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Post by kaima on Nov 21, 2007 14:52:53 GMT -7
The majority is indifferent and minority is openly or covertly anti-semitic. What I worry about is those indifferent ones. Every nation which has had a Jewish population contains antisemitic element. But indifference is also guilt. Hej Pawi, I am all for indifference! How can you care for all of the people around the world, it would drive anyone nuts! Lets say I care about 12% of the world: US & Europe with about 12% of the world population; deduct parts of both of those places and add in scatterings around the world and we can stick with 12%. That leaves 88% of the world I am indifferent to. That does not mean I don't care, I just recognize the limits of the human mind to adequately care about everyone. Even 12% of a bunch of billions is a lot of caring. To me the Jews / Israel are just a part of that mass of humanity, mixed in there with a whole bunch of others, partly in the 12%, partly in the 88%. As for 'indifference is guilt', that is a heavy load of bull manure. Your brand doesn't even make good fertilizer. Kai
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Pawian
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Post by Pawian on Nov 21, 2007 15:37:48 GMT -7
Hej Pawi, I am all for indifference! How can you care for all of the people around the world, it would drive anyone nuts! If people had been less indifferent to Jews` tragedy, how many more lives could have been saved? Even one would matter. That`s silly calculations. Besides, have you ever cared, not about but for somebody in your life? You probably haven`t because if you have, you would understand me better. Very well, but I have different views. I am just stating them and I really don`t understand why you are getting so aroused. Have you been having any problems recently? What did the doctor say? Kai, your loyal adherence to political correctness amazes me. Really, you needn`t refrain yourself! Speak out your mind and heart. If it is supposed to help you, go on with cleansing your psyche.
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bjk
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Post by bjk on Nov 21, 2007 15:50:24 GMT -7
Jaga:
As I mentioned before, I have (in print form only, at the moment) an excellent article that corroborates what you say. Again, I don't want to portray myself as someone who knows something about a country he has never lived in, so I feel it is important to always have some reference backing-up what I have to say.
To my friend in Poland: tell us please, where you obtained the photographs of the event held near the ghetto wall?
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Pawian
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Post by Pawian on Nov 21, 2007 22:48:13 GMT -7
Jaga: As I mentioned before, I have (in print form only, at the moment) an excellent article that corroborates what you say. Again, I don't want to portray myself as someone who knows something about a country he has never lived in, so I feel it is important to always have some reference backing-up what I have to say. To my friend in Poland: tell us please, where you obtained the photographs of the event held near the ghetto wall? On this excellent site containing the photographs from Warsaw during the occupation. www.muzeum.warszawa1939.pl/strona.php?kod=315It was enough to google for karuzela ghetto. And more about it here, but in Polish only: polish-jewish-heritage.org/pol/Feb_04_Karuzela_na_pl_Krasinskich.htm
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Post by pieter on Nov 22, 2007 9:04:44 GMT -7
People,
This subject sure stires up sentiments, historical awareness and knowledge and inter personal relations between peoples and persons, of Neutral people, Philosemites and Anti-semites. Indifferant people were everywhere in the occupied countries, just like collaboration and resistance. Unfortunately Indifferance and collaboration was most the most common attitude or behavior in many European countries. I don't know the exact situation in Poland, but I know that the West-Slavian Poles were seen as inferior to the Germanistic people, but superior to their Jewish compatriots. Poland had together with Yugoslavia (Tito's Partisans army) the biggest underground organisation and the only large organisation who helped jews.
Pieter
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Post by Jaga on Nov 22, 2007 10:33:39 GMT -7
Here is a famous letter of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka from a famous Kossak's family. It shows the atmosphere of the epoch. She was very active in a commitee trying to save Jewish people. On the other hand, you can see in her appeal typical thoughts of the person of her times. We need to try to understand the resentments of these times: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Protest_of_Zofia_Kossak-Szczucka_%28Wikisource_translation%29PROTEST In the Warsaw Ghetto, behind walls separating it from the outside world, several hundred thousand condemned are awaiting death. There is no hope for any rescue, no help comes. Streets are patrolled by executioners, who fire at anyone who dares to leave his house. They also fire at anyone standing by the windows. On pavements rot unburied human corpses. Daily shipments as ordered by the authorities are set at 8-10 thousand of victims. Jewish policemen are ordered to deliver them into the hands of German executioners. If they fail, they will be killed. Children unable to walk by themselves are loaded on wagons. The loading process is so cruel, that only a small number of them reaches the railway platform alive. Mothers seeing it go insane. The number of the insane from despair and horror equals the number of the shot-down. There are railcars waiting at the platform. The executioners are forcibly packing over 150 captives in each one. Thick layers of lime and chlorine are put on the floor of railcars and splashed with water. The doors of the railcar are securely bolted. Trains sometimes start immediately after the load, however sometimes wait one or two days on the side rail... No one cares. Of the people packed so densely that the dead cannot fall down and are standing arm to arm with the living, of the people dying of the lime and chlorine gases, without air, a drop of water, without food - noone will survive. These death-trains, whenever and wherever they arrive will bring only dead bodies. Confronted with such suffering, quick death seems preferable. The executioners have foreseen it. All the drugstores in the ghetto have been closed, to prevent buying of poison. There are no guns. The only solution is to jump down out of the window to the street. Thus many convicts choose to "escape" their executioners in this way. What happens in the Warsaw Ghetto, has been happening for half a year in hundreds of smaller or larger Polish towns and cities. The total number of murdered has already exceeded one million and the number grows each day. All perish. Poor and rich, old, women, men, youngsters, infants, Catholics dying with the name of Jesus and Mary together with Jews. Their only guilt is that they were born Jewish condemned to extermination by Hitler.The world is looking at these atrocities, the most horrible throughout the whole history of mankind, and is silent. Slaughter of the millions of people continues in ominous silence. The executioners are silent, they do not boast about their deeds. England is silent, so is America, even the international Jewry is silent, usually so sensitive to all harm to their people. Silent are Poles. Polish political friends of Jews limit themselves to journalistic notes, Polish opponents of Jews show no interest in a matter that is alien to them. Dying Jews are surrounded only by Pilates washing their hands. Silence shouldn't be tolerated anymore. If for no other reason — it is contemptible. Those who are silent in the face of murder - become partners of the killer. Those who do not condemn - approve. We Catholic Poles, take a stance. Our feelings toward Jews have not changed. We do not stop thinking about them as political, economic and ideological enemies of Poland. Moreover we do realize, that they still hate us more than Germans, that they make us co-responsible for their misfortune. Why? On what basis? It remains the secret of the Jewish soul. Nevertheless, that is a fact that is continuously confirmed. Awareness of those feelings, doesn't relieve us from the duty to condemn the crime.We don't want to be Pilates. We have no power to actively prevent German murders, we cannot help, we cannot save anyone, but we protest from the bottom of our hearts overwhelmed with mercy, fury and horror. We are required by God to protest. God who forbids us to kill. We are required by out Christian consciousness. Every human being has the right to be loved by his fellowmen. Blood of the defenceless cries to heaven for revenge. Those who oppose our protest - are not Catholics. Being Polish, we also protest. We do not believe that Poland can benefit from German cruelties. On the contrary. The continuing silence of the international Jewry, the German propaganda that tries, even now, to put the blame for the slaughter of Jews on Lithuanians and... Poles, we sense a plot of the enemy against us. We also know how poisoned is the fruit of the crime. The role of forced observer in the bloody spectacle taking place on the Polish soil, might promote immunity to pain and suffering and what is the most important, conviction that to murder your neighbour without any punishment is permisssible. Those who do not understand it and want to connect the proud and free future of Poland, with contentment of grief of fellowmen, is neither a Catholic nor a Pole.Front of National Rebirth of Poland Retrieved from "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Protest_of_Zofia_Kossak-Szczucka_%28Wikisource_translation%29"
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Pawian
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Post by Pawian on Nov 22, 2007 11:08:04 GMT -7
Hej Pawi, I am all for indifference! How can you care for all of the people around the world, it would drive anyone nuts! Your nasty attitude is referred to in Jaga`s latest post. Dying Jews are surrounded only by Pilates washing their hands. Silence shouldn't be tolerated anymore. If for no other reason — it is contemptible. Those who are silent in the face of murder - become partners of the killer. Those who do not condemn - approve.
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Pawian
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Post by Pawian on Nov 22, 2007 11:10:29 GMT -7
P Unfortunately Indifferance and collaboration was most the most common attitude or behavior in many European countries. Pieter Why unfortunately? Develop your idea.
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Pawian
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Post by Pawian on Nov 22, 2007 11:16:50 GMT -7
OK, then tell us more about Żegota - the organization created by Poles to help Polish Jews. BJK, take your time, there is no need to hurry. It doesn`t have to be for today. How about tomorrow?
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Pawian
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Post by Pawian on Nov 22, 2007 11:27:57 GMT -7
Again, I don't want to portray myself as someone who knows something about a country he has never lived in, so I feel it is important to always have some reference backing-up what I have to say. Let me offer you a certain reference of mine. Strange enough but I also like backing-up my opinions with reference. It is the reference to the carousel used by happy Poles next to the burning ghetto. Do you like Czesław Miłosz? He wrote a poem about the carousel... He wrote it at Easter time 1943 after he saw merry people having fun on Easter Sunday while Jews were being annihilated in the ghetto. Campo di Fiori In Rome on the Campo di Fiori Baskets of olives and lemons, Cobbles spattered with wine And the wreckage of flowers. Vendors cover the trestles With rose-pink fish; Armfuls of dark grapes Heaped on peach-down.
On this same square They burned Giordano Bruno. Henchmen kindled the pyre Close-pressed by the mob. Before the flames had died The taverns were full again, Baskets of olives and lemons Again on the vendors' shoulders.
I thought of the Campo dei Fiori In Warsaw by the sky-carousel One clear spring evening To the strains of a carnival tune. The bright melody drowned The salvos from the ghetto wall, And couples were flying High in the cloudless sky.
At times wind from the burning Would driff dark kites along And riders on the carousel Caught petals in midair. That same hot wind Blew open the skirts of the girls And the crowds were laughing On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.
Someone will read as moral That the people of Rome or Warsaw Haggle, laugh, make love As they pass by martyrs' pyres. Someone else will read Of the passing of things human, Of the oblivion Born before the flames have died.
But that day I thought only Of the loneliness of the dying, Of how, when Giordano Climbed to his burning There were no words In any human tongue To be left for mankind, Mankind who live on.
Already they were back at their wine Or peddled their white starfish, Baskets of olives and lemons They had shouldered to the fair, And he already distanced As if centuries had passed While they paused just a moment For his flying in the fire.
Those dying here, the lonely Forgotten by the world, Our tongue becomes for them The language of an ancient planet. Until, when all is legend And many years have passed, On a great Campo dci Fiori Rage will kindle at a poet's word.
It isn`t the best of Miłosz`s poem but nevertheless I find it very moving.
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Pawian
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Post by Pawian on Nov 22, 2007 11:45:55 GMT -7
BJK, one more poem by Miłosz.
Hey, Kaima, you are also invited! Don`t fear the Jewish thought police! It is just poetry!
As the poem is more difficult than the previous one, I submit it combined with a professional analysis.
A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto'.
It is more ambiguous, perhaps more difficult to understand. It opens with the image of destruction:
It has begun: the tearing, the trampling on silks, It has begun: the breaking of glass, wood, copper, nickel, silver, foam Of gypsum, iron sheets, violin strings, trumpets, leaves, balls, crystals,
And later: Bees build around the honeycomb of lungs, Ants build around white bone. Torn is paper, rubber, linen, leather, flax, Fiber, fabrics, cellulose, snakeskin, wire. The roof and the wall collapse in flame and heat seizes the foundations. Now there is only the earth, sandy, trodden down, With one leafless tree. The city was destroyed, what remained is the earth, full of broken shells and debris. It is also full of human bodies. In this earth, or rather under it: Slowly, boring a tunnel, a guardian mole makes his way, With a small red lamp fastened to his forehead. He touches buried bodies, counts them, pushes on. He distinguishes human ashes by their luminous vapour, The ashes of each man by a different part of the spectrum. Who this mole is, it is difficult to say. Is he a guardian, perhaps a guardian of the buried? He has got a torch, so he can see; better, at any rate, than the dead can see. And the poet himself, he is as if among the buried. He lies there with them. He fears something. He fears the mole. It is a striking, startling image: I am afraid, so afraid of the guardian mole, He has swollen eyelids, like a Patriarch Who has sat much in the light of candles Reading the great book of the species.
And so this mole has the features of a Jew, poring over the Talmud or the Bible. It seems more likely that it is the Bible, as this alone deserves the name of 'the great book of the species', meaning, of course, the human species.
What will I tell him, I, a Jew of the New Testament, Waiting two thousand years for the second coming of Jesus? broken body will deliver me to his sight And he will count me among the helpers of death: The uncircumcised. (translation Cz. Milosz)
It is a terrifying poem; it is full of fear. It is as if two fears co-exist here. The first is the fear of death; more precisely, the fear of being buried alive, which is what happened to many people who were trapped in the cellars and underground passages of the ghetto. But there is also a second fear: the fear of the guardian mole. This mole burrows underground but also underneath our consciousness. This is the feeling of guilt which we do not want to admit. Buried under the rubble, among the bodies of the Jews, the 'uncircumcised' fears that he may be counted among the murderers. So it is the fear of damnation, the fear of hell. The fear of a non-Jew who looks at the ghetto burning down. He imagines that he might accidentally die then and there, and in the eyes of the mole who can read the ashes, he may appear 'a helper of death'. And so, indeed, the poem is entitled: 'A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto'. This Christian feels fearful of the fate of the Jews but also--muffled, hidden even from himself--he feels the fear that he will be condemned. Condemned by whom? By people? No, people have disappeared. It is the mole who condemns him, or rather may condemn him, this mole who sees well and reads 'the book of the species'. It is his own moral conscience which condemns (or may condemn) the poor Christian. And he would like to hide from his mole-conscience, as he does not know what to say to him.
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Pawian
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Post by Pawian on Nov 22, 2007 13:43:40 GMT -7
I promised we would talk about helpers too..... Now is the time. To call Poles 'Nazi helpers' is idiocy beyond the pale. If there was one Nazi occupied nation (above any other, by orders of magnitude) that didn't stand by silently, but continuously resisted and fought back, it was Poland. Compare Poland, to say, France, a nation that seems in my mind to deserve far more condemnation with respect to quisling, collaborationist behavior during WW II than any other Nazi victim, and the differences could'nt be more stark.. If you thought that there were no Polish helpers and collaborators, you had lived under grand illusion. I understand it - nobody in your family, teaching staff, friends etc ever told you the truth. They only told you about those glorious moments of Polish history and noble behaviour of Poles. You were brought up in a sweet ignorance. The Blue Police, more correctly translated as The Navy-Blue Police (Polish: Granatowa policja, name originating from the colour of their uniforms) was the popular name of the collaborationist Polish police in the General Government during the Second World War.
It was created by Nazi-Germany as an auxiliary paramilitary police force in order to keep law and order in the General Government part of occupied Poland. Similar police organizations existed in all of the occupied countries. Initially used to deal with purely criminal activities, the Blue Police was later used to also prevent smuggling, and against the Jewish population in the ghettos.
Their role is dubious. Many of them were members of the Polish resistance. There were cases when blue policemen rescued Jews or refused to shoot them. A few of them have their trees in Jerusalem. However, on the whole, the blue police activity smells of dirty collaboration. A few rightoeus ones are not enough to excuse this formation. What were their most hideous duties, among others?: 1. Guarding the exit gates of the ghetto, as well as the walls and fences encircling the Ghettos or Jewish districts. 2. Participating in the "resettlement actions" in the capacity of catchers, escorts, etc. 3. Participating in tracking down Jews who were in hiding after the "resettlement actions." 4. Shooting Jews sentenced to death by the Germans. Re 4: On 17 November, 1941, eight Warsaw Jews were executed for leaving the ghetto without permission. One witness reported: The execution squad was composed of Polish policemen. After carrying out their orders, they cried bitterly. Resettlement action German and Polish policemen - a souvenir group photo A policeman of Poland's "Blue Police" inspecting the documents of a Jew in Krakow. www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/krakow/krakow.html
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Post by pieter on Nov 22, 2007 14:58:48 GMT -7
P Unfortunately Indifferance and collaboration was most the most common attitude or behavior in many European countries. Pieter Why unfortunately? Develop your idea. Because indifferance is being careless, having lost a part of your humanity out of fear, cowardice, and giving up your own countries or region values, traditions and culture in which various cultures and ethnic groups could live together for centuries. Indifferance was the same as obeying the occupying power, having a slave mentality, accepting an intolerable situation, giving in to an evil regime. Acts of indifferance in my country were the willing who cooperated with the Aryanisation policy of the Nazi occupation regime, by writing down Aryan in forms for their identification cards (Ausweis), knowing that the Jews got a "J" of Jew (Jood/Zyd), the police who rounded up the Jews authonomously or together with the German police forces (SD, Grüne polizei, Gestapo). People who did not protest when Jewish colleages, peoples and students were removed from companies, schools and universities. And last but not least people who were not really anti-semites or nazi's, but who collaborated with the Nazi's out of opportunism. Hey, they are the winners, and noting will change, lets take your chance and take the opportunity to improve your life by working together with the Nazi's, using Jewish houses, taking or buying jewish furniture, jewlery, art, books, silver, plates and etc. Let's be as flexible, dynamic and cooperative as possible to please the people of the "New Order", let's accept the new circumstances and close our eyes for the less pleasent parts, the nasty things. Ofcourse these things are happening now, but soon things get normal and these things (the arrests of jews and other not wanted, and the terror of the German Nazi's and their Dutch *henchman (the blackskirt militia WA and landmacht, Dutch Nazi Police officers, Dutch SS and Dutch SD). The indifferance of the majority who stayed silent, and watched on or watched the other way, was the worst thing the victims could happen. And the few good (the real resistance, the people who risked their lives to rescue Jews, by hiding them in their houses -you had these people in the Netherlands and Poland-, and the people who protested) had a hard time, by the brutal torture, murder and mutilation they had to endure, and the loss of many friends and comrades. Unfortunately the "Good" are always a minority everywhere! Pieter * In Poland the blue police, and far right partisans who delivered local jews to the German enemy.
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Post by Jaga on Nov 22, 2007 19:09:37 GMT -7
Pawian, there was a German police (SS), Polish blue police in general gouvernor part of Poland and also Jewish police in the ghettos. I have to admit, the Jewish policemen do not really look very happy and confident in this picture. Here is one of the picture of the German and Jewish police: here is a part from the memory of the person who worked in Jewish police: Am I a Murder?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman (the original title is “A History of a Jewish Family During German Occupation”) by Calel Perechodnik is an interesting account by a twenty-seven year old ghetto policeman in Otwock, a town near Warsaw. Perechodnik began his memoir on May 7, 1943, while hiding in the home of a Polish woman in Warsaw. The memoir, which is primarily a confession of the guilt he feels for his responsibility in bringing about the deportation of his wife and two year old daughter and their subsequent death in Treblinka, is unique among Holocaust testimonies and is extremely thought provoking. Perechodnik’s account shares his profound sense of guilt for his inability to save his wife and child although that was the primary reason for his decision to become a ghetto policeman in early 1941. His description of the deportation on August 19, 1942, at the Umschlagplatz is chilling. The picture of his wife and daughter, sitting with the other victims as he carries out his duties, creates a surreal, circus-like scene that is intensified as he loads his boxcars. In relation to the previously mentioned comments by Viktor Frankl about the freedom of individuals in making decisions, it is interesting to compare the choices of Perechodnik, who carries out his duties at the Umschlagplatz, and his friend and fellow officer Abram Willendorf, who removes his police armband and joins his family in their wait for death. Perechodnik mentions several times his admiration for Willendorf, as well as for Janusz Korczak, who chose to die with the children under his care, but, sorrowfully, confesses that his fear of death prevented him from making the right decision. academic.kellogg.edu/mandel/collins_rev.htmAm I a Murderer? Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman Calel Perechodnik
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Post by freetobe on Nov 22, 2007 22:01:52 GMT -7
Jaga, I take no side in this discussion. People do what they feel they must in order to survive. And others who may have suffered as a result, do what they feel they must as a payback. My personal opinions as to what or who is right or wrong in this protracted argument (dare I call it a dialogue?) is not important. What began as a request from you to help in responding to the view of your secular(atheist?) Jewish friend re Polish anti-Semitism has digressed to a diatribe among Paw, Kai, bjk and yourself. As an American(of Polish descent) I take exception to Paw's characterization of Americans as lacking in knowledge of history as well as bjk's reference to Paw as a punk,but mostly to your non censuring of both for their bickering and insensitive remarks. It appears that your choice of subjects for the blog are provocative in a non productive way. Your friend referred to you as an intelligent,etc. and I know what your scientific credentials are. So if you can't formulate a thoughtful sensitive response to a friend you must have an alternative motive in putting this issue on the blog. Newbies beware.
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