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Post by Bonobo on Feb 4, 2018 15:52:42 GMT 1
Israeli intellectuals appeal to Polish president not to sign Holocaust law 02.02.2018 12:13 Israeli politicians, historians and intellectuals have appealed to the Polish president not to sign a law that could mean a jail term for anyone who accuses Poland of being complicit in Nazi German crimes during World War II.
The law has sparked an outcry in Israel. The United States, of which Poland is a staunch ally, has warned that the new law could damage Warsaw's relations with America as well as with Israel.
Poland's lower house last week passed a bill that would introduce penalties for anyone who publicly ascribes blame to the Polish nation or state for crimes committed by Nazi Germany.
The bill was approved by the Polish Senate, the upper house, on Thursday.
Polish President Andrzej Duda has 21 days to sign the legislation into law. Or he can veto it and send it back to Poland's parliament to reconsider, or refer it to the country’s Constitutional Tribunal for review.
In Poland, the planned new law is seen as a way of fighting the use of the phrase “Polish death camps”, which implies Poland's involvement in the Holocaust.
Poland has long fought the use of such phrases, which have appeared in foreign media in relation to Nazi German-run extermination camps located in occupied Polish territory during World War II.
But commentators have said that Israel is concerned that the new law could mean penalties for anyone who criticises individual Poles' role in the Holocaust.
‘Emotions running high’
Israeli ambassador to Poland Anna Azari has said: "In Israel, this bill is seen as creating a possibility of punishment for Holocaust survivors' testimony. The emotions are running high.”
The Polish bill has been criticized by the Israeli prime minister, deputies and Israel’s foreign ministry.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in a special televised address on Thursday evening that Holocaust denial is not only the denial of German crimes but also lying about history, including minimising the responsibility of perpetrators and assigning blame to their victims.
Polish government spokeswoman Joanna Kopcińska has said: “It was the Germans who attacked Poland, while the Poles and Jews were the victims” in World War II.
“There were no Polish death camps, no Polish concentration camps or Polish extermination camps. We must set the record straight by continually explaining and clarifying things,” she added.
A working group for “historical truth and Israeli dialogue” was called on Thursday, after Morawiecki and his Israeli counterpart earlier agreed to hold bilateral dialogue.
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Post by Bonobo on Feb 17, 2018 21:44:43 GMT 1
Oops, I predict a serious deterioration of Polish Israeli relations after the new bill is finally introduced. I don`t suppose that PiS government will back off from the current draft, besides it is supported by the opposition, too and Jews won`t give up their stance, either. Both nations can get really hysterical when it comes to their historical issues, especially the joint ones. Pity. A Polish Jewish Cold War is looming on the horizon? Poles will never admit there were Polish death camps because it is not true. Jews/Israelis fear that the new bill will stiffle the discussion on Polish pogroms of Jews during and after WW2 and warn it is a sort of whitewashing the past. As I suggested 3 weeks ago, the situation has been getting worse and worse. Poles didn`t give up or change the new law, Jews still oppose it. Both sides have said a few unneccessary things about each other which have only exacerbated the conflict instead of solving it. E.g., today Polish Prime Minister said that apart from Polish perpetrators (in Holocaust), other nationalities also took part, including Jewish. It’s extremely important to first understand that, of course, it’s not going to be punishable, not going to be seen as criminal to say that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators, as there were Ukrainian (ones), not only German perpetrators. The Israelis/Jews reacted with utter outrage and called it negationism of Holocaust. Wrongly, because Morawiecki didn`t negate anything, he just stated a historical fact. Juust like some Poles participated actively in Holocaust, some renegade Jews did too. E.g., collaborating Jews rounded up other Jews in ghettos and helped Germans send them to death camps. Also, some Jews worked as German agents who tracked down other Jews hiding in so called Aryan districts. We might discuss the reasons for such behaviour, though, Morawiecki didn`t bother about them. The Jewish reaction to PM`s remark only shows how similar Poles and Jews are: both nations don`t like when their past misdeeds/wrongdoing are spoken about in public, because they consider themselves victims, not perpetrators. Again, pity that being so alike, we can`t understand each other better and reach a compromise. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/17/polish-pm-draws-ire-claim-jewish-holocaust-perpetrators/
Polish PM draws ire with claim of Jewish Holocaust 'perpetrators'
Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki has drawn criticism for his latest remarks
17 February 2018 • 5:45pm
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki sparked a storm of criticism Saturday after defending his country's new law concerning the Holocaust, which he said had involved "Jewish perpetrators" as well as Polish.
The controversial law passed by Poland's senate this month sets fines or a maximum three-year jail term for anyone ascribing "responsibility or co-responsibility to the Polish nation or state for crimes committed by the German Third Reich".
Appearing at the Munich Security Conference, Morawiecki was questioned by a journalist who told of his mother's narrow escape from the Gestapo in Poland after learning that neighbours were planning to denounce them.
The journalist, Ronen Bergman, asked if by recounting this, "I am a criminal in your country?" It garnered a round of applause from the audience.
Morawiecki responded: "It's not going to punishable, not going to be seen as criminal, to say that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators, as there were Ukraine and German perpetrators."
He reiterated that the point of the law was to defend Poland's honour by making clear that people knew "there were no Polish death camps... There were German Nazi death camps."
"But we cannot agree with mixing perpetrators with victims, because it would be first of all an offence to all the Jews and all the Poles who suffered greatly during the Second World War."
Several attendees later took to Twitter to assail the remarks.
Bergman himself tweeted that the Polish premier's answer was "unbelievable".
Francois Heisbourg, a London-based diplomacy expert, called the reference to "'Polish perpetrators like there were Jewish perpetrators'" a "shameful response".
Noa Landau, a correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz, denounced an "outrageous scene", noting the audience's silence after Morawiecki's comments.
www.haaretz.com/israel-news/mks-rebuke-polish-pm-over-claim-of-jewish-perpetrators-in-holocaust-1.5825538 Netanyahu: Polish Premier's Claim of Jewish Perpetrators in Holocaust Is 'Outrageous'
Labor leader Gabbay calls on Israel to react harshly: 'Polish premier speaks like a run-of-the-mill Holocaust denier' Israeli lawmakers were very critical of the Polish primier's comments on the Holocaust.
Zionist Union lawmaker Tzipi Livni, who is also attending the Munich conference, responded to Moraweicki's statement by saying, "It is hard to believe the Polish prime minister's answer, and his intolerable comparison between the Polish and the Jews, between the victims and those who actively took part in the killings."
She added that it was moving to hear Bergman attack the Polish prime minister regarding the Holocaust law while telling his mother's survival story.
Labor Party Chairman Avi Gabbay said in response that “Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki speaks like a run-of-the-mill Holocaust denier. The blood of millions of Jews cries out from Polish soil over the historical injustice and flight from blame. Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and Poles took an active part in their murder. The government of Israel must be the voice for millions of the murdered and harshly denounce the Polish prime minister’s remarks.”
Yair Lapid, the chairman of the centrist Yesh Atid party, tweeted: “The Polish Prime Minister’s statement is antisemitism of the oldest kind. The perpetrators are not the victims. The Jewish state will not allow the murdered to be blamed for their own murder. I again call upon the Prime Minister to immediately recall our Ambassador to Israel.”
Zionist Union lawmaker Amir Peretz, who previously served as Israel's defense minister, said that “Statements by Poland’s prime minister about ‘Jewish criminals’ in World War II, in which 6 million Jews were murdered, are disgusting and irresponsible.” He said that the Polish prime minister’s remarks “pave the way for Holocaust deniers and could yet inspire even sicker voices that will accuse the Jews of collective suicide of 6 million,” adding: “These statements must not be ignored, especially when they come from the prime minister of Poland.”
“The Polish prime minister is actually blaming the Jews for the Holocaust,” said Ksenia Svetlova, another lawmaker from the Zionist Union. “This is the only way to understand his shocking statements at the Munich conference.”
“The Polish law that prohibits talking about the involvement of Poles in the Holocaust is not a chance stumble, but a calculated policy of absolving the Polish people of the terrible and not so distant past,” she continued. “Other European countries [share] this trend ... And so a harsh Israeli response is so important. Otherwise in a few weeks or months we’ll discover that similar remarks are being made in other European capitals.”
“I’ll say it again: A country that rewrites the Holocaust cannot be a friend and partner to Israel, the only Jewish state in the world,” said Svetlova. “The government of Israel must work against these statements and vehemently oppose them, including recalling the ambassadors and going as far as cutting ties.”
Robert Ilatov, chairman of Yisrael Beiteinu, said that “The Polish prime minister will stop at nothing to legitimize the Polish Holocaust denial law. With cynical politeness and without batting an eye, the Polish prime minister denies the Holocaust and rewrites the most terrible tragedy in our people’s history. Any comparison between the Jews and the Poles with regard to the Holocaust is like a crime. The blood of the 3 million Jews murdered in Poland, among other things with the active support of the Polish people, cries out from the soil.
“If it’s so important for the Polish prime minister to present the truth to the world, let him begin by preparing a list of all the assets stolen from the Jews by the Poles during the Holocaust, taking advantage of and fully adopting the race laws passed in Nuremberg. To this day, millions of Polish citizens are using and living from these assets, showing no willingness at all to return them.
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Post by Bonobo on Feb 18, 2018 16:51:16 GMT 1
Escalation. Jewish perpetrators speech of Polish Prime Minister. World Jewish Congress demands an apology from the PM. The government spokeswoman says there will be none. Polish embassy fence in Israel`s capital:
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Post by Bonobo on Feb 18, 2018 21:07:28 GMT 1
This thread is almost 10 years old, as old as this forum. Below is the second post in it about Polish President who joined a Jewish celebration. I am afraid that after current Jewish-Polish brawls we will wait a decade or two for any Polish politician to wear a Jewish cap as a symbol of mutual understanding. What a pity. All this effort to bring two nations together has been lost in such a stupid way. Today the Polish President lit the first candle in the Jewish Synogogue in Warsaw, thus symbolically starting the Jewish holiday of Chanukah. www.tvn24.pl/-1,1578390,0,1,lech-kaczynski-zapalil-chanukowa-swieczke,wiadomosc.html He said that the holiday is the last (but not least) accord in the series of celebrations of Polish independence. President on the left, wearing a Jewish cap. I feel really impressed by his action.
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Post by pjotr on Feb 18, 2018 22:46:38 GMT 1
I agree with the Israeli historian Zuroff. You had the Szmalcownik, a person blackmailing Jews who were hiding, or blackmailing Poles who protected Jews during the Nazi occupation. The act of szmalcownictwo made substantial damage. These Polish criminals were interested in money. By stripping Jews of assets needed for food and bribes, harassing rescuers, raising the overall level of insecurity, and forcing hidden Jews to seek out safer accommodation, blackmailers added significantly to the danger Jews faced and increased their chances of getting caught and killed. At the beginning of the German occupation, szmalcowniks were satisfied with a few hundred zlotys in extortion, but after the death penalty for hiding Jews was introduced the sums rose to several hundred thousand zlotys. And like Zuroff said some Poles were betrayed by their neighbours or strangers. Mind you many people were envious of the jews, hostile to jews ( anti-semitic) or needed money. Some people hated jews more than they despised the German and Austrian nazi's. In many European nations people hunted jews themselves as bounty hunters, or were informers to the Gestapo for money. For each jew they got blood money. For instance in the Netherlands Dutch jew hunters received 7 guilders (Gulden) per jew. A guilder (Gulden) then was much more worth than a Guilder in the seventies, eighties or nineties. In Poland szmalcowniks will have done the same as their Dutch, Belgian, French (Vichy France and German occupied France), Norwegian, Baltic, Hungarian, Romanian, Ukrainian and Belarussian counterparts. Maybe in Poland there were less szmalcowniks then in other countries, because the Polish secret state and many Polish citizens had contempt for their behavior, and the death penalty was put on their heads due to their treacherous and blackmailing attitudes and actions. In occupied Poland the status of Volksdeutsche had many privileges but one big disadvantage: Volksdeutsche were conscripted into the German Army. The Volksliste had 4 categories. No. 1 and No. 2 were considered ethnic Germans, while No. 3 and No. 4 were ethnic Poles that signed the Volksliste. No. 1 and No. 2 in the Polish areas re-annexed by Germany numbered ~1,000,000 and No. 3 and No. 4 ~1,700,000. In the General Government there were ~120,000 Volksdeutsche. Ethnic German-Polish collaboration with Nazi GermanyThousands of ethnic German Poles collaborated with the German and Austrian Nazi occupiers in Poland as henchmen of the Wehrmacht, Waffen SS, the Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete (Nazi occupation government), German police (Ordnungspolizei), Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst (SD) or Sicherheitspolizei (SIPO). The notorious Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz (German: ethnic self-defense or self-protection), also known as the Selbstschutz battalions, were a paramilitary organisation consisting of ethnic German Volksdeutsche mobilized from among the German minority in Poland. By October 1938, the SD agents from Germany have organized the Selbstschutz formations in Poland. The ethnic Germans with Polish citizenship have been trained in the Third Reich in various sabotage methods and guerilla tactics. Before the war began, Selbstschutz activists from Poland compiled lists of Poles who were to be removed or executed in Operation Tannenberg. The list was distributed among Nazi death squads as the Special Prosecution Book-Poland (germ.Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen). Immediately after the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz engaged in attacks against the Polish population and the army, and performed sabotage operations helping the German advance across the Polish state. In mid-September, the chaotic and largely spontaneous activities of this organization were coordinated by SS officers. After German invasion of Poland, Selbstschutz worked together with the Einsatzgruppen to massacre Poles. Selbstschutz took part in the first action of elimination of Polish intelligentsia, the mass murders in Piaśnica, during which 12,000 to 16,000 civilians were murdered. An Intelligenzaktion was a plan to eliminate all Polish intelligentsia and Poland's leadership class in the country. These operations took place soon after the fall of Poland, lasting from the fall of 1939 until the spring of 1940. As the result in 10 regional actions 60,000 landowners, teachers, Polish entrepreneurs, social workers, military veterans, members of national organisations, priests, judges and political activists were killed. Intelligenzaktions were continued by the German AB-Aktion operation in Poland. After the war, Volksdeutsche of Polish origins were treated by Poles with special contempt, and also considered traitors according to Polish law. German citizens that remained on territory of Poland became as a group personae non gratae. They had a choice of applying for Polish citizenship or being expelled to Germany. The property that belonged to Germans, German companies and German states, was confiscated by the Polish state along with many other properties in Communist Poland. German owners, as explicitly stated by the law, were not eligible for any compensation. Those who decided to apply became subject to a verification process. At the beginning of the process, many acts of violence against Volksdeutsche took place. However, soon the verification of Volksdeutsche became controlled by the juridical process and was completed in a more controlled manner. Collaboration by ethnic PolesIn occupied Poland, there was no official collaboration at either the political or economic level. At an early stage of the war, the imprisoned former prime minister of Poland, Wincenty Witos, was offered by the Germans to lead a collaborationist government, but declined; and so did Prince Janusz Radziwiłł. Andrzej Świetlicki of the National Radical Camp Falanga and Professor Władysław Studnicki unsuccessfully sought official collaboration; they were rebuffed by Nazi German leaders. Depending on a definition of collaboration (and of a Polish citizen, including the ethnicity and minority status considerations), 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. The underground courts sentenced 10,000 Poles, including 200 death sentences. Historian Gunnar S. Paulsson estimates that in Warsaw the number of Polish citizens collaborating with the Nazis during the occupation might have been around "1 or 2 percent". Fugitive Jews (and members of the resistance) were handed over to the Gestapo by the so-called "szmalcowniks", who received financial rewards. The denunciators of various ethnicities, according to Isaiah Trunk and Rubin Katz, included members of the Jewish criminal underworld taking advantage of their inside knowledge. In the territories occupied by the Soviets before Operation Barbarossa some members of the Jewish community collaborated with the NKVD. Soon after the German takeover of Jedwabne in July 1941, the Jedwabne pogrom, the exact circumstances of which are not clear, took place. According to the investigation by the Institute of National Remembrance, completed in 2002, at least 340 members of Jewish families were rounded up by or in the presence of Nazi Germans. They were locked in a barn which was then set on fire by Polish residents of Jedwabne and vicinity. For sources look at this Wikipedia page:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_(1939%E2%80%931945)#Collaboration_with_the_occupiers(Look a the notes and citations!)
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Post by pjotr on Feb 18, 2018 23:48:49 GMT 1
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Post by Bonobo on Jul 3, 2018 16:52:21 GMT 1
After a few months, PiS, threatened with the boycotte of Polish politicians by US administration and President, decided to withdraw the controvercial law, despite their previous resolute vows to stick to their stance. However, one retired politician said : PiS brought in the goat and then they took it out, but the stench has remained. www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44627129 Poland Holocaust law: Government U-turn on jail threat
27 June 2018
When Poland made it a criminal offence this year to accuse it of complicity in Nazi war crimes, there was an outcry in Europe, Israel and the US.
Anyone found guilty could face up to three years in jail.
Five months later, the right-wing prime minister has moved to change the law to decriminalise the offence, describing it as a "correction".
An amendment to the Holocaust law was quickly backed by the lower house of parliament and now moves to the Senate.
The law had been intended to "defend the good name of Poland" but from now on it would be a civil, not a criminal offence, the head of prime minister's office, Michal Dworczyk, told public radio.
When it was signed by Polish President Andrzej Duda in February there were immediate objections, and he then referred the measures to the Constitutional Tribunal, in effect putting the law on hold.
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Post by Bonobo on Oct 20, 2018 21:29:03 GMT 1
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Post by Bonobo on Nov 11, 2018 16:31:40 GMT 1
Nice initiative. One for the album: Israeli and Polish post offices issue special anniversary stamp Art & Culture | News Matt Day November 10, 2018
The stamp “celebrates anniversaries that are important to both nations”. Ronen Goldberg, Marzanna Dąbrowska/Poczta Polska
The Polish and Israeli post offices have released a stamp marking the 100th anniversary of Poland regaining its independence and the 70th anniversary of the creation of Israel.
The stamp went into circulation in both countries on November 5, and were created, Poczta Polska says, to celebrate both the anniversaries and a long shared history.
In a press release Poczta Polska said the series, entitled ‘Poland-Israel. Independence. Memory. Heritage,’ is “to commemorate both anniversaries this year as well as the centuries-old common history the two nations share.”
Bearing a price, in Poland, of PLN 2.60 the stamp shows both the Israeli and Polish flags with the mottos ‘Israel - 70 Years of Independence’ and ‘Poland – 100 Years of Independence’ in Polish, English and Hebrew.
It is the third time the Israeli and Polish post offices have launched a joint-issue stamp.Ronen Goldberg, Marzanna Dąbrowska/Poczta Polska
“It is significant that in the same year Poland and Israel celebrate anniversaries that are important to both nations,” said Przmysław Sypniewski, president of Poczta Polska’s management board.
The stamps were designed Ronen Goldberg, an artist who has created a number of stamp designs for the Israeli post office.
This is the third time the two post offices have launched a joint issue of stamps. Back in 1993 they issued a stamp to mark the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and in 2009 a stamp was produced to celebrate the life of Berek Joselewicz, a Jewish-Polish merchant who fought in the Kościuszko Uprising as colonel in the Polish army.
Despite an at-times fraught history between Poles and Jews, Poland and Israel enjoy strong economic and political ties.www.thefirstnews.com/article/one-for-the-album-israeli-and-polish-post-offices-issue-special-anniversary-stamp-3189
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Post by Bonobo on Dec 7, 2018 23:03:51 GMT 1
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Post by Bonobo on Feb 21, 2019 21:49:19 GMT 1
Another deterioration has taken place. BOYCOTT! Morawiecki calls off V4 summit in Israel as diplomatic row escalates following ‘reprehensible and racist’ swipe from Israeli FM News & Politics Marzanna Robinson February 18, 2019
PM Morawiecki said Poland would not be attending the Visegrad meeting in Jerusalem which was scheduled for today and Tuesday as tensions between the two countries deepen. Radek Pietruszka/PAP
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has cancelled Poland’s participation at the Visegrad Group (V4) summit in Israel after the country’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, accused Poland of collaborating with Nazi Germany and said: “Poles suckle anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk."
Having earlier demanded “a firm response to the reprehensible, unacceptable and simply racist words” Morawiecki said he now had no other choice than to cancel Poland’s participation.
He said: "I made the decision to cancel the previously planned visit of the Polish delegation to the V4 summit in Israel; therefore Minister of Foreign Affairs Jacek Czaputowicz will not go there either.
"I made such a decision because the wording of Mr Katz is absolutely unacceptable, it is not only unacceptable in diplomacy, but it is also absolutely unacceptable for me in the public sphere."
He added that Poles were the most victimised people, along with Jews and Roma, during the Second World War and that Poles suffered enormous sacrifice during the war by saving the lives of tens of thousands of Jews.More www.thefirstnews.com/article/boycott-morawiecki-calls-off-v4-summit-in-israel-as-diplomatic-row-escalates-following-reprehensible-and-racist-swipe-from-israeli-fm-4764polandin.com/41418405/poles-and-jews-are-like-cousins-polands-chief-rabbi Speaking to the Super Express daily, Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich said that Poles and Jews are like cousins who are sometimes at odds, adding that people know that family arguments can be very intense.
Rabbi Schudrich also expressed the opinion that the similarities between Poland and Israel sometimes make it difficult for the two countries to communicate.
The chief rabbi, referring to the words of Israel’s Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz regarding anti-Semitism in Poland, emphasised that for him “Katz’s statement is not a political problem, but first and foremost a question of truth,” adding that “as a spiritual man, it is my duty to speak out loud when something is not the truth. And it is not the truth, what Katz suggested in his statement − that all Poles are anti-Semites.”
In Rabbi Schudrich’s view “such a position on the matter is not only offensive and painful, but first of all, it is untrue.”
The top rabbi pointed out the fact that “Jews have been present in Poland for over a thousand years. While living together, Poles and Jews became very similar to each other.” He also noted that they “also share the same good and bad characteristics. These striking similarities sometimes make it very difficult to talk to each other.”
In his opinion, the “dramatic arguments which sometimes explode between us are not the result of us being so different, but because of us being so similar.” He went on to point out that “Poles and Jews are like cousins who are sometimes at odds. And we know that family arguments can be very intense. With a stranger you can just wave them off, but if a relative says something out of order, a big argument kicks off.”
Meanwhile, the Polish Council of Christians and Jews appealed for a responsible approach to the history of Polish-Jewish relations and a prudent shaping of the social and political frames in which these relations will continue to develop in the course of the next generations.
In a statement sent to Polish press agency, PAP, the Council said it “it is receiving with deep concern the new aggravation of rhetoric, as regards Polish-Jewish affairs.”
The Council called on the participants in the public debate, including politicians and journalists, both in Poland and Israel, “to speak about 20th century history with due diligence, restraint and respect for the memory of the deceased and murdered.”
On Sunday, Israel’s Foreign Minister Katz said “Poles imbibe anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk,” quoting the late Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir.
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Post by pjotr on Feb 26, 2019 21:09:59 GMT 1
On the other Proboards Polish Culture Forum a discussion took place about whether Netanyahu in Warsaw is ntalking nonsense. I do believe he did. But first I will post the discussion. Feb 18, 2019 at 5:20pm QuotePost Options Post by Jaga on Feb 18, 2019 at 5:20pm there was a conference in Warsaw sponsored by the US that netanyahu transformed into; bunch of accusations that poland collaborated with Nazi and also into bunch of anti-iran nstatements. Everybody in Poland is upset. In the same manner Netanyahu could accuse Jews as being nazi Colaborators since Jewish elders were forced tonpreoarebthe names of Jews sent to Auschwitz from ghettos. Anyway, netanyahu is losing any credibility he still had. www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-israel-netanyahu-poland-20190216-story.html
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Post by pjotr on Feb 26, 2019 21:10:19 GMT 1
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Post by pjotr on Feb 26, 2019 21:11:46 GMT 1
Feb 20, 2019 at 2:19pm QuotePost Options Post by pieter on Feb 20, 2019 at 2:19pm Jaga, Karl and fellow Forum members and visitors of this Forum,
Again I say, Netanyahu, is silent about the terrible part of the Holocaust in Hungary in which Hungarians of the Arrow Cross Party killed thousands of jews in Budapest and actively assisted the German SS, SD and Gestapo in the Holocaust. And I didn't hear him abpout Romanian collaboration with the Nazi's, Croatian concentrationcamps of the The Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Croatian: Ustaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret) which members murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma as well as political dissidents in Yugoslavia during World War II.
I do believe that it is wrong that the Polishg government ignores the collaboration of some Poles ( a minority) with the German/Austrian Nazi occupiers in murdering jews for personal financial gain or hatred for jews as 'the others'.
The climate of today is wrong, because there is a lack of freedom of historical research. One side exaggerates the participation in collaboration with the Nazi's, while the other side denies it's involvement in the Holocaust. The truth as always lies in the middle.
Netanyahu is wrong in this case and acting foolishly, but also the Polish government with it's stict colored interpretation of the past and with it's hindering of historical accuracy and the truth is also on the wrong track in this. Again, I think this development is unnessecary, but National pride, ego's of politicians and national agenda's play a role in this.
You can't undo certain historical facts like the fact that there were Polish collaborators, the Polish Blue Police in the Gettho's and the Jedwabne pogrom ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedwabne_pogrom ).
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by Bonobo on Feb 27, 2019 20:56:39 GMT 1
there was a conference in Warsaw sponsored by the US that netanyahu transformed into; bunch of accusations that poland collaborated with Nazi and also into bunch of anti-iran nstatements. Everybody in Poland is upset. In the same manner Netanyahu could accuse Jews as being nazi Colaborators since Jewish elders were forced tonpreoarebthe names of Jews sent to Auschwitz from ghettos. Anyway, netanyahu is losing any credibility he still had. The main problem is that Jews are angered by Polish refusal to acknowledge the crimes which were indeed comitted on Polish Jews by aryan Poles. There were such crimes, of course, and intelligent history oriented Poles are able to admit them, but the rest prefers to deny any accusations in fear of the escalation of demands from Jewish organisations, especially American ones. Many Jews believe that Poland owes them some reparations for the Jewish property which was confiscated or just taken over by Poles when Jewish owners were killed by Germans. If Poles admit those accusatiosn, the demands for restitution will increase and nobody in Poland wants that because the public opinion in Poland is unanimous- Poles owe nothing to Jewish organisations and they will never pay anything. I also think so.
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Post by pjotr on Feb 28, 2019 20:02:15 GMT 1
there was a conference in Warsaw sponsored by the US that netanyahu transformed into; bunch of accusations that poland collaborated with Nazi and also into bunch of anti-iran nstatements. Everybody in Poland is upset. In the same manner Netanyahu could accuse Jews as being nazi Colaborators since Jewish elders were forced tonpreoarebthe names of Jews sent to Auschwitz from ghettos. Anyway, netanyahu is losing any credibility he still had. The main problem is that Jews are angered by Polish refusal to acknowledge the crimes which were indeed comitted on Polish Jews by aryan Poles. There were such crimes, of course, and intelligent history oriented Poles are able to admit them, but the rest prefers to deny any accusations in fear of the escalation of demands from Jewish organisations, especially American ones. Many Jews believe that Poland owes them some reparations for the Jewish property which was confiscated or just taken over by Poles when Jewish owners were killed by Germans. If Poles admit those accusatiosn, the demands for restitution will increase and nobody in Poland wants that because the public opinion in Poland is unanimous- Poles owe nothing to Jewish organisations and they will never pay anything. I also think so. Bonobo, I understand why Israeli Jews are angered by the Polish refusal to acknowledge the crimes which were indeed comitted on Polish Jews by aryan Poles. The new Polish law that makes it a crime to blame Poland for the Holocaust is quuestionable. The Holocaust, Hebrew Shoʾah (“ Catastrophe”), Yiddish and Hebrew Ḥurban (“ Destruction”), the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II was commited first and formost by German and Austrian Nazi's of the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), ( Death's Head Units) the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps for Nazi Germany ( the Third Reich (German: Drittes Reich). Next to these SS-Totenkopfverbände you had 32,000 Gestapo agents and 6,482 Sicherheitsdienst ( SD) agents in Nazi German/Austrian-occupied Europe. Larger were ofcourse the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS units who commited war crimes and mass murder (genocide) in Poland and other occupied European countries. The Wehrmacht consisted of 14,800,000 armed men and the Waffen SS 900,000 men (including foreign volunteers and conscripts).The Germans and Austrians called this “ the final solution to the Jewish question" (German: die Endlösung der Judenfrage). SD personnel during a łapanka (random arrest) in occupied PolandSD men in Poland 1939. From left to right in the rear seats: SS-Untersturmführer and SS-Oberscharführer. The SD men are wearing army shoulder straps, akin to the Waffen-SS.Following the invasion of Poland, German occupation policy especially targeted the Jews but also brutalized non-Jewish Poles. In pursuit of lebensraum, Nazi Germany sought systematically to destroy Polish society and nationhood. The Nazis killed Polish priests and politicians, decimated the Polish leadership, and kidnapped the children of the Polish elite, who were raised as “ voluntary Aryans” by their new German “parents.” Many Poles were also forced to perform hard labour on survival diets, were deprived of property and uprooted, and were interned in concentration camps. German troops executing a group of Poles. (Dokumentationsarchiv des Oesterreichischen Widerstandes, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives)A centrepiece of the papacy of Pope (later Saint) John Paul II, who witnessed the Holocaust directly as a young man in Poland, was the fight against anti-Semitism and his embrace of Jews. The pope paid a historic visit to a synagogue in Rome in 1986, and under his leadership the Vatican established diplomatic relations with the State of Israel in 1993, shortly after the conclusion of the Oslo peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. In March 2000 the pontiff visited Israel. At Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust, he described anti-Semitism as anti-Christian in nature and apologized for instances of anti-Semitism by Christians. At the Western Wall, Judaism’s most-sacred site, he inserted a prayer note of apology for past Christian misdeeds into the stones: we are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.In 1986, Pope John Paul II visited a Rome synagogue in the first recorded papal visit of its kind.Pope John Paul II in Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Israel, in March 2000.John Paul rests his hand on the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem in 2000. In 1998 the Vatican had published a document titled “ We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” which called upon the faithful to reflect upon the lessons of the Shoah (the Holocaust). In presenting that document, Edward Idris Cardinal Cassidy, president of the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, said, “ Whenever there has been guilt on the part of the Christians, this burden should be a call to repentance.” Prior to World War II, anti-Semitism was an increasingly visible factor in Polish society, and government authorities took formal measures to exclude Jews from key sectors of public life. The modern country of Poland was a new one established in the aftermath of the First World War, and during the 1920s and 30s it was still struggling to define its ideological footing and identity. A nationalism deeply rooted in Catholicism was central to that struggle. While most Polish Jews were neutral to the idea of a Polish state, many played a significant role in the fight for Poland's independence during World War One; around 650 Jews joined the Legiony Polskie formed by Józef Piłsudski, more than all other minorities combined. Prominent Jews were among the members of KTSSN ( The Temporary Coordinating Commission of Confederated Independence Parties [Polish: Komisja Tymczasowa Skonfederowanych Stronnictw Niepodległościowych]), the nucleus of the interim government of re-emerging sovereign Poland including Herman Feldstein, Henryk Eile, Porucznik Samuel Herschthal, Dr. Zygmunt Leser, Henryk Orlean, Wiktor Chajes and others. An ever-increasing proportion of Jews in interwar Poland lived separate lives from the Polish majority. Economic instability was accompanied by anti-Jewish sentiment in some of the media; discrimination, exclusion, and violence at the universities; and the appearance of " anti-Jewish squads" associated with some of the right-wing political parties ( Endecja, Falanga National Radical Camp). These developments contributed to a greater support among the Jewish community for Zionist and socialist ideas, coupled with attempts at further migration, curtailed only by the British government. Notably, the " campaign for Jewish emigration was predicated not on antisemitism but on objective social and economic factors". However, regardless of these changing economic and social conditions, the increase in antisemitic activity in prewar Poland was also typical of antisemitism found in other parts of Europe at that time, developing within a broader, continent-wide pattern with counterparts in every other European country. Matters improved for a time under the rule of Józef Piłsudski (1926–1935), who opposed antisemitism. Piłsudski countered Endecja's 'ethnic assimilation' with the 'state assimilation' policy: citizens were judged by their loyalty to the state, not by their nationality. The years 1926–1935 were favourably viewed by many Polish Jews, whose situation improved especially under the cabinet of Pilsudski’s appointee Kazimierz Bartel. Many Jews saw Piłsudski as their only hope for restraining antisemitic currents in Poland and for maintaining public order; he was seen as a guarantor of stability and a friend of the Jewish people, who voted for him and actively participated in his political bloc. However, a combination of various factors, including the Great Depression, meant that the situation of Jewish Poles was never very satisfactory, and it deteriorated again after Piłsudski's death in May 1935, which many Jews regarded as a tragedy. Representants of the Polish Jewish community in Dęblin welcome Marshal of Poland, Józef Piłsudski, with bread and salt after the liberation of the city from the bolsheviks during the Polish-Soviet War, 1920.Poland during the InterbellumThe situation was mixed for Polish Jews in the inter-war period (1919-1939). They were recognized as a nationality and their legal rights were supposed to be protected under the Treaty of Versailles; however, their legal rights were not honored by Poland. The Kehillah, a Jewish governing body, was not allowed to run autonomously. The government intervened in the elections and controlled its budget. On the other hand, Jews received funding from the state for their schools. Economic conditions declined for Polish Jews during the inter-war years. Jews were not allowed to work in the civil service, few were public school teachers, almost no Jews were railroad workers and no Jews worked in state-controlled banks or state-run monopolies (i.e. the tobacco industry). Legislation was enacted forcing citizens to rest on Sunday, ruining Jewish commerce that was closed on Saturday. Their economic downfall was accompanied by a rise of anti-Semitism. In the late 1930's a new wave of pogroms befell the community and anti-Jewish boycotts were enacted. Persistent economic boycotts and harassment, including property-destroying riots, combined with the effects of the Great Depression that had been very severe on agricultural countries like Poland, reduced the standard of living of Poles and Polish Jews alike to the extent that by the end of the 1930s, a substantial portion of Polish Jews lived in grinding poverty. The main strain of antisemitism in Poland during this time was motivated by Catholic religious beliefs and centuries-old myths such as the blood libel. This religious-based antisemitism was sometimes joined with an ultra-nationalistic stereotype of Jews as disloyal to the Polish nation. On the eve of World War II, many typical Polish Christians believed that there were far too many Jews in the country and the Polish government became increasingly concerned with the "Jewish Question". Some politicians were in favor of mass Jewish emigration from Poland. By the time of the German invasion in 1939, antisemitism was escalating, and hostility towards Jews was a mainstay of the right-wing political forces post-Piłsudski regime and also the Roman Catholic Church. Discrimination and violence against Jews had rendered the Polish Jewish population increasingly destitute, as was the case throughout much of Central and Eastern Europe. Despite the impending threat to the Polish Republic from Nazi Germany, there was little effort seen in the way of reconciliation with Poland's Jewish population. In July 1939 the pro-government Gazeta Polska wrote, "The fact that our relations with the Reich are worsening does not in the least deactivate our program in the Jewish question—there is not and cannot be any common ground between our internal Jewish problem and Poland's relations with the Hitlerite Reich." Escalating hostility towards Polish Jews and an official Polish government desire to remove Jews from Poland continued until the German invasion of Poland. I hope that the intelligent history oriented Poles are able to openly admit the crimes that were commited against Polish jews by ethnic Poles. To deny any accusations is denying historical facts, data, proof/evidence and accuracy. It's like the Turks in Turkey, Germany, Austria, the UK, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and France who refuse to acknowledge that the Armenian genocide (1914–1923) took place. You have to deconnect the historical crimes commited by ethnic (Roman-Catholic) Poles against Polish jews from the demands from Jewish organisations from the USA and Israel. That many Jews want Polish reparations for the Jewish property which was confiscated or just taken over by Poles when Jewish owners were killed by Germans is another question. Jews and Poles alike know that Poland, nor other European countries (other than Germany, which paid war reparations) will pay to compensate Jewish losses of life, property and incomes. Because Poland and these other European nations see themselves as the victims of Nazi German aggression and occupation themselves. I understand the Polish fear that if they admit those accusations, the they will have to pay high restitution sto descendants of the Polish jews of that time in the USA, Canada, the UK, Israel and other countries. |I understand that nobody in Poland wants that to happen. The past is the past, today is today, and tomorrow will be tomorrow. We shouldn't forget the past, we should learn lessons from it. But in the same time Jewish, Sinti/and Roma, descedants of Sovjet Prisoners of war (who were starved to death in German/Austrian Nazi concentration camps), descedants of politcal prisoners (Social-democratic, communist, liberal, conservative and christian aryan Nazi opponents who were tortured and murdered in Gestapo prisons and Nazi concentration camps) and Polish victims of the Second World War (slave labourers and concentration camp prisoners) should know that the present day German and Austrian people are different generations and don't bare the guilt of their great grandfathers, their great fathers, their fathers or uncles. They were born in the late thirties, early forties, late forties, fifties or sixties. Most of these Germans and Austrians are anti-Nazi or don't like the Third Reich and are ashamed of the Germany of that time. The present day Germany and Austria are free, democratic and Federal republics. I aggree with the public opinion in Poland that Poles owe nothing to Jewish organisations and that they should never pay anything to American jews or Israeli jews. But what they should is accept the painful truth of the past and give it a place. Denying that past is no option. The further away that past comes and the more new generations learned from it, the more reconcilliation can take place. Poland should have, had and will have good relations with Israel. Individual Poles and Israeli's are friends, colleagues, partners and allies. Some American jews also have Polish friends. Poles and jews have lived side by side for one thousand years, they have a lot in common and in the same time differ in culture, religion and genes. But they are brothers and sisters. They are old brothers and sisters. People in a family don't agree always on anything. Cain and Abel show that terrible things can happen in one family, and the descendants of the 2 sons of Abraham, the half brothers Isaac and Ishmael also have a hard time in dealing with each other. I am Polish in every level of my existance, without being aware of it, there is no choice in it. Because it is my language, it is the specific way of naming things, the childeren books, specific things I share with other Polish people.Cheers, Pieter Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica, the Altantic, www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust/Jewish-resistancewww.britannica.com/topic/anti-Semitism/Nazi-anti-Semitism-and-the-Holocaust#ref106029www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/poland-holocaust-death-camps/552455/www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-aims-of-jewish-youthen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
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Post by pjotr on Feb 28, 2019 20:57:36 GMT 1
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Post by pjotr on Feb 28, 2019 21:09:34 GMT 1
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Post by Bonobo on Apr 19, 2019 15:17:06 GMT 1
Just like there are Poles who like Jews and appreciate Jewish contribution into Polish culture, there are Jews who like Poles and Poland. Both are sometimes criticised or even stigmatised by their compatriots in their own countries. Jewish perspective - one decent Jewish writer declares he likes Poland and is immediately attacked by other Jews.
blogs.timesofisrael.com/i-love-poland/
I love Poland A people deserves to be judged by its best, not its worst, and the best of the Poles are among the Jews' most trusted friends Feb 20, 2019, 12:01 PM
Yes: I love Poland.
How to love a people who supposedly “imbibe anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk,” in the words of our new foreign minister, Israel Katz?
No matter how much time passes, Poland remains the place of our inconsolable pain. The grandfather whose name I carry, along with dozens of my family members, were transported and murdered there. The deep hatred against Jews that infected significant parts of Polish society even during and immediately after the Holocaust years lingers.
And yet a people deserves to be judged by its best sons and daughters, not its worst. And Poland’s best are among the very best of humanity, and among the Jewish people’s most trusted friends.
I love the Poland that gave us more trees on Yad Vashem’s Avenue of the Righteous than any other nation by far, even though the penalty for aiding a Jew was more severe in Poland than elsewhere in Europe — the murder of one’s entire family. There were Poles who betrayed Jews in hiding and murdered their Jewish neighbors. But I also remember Jan Karski, a devout Catholic and resistance fighter who twice smuggled himself into the Warsaw Ghetto and then into a transit camp for Jews on their way to the Belzec death camp and traveled to the West to personally plead with world leaders, including President Roosevelt, to save the Jews. Somehow his Polish mother’s milk wasn’t infected with hatred.
I love the Poland I encountered as a first-time visitor in 1989, just as “Solidarity” was transitioning from dissident movement to the party of government, replacing the Communists and beginning the revolution that would soon bring down the Soviet Union. It was the moment when Poland delivered the posthumous reply to Stalin’s taunt, How many divisions does the pope have? The pope’s divisions were the Polish people, and they brought about one of the great miracles of our time. I had devoted much of my life to the movement to free Soviet Jews, and now, thanks in part to Poland, the Iron Curtain was parting. Soon thousands of Soviet Jews, then hundreds of thousands, were coming home to Israel. My joy and Poland’s were joined. Joy was not the emotion I had expected or perhaps even wanted to share with Poland. And yet the Jewish people and the Polish people had been on the same side against evil and, against all odds, we won.
I love the Poland of Pope John Paul II, the greatest friend we’ve ever had in the Catholic Church — not despite the fact that he was Polish, but because he grew up in Poland with Jewish friends who one day disappeared. It was John Paul II who turned the theological promise of Vatican II into reality — who reversed two thousand years of Catholic contempt and insisted that the Jews were not rejected by God, but remained His beloved people, the first pope to go on pilgrimage to a synagogue and who on every step of his incessant travels met with local Jewish communities, to signal to his own faithful that the Jews were, in his words, the church’s elder brothers.
I love the Poland of young people who feel the aching absence of the Jews who once shared their home and who clean Jewish cemeteries because there is no other tangible sign of Jewishness left in their towns and villages. How many are they? Even one would be worth noting. And there are many.
I love the Poland of Janusz Makuch, who had never met a Jew and yet, in 1988, still under Communist rule, founded a semi-underground festival of Jewish culture in Krakow. Janusz’s impulse was to preserve some memory of Polish Jewish culture, perhaps klezmer music and a few words of Yiddish. But then he traveled to Israel and fell in love with the lifeforce of the Jewish people and turned the annual Krakow Jewish Festival into an avant-garde celebration, bringing Israeli bands and filmmakers and American Jewish artists to the streets of Krakow’s old Jewish quarter, and creating the best Jewish festival in the world.
I love the Poland where intense conversations on Jewish identity can happen in an instant, where the Jewish dybbuk haunting this land can suddenly appear in the most unlikely ways. The Poland where thousands of young people who barely knew they were Jewish or didn’t know they were Jewish at all are finding their way home — a whole new community of “de-assimilation,” in the words of Staszek Krajewski, a founding father of the Polish Jewish renaissance. The Poland where you can encounter someone like the professor I met in a Krakow café, who thought he may be Jewish, but had no proof, only an intense attraction to Judaism. Should I convert? he asked me. Are you Catholic? I asked in return. I love the Church and attend mass regularly, he replied. I told him to continue to be a friend of the Jewish people.
I love the Poland where, unlike much of Europe, anti-Zionism has not become an ideological fad, where even leftists will tell you that Poles who remember Communism know that “anti-Zionism” is a thin euphemism for Jew-hatred. The Poland where Israel is widely seen as a fellow heroic nation braving a difficult geography, and whose post-Communist governments have been among Israel’s strongest defenders in the European Union (which could of course change if Israel Katz succeeds in his mission as minister in charge of alienating Israel’s friends).
I don’t love the Poland that has tried to suppress scholarly inquiry into the shameful parts of its past, the Poland that tries to compete with us for the status of ultimate victim, and which has tried to appropriate as “Polish martyrs” the three million murdered Polish Jews, who in life were scarcely regarded as part of the nation, the Poland where expressions of the most vulgar anti-Semitism continue to taunt our deepest pain, the Poland where my liberal friends who had been dissidents under Communism now feel under assault again from their own government.
But I admit it: Having encountered the beautiful and tormented and holy soul of Poland, there is no hope for me. I am incurably in love. About the Author Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, where he is co-director, together Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, of the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), and a member of the Institute's iEngage Project. His latest book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, is a New York Times bestseller. His previous book, Like Dreamers, was named the 2013 National Jewish Book Council Book of the Year.Reply: blogs.timesofisrael.com/yossi-klein-halevi-loves-poland-but-does-poland-love-him/ Yossi Klein Halevi loves Poland, but does Poland love him?
The statistics don't lie: Polish anti-Semitism is widespread and enduring
Feb 21, 2019, 10:27 PM
Responding to Foreign Minister Israel Katz’ impolitic proclamation that “Poles imbibe anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk,” itself a reiteration of Yitzhak Shamir’s comment, Yossi Klein Halevi tells us he loves Poland, because the best of Poland are among the best of humanity.
Halevi highlights numerous examples of Polish commitment to Jewish culture or artifacts. And the bold inroads Pope John Paul II made to repair Christian-Jewish relations are indeed highly commendable. Like Halevi, I stand in mute awe of Poles who risked their own lives to save the lives of Jews in the Holocaust.
These Poles are among the best of humanity, and Halevi tells us a people should be judged by its best.
But should it?
An important study analyzes the current state of Poland’s anti-Semitism, and it is extensive. In fact, anti-Semitism is so ingrained in Polish culture that it plays several important functions in contemporary Polish society.
Almost 20 percent of Poles agree with the statement: “Although the Holocaust was a great tragedy, one good thing about it is that there are no more Jews living currently in Poland.”
In a survey of several European countries, nearly half of those surveyed in Poland, 45%, held anti-Semitic attitudes, the second highest percentage of any country surveyed. (Only Spain scored higher.)
Most Poles — 54% — think that Polish Jews, a scant 0.1% of Poland, have too much influence over the economy. Overall, the case of Poland is an example of the endurance of anti-Semitism without Jews.
And there is no sign that Poland’s animus toward Jews will change any time soon. The Catholic Church of Poland is reticent about educating its populace, and with state refusal to recognize the fact that many Polish citizens took part in the Holocaust, there is no reason to assume Poland’s antiSemitism will abate.
In light of Poland’s deep-seated anti-Semitism, Halevi’s examples of Polish judeophilia are all the more impressive. But they remain a minority in a sea of ingrained anti-Semitism.
So Halevi may love Poland. But Poland does not love the Jews.
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Post by Bonobo on Jul 28, 2019 17:09:12 GMT 1
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Post by pjotr on Jul 29, 2019 18:27:42 GMT 1
Jews like some Christians, Muslims, Hindu's and atheists sometimes disagree with other Christians, Muslims, Hindu's and atheists disagree with other jews over religious, property and direction matters..
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Post by Bonobo on Jan 25, 2020 19:55:56 GMT 1
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