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Post by Jaga on Nov 18, 2007 15:36:21 GMT -7
+++And the very expression Kaima used - Jewish- Nazi. Such juxtaposing wasn`t too nice.+++ Pawian, I could not find this expression. Where is it? I would like to see its context. If it means "Jewish-Nazi friendship", it would not make any sense, but if it means "Jewish-Nazi" conflict - it means basically the same as Polish-Nazi conflict etc... I just searched the google. The term "Jewish-Nazi" is contradictory according to one source. But here is a website that talks about Jewish victims of Nazi persecutions: www.swissbankclaims.com/pdfs_eng/AmericanJewishJointDistributionCommittee(CentralAndEasternEurope).pdf
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Pawian
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Post by Pawian on Nov 18, 2007 16:00:40 GMT -7
+++And the very expression Kaima used - Jewish- Nazi. Such juxtaposing wasn`t too nice.+++ Pawian, I could not find this expression. Where is it? I would like to see its context. If it means "Jewish-Nazi friendship", it would not make any sense, but if it means "Jewish-Nazi" conflict - it means basically the same as Polish-Nazi conflict etc... I just searched the google. The term "Jewish-Nazi" is contradictory according to one source. jagahost.proboards79.com/index.cgi?board=history&action=display&thread=1184366695&page=2#1195108240
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Post by kaima on Nov 18, 2007 17:59:04 GMT -7
Agreed Pawi, It is not a nice phrase, nor a nice practice. I do contend the practice is well served by the label, however unpleasant it must be. The practice brings up pictures of nazi police coming in with rubber truncheons ans whacking people over the head wholesale to stop the conversation. Thus the phrase. Here is the smallest snippet I would consider to carry the context, but thanks for posting the link. Now if it bothered you, why didn't you jump on me then, instead of concentrating your anger at the other fellow? "In America to be called anti-Semitic it is sufficient to not voice 100% support for whatever current Israeli politics may be. That pretty severely limits discussion of any kind. On this forum we have some Jewish nazi thought-police spring up now and then to jump on some supposedly anti-Jewish statement or discussion, and then they just as quickly melt into the ether again. Big Brother is out there. " Kai
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Post by Jaga on Nov 18, 2007 19:44:27 GMT -7
Just one more remark about our discussion. For 2 years a part of my job consisted from reading the old Polish newspapers in the Library of Congress in DC. Some of these newspapers are from 1945. It was amazing sometimes to read them. The situation was very different in warsaw (which was completely destroyed) as compared to Krakow. In Warsaw people did not have place to sleep, not too much to eat. In Krakow life was more normal.
What was amazing - the amount of information about common crimes. It seemed that the war impacted people in very negative way. The value of human life was very low, people had much easier access to the weapons, murders and other crime was very common! People need a couple of years to get back to normal, more pacifistic mind!
I believe that the wars are responsible for developing in people a brutal and more aggressive aspect. If you look at Kielce's pogrom, it happened shortly after the war. If you look at Jedwabne, it happened after Soviet invaders left and German came.
I believe that if the times were calm, easier to live, nothing like than would happen - neither in Kielce nor in Jedwabne.
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Pawian
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Post by Pawian on Nov 21, 2007 8:05:39 GMT -7
But I don't have the time to repeat what has been written by scholars, and available to researchers for years The material is out there. Dear bjk decided not to go into details. He said he didn`t have time, but I suspect he just wasn`t prepared for a factual discussion. He only knew he had to defend the Polish good name against defamatory attacks by reluctant Jews. Unfortunately, mere willingness to tak up defence is not enough. One has to know how to defend wisely. Apparently, bjk wasn`t really ready because he hadn`t read any of the books which he advertised here. I hope that during his absence (temporary!) from the forum he is busy perusing the literature. I think I can help him a little. Let`s imagine we reverse time and try to recreate our discussion anew. What should bjk have said? First of all, he should have mentioned the reports by the Polish underground movement about the dire situation in Poland. American and British leaders either didn`t believe or didn`t react. Churchill knew nothing about the Holocaust because his advisors kept it secret form him, in fear on "another petitioner who might disturb Churchill`s peace of mind." Those petitioners were gassed Jews whose ashes Nazi murderers buried or threw into rivers all over Poland. The man who brought the Jewish silent petition to the Western leaders was Jan Karski, a member of the Polish resistance, a spy and finally an envoy. Unfortunately, his mission was of Cassandric nature - nobody believed him. British reluctance to act.Jan Karski, a liaison officer of the Polish underground, came to London in November 1942 and told Cavendish-Bentinck about the mass murder of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Belzec concentration camp. Another Polish witness, Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, reported in December 1943 that 3.3 million Polish Jews had been murdered and that “the Germans used troops, tanks and artillery to liquidate the ghetto in Warsaw.”
Doubt was cast on reports of atrocities by Roger Allen, a high-ranking Foreign Office official who worked closely with Cavendish-Bentinck during the war. Allen didn’t believe stories about the use of gas chambers in Poland. Allen wrote in August 1943 that he could “never understand what the advantage of a gas chamber over a simple machine gun or over starving people would be.” He also questioned the reliability of the reports of gas chambers because they were “very general and tended to come from Jewish sources.”
Cavendish-Bentinck had access to the decrypted German police and SS reports which also mentioned the persecution and genocide of the Jews on the territories held by the Germans. Nevertheless, he said in August 1943, the Poles and Jews were exaggerating the German atrocities to try to stiffen British resolve.
British officials also withheld information about the treatment of the Jews from the War Cabinet and Churchill. When he reported on Karski’s visit, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden deleted all references to Jews being murdered. He also refused to let Karski report personally to Churchill because he felt it was “his duty to protect the elderly and overworked Prime Minister from too many petitioners.”www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/britdoubts.html
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Post by hollister on Nov 21, 2007 8:16:02 GMT -7
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Post by Pawian on Nov 21, 2007 8:17:14 GMT -7
Americans refused to react too. Why??? They didn`t believe, even Jewish advisors to President Roosevelt couldn`t understand the true nature of the Holocaust. It cannot have been a coincidence that Ciechanowski brought together three of the Roosevelt administration's most prominent Jews to hear Karski's report in this initial meeting. Presidential adviser Ben Cohen, Assistant Solicitor General Oscar Cox and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter had helped to shape Roosevelt's New Deal policies.
Each man was close to the president and well-connected in Washington. Ciechanowski wanted to get Roosevelt's attention; Karski carried dramatic news that would presumably interest American Jews. Therefore, the ambassador would set his strategy in motion by inviting F.D.R.'s top Jewish advisers to meet Karski.
The dinner meeting with Cohen, Cox and Frankfurter lasted until nearly 1:00 in the morning. Jan held forth on the organization of the Underground and other subjects, while also giving an objective description of the persecution of Jews in Poland. Over dinner, he referred only in passing to what he himself had witnessed-- but the stories were still enough to "make your hair stand on end," as Cox wrote to Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's top aide.
Frankfurter lingered after the other guests left the embassy. Adjourning the gathering to a quiet ballroom, Ciechanowski took a seat to Karski's left. The Supreme Court justice sat opposite Karski, looking into his eyes.
"Mr. Karski," Frankfurter asked, "do you know that I am a Jew?"
Karski nodded.
"There are so many conflicting reports about what is happening to the Jews in your country," Frankfurter said. "Please tell me exactly what you have seen."
Jan spent half an hour patiently explaining how his missions to the Ghetto and the camp had come about and precisely, in gruesome detail, what he had witnessed. When Karski finished, he waited for the visitor to make the next move.
Frankfurter silently got up from his chair. For a few moments, he paced back and forth in front of Karski and the ambassador, who looked on in puzzlement. Then, just as quietly, he took his seat again.
"Mr. Karski," Frankfurter said after a further pause, "a man like me talking to a man like you must be totally frank. So I must say: I am unable to believe you."
Ciechanowski flew from his seat. "Felix, you don't mean it!" he cried. "How can you call him a liar to his face! The authority of my government is behind him. You know who he is!"
Frankfurter replied, in a soft voice filled with resignation, "Mr. Ambassador, I did not say this young man is lying. I said I am unable to believe him. There is a difference." www.remember.org/karski/kexcrpt4.htmlBJK could have written: My God, if American Jews didn`t do anything to stop the Holocaust because they simply refused to believe, what on earth Poles could do in their occupied Nazi terrorised country???
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Post by Pawian on Nov 21, 2007 8:29:13 GMT -7
It has some points which I am going to use in my further discussion as BJK`s alter ego, but I am afraid in his letter the author prefers to skip uneasy aspects of Polish Jewish relations and concentrates on those bright ones. In short: the letter contains the propaganda of the good. I will respond to it in detail later, I promise.
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Post by Pawian on Nov 21, 2007 8:35:28 GMT -7
What did Karski report to Western leaders so that they didn`t believe?
E.g., his visit to the Warsaw Ghetto. Jews cooperated with the Polish underground and knew that Poles were going to send a messenger to allies. Karski was invited by Jews to see the ghetto to be able to relate the truth. He went there with a Jewish guide who admonished him to rememebr everything.
Karski and Feiner shuffled down the street with the Jewish underground member at their side. The streets were packed with humanity and its remnants. "There was hardly a square yard of empty space," Karski recalled. "As we picked our way across the mud and rubble, the shadows of what had once been men or women flitted by us in pursuit of someone or something, their eyes blazing with some insane hunger or greed." The cries of the mad and the hungry echoed through the streets, mingled with the voices of residents offering to barter scraps of clothing for morsels of food.
Jan identified the stench in his nostrils just as he discerned the unclothed corpses. Strewn in the gutters were the bodies of the old and young, all as naked in death as they had been in birth.
"What does it mean?" Jan asked under his breath.
"When a Jew dies," Feiner calmly replied, "the family removes his clothing and throws his body in the street. Otherwise they would have to pay a burial tax to the Germans. Besides, this saves clothing."
The visitors reached the Plac Muranowski, a square at the northeast corner of the Ghetto that had once been a park. Mothers crowded the benches, nursing emaciated infants. Stunted children filled the area, some sitting listlessly, others cavorting in the dirt.
"They are playing, you see." Jan thought he heard Feiner's voice break with emotion. "Life goes on. They play before they die."
"These children are not playing," responded Jan. "They only make believe it is play."
On the streets, Feiner relentlessly pointed out every macabre example of the zone's bestial conditions. Over and over the men would come upon human forms crumpled against the sides of buildings, their catatonic stares fixed on nothing, only a slight rustling beneath their rags betraying the fact that they were still breathing. At each instance, Feiner would stop for a moment. "Remember this," he said, over and over. "Remember this."
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Post by Pawian on Nov 21, 2007 8:58:21 GMT -7
Karski also visited Belzec, the Nazi death camp. The Office of Information and Propaganda also received an alarming report from the Home Army headquarters in Lublin of mass executions of Jews in the newly opened Belzec camp. In mid-October 1942, Karski was assigned the task of going to Belzec. He went to the camp dressed in the uniform of an Estonian guard thanks to help from a guide. This action lasted an hour, and Karski learned that the camp commandant was named Gotlieb Hering and that exhaust fumes from engines taken from Soviet tanks were being used to kill people. As he recalled years later, that experience shocked him deeply. But his sacrifice and effort were wasted by the allies who did nothing to stop the Holocaust. What could have been done? The allies could bombard Auschwitz and other camps, not only their gas chambers and crematoria, but also railways leading to the camp. It wasn`t done because the Allies prefered to use their resources against military objects. And they weren`t pressed hard enough by Jewish elites in America to help dying Jews. www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/20124/edition_id/410/format/html/displaystory.htmlThe Allies had the military resources to bombard Auschwitz, he maintained. The U.S. Air Force "was capable of striking the railroad lines to Auschwitz and the vicinity, but for bombing to be effective it had to be sustained, and for it to be feasible it had to be undertaken by day in good weather and between July and October 1944." The window of opportunity closed in the fall with the onset of chilly and foggy weather.Another reason for the Allies' failure to act, Berenbaum stated, was the lack of pressure from the organized American Jewish community. While some Zionists, recent immigrant groups and Orthodox Jews clamored to rescue Jews at all costs, the "established Jewish leadership was reluctant to press for organized military activity for fear of being too overt and encouraging perceptions within the political leadership that World War II was a 'Jewish war.'"
Even David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency's executive committee and later Israel's first premier, was initially against intervention on behalf of Jews in Poland. Berenbaum quoted Ben-Gurion, who said in June 1944 "that we do not know the truth concerning the entire situation in Poland and it seems that we will be unable to propose anything concerning this matter."
America's refusal to act nagged at Berenbaum throughout his talk. He said that by the summer of 1944 "the gas chambers at Auschwitz were operating around the clock, and the crematoria were so overtaxed that bodies were being burned in open fields with body fat fueling the flames. Any interruption in the killing process might possibly have saved thousands of lives."
Deanna Chase, a third year psychology student, added that Berenbaum "challenged us to think about the United States' role in ending genocide. I think America could've done more."
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Post by Pawian on Nov 21, 2007 9:01:08 GMT -7
BJK, if you are secretly with us, this is the first part of the information for you to use on your Jewish opponents in your discussions. Go and defend Poland`s good name there in America!
TBC
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Post by bjk on Nov 21, 2007 10:13:04 GMT -7
Could you explain to our readers why the photos you posted in your first response, allegedly of 'Polish antisemtic graffitti' is GERMAN? Why would antisemtic graffitti in POLAND be written in GERMAN? And more importantly, why would you post this with the claim that this is proof of popular sentiment TODAY in Poland?
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Post by kaima on Nov 21, 2007 10:57:21 GMT -7
Karski also visited Belzec, the Nazi death camp. But his sacrifice and effort were wasted by the allies who did nothing to stop the Holocaust. What could have been done? The allies could bombard Auschwitz and other camps, not only their gas chambers and crematoria, but also railways leading to the camp. It wasn`t done because the Allies prefered to use their resources against military objects. And they weren`t pressed hard enough by Jewish elites in America to help dying Jews. www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/20124/edition_id/410/format/html/displaystory.htmlPawi, I read this as recurring non-sense that has been propagated for decades and will continue long after we are all gone. 'The allies should have bombed the camps'. With precision bombing of the day? Our propaganda called it 'precision bombing' and people think of it as such today, just as the careless and inaccurate use of the phrase 'Polish death camp' hurts Poland today. The camps were not Polish, they were German-Nazi camps in what was conquered Poland. The 'precision bombing' of the day most often got within half a mile or so of the target at best. The Japs laughed at our great top secret Norden Bomb sight when they got hold of one. The results of the bombing of Europe were horrendously inaccurate. What do these people imagine, one bomb for the ovens, one bomb for the guard's barracks, another for the camp commandant's house, all neatly blown up with debris falling in a neat stack, prisoners unhurt? Bombing was not a realistic alternative. It would have been mass slaughter of the prisoners. Decades after the war, when the Germans would find a dud 500 pound bomb buried in Berlin, they would evacuate all buildings for about 5 city blocks in all directions. Yes, one little bomb (big for the day) would have such damage that it would endanger people so far away. Given the distances to the camps, fuel, air defenses and such anything precise like dive bombing was out of the question. These people live in a world perpetuating fantasy and finger pointing. Kai
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Post by Pawian on Nov 21, 2007 11:01:27 GMT -7
BJK, welcome back, I am really glad you haven`t left us for good. We will be able to finish our broken discussion. I promise I will stick to facts without personal trips, of course on condition you do the same. Could you explain to our readers why the photos you posted in your first response, allegedly of 'Polish antisemtic graffitti' is GERMAN? Why would antisemtic graffitti in POLAND be written in GERMAN? It is very easy to explain. Typical antisemitic graffiti seen in Poland contains some German speech or symbols. It is usually a svastika or the expression "Jude Raus." Raus means out, so the graffitti author suggests that Jews must leave. German symbols and words are used to hurt Jews more. Even anti-semitic Poles know a lot about Holocaust, they know that Germans used those expressions during the war, today they repeat them to provoke more. It is a proof. Not popular sentiment by any means, and if I suggested so before, I should correct it now. The antisemitic grafitti is made by a few crazed youngsters who think they should follow the fascist ideology. However, such graffitti stays on walls for a very long time. Other Poles who see it don`t care. They pass without hesitation. Anti-Jewish graffitti - it`s not my business, they say. They are INDIFFERENT. Do you know what I mean? Indifferent like during the war.
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Post by Pawian on Nov 21, 2007 11:18:52 GMT -7
Here are the photos of anti-semitic graffitti that I took last year. The owners of smeared property don`t care so the graffitti is still there today, only becoming bleaker and bleaker every year. What Hitler started, we will finish. Fuk the Jews!This one is obscure, I don`t remember what was written there exactly, but I know it was antisemitic.
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