News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

Correct, Atch! Conservative Judaism though had its roots in the New World, that is, in North America, brought to the States by a German-born rabbi, David Einhorn, who advocated a less literal, freer interpretation of the Talmud!

Small wonder, as German Jews were always more assimilated than, say, Polish, Russian, or Eastern European Jews, typically from poor shtettl communities.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

Bibi's got some control issues, that's for sure! He's supposed to have a fearsome temper and is known to be quite abusive in private life.

Travel / Why do you visit Poland? [223]

And don't forget the late, lamented PolonisLOL

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

True, gregy!

The Jews of wartime Europe had no place to turn. The American Jewish Congress and Rabbi Dr. Stephen Wise should have been ashamed of themselves for looking away at a time when such auxilliary organizations and the US Jewish Community could have been of tremendous help.

Roosevelt too was not at his best either, I'm ashamed to admit, caving in to Sen. Long and ordering the SS-Missouri not to stop in Havana but instead return to Europe. SHAMEFUL!!

Yet, what could he really have done? He didn't want to be assassinated now, did he? A truly great American president nonetheless.

Travel / Why do you visit Poland? [223]

I do hope to return one day. This time, instead of a day and a half in Szczecin, I'd want to spend at least a week in Wroclaw. The architecture, particularly the Old Town, is magnificent!

Perhaps, time and money permitting, I'd like to fit in a trip to Krakow to see Wawel:-)

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

Although I don't recall their names, a number of non-Jewish (Polish and German) Holocaust historians, at the risk of being vilified by their own, have come out and stated that any insinuations that somehow Jewish acts of violence aka "war crimes" (in the words of PiS supporters) against Polish gentiles displaying anti-Jewish collaborationist hostility or Nazis and their sympathizers might be equal to their converse, are tantamount to revisionist history and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible as inciting hatred and bigotry.

Comments from the peanut gallery?

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

Ever asked yourself about the other side of the story, gregy, or did you just jump on the bandwagon like nearly everybody else? What was their motivation?

Was it justifiable or merely malicious?

The answers might surprise you.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

Your blood references sound frighteningly close to Nazi talk, Dirk! You should be aware of that.

Only an ignoramus believes that blood and ethnicity are in any way connected. Sure, the blood of an AIDS patient to be certain will be tainted.....because he has AIDS, never because he happens to belong to a particular ethnicity!!

Ilness knows no national distinction; it's an equal opportunity destroyer.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

No, Dirk. The moral of the story is that the more quickly the Jews had been assimilated into Polish culture (perhaps paying only lip service to the Catholic Church will practicing Judaism at home), to a degree as they were in post-Enlightenment Germany and France, things might have turned out a great deal differently, maybe more happily, for concerned!

While I'm not suggesting that the latter was of much use to the German Jews when Hitler came on the scene, one never quite knows how events had unfolded had the image of the Jew not become demonized as it had.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

@Dirk et al.

There were plenty of totally assimilated Polish Jews (and half-Jews) whose names I've mentioned several times on PF, who contributed richly to Polish culture!

Not every Polish Jew was a Yiddish-speaking yeshiva brukha from some shtettl in G_d knows where:-) Stereotyping cuts both ways, as I've said often before:

Not all Polish gentiles are/were drunken, ignorant, Jew-hating louts and peasants, neither are/were all Polish Jews pale-faced yeshiva boys, davening from dawn till dusk, disrespecting their Christian neighbors' culture!!

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

You're damned right, buddy! Poland may be such an example.....or, naturally, the US under you know who! Germany by contrast, is one of the most self-scrutizining, maddeningly self-examining nation on earth today.:-)

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

...and because he mesmerized an all too gullible public into believing that he and he alone was Germany's savior!

Life / Why are Polish people so strange & unusual? [51]

Yep, Johnny!

What I meant by distinguishing between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles is simply that in the end, both are Polish nationals and citizens, they just practice a different religion. You see, I've come to the conclusion that nationality as opposed to ethnicity, is sort of like a club. If the members pay their dues, why oughtn't they become (and remain) members, huh? But unlike a club, one's membership in that nationality never expires, save if the citizen chooses to relinquish their citzenship, i.e. choose an different nationality:-) Their religion though will, of course, always stay the same. A Catholic is a Catholic no matter in which country they live, same for a Jew or any other.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

@Dougpol and TheOther, we seem to have misunderstood the use of the word "democratic". Indeed, it has often been an incorrectly used term throughout history, e.g. The German "Democratic" Republic, however in 1933, Germany was still in the shadows of the albeit ill-fated Weimar Republic prior to Hitler's seizure of power. Therefore, by his very being elected, rather than literally thrust, into office by mob violence, one can conclude that he was "democratically" elected. The election process is one of the cornerstones of Western democracy and so I apologize for splitting hairs about this.

Interesting to consider a side issue, namely, that ordinary German citizens weren't threatened outright if they didn't vote for Hitler, that is, pollwatchers never tried to scare them away at the polls, in rather stark contrast to African-Americans in the US South being frightened and harrassed by local authorities into not voting for the leader of the very country in which they were citizens. And I'm speaking of long AFTER 1924, following the law which finally allowed blacks the right to vote.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

Again, it might not have been a "fair" election in terms of the outcome, but yes, it certainly was democratic, TheOther!!

Life / Why are Polish people so strange & unusual? [51]

One's very first impression, at least in my case, of multi-aged male Poles who've crossed my path over the years (especially if I were speaking to them in English at first, rather than Polish!), is that of smart aleck, full of one upmanship and seemingly invasive questions about me, followed by blunt, snap judgements as to who they think I "must" be, based solely on their initial impression.

I've come to expect same whenever I meet up with a male Pole (Jewish Poles as well). and I've never been disappointed to date:-)

Examples: "So why you are speaking Polish?", "You must be Jew, yes?", "You are married?", "Why you never lived in Poland?", "You talking **** about Poland...!" etc.

On the other hand, at least one cannot accuse them of NOT speaking their minds. However, it does tend to put on on the defensive a little, even if this wasn't exactly their intent.

I merely take it all with humor, plus a healthy grain of salt and never let it bother me.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

@Dougpol, slight correction here. A majority of the poorer classes DID in fact vote Hitler into office, it was however the military who felt that once voting Hitler in, they could easily sway him to do their bidding! The less fortunate sectors of German society felt they had no choice but to elect Hitler; even Hindenburg (senile at the time though he was) was fooled when he conceded official power over to Hitler.

The point is that Hitler was voted into power, DEMOCRATICALLY too, one should add:-)

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

I'd have to honestly take a close(r) look at some brick-and-mortar sources for that, I'm afraid. Wiki's limited in more ways than one, furthermore, it surely won't be the first time either that the perpetrator's cried victim!

This pernicious slander that the Jews have something in their genes which makes them so rapacious for power that they seek to take over the world has to be finally put to rest. As it can't be proven, it has zero validity:-)

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

If you mean Jews killing gentile Poles who sought to kill them, you're historically right. The example though beggars comparison....except to an anti-Semite.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

Poles weren't murdered in Israel, were they? Yet Jews were murdered in Poland. The families and survivors of Auschwitz wound up where?? In Palestine aka modern Israel.

Guess, Netanyahu and Ambassador Azari see some connection there.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

@Dirk,
The Israelis might well be as misguided as they Poles in this respect, or even the Nazis! In poetry, we do speak of "foreign blood" (The Marseilleise, for example), yet we know in reality that such doesn't, cannot exist....if you believe in science:-)))

As to why the Jews kept getting thrown out again and again from most European countries has as much to do with Catholic dogma concerning alleged Christ killers as anything else.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

Blood knows no nationality or the like, someone ought to have reminded Hitler......and Archie Bunker when he went in for a transfusionLOL

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

Perhaps as an American, I see matters differently, but to be for example Polish, German, French etc. in the end means to feel, speak, act Polish, German or French in one's heart, despite the superficial differences between ethnic as compared with "naturalized" minorities.

Tell a Polish Jew who considered themselves lucky enough to be considered for the army etc. that they're not as Polish as a Christian Slav who never had to overcome the disadvantages of prejudice!

Tell a Black American who was a Tuskeegee airman that the color of his skin makes him less of an American than a white man.....I dare ya!!!

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

Polish Jews most certainly ARE Poles, as are American Jews Americans (inspite of the tricky nomenclature of being associated with an essentially immigrant nation vs. one homogeneous nationality, I'll grant you), German Jews Germans etc..

The artificial distinctions of race vs. nationality vs. religion cannot deprive any citizen from their legal birthright to be counted as belonging to the country of their birth.

While it is true that the bulk of Polish Jewry once resided in shtettls, spoke exclusively Yiddish, not Polsh or even German, and were culturally isolated from their gentile neighbors (not by the former's consent, I might add), a large number became great contributors to the majority Polish society such as Julian Tuwim, Tadeusz Roziewicz etc., writing in a Polish which continues to set standards even to this this day.

It would therefore be a grave injustice to those Poles to associate the "average" Polish Jew of today with some Isaac Bashevis Singer characters of a bygone era!

Life / Why are Polish people so strange & unusual? [51]

Israel is naturally reluctant to admit the fact that Germany alone planned and executed the Holocaust, since much of Israel's technology depnends on Germany, and not Poland:-)

Kinda smells, don't it!

Life / Why are Polish people so strange & unusual? [51]

There I couldn't agree with you more, Dougpol1! Then again, the Poles have only themselves to blame, as I've said once before, re-electing the same party which nearly destroyed their country during part of the '90's!

But let's don't be too hard on 'em. It hurts like Hell, I'm sure, to be constantly maligned by others.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1538]

Fair enough, TheOther. I take your point.

Life / Why are Polish people so strange & unusual? [51]

Knownaim,

My experience, both all too briefly in Poland, as well as with Polish people here in the States over many, many years, is that Polish hospitality is unrivaled among Europeans whom I've enountered during my travels!

As far as some of what I've read which you experienced, I must beg to differ sharply. Poles as a group are certainly not slower or faster than any other peoples; they can though be quite intense as concerns both their own history along with their place in the world. They are indeed sensitive to stereotyped misconceptions about themselves and if they perceive they are being made fun of or condescended to in any way, their feelers go up like a bird dog, and they will usually respond by looking you straight in the eye, above all, honestly, truthfully, and sometimes even, not so diplomatically.

At present, they have a lot on their plate, in addition to being unfairly made to feel as though the Nazi Holocaust was somehow their "fault".

History / Lusatian-Sarmatic obsession of Poles [153]

Let's hope you will be:-)

History / Lusatian-Sarmatic obsession of Poles [153]

The Celts were to be sure to be found all throughout Central Europe, merging with both the Germanic and the Slavic nations, as we both know:-)

As to their origins, there are numerous theories yet to be historically substantiated.