From the Polish or Israeli side Karl. I can't understand that why after 70 years Poles, Israeli's and sometimes Germans can't be more mature. Poles are over sensitive, Israeli's too and Germans in my opinion have to much a guilt complex. We have to remember the 3 million Polish jews and 3 million non-Jewish Roman-Catholic Poles that were murdered. Often in the West people don't know how much Poland suffered during the war. Both in civilian deaths and in military combat. Many Poles died in concentrationcamps like Jews or Gypsies and Sovjet Red Army soldiers.
However to accuse jews a “feeling of shame at the passivity of the Jews during the Holocaust.” is a crazy and false accusation. Why? Because jews were a minority in most European countries, they were often kept out of influential political positions and didn't had armed defense forces, militia's, guerilla organisations or large popular support. The German and Austrian ideological and military war machine of Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS, Ordnungspolizei (Grüne Polizei) and Sicherheitsdients/Gestapo (and Sicherheitspolizei) was so strong and superior that it ruled, managed and opressed large parts of Europe for 5 years, often with local or foreign henchmen (Dutch, Flemish, Wallon, French, Danish, Ukrainian, Baltic and Russian Nazi's) and the Nazi's run a system of ten thousands of larger and smaller concentrationcamps all over Europe.
Poland is right when it is furious about foreign newspapers, magazines, tv/radio stations and politcians who spoke about Polish Death camps or Polish concentrationcamps, because these concentrationcamps (Vernichtungslager) were German/Austrian Nazi concentrationcamps in Poland, managed and run by the German/Austrian SS-Totenkopfverbände, the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps for the Third Reich.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-Totenkopfverb%C3%A4ndeFor once and for all and hopefully the last time I post this terrible recording of Heinrich Himmler about that work, duty and thus murderous job of the SS-Totenkopfverbände. Heinrich Himmler gave a 3 hour and 5 minute long speech to hundreds of SS men on Oct. 4, 1943, in Posen, Poland, regarding many things, amongst them the extermination of the Jews. The part where he talks about the extermination of the jews is shown here.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czes%C5%82awa_KwokaFor me Czesława Kwoka is one of the symbols of the Holocaust, not only Anne Frank and the Dutch Gypsy girl Anna Maria Steinbach who was gassed in Nazi Germany's Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. These three girls are for me the symbol for the Holocaust, because the German and Ausrtrian Nazi's saw Jews, Gypsies and Slav people in Europe as inferior. The last group is often forgotten. The Polish people, Belarussians, Russians, Ukrainians and Czech people (The Lidice massacre) that were murdered by the Nazi's.
The 9-year-old dutch Sinti-girl Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach peeks outside , at the last moment just before the sliding door is closed , standing inside a freight wagon with 74 people on May 19 , 1944 in the Westerbork concentration camp in Holland , when this deportation train leaves for Auschwitz-Birkenau - where Settela is murdered a few months later in one of the gas chambers. Here she wears a headscarf made from a torn sheet, because the Nazis had her head shaved , and while Settela peeks outside , her mother cries behind her in the car : "Get out of there, or soon your head gets in between!" She was filmed by the jewish prisoner filmmaker Rudolf Breslauer as part of a documentary film being made on the Westerbork camp.We have to be fair about history. Not only Israeli's, American jews and the European Diaspora jews (less powerful than the Israeli's and American jews, and not always with the same opinions) share a one sided view on the Second World War and the Holocaust (Shoa/Endlosung -Final solution of the jewish people in Europe by the Nazi's-), also many Christian and secular people share the same opinions, ideas and visions of the past. It is true that the Nazi's were obsessed by the Jews and Gypsies as (in their eyes) inferior peoples, cultures and nations, and that they wanted to eliminate these people completely. But their plans went further. After the elimination of the jews and gypsies, they wanted to wipe out large portions of the slav people and replace them in Poland, and the fertile agricultural lands of Ukraine, Belarus and Western-Russia by Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, German and Austrian farmers to Germanise these territories. Their plans were to enslave all slav people. Kill a large part of them. Their elites, intelligentsia's, academic people, leaders and adminstrators and only keep the work folk, the workers and peasents as slave workers.
There is little attention in the Western history studies, highschools and universities for the suffering of the Western slav and Eastern slav people. Little attention of ethnic cleansing of Polish area's in Western Poland where Poles were replaced by Baltic Germans and Volksdeutsche. There is little attention for the bad role the Volksdeutsche played in occupied Poland with their Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, who participated in the Intelligenzaktion, a plan to eliminate all Polish intelligentsia and Poland's leadership class in the country. These operations took place soon after the fall of Poland, lasting from the fall of 1939 until the spring of 1940. As the result in 10 regional actions 60,000 landowners, teachers, Polish entrepreneurs, social workers, military veterans, members of national organisations, priests, judges and political activists were killed. The Intelligenzaktions were continued by the German AB-Aktion operation in Poland.
Next to the jews which were deported to Auschwitz, 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Romani and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 400 Jehovah's Witnesses, anti-Nazi Christians (Roman-Catholic priests, Confessing Church -Bekennende Kirche- people and other Christian denominations, also Calvinists, Lurtherans and Evangelicals), and tens of thousands of others of diverse nationalities were deported to Auschwitz, including an unknown number of homosexuals. Many people don't know that Heinrich Himmler and other high ranking SS officers had a deep contempt and personal hatred towards christianity, because in their words the ethics and morale in christianity, which went against their Social darwinistic, occult, race biological theories and pseudo scientific ideas.
I think Israeli's, American jews and European jews should also look at bad elements and collaboration within the jewish communities. How did the Jewish councils (Judenrat, Joodse raad in Dutch), the Jewish Getto Police, Jewish Kapo's, Jewish criminals operated during the war? In the Netherlands there was a painful and thourough discussion about that within the jewish community. Jewish working class members were very angry about members of the jewish elite who were the leaders and administrators of the Joodse Raad (Jewish council) in Amsterdam for instance. They state that the Jewish elite saved the lives of their families (rich jews) at the expense of the poor jewish masses, the jewish working class, who had less chance to survive. Painful, deep, emotional, historical, and ethical discussions. Some jewish council members were kicked out of the jewish community after the war.
I think about the collaborationalist Jewish group,
Group 13 (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_13 ), and
Zagiew ("
The Torch") a Nazi-collaborationist Jewish agent provocateur group in Nazi German-occupied
Poland which both blackmailed Polish jews and Polish Roman-Catholics who helped jews in and outside the Warsaw getto. And I think of notorious Jewish Getto Police commanders like Józef Szeryński and Jakub Lejkin. I also think about the ruthless, harsh, stern, arrogant, feared and loathed
Chaim Rumkowski, a Polish jewish businessman appointed by Nazi Germany as the head of the Council of Elders in
the Łódź Ghetto during the occupation of Poland in World War II.
Rumkowski used his position as head of the Judenrat to confiscate property and businesses that were still being run by their rightful Jewish owners in the ghetto. "
He treated the ghetto Jews like personal belongings. He spoke to them arrogantly and rudely and sometime beat them".
Kapo
A kapo leader at Salaspils concentration camp, Latvia, with a Lagerpolizist (camp policeman) armbandA kapo or prisoner functionary (German:
Funktionshäftling, see § Etymology) was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who was assigned by
the SS guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks. Also called "
prisoner self-administration", the prisoner functionary system minimized costs by allowing camps to function with fewer
SS personnel.
The system was designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners in order
to maintain the favor of their SS overseers. If they were derelict, they would be returned to the status of ordinary prisoners and be subject to other kapos. Many prisoner functionaries were
recruited from the ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political, religious and racial prisoners;
those were known for their brutality toward other prisoners.
This brutality was tolerated by the SS and was an integral part of the camp system.
Prisoner functionaries were spared physical abuse and hard labor, provided they performed their duties to the satisfaction of
the SS functionaries. They also had access to certain privileges, such as civilian clothes and a private room. While the Germans commonly called them
kapos, the official government term for prisoner functionaries was
Funktionshäftling.
You had many
Ukrainian (Christian Orthodox)
Kapo's in German/Austrian concentration camps in Poland, Germany and Austria, but also
German/Austrian Kapo's (often criminals, political prisoners and others) and
Jewish Kapo's. So jews suffered under Ukrainian, German/Austrian and jewish Kapo's. People of other nationalities suffered under other Kapo's, because in my opinion jews were not in the same sections as non jews, because in the concentrationcamp hierarchy, they were the lowest group in the Nazi ethnic, racial and cultural hierarchy.
It is up to Polish, Israeli, German, American, Dutch, British, Canadian, Russian, French, Italian, South-African, Australian and other scientists and historians to get the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Uncompromising, all the facts, all the evidence, all the material, all the files. On all sides people made mistakes, you had bad apples, you had saints and heroes and also large groups of mediocre, indifferent or just surviving people. Real resitance and real collaboration was only done by minorities of the European peoples. The majorities just tried to survive, and were not overtly bad, nor overtly good.
Cheers,
Pieter
