News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

@kaprys and company,

Ever heard the saying that the sins of the fathers are (sadly) visited upon their children? 'Course you and your generation are not responsible or guilty. However, in order to insure that those events never repeat themselves, one must be extra vigilant, that's all I'm saying.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

@Again, kaprys, you pretend not to understand my English!

I most certainly DO feel contrition for what happened to African-Americans during those Civil War days. Guilt though would mean that either I personally or my immediate family had some TRACEABLE link directly to slavery itself. I can only hope that I would never mistreat people of color in such a despicable fashion.

Can the same be said of you?

Study / Studying in Poland without speaking Polish? [15]

'Course, Alex, it's a no-brainer:-)

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

This means that only a minority of American Jews, namely a handful or so of major Hollywood moguls like Goldwyn, Mayer along with a few others, showed slaves and Native Americans in a stereotyped, disparaging manner. While this is unforgivable by today's standards, it's not the same as reminiscing with the family over Passover, say, and showing old photos of uncle so-and-so, or great-grandad shooting up a Native American village, for instance. America's Jews nowadays can only trace their heritage in this country to Ellis Island, at the earliest around 1889 and after.

US-born Jews do not have a common link to these atrocities that, for example, current rank-and-file Germans have with the crimes of their grandparents or even now great-grandparents! The latter can actually claim, "Look, grandpa in '44 with Jewish prisoners leading them off to be shot in open graves...!" etc.

Language / Issues understanding "to go" verb in Polish language [18]

Ah, yes. The narzednik often doesn't require a preposition, I merely forgot momentarily:-)

"Interesuje nowymi samochodami". etc.. and such. Right, German would have required one. Just confused the two for a sec.

Remember now.

WHHHOOOPSIDAISY!!.

"Interesuje SIE nowymi samochodami."

Need to proofread extra before I click "post message":-) Apologies, just a typo, but nonetheless, a mistake.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

@kaprys,

Don't rationalize matters! Not all atrocities can be relativized.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

In the end, those acts during the war years in Poland were perpetrated by Germans. The historian Dieter Zimmer, a German and a non-Jew, made this most apparent in his Rowohlt paperback many years ago about the Holocaust.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

I really ought to have made abundantly clear that I am NOT an advocate of so-termed "collective guilt/shame", or I never would have invested so much of my time and money in living in Germany as well as visiting, not to mention enjoying the brief period I spent in, Poland! That's for starters.

Secondly, even though a third-generation American, ergo,one whose ancestors weren't involved in either slavery or the slaughter of Native Americans, I nonetheless DO feel a twinge of guilt in as far as those crimes were committed on the soil on which I live.

Concerning Pani Kurek, I'd have to read her work both in the original along with in entirety to be able to judge for myself.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

You throw that example up to ME??!

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

I know Gross has been attacked, WielkiPolak. Truth tellers usually are when the truth becomes too uncomfortable:-)

Language / Issues understanding "to go" verb in Polish language [18]

@Thank you, Johnny and kaprys!

You're welcome, sir! One never stops learning about their native language included.

@kaprys,

Careless of me. Naturally, "PO"- and not "PRZY-"jechal" in that context. I ought to have remembered when I was in Poland, the announcements saying "Pociag ODjechal!", in Polish, English, and German:-)

He WENT by car to the restaurant. = On przyjechal do restauracji (..no need to mention "..ze samochodem.."!!).
She took a cab. = Ona pojechala z taksowka,
The bus/train already left. = Autobus/Pociag juz odjechal.

My memory occasionally needs to be jogged, thanks!

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

"@dolno, hate to disappoint you, but Jedwabne and Kielce themselves shame the Polish nation. Historians such as Jan Gross and others have merely brought it to the much needed attention of the an all too gullible public!

Language / Issues understanding "to go" verb in Polish language [18]

In addition, if one wishes to indicate "going" ON FOOT vs. some other way, such as taking the bus, one may, of course simply use "isc"/"pojsc" pieszo or piechota!

Predzej poszedlbym pieszo niz przyjechal z autobusem. = I'd sooner [rather] go on foot than take the bus.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

@G,

To submit to the attitude of "that's the way it is", almost a resigned Calvinist "Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.." mentality is precisely what mainstream Western tradition ISN'T all about!! Passivity and fatalism are the enemy in this case. Holocausts ARE preventable, so long as one sees them coming and can change hearts as well as minds. Fairness is what the Judeo-Catholic tradition strives to achieve.

@dolnoslask,

I never once uttered the statement that either the Polish gov't. or the vast majority of Polish people were directly "complicit" in the Holocaust. Go back and re-read my various posts, which are written in plain English:-)

What I did say, is that, while Poland did in fact take more than a hit during WWII, moroever, had a strong, nationwide resistance movement against the Nazis, Jedwabne and particularly Kielce (perpetrated AFTER the War was over), shall remain Poland's Nan King Massacre, their My Lai, their shame. The Kielce Pogrom was not committed during war time and therefore cannot be justified as such.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Noone should "get used to" something which is already an aberration and should never have been in the first place.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Holocaust relativism runs rampant here on PF!

Life / The Art of Complaining by Polish people [47]

So true! No one country has a monopoly on any set behavior pattern.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Obvious here that the lessons of the Holocaust have yet to be learned, and likely, never will be at this rate. Your fallacious logic is unimpressive to say the least.

Explaining that the Nazis slaughtered millions of Jews and others ought not be met with "Oh, but you crazy Jews killed far more....!!" etc. ad nauseum.

Go back to school, before or after you have your diapers changedLOL

Language / Issues understanding "to go" verb in Polish language [18]

In English, we are far less directionally specific than in Polish!

If I say, "I'm going to Poland.", it's obvious that it's not on foot. Therefore, I needn't specify that I'm "flying" or even sailing by ship, to Poland:-)

In Polish, "Ide do Polski." might well cause the Poles much amusement. Probably, "Odlatuje do Polski" would do the trick nicely,
i.e. (literally) " I fly [this one time] off to Poland".

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Nevertheless Johnny, I'm sure you would be raging inside, outside, from all sides, with bitterness if the people who killed your people, stole their property and for years resisted compensation until literally pushed to the walls, were living high off the hog at the government's expense and whose crimes became whitewashed.

Now, I realize that the Germans had their noses rubbed in it far more than the Poles. However, the question of culpability needs to be spread around. I extend the word "culpability" also to include any Jews who either willingly and traitorously in any way collaborated with the enemy for the sake of quick, easy gain.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Yet Germany after the War was lauded as the great country for the best beer, machinery, beautiful women, the most dynamic economy on the Continent (and still is!), the best socialized society, where former top as well as lower-level Nazis continue to receive generous pensions while survivors in Israel continue to languish.

That sure is a double standard, whereby the US praises the same country which nearly wiped out an entire people who helped to contribute to Germany's greatness.

See something wrong with this picture??

Things will get a lot worse if somebody doesn't, and soon!

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Poland has a naturally bordered territory, something Israel never had. If you also remember, Germany was always known up through the early 19th century as the "land in the middle", because her borders were always shifting. How ironic that you and various others accuse Israel of "illegally" taking over other people's territories, whereby the latter became the Nazis' stock and trade.

Talk about double standards!

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

@Johnny,

Well, how convenient that "interpretations vary" when YOU'RE trying to push YOUR agenda through regarding YOUR version of historical accuracy!
America was taken from the Natives and indeed formed into the United States of America for political reasons, religion only entering the equation as
we all know that our Founding Male W.A.S.P. Fathers were themselves deeply religious (although perhaps not always exactly 'spiritual') men.
Much might also be said about the Puritans who either desired religious freedom or were pushed out of England because they were troublemakers there too:-)

Concerning the original thread topic of the criminalization of anybody who refers openly to Polish Death Camps, there is something to be said for
those Poles who did in fact collaborate with the enemy as well as those who valiantly resisted the Nazis, many of whom paid for it with their lives!

Poland has no fewer saints vs. sinners than any other country, so let's not put them on some sort of moral pedestal.

Same for the Jews.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Here you merely show your deep seated anti-Semitic prejudice!! America wasn't a nation either until declared one by the white man, purely for political reasons.

WE were the interlopers, after all, NOT the Native Americans whose land we in point of fact stole outright from under their noses!!!

You're merely rationalizing, as all bigots do, unconcerned with facts, merely with facile justifications to satisfy your own bias.

According to the Bible, ancient Judaea was to be the land of the Judaeens, present day Jews.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Here I agree! Their stand on the Falashas is ambivalent too, to say the very least:-)

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

I'm not crazy about Zionism either, although one, that is, any thinking person (Jew or gentile) can readily appreciate why ZIonists feel as adamantly about their cause as they do! Why ought the Israelis be the only nation on earth without a bona fide homeland of their own?

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Nonetheless, post-War American, US-born. There's a difference.

Life / The Art of Complaining by Polish people [47]

I was simply making a joke apropos, nothing more!:-)

In fact, the art of complaining has become part of the Austrian, especially, Viennese, lingo from time immemorial. Optimism in Vienna (having lived there for a time) is often suspect and considered too "American" for most people's traditional tastes. Only recently, according to the NYT, is positive thinking in France actually being given intellectual credence. Go figure. That apparently it's also a Polish trait I heard for the first time just several days ago when I read the current thread!

Life / The Art of Complaining by Polish people [47]

Again, it seems they've been learning this fine art from their Austrian neighbors:-)

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Finkelstein is not only neither a survivor himself, nor even the offspring of survivors, he has been reviled by nearly every survivor as well as non-survivor group in the country!!

Be wary of the rogue historian trying to play into the hands of the Irvings, Leuchtners and the rest of the deniers:-)