Terrible past for the Jews in Poland?

you were alive then, and in the Polish government?
surely shome mishtake.

This is just too funny!!! Here is my take on this subject.

1. If you think most Jews are bad, chances are you come from a family of loosers, you have bad work ethic, and you probably didn't pursue education to it's highest level. You will always be Jelous of the "Evil Jews", but in reality u are just a lame ass looser and so is your family;)

2. If you think most Poles are Anti-Semites, that you are just whiny b!#(h, and just need to complain and nag, and your only reason for being here is because you need to complain and whine, and you are the kind of person that prefers to spend his time dwelling on the negative.

To the Poles who write all the negative stuff about how the Jews are destroying and ripping everyone off... you think you are a proud patriot, but really you just give a black eye to your people. If you were a true patriot you would be volunteering as a firefighter, paramedic, etc., instead of all the hate mongering.

To the Jews here. If Poland was a such a bad place for Jews, how come all of the bad stories only arose after Russian Tsar took control of the Polish/Belarus in the late 18th century? Why did so many Jews move to Poland are they really that dumb to go where it sucks??

Genceps, how much time have you spent in Poland?

What does it matter ? He display common sense at least. Which cannot be said about some people living in Poland !

It seems to me that some people instead of looking for things that connect them are focusing on differences to divide people and then to make it easy to force on them some totalitarian philosophy.

Jon, there are good and bad among all peoples. Do you know how many bad things I heard about Goim growing up, that doesn't make all of us racists towards them. I tell you what, if you feel someone is a blatant racist, here's what I found works: take a knife and stab one or a metal stick and beat one down. Idiots only respect violence. You are not helping the Jewish cause by concentrating your time on harping on the negative. Antisemites can spent more time then you or I being negative because their life sucks and negativity is all they have to offer. It's only a small % of people who are negative, they just make more noise then normal people, because your average person has better things to do.

I've never understood why this forum attracts so many people who are obsessed with (mostly anti-) Jewish issues. I live within a proposed eruv; there are probably more practising Jews within a 2-mile radius of my flat than there are in the whole of Poland, yet you never hear me going on about it. Mind you, I'm too busy stuffing myself with chopped liver and matzo crackers to get involved, lol.

I don't understand this paranoia about Jews.

Poles miss their Jews. Simple. We quarreled in the past, but we lived together after all. Like a family.

pawian

Hey Pawian, I don't speak Polish, but that first word seems like Taskuu (in Russian: Long for u), am I correct?

I looked it up, and found tesknie.com.
Very cool! Must admit made my eyes watery.
I'm a moderator of a 4,000+ Russian American Jewish group on facebook:
facebook.com/groups/RJews/
And I have posted the pictures there as well as the website there.
I think it's a good start at rebuilding relations between the 2 communities.

genecps,Cool and agree it is a good start at reconciliation between the two communities.Good stuff!

I know what Zydzie is but not the rest of it.

It means: We miss you Jews!

Aaaw, that's nice!

Apologies all for forgetting that the investigation into the events at Bzury had already been mentioned in this thread and thus incorrectly opening another thread about it.

Would this thread be the correct place to post news from this week about the events in Bzury which were discussed in this thread?

Well, that's what they did. Those who survived the holocaust moved to Israel.

talking about those stuff.. when do ya'll think will stefan michnik be finally prosecuted??:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Michnik

"Jews, in contrast to the millions of serfs and the impoverished
townspeople who were oppressed by the nobility, constituted a
privileged group which ... effectively represented the only class in
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to concentrate finance and liquid
assets in its hands."
- Witold Rymankowki in Polonsky, Antony, Ed. From Shtetl to
Socialism:
Studies from Polin. The Litman Library for Jewish Civilization,
London, Washington, 1993.

"...in Poland a number of wealthy Jews ... were engaged ... (as
money lenders, merchants) ... managers of the prince's mint, supervisors
of collection of taxes and tolls, [and] management of estates acquired
as the result of foreclosure."
- Weinryb, Bernard D. The Jews of Poland. A Social and Economic
History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800. Jewish
Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1973. p. 63

"Another area controlled by the Jewish community was rents and
leaseholds. In time ... monopolistic tendencies increased among the
Jews ... The fact remained that the monopolistic-exclusion
principles were also an integral part of the Jewish way of life and could thus
not be regarded as a constant anti-Semitic factor directed solely
against themselves."
- Ibid. p. 159

Any chance of confirmation that this is indeed the correct place to post the news from this week about the investigation into the aforementioned events in Bzury? Alternatively, could a mod please advise where such news about Poland should be put?

post whatever it is..... and we'll worry about it when we can see it.

Truly fascinating. Thanks for posting that. If not you, we would most probably miss this breaking news.

Sad news indeed. Something that should not be forgotten.

If you read the certain excerpts I had posted, you can see that Jews not only had it great in Poland, but in fact had it better than the Non-Jewish Poles themselves.

Some American Jews blame Polish Catholics because they know, deep down, that American Jews did nothing to save their fellow tribe members in Europe during WW2. Instead of blaming themselves (though what could they do anyway) they blame the Polish Catholics. Even though Polish Catholics suffered as greatly during WW2 as many other groups did.

"...to ask why the Poles did little to help the Jews is rather like asking why the Jews did nothing to assist the Poles." - Norman Davies

Without going into your obvious bias, I want to clear up a misconception. In Medieval Europe (till the enlightenment) every individual belonged to a certain segment of society whether they wanted to or not. There were the serfs, burghers, guild members, clergy, aristocrats and so on. Society (or the kingdom) imposed different rights and obligations to each of the groups. For example, Jews could work with money but they couldn't own land or be admitted to guilds. Catholic clergy had advantages over townspeople, and the aristocrats owned huge areas of land including whole towns and villages. When the government taxed Jews they didn't ask each one to file a statement of income; they went to the head of the community and told him how much tax the Jews had to give him, and they paid as a community, not as individuals. No one in medieval society could choose what sector he's belong to – not serfs, not Jews not noblemen and not craftsmen – and no one questioned it. That situation wasn't invented by Jews any more than it was invented by serfs. And none of this really changed much until the 19th century. So to say that Jews had priviliges or advantages over other Poles is an anachronism. There was no concept in those days of any sort of equality, people weren't thought of as individuals but as groups and each group got screwed by some other group.

When your millions of of oppressed peasants got too upset at their predicament, the ruling class (nobility or church) had a good way for them to let off steam – they blamed it on the Jews and encouraged pogroms. Then things quieted down. The problem is that many peasants never saw through this manipulation, and they believed the lies that were told to them. Some, like you, still believe it today.

Can you provide some exact cases of such events ? I've read about it many times but only in general, without any examples.

I think it's the industrialization of death that makes the Hitler regime so horrendous and it automatically disqualifes any positive narrative. I don't think anyone can deny the Jews the victims status in the WW2.

To that end I think the victim status is arguable before WWII, but I don't want to repeat what some posters already said (e.g. Gumishu).

The excerpts I have posted clearly show that Polish Jews had privileges, along with Polish Catholic nobility and royalty, over all the rest of the Polish Catholics. So Jews were not the only privileged ones, but these excerpts do examine the situation of the Jews in particular. Jews may not have owned land and no one did unless they were the nobility or royalty. But, and I would be happy to provide more excerpts, Jews were allowed to be mobile, marry, and divorce. Serfs (the majority) could not be mobile, and had to have permission from the lords to marry.


They also blamed it on, and rioted against, nobles, members of royal divisions, and even at times clergy. Jews were part of the oppression, and so they were blamed as well. They were active agents, not passive objects.

I actually have some Jewish background. I simply choose to look at history without any loyalty to any particular group or narrative.

I wasn't talking about Poland only - most pogroms were in other parts of the Russian empire, especially Ukraine. So my examples are not just in Poland. Here are some:

Kalisz 1542, 1557
Warsaw, May 1790
Odessa 1821
Warsaw, Christmas 1881
Kiev and 64 other towns in Russia 1881
Kishinev, Easter 1903
Bialystok 1906
You can google them to find out more details about these and other pogroms.
There were pogroms after WWI too, but that gets into the whole issue of nationalism after the breakup of the Russian Empire, so thats for a different discussion.

I also left out the cossack uprisings in 1648 against the Polish landowners, which killed thousands of Jews, because that was part of a wider conflict.

Alternatively, we can go to the sites where the excerpts are from (e.g. holywar.org/jewishtr/07poland.htm or radioislam.org/thetruth/07poland.htm). Or at least we can if we want to set off our web filters, as "This Websense category is filtered: Racism and Hate". Should we wonder why you didn't want to tell us where you found such gems?


You mean, for example, during the majority of the time that Warsaw was the capital of independent Poland, Jews were the only people who were allowed to live in the city of Warsaw.

Oh, sorry, I've got that the wrong way round, haven't I? In reality during the majority of the time that Warsaw was the capital of independent Poland, Jews were not allowed to live in the city of Warsaw.

On the plus side, at least here in Poland, Polish-Jewish relations are certainly better than they have been since at least WWII and get better and better by the month. Hopefully people who come to this forum won't make the mistake of thinking that those posters here who claim to be Polish and then spew race hate are in any way representative of Polish people.

I do not live in Poland nor was I born in Poland, My views do not represent the views of Poland. So I am not claiming to represent Poland or every single Polish person on earth.

Just because other sites with other motives use the excerpts I used, doesn't mean that the excerpts themselves are racist at all. These books do exist, do they not? If another website uses the excerpts, that doesn't mean the excerpts are tainted an should be deemed racist.

So because I'm merely pointing out that certain members of certain group are/were not saints, and were/are active agents rather than passive objects, that makes me racist?

How can you be racist against Jews? You have Black Jews, Arab Jews, Chinese Jews, Indian Jews...

Millions of Caucasian Jews lived in Poland, and chose to live there, and could leave any time. They lived there for a very long time. So how could Poland be an evil hot bed of "anti-semitism" if so many Jews lived there? Another poster pointed this out.

Polish Catholic serfs, the majority of the population, could not leave their land and were not allowed in cities..

This example, with its obnoxiously feigned "mistake", in no way invalidates what Yerrick has said about the special privileges granted to Polish Jewry relative to those of the Polish peasantry. Indeed residency restrictions were also enforced by Jews against Gentiles in Poland. The documentary Stetl, about the history of the town of Bransk, revealed that Polish Gentiles had to receive special permission from the Jewish authorities in Bransk before being allowed to move into the center of that the town.