Exposing Gross - Poles and Jews after the Holocaust !

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Jul 18, 11, 18:57 #241

yehudi:

Where is your source for claiming that there was a Jewish death penalty

My source is a book, Jewish History, Jewish Religionby an Israeli historian, named Israel Shahak,which is available online: http://members.tripod.com/alabasters_archive/jewish_history.html The following quotation is taken from its second chapter:

Since the time of the late Roman Empire, Jewish communities had considerable legal powers over their members. Not only powers which arise through voluntary mobilization of social pressure (for example refusal to have any dealing whatsoever with an excommunicated Jew or even to bury his body), but a power of naked coercion: to flog, to imprison, to expel—all this could be inflicted quite legally on an individual Jew by the rabbinical courts for all kinds of offenses. In many countries—Spain and Poland are notable examples—even capital punishment could be and was inflicted, sometimes using particularly cruel methods such as flogging to death.

Your source, Yehudi, does mention the fact that rabbinical courts in Spain did impose capital punishment "to protect the Torah" but fails to mention that this was also done in Poland.

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Jul 18, 11, 19:40 #242

Des Essientes:

My source is a book, Jewish History, Jewish Religionby an Israeli historian, named Israel Shahak,which is available online: http://members.tripod.com/alabasters_archive/jewish_history.html The following quotation is taken from its second chapter:

"Shahak's works have also found a receptive audience among neo-Nazis, antisemites and Holocaust deniers, and articles of his have been republished on websites such as Radio Islam, Bible Believers, Jew Watch, CODOH, and "Historical Review Press".[36] David Duke mourned Shahak, stating he had exposed "numerous examples of hateful Judaic laws... that permit Jews to cheat, to steal, to rob, to kill, to rape, to lie, even to enslave Christians,"[37] and dedicated his book Jewish Supremacism to him.[38] Duke's antisemitic theories defaming the Talmud and Judaism drew on material from the works of Shahak and Elizabeth Dilling.[39] In a new introduction to his re-edition of their Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Norton Mezvinsky wrote that antisemites and antisemitic groups "utilize unduly Shahak's criticisms in trying to justify their hatred of Jews. They have continued to do this either by citing and/or using out-of-context some of Shahak's points."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Shahak#Reception

How about some scientific, reputed sources?

Des EssientesThreads: 11 Posts: 2,318 Joined: Feb 6, 10 ♂ [Suspended]	Jul 18, 11, 20:09 #243
Palivec: How about some scientific, reputed sources? Israel Shahak is a reputed source. His book which I have quoted has a forward written by my country's beloved writer Gore Vidal who is certainly not a Neo-Nazi. If some Neo-Nazis read Shahak's work and "utilize it unduly" that doesn't make him one of them.

nottThreads: 6 Posts: 1,271 Joined: Jun 2, 10 ♂	Jul 18, 11, 20:15 #244
Palivec: Shahak's works have also found a receptive audience among neo-Nazis, antisemites and Holocaust deniers and this, by definition, shows them as utter lies. Does it? What kind of argument this is? If a Nazi propagates the idea that the Sun is in the center of the the Solar System, what does it say to you?

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Jul 19, 11, 15:46 #245

Des Essientes:

My source is a book, Jewish History, Jewish Religionby an Israeli historian, named Israel Shahak

Thanks for replying to my challenge. But your source is not reputable. Israel Shahak was a professor of chemistry, not history. His writings on Jewish history are not taken seriously by most historians and he clearly had a hostile approach to Judaism. So if thats your only source, you're on shaky ground. And even he doesn't say anything (in the text you quoted) about boiling people alive for "crimes" of belief. The source I brought does mention, as you said, that in Spain the Jewish communities sometimes were given the authority to give death penalties. But if that happened it was not under the authority of Jewish law, but under Spanish law. It also says clearly that this was an exception and that most of Jews in the world did no such thing. If we're talking about Poland in the middle ages, it is inconceivable that Jews would have boiled someone to death for a religious crime. That sounds more like a Spanish vice.

In short, Des Essientes, if you're looking for Jewish sources to confirm your anti-Jewish prejudices, you won't have trouble finding them. There were always some Jews with hatred of their own kind. But when you quote sources like that it says more about you than it does about the point you're trying to make.

SeanusThreads: 22 Posts: 30,158 Joined: Dec 25, 07 ♂	Jul 19, 11, 17:28 #246
Yehudi, how you could you possibly imply that a Catholic country in Spain could have any vices? ;) ;) ;) Yehudi, who are your recommended authors on the Holocaust? Raul Hillberg? I'm guessing David Irving doesn't feature on your shelves ;) ;)

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Edited by: Des Essientes Jul 19, 11, 19:33 #247

yehudi:

in Spain the Jewish communities sometimes were given the authority to give death penalties. But if that happened it was not under the authority of Jewish law, but under Spanish law.

No, your source says the rabbinical courts in Spain handed down these "extra-legal" decisions to "protect the Torah" and that tome's sanctity was not enshrined in Spanish law. Rabbinical courts executed Jews in Spain at their own behest and not at the request of any Spanish Gentiles. The silly argument claiming this was done extra-legally doesn't absolve the rabbinical courts from taking lives, and rabbinical courts did the same thing in Poland and elsewhere.

yehudi:

In short, Des Essientes, if you're looking for Jewish sources to confirm your anti-Jewish prejudices

I don't have any anti-Jewish prejudices. How can it really surprise you that rabbinical courts were harsh in Poland in the Middle-Ages? All the other courts in Europe were harsh also. Perhaps it is the stream of chauvinistic propaganda that you imbibe in the country in which you reside that would make you believe the "chosen people" were immune from the widespread draconian spirit of justice in Medieval times, and it seems that this nationalist bigotry leads you foolishly insinute that the Spanish were less humane than your co-religionists:

yehudi:

That sounds more like a Spanish vice.

As for my sources I now believe that I initially read about capital punishment being meted out by Medieval Polish rabbinical courts in the Polish-British Gentile Adam Zamoyski's book The Polish Way but I read the book on loan from the library and I cannot consult it now. Israel Shahak affirms that rabbinically imposed capital punishment was indeed a reality and his historical work is respected the world over, while you have nothing but your hunch that it was just a Spanish thing. Israel Shahak is not liked by some rabid Zionists but that hardly makes him a suspect source as these detractors care more about hasbara than any honest evaluations of Jewish history.

yehudi:

But when you quote sources like that it says more about you than it does about the point you're trying to make.

Your source which you claimed proves that capital punishment was never meted out by rabbinical courts actually reveals the contrary with regard to Spain. Your choice to cite this as evidence for your false belief shows that you aren't a very thorough reader.

Seanus:

Yehudi, how you could you possibly imply that a Catholic country in Spain could have any vices?

The rulers of Spain at the time in question were not Catholics, Seanus, and when the Catholics did finally retake the entire peninsula they expelled the Jews.

SeanusThreads: 22 Posts: 30,158 Joined: Dec 25, 07 ♂	Jul 19, 11, 20:39 #248
DE, maybe. I don't pretend to know either way on that one.

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Edited by: Des Essientes Jul 19, 11, 20:47 #249

Seanus:

DE, maybe. I don't pretend to know either way on that one.

It is a historical fact that most of Spain was ruled by Muslims during the Middle-Ages and when the Catholic reconquista was finally complete in 1492 Jews were told to either convert to Christianity or to leave. The Spanish authorities that granted Medieval rabbinical courts the freedom to punish, and even to execute, Spanish Jews were Muslims not Catholics.

SeanusThreads: 22 Posts: 30,158 Joined: Dec 25, 07 ♂	Jul 19, 11, 20:50 #250
1492 I associate with the discovery of America and not shenigans in Spain. Were you there to capture the footage, DE? ;) ;)

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Jul 21, 11, 16:18 #251

Seanus

Yehudi, who are your recommended authors on the Holocaust? Raul Hillberg?

I'm no expert, but I find the books written by historians to be heavy with facts and missing the human side. The book that most affected me was the memoirs of Emanuel Ringelblum, a community worker in Warsaw, who returned from a trip to Switzerland just in time for the German invasion. He ended up in the ghetto and kept a diary of what was going on around him until the revolt (in which he was killed), hiding copies of it in milk cans. After the war, the milk cans were found and the diary was published.

What makes his record so fascinating is that he is inside the events. He doesn't know from one entry to the next what will happen afterward. The reader knows all about the holocaust, but for Ringelblum the events are unfolding and the horror becomes clear very gradually.

http://www.amazon.com/Notes-Warsaw-Ghetto-Emmanuel-Ringelblum/dp/15968 73310

SeanusThreads: 22 Posts: 30,158 Joined: Dec 25, 07 ♂	Jul 21, 11, 23:08 #252
Thanks, yehudi. It'd be good to have a gander at his observations.

gspaulsson

Oct 25, 11, 23:41 #253

Ran across this on google. Vetala has a misconception. I am not on any "opposite side" from Gross - he chose his research topic and I chose mine. He writes about Poles who collaborated with the Germans or murdered or betrayed Jews; I write about Jews in hiding, who encounter all kinds of people "on the Aryan side". Some of them are the kind of people Gross writes about, others are the kind vetala would prefer to read about. They are not only Poles, but also Germans and fellow Jews. Most of the population was not involved with Jews, one way or the other. Those whom Jews sought out to ask for help were naturally more friendly than average; despite that, 60% of the Jews who escaped from the Warsaw ghetto did not survive.

It is not helpful that people who have a one-track mind mine my book for examples of "good Poles". I do not think in nationalist categories - the contacts which made the "secret city" of my title possible arose at the personal and not the civic level. To my mind, generalizations about entire nations belong to a bygone age, when people still spoke of such things as "national honour" and "national character"; intellectual discourse has moved beyond all that.

I see nothing wrong with Gross's books: he researches his subject well and writes in a vivid and engaging manner, about subjects that should be of interest to everyone. Some people prefer to hide their heads in the sand; I wish that such people would not cite my book as if I supported them.

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Edited by: gumishu Oct 25, 11, 23:55 #254

gspaulsson:

Those whom Jews sought out to ask for help were naturally more friendly than average; despite that, 60% of the Jews who escaped from the Warsaw ghetto did not survive.

hello, and welcome to polishforums - I actually never thought I would be talking to a serious history author :)

I am not sure if you have taken into account that Warsaw Uprising occured later and that the whole left-bank Warsaw was emptied of civilian populace and demolished to a high extent (deliberately burnt out and/or blown up) - many of those Jews who managed to slip away from the ghetto but remained in Warsaw fell victim of German bombardment and mass killings of the Warsaw populace by Germans (it is estimated that at least 200 000 civilian Varsovians perished in the Uprising) - many must have been also singled out as Jews during the evacuation of Warsaw - some (as did Władysław Szpilman) chose to remain in the ruins of Warsaw and somehow managed to survive over 3 months there (including winter conditions in December and January of 1945 (Szpilman perhaps was saved by Wilm Hosenfeld)

and actually I would like to thank you for the honest conclusion you reached in your book that the Poles were not a nation of accomplices (though there were Polish accomplices and there were Polish blackmailers as you well point out in your book too) of the Nazis but rather of 'dogs which did not bark' which made the survival of many Jews possible at all

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