The Two Saddest Nations on Earth... Poles and Jews

Many of you will think: "Not another Polish-Jewish thread again"

But I felt this to be necessary...

I want to ask all members on this forum who are really care about such things and don't just try to degrade their fellow Poles/Jews, to make an attempt to show that they really would want Jewish Polish relations to be mended; not on a official foreign relations level, but on a personal level, that we can each say individually "I forgive you", and mean it.

I would like to see if we could all show the friendship between our two nations, whether historical or modern, by posting pictures, work of arts, texts, our own words, or anything else that you feel would help our current stance, or that shows appreciation towards our two nations.

I encourage none-Poles and none-Jews also to help us by showing what you believe our nations were and should become.

If this thread becomes what I hope it will be, I will send it to as many sites and people as I can who still have conflicts in matters between Jews and Poles as proof that we can still be friends despite all hardships, and that we will be for the rest of time.

The Reception of the Jews in Poland

Please, if you mean it, if you think the rift between Poles and Jews should be mended, post below

Allow me to begin

One of my favorite movies with a Jewish character:

If you have nothing positive to post, please do not post at all

Why even bother.

Historically anything Poles did for Jews, Jews took for GRANTED.

Poles ALLOWED Jews into Poland for ONE THOUSAND YEARS when every other nation was kicking them out and what did that get Poland? Hint: No good deed goes unpunished.

As long as you have Jewish Poland-Haters in media like the Anti-Polish New York Times or the anti-Polish Washington Post writing hit pieces on Poland, I say why do Jews and Poles even bother with each other?

The vicious media Anti-Polish Bigot Richard Cohen went crazy quoting the anti-Polish "Goebels" of Anti-Polish Hate propaganda Mr. Poland-Hater himself, Jan Gross, in Cohen's latest Hate piece on Poland recently.

Why should Poles do anything good for Jews when if they do 9 good things for Jews but ONE BAD thing, the anti-Polish Bigots at the New York Times and the Washington Post will only put a MICROSCOPE on the one bad thing the Poles did to Jews. And of course they will portray the Jews as eternal angels. Their simple media formula is "Poles are always BAD" and "Jews are always GOOD".

In Poland all Poles do is walk around on pins and needles when around Jews since they know at ANY minute, if a Jewish guy is having a bad day, and gets into an argument with a Polish guy, the Jewish guy will RUN to call a New York Times reporter or Poland-Hater at the Washington Post like Anti-Polish Bigot Richard Cohen and scream to him about ALL THE ANTI-SEMITISM he is seeing in Poland, like the "historical anti-semitism" the New York Times and Washington Post talk about. And how those "Polish death camps" Richard Cohen talks about had to be real blah blah blah blah

And with all the anti-Polish propaganda pumped into the minds of Jews by the New York Times, Washington Post and other anti-Polish media, WHY would Jews be crazy enough to want to LIVE in Poland today or be by Poles when according to the media anti-Polish Bigots the Poles are "gonna getcha" at any moment.

Jewish threads need to be banned, whats with you freaks, it has nothing to do with Poland and most Poles dont care either.

Sire, if you genuinely intend to honour the relationship between Poles and Jews, gazing past anti-Semitism and mere indifference, you should present the work of Isaac Singer. This person made major inroads into bridging the cultural gap and worked extensively on commonalities.

wtf? you want to mend fences but you come up with the most effed up title ever? yeah right, dream on cowboy.. you're about to get a trashing..

What Seanus said.

Who really gives a **** about old petty vendetta's? Hatred for the sake of hatred (because that's usually what it is, don't romanticize it by thinking there's some "deepness" behind it) is just pointless, and only serves to disadvantage those who choose hate as their path in life. Changing hearts and minds; noble idea, but ultimately pointless, in my opinion. I've yet to see it work, but by all means keep trying if you want, if you have the patience. The best thing to do is to ignore such things, they aren't even worth the kilobytes that this thread takes up.

I'm a pretty sad person

And MW merrily goes on watching everything from just one side. I can name a few posters on here that per definition say bad stuff about Jews.


Will you get a life? When Jan Gross presented his work "Neighbours" in Warsaw, half of the crowd walked away crying and shouting that it was all lies. The other half stayed, as prove that at least a big part of the Polish population is willing to re-evaluate their past and willing to accept any dark periods. Before you care to react, this is the only thing I am going to say about it.

Anyway, I think Poles and Jews are the same: they both cannot get over the past and they both like to whinge and whine about it. Both have some of the world's most beautiful women in their ranks and both are not in the World Cup this year. See? :)

I think both should get over the past and look forward to the future. Seanus is right, Isaac Beshavis Singer is a really good example of how bridges can be built. I have to admit I mix Singer frequently up with Isaac Asimov, but that was an American.

>^..^<

M-G (meetings over for today, has to hurry now to the bus and watch NL play. Hup Holland!)

Lmao the ones who stayed were reporters and researchears who totally humiliated Gross, if we're talking about his Warsaw stunt, Gross basically fled when people started revealing his lies, some guy brought a witness that Gross quotes, said witness was never approached by Gross.

Your interpretation is a complete pile of rubbish, outside of some Jews Gross' book was received for what it was, an anti-Polish pamphlet.

I don't think many really grasp the various tragedies that have befallen both sets of people. Mourning is part of the psyche and with good reason. I have experienced the latest loss in my family today as my grandma died (RIP). Now imagine this happening on a much larger scale. People need to look beyond numbers and get back in touch with their emotions. Academic folk in particular.

I always cite the example of murder. If we can feel the loss of one individual so acutely then we must surely be able to feel the loss of millions. Or are we so numb?

Outsiders, exercise caution in your writing and show some tact! Loss is painful and there is no getting round that! We can be philosophical about it which helps to ease the pain. However, let us never forget what we are!!

Sean one day i swear i'm going to take away your fence and you'll have to pick a side...

Seanus, I am very sad to hear about your loss. I wish you and your family all possible strength and wisdom to be able to deal with the death of your grandmother.

Kind regards,

Stu.

Many thanks, Stu :) :) And I wish the Dutch the best of luck today :)

I just hope Poles can give the OP the benefit of the doubt and not read it as sad (as in hopeless/pathetic) but sad as in a very natural emotional reaction to events and realities around us.

If they do that, they will be on home ground. Much of the best music in life is melancholic!

Sok, this is not the time for such statements. Besides, I don't see what you mean here.

14 replies... and none bear even the slightest resemblance to what I asked

O well, at least I tried. (what was I thinking last night)

We can just drop he whole thing.

Sire, it needs MUCH more than a forum to change popular sentiments. Change comes from both within and outwith. Besides, many Polish PF members didn't live through WWII. They were very different times. Poland has had enough of a transformation to go through after the collapse of communism.

Efforts are ongoing to mend the relationship. The thing is, you just don't see them.

Well, I knew that, just I wanted to see for myself if the common person even tries to change something themselves; I always thought that many Poles wouldn't be as hate-filled as some do seem to be...

Who am I to mess with imperfections anyways...

Sire, do you live in Poland? The Jewish question is really not that big amongst common people, believe me. The Poles are more focussed on carving out their own way. I'd very much class indifference the lesser of two 'evils' when cast alongside outright hostility, wouldn't you?

Remember, don't make the issues of yesteryear a burden for those of today. They have their own pressing issues to contend with.

... this is a song of hope good old Moby. Very symbolic was the gesture of embrace at the end between an intelligence race/breed of dog and a dolphin. If people can't do what comes so naturally to intelligent beings, can we really call ourselves that intelligent?

No, I don't live in Poland (yet), but I see your point (all to clearly)


I think that's a good finale for this thread.

Hmm, and sorry about your deceased relative, God bless her.

Many thanks, Sire. Oh, and I appreciate the sentiment on the thread. People must get over their petty squabbles and learn to work together, to develop technology that will aid humanity and not destroy it.

In this respect, Poles and Jews must work together as there is much potential there.

We see here some Jews and their polish girlfriends.

Go figure.

The saddest nations?
The wisest and signed with a pain.

Have you ever heard about a book written by Nicholas the Lage "The atlas of Jewish world"?

It's incredible and so widely impressive.

I bought one day a story written by Dinur Yehi'el (pseud. Ka-tzetnik 1356330) "House of Dolls" - (polish title is "Dom Lalek") and till this day I remember "emotions" that were inside me.

I do not recommend it for children.

I like the Jewish culture and literature very much.

Well recently I was reading a monography of my family's home village. There were lots of Jews so there was established a little ghetto during war. And you might be suprised that there were ppl who wanted to help, smuggling food to their friends. There were also some families who have hidden Jews. Unfotunately little Jews suvived war but there are still alive few Jewish ppl who orginate from that village and still (although they emigrated to other countries) are sending letters to their friends in Poland.

If I, myself, know such cases when ppl helped Jews in some unknown little village, then how many more village like this one can be in Poland? I dont want to make heros of my fellow countymen - I know there were lots of bad and greedy Poles who made lots of harms to Jews, but I dont want Poles to be showed like war criminals. Most ppl were not engaged in any way in Holocaust so why they should wear this trait or label of jew's persecutors??

The ppl you have accused of rejecting any bad periods in fact have right. Have their own personal right. They have it because they just dont recall in their own experiece or experience of their family any recollection of Poles killing Jews. It seems they dont know such cases from the first hand or from their own experience, thats why they dont agree with such statments. I dont say that Gross have no right either (I dont have any competence to criticise his statments). I just remind you that there is never one truth. There are only personal truths. It depends where you've been, where you've lived. I understand those ppl.

The main problem is that people arent able to discuss this subject in proper way. There are always extremes from one side to another: "We were not killing jews, we were heplping them, be thankful" or "You were not hepling Jews, you were killing them, be shamful" nothing between. Its a problem of both sides who dont want to acknoledged to each other either the merits and crimes... and to notice the most important thing that there was a whole bunch of different man-kinds - there were criminals, there were heros and there were ordinary ppl.

I feel that if you have to make some statments about attitudes of Poles towards Jews during the war it would be that the majority of Polish ppl neither help nor done harm to Jews.

I feel deeply sorry that in my country there were such incidents like Jedwabne but I also dont quite understand why whole polish nation should feel the responsibility for a bunch of hicks from some village...

Whole nation should feel resposibility for their govermen's acts. Thats why we should feel the repsonsibility for March'68 and generally afterwar antysemitism which forced lots of ppl of jewish origin to emigrate...


I will add here also Ludwik Zamenhof who came to the conviction that the main reason ppl cant communicate is that they use different languages... thats why he created esperanto ;)

Zamenhof? He had a great idea for sure. However, he overestimated the will of the people to use it. Compromises can be hard to find :(

Oh please I will never feel responsible for that! Even so I will still apologize to every Czech I meet, you know why? Because I wouldn't have anything against a Swede saying sorry for Potop or German for the holocaust or a Soviet for Katyń!

It is illogical but there are people's feelings to consider and the main thing is
If I ever did it I wouldn't done it with a smile
AND that is the info your giving to others by saying so!

I hope I'm not the only one who finds it absurd that people feel responsibility at the deeds of people long dead. Even if every person in your country and family was an evil genocidal maniac, where is the sound logic in assuming responsibility for something and someone you have no control over?

So everything your parents are teaching you, or what the School teaches all generations is all BS?

I wasn't saying it's logical, emotions aren't logical mate

What you're taught is a different matter entirely from what is being discussed. Unfortunately this matter comes up very often, especially here; people feel certain illogical and senseless things based on very little, usually on ancestry, which yes, I consider to be total BS. Memory, morals, attitudes, principles, knowledge, information, objectivity, likes, dislikes... absolutely none of this stuff has been proven to be linked to DNA. I don't see the need for people to carry unnecessary phantom burdens based on next to nothing. Certainly there is zero need for a modern-day Pole or German to feel shame or pride for what happened several decades ago.

How do you know that the girlfriends are Polish? They look Chinese to me.