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"Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Black
Date: May 31, 2012 02:33AM
[news.yahoo.com]
Guessing most of you have caught this.
Personally I'm finding the "outcry" thoroughly disgusting.
Death camps. Poland. Death Camps in Poland.
==> Polish Death Camps.
Frikkin' get over it. Not the same as saying the Poles ran the death camps, but if you're going to go there, hundreds of thousands of Poles served in the Nazi military, so, yeah, Polish Death Camps.
Here's your apology:
We're sorry the U.S. President is not an active participant in your efforts to sanitize Poland's role in the Holocaust.


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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: RgrF
Date: May 31, 2012 03:38AM
Poles of that time were actively engaged in extermination activities. They, particularly Catholic Poles, were enthusiastic participants.

You only get to rewrite history if you actually win a war.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Chakravartin
Date: May 31, 2012 06:40AM
Quote
RgrF
Poles of that time were actively engaged in extermination activities. They, particularly Catholic Poles, were enthusiastic participants.

You only get to rewrite history if you actually win a war.

The Polish people were not responsible for the Nazi death factories in German-occupied Poland, nor complicit.

It's easy to see why many people in that country would be offended at the implication that they participated in the slaughter of their own people.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: rjmacs
Date: May 31, 2012 07:00AM
Quote
Chakravartin
Quote
RgrF
Poles of that time were actively engaged in extermination activities. They, particularly Catholic Poles, were enthusiastic participants.

You only get to rewrite history if you actually win a war.

The Polish people were not responsible for the Nazi death factories in German-occupied Poland, nor complicit.

It's easy to see why many people in that country would be offended at the implication that they participated in the slaughter of their own people.

Not complicit?! Are you saying that Poles did not work in the death camps? Are you saying that the Occupied Government did not assist the Nazis in sealing the Warsaw ghetto, systematically terrorizing its residents, plundering their homes, and ultimately sending them to their deaths? Or are you saying that all 'cooperation' was coerced at the barrel of a gun? That would belie a terrible misapprehension of the actual history, not just of the Holocaust, but of the long history of Jews in Poland.

If my nation were invaded and occupied, and the invaders began rounding up a category of persons and sending them to their destruction, if i did nothing to disrupt the genocide i would be complicit in their deaths. I have a moral obligation to oppose the annihilation of innocents, even if it requires some risk to myself. I'm entirely sure that we'll disagree on this point, because you don't seem to think we have positive moral obligations toward each other, but i absolutely do.


rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/31/2012 07:06AM by rjmacs.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Pops
Date: May 31, 2012 07:27AM
Quote
Chakravartin
The Polish people were not responsible for the Nazi death factories in German-occupied Poland, nor complicit.

It's easy to see why many people in that country would be offended at the implication that they participated in the slaughter of their own people.
You'd better try History 101. There was enough anti-Semitism in Poland at that time to do the job without the Nazis. A large portion of the the population was actively complicit, and virtually all the rest quietly turned their backs with no public outcry.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Janit
Date: May 31, 2012 07:34AM
Somehow the response of the Polish president smacks of "protesting too much."

The contested statement was made in the context of honoring "World War II Polish resistance hero Jan Karski with a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian American honor."

Give us a break. We actually honored one of your guys, and now you're annoyed that we implied that bad things happened in your country. Seems more than a little petty under the circumstances.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Carnos Jax
Date: May 31, 2012 08:48AM
Do any of y'all believe that if the same were to happen in this country, that a similar percentage (not necessarily majority) of the population (as evidenced by our almost divided politics) would not be complicit in the same activities?
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: rjmacs
Date: May 31, 2012 09:02AM
Quote
Carnos Jax
Do any of y'all believe that if the same were to happen in this country, that a similar percentage (not necessarily majority) of the population (as evidenced by our almost divided politics) would not be complicit in the same activities?

In fact, historically we have been.


rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: $tevie
Date: May 31, 2012 10:16AM
Quote

For years, Jan Karski’s students at Georgetown University knew he was a great professor; what they didn't realize was he was also a hero. Fluent in four languages, possessed of a photographic memory, Jan served as a courier for the Polish resistance during the darkest days of World War II. Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale, and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a *Polish death camp* to see for himself. Jan took that information to President Franklin Roosevelt, giving one of the first accounts of the Holocaust and imploring to the world to take action. It was decades before Jan was ready to tell his story. By then, he said, “I don’t need courage anymore. So I teach compassion.”
Quote

* Note – the language in asterisks below is historically inaccurate. It should instead have been: “Nazi death camps in German occupied Poland”. We regret the error.
[www.whitehouse.gov]

Read in context, it just doesn't seem all that terrible to me, either. It appears to be (a politically unfortunate) shorthand for "death camp located in Poland": a Polish death camp. I think expressing regret was enough of a response from the White House, I don't see the need for sackcloth and ashes.

Quote

The Germans deported Jews from all over occupied Europe to extermination camps in Poland, where they were systematically killed, and also to concentration camps, where they were used for forced labor.

[www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org]

Most of the so-called death camps were in Poland, for whatever reasons, it's just the truth.
[www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org]


"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/31/2012 10:26AM by $tevie.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Black
Date: May 31, 2012 10:44AM
Quote
rjmacs
Quote
Carnos Jax
Do any of y'all believe that if the same were to happen in this country, that a similar percentage (not necessarily majority) of the population (as evidenced by our almost divided politics) would not be complicit in the same activities?

In fact, historically we have been.

Complicity is certainly a worthy topic of discussion, but it's a departure from this one as the poles were not just complicit but instrumental.
Janit nailed it w/ "thou doth..."


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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: rjmacs
Date: May 31, 2012 10:49AM
Quote
Black
Quote
rjmacs
Quote
Carnos Jax
Do any of y'all believe that if the same were to happen in this country, that a similar percentage (not necessarily majority) of the population (as evidenced by our almost divided politics) would not be complicit in the same activities?

In fact, historically we have been.

Complicity is certainly a worthy topic of discussion, but it's a departure from this one as the poles were not just complicit but instrumental.
Janit nailed it w/ "thou doth..."

I don't see Americans as having been any less 'instrumental' in the American Indian genocide, or institutionalized slavery, if we're making comparisons... We own those horrors wholesale - no Nazis to point to.


rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: cbelt3
Date: May 31, 2012 11:25AM
Politician gets his terminology wrong. Gets @#$%& at for it.

Next !

FWIW.. my inlaws commented briefly on the concept of 'complicit' or 'resistance'. They were ethnic Germans living in what became Bosnia (DonauSchwabenlanders) . Here were their comments:

When the Nazis took control, if you did not join their party right away, you were declared an enemy. If you were lucky they just let you starve to death, because nobody would do business with you. If you were unlucky you got shipped to a death camp.

When the Russians took control back, they just lined all the men with military cards up and shot them. They lined all the women over the age of about 12 up and took them to their camps and raped them and made them camp @#$%&. They lined all the boys over the age of 12 up and put them on rail cars and sent them to work in the mines in Siberia. They took everyone else and put them in death camps.

For a 21st century American to make judgements about that time in history and the pressures and trouble experienced by the people who lived there is... naive at best. And then to make arrant claims like "I would have resisted"..... pfft. You would have been killed. Right there and then, and your body left for the crows.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Black
Date: May 31, 2012 12:21PM
.


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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/31/2012 12:54PM by Black.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Black
Date: May 31, 2012 12:28PM
.


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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/31/2012 12:54PM by Black.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: hal
Date: May 31, 2012 01:54PM
anyone see the film 'Shoah'?

The interviews of the poles that actually lived near the camps was chilling. See this film THEN tell me the poles didn't carry some responsibility...
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: rjmacs
Date: May 31, 2012 03:00PM
Quote
cbelt3
For a 21st century American to make judgements about that time in history and the pressures and trouble experienced by the people who lived there is... naive at best. And then to make arrant claims like "I would have resisted"..... pfft. You would have been killed. Right there and then, and your body left for the crows.

Some causes are worth dying for. When one man rises up, resists, and is struck down - he is a fool. When a handful rise up, resist, and are struck down - they are martrys. When a people rise up, resist, and face death as one - it is a revolution. The Nazi regime was functionally dependent on terror and fear; broad enough resistance would have made the Holocaust a practical impossibility.

Everyone is free to claim and defend his own cowardice, but it is precisely those excuses that allow genocide to occur.


rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Robert M
Date: May 31, 2012 03:01PM
Hal,

I remember those interviews. Enlightening yet terrifying. Truly a terrifying film.

Robert
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Carnos Jax
Date: May 31, 2012 03:28PM
I guess I'm having a little difficulty painting the Poles with such a wide brush. But I may be very well ignorant of the matter as a whole.

Would we be then complicit in the on going tragedies in Africa/Middle East and elsewhere by facilitating the economies of those who commit attrocious acts via our purchase of their oil?

Technically, we do have a choice. I understand the Amish lead contented lives...
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: $tevie
Date: May 31, 2012 03:37PM
Maybe they are contented, but the Amish treatment of animals has made me write them off as a bunch of creeps.


"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Carnos Jax
Date: May 31, 2012 04:16PM
I was not aware they treated animals badly/worse than the rest of us. Again, I don't know much about these sorts of things. Then again, we don't have to be 'exactly' like the Amish.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/31/2012 04:17PM by Carnos Jax.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: $tevie
Date: May 31, 2012 06:17PM
Well, it just shows that it's difficult to find any group of people who don't have big fat flaws.


"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: August West
Date: May 31, 2012 06:23PM
Quote
Pops
There was enough anti-Semitism in Poland at that time to do the job without the Nazis. A large portion of the the population was actively complicit, and virtually all the rest quietly turned their backs with no public outcry.

+1
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Chakravartin
Date: May 31, 2012 06:24PM
Quote
cbelt3
Politician gets his terminology wrong. Gets @#$%& at for it.

Next !

FWIW.. my inlaws commented briefly on the concept of 'complicit' or 'resistance'. They were ethnic Germans living in what became Bosnia (DonauSchwabenlanders) . Here were their comments:

When the Nazis took control, if you did not join their party right away, you were declared an enemy. If you were lucky they just let you starve to death, because nobody would do business with you. If you were unlucky you got shipped to a death camp.

When the Russians took control back, they just lined all the men with military cards up and shot them. They lined all the women over the age of about 12 up and took them to their camps and raped them and made them camp @#$%&. They lined all the boys over the age of 12 up and put them on rail cars and sent them to work in the mines in Siberia. They took everyone else and put them in death camps.

For a 21st century American to make judgements about that time in history and the pressures and trouble experienced by the people who lived there is... naive at best. And then to make arrant claims like "I would have resisted"..... pfft. You would have been killed. Right there and then, and your body left for the crows.

...And hundreds of thousands of non-Jew, non-Gypsy Poles were killed in those death camps.

In any population there are going to be some @#$%& who gleefully work with with the most evil scumbags, but they don't define the entire population.

They may be over-reacting a bit here, but it's hard to blame them given what they've been through. Poland was victimized... raped. The country is justly sensitive on the matter.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Black
Date: May 31, 2012 07:54PM
Quote
Chakravartin
Quote
cbelt3
Politician gets his terminology wrong. Gets @#$%& at for it.

Next !

FWIW.. my inlaws commented briefly on the concept of 'complicit' or 'resistance'. They were ethnic Germans living in what became Bosnia (DonauSchwabenlanders) . Here were their comments:

When the Nazis took control, if you did not join their party right away, you were declared an enemy. If you were lucky they just let you starve to death, because nobody would do business with you. If you were unlucky you got shipped to a death camp.

When the Russians took control back, they just lined all the men with military cards up and shot them. They lined all the women over the age of about 12 up and took them to their camps and raped them and made them camp @#$%&. They lined all the boys over the age of 12 up and put them on rail cars and sent them to work in the mines in Siberia. They took everyone else and put them in death camps.

For a 21st century American to make judgements about that time in history and the pressures and trouble experienced by the people who lived there is... naive at best. And then to make arrant claims like "I would have resisted"..... pfft. You would have been killed. Right there and then, and your body left for the crows.

...And hundreds of thousands of non-Jew, non-Gypsy Poles were killed in those death camps.

In any population there are going to be some @#$%& who gleefully work with with the most evil scumbags, but they don't define the entire population.

They may be over-reacting a bit here, but it's hard to blame them given what they've been through. Poland was victimized... raped. The country is justly sensitive on the matter.

When I lived in Germany I attended several events over several years held on the anniversary of Reichskristalnacht that were aimed at increasing awareness of what happened during the 30s and 40s.
Although the presenters meant well, they would invariably trot out films from the 50s which would focus on the "good" Germans that helped and saved Jews at great personal risk . . . apparently this was a hugely popular theme and there were many such films made at the time. I have no doubt the poles did their share of telling themselves nice little stories about all the heroic and brave acts of polish people who did their best to protect the Jews during this same time. I don't think anyone is claiming that these were not hard times to live in and that people didn't have to make difficult choices, but let's not pretend that everyone was a victim and that no Polish people participated willfully and enthusiastically in the attempted eradication of the Jews.


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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Chakravartin
Date: June 01, 2012 05:41AM
Quote
Black
...let's not pretend that everyone was a victim and that no Polish people participated willfully and enthusiastically in the attempted eradication of the Jews.

Any particular reason you ignored what I wrote when composing your response to what I wrote?
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: RgrF
Date: June 02, 2012 12:29AM
Most of pre-war Europe had extreme positions with regard to their resident Jewish citizens, that Germans were the populace that actually acted on those prejudices doesn't expiate the actions of other nationalities who aided and abetted in the execution of that Holocaust.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: rjmacs
Date: June 02, 2012 12:46AM
Quote
RgrF
Most of pre-war Europe had extreme positions with regard to their resident Jewish citizens, that Germans were the populace that actually acted on those prejudices doesn't expiate the actions of other nationalities who aided and abetted in the execution of that Holocaust.

Eastern Europe and Russia, Ukraine, etc. have a long history of pogroms against Jews, so it's not true to say that others hadn't acted on their prejudices - just that they hadn't committed genocide. They certainly had committed acts of terror and devastation.

Most Poles stood by while their Jewish countrymen were rounded up, sent to camps, and exterminated. As far as i am concerned, that constitutes complicity (as i have outlined above). Taking great offense at the mention of Polish death camps reflects a kind of 'sensitivity' that has no place in a Poland that recognizes its own past in its entirety, acknowledges its errors, and is moving forward as a nation committed to transparency and human dignity.


rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: RgrF
Date: June 02, 2012 12:55AM
Russia and Ukraine weren't part of pre-war or post-war Europe, it's not splitting hairs to point out that Western Europe was fertile ground for what Germany did.

In fact it would be appropriate to note the support that the German American Bund had here in the US.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: rjmacs
Date: June 02, 2012 01:57AM
Quote
RgrF
Russia and Ukraine weren't part of pre-war or post-war Europe, it's not splitting hairs to point out that Western Europe was fertile ground for what Germany did.

In fact it would be appropriate to note the support that the German American Bund had here in the US.

Was Poland in pre-war Europe? There were numerous pogroms there before WW II.


rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Chakravartin
Date: June 02, 2012 02:09AM
Quote
rjmacs
Most Poles stood by while their Jewish countrymen were rounded up, sent to camps, and exterminated. As far as i am concerned, that constitutes complicity...

My mom's cousin was part of the Polish underground and the French Resistance. I started to describe what he did that got him imprisoned, tortured and maimed by the Nazis, but then it occurred to me that it doesn't matter to you. You're not participating here for enlightenment and nothing I write is likely to have the slightest impact upon your prejudices.

Count your lucky stars you weren't there. You'd surely have learned a few things about "complicity."
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: rjmacs
Date: June 02, 2012 02:24AM
Quote
Chakravartin
Quote
rjmacs
Most Poles stood by while their Jewish countrymen were rounded up, sent to camps, and exterminated. As far as i am concerned, that constitutes complicity...

My mom's cousin was part of the Polish underground and the French Resistance. I started to describe what he did that got him imprisoned, tortured and maimed by the Nazis, but then it occurred to me that it doesn't matter to you. You're not participating here for enlightenment and nothing I write is likely to have the slightest impact upon your prejudices.

Count your lucky stars you weren't there. You'd surely have learned a few things about "complicity."

I certainly count my lucky stars that i wasn't there. And you have neither cause nor reason to question the strength or courage of my convictions - but insult me if you must. Note the use of the word "most" in my post above. Thank goodness for people like your mother's cousin. I would that more Poles had been of comparable character. As someone of partial Polish derivation myself, i have no desire to smear my ancestral relatives for prejudicial reasons. Is it ethnic pride that is distorting your reading of history?


rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2012 02:25AM by rjmacs.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Chakravartin
Date: June 02, 2012 02:30AM
Quote
rjmacs
i have no desire to smear my ancestral relatives for prejudicial reasons. Is it ethnic pride that is distorting your reading of history?

More than half a million armed members over the course of the war... More Jews saved from the Nazis by the Polish resistance than by any other means. Do you really think that they acted with no support from the general population?

'Seems to me that you're the one distorting history.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: rjmacs
Date: June 02, 2012 02:42AM
.


rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future




Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2012 02:48AM by rjmacs.
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: RgrF
Date: June 02, 2012 03:16AM
This getting to the silly stage.
Who was most anti-Semetic

I'd post a pole if only I knew how

Germans
French
Poles
Cheks
Greeks'
Brits
Portugese
Spanish
Danes
Finnnish
Norwegians
Swedish
Americans
Canadians
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Re: "Polish Death Camps"
Posted by: Black
Date: June 02, 2012 03:23AM
Quote
rjmacs
.

^^Best response to Chaka when he gets "like this"^^


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