Jewish love towards Poles

I understand that and agree, but that wasnt my point - there's no need to say bad generalised things about Poland please. Thanks.

why not,Im just fitting in round here,so its fine for Poles to spout the same about just about every non Pole but when the shoes on the other foot. BTW, Generelized,have you been to Poland lately with "people of colour"? I think the rose tints may slip a little if you and when you do.
Look,there are enough chauvanist Poles on this forum to paint the rosey pictures,what seems to be lacking is much honesty about the negative sides, I state plainly in my opening posts on this thread that the UK hasnt always been the paragon of virtue and then get accused of covering up those very same bad sides I had highlighted.

No I havent. Why? From the emotion of your post I take it that the 'coloured people' are treated pretty badly there? Are you now in league with Blackzilla - remember him?



I agree whol;eheartedly. I'd hazard a guess and say though that a gretaer percentage of threads on this forum are rehashes of negative things about Poland. Is there really a need to keep flogging a dead horse?

er,as you well may know I spent my time blowing his rants out da water :)
But back t the whole Jewish question, Ozi, in Oz,is there an instantly recognised "sign" for a jewish person? I hazzard a guess not,I was surprised to say the least to discover one in Poland,and used by otherwise inteligent,laid back young people who had probably never met a jew.Just seemed bleedin bizzare to me.

I know, and kudos to you for that. Thats why I found it strange that you' d say that. Or can you have it both ways (thinly veiled allusion to our other discussion) ;-)



What do you mean - youre being a bit cryptic? Polish Jews are wearing 'signs", or non Jewish Poles are putting signs on them??

cryptic,no,its just hard to describe a hand gesture on the internet...I'll try; Imagine a kid curling their fringe with their fingers.Its like that ,but at the side of the head imitating the curly sideburns worn by orthodox/religious Jewish men and boys.Like I say,weird and not something Ive come across anywhere but in Polish circles. Normally used in the sort of "you know they(followed by the gesture) are all the same/all in it together/rich bankers "etc etc....

Oh - you mean you've witnessed some Poles making the "koo koo crazy" hand sign when talking about Jews (correct me if I'm wrong). Thats what I understand the finger gesture to mean. In Oz, we use it if someone aint the full quid.

So, is this the instantly recognised sign that someone's referring to a Polish Jew? I dont mean to be rude, but we have the same type of thing here in Oz when referring to Poms (Oz talk for the English). We usually say whinging Poms and accompany this with the following hand gesture:

clench fingers and thumb such that it appears youre holding an invisible "rod" about an inch in diameter. Holding that hand gesture, touch the thumb and forefinger tot he forehead. From the elbow, move the forearm back and forth in a rythmic, pumping fashion. LOL

greendevils.pl/jednostki_specjalne/britische_freie_korps/plakat_bfk_2. JPG

.....

Kinda late in the game, don't you think? Jews tried to get to other countries (UK among others) since Krystal Nacht. It wasn't an obscure event. All major newspapers, including British ones, run the story on their front pages. In 1942/43 Eden, the British Parliament, British religious circles and media were informed about the extermination of Jews from none other than a Catholic Pole - Jan Karski. Few believed him. Those who did looked the other way.

Karski was an undeground fighter who volunteered to be smuggled to Auschwitz to document the plight of the Jews and to later report it in the West. The West did not care. The British Parliament gave the Jews a minute of silence. "That's all we could do", said one of the British MPs (I have the video interview with the champion of pro-Jewish spirit in Britain. The recording is a part of "The World at War", a BBC series).

They could do much more. In fact Polish Jews, co-operating with Zegota (a division of Polish underground Home Army, the only European underground organization created solely with the purpose to help Jews during WW2) proposed bombing Auschwitz and other camps. Such action wouldn't change the fate of those already there - Jews and Poles - but would prevent further systematic extermination.



No, you didn't. Other posters did after you mantioned that "we in Britain went loopy and burned dozens of them alive was in 1300". Therefore you are a liar. Alternatively, you chose to have selective amnesia within one single thread. In either case, you are not a reliable debater.

Btw. your choice to descibe what happened to Jews in Britain in 1300 is quite different than the words you use to descrive their situation in Poland. "Loopy". Damn, the British Jews must have been some touchy fellas. You go loopy just once and they leave for hundreds of years. Interesting. Or perhaps you "forgot" to mention some other signifficant events where Brits went "loopy"


I didn't. I don't even know what "grammer" is.



As I said before; you are blinded by it and don't seem to be able to think straight.



Cryptic? As cryptic as English expression for Jews, such as kike, mock or hebe?
But, in fact, I know what you mean. The gesture is used by many non-religious Jews in NYC. That's where I first saw it. I never saw it in Poland.

Again, you are trying to be more Jewish than Jews. It won't work. You will never come even close to becoming, or being regarded as one of them. Jews are considered smart, intelligent and worthy opponents in a debate. You display none of the qualities and by your continuous and blanket homophobia you do not further anybody's cause, but you merely satisfy your hunger for nastiness towards anybody who points out your arrogance and incompetence on the subject.

That's pretty much all I have to say to you and I won't respond to any more of your posts, unless they offer some substance and are fact based. By facts I mean verifiable statements, not the statements that you think are true.

שָׁלוֹם

I don't know if the West didn't care completely. American Jews actually thought that Karski's was anti-German propaganda when he reported what was happening to Jews in Europe.

No,quite different,and btw,the Polish version of the koo koo sign is very different,its a flat handed gesture that waggles up and down at the side of the head,but god bless you for jumping to a defense.
fek you arschole,BFK were a bunch of nazi thugs,half of which BTW were colonials from OZ or NZ...

er,they would be yank terms,unknown by PROPER English speakers.
well,thank fek for that,it was getting really boring trying to "defend" myself from a muppet like yu,me thinks you have a guilt complex or you may just see the points I and others made....coward.
Hhm,yes,lets hear the full story,this was while europe was under nazi occupation,what the fek else do you think could have been done,a fekkin commando raid to free 6 million people,dont be an ar se,you write well but your logic is flawed to say the least.....
And why should they have believed him,Britain had been fed BS horrer stories all through ww1 regarding Huns bayoneting babies and raping belguin nuns,all of which turned out to be rubbish.And,I say again,what could have been done,maybe a stiff letter to herr hitler "Please mr hitler stop being nasty to the jews,or we will get really realy mad..."
Face it,for 350 years Jews have lived peacfull lives in Britain,not even counting ww2 can the same be said about Poland? Can it fek,While the British army was liberating Belsen et al your peasants were burrning Jews on a grand scale,why else do you think we have a massive Jewish population and Poland has a few thousand?




So darius,why do so many Jewish people fear/hate Poland? are they all Paranoid? Your logic would seem to suggest they are,and in that case ,you must be the anti semite for labeling an entire race/religion as such. In 18 years of a free Poland why havnt more Jewish people moved back if Poland is such a happy clappy tolerent place for Jews? Why do they Crowd into a tiny strip of land under katyasha fire when they would,according to you,find such a peacefull tolerent home in Poland?

We really can't win here. Even when a tangible example of Polish action in assisting the Jews is pointed out an excuse is given as to why it wasnt believed. I think that says more about GB's credentials than anything else.

The fact that you cite this example of why he wasnt believed then fail to attack the logic of it says volumes about you too.

Honestly, I cannot comprehend how Karski could not have been believed - the poor guy trudged through Europe to deliver this bloody message. It really is symptomatic of GB's attitude to Eastern Europe during WW2.

It's my understanding that when Karski's message was conveyed to Jewish bodies in the USA, the response received was that it was not that they didnt believe him, it's that they didnt believe something like that could happen.

As to what more could have been done - here's a start. GB insisted with the Nazis that the AK be given combatant status. If not, German prisoners would suffer the consequences. Why couldn't similar correspondence have been forwarded setting out like terms for the Jews? Oh, I forgot, GB didnt know about this problem, so could not have conceivably done anything til they rolled up to the gates of the concentration camp.

No - Omniba never wrote this - this is isthatu from post #114. How did this come about Admin, that my name was attached to someone else's comment?

Really,Im afraid Dan,your knowladge on this subject is rather limited which shows clearlly in that last post,you yourself contradict your own logic,but,Im not going to get into a p issing contest.

so if this was OK for the yanks why were the brits such bad guys for taking the same position?

suffice to say,
I strongly apologies for some comments in earlier posts on this page that were out of order and knee jerk reactions to some absurd accusations leveled at me.

So why so many (for example) Russians hate Negros... ?

Looks like you start the whole new trend in logic...

I didnt say it was ok. Why are you trying this type of answering strategy - answering questions with questions, changing issues, saying nothing comes to mind et al. Isnt it obvious smoke and mirrors doesnt work with me?

You used to give me really thoughtful and interesting responses - where are they? Am I touching on issues that strike a nerve with you?

dont be daft,if i have no opinion I will not conjure one up just to satisfy you.....

You've all been discussing the attitides of Jews vs Poles on a national and historic level. But on a personal level, one on one, it doesn't always work the same way. My one trip to Poland (so far) gave me an interesting perspective on this. Instead of going on an organized group, I traveled with one friend who speaks polish fluently. We rented a car and just drove around from town to town, stopping in places with Jewish historical importance and places that we heard of from our grandparents or from stories. In each place we would walk around the rynek and look for people to talk to. We would look for people who were old enough to have been around during the war, and also had a friendly face. (I think that Jews have a sixth sense of who is hostile and who is friendly). We met some very warm people, who when they heard we were from israel really wanted to talk about the Jewish aspect of poland and about the war. Some witnessed terrible things, some were themsleves in camps, and some were very uptight about the whole subject and a few were suspicious and unfriendly. But aside from grafitti, i didn't witness outright hostility.

There was a strange thing that we noticed though: In a casual conversation with random Polish people, after the first pleasantries, when they would realize we were Jews, there was usually a few seconds of awkward silence and caution, and then the conversation would continue. It seemed as if they would pause to think for a minute what to make of us, and then they would decide to be be civil and sometimes friendly.

Another weird experience was this: When we went to the local museum in Kalisz hoping to see something about the long Jewish history in the city, and we saw practically nothing. So we asked the curator about that , and she said, "Oh, if you want to see about the Jews, look in the cemetery." It gave me a chill. What she meant was that in the Jewish cemetery there is a small museum of the history if Jews in Kalisz. But that symbolizes the weirdness that a Jew feels in Poland today. Everything is about death and cemeteries, and nobody thinks that's not normal. It's taken for granted by both Poles and visiting jews. Here in israel, Jewishness is totally alive and considered a happy thing. So the contrast is startling.

Thanks for the insight on your thread Kaliszer - it was very interesting.

I take it you're a Polish Jew. What are your thoughts on the question of Jewish/Polish relations at around the time of WW2? Is it as big a deal as a lot of academics are making it out to be? As some scholars have suggested, would dialogue help, or are both sides just too entrenched?

The issue I am yet to comprehend (and I hope that you can shed some light on) is why did portions of Polish Jews fail to assimilate with "ethnic" Poles and stay aloof?

My subjective theory - weight of numbers precipitated inaction. There was no need to make the transition because it wasnt really necessary given that Jews could get by as there was such a large community of them. This theory, of course, is open to critique.

I look ofrward to your response.

Cheers, Dan

how inteligent - who actually took the time to make that up....

I am an Israeli Jew, but my grandfather (father's side) was born in Poland as was his grandfather before that for generations. I'll try to answer why Jews generally didn't assimilate with ethnic Poles.

That was part of it for sure. But for traditional Jews it was more than that. Traditional society for both Christians and Jews was structured around religious affiliation. In the liberal modern world that seems irrelevant, but for our grandparents there was nothing more relevant than that. People's everyday lives revolved around praying together, studying together, eating the foods that the religion allowed, celebrating holidays and weddings together, etc. Catholics and Jews had almost nothing in common in these areas. (I think that Orthodox Christians and Catholics were also separated to an extent for the same reasons.) To become a "Pole" meant to become a Catholic. Jews wanted to be Jews -- both in the religious sense and in the ethnic sense. The two were inseparable.

Traditional Jews have a very strong consciousness of being a separate ethnic group. They think of themselves as part of the overall Jewish nation that was temporarily in exile from the homeland. Poles were a different nation and Jews saw no point in pretending to be Poles.

Toward the end of the 19th century, as religion became less of a force, more Jews did assimilate (as they did in Germany and Russia too). They adopted the Polish language and some of its culture. But to really assimilate you had to be a Catholic. And there was no point in giving up your own religion just to take on another one you didn't believe in.

In countries where religion is considered a private thing and not part of national identification, like the US, UK and France, a Jew can assimilate culturally more smoothly. But is that a good thing?

Yes, You are free to go to temple ,free to employ a local gentile to do all the manual work on the Sabbath ,basicaly free to be as Jewish or not as you want to be and still be 100% British. How can there be a debate about this being a good thing? Why would you want to be isolated and not considered an equal part of the sociaty you live in unless you convert to the dominante religion?

Thanks for the honest response - I appreciate it. I have aniother question for you.



If the above view can be described as the correct state of affairs, can it be argued that traditional Jews saw Poland as a means to an end?

Without considering modern day social/ethnic sensibilities, is the nation that provides the living area for the separate ethnic group required to accept that group unconditionally ("take us as you find us"), or, should that separate ethnic group through their own impetus, fit in - if not, why?

Cheers, Dan

I did. Why? Did you get it?

This is a two-way street. Organized Israeli trips concentrate on the death sites without any help from Poles, and I believe consciously avoid any sites that speak about the life of Jews in pre-war (or for that matter today's) Poland. As an example, there is a small Jewish museum in the old synagogue in Oświęcim, but hardly anyone goes there, despite the droves of people visiting the camp. Warsaw has a small but lively Jewish community, but from what I know none of the Israeli tour organizers are very interested in showing that to the school kids they bring here.

At the time you're talking about, religion was a huge part of national identification pretty much everywhere. Kennedy's election was a shock in largely Protestant America. Jews, Latinos and Blacks couldn't join many clubs and organizations until fairly recently. Don't let today's PC propaganda tell you otherwise - there was plenty of institutionalized racism and anti-Semitism in America before the 1970s, and it makes no sense to evaluate the situation in pre-war Poland by comparing it to today's liberal Western Europe or the US.

Clearly, you are not in a position to judge my logic if you do not understand what I write. Karski did not ask to free 6 million Jews. There weren't 6 millions Jews in Poland at any time anyway.

What I wrote was clear, and just today there was another confirmation of what Poles and Jews asked the West - bomb Auschwitz to avoid further extermination:

President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel's Holocaust memorial Friday and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial's chairman said.
source: URL

He should cry together with Merckel and Putin.

I'm sure he would. But Merckel and Putin have more important things to do at this time :)

At the risk of sounding disingenuous, I'd just like to point out that we have more than tears of sorrow. There is no 2 ways about it, the Holocaust should have been averted. Crimes against humanity must be stopped forthwith as they are grave and heinous in their very nature but it is a sad state of affairs when politics override(s) that concern. How about the current bloodshed George?

No question about George's highly selective sorrow. What I quoted isn't meant to be a comment on Dubya though.