Jewish Life in Modern-Day Poland

[pjotr]

[Bonobo]

Very interesting documentary, Peter. Especially about the Pole who learned his true origin at 22 and became a devout Jew.

[pjotr]

Bonobo,

That is interesting indeed. It seems that the Jewish community in Poland is growing, and that it is a very Polish jewish community. Because all the jewish persons in the movie speak Polish and are in a way very Polish. The people who discover their jewish heritage, grew up as very Roman-Catholic Poles. When they grow up as jews, they will remember their Roman-Catholic upbringing and their children, although they are being raised jewish, will also indirectly get some Polish or Roman-Catholic values too, because their parents are of mixed background. Like Tufta once said. People are Polish first, and secondly they are Roman-Catholic or Jewish ( or Tartar Muslim or Calvinist, Lutheranian, Greek Catholic, Russian-Orthodox or secular-humanist.)

Cheers,
Pieter

[pjotr]

A Polish jew who never became 100% Dutch and who considered himself to be more Polish than Jewish or Dutch. Actually He was Polish, Jewish and Dutch. A good combination.

Tuesday July 19th, 2011

Milo Anstadt 1920 - 2011


Milo Anstadt when he was younger. A journalist/director/writer.

His house smelled like the house of my grandparents. He smelled like my grandfather. We spoke Polish, until I broke my tongue. Once he had returned to Lwów, his hometown. "Even our house was still there. The whole city. But we were all gone." He wanted to know nothing from his Jewish origins, about which he recounts in his books 'Child in Poland'. Milo was a Pole. A real one: courteous, hardened, multilingual, sophisticated and a man which knew the world. Fragile, but vital. A Pole from Lwów. Not from Lemberg, certainly not from Lviv: from Lwów. Where has the Europe of that time gone? I would have liked it so much to return with him to to Lwów. But a human life goes too fast, even if you've become 91 years old, like he did. And we, we forget so quickly. (photo: NRC)

Michael Driebergen

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Anstadt

P.S.- Television producer, writer and radio journalist Michael Driebergen (31) works for (Dutch) Radio 1 and (Dutch) national newspapers and magazines. A few months a year he lives in Lemberg / Lviv / Lwów / Lvov (western Ukraine), as a freelance journalist for Poland and Ukraine. He made a radio documentary about the history of Lviv (VPRO OVT)



- Comment Pieter: Milo Anstadt was so happy and proud when he received a Polish passport from the first non-Communist ambassador in the Netherlands in the early ninetees. He had lost his Polish nationality when his parents left Poland in 1930. He was 10 back then. He always kept contact with Poland, Polish culture and this the Polish language, which he didn't forget. Anstadt translated Polish text, documents and other things, had Polish friends in Poland and received Polish friends in his house in Amsterdam. Poland stayed important until the end. I called him two times shortly before he died. I asked him about the Polish-jewish relationship and some questions about Polish history, because he had written a few historical books in Dutch about Poland. The country, it's history, it's people and about Polish-jewish relationship. He hated the victim attitude of many fellow jews, and was not very popular for that amongst fellow jews. He couldn't care less. He spoke Polish, Yiddish, Dutch, German and English. He was the director of a very important series about the Occupation of the Netherlands by the Germans; "De Bezetting", "The Occupation".

Cheers,
Pieter

[pjotr]

[Bonobo]

Feb 11, 2013 1:47:29 GMT 1 pjotr said:

Bonobo,
That is interesting indeed. It seems that the Jewish community in Poland is growing, and that it is a very Polish jewish community. Because all the jewish persons in the movie speak Polish and are in a way very Polish. The people who discover their jewish heritage, grew up as very Roman-Catholic Poles. When they grow up as jews, they will remember their Roman-Catholic upbringing and their children, although they are being raised jewish, will also indirectly get some Polish or Roman-Catholic values too, because their parents are of mixed background. Like Tufta once said. People are Polish first, and secondly they are Roman-Catholic or Jewish ( or Tartar Muslim or Calvinist, Lutheranian, Greek Catholic, Russian-Orthodox or secular-humanist.)
Cheers,
Pieter

It is all mixed up pretty well.
But that`s 21 century, I suppose. In the past it was so much simpler.

[pjotr]

Feb 13, 2013 0:40:32 GMT 1 Bonobo said:

Feb 11, 2013 1:47:29 GMT 1 pjotr said:

Bonobo,
That is interesting indeed. It seems that the Jewish community in Poland is growing, and that it is a very Polish jewish community. Because all the jewish persons in the movie speak Polish and are in a way very Polish. The people who discover their jewish heritage, grew up as very Roman-Catholic Poles. When they grow up as jews, they will remember their Roman-Catholic upbringing and their children, although they are being raised jewish, will also indirectly get some Polish or Roman-Catholic values too, because their parents are of mixed background. Like Tufta once said. People are Polish first, and secondly they are Roman-Catholic or Jewish ( or Tartar Muslim or Calvinist, Lutheranian, Greek Catholic, Russian-Orthodox or secular-humanist.)
Cheers,
Pieter

It is all mixed up pretty well.
But that`s 21 century, I suppose. In the past it was so much simpler.

I agree with you Bo. But like you stated in another thread, Poland is much more homegenic than the pluriform Netherlands and other West-European countries. It is true that my (Dutch) country is more complicated in cultural, ethnic and linguistic sense.

There are so many nationalities overhere, that there are language and cultural problems. For instance I have and had linguistic/language problems with some colleages, who are very dear colleages, but who have migrant or asylumseeker backgrounds.

Some of them came from the intelligentsia (elite) circles from the countries they came from. They have university levels, had god jobs in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Algeria and other places. Here in the Netherlands for years they were forced to inactivity, because they were locked in asylumseeker shelter homes, the centres in which they are concentrated, and have to wait for their allowance pass or papers with which they can stay over here. And then they discover that their diploma's, their educations, their skills doesn't count overhere. And you see professors, entrepreneurs, engineers, artists, journalists and politicians (oppositions activists/dissidents) who have simple jobs as cleaners, dishwashers in restaurants, factory workers, Newspaper delivery man or postman. This problems did not exist in the twentees, thirtees, fourtees, fiftees and sixtees.

Form the other hand this multi-cultural society has connected me to the world since my childhood. Which started by growing up in a street with expats, next to Dutch people. I grew up with French, Wallon (Belgian-French), Flemish, English, and Greek-Italian neighbours next to the Dutch locals. And my mother had a Polish background, you can add that to the expat street culture. In the beginning my parents spoke a lot English too. My mother learned Dutch from Dutch childrens books, conversations with my father and her children (us) and other Dutch people. And later from reading Dutch literature, newspapers and magazines. As a child there were not so many migrant children on my primary school, except of a very pretty black Surinames girl, named Bibbi. But these Surinames people often spoke perfectly Dutch in an old fashionate way, because they were used to the Dutch colonial school system. The funny thing is that many Surinamese people who never went to the Netherlands, knew the names of all the Dutch cities, and a lot of towns, villages and provinces and regions, because they got Dutch Geography. Where many Duch people are very lazy or not so strict with their Dutch grammer and orthography, some migrants and asylumseekers fought to learn the language and became very good at it. They are nearly language purists. Some of them became very good writers, poets and journalists in the Dutch language. A new problem emerged in the Islamic pillar, and in the several pillars inside the Islamic pillars. Many Turkish youngsters or visitors at Turkish mosques speak Turkish poorly, they are native Dutch speakers. A group of young Dutch migrants of mixed ethnic background (Turkish, Moroccan, Kurd and others) therefor started a new Mosque, a Dutch language Mosque for young Muslims who only speak Dutch or prefer Dutch in the sermons, next to some Arabic prayers.

[pjotr]

Here another article about Milo Anstadt in Polish:

wyborcza.pl/1,75475,9960832,Zmarl_znany_holenderski_pisarz_polskiego_pochodzenia.html

[tufta]

Read the thread thouroughly, watched all videos.

I once thought Jewish revival in Poland could take place, now I tend to think it is just a marginal phenomenon.

A question: is Barrack Obama Ghanaian? Of course he is - he has 50% of his DNA directly from Ghana! Of course he is not - he is fully American, taught like one, thinking like one, being one!

What I found most reassuring in the set of youtubes is that Deutsche Welle station made a report about Jewish Life in Modern-Day Poland and informed about fear of Polish Jews today and that 'anti-semitism is always close to the surface in this country'. As we know Polish kind of deeply idealogical anti-Semitism was always murderous and leads to murdering Jews - in contrast to economical and confessional antisemitism characteristic for Germany, which did not exclude helping the Jews prosecuted by murderous Poish state. It is good that today, facing absolute lack of anti-Semitism in Modern Day Germany Deutsche Welle gently warns about it in neighbouring Poland while reporting about Jewish life here.

[pjotr]

Tufta,

I tend to agree with you because I see comparissons between Poland and other European countries. Since the Holocaust and a mass jewish exodus to Palestine (Israel) and the USA after the Second World Jewish life, jewish culture and jewish people have played a marginal role in most European countries, because they were tiny minorities without much influence. Real jewish life today exists in New York, Antwerp (Belgium), France and Great-Britain (which have stil significant jewis communities), but Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium (outside Antwerp and Brussels) and other European countries do not have large jewish communities and a vibrant jewish culture. The communities are simply to small and marginal for that. In Poland you have a few thousand jews on a population of (predominanttly) 40 million (Roman-Catholic) Poles.

I had to search hard to find these video's. I think Polish-Jewish history is more alive and there is more jewish culture and heritage in Poland than there are jews living in Poland. And next to that maybe thousands of Poles with a jewish past live a Roman-Catholic Polish life and other Jewish Poles don't want to empathise their jewishness, because they see themselves as Poles like Milo Anstadt did.

Cheers,
Pieter

[tufta]

Hi Pieter!
" And next to that maybe thousands of Poles with a jewish past live a Roman-Catholic Polish life and other Jewish Poles don't want to empathise their jewishness, because they see themselves as Poles like Milo Anstadt did."

Yes Pieter, most Poles are simply Poles no matter what was the confession of their forefathers. However, almost every Pole with some basic historical background will tell you that we feel a little bit like siblings who lost all their kinsfolk - for the first time in history Poland since 1945 is ethnically homogeneous country. Not by our choice.


And excuse the heavy sarcasm in previous comment, couldn't help.

[pjotr]

Tufta,

There is that fine Polish kind of irony again which I remember of the humor of my Polish uncles back in the eightees: I quote you: "Anti-semitism is always close to the surface in this country'. As we know Polish kind of deeply idealogical anti-Semitism was always murderous and leads to murdering Jews - in contrast to economical and confessional antisemitism characteristic for Germany, which did not exclude helping the Jews prosecuted by murderous Poish state."

I just wrote in an e-mail correspondance with a Dutch jewish friend of mine that *I have experianced more anti-semitism in the Netherlands than in Poland. Ofcourse you would say or one would say, "How many times have you been in Poland", and "You live all your life in the Netherlands". What I can say is that I have NEVER experianced any anti-semitism in the circle of my Polish family, their friends and their colleages. Is it coincidence or not? And I have experiance anti-semitic remarks in the Netherlands from some elements of my colleages, from strangers and from people one would not expect it. The latter was due to my job as radio journalist for years. Due to that job I met a lot of people of a variety of professional backgrounds. I learnt some things and one of them was that there are anti-semitic ideas (conspiracy theories, stereotypes and dislike of jews) that are held by some politicians, entrepreneurs and civilians. Some are related to Israel and Zionism, in the sense that their anti-semitism is triggered by Israels policies or news about Israel. Some of the anti-semitism comes from old anti-semitic stereotypes that are rooted deep in the European subconciousness. Even within jewish people themselves (because I have witnessed anti-semitism from people with jewish roots too. Some from quarter jews [1/4 th jewish blood], some of half jews and some even from 100% jews with a deep self loathing criticism: One of them said: "Jews can be filthy mean fellows, look at how they treat the Palestinains, they are tough cookies.") Der Jüdische Selbsthass ("Jewish Self-hatred") has a long history. I wonder if we have other versions of that like Polish selfhatred or Dutch selfhatred? I know that the Dutch version exsist of Anglophile and Francophone Dutch people who emirgrated to France and England, and who can't stand Dutch culture, people, mentality and the language. Many compatriots avoid places abroad where there are large concentrations of compatriots, because they want to experiance, respect and enjoy the local/regional national culture, the people, their environment and history.

A critical man like Milo Anstadt told me in a phone conversation before he died (I think it was in 2008 or 2009): "Don't think that the Polish jews before the war were only victims of anti-semitism and Polish Polonism policies like 'Poles first', or 'buy Polish products'". Anstadt: "Polish jews weren't victims, we were well organised, we knew how to defend ourselves, and we had our political parties, Unions, religious communities, our rights, our selfdetermination [selfrule and certain autonomy] and Polish jews were no angels either. Mind you that there were 3 million Polish jews back then, and the Polish jews had their mass organisations." Ofcourse Anstadt was a Polonist jew of Polish origin who loved Poland, which means that he was a Polish jew who thought of himself first as being a Pole, and secondly as being a jew. Tufta, you wrote about this phenomenon earlier. Polish jews who considered themselves to be Polish. Maybe Bruno Schulz was one of them? From my Polish family, which was/is "aryan ethnic Roman-Catholic Polish" to use that Nazi time terminology had jewish element due to mixed marriages. That wasn't a problem within the family. The jews who married the Polish Roman-Catholic family members often lived a Roman-Catholic life. (I don't know if they converted or were already converted assimilated jews) They did'nt practice Judaism nor empathised their jewishness or past. But they were Polish jews. They were simply family members, not different fro the Roman-Catholic fellow family members. Maybe some people could have problems with the mixed marriages, but I have never witnessed those objections. Many of these marriages took place before my birth and many of these people died before I came to Poland. One Jewish family member died in Katyn as a Polish officer, and his son died in the Warsaw uprising.

My mother rented a room from a jewish landlord in Warsaw and had jewish colleages at her work. She told me that that never was an issue. She said: "People didn't talked about who was a jew or who was a Roman-Catholic, people knew who was jewish, but that wasn't an issue in Warsaw of the fiftees or sixtees. People were colleages, acquaintances or friends, and that was what mattered, not what religion, nationality or religion you had." And my mother also said about Roman-Catholic Poles: "You had many versions of Polish Catholics; some of them were pious believers, who went to church every sunday, tuesdaymorining and wednesday evening, others were general Catholics who lived according to their famolies Roman-Catholic traditions, and other Poles were Roman-Catholic, but did'nt attend church or went to church every now and then." I got a pluriform view about Poland due to her stories. Ofcourse Warsaw was more cosmopolitan, more of a Metropole than other Polish cities, so I know that her stories are not the general Polish story of an average Pole. But they showed the image of a certain group of Poles. The Yuppies of the Peoples Republic of Poland.

The Polish family of my mother was a mix of a ethnic Polish Roman-Catholic majority and some jewish and ethnic German elements in it. (In the sense of Poles with German names, German ancesters and German family -far away-. Very Polish like general Władysław Anders (1892 – 1970), Brigadier General Emil August Fieldorf (1895 – 1953), Adam Fastnacht (1913 - 1987), Anna Viktoria German (1936 – 1982), Maximilian Kolbe (Had an ethnic German father and lived from; 1894 – 1941), Suzanna von Nathusius (born April 12, 2000) and Dr. Edward Henryk Werner (1878 – 1945).

Cheers,
Pieter

* Some primitive, rude Dutch people mistook my "Polishness" (50% Polish heritage) and dark (un-Dutch?) slavic look as being jewish. A few times I was called a dirty jew or witnessed negative remarks to my person, because some people considered me to be jewish. (Important statement to put this statement into perspective: "The anti-semitic element in the Netherlands is a minority, but anti-semitism exists in the Netherlands in the native Dutch, West-Germanic form of anti-semitic atheist Dutchmen and a tiny minority of a marginal group of anti-semitic christians. There is a larger group however of anti-semitic Muslim migrants, who hate Israel and Israeli's and jews in general. Not all muslims, but some of them." Neo-Nazism is such a marginal phenomenon, that the majority of anti-semitic incidents has a non neo-nazi background. You have anti-semitic hooligans, anti-semitic leftwing people, rightwing anti-semites and Islamist anti-semites.

[pjotr]

Feb 14, 2013 22:03:02 GMT 1 tufta said:

Hi Pieter!
" And next to that maybe thousands of Poles with a jewish past live a Roman-Catholic Polish life and other Jewish Poles don't want to empathise their jewishness, because they see themselves as Poles like Milo Anstadt did."

Yes Pieter, most Poles are simply Poles no matter what was the confession of their forefathers. However, almost every Pole with some basic historical background will tell you that we feel a little bit like siblings who lost all their kinsfolk - for the first time in history Poland since 1945 is ethnically homogeneous country. Not by our choice.

And excuse the heavy sarcasm in previous comment, couldn't help.

Tufta,

Please don't excuse to me, I read your sarcastic reply with a smile on my face, because it reminded me of the ironical, sarcastic and sometimes cynical humor of my Polish uncles and of the sometimes dark humor of the very good Polish writers, which I read in Dutch translation. By the way that sarcastic Polish humor is sometimes close to the Jewish humor I know. Sometimes I think the exellent Polish sense of humor and Jewish sense of humor is a sort of twin humor.
I like Polish sense of humor although it was and is sometimes dark, sinister, loaded humor, connected to a heavy past and the consequences of that past for today's reality. Some of the Polish literature I read was very fatalistic and pessimistic, but I liked it. It was from the dark period of Sovjet domination and the time that Poland was governed by Polish henchmen (puppets) of the SovjetUnion. Another thing I remembered that some Polish family members had a double sense of humor in the sense that they mocked both the Communist party, state, system, nomenklatura, shortages (of food and consumer products), malfuctionating economy and corruption and the Roman-Catholic church (the clergy and the power of the church). These were Roman-Catholic people, who were traditional, but part of their humor was about the church and thus about Roman-Catholicism. In that I make the comparison with the jewish humor. In jewish humor an important element is selfmockery and every jewish aspect of life is a subject or target for satire. My Polish uncles humor was a sort of Roman-Catholic version of the Jewish selfmockery humor I know.

Jewish Gallows humor:

During the days of oppression and poverty of the Russian shtetls, one village had a rumour going around: a Christian girl was found murdered near their village. Fearing a pogrom, they gathered at the synagogue. Suddenly, the rabbi came running up, and cried, "Wonderful news! The murdered girl was Jewish!"











Cheers,
Pieter

[tufta]

.

[tufta]

Pieter, I think you are very correct when you depict similarities in humour. There're many and not just in humour for the Jewish and 'aryan' populations of Poland mixed thoroughly during 800 years of common prosperity. You do remember that Poland was a safe harbour for people of Europe prosecuted in their home countries, and that included Jews, expelled from Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, France. These Jews settled mainly in Poland, Turkey and Germany. And then came the parititions of Poland and a new xenophobic dimension started to influence the relations in the lands of once multicultural, liberal former Rzeczpospolita. First in the Russian partition, than with rising nationalism currents (or 'inventing' nationalism as we know it todat) in the wester part of Europe, in remaining two partitions. And then came Polish independence 1918-1939 and Poles, still in a multicultural country, started to form their state, sometimes - and too often!- disregarding the minorities, especially after Pi³sudkski's death. Antisemitism was practically a part of everyday life, but that was mainly economical and 'confessional' antisemitism, never ideological, never were Jews (mis)treated as 'undermen', they were often mistreated and brutally as competitors in economy (especially in territories where they were numerous) and competitors 'in faith', with silly stereotyping by many priests as 'murderers of Jesus Christ'. People in the villages in the poorer, desolated parts actually believed that! When Germans came with their murderous racism, many of Poles, some known in public for their antisemitism helped the Jews. There's a Jewish-Polish-American researcher who ....


ooops, my time's up Have to go but will come back and try to finish.

[tufta]

excuse the delay,busy day, now running to neighbours-friends for a litlle traditional celebration Till later

[tufta]

.

[tufta]

Excuse this too long series on the subject not really in the centre of interest
Anyway. I meant a researcher, Jew saved by Poles from the Germans, who devoted large part of her life investigating the phenomenon of 'two antisemitism'.
And to conclude. Imagine you are a teenager or a young man from Salomon Islands. You have a faint imagination of WWII besides that it was some very bloody conflict in the Pacific which originated and ruined Europe, now prosperous EU. And now you watch this English-language Deutche Well documentary, do it Pieter, if you have the time, looking from the position I've decribed. A boy in Salomon Island. Please don't superimpose your knowledge on the film, just percieve it as it is. And then see - what have you learned from it? WHo destroyed Jews of Europe, of Poland? Who were the Nazi? In what country Jews still live in fear?

And NOW compare that to your knowledge

[pjotr]

Tufta,

Yes, I do remember that Poland was a safe harbour for people of Europe prosecuted in their home countries, the Calvinists, Lutheranians, Jews and others. I think about the German and Dutch minorities too. And I know that there were both Sephardic jewish refugees from Spain and Potugal and Ashkenazi jewish refugees from Great-Britain and France. I thought that there were some German jewish refugees to after the start of some pogroms in German cities and towns by people who went to war for the crussades. Their first victims were jews and other christians (read the plunder of territories of the Byzantine Empire (under whom Constantinople) and after that Palestine itself.

It is good that you distinguish between economical/ 'confessional' antisemitism on one side and the ideological/biological anti-semitism on the other side. What is the view of that Jewish-Polish-American researcher on the phenomenon of 'two antisemitism'?

If I look from the young man from the Salomon Islands perspective, I get the image of an anti-semitic Poland where all the walls are smeared with ani-semitic slogans and graffiti. I see the Orhtodox jew who was a vicious anti-semite before he converted to Judaism. I see a historical image that Poland wasn't a safe country for jews during it's history. And that today things slowly are going to change.

Finally I have to say that I remember that Bonobo discussed the issue of Polish Catholic-Jewish religions very thoroughly in the past on this Forum and probably on the other Forum (Jaga's one).
There will be always different sides to the story. The Polish Roman-Catholic general one of citizens of Poland, the view of the Polish diaspora (which can be ultra-nationalist Polish next to moderate patriots and people who just love their Polish heritage), and the view of the Jewish diaspora in the world and the Israeli's. Israel is a very Patriotic or nationalistic country with it's different versions of Zionism. Looking to Poland from a Jewish Nationalist view, you don't get an objective or neutral standpoint, nor you get a objective view from a Polish Nationalist. That's why it is good that foreign historians have wrote books about the Polish history from a neutral point of view. Milo Anstadts books were good, but I know that hew was a Polonist Dutch-Polish jew. He was pro-Polish, but he could look critical too as a journalist, witer and a person who was aware of his Polish roots.

Cheers,
Pieter

[tufta]

Hello Pieter,
I fully agree there are different views on many matters including Polish history. I think that peaceful confronting these views sometimes may be beneficial.

When I confront my knowledge and Pieter's knowledge:

'I do remember that Poland was a safe harbour for people of Europe prosecuted in their home countries, the Calvinists, Lutheranians, Jews and others', 'distinguish between economical/ 'confessional' antisemitism on one side and the ideological/biological anti-semitism on the other side.'

with the knowledge presented in the English language DW movie (tabula rasa mind perspective post-watching the film):

'I see a historical image that Poland wasn't a safe country for jews during it's history. And that today things slowly are going to change.' I see that something terribly important is missing here.

What happened to the Jews? Why they disappeared from Poland?


As to 'two antisemitism I meant plural but missed 's'.
You can read the works/books yourself Her name is Nechama Tec, you may remember her in relation to 'Bielski partisants'.

[pjotr]

Tufta,

Tabula rasa, meaning blank slate in Latin, is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. Generally proponents of the tabula rasa thesis favour the "nurture" side of the nature versus nurture debate, when it comes to aspects of one's personality, social and emotional behaviour, and intelligence. The term in Latin equates to the English "blank slate" (or more accurately, "scraped tablet") (which refers to writing on a slate sheet in chalk) but comes from the Roman tabula or wax tablet, used for notes, which was blanked by heating the wax and then smoothing it to give a tabula rasa.

I only partly believe in this theory which was invented by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC). I believe in Empirical evidence, a source of knowledge acquired by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical evidence is information that justifies a belief in the truth or falsity of an empirical claim. In the empiricist view, one can only claim to have knowledge when one has a true belief based on empirical evidence. This stands in contrast to the rationalist view under which reason or reflection alone is considered to be evidence for the truth or falsity of some propositions.

When I spoke from the young man from the Salomon Islands perspective I imagined a Polynesian man with no European ancesters and limited knowledge of European history in general and Polish history in particular. From his blank position (no initial knowledge about Poland, no connection to Polish culture, Polish people or objective or scientific knowledge about Poland) I imagined that he watched the video of DW, and made his conclusion. Probably also influenced by simplistic Hollywood movies (B movies, with often an anti-Polonist element) about the Second World War and some sitcoms. I do not underestimate the intelligence of people of the Salomon Islands, but think from my European perspective.

If I am asked to give watch a movie about the Second World war in South-Eastern Asia or the West Pacific, I probably would do the same and go on my instinct or intuition, because I am not an expert of South-Eastern Asia or the West Pacific (*in the case that I am a general Western-European without general and specific knowledge about these regions).

Cheers,
Pieter

P.S.- *I do know something about South-East Asia, because during the Second World War, the Dutch Indies (Indonesia, a former Dutch colony) was at war with Japan, lost the war and was occupied by Japan. As a result of that I became interested in the Japanese and Asian side of the Second World war. Pearl Harbour (1941), China (occupied by Japan during the thirties and fourties), Korea (lost about 7 million people due to Japanese brutality. From 1910 until 1945 Korea was occupied by Japan. Like the Prussians and Russians in Poland the Japanese tried to wipe out the Korean culture, and forced Koreans to take Japanese names) and etc.

[pjotr]

Feb 16, 2013 19:21:45 GMT 1 tufta said:

What happened to the Jews? Why they disappeared from Poland?

Tufta,

At the start of the Second world war on 1 September 1939, with the German invasion of Poland, the Nazi German Einsatzkommandos, a sub-group of five Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads (term used by Holocaust historians) – up to 3,000 men each – usually composed of 500–1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, started to kill Jews and Polish intellectuals in the captured Polish territories often far behind the advancing German front.


Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in Poland

During the war not only these forces hunted, arrested and killed the Polish jews and other jews, but also other German and non German elements, like elements of the Wehrmacht, SD (Sicherheitsdients), ordinairy German police, Luftwaffe units, Ukrainian, Russian and Baltic elements that collaborated with the Germans, and unfortunately also tiny Polish and Jewish elements that collaborated with the Holocaust machine. I mention the Jewish Getto Police and some Jewish Gestapo collaborators and the incidents in Jadwebne and the bad elements within the Blue Police or the Polnisches Schutzmannschaftsbataillon 202 and some Polish collaborators, who betrayed jews or Polish resistance fighters for money. But I want to state very clearly that these people were a tiny minority. So marginal that you can't speak about a "Polish collaboration" with the German/Austrian Nazi Holocaust. The majority of the systematic murders and the Industrial killing with Gas in the Gas chambers was done by German Nazi SS Totenkopf verbande.


Polish Blue Police officer during the German occupation


SD-men in the Dutch city of Maastricht. The same guys rounded up, beat, put in prison, tortured and murdered jews before they were sent to their SS colleages in the concentrationcamps. This was the SS police. The SD was equally brutal to the Gestapo.

But in large and general, the systematic mass murder on jews in Poland was commited by German and Austrian Nazi's and their henchmen.


Einsatzkommando fire at men in a trench, 1941-1942 During World War II, the Nazi German Einsatzkommandos were a sub-group of five Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads—up to 3,000 men each—usually composed of 500-1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, whose mission was to kill Jews, Romani, communists and the NKVD collaborators in the captured territories often far behind the advancing German front.



Cheers,
Pieter

[pjotr]

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policja_Polska_Generalnego_Gubernatorstwa_(1939-1944)

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/202_Batalion_Schutzmannschaft

Polish collaboration during World War II in Poland

Unlike in most European countries occupied by Nazi Germany—where the Germans sought and found true collaborators among the locals—in occupied Poland there was no official collaboration either at the political or at the economic level. Poland also never officially surrendered to the Germans. Under German occupation, the Polish army continued to fight underground, as Armia Krajowa and forest partisans – Leśni. The Polish resistance movement in World War II in German-occupied Poland was the largest resistance movement in all of occupied Europe. As a result, Polish citizens were unlikely to be given positions of any significant authority. The vast majority of the pre-war citizenry collaborating with the Nazis was the German minority in Poland which was offered one of several possible grades of the German citizenship. In 1939, before the German invasion of Poland, 800,000 people declared themselves as members of the German minority in Poland mostly in Pomerania and Western Silesia. During the war there were about 3 million former Polish citizens of German origin who signed the official list of Volksdeutsche. People who became Volksdeutsche were treated by Poles with special contempt, and the fact of them having signed the Volksliste constituted high treason according to the Polish underground law.
There is a general consensus among historians that there was very little collaboration with the Nazis among the Polish nation as a whole, compared to other German-occupied countries. Depending on a definition of collaboration (and of a Polish citizen, based on ethnicity and minority status), scholars estimate number of "Polish collaborators" at around several thousand in a population of about 35 million (that number is supported by the Israeli War Crimes Commission). The estimate is based primarily on the number of death sentences for treason by the Special Courts of the Polish Underground State. Some estimates are higher, counting in all members of the German minority in Poland and any former Polish citizens declaring their German ethnicity (Volksdeutsche), as well as conscripted members of the Blue Police, low-ranking Polish bureaucrats employed in German occupational administration, and even workers in forced labor camps (ex. Zivilarbeiter and Baudienst). Most of the Blue Police were forcibly drafted into service; nevertheless, a significant number acted as spies for Polish resistance movement Armia Krajowa. John Connelly quoted a Polish historian (Leszek Gondek) calling the phenomenon of Polish collaboration "marginal" and wrote that "only relatively small percentage of Polish population engaged in activities that may be described as collaboration when seen against the backdrop of European and world history".
The anti-Jewish actions of szmalcownicy were very harmful to the Polish Jews as well as the gentile Poles aiding them. Anti-Jewish collaboration of Poles was particularly widespread and effective in the rural areas. The collaboration by some Polish Jews, who belonged to Żagiew, was also harmful to both Jewish and ethnic Polish Underground.
In October 1939, the Nazis ordered the mobilization of the pre-war Polish police to the service of the occupational authorities. The policemen were to report for duty or face death penalty. Blue Police was formed. At its peak in 1943, it numbered around 16,000. Its primary task was to act as a regular police force and to deal with criminal activities, but were also used by the Germans in combating smuggling, resistance, and in measures against the Polish (and Polish Jewish) population: for example, it was present in łapankas (rounding up random civilians for labor duties) and patrolling for Jewish escapees from the ghettos. Nonetheless many individuals in the Blue Police followed German orders reluctantly, often disobeyed German orders or even risked death acting against them. Many members of the Blue Police were in fact double agents for the Polish resistance. Some of its officers were ultimately awarded the Righteous among the Nations awards for saving Jews.
Following Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, German forces quickly overran the territory of Poland controlled by the Soviets since their joint invasion of Poland in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. A number of people collaborating with the Soviets before Operation Barbarossa were killed by local people. Belief in the Żydokomuna stereotype, combined with the German Nazi encouragement for expression of anti-Semitic attitudes, was a principal cause of massacres of Jews by gentile Poles in Poland's northeastern Łomża province in the summer of 1941, including the massacre at Jedwabne.
In 1944 Germans clandestinely armed a few regional Armia Krajowa (AK) units operating in the area of Vilnius in order to encourage them to act against the Soviet partisans in the region; in Nowogrodek district and to a lesser degree in Vilnius district (AK turned these weapons against the Nazis during Operation Ostra Brama). Such arrangements were purely tactical and did not evidence the type of ideological collaboration as shown by Vichy regime in France or Quisling regime in Norway. The Poles main motivation was to gain intelligence on German morale and preparedness and to acquire much needed equipment. There are no known joint Polish-German actions, and the Germans were unsuccessful in their attempt to turn the Poles toward fighting exclusively against Soviet partisans. Further, most of such collaboration of local commanders with the Germans was condemned by AK headquarters. Tadeusz Piotrowski quotes Joseph Rothschild saying "The Polish Home Army was by and large untainted by collaboration" and adds that "the honor of AK as a whole is beyond reproach".
One partisan unit of Polish right-wing National Armed Forces, the Holy Cross Mountains Brigade, decided to tacitly cooperate with the Germans in late 1944. It ceased hostile actions against the Germans for a few months, accepted logistic help and withdrew from Poland into Czechoslovakia with German approval (where they resumed hostilities against the Germans) in late stages of the war in order to avoid capture by the Soviets.

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolaboracja_pod_okupacją_niemiecką_podczas_II_wojny_światowej

[tufta]

Hello Pieter, and thank you for your answer. So I think we may agree that the DW English language movie about revival of Jewish life in Poland may in fact disinform not inform about what really happened in Poland.

[pjotr]

Feb 18, 2013 12:30:09 GMT 1 tufta said:

Hello Pieter, and thank you for your answer. So I think we may agree that the DW English language movie about revival of Jewish life in Poland may in fact disinform not inform about what really happened in Poland.

We agree on that fact. Mostly Modern German documentry makers sensible about historical facts and the different national versions of history, would have taken a more objective or neutral point of view.

Some facts or realities in the documentry are true, but they don't tell the whole story.

[pjotr]

Actually the tendency of the documentry that empathises that Poland isn't safe for jews today is bad, but the personal statements of the Polish jews aren't. You see that the young Polish woman can go to a Polish researcher without any problems. If there would be a danger about her identity she would not have visited this Polish genealogist. And the fact that they speak openly to a German filmmaker. Europe is small and via Internet they could and would have know that this documentary could have been seen in Poland. Everybody knows that internet, youtube and Facebook exist.

[pjotr]

The Jewish community in Poland is resurecting from the ruins of Nazism and communism.











What for influence has the present national-conservative government and anti-immigrant government on the social-cultural climate in Poland. Is there an increase in xenophobia and does islamophobia go hand in hand with anti-semitism? Today I read in Dutch newspapers and magazines about the heated climate in our Western corner of Europe where a fear and fierce hatred of Islam and Muslims exist and Muslims are targeted. Particulary Muslim women because they are visible Muslim with their headgears. In the same time racism grew when a black female tv personanlity joined the migrant party Denk (Think) which represents Muslim migrant Turks, Moroccans and non-Muslim black Surinamese and Dutch Antillian people. The woman Sylvana Simons is attacked on Social media and in the media with racist, xenophobe, sexist and colonial remarks.

In some countries xenophobia, racism, ethnic profiling (discrimination), islamophobia and anti-semitism go hand in hand. In the Netherlands both Muslim anti-semitism exists and old fashionate European anti-semitism (with roots in christian anti-semitism, leftwing communist anti-semitism and biological nazi race anti-semitism) exist.

[pjotr]

My last post was very negative, while I am very positive about Polish jews in general and the revival of the Polish jewish community today in particular.




Polish Jews today, four generations and growing

In Poland today, an astonishingly vigorous Jewish community has emerged from the shadows – a reminder that where democracy flourishes, so too can the Jewish people.


Jewish wedding in Krakow

This month the jewish community went to yoga classes. They attended interpretive literary readings, learned about the genetic origins of Ashkenazi Jewry, and taught their kids about Sephardic cuisine. And that was just at the Warsaw JCC.

The revival of Jewish cultural life that began more than two decades ago with the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival has become an established, post-revival reality, with dynamic Jewish youth groups, day schools and summer camps, and scholarly work conducted by Jews and non-Jews alike. American Jews still have a tendency to speak of the Polish community only in terms of memory, but Poland’s living Jewish culture reflects resiliency, depth and beauty.


Locals and tourists on the streets of Kazimierz district of Krakow during the Jewish Festival.

However they may express their heritage, the members of today’s Jewish community in Poland have a powerful sense of place, deeply rooted in their Polish belonging. From Orthodox traditionalists to cultural Jews, to the growing number of Poles raised Catholic or atheist who have discovered their Jewish ancestry only recently, all are pursuing the vitality that marks 1,000 years of Polish-Jewish life. As Piotr Wislicki, chairman of the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, says, “There is no history of Poland without the Jews, and no history of the Jews without Poland.”


Home to Europe's largest Jewish community before the Holocaust, Poland is currently experiencing a revival of Jewish culture. The panel explored this resurgence and the complicated questions it raises about contemporary identity.

The Jews of Poland are experiencing a reawakening of identity. Warsaw’s new, state-of-the-art POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews expresses and builds on this awakening, as Poles of all backgrounds become agents of a new future, built together. Perhaps most fascinating is the number of non-Jews involved in this process at every step of the way.



As democracy has taken root and flourished, Polishness has ceased to be defined in narrow ethnic or religious terms, becoming instead a question of citizenship and multicultural heritage. Non-Jewish turnout at festivals, academic seminars, and among the museum’s visitors is a sign of this growing inclusiveness, as anti-Semitism is increasingly perceived as a threat not just to Jews, but to society as a whole.

All of this can be seen in the Polish justice system’s recent defense of ritual slaughter in the face of those who sought to legislate against the rules of kashrut and halal; in their campaign to defeat this pernicious law, the Jewish community was joined by leaders of Poland’s small, indigenous Muslim community.


A group of young Polish jews in Jerusalem, Israel.

Yet most in the world’s Jewish community seem unaware of these changes. The narrative of loss and destruction is powerful; many among us fear that failing to focus on the horrors of the past will mean we’ve failed the memories of those we lost.

I believe, however, that nothing could be further from the truth. Over the course of 10 centuries, Jewish lives were lived in all their glory on Polish soil. The community’s rabbis, writings, food, art, thoughts and deeds are everywhere woven into our shared culture – and that community’s descendants are continuing its legacy. To fail to recognize the growth and vitality of today’s Polish Jewish community is to violate the memories on which they draw.


22-year old Damian (2L) holds the 'havdalah' candle as Slawek (R) reads a prayer in the presence of other young Jewish students of the Jewish Community Center (JCC) Krakow, during a 'havdalah' ceremony, in the home of one of the students in Krakow, Poland, Sept. 28, 2013.

As the director of Taube Philanthropies, I have felt real pride and deep joy as I’ve watched the POLIN Museum move from dream to reality – the role we play in that institution will always give it a very special place in my heart.

As deep as the Holocaust’s trauma was and will always be, it is not now, nor has it ever been, the whole story of Polish Jewry. Vibrant Jewish life is now a reality in Poland, and those who live elsewhere who don’t realize it are missing out on a rich cultural revival. The narrative has been changed.

In Poland today, an astonishingly vigorous Jewish community has emerged from the shadows – a reminder that where democracy flourishes, so too can the Jewish people.

Shana Penn is executive director of Taube Philanthropies and a visiting scholar at the Graduate Theological Union’s Center for Jewish Studies.



Bonobo, have you ever had Polish jewish pupils or jewish university students? And are they open about their judaism? Do you have jewish friends or colleages? Do you know the Krakow jewish community?

[pjotr]

Dear Jeanne,

The present climate in Poland for the small and vibrant Jewish community is good, but the climate on the European continent is not so good for religious and secular jews for various reasons. First of all due to some xenophobic, traditional, discriminatory, racist and anti-semitic European groups (from the old far right neo-nazi groups, to soccer Hooligans to new rightwing populist movements), and the old anti-semitic left and the new anti-semitism of Middle-eastern, Southern-European (Turkish, Bosnian and Albanian) and North-African (Berber and Arab) Muslim migrant anti-semitism. The present climate in for instance France, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, and certain parts of Germany is not good for jews, due to the dominant presence of Muslim migrants.

Although you have rightwing populist and national-conservative governments in Poland and Hungary I haven't heard yet sounds of a rising anti-semitism in Poland and Hungary, but I certainly hear sounds about xenophobia, discrimination and racism against Muslims in those nations. The intellectually left-wing Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland (Free Netherlands) interviewed the Hungarian Jewish author György Konrád last week. I read the interview and translated a few of the Dutch sentences into English over here.


György (George) Konrád (born 2 April 1933) is a Hungarian novelist and essayist, known as an advocate of individual freedom.

In that interview Konrád labeled the German chancelor Angela Merkels hospitable attiude towards Muslim migrants from Syria, North-Africa and Afhanistan as disastrous for Europe. He said; "We have to fight islamophobia, but in the same time should defend our values." He continued: 'The West-European leftwing elite play into the hands of radical Islam. But you are not in or at any place better of that here.' "The leftwing elite has a lot of criticism directed on European civilization, and that is very perilous." "We in the east know what opression is, you in the West have lived to long in peace, freedom and democracy." "We have a healthy distrust and you lack that attitude in the West". The leftwing soul is quickly won for the wrong cause. You see in everything and everybody a victim.


György Konrád in his apartement in a Villa in the green Buda part of Budapest

I hope that in Poland, the Netherlands, Germany, and the rest of Europe moderate Christians, Jews, Muslims, secular-humanists, atheists, Buddhists, Hindu's and others will find a common ground to coexist, and resist extremism, totalitarianism, fundamentalism, theocracy, authoritarianism, dictatorship and any unreasonable and inhumane ideology, movement, direction, party or development. I hope that Poland will stay on the right track of freedom and democracy, rule of law, reason, humanity, European civilization and as a member of the European family of nations.

Cheers,
Pieter

[pjotr]

This leading Polish jewish intellectual is very influential in Poland.