Genealogy / Jewish Roots of Poland [639]


Bagels are not a Jewish food. Only in the US they think it's Jewish. In Israel it's looked at as an American food.


You are probably only familiar with Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine, which is heavily influenced by Polish cuisine, but there are lots of different kinds of Jewish cuisine, and in Israel they all come together.


I don't know about real cross-cultural influence, but there is i think a mutual fascination, sometimes attraction and sometimes repulsion. Why am I on a Polish forum if I wasn't drawn somehow to Poland? Why are there Jewish style restaurants in Krakow?

But I think in the next generation or two the relationship will fade away – no love, no hate.

Genealogy / Jewish Roots of Poland [639]


Maybe there was once, but I never heard of it.

this is making me hungry.

Genealogy / Jewish Roots of Poland [639]


I suppose a Jew of this generation born in Poland could say that, but there aren't many of those living in Israel. There are more than a million people here who's ancestors came from Poland, but it would be extremely unusual for one of them to move from Israel to Poland. I've never heard of such a case. There's not a lot of violence in Israel despite the impression from the news, but if someone did find life here not to his taste, he would be more likely to move to the US, or western europe.

History / What British unit liberated Poland in 1945?? [445]


Because our religion is a national religion.We are a nation that has it's own religion and we're a religion that has it's own nation. Our nationhood was on hold because of the exile from the land of Israel, and so it took a different form, emphasizing the religion. Jews were absorbed (some more, some less) into the counties where we lived, so individuals like you, for example, can choose to identify as a Canadian of the Jewish faith. That's your right as an individual. But the core of the nation has never lost its identity. Now that we have a country again, the nature of our nationhood is shifting again, and it puts people like you in an ambiguous state. But these issues will iron themselves out over the next 200 years or so.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


No idea at all. But just answer this: After the Nazis emptied a town of its Jews, what happened to their homes? Specifically, after the war was over, who moved in, who assumed ownership of the property?

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


That answers my question to Greg. Poles moved in, and I 'm not passing judgement on people who did that because it's behind us now. All this was a result of the holocaust and the war. But Greg seems to think that no Jews lost property as a result of the holocaust, and that there's no justification for a surviving Jew to reclaim his property.


To me? I have no claims anywhere in poland.

Food / Is carp indigenous to Israel? [39]


No.


Yes.

Food / Is carp indigenous to Israel? [39]


All I know about is St Peters Fish (which we call "Amnun") and I've also seen catfish near the restaurants on the shore, lapping up what falls in the water. But we don't eat catfish. There are also little fish that nibble at you when you swim there, but I don't know what they're called.


So I guess an appropriate symbol for christianity could be Gefilte Fish made of carp.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


There's nothing antisemitic about questioning the Jewish narrative. What's antisemitic is perpetuating stereotypes like this...


We Jews won't be satisfied till you give us our pound of christian flesh.

USA, Canada / Marriage laws: dual citizenship (Polish and US) preparing to get married to an American. [65]

Do you like living in Poland better than living in Amman?

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]

We Jews don't say that only Jews were killed or suffered the most in the war. Millions of people suffered. What was different about what happened to the Jews, what we refer to as the holocaust, is that they weren't killed in the war. What do I mean by that? I mean that the German program to exterminate the Jews was not part of the war – if anything it was hampered by the war. Had there been no war after the invasion of Poland, they would have killed every last Jew they got there hands on. The Germans started the program way before the war started, with severe persecution in the 1930s, and eventually declared the program's goal to be the extermination of ALL the Jews. Not just communists, not just the bankers, not just religious Jews, but every single Jew. The people who were gassed at treblinka were not war casualties, they were victims of a systematic program of extermination that was designed specifically for Jews and Roma and not any other ethnic group that I'm aware of.

The millions of Poles and Russians and others all over the world that were killed in the war were mostly casualties of a war that didn't distinguish between combatants and civilians. Some of them were murdered in camps for political affiliation or for opposing the regime – in other words, for their actions, not for the "crime" of being born. It was a human tragedy that they were killed, but it's a whole different event than what happened to the Jews. That's why we get frustrated and defensive when these arguments are brought up.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


Of course it was much harder for Poles and Russians than for Americans or British because that's where the fighting was. And the german occupation was far more brutal to Poles than to the french. (And unlike France, Poland didn't have a collaborationist government). But my point is to explain that the Jews were not war casualties, but murder victims. And that's why Jews jump whenever we're told that not only Jews were killed.


It shouldn't be. That's an impression I'm trying to correct here. WWII was one catastrophe and the holocaust was another. The effects they had on each other are many and complex.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


But Poles in the US and UK don't seem to realize that, so they say things like...


The fact that people discuss whether Poles saved or didn't save Jews from the Nazis indicates that Poles were in a different situation and were in a position to save Jews (at the risk of death) because they weren't targeted for extinction, yet.

If the Nazi plan to exterminate the Polish speaking people actually reached the stage of being implemented, then there would be no difference. But the Germans were defeated before that could happen, thank G-d.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]

The theological questions that come out of the holocaust have been discussed by smarter people than you or me, people who were there and people who weren't. I would stay away from that topic because it's a dead end.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


Do you bother to read anything I wrote?. If this is what you got out of it I can't help you.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


Jews don't hate Poles, but a lot of Jews assume that Poles hate us so they relate to Poles in that way. It's a reaction.


Hug a Jew.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


First of all let me clarify one thing - people in Israel don't normally go around talking about Poles at the breakfast table. There are more pressing matters going on here. But if you ask someone about Poles, they still think in terms of the 1930s and they'll say, "yeah, they hate us." That's because they've never been on the Polish Forum so they don't know any better.

If any of you on this forum were ever in Israel as tourists or on business, I'd like to know how people treated you. My guess is that they'd be friendly to Polish tourists because they would assume anyone visiting Israel is a friend.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


I don't understand the question.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]

No.
Why would they think they are Jewish? It's very rare to see a Polish Jew in Israel under the age of 70. So a Polish tourist would clearly be non-Jewish, but assumed to be friendly to Israel.

If i saw a young Jewish tourist from Poland (which I never did) I would wonder why he lives there and not here.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


Other people's business? What 's that? Everything is everyone's business.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


Excuse me? That comment was a bit of an exaggeration! No one here has any hateful agenda against Poles. There's an overall assumption in Israel that the European-Christian world has prejudices against us and that in Poland it's part of the culture. That might be incorrect but it doesn't follow from that we have any hate against Europe or Poland. It's just a grudging acceptance of the fact that we're not always well-liked. If blacks in Alabama say that whites don't like them it doesn't mean the blacks have a Ku Klux Klan mentality.


I guess you mean the 1940s. In the '30s, before the german invasion, Poland had a generally anti-semitic environment – certainly in the political sphere. You might say that was not typical of most Poles, but that was the impression that stuck. I don't think there's any reason for Jewish-Polish hostility today and I don't think there really is any.

I would agree that groups of Israeli school kids who travel to Poland should be given a more accurate impression of current Polish attitudes. More contact between Polish and Israeli youth would be a good way of doing that.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


He slurred Mel Gibson. Is he Polish?


As a foreigner I'm just guessing, but could that be because there were many Poles in the Polish communist party and they still have influence on how history is taught? Won't a public airing of that period make a lot of people in Poland uncomfortable?

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


Sounds familiar. In Israel, the leftist parties tend to demonize the right wing parties, like Likud, by hinting that they are fascist... and we all know how that ended. What nonsense! There's no reason why a party can't be nationalist without being xenophobic and fascist, just like there can be a leftist party that's not stalinist. In the US, the republicans are saying that Obama is a socialist because he nationalized the failing banks and he wants to setup national healthcare. All these accusations, left and right, are simplistic and typical of demagogues.

About educating on the crimes of Communism. You say that


But I think that approach is inaccurate. That's what Nazism was about, but Communism was an evil of its own nature and it should be recognized for what it really was – a utopian scheme gone mad, because it was hijacked by vicious, power-hungry people and blood-thirsty tyrants. People should be educated to be very careful of movements that claim to want to liberate the common man, because they can end up enslaving the common man. Communists enslaved their own people just as much as other nations, so it's not about prejudice and tolerance. Communism and Nazism were two different diseases and it's important to diagnose each one accurately. A wrong diagnosis can fail to prevent an outbreak.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


It doesn't have any effect on that, for 2 reasons:
1. There aren't more than 2 or 3 Jews in the world who see this site, and I'm one of them.
2. Jews don't hate Poles.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


But that's not what I said. I wasn't comparing who was more evil. I was pointing out that each of the two were evil in a different way and that the difference should be recognized in order to educate against them effectively.

If you use the terminology of anti-Nazism (intolerance, prejudice, racism etc) against Communism you end up with a weak argument, because Communism was about enslaving the population (and murdering) regardless of race, color or creed.

Similarly, if you use the terminology of anti-communism (totalitarianism, lack of freedoms etc) against Nazism you end up with a weak argument, because, as you said, the Germans didn't suffer under Nazism. Nazism was about hatred of the enemy, especially Jews, brought to such a pitch that it justified the most horrible crimes.

Therefore a museum about the holocaust is no place to talk about the crimes of the Communists, and a museum about Communist crimes (when someone decides to build one) is no place to talk about prejudice and intolerance.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


On the other hand, someone who's in charge of security for a big group of school kids, many of who were never out of Israel and have no experience in the subtleties of Jewish-Polish history, and who have a more blunt way of talking than the average european, is probably right in trying to try and keep them from talking with people in the street – to keep them out of trouble. But it would be a lot better if there were organized opportunities to talk to Poles. I heard of a program where local polish high school kids work together with israeli kids in cleaning up abandoned jewish cemeteries. This is a really good idea. I once spoke to a man who leads Israeli groups to Poland and urged him to more of this, but the problem is that they usually have only one week to cover an entire country and there isn't time for this kind of in-depth contact.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]

The survey is a bit suspicious since it probably had an agenda it was trying to promote. So I don't know how accurate it is.

But assuming it is accurate, I can think of two reasons the younger generation might be less friendly to Germany:
1. The older generation was more European in its orientation and felt more affinity to German culture. That awareness of the pre-Nazi german culture makes them aware that there is more than one side to Germany. The younger generation has no cultural connection to Germany.

2. The older generation has more of a diaspora mentality, so they might feel a need to accept and be accepted by the European world and therefore are more receptive to German "repentance". The younger generation couldn't care less whether Germans have changed or not. Who talks about the germans? The only relevance of Germany to them is their historical role.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]



Compare that to 300,000 Israelis that traveled to Turkey. I don't think that means we have a big affinity to Turkish culture. Ok, it's closer and cheaper. But 25,000 is no big deal.

True, there are Jews from Russia who prefer Germany to Israel. That's because their Jewish identity is pretty flimsy. And there are Israelis who live in Germany, but since they're in Germany and not here, they have no influence on local attitudes. And they aren't looked at here as people to emulate.


You're dreaming. Those who lived through Poland's "warm and welcoming" period died more than 300 years ago. Poland's kings welcomed the Jews in the middle ages because of commercial reasons. That has nothing to do with the attitudes of the regular people (no one asked them either) in that period or later. And when Poland gained independence after WWI, anti-Jewish feeling hit an all-time high. I don't see how anyone can deny this. With all due respect to today's Poland, it was not warm and welcoming to Jews since about the 17th century.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


I can't understand it either. Its a strange world.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


I gotta drive home. I'll have coffee.