History / What proportion of the Polish population collaborated with the Nazis? [125]


In the mid to late 1940s, there was a considerable interest in Poland in (1) prosecuting people who collaborated with Germany, and (2) using the pretext of collaboration to prosecute political opponents of the communist government. So, if there was anything to be prosecuted, it was prosecuted (and this includes the collaborators from Jedwabne, for example). And much more.

60 years later Jan Gross woke up and decided to make himself a nice career by catering to the bigotry of descendants of the people, who spent the war comfortably in Brooklyn. His sources are no better than the sources available to Polish prosecutors immediately after the war. If he derives more conclusions from them, it's based on his creativity, selective approach to sources, subordinate to proving his thesis, and (last but not least) the corruption of the witnesses' memories after decades of exposure to certain myths, persistent in the Jewish community. I want to illustrate the latter with a personal experience:

A Jewish man called "Dentist from Auschwitz" came with a lecture to a university where I was working. The lecture started with an account of his pre-war life, he told about studying dentistry in Warsaw, about deciding if he wanted to be religious or not, et caetera. Just a typical account of a life of a wealthy, moderately spoiled kid from a privileged family. And suddenly he probably reminded himself that he forgot something important, and felt obliged to add that "pre-war Poland was unlivable for Jews". See my point? To hell with facts. "Unlivable". Forget about being a student, and about living comfortably enough to preoccupy himself with philosophical problems. 60 years later "everybody knows" that streets in Warsaw were filled by fascist thugs with baseball bats, hunting Jews. Right? The same mechanism is responsible for the historical revisionism of Gross and his faithful readers. You guys just "know"... Perhaps it's time to address the bigotry within your community? Or perhaps you guys simply need this false history, for nation-building purposes or something else?

In 1943, the people who started the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, raised two flags above the Ghetto: the one with the Star of David, and the white and red Polish flag. Are you suggesting that they knew less than American Jews?

History / What proportion of the Polish population collaborated with the Nazis? [125]


To a large degree, this is a Jewish myth. The small degree to which this is true is the role of the individuals who were denouncing Jews to Germans. This was a supplementary only role, however. Germany had full control over the Polish territory, Germans were able to implement the genocide using their own means, and the role of the "szmalcownik" was inherently limited to denouncing the limited number of the escapees. Interestingly, Jews always omit one fact: that for any such escapee to survive more than one day, an infrastructure of non-Jewish helpers (risking their lives to help!), both individual and institutional (Żegota) had to exist in the first place.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBegota
To provide food (normally rationed). To provide shelter. To provide false documents. Right? But, of course, this obvious fact is incompatible with the Jewish myth, hence we have the theory of "a few who helped, and the majority who threatened".

The persistence of this myth is responsible even for attacking the Jews who dare to tell about their own experience. Szpilman and Polanski's account (they were both saved by Poles, "The Pianist" is a movie directed by Polański and based on Szpilman's memoirs) had been criticized for non-compliance. A couple of days ago, as a fan of Warehouse 13, I was doing some reading about Saul Rubinek. To my not-so-great surprise I found out that his account of his parents' survival (saved by a Polish farmer) generated a resounding 'oy-vey', and the guy was forced to explain himself ("I am not a historian"). Now, believe in what you want, but please be advised that it is precisely such attitudes and false accusations that are responsible for the miserable state of the Polish-Jewish relationships, including the phenomenon of 'anti-semitism without Jews'. The theory of the Polish complicity in the Holocaust is a nonsense totally equivalent to the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and we hold those who are peddling it responsible.

History / What proportion of the Polish population collaborated with the Nazis? [125]

@Lyzko, #85.


I do, in a certain sense. In another thread yesterday I was discussing with someone interested in the ratio of interfaith marriages between Poles and Jews in the pre-war period. I quoted an opinion with regard to such marriages from a present-day rabbi. First the quote, then a discussion.

Now, my points:

1. If a contemporary Catholic priest or a Protestant minister wrote such garbage, he would be branded a medieval bigot. Just as we brand the mullahs in Tehran. Yet this is the official position of Judaism, in contemporary America. Can you believe this?

2. What the quote directly illustrates is that it is Jews who have been and still are reluctant (to put it mildly) to integrate into the non-Jewish society, not the other way around. Sure, thank God, such attitudes slowly disappear, but I dare to say that another 40 years in the desert still won't be enough to eradicate them completely.

3. If anti-semitism is a unique phenomenon, qualitatively different (and worse) than attitudes in the U.S. toward Koreans, in Poland toward Vietnamese, in Britain toward Pakistani etc., then we need to find a similarly unique, qualitatively distinct factor responsible. Now we have a choice between (a) finding such factors for each and every ethnicity where anti-semitism occurs, or (b) assuming that some unique to them factor makes Jews particularly disliked. Occam's razor, Lyzko, and I don't care how much politically incorrect this is - the Jewish exceptionalism (translated into relationships with the host populaces) is the root of the problem.

Is this enough to "bring on their own misery"? Sometimes not at all, but under certain circumstances - absolutely. The former case is the pre-1939 situation of Jews in Poland. Jews had a substantial autonomy, and formed (voluntarily!) a parallel, closed society. Then 1939 came, and now, in this context, Jews ask the following question:


The answer is two-fold.
1. As an organized society, Poland could not. Poland fought a war against the Nazi Germany, and lost 3 million of her non-Jewish citizens, in addition to 3 million Jews. The Polish government in exile introduced laws protecting Jews and enforced them, within the available means, on the territory occupied by Germany. No level of the Polish government ever collaborated with Nazi Germany. Not the central government, not the voivodships, not the counties, not the municipalities. Poland was alerting other Allies about the genocide, and this was met with indifference (in particular, when Szmul Zygielbojm, a Bund leader and a member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile, was committing suicide, the U.S. Jews couldn't care less.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szmul_Zygielbojm
It took them around 50 years to wake up and now accuse Poles of the complicity in the Holocaust). What else could have been done?

2. At the individual level, sure, even more Poles could have risked their own lives and the lives of their families to defy the occupiers' policies and try to save their "better" neighbors. But here is the catch: Why should they take this risk, in a situation when the MAJORITY of their "better" neighbors had persistently refused to ask themselves the following question: "Could I be a better citizen and neighbor?" When the highly visible minority of Jews actually actively assisted the Soviet occupiers? The rest is history - many Poles risked their lives to save Jews. Many refused, but Jews have no moral right to blame them for this. Selfless heroism is never an obligation, and asserting the existence of such obligation by representatives of a nation that has its own hands rather dirty is a hypocrisy.

What I wrote is brutal, but logical and based on historical facts. Perhaps the biggest disservice done to Jews by other nations is not explaining these things openly, but rather pu$syfooting (Admin - this is NOT a "bad" word, update your dictionary) around the subject, out of some silly, gentile "sensitivity". I don't believe in any genetic traits responsible for any nation's misery. But I do believe that certain cultures may have certain rotten aspects, and it's karma's nature to eventually bite.

Life / Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]


Because we have learned how to wash these body parts and don't have to mutilate them instead. Try some day some warm water and soap, it really isn't all that disgusting.

:)

History / What proportion of the Polish population collaborated with the Nazis? [125]


How do you define the "Polish population"? Along the ethnicity, or citizenship lines?
If the pre-1939 citizenship counts, then the proportion was fairly large - Poland had a substantial German minority, which actively assisted the German Army in 1939 (the Fifth Column), and then defined themselves as Volksdeutsche (in some cases it was even possible for individuals to apply for the Reichsdeutsche status).

Also, the collaboration of the Ukrainian and Lithuanian minority is well documented. Jews preferred to collaborate with the Stalinist regime that occupied parts of Poland (although if we define the Blue Police as collaborators, then the same definition must apply to ghetto police units, if we want to avoid using double standards).

As for ethnic Poles, the willingness to collaborate, in a strict sense, was low and can probably be best illustrated by the German attempts to form the Goralische Waffen SS Legion. The 300 volunteers (out of whom 1/3 was unsuitable for military service) may very well just represent the population of village idiots.

If the term "collaboration" is less strictly defined, then you can also count the Blue Police, tasked mainly with enforcing criminal law. The less strict definition is necessary, because this wasn't a voluntary collaboration - pre-war police officers were ordered to report to work under the threat of the death penalty. As a whole, the Blue Police was not considered a collaboratory unit by post-war Polish courts (which were usually strict with regards to cases of collaboration). On an individual level, cases of collaboration by Blue Policemen were prosecuted. On the other hand, the Blue Police had strong ties with the Polish underground (est. 25-30% officers were members of the underground).

I think the most substantial cases of collaboration involved denouncing Jews. The problem was real enough to force the Polish government in exile to announce that:


Death sentences for such collaboration were served by the Home Army (although, according to W. Bartoszewski, the number of such sentences was not sufficient to end the practice, due to the limited investigative capabilities of the Home Army). Also, after the war such collaboration was routinely prosecuted.

The bottom line: the collaboration was present, but nowhere near the European average. There was no institutional collaboration, originating from any Polish level of government, whatsoever. The individual collaboration was considered a crime, both during and after the war.