often one will state or quote, only later to have discovered this or that to be slightly less than accurate:-) Nothing I've posted here has been any more than (on occasion) a tad off, yet certainly within the limits of historical exactitude. In the scheme of things, my posts are well-informed, admittedly imperfect from time to time.

In college, our European history prof also confessed to having placed the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as 1941, immediately making mention of said error by the start of our next class. In 1981, we didn't have the "benefit" of instant Google.

I endeavor always to do the same.

no you had 'books'..:)

Indeed, and fecking lucky to have 'em too, I should say:-)

@Lyzko

Warsaw was far more damaged than any of those cities you mentioned... Easily 90% of the building were destroyed. The whole city was flattened per Hitler's orders

The fire-bombing of Dresden was no piker either, I'll have you know:-)

Yet another example he is more compassionate towards Germans than to Poles.
A history teacher? It is horrible to think he spread his 'knowledge' about WW2 to others - full of prejudice and lacking information.

He hasn't got a clue about (Or wishes to deny or hide) the hidden holocaust that occured in eastern Poland at the outbreak of WWII, especially the dynamic of Jewish involvement in the ethnic cleansing of the Polish population. he just wants to focus on Polish involvement in western Poland to the extent that in his beleif the majority of Poles were on the side of the Nazis, I pity any children or young adults that .he teaches.

Sadly he will not accept there were bad Jewish/Polish people around at that time who took advantage of the situation for personal gain. for some reason he seems to attempt to lessen blame on Germany and Soviet Russia who are the true root cause of the Murder of millions of Polish Jews, yet those Jews were citizens of Poland and had lived in Poland in safety from persecution. for many years prior to German invasion.

My parents ans grandparents lived with Jewish neighbours , my understnding of relations and the history of that time is directly from them, not randonly trawled from the inernet or taken fron some subversive propoganda media outlet / manual.

Bad things. Very bad things.

@dolnoslask
I know. That's how I feel as well. And to think that he preaches his 'facts' to others is just terrifying.
Is it my impression that he has just found out about the destruction of Warsaw? And what does he compare it, too? German cities. As much as you feel sorry for civilians there, it was a bloody consequence of what Nazis had done to numerous European cities, towns and villages. A great number of them in Poland. Where's sympathy for their civilians?

On the other hand, somebody taught him that, too. That basically posts a question about the level of history classes in the US. Is it just him or is it common?

Its common.


Bbhahahaha! Laughing at an arrogant fool. Meaning you sunshine. You could at least google some fats before committing yourself on PF. Unless... you're trolling.

As for Jewish involvement in Stalinist atrocities, it is a taboo. Even Solzhenitsyn was criticised and ostracised for mentioning it in one of his books.

Or postwar Poland and Jewish Stalinist persecutors like Romkowski, Brystiger, Wolinska or Rozycki and many more. Should we reverse Lyzko's argument and say that communists chose Jews to persecute Poles because of their anti-polonism? They would torture and sentence to death people like Pilecki. The man who had volunteered into Auschwitz to gather intelligence was tortured by a Jew... He and other victims of the Stalinist regime were thrown into mass graves and many still remain unidentified. And their oppressors were never punished.

But I'm not going to make such generalisations about a whole nation based on certain individuals.
Why were there so many Jews in Poland before the war? Because ethnic Poles and Polish Jews could live happily together. There were good Poles and bad Poles, good Jews and bad Jews. Also the German, Russian or Ukrainian minorities. All had to face Nazis. Many were killed. Many fought bravely against the occupant. Shamefully, some helped Nazis - some of them were ethnic Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and yes - Jews too.

Exactly and my hope with the new generations of Poles and Jews is that we could one day have that situation in Poland again, there is much that the Jewish people could bring back both in culture and worth to Poland.

Sadly there are people like Lyzko who promote false history and give a false views of how Jews are received and treated in Poland today. he has only been to Poland once and that was a long time ago, even he admitted no harm came to him during his stay.

Recently I have read a book by an American Jewish author. She had come to Poland to trace her family's history. Among other things the book also focuses on Jewish misconceptions concerning Poles and Polish misconceptions concerning Jews. Unfortunately, there are people on both sides who choose to see the other side only through painful stereotypes.

Take Kazimierz in Kraków - some think it is a Jewish Disneyland. They don't see it as a way of preserving the history of Polish Jews but as a way of making money on tourists. So even if Poles are interested in the history of Polish Jews, it is wrong to some.

Spot on!!!

Only a week ago of one Lyzko's former presidents had this instructive guidance to give him regarding hate:



In order to begin his rehabilitation and for his eventual atonement to be meaningful and sincere Lyzko should take the time now to tell the forum where he learned his hatred of Poles from.