History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

@Dirkdiggler, while partly correct, the fact is, the Poles (even though Slavs and not Germans) were still Christians, even though Christianity in itself was rejected by Hitler as showing too much of a "Jewish conscience"! If Poles somehow escaped the Nazi network throughout the occupied continent and made it safely to non-Nazi-held territory, they wouldn't necessarily be deported back to an extermination camp. They'd be starved or worked to death.

Neither option is preferable however, this is certainly true.

Genealogy / Why are some Polish people dark complected, and others very light [511]

Owing to centuries-long admixture, traces of neighboring peoples have surely left their mark on the inhabitants of Poland!

Study / Question about studing Polish history and culture [20]

Well, Zihao Song, although one city I've never visited, Jagiellonian University in Cracow has Polish For Foreigners offered at any level and seems to have a modestly good reputation.

I only know this because the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York, at that time in conjunction with Hunter College, used to have exchange programs with the above school every summer and I heard only positive things. I almost went, but unfortunately I couldn't coordinate the trip with my concluding grad program at City University.

Best of luck to you! Powodzenia!

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

Ernst Zuendel just passed yesterday!!! One of the last of the "great" Holocaust deniers will have to meet his maker. That leaves only David Irving, a fella in France and another in Sweden to carry on the dirty job:-))

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

Only Poles for example, in and of themselves, were never per se exclusively targets of mass methodical, assembly-line extermination:-) Many peoples throughout history, right up through Idi Amin and Pol Pot practiced death by attrition and mass starvation. Prior to Hitler, the Jews themselves had undergone similar, if not identical, treatment at the hands of many nations, including during the Holy Roman Empire.

The Holocaust however put a different slant on the killing of Jews, biological, no longer merely ideological.

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

DIrkdiggler, documentary evidence has already confirmed this assertion to be both factual as well as truthful:

The key difference though here is that Poles per se found or arrested outside the dragnet of Hitler's Reich could easily be spared, should they agree to cooperate with the Nazis, e.g. turn in Jewish neighbors, colleagues etc.., thus currying favor with the "Generalgouvernment".

Any Jew however enountered by the Gestapo's net ANYWHERE within Occupied Europe was to be returned to Germany, thrown into a camp, and exterminated along with the rest of his ill-fated lot.

Again, for those whom Goering determined to be "Jews" vs. "Mischlinge", there could be no 'negotiation'; their fate was final, hence, "Final Solution to the JEWISH Problem" as outlined in the minutes of the Wannsee Conference, presided over by Heydrich and his adjutant Lieutenant Adolf Eichmann.

Moreover, the designation of "bacillus" and "parasites" etc.. was reserved solely for the Jews. Any doubts lingering can easily quelled by watching the painfully horrid "The Eternal Jew" (1939??) by Fritz Hippler. Poles, Russians, SIntis were murdered in droves, yet none of same ever openly equated with vermin or rodents or other "Schaedlinge" (pests)!!

Travel / Why do you visit Poland? [223]

A German acquaintance of mine was just on a rowing tour of the Tatry Mountain area, along with one of the last wilderness parks in Poland! I'd loved to have joined her...were I twenty-nine again and single, but the point is, every country has her beauty spots, not to mention her places of shame.

Auschwitz-Birkenau remains one of Poland's places of shame, "Polish" concentration camps, or not:-)

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

Absolutely, jon!

Raul Hilberg and others, along with a number of non-Jewish German historians/publicists, such as Dieter Zimmer, have confirmed that the nature of the Holocaust (also referred to by Jewish theologians as "The Tremendum") was indeed a unique evil.

Whereas the Poles along with other ethnic Slavs, Sinti-Roma, including various "anti-socials" were imprisoned with the rest of the inmates, tortured and thereafter usually executed, ONLY full Jews were slated for immediate extermination regardless of where within the dragnet of Hitler's Reich they were found. Neither forced conversion nor sterling war service in WWI could salvage even the most Germanophilic Jewish patriot from their fate in the gas chambers; for those Jews of Europe, no compromise was possible.

The fact that Jewish prisoners numbered among the kapos, should never rationalize aka relativize the unique enormity of the Shoah.

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

Right, Ironside! If truth be told, the Poles, the Russians, yes, American Jews, the Israelis, have been wanting to exact reparations from Germany since at the outset of the '50's, and I don't think that's too much of an exaggeration either:-)

Small wonder that PEGIDA, AfD, Hoecke, Gedeon along with a small group of German historians led by among others Nolte and Joachim Fest, have maintained for years that Germany is being bled dry financially. Martin Walser chose an unfortunate analogy when some years back now, he referred to Auschwitz as a "moral cudgel", used to batter German sympathies and imbued feelings of guilt.

Poland is far from alone in her demands.

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

Anyone who claims that Poles and/or Poland are dumb, backward etc. ought to look at Poland's sometimes unsung accomplishments, not only Europe's largest anti-Nazi resistance movement (greater even than Denmark or Norway, and second only to France!), but her notable scientists, mathematicians, and musicians.

I'm with Ted Knight aka Kaczynski who once on the Carson Show in the '60's responded to a fellow guest who offered a 'light-hearted' Polish joke with "Oh, great! Now tell it to us in Polish."

:-))

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

You're on to something there with "generational guilt", DIrk!

Poland nonetheless continues to be thought of as a kind of backwater. This impression, although naturally false, is impregnated in the minds of older Germans especially.

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

While Hitler himself dubbed all Slavs, primarily the Poles, "Untermenschen" (subhuman), he reserved his deepest, most pathological contempt for the Jews of Europe. Albeit wantonly cruel to gentile Pole and Jew alike, only the Jewish Poles were specifically slated for total annihilation.

As Hitler had complete disrespect for Christianity, the fact that the Poles were Christians, including the rest of Europe for that matter, raised the level of the Slavs ever so slightly above that of the Semites.

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

Guilt trip tactics which merely serve to embitter rather than embolden the German government into helping Poland obtain her "reparations" which she demands:-)

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

I have to agree with my forum colleague Tacitus however. that to what extent do nations want to bleed each other dry... of both their money along with their pride?

Once more, a tough call.

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

Finkelstein, by the way, has become almost a virtual pariah in the Jewish community, not to mention harshly villified by survivors!

A tough call, Dirk. Can't say as I can blame the latter, and yet, I too, although again Jewish, feel that Holocaust suffering has become too "overmarketed", and this is the crying disgrace.

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

On the money, jon, as nearly always:-)

Good man for standing up to these ignoramuses!!
Happy to see at least you haven't bought into that "empathy fatigue" bit from those who minimize, rationalize, even worse, RELATIVIZE, the singular monstrousness of the Holocaust.

True empathy knows no fatigue, just as real guilt recognizes no "statute of limitations", whether it's for some 90-year old erstwhile brutal camp guard at Auschwitz, or a John Gotti, "Whitey" Bolger etc. here in the States; once a career criminal, always a career criminal, change of career notwithstanding!!!

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

Don't catch your drift, Johnny?

All I'm saying is that I resent the Zionist notion that Eretz Yisroel belongs SOLELY to the Jews, forgetting that the Palestinian Arabs lay equal claim to said land.

Any issues regarding primogeniture are and will always be fraught with legal ramifications and Israel today under Netanyahu is a nation with one mega identity crises on her hands!

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

The Palestinians are our neighbors as well as our brothers....before G_d!
No brainer, pal":-)

Travel / Why do you visit Poland? [223]

I never claimed any such thing! I assert that I know Polish, yet never claimed to be perfect, not nearly close. I use it to communicate with mono-lingual Poles (of whom there appear to me many) along with pretenders to the throne of English:-)

@kaprys,

My remarks to Paul were as follows. Owing to the sacred nature of a collective murder site, I would presume any normally sensitive person would NOT treat a visit to Auschwitz/Oswiecim in the same way as one would a visit to Krakow, Warsaw, Las Vegas or Coney Island!!

As historical memory fades and we all seem to believe ourselves to be on some lifetime pleasure cruise through existence, I for one still think it's critical to regard things in context and not blithely as well as blindly romp through an extermination camp as though it were a summer stroll in the country.

Paul also stated that "things weren't as bad as people claim". I was merely challenging the poster to justify how stuffing bodies into ovens, indescribably sadistic torture and the like were as that person maintains.

The statement I found rather unsettling, that's all, silly meLOL

Travel / Why do you visit Poland? [223]

Be wary of those who hold G_d ABOVE man, although we all must bow down to Him in the end. It smacks of sanctimoniousness. Furthermore, Commandant Hoess considered himself a religious Catholic:-)

Gives the thinking among us yet even greater pause to think, doesn't it?

News / Will America send troops to fight a Russian invasion of Baltics and/or Poland? [283]

If we do, we'll have President Duda's blessings, I'm sure:-)

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

There's no agenda here, folks!

There were those Poles who hid Jews, made huge sacrifices, and those who may have for a time, but then realized that it wasn't worth their while, that's all.

Think we're blowing what I wrote way out of all proportion:-)

Incidentally, gaining sympathy works both ways. Sob stories on the gentile end can be as effective as vice-versa.

The dirty shame, rather than just a pity, is, that a fair number of Jewish survivors have in fact either invented or at least embellished their experiences during the Holocaust, thereby making a mockery of the entire event, not to even mention fueling the already festering resentment of anti-Semites the world over!!

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

Again, I'm not condemning Poland, any more than one would condemn the Germans aka "collective" Germany!

Obviously, in any group, there will be exceptions. Poland had a mighty resistance, far greater than in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary etc., almost equal to the French Resistance in her tenacity!

All I'm saying is, that as with post-War Austria, far too often, Poland was made to seem the mere victim of Nazi aggression. History shows, Gross for example, that there was a latent anti-Semitism in Poland which Hitler and cohorts manipulated all too skillfully during his occupation of that country.

Poland was perhaps more susceptible to anti-Semitism. That scarcely makes all Poles monsters now, does it? I hardly think so:-)

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

That's as straightforward as I can get at this time, pal! If it were any straighter, it would snap:-)
lol

@Kaprys,

Do you think that if the Poles en masse had openly refused to cooperate with the Germans, as happened by in large in Denmark for instance, the Holocaust would have occurred as swiftly and "efficiently" in Poland as it did?

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

Were the majority of Poland's population living predominantly in the countryside more neutral towards their Jewish fellow citizens, as were, say, the Danes, the Bulgarians, even the Spaniards and the Italians, the Nazis would doubtless have less success in recruiting locals to help in rounding up Jews!

You mean to tell me that you can put Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania or Latvia in the same category as Italy, Spain, Denmark, Bulgaria or Albania??

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

Nobody ever called Poland "responsible", for which reason I used the term "responsibility" instead, indicating SHARED responsibility only.
If you can't accept the unvarnished truth and wish to believe fairy tales about how perfect or wonderful poor Poland was during WWII, that remains YOUR delusion, not mine!

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

I wrote consistently about Polish Christians, true Christians who performed their Christian duties, selfless acts of courage and resistance, such as those who were behind the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Whatever their backgrounds, they came together as Christians, Jews, above all, as fellow Poles to fight Hitler!!

Leopold Socha along with Jan Karski were also mentioned numerous times in a number of my posts, so what the hell are you babbling about?!!

Either you can't read, or you read selectively. Furthermore, no discussion is pointless in as far as it attempts to arrive at the truth.

Travel / Why do you visit Poland? [223]

Curious as to what you consider "not as bad as some claim", Paul. If you're referring to the condition of the site itself, I can't judge because I've never been.

If you're however referring to the total experience of bearing witness to the unspeakable acts committed by those who forgot that G_d, not Man, is the measure of all things, I submit you are either naive to a fault, still a child who cannot comprehend, or, a rather warped individual!

Hope you had a "nice time". Somehow, I just wouldn't have an appetite for viewing human tragedy while on vacationLOL

History / Can anyone from Poland tell me about Auschwitz and The Ghetto? [625]

I'm well aware of all that, kaprys, as I'm certain you must be aware by this time. However, for every "good" Catholic Pole, there were plenty out there willing to turn in their Jewish neighbor.

Again, not all gentiles were angels either! Do you understand what I've been posting, or only what you WANT to understand?
:-)

History / Poles and (Polish) Jews... Victims of war... and beyond [380]

Wish you'd show me chapter and verse, if possible, where and when I do the things I've been accused of.

I'm dyin' to find out. Plus, I love reading fiction, helps me relax:-)