News / EU presidency to cost Poland 110 million euro [33]

Yeah, a big PR/propaganda campaign, something not unlike the Harvest Festivals during Gierek's rule. Tangible benefits - negligible.

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.

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 / Question about land of former Poland/modern Belarus [11]

According to the 1921 cenzus for Województwo Nowogródzkie, it was 8.9%. Naturally, the distribution was not uniform.
pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plik:Woj.nowogr%C3%B3dzkie-Polska_spis_powszechny_1921.pdf&page=47


Oh, one more off-topic thing for the sake of correctness: People from the Lwów (Lviv) area were moved to Lower Silesia. Those from the areas you asked about were resettled to Pomerania (Kashubia).

History / Question about land of former Poland/modern Belarus [11]

1. I have no idea, and probably nobody knows, except German Einsatzgruppen.
2. 1944-1946 and 1955-1959.
3. Probably very low. Jews preferred marrying within their own community, and the same applied to Poles. Defying the cultural and religious pressure was always difficult, and even today intercultural/interfaith relationships face obstacles. Consider, for example, this Rabbi's response to a question regarding an interfaith marriage:


4. Related to 1. In this case, the personnel files of Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (communist secret police) may hold the largest part of the answer.

History / Question about land of former Poland/modern Belarus [11]

Both the Ashkenazi phenotype (the "European" looks) and DNA suggest at least some mixing of the genetic material with other Europeans, although those brave souls who were enriching their communities' gene pools were doing it largely without the blessing of either a priest or a rabbi. :) In Poland, this dates back at least to Casimir III the Great and Esther.

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.

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.

Love / Amount of money for gift (I have a girlfriend in Poland) [56]

Personally, I wouldn't offer money, regardless of the amount.

Love / Amount of money for gift (I have a girlfriend in Poland) [56]

Imagine that I have an American gf, and am sending her a Christmas card with a $20 bill tucked in...
This would be a very short-lived relationship.

1. A friend or a girlfriend?
A small, nice gift worth $20 (but not money!) is appropriate for a friend. But if you are talking about a relationship, then sending a $20 bill would be rather rude, especially considering the undertones present in you post (and that's why you got these replies).

2. If she is a girlfriend, then an acceptable minimum is a $50 gift card. If you don't have money, it's also ok to shop around for something inexpensive, but nice and unique (for me, a silver Navajo bracelet bought at Four Corners worked like a charm). Generally, don't expect that a "Polack" girlfriend (as you nicely called her) would have different expectations than an American one.

3. Women are expensive. This is a fact of life. Get over it. TANSTAAFL, and "you get what you pay for" apply. :)

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]

See what I meant? The myth is so persistent that JonnyM uses (in #105) an example of a family friend who "wasn't even Jewish" to illustrate the alleged persecution of Jews in Poland! Guys, hate blinds you so much that you don't even notice that your arguments are at the Alice in the Wonderland level of absurdity. Forget about historical facts. You know better.

Now, if you really want to hate Poles, then feel free. But what goes around, comes around. You probably wonder what may be responsible for the phenomenon of "anti-semitism without Jews"? Here you go - the hateful historical revisionism, by descendants of people who spent the war comfortably in Brooklyn and L.A., for example.

This concludes my participation in this thread. Thank you for the discussion.

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

P.S. Numerus clausus is just a synonym of affirmative action, by the way.
Pre-war admission system in Poland wasn't banning Jews. It simply adjusted the number of admissions to the proportional representation in the population. As much as I personally disagree with ANY quotas, the quota system in pre-war Poland (introduced in a situation where Jews were already well represented among doctors and lawyers, and constituted over 50% of these professionals) was no different than, for example, what the American Jewish Committee advocated in the amici brief regarding some high profile AA cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. You guys not only can live with the quota system in the present-day U.S. You guys actively support it! Now, think a moment what makes your attitude toward the quota system in pre-war Poland so vastly different. There are several possible answers, and you are not going to like any of them, because they ultimately boil down to Jewish exceptionalism.

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


Please try to tell the truth: it was technically impossible for a professional self-government organization, where Jews constituted 65-70% (as in the case of the Lwów bar, see the reference in my above post) to introduce anti-Jewish policies out of anti-Jewish sentiments. There were university admission policies equivalent to affirmative action (introduced in 1937, if I am correct), but this neither constitutes making any country "unlivable" for the affected group, nor was unique to Poland or to the pre-war period.

I am happy that you don't support the present-day U.S. AA policies. Neither do I. Nevertheless, AJC does, and this substantially weakens the case of Jews against the Polish quota system.

There was no particular love in the pre-war Poland for the non-assimilating Jewish minority. However, this had NOT translated into genocide or a substantial participation in it during the war. The pre-war Polish solution was two-fold. 1. Assimilation (Tarski, Ulam etc.); 2. Actively supporting the establishment of the Jewish homeland in Palestine. You may find this Israeli source interesting, albeit it is yet another thing incompatible with the revisionist version of history most American Jews subscribe to.


You forgot to add that these children were actually eaten by Polish anti-semites. Come on, there is no absurd you guys cannot say with a straight face.

In Poland there were no laws or institutional policies barring Jews from any public sector posts.

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


Ok, this is really off-topic, but I'll bite. The AA system in the U.S. actually discriminates against a formerly downtrodden minority (Asians) for the sake of achieving strictly numerical quotas. The current "underrepresented" minorities' "downtrodden" status is attributable to cultural factors characteristic to these communities. All arguments to the contrary disintegrate when they are confronted with the success of East Asians, who don't fail to achieve, in spite of the past discrimination.

History / Are there still communists in Poland? [58]


In the United States, such people would be considered traitors. But in Poland the population is being conditioned to reject patriotism in its commonly recognized meaning.

Study / Racism in Czestochowa? I'm a black student from France. [14]

This is usually not racism per se. This is simply a reaction to someone different. Folks in big cities are used to foreign students and employees of multi-national companies. Conversely, for people from small towns a black or Asian person is still something exotic, and there is some small chance that you may draw some looks and comments that definitely are insensitive, and may be perceived as racist. Please be advised, however, that there is no cultural background in Poland for REAL racism (i.e. the sense of inherent inferiority of certain races). No history of slavery, colonialism and so on. So, the best advice I can give you is: be tolerant to country bumpkins. :)

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

Lyzko: as I already have illustrated (post #88) with an example from contemporary America, it is Jews who don't want to assimilate, and who treat assimilation as an antithesis of Jewishness. Definitely, such attitudes slowly vanish, but this has nothing to do with the basic observation: Jews in the past didn't want to assimilate at all, and the cultural bias against assimilation is so strong that to this day it produces uniquely bigoted opinions from rabbis in America, such as the one that I quoted in #88.

Jews in larger urban centers were less dominated by religious factors, and thus more open to assimilation (prominent examples, in re: #106, include the already mentioned mathematicians Tarski and Ulam, also Artur Rubinstein, Julian Tuwim, Jan Kiepura).

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

There is a huge difference between patriotism and exceptionalism. Patriotism is not based on the principle of denying others their fundamental rights. Exceptionalism makes the rights of others outright subordinate to the needs of the group that considers itself exceptional.

As for "uniquely bigoted" and examples from other faiths: absolutely! Mullahs from Iran and Pakistan immediately spring to mind.

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

Pretty close. Similar traits that define individuals as criminals are responsible for the exceptionalism of groups/ethnicities.

Work / (English and teaching in Poland) Help needed urgently re a VISA [13]

Maybe this is a naive advice: you are a British citizen, so dealing with the immigration bureaucracy in Britain will be probably easier for you. If possible, marry her, get all the British paperwork for her, so she can come to Poland as a Briton, without worrying about visas, work permits etc.

Study / Racism in Czestochowa? I'm a black student from France. [14]

Go ahead, educate me. While waiting for your revelations (especially with regards to different races allegedly involved), I will go to the kitchen and make a bag of popcorn.

Life / Why are Polish people so obsessed with race? [160]


Personally I don't care. I am married to an East Asian.

News / Polish Doctor Burzynski finds a cure for incurable cancer [22]


I assume graves of the people who didn't survive are not presented, to balance the message?
The efficacy of a treatment is not measured by PR stunts. It is established by clinical trials. Antineoplastons have failed such trials, as far as I know.

USA, Canada / Where do most Polish-Americans identify on the political spectrum? [142]


They consistently tend to vote Democratic, although after what Roosevelt and his party did to Poland this is just a proof that Polish jokes are not without merit.

Personally, I am a libertarian, and a Ron Paul supporter.

History / Question about land of former Poland/modern Belarus [11]


It does not have to be true in 100% of cases. However, generally it is true that organized resettlements were done along the lines I described. Lwów -> Wrocław, Wileńszczyzna -> Pomorze. The latter applies to part of my own family; they have been resettled from a village near Nowa Wilejka, a region that now belongs to Belarus, to Kashubia. Conversely, there is a running joke (not devoid of merit) among Polish scientists that Wrocław University is actually a renamed Lwów University.

Love / Do Polish women fight about everything? [39]

Women DO fight, especially during the pre-menstrual phase of the estrous cycle. Conversely, during the estrus she will be sweet to you. Amuse yourself by plotting the emotional changes against time. It's biology that shaped them this way: when a woman does not get pregnant, it is evolutionarily preferred if she attempts to switch partners (by being a b.tch to the current one). There was an article in The Lancet some time ago about this mechanism. Now, it is about your luck if your particular specimen can keep this more or less under the control of her brain, or not.

Life / Is parity the answer for Polish women? [262]

Parity, just as other implementations of affirmative action, will have the following effect: it will be harder for competent individuals belonging to protected groups to qualify. How so? Because where competence counts, others with subject them to a tougher scrutiny, to verify that they are indeed competent, rather than just piggybacking on AA policies. Where competence does not count so much, they will be crowded out by legions of those, whose competence is defined solely by belonging to protected groups.

UK, Ireland / Polish is an official language in the UK? [68]


I completely agree! After all, if Poles decide that UK is a better place for them to live than Poland, then it doesn't make much sense attempting to transform the said UK into another copy of Poland. Assimilate (nobody is expecting a 100% assimilation though) and be respectful to the culture of the host country!

Food / Borscht - Zurek / Bialy barszcz recipe [153]

Vinegar and starch? It's barbarity! :) (no offense, please!)
This should be made from the same fermented stuff that is used for making bread (sourdough, just a little diluted). Other ingredients: sausage (either raw or smoked, sweet Italian sausage available in US grocery stores works fine), a potato cut into cubes, a bullion cube, some garlic, black pepper, marjoram, a bay leaf. Just before serving, add a spoon of sour cream.

Names for this soup: żurek, zalewajka.

I have never tried making this with vinegar, but quite conceivably using fermented rye flour produces a "milder" taste (this should be no surprise to any winemaker).