Implying Polish Guilt in Holocaust To Be Outlawed

I think they're being a bit oversensitive here. I can understand the anger, but no-one sensible sees the phrase "Polish death camps" and thinks the Poles had anything to do with them.
"The government of Poland plans to introduce a law making it a crime to imply the country bears any responsibility for atrocities carried out on Polish soil by Nazi Germany.
People could face up to five years in prison if found guilty.
The bill was drafted in part as a response to the phrase "Polish death camps" which often appears in the foreign media as a shortcut term.
In such cases, the state could pursue civil action and claim compensation.
The bill would make it illegal to say that Poland "took part, organised or was co-responsible for the crimes of the Third Reich".
Millions of people, mostly Jews, from across Europe were killed in six German-run extermination camps on Polish soil.
Further Holocaust atrocities were committed in concentration camps and ghettos in Poland.
The country was occupied by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945. Ninety percent of Poland's pre-war Jewish population were murdered.
When the current Polish governing party, Law and Justice, was still in opposition it introduced a similar bill to parliament in 2013. However, that bill was rejected on the first reading.
In 2012, the White House said US president Barack Obama "misspoke" at a public event when he referred to "Polish death camps"."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35581708

 

Unfortunately the world is filled with people who have no prior knowledge of history. It's a shame that they "have" to come down to jail time to punish ignorance.

 

I must admit that I never heard someone saying a "Polish death camp".
I agree with KJ Jr. The foolishnes and ignorance of some people always amazes me.

 

I can see the danger of gross misunderstandings occuring by using 'that phrase'. . .but making it a crime?
That is not the voice of reason.

 

If the implication was accidental or deliberate, is there a difference in the proposed law?

Implying now. Thought crimes next.

"We have ways of making you think!"

All kinds of bizarre really...

 

Good thing the Polish Government only has authority over Poles. I wonder what the penalty will be for using the term? Will they arrest you and send you to a Polish Death Camp?

 

Even though Poles were victims it is imposible to deny their willing participation in Holocaust. Before the war, Poland had large minorities but during and shortly after the war a great deal of former Polish citizens of other ethnicity have vanished, with a little help from their Polish "friends". Before the war, Poles were at least equal to the Nazis regarding treatment of their minorities, especially Jews and Polish ethnic Germans.

I hope Polish interior ministry will not issue an international warrant for my arrest and extradition to Treblinka.

 

I had to check the date but no it is not the 1st of April. The world gone mad.

 

Shouldn't conflate individual acts, even if they are common, with the entire population. After the crushing of the state, those individual acts can hardly be called the responsibility of the totality of Poles.

 

Methinks Poland protesteth too much...

 

"Polish" can mean either "run by Poles" or "located in Poland" in most languages, the first is false and offensive the second is historical truth. This sort of thing smell of rewriting history by law, and will, if approved, hamper research, there are grey areas, the camps were definitely German but the ghettos were already there, the Warsaw ghetto rising got little or no support from the locals.

When I was a modeller I always thought all those pictures of Luftwaffe aircraft missing the tail planes a bit silly, though I did sympathize with the German view, you cannot erase history, and understanding is better than ignorance, but symbols do have power.

 

And now you see what the Polish government is up against.
Freedom of speech has its responsibilities. You can sue someone in a court of law for defamation of character - libel and slander. The law is there to protect the individual for being falsely accused. Poland stands accused of participating in mass murder, genocide and goodness knows what, without one shred of evidence.


'It is impossible to deny their willing participation in Holocaust' -is that a true statement?
Is it? Can you prove that? The Poles, or the Polish government at least, were complicit in the Final solution? Really?


Can you prove that the Poles who were being murdered, tortured or starved were pro-holocaust? The Poles in the camps were willing participants? The people risking their lives to shelter those on the Wanted list -including Jews, were they working with the Nazis? In Poland, it was a death sentence for you and your whole family if you were caught. Can you prove that all Poles were anti-semitic?
Yes, some were. To understand why, you will have to look into the matter deeply and discuss it with all parties. But the vast majority got on well with their neighbours of all ethnic backgrounds.

'During and shortly after the war a great deal of former Polish citizens of other ethnicity have vanished'.

'Vanished'? Do you mean all the gypsies and Jews? Were they 'vanished with a little help from their Polish 'friends' '? Did a large number of Poles 'vanish' into Siberia, and then into Persia and then to India, Africa, Mexico. . .and the allied forces?

Did some minorities 'vanish' after the war because the borders had moved and Poland's demographic population changed?
Or perhaps they 'vanished' when the Nazis raised their villages to the ground. Or did they vanish when the Russians murdered them or sent them to gulags?

Or maybe the thousands Jews who returned from the USSR didn't really exist.
Or the people who did return after the war weren't vanished by the Soviet regime. Perhaps this is what you are getting confused with?

'Poles were at least equal to the Nazis. . .'
What a shocking thing to say. Well, now, please back that one up. I have spoken to many Polish Jews and Polish ethnic Germans to know the true story, from first-hand accounts.

As to your off the cuff reference to Treblinka -well. . . Shame on you!!
Have you really thought about what you are saying?

My question to you is this: where are you getting these ideas from? You seriously need to question its source. What is the agenda? Are you being brainwashed?

Question everything and look for first hand accounts. Weigh up the background, filter out bias.

I have tried to show you to think about what you are saying. Another person would have called you a racist neo-nazi, spreading hate and trying to make what the Nazis did look OK because everyone secretly agreed with them.

Use your freedom of speech responsibly, while you still have it.
I wish you well.

 

Lots of maybes and perhaps in your argument, while you are asking for sources where are yours?

 

Cecylia, our views are much closer than you might have thought from my previous post. But, I prefer the truth.

I will "use my freedom of speech responsibly" and will reply to your claims indeed in detail, with references to reliable sources to make myself clear on this subject. Right now I am in a hurry and would like just to begin our conversation with fresh, official Polish data:

1. According to the Polish Ministry of the Interior and Administration, at the time of the 2002 census, there were 1,055 Jewish people in Poland.
2. The national study, conducted by the Center for Research on Prejudice at Warsaw University, found that in Poland, the belief in a Jewish conspiracy remains high – 63% in 2013 – and relatively unchanged from 2009 when 65% of respondents held this belief.

There are also other unpleasant results in that study but I will focus just to this simple pair of data. Now, how it is possible that antisemitism is so deep and wide spread in a nation where possibility to actually meet a Jew once in a life is negligibly low? Really why?

Excuse me now, I have to go but I will get back to this subject later on and will address another important subject: the interwar Polish anti-Semite legislation. Such things are undeniable - antisemitism is written down into interwar Polish laws.

 

I'm back now, but I have decided to leave the interwar anti-Semite legislation for later. First essentials, what really happened? Were just Germans and Russian villains whils all other central and east European nations were just innocent bystanders? Let us see is it reasonable to talk about the Polish participatio in the Final Solution.

Saying: »four million were killed« sounds so odd, almost bureaucratic statement, deprived from any emotion of sorrow, pain and compassion for the victims. To express a real horror of Holocaust one has to tell each and every of these sad stories individually. For each soul we should hear individual story. That's an Impossible task but, at least, we can try to tell just few of them in memory of all innocent victims. Here is one of these stories, from Poland:

On the morning of July 10, 1941, eight Germans came to Jedwabne and met with the town authorities, including the mayor, Marian Karolak. The Germans argued that at least one Jewish family from each profession should be left alive, but a local Polish carpenter replied: 'We have enough of our own craftsmen, we have to destroy all the Jews, none should stay alive.' The mayor and other Poles present agreed. According to the testimony of Szmul Wasersztajn, one of the few Jewish survivors, what followed was a full-scale pogrom: 'Beards of old Jews were burned, newborn babies were killed at their mothers' breasts, people were beaten murderously and forced to sing and dance. In the end they proceeded to the main action - the burning.' The Jews were herded into the barn of the town baker, Bronislaw Sleszynski, and incinerated. This was not the work of a few local ruffians, but of roughly half the male Polish population, led by respectable notables like Karolak and Sleszynski. Any Jews who tried to escape were hunted down in the surrounding fields - again, by their own neighbours. The few Germans present confined themselves to taking photographs. In the words of historian Jan Gross, 'Everybody who was in town on this day, and in possession of a sense of sight, smell, or hearing, either participated in or witnessed the tormented deaths of the Jews of Jedwabne.' Only a handful of people acted to save their fellow citizens. Stanislaw Ramotowski helped his future wife Rachela Finkelsztejn to hide. Antonina Wyrzykowska kept seven Jews hidden in her house, among them Szmul Wasersztajn, with whom she had an affair. The father of Leszek Dziedzic also helped Wasersztajn to survive the war. It is notable that two out of these three were sexually involved with at least one of the people they saved, underlining the degree of intimacy that had previously existed between Jews and Christians in Jedwabne.

Source: Niall Ferguson, The War of the World, The Penguin Press, New York 2006, pp 452.

 

Good to hear from you, Tamino,

I know what you mean about lack of time. I didn't really want to get into such a discussion on this site, but I did feel that I had to challenge you on the sweeping statements you made.

Brian Smith seems to have missed the point of my missive. Interestingly, he makes no comment on your views but tries to bounce the ball straight back to me before you had a chance to reply. Not really cricket, eh

So, the point I was trying to make, and I think you have understood this, that one should be careful about making sweeping statements using generic terms. The Brits did this, the Germans did that, the Americans do this. . .Poles being equal to the Nazis. . .aha! Nazis. Why did you not say Germans? Is it because you don't believe that all Germans were complicit in the Final solution etc. So there were good Germans, and there were the Nazis. But, only bad Poles and all the Poles willingly participated in the Holocaust, and then they vanished everyone else.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

As to anti-semitism in Poland, yes, I agree, there certainly was. It was rife throughout Europe at that time.

Did you know that Moseley's fascist party marched into London's East End, with the support of the police, and tried to destroy Jewish property and harm its inhabitants? And that there were far more English supporters of Hitler than we have been led to believe? But people don't say that the English were fascists and anti-semites.

Incidently, the British imprisoned Jews in camps in Palestine and closer to home:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a6651858.shtml

These days, replace the word Jew with Muslim, Communist with terrorist -and we have history repeating itself.


OK, I'm pretty tired after work, so just a few other points:


I am aware of the census results.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_Poland

This shows the historical democratics of Poland, showing how diverse it has been.
I have to explain to you, that Poland was not a free country after the war. It became very insular. People could not return to live there without fearing for their lives. Anyone who had been in the West, had seen a different way of life, were seen as traitors under the Communist regime.

You seem to be quoting figures from 60+ years after WW2. Please clarify the point you are making here.

Could you please define what is meant by the phrase 'Jewish conspiracy'?
That's it for now.
I look forward to hearing from you.

 

The point is it was just that, a missive, so nothing to miss. You also assume I should play cricket,why?

 

While the cricket-playing nation was the only opponent fighting against formation of the Nazi Festung Europa, Polish parliament was passing Nazi-style anti-Semite legislation inspired by the Nuremberg Race Laws. In August 1936, the Polish government ordered that all shops include the name of the owner on their business sign. That was worse than SA painting the Davis stars on Jewish shops - SA did that for free, Polish Jews had to pay for new business signs. Attacks on Jewish businesses surged after the marking order went into effect.

 

One could say however that Polish law was at least equatable in that it required every business owner to apply his name to any store/business sign at their own cost.

On a larger scale this law only invites greater scrutiny on the Polish connection upon the Nazi Final Solution, both the good and the bad. The harsh reality is that within pretty much every occupied and Allied (to Germany) there was some level of 'cooperation' with the act itself.