May 30, 2012, - 12:59 pm

Poles Were Complicit in Holocaust: Outrage Over Obama “Gaffe” is Fraudulent, Ignorant

By Debbie Schlussel

Barack Obama has done enough legitimately bad things that we don’t need to manufacture phony outrage over things he does that really aren’t so bad. Such is the case with the feigned shock and fake moralizing over his comments, yesterday, about German Nazi death camps in Poland being a Polish death camp. Here’s a tip for Poland and ignoramuses in the lumpenconservatariat who now engage in revisionist history: Poles murdered millions of Jews, they maintained several death camps, and they wiped out almost all of both sides of my family, as well as those in hundreds of thousands of other Jewish families. This wasn’t just the Nazis. It was tens of thousands of eager Poles and more. Obama made no gaffe here. Poland’s willing executioners took their significant place among Hitler’s willing executioners.


Poland’s Warsaw Ghetto Existed Because of Polish Complicity

swastika.jpg

Two Things That Weren’t Exactly Mutually Exclusive

There is a reason why Poland was so easily occupied by the Germans. Yeah, I know–they were “just taking orders.” Just taking orders when they helped round up Jews and helped man gas chambers. As if Nazis from Germany did this alone! Polish police all too happily worked with the SS to round up Jews. Polish police all too easily took their place in helping run and operate the death camps. Facts are stubborn things. But, sadly, not as stubborn as morons and blind partisans.

I had to laugh when I read this:

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday Obama’s words had hurt all Poles and he expected more from Washington than just “regret”.

Are you kidding? Someone needs to remind Mr. Tusk that his people were the ones doing the hurting and the turning over to the Nazis and the mass murder of at least half of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, some of them from my family. You are “hurt” by calling Nazi death camps, “Polish”???? Um, where were they? Who helped operate them and round up and turn in the camps’ Jewish occupants, soon to be turned into ash and fumes?


There is a reason that President Obama, yesterday, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Jan Karski, the former Polish underground officer who provided early eyewitness accounts of Nazi Germany’s genocide of European Jews. And that’s because Karski was unlike most of his fellow Poles, who hated Jews just as the Nazis did and proudly turned them over to the Nazis and/or participated in the mass murderous Judenrein. Even in the Polish underground, hatred of Jews was legion. My great-uncle was in the Polish underground, until they slit his throat while he was sleeping because, one day, the head of the Polish underground demanded a cleansing of its Jews, too.

My paternal grandmother had eleven brothers and sisters. Only one brother survived the Holocaust after the Poles murdered the rest along with her parents, after Poles seized their farm. (Grandma Marilyn was brought to the U.S. before the Holocaust began.) My maternal grandmother had only one surviving sister and brother, out of ten siblings. All the rest–and her parents–were murdered by the Poles. My maternal grandfather’s entire family was wiped out by the Poles. Grandpa Isaac’s father was mayor of the town and owned a hardware store. He hid in the haystacks of a Pole who owed him money and had bought tools on credit, but my grandfather escaped and was ultimately rounded up to the camps, after he heard the Pole tell neighbors he was going to trade my grandfather to the Nazis for a bottle of whisky.

My family and the millions of Jews wiped out in Poland never identified as Polish because the Poles never treated them that way. They were subject to centuries of pogroms and extreme anti-Semitism by the country in which they lived, before they were ultimately rounded up to the camps and mass-murdered with Polish cooperation. They were treated as subhuman all along the way, never as fellow “Polish.” So it’s beyond hilarious now to hear that the Poles are “hurt” by Obama’s description of a German Nazi death camp as “Polish.” As if there weren’t any Polish ones or as if the Poles had zero part in the Holocaust they all too eagerly participated in. Read the 93 pages of “Bystanders, Blackmailers, and Perpetrators: Polish Complicity During the Holocaust” for just a taste of what the Poles wrought on the Jews.

Yes, it is laughable that the Poles, Rush Limbaugh, self-hating Jew Matt Drudge, and a gazillion Republicans and incredibly obtuse and ignorant members of the lumpenconservatariat–most of them no different from the Obamabots in their lack of intelligence, knowledge, and common sense and decency–are incensed over this “gaffe” that really ain’t a gaffe at all. It’s intellectual dishonesty to insist that these death camps on Polish soil were not at all Polish and merely “German Nazi.” Here’s a list of the Polish ones–did they not exist? Did they exist in Poland only because the Germans did this and the Polish had no part? Only a liar or a moron would make these claims. The White House should have made no apology to Poland. These major death camps existed in Poland for a reason: Polish complicity in the Holocaust and willing cooperation with the Nazis.

* Auschwitz

* Belzec

* Chelmno

* Gross-Rosen

* Majdanek

* Plaszow

* Sobibor

* Stutthof

* Treblinka

Keep these names in your mind when you read this quote:

Poland’s government keenly watches the global media for descriptions of former Nazi German death camps as “Polish” because it says the term — even if used simply as a geographical indicator — can give the impression that Poland bore responsibility for Nazi Germany’s World War II genocide.

Although located in Poland, Auschwitz for example was set up and run entirely by German dictator Adolf Hitler’s occupying forces from 1940 to 1945.

Huh? The Poles were not just forced into this by the Nazis. They were active participants, many of them gleeful and eager to murder Jews. To call these camps Polish is no “gaffe.” Poland DOES bear responsibility for the Nazi genocide of Jews.

It’s just fact. And it’s denial and fraud for Poland and others to argue otherwise.

Yes, there were a few righteous gentile Poles who saved Jews. A very tiny few. The majority were all too happy for the Judenrein, especially in the way it took place.

That was the real Poland during World War II. Anyone who says otherwise is a fraud.

And if you wonder why so many Jews are liberal and won’t vote Republican, BS, like the absurd denial that Nazi Death Camps were Polish, certainly doesn’t help in endearing Jews to the GOP.




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2,053 Responses

“helping the Germans build and run the camps”
NormanF on May 30, 2012 at 2:23 pm

I’m sure, with a gun at your head, you would do the same Normie.
And your yes-man approach on Deb’s blog is getting a bit tiresome.

I_AM_ME on May 30, 2012 at 4:49 pm
I’ll bet your lovely Soviets killed more Jews than even Hitler in his wettest dream. Nice heros you have there.

theShadow on May 30, 2012 at 9:34 pm

    It is a natural human tendency to live in denial of painful truths. As a result of horrific tragedies, there is such a thing as collective amnesia, in which people cannot or do not wish to remember the truth about what really happened. The vehement protests, particularly from Poland and its politicians over a simple reference to “Polish death camps” during Obama’s presentation, demonstrates a collective amnesia on the part of the protesters.

    People today, who don’t care to read history or try to understand the past, will be condemned to relieve the past, because they can’t or won’t learn from it.

    Thus, the Poles don’t even remember that when the 6-day war broke out as Israel defended herself against the attacks on her Arab neighbors, the response of the Poles was to ended relations in 1967 with Israel to support the Arabs in the Middle East war that year. The response to AGAIN join the enemies of the Jewish people was an immediate, knee-jerk one. Why? Because of the long deep-seated hatred that Poles have felt for Jews.

    Poles cannot or do not wish to remember that Polish Foreign Minister Jozef Beck was closely aligned with Nazi Germany and, yes, they COLLABORATED to commit crimes against the Jews. Here is a photo of Polish Foreign Minister Jozef Beck with Nazi President of the Reichstag Hermann Goering. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F051619-0037%2C_Hermann_G%C3%B6ring%2C_Josef_Beck.jpg And here’s a photo of Beck with Hitler. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/Beck_and_hitler.jpg

    Yes, reality can be a painful thing. And the Poles who don’t want to face their terrible past and who do not or cannot learn from it, will continue to be another part of the problem. If the Poles were truly outraged by Obama’s reference to their “Polish death camps,” rather than seeking apologies from Obama, they would seek to show solidarity with Israel today against her enemies that surround her. And I mean solidarity, and not just diplomacy.

    Ralph Adamo on May 31, 2012 at 6:48 am

      Poland is singled out as the arch-anti-semitic country in Jewish popular narratives not because it was objectively worse than other countries (the pogrom capital of the world was Ukraine, not Poland) but because before Israel was founded, Poland was the homeland of the Ashkenazi Jews. In Yidish, it was called “der Haym”. More Jews witnessed anti-semitism in Poland than anywhere else, and when they emigrated they took those memories with them. As to Romania and its 350,000 Jewish victims, as one American Jew said to me, “Who cares about Romania? The Jews cared about Poland. It was our home” (“Polish Complicity in Shoah is a Myth”, by Steven Paullson, at TOTALLYJEWISH.COM http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/special_reports/?content_id=5962

      Janusz Andrzejewski on May 31, 2012 at 9:44 pm

        Debbie’s article has attracted a lot of interest here. I suspect that this is because her article comes up high on the list of searches in connection with Obama’s brief reference to “Polish death camps.” Debbie article is also of special interest because it is one of the very few that takes the position that the Poles were complicit in the war against the Jews during WWII.

        So far, I’ve not seen one convincing case that Polish complicity is a myth. What I do see is speculation and diversions masquerading as “history” on the part of the Polish apologists. For example, Janusz Andrzejewski posts an article by Steven Paulsson that purports to support the position that Polish complicity really has nothing to do with the Poles, claiming they treated the Jews no worse than others, and that Poland is central in th collection memory of some Jews because “stories” have been handed down that have no basis in reality. But Paulsson presents absolutely NOTHING in support of his positions, and it does not even rank of speculation, because even speculation is built on a foundation of plausible assumptions, and Paulsson doesn’t even bother to invent such a foundation.

        Nobody taking the position that Poles were not complicit bothers to present even a scintilla of evidence. But for all the phony arguments they cannot explain away the very close and friendly relationship that Polish Foreign Minister Jozef Beck had with Hitler, Goerring, and many other members of the Nazi leadership. That has been thoroughly documented, and I’ve posted two pictures to encapsulate that close and enduring friendship that the Polish leader had with the Nazi leaders.

        Thus, as I also pointed out, was it any surprise at all that when Israel was being attacked by her Arab neighbors in 1967 in what came to be called the 6-day war, Poland immediately ENDED its relations with Israel and BACKED Israel’s enemies. And that happened, of course, because the anti-Semitism that was prevalent among Poles did NOT dissapear with the end of WWII.

        If the Poles really want to prove that they’ve changed, they can demonstrate their support for Israel instead of engaging in cheap politics by demanding that Obama do more to apologize than he already (unnecessarily) has. I’ll be waiting for that to happen, but I won’t hold my breath.

        Ralph Adamo on May 31, 2012 at 11:56 pm

          Ralph Adamo is indeed at it. He naively claims that because Poland during the 6-day war in 1967 took the side of Arabs it means that Poland is anti-semitic. However, Mr. Adamo, perhaps you have forgotten that Poland in 1967 was a Soviet satellite and did not have any free elections from 1938 until 1989. So, Gomulka did whatever his Soviet puppet-masters demanded from him. And Poland was a Soviet satellite until 1989 thanks to F.D.R. who sold us out to Stalin at Teheran and Yalta conferences(notwithstanding that Poles had the fourth biggest allied army in World War II (consisting of the Polish forces in the west and in the east, made of Polish prisoners of Gulag.)
          On another note, Arabs are semites so should communist Poland have taken the side of Israel in the 6-days war, it would still have remained anti-semitic, would it not?

          Regarding Jozef Beck, who is no hero of mine, the fact that he was on a photo either with Hitler or Goering does not mean anything. Beck has performed the duties of a Foreign Minister of the Republic of Poland and in such capacity he had to meet the heads of state and various ministers or dignitaries of various governments just as american diplomats were meeting with Hitler, Mussolini, Goebbels, Ciano, Goering, etc. The period of 1935-1939 was rather busy in European politics. So you can view Beck’s pictures with Hitler, Goering, Mussolini, Ciano, Anthony Eden, Pierre Etienne-Flandin and all major players in European politics of the late 1930-s. The young Poland, after 123 years of non-existence, conducted at the time foreign policy of balancing between the West, Germany and Soviet Union. Positions of Beck in foreign politics evolved and it was rather a policy of reaction to the actions of major players than a creative policy, executing his own concepts (personally, I do not agree with the balancing of the enemies, but I am no diplomat or politician). Yet Beck was not a part of Munich appeasement as the West was. And Beck did not surrender to the Germans like Austria (and the West in Munich) and did not allow the Germans to have their way without resistance. But as I said, Beck was no hero of mine (balancing of enemies and Chechoslovakia), and his policies, after death of Marshall Pilsudski in 1935, were conducted without any supervision.

          Janusz Andrzejewski on June 1, 2012 at 9:13 am

      One might suspect that the author of that hate-filled anti-Polish rant must have been high on something? After all, Debbie Schlussel is an experienced political analyst and an educated person. Holding both Law and MBA degrees from the University of Wisconsin, she is an attorney, political commentator, radio talk show host and columnist in the New York Post and Jerusalem Post. She also speaks several languages including Hebrew and Russian.

      The only apparent explanation for such primitive, historically unjustified Polonophobia must be a deep-seated personal grudge. Schlussel charges that nearly her entire family in Poland was wiped out by Poles. Only one brother of her paternal grandmother’s 11 siblings survived after the Poles murdered the rest along with her parents and seized their farm. Her maternal grandmother had only one surviving sister and brother out of ten siblings murdered by the Poles, and her “maternal grandfather’s entire family was wiped out by the Poles.”
      If those accusations are true, then Schlussel’s bitterness might be understandable, but should and educated person allow emotions to cloud their ability to reason. Her writings reflect the old canard of alleged “Polish complicity in the Holocaust.” That reveals total ignorance not only of history but also of human psychology and human behavior in extreme circumstances.

      It can also be stated that, were it not for Jewish complicity in creating the Soviet machinery of terror, there might have been no Bolshevik revolution, no Stalinist purges, artificial famines, gulags, Katy? and other communist atrocities. The launch of the 1917 October Revolution was conceived at a top-secret meeting of Bolshevik party’s Central Committee. Although Jews did not account for more than five percent of Russia’s population, of the 12 participants six were Jewish, four Russian, one Georgian (Stalin) and one Pole (Dzier?y?ski). Although more Poles have been credited by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Institute of saving Jews during World War II than any other nation, it also true some behaved in a less than exemplary manner.

      Most Poles were focused on their own survival and neither helped nor harmed the Jews. Yes, a minority turned Jews over to the Germans, seized their property or harmed them in other ways. But Jews also collaborated with the Nazis. The German controlled Judenräte (councils of Jewish elders) were guilty of direct complicity in the Holocaust. They provided the Nazis with detailed lists of names and addresses of local Jews who could then be easily rounded up for herding into ghettos or transferring to extermination sites.

      The Jewish Ghetto police operating under German supervision were known for their cruelty towards fellow-Jews and shameless appropriation of their property. Jewish kapos (trustees) helped run the German death camps, kept fellow-prisoners in line, manned the crematoria and performed other tasks on orders from their Nazi masters. The Gestapo and other German services also had their network of Jewish informers who spied and snitched on their fellow-Jews to the Nazis.

      This is not to single out any ethnic group for its complicity with occupation forces, but only to point out that war is hell. The constant threat to life, limb and property, the ubiquitous death and destruction brutalize people and make the desperate struggle for survival, even delaying the inevitable by a single day, the supreme priority. Human psychology functions along very similar lines regardless of the nationality of those involved. Only he who has never sinned may throw stones.

      Robert Strybel on June 4, 2012 at 11:36 am

      http://www.ziomania.com/imagez/libya/gaddafi154.jpg

      And nothing more to say.

      Dave on June 5, 2012 at 5:06 am

      And here is how Beck replied to Hitler demands in in front of polish parliament: “Peace is a precious and a desirable thing. Our generation, bloodied in wars, certainly deserves peace. But peace, like almost all things of this world, has its price, a high but a measurable one. We in Poland do not know the concept of peace at any price. There is only one thing in the lives of men, nations and countries that is without price. That thing is honor.” Doesn’t sound like a collaboration partner. About the photos – they were taken in 1935 and 1937, before the war. It is natural that foreign minister meets with high representatives of strong neighbor country isn’t it ?

      Pawel on June 5, 2012 at 5:32 am

      Here is Churchill, Roosevelt with Stalin.
      http://goo.gl/vQw2j
      What’s the point? Does your photo prove anything except of your ignorance?
      You all say that Poles let Germans kill Jews. What could they do when Polish army were defeated?
      Facts:
      1)Polish underground army were fighting and providing Western Countries information about Holocaust
      2)Americans refused to bomb Auschwitz despite clear reports from Polish Underground Army about mass murders by Germans.
      3)Many Poles risked their lifes to save Jews.
      4)Some of Poles weren’t willing to risk their lifes for others, some of them were helping Germans, every case of collaboration was punished by death by Polish Underground Army.
      Poles weren’t responsible for Nazi Germany.

      And you point out some cases from Israeli-Palestinian war. So let me ask you some questions: What’s the difference between ghettos then and blocked palestinian Gaza? What’s the difference between Israeli child killed by sucicide bomber and Palestinain child killed by air strike?

      Hans Termt on June 5, 2012 at 6:22 am

      Who is in this photo my dear?
      http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/NA004094/herbert-hoover-and-adolf-hitler
      So, Herbert Hoover y COLLABORATED with Hitler…?

      Everyone country (expect Romania) from Warsaw Pact do it. So, GDR, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Czechoslovak and Soviet Union have long deep-seated hatred for Jews. Or maybe the whole world? And of course it’s don’t have any relation with Cold War, right…?

      proud&patriot on June 6, 2012 at 1:17 pm

    First of all the Russians had progroms long before either Hitler or the Soviets. Poland being part of that Empire had its own hatred of the Jews. Poland still had anti-semite feelings in most of the country at the time of WWII but, this was nothing new. In fact it is to the country of my Ancestors that we were one of the better places for Jews to live and that they were loyal citizens of Germany. It is to our shame that killing of Jews happen and that Hitler was allowed to come to pass. One thing that is true is that Stalin did kill more Jews than Hitler ever dreamed of and America said little about that.

    Jonathan Gartner on May 31, 2012 at 9:26 am

    Dear Ms. Schlussel. I would like you to be advised that president Obama in his letter to Polish president, Bronislaw Komorowski, has sincerely apologized for the “polish death camp” remark. President Obama admitted that Medal of Freedom granted to professor Jan Karski was granted also to acknowledge the sacrifices of the Polish nation under nazi occupation. President Obama stressed the bravery and heroism of the Poles exhibited in their underground resistance to the nazis. President Obama confirmed in the letter that there were no “polish death camps” and that many of the Poles gave their lifes for saving Jews from the Holocaust. Please be advised that president Obama’a letter of apology has been received by the president of the Republic of Poand as satisfactory. I guess, that closes this chapter.

    Janusz Andrzejewski on June 1, 2012 at 10:10 am

      Like I said, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for Poland to be demonstrating solidarity with Israel. You can ignore or dismiss the evidence all you want, but that does not change the evidence. Also, Obama’s apology does not change anything that Debbie said either, as Obama is hardly an expert on the history of Poland’s antisemitism. The reality is that the representatives of Poland should be feeling SHAME, not “outrage” over Obama’s unintentionally correct statement about the “Polish[-Nazi] death camps.”

      But enough of that. It’s time for a mini-history lesson on the subject of officially sanctioned anti-Semitism in Poland, following practices IDENTICAL to the Nazis…….

      Poland between the world wars was a state that the victorious Allied Powers had created in 1919 from parts of the defunct German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires. The new Polish Republic included within its borders a number of ethnic minority groups, among which were Germans, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Slovaks, and roughly three million Jews. Polish authorities agreed to protect the civil rights of these non-Polish minorities by signing the so-called “Little Treaty of Versailles” (also known as the Minorities Treaty) on June 28, 1919.

      The historical record shows, however, that the “protection” offered by Polish authorities was very uneven, particularly after the death of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, the first Polish president, in 1935.

      After 1935, Polish anti-Semitic political parties put increasing pressure on the government to pass legislation that would place restrictions on the social mobility of Polish Jews. These parties had been inspired by the example that the Nazis set in Germany with the passage of the Nuremberg Race Laws.

      The first example of this legislation was a bill enacted into law on January 1, 1937. This bill placed limits on the practice of the kosher slaughtering of cattle by Orthodox Jews. This bill, historian Emanuel Melzer points out, allowed the Polish government “to regulate the supply of cattle to kosher slaughterers, and jurisdictions in which Jews numbered less than three percent of the total population were to be permitted to outlaw kosher slaughtering altogether.” This blatantly discriminatory bill struck directly at the heart of the religious practice of Poland’s large number of Orthodox Jews. It also had a devastating effect on the economic well being of tens of thousands of Jewish butchers, their families, and their suppliers.

      From 1935 to 1939, anti-Semitic feeling in Poland gained in intensity. The impact of this development was to influence the adoption of measures by Polish professional organizations that excluded Jews. Here are only a few examples:

      • In August 1936, the Polish government ordered that all shops include the name of the owner on their business sign. This order was tantamount to specifically marking Jewish-owned businesses. Attacks on Jewish businesses surged after the marking order went into effect.

      • In May 1937, the membership of the Polish Medical Association adopted a paragraph into their professional charter excluding Jews from the medical profession.

      • Also in May 1937, the Polish Bar Association adopted a similar measure. This was followed by official state action in May 1938 restricting the ability of Jewish lawyers to attain licenses to practice law.

      • In January 1938, the General Assembly of Journalists in the city of Wilno added a provision to its by-laws stating that anyone Jewish could not belong to their organization.

      • In April 1938, the Bank Polski, the Polish state’s largest financial institution, adopted a provision excluding Jews.

      • Most importantly, in March 1938 the Polish government announced a new “Citizenship Law.” This law stated that as of October 30, 1938, the passports of Polish citizens who had lived abroad for more than five years would be revoked if those citizens had not “maintained contact with the [home] country”.

      Although this law did not target Jews specifically, its effect had a dramatic impact on Jews who had lived outside of Poland. One such community of Jewish expatriates were the tens of thousands of Polish Jews residing in neighboring Germany. The Polish action would have effectively rendered these people “stateless” on German soil, making them a German problem.

      Nazi officials, particularly Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, and his subordinate, Reinhard Heydrich, had planned since earlier in the year to force Jews – particularly Polish Jews – to leave Germany. On October 28-29, the SS and Gestapo detained 15,000 Polish Jews and sent them over the German frontier into Poland. These refugees were turned back by Polish border guards and then interned in a refugee camp “between” Germany and Poland at Zbaszyn. There they languished under terrible conditions until Poland finally relented and allowed them to enter the country in 1939.

      The legislative actions of the Polish government described above were part of a broad program intended to reduce the number of Jews in Poland. Indirect action, however, such as the banning of slaughtering practices and other anti Jewish legal provisions, represented the “benevolent” side of a far more nefarious policy of actively forcing Jewish emigration. This policy of forced Jewish emigration was also linked to larger Polish “imperial” dreams.

      Beginning in 1935, the Polish government initiated a policy to elevate Poland to an international position on par with the world’s other great powers. This policy, which was directed by Polish Foreign Minister Jozef Beck, had two dimensions to it. The first was for Poland to establish a colonial presence in Africa. The second was to use some of the African territory Poland hoped to acquire as a place to forcibly relocate its over three million Jews. The territory Beck and others had in mind was the island of Madagascar.

      The notion of creating a “Jewish colony” in Madagascar had its roots in the writings of the racist and anti-Semitic thinker Paul de Lagarde. Lagarde had written in 1885 that Europe’s Jews should be resettled on Madagascar. He chose Madagascar because it was an island. As an anti-Semite, Lagarde believed that the only way to curb Jewish influence in the world was to isolate Jews geographically.

      Five decades would pass before a European government seriously considered implementing Lagarde’s proposed solution to the “Jewish problem”. In that time, Lagarde’s proposal had become widely known in Europe, thanks largely to organizations like the Anti-Semitic Congress, which met in Vienna in 1921. Polish anti-Semites were thus familiar with Lagarde’s ideas and by the mid-1930s they had long desired to investigate the feasibility of a Jewish colony on Madagascar. There was a problem, however. Poland held no colonies in Africa and Madagascar was under French control. The Polish government therefore campaigned in Britain and France and in the League of Nations for its right to ten-percent of former German colonial holdings in Africa. The Poles claimed that as a successor state that had once belonged to the German Empire, they had a right to these territories. Not surprisingly, Polish claims found little sympathy in either Britain or France, or among the member states of the League.

      Their colonial ambitions thwarted, Polish officials turned to another strategy. They decided to use the idea of creating a Jewish colony on Madagascar as a way of “opening the door” to further colonial acquisitions. The basis of Poland’s hopes lay in comments that French Colonial Minister Marius Moutet had made in January 1937 concerning the possibility of sending France’s Jews to many different locations around the world, all of which were French colonial holdings, including the island of Madagascar.

      Within weeks of hearing Moutet’s comments, the Polish government initiated negotiations with the French to explore the possibility of sending Polish Jews to Madagascar. The French responded positively to the Poles and on 5 May 1937 a joint Polish-French Commission under the direction of Mieczyslaw B. Lepecki left Marseilles for Madagascar.

      During the weeks that the Lepecki Commission was in Madagascar, it studied several regions on the island to determine how many people could viably live there. The commission then returned to Europe and in October 1937 Lepecki published a 250 page report detailing his findings. Lepecki’s report concluded that the Madagascar solution was not feasible. Not only would the cost of transporting Jewish families be exorbitant (some 30,000 francs per family!), Lepecki concluded that the island could only support between 40,000 and 60,000 Polish-Jewish refugees. Polish Jewry alone comprised over three million people. Sending 60,000 Jews to Madagascar, therefore, would not solve the “Jewish problem” in Poland and it would bankrupt the state treasury.

      The Polish “Madagascar Plan” was thus scrapped. Following Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, the SS revived the idea of sending Jews to Madagascar. However, the impracticality of these plans due to the war brought them to a rapid end. The Nazis instead implemented their own “final solution” to the Jewish problem and liquidated most of European Jewry in death camps they located in occupied Poland.

      Ralph Adamo on June 1, 2012 at 3:18 pm

        Ralph Adamo distorts the history again by writing that Poland was created by the victorious Allied Powers in 1919 out of some territories of the defunct German, Russian and Austrian-Hungarian empires. What a nerve one has to have to put it this way. Please be informed that Polish nation did not wait for the Allied Powers to create anything. In fact, against the Allied Powers wishes and against various Jewish groups actions, including the Rotshilds opposition to independent Poland before and at Versaille Conference (there were also Jews aiding Poland’s independance drive), Polish nation took matters in its own hands and created its own authorities on November 11, 1918, right after return of Marshall Jozef Pilsudzki from Magdeburg castle (where he was imprisoned by the Germans). Another distortion is that you call Pilsudski a first president of Poland, whereas he never was elected to such a post. The first president, Gabriel Narutowicz, was elected and took office as the first president of the Second Republic of Poland on December 11, 1922. Marshall Jozef Pilsudski was simply called the “komendant”, and he was loved by the whole nation, including Jews, whereas his authhority was informal and flowed from his standing as a creator of Second Republic, his fight against the czarist Russia for independence of Poland, and then for saving Poland in 1921 (and possibly Germany which was then in the middle of communist revolution ) from the invading Soviet armies (The Miracle On Vistula River) as well as being protector of minorities, including Jews.
        Right after proclamation of independence in November, 1918, Polish soldiers and civilians had to fight Germans (who were aided by Jews), Russians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians (who also were aided by Jews)for various territories which belonged to Poland prior to its partitions in 1772, 1793 and the last one in 1795, after which Poland ceased to exist as a state. The victorious powers did nothing for Poland but to sanction by Little Treaty of Versailles what the Poles already took with their own hands, except for Silesia, where a plebiscite, fair to all parties was to take place. But even in Silesia, the Poles had to rise up three times and fight as Allied Powers were not able to protect the rights of Polish inhabitants. Should the Poles waited for the protection of the Allied Powers, there would not be any independent Polish state to this date.
        Concerning the policies after 1935, I have admitted in all my writings that after death of Marshall Pilsudzki the National Democrats dominated the politics, and various anti-semitic policies were implemented. Madagascar as a colony was the most ridiculous and megalomaniac idea which came out of pre-World War II Poland. However, that does not mean that the Poles were complicit in Holocaust. As Michael C. Moynihan on May 31, 2012 wrote in Tablet: “It is undeniably true that the ‘Polish nation’ was not complicit in the Holocaust, that the country fiercely resisted invasion and occupation, that Poland was uninvolved in the industrialized killing of Jews and that Poles often displayed tremendous moral courage in hiding Jewish fellow citizens.”
        (http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/101123/nazi-collaborators-or-victims)
        What of course does not mean that there were no incidents of pogroms such as the one at Jedwabne in 1941 (debate is still ongoing regarding whether the Polish villagers engaged in reprisals at Jedwabne against Jews for aiding Soviet NKVD in repressions against the Poles, after Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939 pursuant to secret clause to Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) and in Kielce after World War II. The perpetrators, if not all, were convicted.

        Janusz Andrzejewski on June 1, 2012 at 5:30 pm

    President Obama’s apology to Polish President, Bronislaw Komorowski, has finally put to rest the “polish death camp” issue. President Obama admitted bravery and heroism of the Poles in the underground resistance to the German nazis and stated unequivocally that there were no “polish death camps”, and saluted the Poles for sacrificing their own lifes while saving many Jews from the Holocaust. We welcome the official stance of the president of the United States of America, correcting the revisionist attempts of fringe politicians and commentators to make the Poles complicit in the Holocaust.

    Janusz Andrzejewski on June 1, 2012 at 11:18 am

Several Polish SS divisions? I dare you – give us numbers/designation of those divisions.

And here is some insight on facts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Waffen-SS_units

There were no Polish SS divisions, and reason was simple. Hatred against Hitler and Germans for invasion in 1939.

Want some real nazi allies? Check IBM.
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

G: While IBM’s complicity with the Holocaust is well known based on the book, the Poles’ complicity is even more obvious and documented.

As for the Poles’ involvement in the SS, that’s documented, too. For example, there waas the Polnische-Schutzmannschaft-Bataillon, which was technically under the control of the Ordnungspolizei–through KdO Warschau. It was essentially SS because Ordnungspolizei was an integral part of the SS und polizei empire under Himmler: Hauptamt-Orpo, RSHA and SS-Hauptamt, etc. The same Polnische-Blaupolizei, as strictly subordinated to the various Schupo commands, is considered to be just another structure connected with SS und police empire.

Then, there are the ethnic Polish who served in the 30. Waffen-Grenadier-Division des SS (1. weissruthenien). Some of these were Polish eks- soldier mobilized to BKA (Byelorrusskaja Krajewaja Abarona). DS

gr77 on May 30, 2012 at 10:08 pm

    DEAR ALL!!
    WHAT A SAD WEBSITE THIS IS! SO MANY HATE PREACHERS IN ONE PLACE, SCARY! WHY DON’T YOU ALL DO YOUR HOMEWORK PROPERLY BEFORE THROWING ACCUSATIONS? WHAT PURPOSE DOES IT SERVE? PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME.

    lidia on May 31, 2012 at 3:39 am

      There are plenty of links and citations lidis. If you do not know how to click on a link, have someone help you.

      Worry01 on May 31, 2012 at 4:17 am

        Thanks, had a good read of all the rubbish on this site, also suggested to ceirtain Polish and Israeli authorities that they might want to do the same

        lidia on May 31, 2012 at 5:10 am

        Worry01,
        thank you, managed to go throuht all the rubbish written on this website, also suggested to some Polish and Israeli authorities that they might take a good look at too

        lidia on May 31, 2012 at 5:21 am

          I rather doubt that you did lidia, but you have revealed what you are by your Israel reference.

          Worry01 on May 31, 2012 at 7:33 am

        Dear Worry01,
        There is no mistery as to who I am: just a regular British citizen(warsaw native with Jewish roots) who stumbled upon this website, got outraged to the point of disgust and decided to take action.Got it?

        lidia on May 31, 2012 at 8:13 am

          Lidia lize. Hey sharmuta, next time learn how to spell your “own” name.

          skzion on May 31, 2012 at 8:54 am

          Dear SKZION,
          How classy. I will not lower myself to your level. To call people you don’t know names…well it says a lot about you, just what I expected

          lidia on May 31, 2012 at 10:29 am

      Muzzie

      As goes... on June 1, 2012 at 7:56 am

    DEbbie – I see you have extensive knowledge in copy and paste 🙂

    BKA was established by people who felt Belarusians, not Polish. Polish SS commando has never existed. Schutzmannschafts Batallion 202 drafted VOLKSDEUTCHES! And they were forced to fight with Polish Partizants!

    Someone should sue you. Holocaust denial reversed.

    me.me.me on May 31, 2012 at 9:08 am

    Debbie –

    Created in May-June 1942,[2] the battalion which operated mostly in Volhynia and Podolia between 1943 – 1944, was subordinate to the German Schutzpolizei. The initial volunteer recruitment yielded only 2 members. Afterward, the German authorities resorted to forceful draft among members of Blue Police. Due to attempts to dodge the draft, another method included false advertisements for paid work in “Polish Police”.
    German major Walery Sauermann was made the commander of the unit, and Germans made up all of the officers. In November 1943 more than half of the battalion deserted. At least 700 Poles joined the 27th Volhynian Division of the Armia Krajowa, additional 60 Poles were executed for mutiny in Jarmoli?ce. One of the most widely quoted reason among the Poles for joining the unit was a desire to offer protection for civilians against the OUN-UPA wave of massacres of Poles in Volhynia.[3] The unit was practically destroyed in combat with the Red Army at the beginning of 1944.[2] The remains of the unit were transferred to Lwow (Lviv). Officially the battalion was disbanded on May 8, 1944.

    You are stupid, full of shit attention seeker.

    me.me.me on May 31, 2012 at 9:11 am

      You may or may not be correct, but your language shows you to be trash.

      Joel-Confederate Son on May 31, 2012 at 1:55 pm

    Polish SS Divisions? You must be kidding? There was no Polish SS division or any formation.
    “It should be noted without equivocation that Poland’s Holocaust record, is better than most countries under nazi occupation. Unlike most of Germany European colonies, Poland produced no SS division. Those who served with the German army were primarily Volksdeutsch (Polish citizens of German extraction), and, unlike citizens of other countries under occupation, no Poles eagerly worked as death camp guards”. (Michael C. Moynihan: “Nazi Collaborators or Victims” published in Tablet, May 31, 2012 http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/101123/nazi-collaborators-or-victims

    Janusz Andrzejewski on June 1, 2012 at 2:55 pm

Poland in 1939, huh? That is before six years of a world war and over forty years of communist rule. I bet the demographics of that country are quite different now.
Take the Germans for instance. I heard the Poles and Russians killed most of them when the war ended and later. These Germans were not Nazi occupiers, they were mostly people who had been born in Poland, who’s families had been there for generations.
I am betting the Ukrainians and Russians didn’t fare much better. For much of the war Ukraine was part of the axis, even though many Ukrainians fought in the Red Army against the Nazis. Russians who were in Nazi hands during the war for various reasons were considered traitors and most of them were shipped to the gulag after the war.
Nice, huh? How many of these people were really Nazis and deserved to be made homeless or murdered?
People from all nations have blood on their hands. Blood of Jew and Gentile.

RT on May 30, 2012 at 10:10 pm

“Poland’s Warsaw Ghetto Existed Because of Polish Complicity”

Find me a nation that was not complicit in such an act.
The USofA included.

100 Poles for every German. I’m sure you heros would resist.
Whole villages whiped out for trying to save one Jewish life.
I’m sure all of you would take that chance, right?
BULLSHIT!
Nice to be a HERO behind your computer, but it wasn’t your life on the line.

Message to ‘nailsagainsttheboard on May 30, 2012 at 9:32 pm’
…how do you forget what you don’t even know?

@As Goes… Any “jew” that would quote Archie Bunker is just another Ignorant lying ass bigot. Just replace “polack” with “joooo” in your comments and you should get the drift.

theShadow on May 30, 2012 at 11:54 pm

    theShadow. You may have some good points, but your language identifies you as nothing but trash.

    Joel Harrell on May 31, 2012 at 10:12 pm

      Sometimes you have to use this language to make someone understand (unfortunately). For some people, it is tragic that the information like at the blog are full of bullshit and some of people believe it and even defend those… That is horrible!!!

      Adam on June 5, 2012 at 8:06 am

As Goes…, how was my post off-topic? I asked about Jan Karsky, whose award was what prompted this blow-up in the first place, and which is referenced in the story above.

I’m aware that Rush sometimes says things that are false, like his superlative praise for Dubai. I was unaware of his comments on Jews in stadiums or the US military policy on artwork. But re-reading that link that I provided, it seemed that he was talking about Jan Karski as ‘a proud Marxist and Socialist’ although he may well have been refering to Dolores C Huerta, the Cesar Chavez associate who he honored, in which case, that section of the monolog was clumsily delivered.

Infidel on May 30, 2012 at 11:55 pm

    ” although he may well have been refering to Dolores C Huerta, the Cesar Chavez associate who he honored, in which case, that section of the monolog was clumsily delivered.

    Infidel on May 30, 2012 at 11:55 pm”

    Yes, he was refering to Dolores C Huerta and yes, his monologue was a bit discombobulated. Too much on his mind, perhaps?

    theShadow on May 31, 2012 at 12:04 am

http://members.core.com/~mikerose/history.html

This article covers many things, but one of the major threads that came up again and again was the precarious status of Jews in Poland from the later Middle Ages on. The authorities tolerated and protected Jews on a sporadic basis in Poland over the centuries, but this policy never found favor with the general population. Clerics, townspeople, peasants, and even the better off bourgeois hated the competition and envied the success of Jews in the few areas they were allowed to pursue as gainful employment. The Jewish persecutions intensified with the Tsarist takeover of Polish territory over time. However, the Russians built upon a pre-existing malice that many Poles had shown toward the Jews already.There was nothing new under the sun here.

Worry01 on May 31, 2012 at 12:00 am

Sometimes, a picture tells part of the story. Here is one such picture, showing Adolph Hitler posing with Polich Foreign Minister Jozef Beck in 1937. Note that there are no signs of tension between them. Rather, they look quite at home with one another as they were briefly interrupted during their friendly chat over cups of tea, to pose for the photo. You can even see a faint smile crossing Beck’s thin lips. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beck_and_hitler.jpg

And there is some investigative evidence that Beck was working for German foreign intelligence much earlier, and that Beck and Hitler made a secret pact in 1934, which included a planned invasion of the Soviet Union.

Although Beck may have taken some public positions that appeared to be contrary to Nazi Germany’s wishes, there is no evidence that Beck’s political posturing was other than spin to hide the collaboration between Poland and Germany.

Poland’s current Prime Minister Donald Tusk didn’t mention Jozef Beck’s relationship with Hitler, did he?…. I didn’t think so.

Ralph Adamo on May 31, 2012 at 1:05 am

    Poland turned its back on Germany when that country had a government that it could have reached a genuinely binding agreement with, namely the Weimar Republic. Instead, it chose to fool itself into thinking that signing a mutual non-aggression pact with the Third Reich was sensible. This willful ignorance was indulged in despite previous statements made by Adolf Hitler and other prominent Nationalists in the past regarding Poland. If Herr Beck had any questions on this score, he could have consulted a new national bestseller at the time in Germany, Mein Kampf.

    Even making allowances for Poland being under a semi-authoritarian regime, the general population did not really resist their government’s turn away from Western Europe. Marshall Pilsudski and his successors were not unpopular with most of Poland.

    Worry01 on May 31, 2012 at 1:29 am

      Worry, again get some education and do not confuse people around here. Marshall Pilsudski was a protector of Jews. The National Democrats, founded by Roman Dmowski, gained the upper hand in Polish society after Marshall Pilsudski’s death in 1935 and they sponsored various anti-Jewish actions.

      Janusz Andrzejewski on May 31, 2012 at 9:59 pm

    Ralph Adamo & Worry01,
    It’s nice to hear from people interested in an actual discussion and a bit of history instead of just playing the blame-game.

    theShadow on May 31, 2012 at 1:57 am

    “The purge of Jews is not only a Nazi crime. In this country, you and I and the president of the US and the Congress and the State Department are accessories to this crime, and share Hitler’s guilt. If we behaved like humane and generous people instead of complacent, cowardly ones, two million Jews lying in the earth of Poland and Hitler’s other crowded graveyards would be alive and safe. And other millions yet to die would have found sanctuary. We had it in our power to rescue these doomed people and did not lift a hand to do it.”

    http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Books/Article.aspx?id=139215

    me.me.me on May 31, 2012 at 9:17 am

Dear Miss Schlussel,

Having noted the fuss about Obama’s “gaffe” in recent BBC coverage I went on line to find out what this was all about and although not exactly on the topic, was soon regaled by your little anti-polaktic rant. I would normally dismiss such “ignorant” in the strictest and mildest sense of the word, drivel, but was, yes, offended by your dumping on the poor Polish lady’s attempt to defend her country’s record. Also, anxious, that a lack of response by, myself or others, be taken as acknowledgement of the Polish complicity in the Nazi Holocaust that you claim. Witness the accolades you have received on line from all the Internet Yahoos, which remind me of nothing more than the worst excesses of anti-semitism redirected.

Let me get a few facts out of the way first. Did anti-semitism exist in Poland, before the war, during the war, perhaps even after the war, today? Yes. Did it, does it still exist today in Europe, the United States, Canada, the Moslem world and elsewhere. Yes. Is it reprehensible? Yes. It always is. Did it manifest itself as Polish complicity in the German extermination of the Jews (the Nazi Holocaust) NO IT DID NOT. The “Polish death camps”, indeed a geographical designation, were so located not because of an availability of complicit or compliant Polish assistance but because of the availability of “clients”, Jewish, Polish, Roma, Russian and others. We Poles have the distinction of being the Germans’ second most hated ethnic group and also destined for total extermination but only after we had served a useful purpose as Nazi slaves; those of us of course (and there were millions of Poles who also died at the hands of the Nazis) who had not already ended in the death camps for being too non-compliant, in the wrong place at the wrong time, or too educated or too influential for slavery.

Your list of major Extermination Camps in Poland is one of the few facts that you have right. They were not, as you suggest, however, run by or with the collusion of Poles. The suggestion is so absurd I feel disinclined to tackle it seriously. But, can you find some Pole who denounced a Jew, or a drunk who would claim to or did denounce a Jew for a bottle. Probably! Scum do exist everywhere. Can you find an American who lynched a Black or killed an Afgan child, an Israeli who abused an Arab, a Jew who lied (hopefully not maliciously) and slandered a nation. Sure. Did the Nazis have collaborators inside the death camps? Yes. They were called KAPOs. They came from many nationalities, but, a large percentage was Jews. Why so? I suspect because the horror of the camps made cowards of many. The Jews, first in line for the gas chambers, had less hope and more to lose and quicker. Survival becomes the only imperative. Not pretty but the truth.

Seventy years after the events, sitting in a cosy, I presume comfortable, middle American chair where protest and resistance, correlates to a trip to occupy Wall Street and confront a law abiding police it is easy to criticize. I hope Ms. Schlussel that even under the conditions of a brutal German Nazi occupation where everybody’s life was in constant danger, you would be prepared to sacrifice your life for principal and not only your life but to endanger the lives of family and friends to take a stand against such oppression. Many Poles did just that in order to protect their Jewish brothers and to resisrt the Nazi oppresors. Many paid the price for their courage. However it is true that many just tried to survive day to day. Still, the defeated and ill-equipped Poles managed to organize the largest and most effective underground resistance movement in occupied Europe, far (unlike resistance movements in France) from any possible assistance from the allies. Escaping Poles fielded two Armored Divisions, many fighter and bomber squadrons and at least half a dozen ships to fight with the allies in all theatres of war against the German Nazi scourge. Finally they mounted two heroic risings in the capital city of Warsaw which no other occupied country had done; the earlier Jewish Ghetto Rising and the larger Polish Warsaw Rising in 1944. Kostek Sudowicz my father’s Jewish tank driver, a constant companion of my early youth, with whom my father escaped across Europe to join Polish troops in France and then Britain, would, as would have his brother who died a leader in the Ghetto Rising been horrified at the rubbish you have inflicted on the Internet.

You throw around numbers like confetti. Millions of Jews killed by Poles, elsewhere hundreds of thousands. I hope some credible Jew will take you to task on this nonsense. I will also try for some numbers although I could be corrected. I am not great on numbers and quote from memory. Of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust about three million were Polish Jews. Poland also lost six million citizens of which three million were the fore mentioned Jewish citizens. The remaining three million ethnic Polish and other citizens were lost to the Germans and Russians, on the war front, in bombings, in the death camps, in summary executions, reprisals and risings, and deportations, of hunger, disease and due to the displacement of populations across shifting borders. The most hated name in living Polish memory has been Nazi! and Collaborator! No wonder that the Poles are a little sensitive to the potential for confusion created by a geographic reference like “Polish Death Camps” when there are enough idiots around to take it exactly as it was not intended.

Andrew (Andrzej) Malczewski
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Andrew Malczewski on May 31, 2012 at 1:36 am

    I stand with Andrzej Malczewski.
    If the rest of you still want to beleive the Nazi propoganda machine 75 years later I send a big Kozakiewicz salute your way.

    theShadow on May 31, 2012 at 2:19 am

    Thanks for the overly long rant. The fact is that the Poles are a hateful people. A country of peasants. AntiSemitism is in their mother’s milk.

    Polish Pride=we didn’t cooperate willingly.

    lexi on May 31, 2012 at 10:34 am

Another solid piece, Debbie, keep up the good work.

It’s a shame that so many in the Jewish establishment and their little fan clubs are supporting lies and historical revisionism. For example, we have William (or who I like to call “Billy”) Daroff (of the Jewish Federations of North America), claiming:

Poles are known for their long history of loving the Jewish people
https://twitter.com/Daroff/status/207612557496827905

WTF?

And his ignorant fan club cheer him on:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/poles%20daroff

Keep in mind, this is the same Daroff who defends Islam, while slandering Judaism. And, of course, the Jewish Federations of North America has a long history of supporting our enemies, Land concessions, and anti-Israel orgs like the New Israel Fund… who blatantly support some of Israel’s most hostile enemies.

Meanwhile, Daroff gets applauded from his ignorant little Twitter fan club:
https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/poles%20daroff

…with “friends” like these, who need enemies? Fellow Jews are now in the business of re-writing history? Of whitewashing centuries of Polish antisemitism? It’s disgusting to the n’th degree.

David Appletree / Jewish Internet Defense Force on May 31, 2012 at 1:42 am

Yes, AM, Poles were killed by the Germans, but as has been said here countless times, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend necessarily.

Anti-semitic activity in Poland during the 30s in massive amounts is a matter of record as was anti-semitic activity during and after WW II,.

Also, we shouldn’t forget other motives for the Poles ratting on Jews, and assisting in their slaughter. If Jewish businesses, assets or occupations were done away with, they would go to Poles. Just like in Germany, when Jews were removed from academic positions, less talented Germans ‘inherited’ them. This has been a motive throughout history for antisemitism and pogroms, and of course it existed in Poland as well, before, during and after World War II.

This happened in the US as well. One of the problems many of the German emigres faced was hostility from less accomplished Americans on college campuses and professions who wanted to keep their closed little guilds.

This is one of the reasons the New School flourished during the 30s. It was one of the few institutions of higher learning that opened its doors to the emigres (and, of course, Hollywood to a significant extent, at least for the top positions).

Little Al on May 31, 2012 at 2:07 am

How many Catholic priests and Military officers were killed by the Nazis? The Polish people were not complicit. Those that were, like some Jews, may have acted to save their own skins.

mary michaels on May 31, 2012 at 9:11 am

This is why I love this site. This ugly part of WWII was never taught to me in public school. I’m sure that it isn’t taught now. I’ve read all of the comments about this topic there has been some very good debate. Some of the trolls were thier usual apologistic selves. The fact remains that Hitler and the Nazi were able to swarm all over Europe like locusts because of virulent anti-Semitism. In countries like Russia, Hungary, France and especially Poland death for Jews was rampant. Ask yourselves this question. Why were most if not all of the death camps located in Poland? Facts are stuborn things indeed.

Ken b on May 31, 2012 at 9:35 am

How many Catholic priests and Polish military were also killed by Nazis? If Poles helped in this effort, like some Jews, they were only trying to save their own skin.

mary michaels on May 31, 2012 at 9:42 am

For those who are anti-Semitic Poland apologists, why don’t you watch the BBC expose on Polish anti-Semitism in 2012? Even though it is the obnoxious BBC, they seem to have gotten something right with this documentary. The commenter Hans posted it here yesterday, and it is pretty shocking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z93iQgI3_Iw&feature=player_embedded

This type of anti-Semitism doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens with complicity of the population as a whole. And this is 2012, and Poland is not occupied. It is clear that the Polish are and were anti-Semites as a whole and have a long tradition of it, including their Polish death camps.

The thing that Jonathan Ornstein says in the BBC video is striking: There is vile anti-Semitic graffiti on a main street of a city in Poland. Thousands of Polish walk by it every day. Did one single Pole do anything about it? Did the Polish authorities? No. And then we are supposed to believe there were no Polish Death Camps when the Polish as a whole are still rabid anti-Semites today?

JM on May 31, 2012 at 10:22 am

I have no idea who Debbie Schlussel is and am always for allowing free expression of everyone’s views, even so full of hatred and not supported by facts, as this lady’s diatribes. However, I would like to point out, that not only the Poles were offended by Obama ignorant “Polish death camp” remark. The most telling is the fact that apology to Poland is being demanded by the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, and by former Israel’s ambassador to Poland, Szewach Weiss. I rather stick to their knowledge of Jewish life in Poland than to Ms. Schlussel’s. Also, it always surprises me that there are some fringe Jewish politicians or commentators who are so anti-Polish notwithstanding that Poland was the only country in Europe which was ready to accept Jews in 14th century during the reign of King Casimir the Great who gave them special rights and privileges not enjoyed by other ethnic or religious groups. In fact, let’s be open about this, Poland saved the European Jews in medieval ages. When the Jews were murdered and expelled from countries such as Spain, Portugal, England, France, German Empire or principalities, Italian principalities, Poland embraced them and allowed their culture and religion to thrive. And thrive they did until the partitions of Poland in late 18th century (by Prussia, Austria and Russia). The animosities started to appear at the time when the Poles were fighting for the independence of the country throughout 19th century, and when the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian rulers started to utilize various ethnic and religious differences between groups living on the territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom to control the Polish freedom insurrections. Russians and Prussians were particulalry active in using Jews to keep the Poles in check in their freedom fight.The above was even more visible at the end of Wold War I when Poland was regaining independence. The Jews were very active in opposing independent Poland in former Poland’s territories of today’s Lithuania,Belarus or Ukraine as well as in Greater Poland (occupied by Prussia). The Rothschilds were against rebirth of independent Poland so much that they lobbied prior to and at the Versaille Conference first not to allow its rebirth, then when they lost, not to return to Poland its former eastern territories (Ukraine, Lithuania) or Silesia. The Jews opposed Polish risings in Greater Poland and in Silesia as well as in Lithuania. Such was there thank you for centuries of safety, freedom and thriving in Polish kingdom. Notwithstanding the above, in the 20 years of independence between World War I and World War II, the Jews comprised roughly from 30 to 40% of students of law or medicine of best Polish universities (Krakow, Warsaw, Lviv, Vilnus, Lodz or Posnan). Not the worst scenario of oppression or anti-semitism. However, one has to acknowledge that nationalist elements of Polish society (Narodowi Demokraci under the leadership of Roman Dmowski) in late 1930-ies were very active in their political fight against the Jews, a lot of whom though were members of communist party. As a result of Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Poland was invaded by Germany on September 1, 1939 and, when young and underdevelopped Poland fiercely defended against German attacks from west, south and north, Soviet Union back-stabbed Poland on September 17, 1939 from the east. As soon as Soviets entered Polish eastern territories, the cream of Poland society has been extinguisehd in a wave of genocide by the Soviets using Jewish hands. The apparatus of repression against Poles in the part occupied by Soviet Union was mostly conducted by Jewish people who joined communist party and the Soviet security apparatus. The world for many years did not want to hear about Katyn and couple of other places where NKVD (a “great institution” directed by a Jewish man by the name Beria) murdered more than 20,000 of Polish doctors, lawyers, professors, generals, engineers, etc. Millions of Poles (noblemen and intelligentsia) were rounded up (many by Jews) and send by trains to Siberia. Only tens of thousands came back…Many Poles were buthchered by Jewish teenagers assisting their brethren in Soviet repression apparatus. All those events did not help Polish-Jewish relations. There were reprisals against the Jews, sometimes just, sometimes unjust. Yet, the Poles helped to save many Jews during World War II even though the punishment for hiding a Jew was death. In fact, more than 50% of the trees growing in Yad Vashem alley((to remember those who saved Jews) bear Polish names. On a personal level, in my grand-dad’s village in the south of Poland, prior to World War II, there were 8 families. They led a good life, and were not ostracised. My grand-dad was a community leader, and the Jews were coming to him with all their problems. One of them, constantly visited my grand-dad in the initial stages of German occupation to find out whether the German landraat would come to the village, for on each visit the landraat would come and beat him up (it was before the final solution was implemented by Hitler). My grand-dad who knew German language for he was in the Austrian army in World War I (he lived in Galicja, occupied by Austria) and had to speak to Germans in the course of his duties as he was the mayor of the village, advised him to tell all the Jews to leave the village immediately and flee for their life. The man wanted to leave with my grand-dad all his equipment and house, but my grand-dad refused. He had 7 children and could not afford to pay and would not take anything for free. Eventually, the man managed to find somebody who paid a fraction of what it was worthy for his equipment and house. My aunt still lives with me and she always tells me stories from before the world war ii as well as the stories of life under German occupation. The girls from the Jewish families were her friends. She still quotes their names, at the age of 88. The only incidents of anti-semistism in pre-World War II she remembers was roughing up of Jewish boy by a Polish boy. Which does not mean that the anti-semitic incidents did not occur or where rare. As everywhere else in Europe.

Janusz Andrzejewski on May 31, 2012 at 10:41 am

    Beria was a Jew? Are you drunk or crazy? Yagoda was. Beria wasn’t.
    Btw, the topic of “atheist Soviet Jews(komissars)vs. the Soviet anti-semitism” as well as “How The Russian Empire made Marxism popular among some Jews and how it was destroyed in 1917” are very interesting. Nobody dispases Uber-leftists brain-washed Jews more than other Jews, many of whom paid the ultimate price for what Leftists/Socialists/National Socialists did in the 20th centiry.

    Beenthere on May 31, 2012 at 2:38 pm

      Beenthere, I stand corrected. Beria was not a Jew, Gienrich Jagoda, who was the chief of NKVD in 1930-ies, was. I have been so emotional about the myth-perpetuation by Ms. Schlussel that I have myself ceased to be dilligent for a moment. Thank you.

      Janusz Andrzejewski on June 2, 2012 at 10:45 am

I agree that Poland in 1939 was basically a fascist nation and very anti semetic. However, O bam bam just showed his ignorance when he called them “Polish death camps” as they
were not run by the Polish government, but by the Nazi regime.
Sure, there were Poles who aided the Nazis, but Poles suffered more battlefield casualties than the French, also killed and
wounded a lot more Germans than the French. The Poles also had about 5 million of their “untermensch” citizens killed in the concentration camps located in Poland. Yes, their “outrage” in this gaffe is a way over the top, but after O bam bam pulled the anti-missile site in Poland and the Czech republic I can understand their willingness to criticize our regime in any way they can.

Daniel K on May 31, 2012 at 10:51 am

I’m getting totally lost in this thread due to the random appearance of comments, rather than in strict chronological order. Typically happens on this site w/ >50 comments – hope it gets fixed sometime.

Jonathan Gartner

Hitler killed 6 million Jews. Stalin’s purges did kill more people overall than what the Nazis killed in WWII – even the Guiness Book of World Records has both the Soviet and the Chinese purges surpassing what the Nazis did.

But while Stalin’s victims included Jews, there is no way he could have killed more than 6 million Jews, or else, that too would have been a part of the holocaust narrative. And it’s not like Israel or the Jews, despite their Socialist leanings, were ever pro-Soviet – indeed, until Mikhail Gorbachev, Israel had a tough time getting the Soviets to let Soviet Jews leave the USSR for Israel.

What the communists did to everyone, including Jews, was venal enough w/o exaggerating the effect of their policies on any group, including Jews.

Infidel on May 31, 2012 at 11:26 am

Sorry Debbie, there were Polish collaborators and there was (and probably is) Polish anti-semitism but these are besides the fact that these were German camps IN Poland. I am no fan of Prez Obama, but I think that Obama made an unintentional mistake referring to them as Polish camps, but a mistake it was. This would be like me referring to an American army base located in Germany as a “German base” when in fact it is an American base in Germany. I know the Polish outrage to you seems to be revisionist history, but Obama couldn’t care less about assigning blame or implying complicity. He read the script which was inaccurate.

fred on May 31, 2012 at 11:34 am

You know what? I have a feeling that all this faux outrage from the Poles will bring their complicity in WW II to light. The media will need to help out Obama, so they’ll find all the facts to prove he was actually right to call them Polish death camps.

Sean M on May 31, 2012 at 11:38 am

    I hope you will read some history and that you will visit Poland before making such ignorant accusations

    Anna on June 3, 2012 at 10:11 pm

Warsaw Jewish community stated today that it found the Obama remarks about “Polish death camp” deeply upsetting. They said”
“Though it should be obvious, he referred to geographical location only, and no slur on Poland was intended, the phrase carries a potential (for) misinterpretation”, it said, adding that it is “injurious to the very values and accomplishments” of the Polish anti-nazi resistance.
“We expect president Barack Obama to personally rectify his choice of words”, the Jewish community added.

I myself, demand that Ms. Schlussell, if she is a descendant of European Jews, will apologize to the Poles for her malignant diatribes and will finally express gratitude to the Polish nation (or to the Poles who represent over 50% of those honored in Yad Vashem for saving Jews from Holocaust) for not only saving some European Jews from the holocaust but also from the darkness of medieval ages. Somehow, Jews never speak about refuge granted them in 14th century by Polish king Casimir the Great, which saved them from the carnages and pogroms in Spain, Portugal, England, France, German and Italian principalities. Since then, they were able to thrive in Poland, enjoying special priviliges, granted them by king Casimir the Great, and unheard tolerance which they enjoyed until the partition of Poland by Russia, Prussia and Austria, at the end of 18th century. What happened after, you may find out in my previous statement on this site.

Janusz Andrzejewski on May 31, 2012 at 11:50 am

    Uh, Janusz, not all of us take our marching orders from a rabbi who lives in Poland post WW2. The clowns who were his predecessors at least had the excuse that the Shoah hadn’t yet happened.

    skzion on May 31, 2012 at 10:36 pm

Unfortunately Pr. Obama wasn’t far off with his comment. Eastern and Western Europe were all complicit in prosecuting the Jews. The Russian Czar had pogroms to eliminate large segment of the Jewish populations. Poles had a large Jewish population and ripe for Hitler’s hanchman. The Kaiser was right behind the Russian Czar in haterd of Jews and so were the French (why would be a case made against Dryfuss so easy)
However, most people only listen to 30 second clips without any care whats behind them.

Steve Gardality on May 31, 2012 at 11:58 am

Warsaw Ghetto (and German Nazi death camps in occupied by Germany Poland) existed not because of Polish complicity but because Poland had the biggest population of Jews in the world prior to World War II. For the Germans, known for their efficiency in all their ventures, it was obvious that their final solution was to be implemented in occupied Poland, where they had the biggest Jewish population in the world. They were so inhumanely and cruelly efficient…
Perhaps, you bigots, should blame Polish king Casimir the Great who in 14th century gave refuge to the Jews from pogroms and carnages of Spain, Portugal, England, France, German and Italian principalities and gave them unheard of elsewhere privileges. That caused majority of the Jews in medieval ages to flee to Poland where they enjoyed freedom, economic opportunity and thrived until the partition of Poland, at the end of 18th century, by Prussia, Austria and Russia. The partitions and political manipulations of the Prussian and Russian rulers (Austrian to a lesser degree) caused the birth of conflicts between the various ethnic groups and religions on the territory of partitioned Poland. The rest was done by Soviet NKVD and by the Nazis.Get your history straight and express gratitude to the Poles for saving you from the medieval carnages by the rest of Europe, and from Holocaust (look at Yad Vashem and read the Polish names of more than 50% of saviors of the Jewish lifes).

Janusz Andrzejewski on May 31, 2012 at 12:19 pm

Janusz Andrzejewski, given that Debbie lost so many of her family members on both sides in Poland, who died @ the hands of Germans and Poles, that comment by you demanding that she apologize to the Poles was pretty crass.

Fred

I do agree w/ you. Debbie may be correct about the camps being in Poland and being manned by Poles, but unless they were proven to be set up by the Polish government, as opposed to the Wehrmacht, they were still German camps, not Polish.

Infidel on May 31, 2012 at 12:39 pm

just imagine a world without jewes,or better yet jews shoved into ovens.

kay on May 31, 2012 at 1:42 pm

    Thanks, kay, but I’d prefer imagining a world without Islam.

    skzion on May 31, 2012 at 10:40 pm

After I heard about this I kinda figured that Debbie would be one conservative who would post this type of response. Have to agree with her, even though I love any reason I can find to slam Obama.

That being said I’ll slam Obama anyway. Gaffe or no gaffe is moot since the man shouldn’t be president, or be able to hold any other public office, since he is an identity thief.

CornCoLeo on May 31, 2012 at 1:54 pm

Debbie… I could count many, many times, but that still does not make “several divisions” you said about.

Do you know that this Polnische-Schutzmannschaft-Bataillon was formed using hoax? There were advertisements about paid work in “Polish Police”. At that time there was a rising numbers of ukrainian partisians attacks against Polish civilians. Previous advertisement for recruiting to fight russian partisians had poor effect. There are MANY stories like that about forced drafts into german forces (including “Sonderkommandos” – does it ring a bell?)
As that such forces were “politically uncertain” and were intended against Red Army, not civilians.

30. Waffen-Grenadier-Division – that’s a 1-st Belarusian division completed from Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusian.
That division was directed to southern France to fight partisians there. It did very poorely, because they wanted to fight communists they hated so much, and “nazi cause” was meaningless to them. Still no involvement against Jews.

“BKA connection” is even weaker, and still has nothing to do with Holocaust.

You have to make up something MUCH stronger to “fill in” those “several SS division”.

If you want to find Poles part in genocides, you can only go as fas as Felix Dzerzhinsky.

gr77 on May 31, 2012 at 3:59 pm

Debbie… I could count many, many times, but that still does not make “several divisions” you said about.

Do you know that this Polnische-Schutzmannschaft-Bataillon was formed using hoax? There were advertisements about paid work in “Polish Police”. At that time there was a rising numbers of ukrainian partisians attacks against Polish civilians. Previous advertisement for recruiting to fight russian partisians had poor effect. There are MANY stories like that about forced drafts into german forces (including “Sonderkommandos” – does it ring a bell?)
As that such forces were “politically uncertain” and were intended against Red Army, not civilians.

30. Waffen-Grenadier-Division – that’s a 1-st Belarusian division completed from Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusian.
That division was directed to southern France to fight partisians there. It did very poorely, because they wanted to fight communists they hated so much, and “nazi cause” was meaningless to them. Still no involvement against Jews.

“BKA connection” is even weaker, and still has nothing to do with Holocaust.

You will have to make up something MUCH stronger to “fill in” those “several SS division”.

If you want to find Poles part in genocides, you can only go as fas as Felix Dzerzhinsky.

gr77 on May 31, 2012 at 4:02 pm

Dear Ms Schlussel, thank you very much for great article. Although I am extremely against President Obama and against his politics. But sadly today we see some political opponents of the President, including Jews, pretending to outrage just so that satisfy the Poles for political purposes. In this case, this is an insult to Millions of Jews who were murdered in those Camps “Polish Death Camps”.

Yes, the Poles were complicit in the Holocaust. In fact the Jews were massacred and robbed by their neighbors of Poles during and after WWII. Poles turned against their Jewish neighbours, pointing them out to the Nazi’s. They also worked in the ghettos and camps and watched their neighbours suffer, and rarely did anything to help them. I am not Pole, but do live for a long time in Poland. Poland is shockingly awash in anti-Semitism. I saw a horrible thing in this damn country, that “Jews are most cursed and despised by Poles.” They always blame the Jews on their problems. Jassem Othman, Syrian dissident – Poland

Jassem Othman on May 31, 2012 at 4:48 pm

Dear Ms Schlussel, thank you very much for great article. Although I am extremely against President Obama and against his politics. But sadly today we see some political opponents of the President, including Jews, pretending to outrage just so that satisfy the Poles for political purposes. In this case, this is an insult to Millions of Jews who were murdered in those Camps “Polish Death Camps”.

Yes, the Poles were complicit in the Holocaust. In fact the Jews were massacred and robbed by their neighbors of Poles during and after WWII. Poles turned against their Jewish neighbours, pointing them out to the Nazi’s. They also worked in the ghettos and camps and watched their neighbours suffer, and rarely did anything to help them. I am not Pole, but do live for a long time in Poland. Poland is shockingly awash in anti-Semitism. I saw a horrible thing in this damn country, that “Jews are most cursed and despised by Poles.” They always blame the Jews on their problems. Jassem Othman – Poland

Jassem Othman on May 31, 2012 at 4:52 pm

Please read about “Prof. Jan T. Gross”, is a Polish-American historian and sociologist. His books (Neighbors and Fear and Golden Harvest) are showing how racist Polish people are and how deceitful Poles are in manipulating the world into thinking that Poland was always the victim and never the wrongdoer. Those books painting a very different picture about the extermination of the Jewish by Poles and terrifying rapaciousness of Polish.

Jassem Othman on May 31, 2012 at 5:13 pm

There were Jews who were complicit in the holocaust as well, but nobody would argue that they ran death camps. Poland NEVER supplied native SS troups because the Germans knew they couldn’t trust any Poles, and it was the SS that ran the camps. Poland had the largest density of Jewish citizens of any other European nation in the 1930s. That wasn’t an accident—-unless people think Jewish people are masaochists.

Chris on May 31, 2012 at 7:17 pm

I have to regret that when I placed several minutes ago my latest piece on this blog, responding to Debbie Schlussel, Norman F and others and to their unfair thesis of Polish complicity in German nazi crimes, it was quickly removed. I believe that the piece must have been considered by Ms. Schlussel dangerous to her thesis as it was written in a grotesque and satirical way, in a form of a letter of Polish anti-semite, admitting all the complicity charges, yet conveying all the suffering of Polish gentiles. I have print out a copy of this blog with my letter prior to being deleted by not always do dilligent Ms. Schlussel. So here goes the freedom of expression by Ms. Schlussel. Or is it called editorial control? Also, you can confront myth of Polish complicity in article of Steven Paullson “Polish Complicity in Shoah is a Myth” at Totally Jewish.Com dated March 29, 2007.

Janusz Andrzejewski on May 31, 2012 at 9:08 pm

    JA, this web site has a glitch wherein a comment is temporarily swallowed. Check back in 15 minutes and it should be there.

    If you were a regular on this site you would know that discussion here is free wheeling. That doesn’t mean you’ll like the discussion, though.

    skzion on June 1, 2012 at 10:33 pm

    JA,

    I believe that the comment that you are referring to is the one that you published on May 31, 2012 at 8:33 pm. If so, then the comment is still there. Click on “OLDER COMMENTS”, scroll down the page and you will see it.

    JeffE on June 3, 2012 at 12:46 am

You’re right Debbie.

AJ on June 1, 2012 at 10:45 am

I am a Jewish American with grandparents from Poland.
Debbie, you write “Poles were complicit in the Holocaust. Poles murdered millions of Jews, they maintained several death camps”.

Is there any evidence or book that indicates that Poles murdered millions of Jews, and that they maintained several death camps?

According to wikipedia which lists sources, “There is a general consensus among historians that there was very little collaboration with the Nazis among the Polish nation as a whole, compared to other German-occupied countries.
“Depending on a definition of collaboration (and of a Polish citizen, based on ethnicity and minority status), scholars estimate number of “Polish collaborators” at around several thousand in a population of about 35 million (that number is supported by the Israeli War Crimes Commission)“

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_with_the_Axis_Powers_during_World_War_II#cite_note-Lukas-48

Note that some of Polish collaborators may have been ethnic germans.

What is documented in literature is that there was a significant collaboration between Germans and Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Latvians. Richard Rhodes’ “Masters of Death” documents probably 50-100 major massacres of Jews on the eastern front by the Nazis with collaboration of Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Latvians. Most victims were shot in the head. Many of these massacres involved 10,000 or so Jews in a single massacre, and all told, about 1.5 million Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen and their collaborators. These killings may be the most appalling in history. There was never any collaboration between the Einsatzgruppen and Poles.

And in your anti-Polish comments, you leave out that the Polish government in exile complained and called for action against the Nazis numerous times to the British and US governments in response to the Nazi extermination of Jews. However, the British and US government, which were far more complicit in the Holocaust than the Polish Government, never did anything.

Marc Grossman on June 1, 2012 at 12:32 pm

Thank you Debbie. I was also outraged over conservatives reaction to Obama’s correct reference to Polish death camps. There is certainly plenty of reasons to oppose Obama, but in this case, he made no gaffe and doesn’t owe the Poles an apology, and conservatives need to back off this issue.

Laura on June 1, 2012 at 1:16 pm

Janusz Andrzejewski, you and that article are full of it. Poland WAS complicit in the holocaust. That is historical FACT and not a myth.

Laura on June 1, 2012 at 1:30 pm

Dear Ms Schlussel

I read your recent article Poles were Complicit in Holocaust: Outrage Over Obama “ Gaffe” is Fraudulent, Ignorant” with much interest and dismay. You seem to perpetuate many misconceptions about the Holocaust. Much seems to be hearsay over many years of repetition by individuals and much of the media.

I am sorry about your families ordeal during the holocaust. It is painful I’m sure as it is for many of our families who suffered as a result of Nazi Germany’s desire to
completely remove Poland and it’s inhabitants from the planet.

Here are some facts with references should you care to be interested in a more truthful rendition of what happened in WWII.

And farther on in this letter are remarks by fellow Jews and Jewish organizations.
I’m sure they would not like the label you gave us all “Here’s a tip for Poland and ignoramuses in the lumpenconservatariat who now engage in revisionist history”

From the book ‘Nazi Crimes in Poland’ page 47 and 48.

The Plans for Poland’s Destruction.

German nationalists have always strived to conquer and seize the Polish lands to expand the so called “Lebensraum” living space. Evoking those traditions, the fascists had formulated a program of German conquests and hegemony in Europe even before they actually seized power. “The New Reich”, wrote Hitler in ‘Mein Kampf’, must return to the path laid out by the ancient knightly orders to conquer lands with the German sword and put it to the German plough in order to give the nation its daily bread”
The Nazi aggression on Poland in September 1939 was a continuation of the striving of German imperialism on an unprecedented scale. Its actual objective was not merely the liquidation of Poland’s statehood but the extermination of the Polish nation. Plans toward those aims had been drafted long before the outbreak of World War II by the highest circles of the NSDAP party and the central authorities and institutions of the Third Reich, including the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht, the Reich’s Main Security Office (RSHA) as well as the executive boards of monopolies and scientific institutes.

The objective of the Third Reish’s policy toward Poland were defined in Hitler’s speech in Obersalzberg on August 22, 1939 to senior officers of the Wehrmacht. Germany’s top brass fully approved the criminal directive; “Destruction of Poland in the foreground, I shall give you a propagandist cause for starting the war, never mind whether it is plausible or not. In starting and making a war, not the Right is what matters, but Victory. Have no pity. Brutal attitude. The strongest has the right. Greatest severity. Complete destruction of Poland is the military aim. To be fast is the main Thing. Pursue until complete elimination of the enemy.”

Those guidelines provided the foundations of the occupation policy in Poland. On October 7, 1939 Hitler signed the secret decree “On the Strengthening of Germanity” (Erlass das des Fuhrers und Reichskanzters zur Festigung deutschen Volkstums) ordering deportations of Poles from the Polish lands incorporated into the Reich and substituting them with German settlers brought in from abroad as well as establishing new areas for future German settlements SS Reichsfuhrer H. Himmler on whose orders the so called General Plan East (Generalplan Ost) was prepared in early 1941, was charged with implementing those tasks.

The plan called for the complete Germanization of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Byelorussia, the Ukraine, the Crimes of the Baltic states inhabited by some 45 million people, of whom 31 million were to be deported to Siberia. Most of the remaining 14 million were to be exterminated; only a small fraction, viewed apt for Germanization, was to remain. Nazi plans provided for the resettlement of about 18 million Poles, or 80 – 84 percent of those who would survive the war.

In their striving to Germanize the conquered territories the Nazis drafted detailed plans of destroying everything Polish. One o them provided for the transformation of Warsaw into a German town of 100 thousand to 130 thousand inhabitants. The Warsaw city limits were to be slashed from 140 square kilometers to 15; all Polish historical monuments were to be destroyed with the possible exception of the Belweder Palace which was to become Hitler’s guest house, and the Old Town which had been considered a local transplantation of the Gothic style.

Nazi plans spelled out the principles and methods of realizing the occupation policy, notably the scope of the terror to be applied. The occupant implemented his plans through secret and public murders, arrests, street round-ups, by sending people to camps and other places of confinement, by mass deportations and slave labor forged into an instrument of extermination.

Hundreds of thousands of Nazis were involved in the organization and implementation of that genocidal operation.

Opinions by your fellow Jews.

It is universally accepted the camps should not be called Polish
Shana Penn (Director Media Relations United States Holocaust memorial Museum): The most common error of concern, which I will discuss further on, is the identification of Nazi concentration camps on Polish soil as being “Polish concentration camps” instead of, as they were in reality, Nazi-run camps in German-occupied Poland during World War II.

American Jewish Committee: The camps were located in German-occupied Poland, the European country with by far the largest Jewish population, but they were most emphatically not “Polish camps”
Anti-Defamation League: As an organization devoted to nurturing Holocaust remembrance we share Poland’s concern over the frequent description of Auschwitz as a Polish camp, which suggests the object was built on behalf of the Polish nation,

David Peleg (The Ambassador of Israel to Warsaw, Poland): We, being Jews and Israelis, with reject resolutely terminology such as “Polish concentration camps”. These prejudicial and erroneous phrases represent primarily testimony about ignorance and lack of understanding of fundamental historical truth. Every thinking man knows that it was the Nazis who selected Poland for central site for dreadful genocide of extermination of European Jews. On the Polish soil the Germans built terrifying camps where they systematically murdered 4.5 million Jews (including 3 million Polish Jews) and other nationalities including thousands of Poles.

Menachem Rosensaft (the founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors): absolutely legitimate ((to change the name of Auschwitz)). The death factory of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than 1,000,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered, was a German camp, conceived by the Nazi-German government and operated by Germans.

David A. Harris (American Jewish Committee Executive Director): References implying that the Polish nation was responsible for the creation and operation of the Nazi death camps are a falsification of history and an unwarranted defamation of all Poles, particularly those who suffered so greatly under the German occupation,” said Harris in his letter to UNESCO.
Shimon Peres (Israeli President) said about it being hard to be in Poland: “that is not the fault of the Polish people, rather it is the incomparable extermination (of the Jews) carried out by the Nazis.”
Richard Pipes (formerly of Harvard University): It must never be mistakenly believed that the Holocaust was perpetrated by the Poles.
Yisrael Gutman (Director of research at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem and editor in chief of “The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust” 1990): There is no ground to label Poles as Nazis. Nazism was an entirely different form of racism, and cannot be compared to the various faces of anti-Semitism, which were also manifested among some Poles. As such Nazism stands out as in a league of its own in regards of cold-blooded cruelty.
Yitzhak Rabin (Israeli Prime Minister): In the first place-and it is always necessary to remember this-Auschwitz was a German death camp, built by German criminals on Polish soil. Whoever cannot make a distinction between these two things and links the camp at Auschwitz with Poland, commits a cardinal error
Michael Schudrich (chief Rabbi of Poland) when asked is it possible to accuse Poles as a nation responsible for the Holocaust: Certainly not. I raise objection even the question itself. One cannot even ask such questions! That’s unbelievable that someone can formulate such a statement. That’s not just against Poland, but against the truth and history.
Dr. Laurence Weinbaum (World Jewish Congress and a historian specializing in Polish-Jewish relations): It is an interesting reflection on the success of Germany’s post-war foreign policy that the world has become accustomed to referring to “Nazis” in place of “Germans” – and that in place of “Nazi German” we now find “Polish Nazi”. One can only wonder whether successive generations will associate the Holocaust with the Germans – and the first attempt to stem the German onslaught with the Poles.
Simon Wiesenthal (Nazi hunter): I cannot blame 36 million Poles for those thousands of blackmailers
World Jewish Congress: Poland should not be blamed for the Holocaust, to blame here are the Nazis and their allies.
OSCE: To this day, Poland battles with misconceptions, illustrated by references to the extermination camps built and run by the German Nazis as “Polish concentration camps”, which indirectly associate Poles as responsible for the Holocaust.
Michael Preisler (Auschwitz Survivor): Nowhere else is Holocaust history as distorted and as misrepresented as it is about Poland
Szymon Datner (Former director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw): the Holocaust was such a specific, though unimaginable, crime. But it cannot be charged against the Poles.
Adam Michnik: Do Poles, along with Germans, bear guilt for the Holocaust? It is hard to imagine a more absurd claim.
Peter Stachura (Professor Stirling University): For some critics, the fact the Holocaust took place in Poland, albeit in death camps set up and administered by the Nazis has been cited as evidence of Polish guilt, even partial culpability for appalling fate suffered by the Jews.
David Cesarani (English historian who specialises in Jewish history): Many Jewish historians, meanwhile, have shown the closeness between the two communities and challenged the stereotype that Jews and Christians on Polish soil lived in separate worlds. Relations between them, especially in small towns and villages, were more cordial and intimate than was once thought to be the case. The knowledge of the slaughter of the Jews in Poland and the bitter aftermath, including the attacks on survivors by rightwing Poles in 1945-7, created a distorting
It wasn’t possible for Poles to save the Jews
Adolph Berman and Leon Feiner (Jews who were being sheltered by Poles in 1942): . We cannot save ourselves nor can anyone in Poland save us. The Polish resistance can save some of us but not the masses.
Walter Laqueur (Israeli Historian and Author): ((The Poles)) did what they could, usually at great risk and in difficult conditions”
Emanuel Ringelblum (Jewish author): The Polish people and the Government of the Republic of Poland were incapable of deflecting the Nazi steamroller from its anti-Jewish course.
Marek Edelman (last surviving leader of the Jewish ghetto revolt): Without the help of the Poles we couldn’t have started the uprising
Zvi Gitelman: the stereotype of Polish anti-Semitism – which like all stereotypes has truth in it except that it becomes over generalized and attributed to each Polish person
The camps were not in Poland because of Poles
David Cesarani (English historian who specialises in Jewish history): The camp was, in fact, in a part of Poland annexed to Germany and was a German creation. Before it was expanded and adapted to include a death camps devoted to the mass murder of Europe’s Jews, tens of thousands of Catholic Poles died there. The camp’s initial function was to terrorise the Polish population.
Abraham H. Foxman (National Director of the Anti-Defamation League): As Jews and Poles have joined together to remember and explore our histories, we have emphasized that the responsibility for the three million Jews who perished in Poland during the Holocaust lies with the Nazis.

Yisrael Gutman (Director of research at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem and editor in chief of “The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust” 1990): All accusations against the Poles that they were responsible for the Final Solution are not even worth mentioning. Secondly, there is no validity at all in the contention that Polish attitudes were the reason for the siting [sic] of the death camps in Poland.”
David A. Harris (American Jewish Committee Executive Director): The camps were located in German-occupied Poland, the European country with by far the largest Jewish population, but they were most emphatically not “Polish camps”. This is not a mere semantic matter. Historical integrity and accuracy hang in the balance. Any misrepresentation of Poland’s role in the Second World War, whether intentional or accidental, would be most regrettable and therefore should not be left unchallenged.
Bernard Korbman (President Australia Society of Polish Jews and Their Descendants): This is not about semantics, it is not about political correctness, it is about historical accuracy, it is about recognising the tragic loss of life, displacement and suffering by Poles during World War II. It is about not belittling or destroying the integrity and dignity of an entire nation through falsehood and innuendo.
Szymon Szurmiej (Head of Warsaw’s Jewish Theater): One would have to be really ill-willed or have little historical knowledge to link Auschwitz’s location in Poland with the Poles’ approval of the camp or even participation in its doings
Dr. Laurence Weinbaum (World Jewish Congress and a historian specializing in Polish-Jewish relations): Polish society as a whole cannot be seen as a perpetrator-nation
Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada (Montreal Chapter): The reference to Auschwitz or any other of those camps as a Polish concentration camp will inevitably lead your readers to erroneously conclude that a death camp was sponsored or administered by the Polish government (whereas no Polish government existed during the German occupation !) or that Polish people participated in perpetrating the Holocaust. Any such implication besmirches the memory of all those Poles who suffered so greatly under the German occupation, including the many thousands who died at the hands of the Germans in Auschwitz.

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski (ad of the International Auschwitz Council and a former camp prisoner): none of the local residents worked at Auschwitz.
Steve Paulsson (Senior Historian of the Holocaust Exhibition Project Office (Imperial War Museum, Toronto), lecturer in Holocaust Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and author of Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945): Poles did not serve as guards in the camp or any camp, other than some small labour camps, although prisoners of all nationalities (including Jews) were made Kapos
Please listen to these wise people and correct the article. Whatever Poles have done to Jews, they are still German death camps.
Other comments:
United Nations: Poland requested the change to ensure that future generations understand it had no role in the camp established by Adolf Hitler’s forces during their brutal occupation of the country. Polish officials have complained that Auschwitz is sometimes referred to as a “Polish concentration camp,” a phrase they fear may be misleading to younger generations who may not associate the camp with Nazi Germany.
Luigi Cajani (Professor of modern history at the Università La Sapienza, Rome): For many years Polish diplomacy has been combating the use made from time to time of the unhappy expression “Polish concentration camps” to refer to Auschwitz, Treblinka and so on. This expression is certainly wrong and misleading, because it conflates the geographical location of the Nazi death camps with their historical perpetrators.
Professor Norman Davies (Author, British Historian): There were no Polish Nazis. There was no Polish branch of the Nazi Party. In 1939-45, there were no Polish armed forces under German command, and, unlike almost every other German-occupied country, no Polish volunteer divisions in the Waffen SS. Despite what one often hears, there were no ‘Polish concentration camps’, and there was no collaborationist government, as in Vichy France or in Norway.
David Marwell (director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage Museum in New York, which focuses on the Holocaust): Although the phrase `Polish Death Camp’ may simply be shorthand to describe location, there are many who wrongly conflate the geography of the camps with those who ran them. When it comes to such important issues, absolute clarity and accuracy are essential.
Dr. Laurence Weinbaum (World Jewish Congress and a historian specializing in Polish-Jewish relations): Polish society as a whole cannot be seen as a perpetrator-nation

Jim Przedzienkowski on June 2, 2012 at 7:29 am

    To Jim Przedzienkowski, you have my full respect for your balanced and extensive compilation of sources showing that claims of Polish complicity in Holocaust (notwithstanding many examples of anti-semitism) are nothing more than ill-willed, unsupported scientifically ravings of a few fringe commentators and their supporters. Thank you also for raising the bar of the discussion on this website. If I were in the shoes of Ms. Schlussel, notwithstanding her family extensive losses, I would have felt strong desire to express gratitude for such an honest and serious effort from which Ms. Schlussel’s blog can only benefit. Even though it is so difficult, after reading so many hopeless and bigoted comments, one must keep faith that historical truth might come out, like diamonds from the ashes, from the ocean of misconceptions built on myths, perpetuated by constant unopposed repetitions. The discussion must go on…

    Janusz Andrzejewski on June 2, 2012 at 9:52 am

      Janusz, thanks for the kind words. Ralph points out the ‘majority of poles’ with no reference means it is conjecture on his part. And quotations are old as is the issue. It is the changing of the truth that is changing and is incorrect.

      Jim Przedzienkowski on June 4, 2012 at 2:59 am

Your article is the sickest thing I’ve seen in many years as a history student in the UK. Your lies are of the most vile nature. If you really did have family that died in the holocaust then you defame their memory by your horrific attack on Poles. You disgust me.

richard Fforbes on June 2, 2012 at 7:46 am

You are 100 % correct. poles were totally complicit in hunting down Jews, handing over Jews and killing Jews. They had done this for centuries before WW2 as pogroms and they continued during WW2 AND AFTER. Jan Gross wrote several books about this. Read his books-
1.”Neighbors” Neighbors (2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, reconstructs the events that took place in July 1941 in the small Polish town of Jedwabne, where virtually every one of the town’s 1,600 Jewish residents was killed in a single day. Using eyewitness testimony Professor Gross demonstrates that the Jews of Jedwabne were murdered by their Polish neighbors “not by the German occupiers, as previously assumed.”
2. Golden Harvest–he documents how Poles dug up ash fields and burial grounds in search of gold in the soil of Treblinka death camp.
I just finished reading Golden Harvest and it is SICKENING.
Yes the POLES were terrible and they were totally complicit in the Holocaust.

charlotte on June 2, 2012 at 8:28 am

POINT NUMBER (1) The Nazi DEATH CAMP was actually situated on the polish ‘Pole’ geographical location, territory, land, country or call it whatever.

POINT NUMBERP (2) The Germans could not have clearly identified the JEWS in Poland without the assistance of the “POLE”

POINT NUMBER (3) The Jewish owned a very large proportion of and managed the economy of Poland then, by implication their DEATH would mean a regain of Poland by the Pole.

POINT NUMBER (4) The entire Europe abhorred the Jews. As such, the Pole fears being an outcast. Thus, can not , but play a systematically underground role.

POINT NUMBER (5) The likes of Debbie Schlussel of the Jews and. Jan Karski an underground Polish whom as an eyewitness, revealed this atrocity to the world are still in existence. Especially Jan Karsky is immortalised by his evidence and documentation of the German-polish genocide.

POINT NUMBER (6) any documentation made by a non accomplice without clear photographs could be saddled with the attendant features of dialectism, in other words, story(ies) are told based on speculation, exaggeration, fiction with an aim of justifying one’s act, or applaud one’s self, origin or country. In most cases stories are formed simply to attribute undue glory.

POINT NUMBER(7) There are set of conspicuous tabloid on this site ” AFRICA to GAZA AID CONVOY and MASA ISRAEL JOURNEY for the benefit of those in doubt or are not sure of this hideous Nazi-Polish act.

From the foregoing, The highly Distinguished on this case in the position of no other person than President Barrack Obama is 100% RIGHT to have referred to the Nazi German death camp as “THE POLISH DEATH CAMP” because the Pole aidded by providing a campground and abetted by provinding mercinerires and sportingput the Jews in Poland.

Emorex Philip Nnaemeka Osemene on June 2, 2012 at 9:02 am

I think you need a little more information about the history of Poland, which you’re obviously lacking. Why was Poland was so “easily occupied by the Nazis”? Well, maybe because the country has just risen from over a 100-year occupation (by Germans, Russians and Austro-Hungarian empire) and was struggling to build one country from the three totally different parts, some of which were very poor and disastrously neglected. The longing for freedom for these 123 years was so strong that the Poles would never surrender to any new kind of oppression if they were able to stop it (didn’t they prove it in 1920 in the battle with the Bolsheviks?). The hatred towards Germans and Russians was so strong, that the Poles would never surrender to any of them by their own free will.

The Poles were also the victims of the concentration camps. I suppose some of them co-operated with the Nazis to save their own skin, but what will you say about the Sonderkommando members, did the Jews sending other Jews to death also “eagerly took part in the Holocaust”?

There were Poles that co-operated with the Nazis and Poles that opposed against it. The world isn’t just black and white and the stereotypization was what lead to the Holocaust in the first place.

zuzx on June 2, 2012 at 10:59 am

This seems to be a very interesting thread. Allow me to toss in my hat.

Explain these random facts…

1) After WW I, France was recovering from some pretty heavy losses and was not willing to go through another great war for civilization. The Vichy regime was considered as an act of self-preservation at all costs.

2) Early in the war, the armies of the Third Reich virtually marched in and took over every country in Europe (except Switzerland). Other countries latched onto National Socialist and racial anti-Semitism ideologies before the war. Despite considerable armed opposition, the Nazis were virtually welcomed, if not as liberators, at least as some overtly friendly neighbour coming in to borrow a cup of sugar (think Quagmire to Peter Griffin; Ned Flanders to Homer Simpson).

3) Denmark’s “peaceful resistance” to the Nazi occupation is a Hippy myth.

4) Why did nobody lifted a finger when Jews were being rounded up, not only in Poland, but everywhere else? And when evidence of death camps started showing up, why was there no action planned to liberate them?

5) If the Nazis were to have been successful in Operation Barbarossa, I doubt that the “occupied countries” would’ve shaken off their “Nazi oppressors”.

6) Where was the Catholic Church in all this? Answer: Ustasha. Google that.

7) The whole turnaround in the latter years of the war was less about freedom and more about throwing off a delusional dictator who failed to deliver on what was promised to the vassals. In other words, they gravitated to the stronger and seemingly more stable side.

8) Britain was much less interested about having a war with the Nazis, but given the fact that it’s empire was starting to disintegrate, it felt that resisting them would be better to make a final stand. Plus, Churchill was more than happy to go for a few more rounds against the Kaiser.

9) Japan was no less better than the Reich – their expansionism was just as racially motivated as that of their Teutonic counterparts. There has been tales of atrocities against local populations that would make a Einsatzgruppen member shoot himself for not being brutal enough.

10) In Yugoslavia, Serbs were getting even worse treatment from Ante Pavelic’s Ustasha. Local SS commanders were aghast at such savagery they begged Himmler to intervene. Himmler, being an upstanding human being. didn’t.

11) Of all the people being listed as “the righteous among nations” at Yad Vashem, how many of them DID NOT exploit the Jews they were hiding? Think about it.

12) After WW II, the fighting may have stopped in Poland, but for a few years, there had been pogroms against the surviving Jews. So it’s fallacious to say that the Holocaust ended with Hitler’s death.

13) In the end, the Jews WEREN’T liberated by the Allies. They were discovered, cleaned up, herded into camps and sent on their merry way. The Jews simply liberated themselves by sailing to a small protectorate in Asia and creating a country that is called Israel.

EXPLAIN, DAMMIT!

The Reverend Jacques on June 2, 2012 at 11:47 am

Just curious as to how YOU know that most of the Polish people hated Jewish people as much as the Nazis? Were you there? Did you talk to them? People like you who make these broad based unfounded accusations make the right look badly. I understand this is a very emotional issue for you, but to paint an entire population with a broad brush is exactly what the Nazis did.

I WON'T JUDGE on June 2, 2012 at 5:55 pm

Dear Debbie,
Thank you for the text.

Your words were, for me (an Israeli surrounded by families of survivors) – something that goes without saying.

I’m surprise to see how many confused responses come here, showing, probably the topic was not handled right before.
If people disagree with you, it only means it’s the first time they come across this kind of opinion (which is 100% natural) and that’s sad.

I’m happy you laid here your voice, and at least started a discussion that maybe some new awareness and state of mind will come out of it.

????? ?? ????

Dana on June 2, 2012 at 7:59 pm

POINT NUMBER (1) The Nazi DEATH CAMP was actually situated on the polish ‘Pole’ geographical location, territory, land, country or call it whatever.

POINT NUMBER (2) The Germans could not have clearly identified the JEWS in Poland without the assistance of the “POLE”

POINT NUMBER (3) The Jewish owned a very large proportion of and managed the economy of Poland then, by implication their DEATH would mean a regain of Poland by the Pole.

POINT NUMBER (4) The entire Europe abhorred the Jews. As such, the Pole fears being an outcast. Thus, can not , but play a systematically underground role.

POINT NUMBER (5) The likes of Debbie Schlussel of the Jews and. Jan Karski an underground Polish whom as an eyewitness, revealed this atrocity to the world are still in existence. Especially Jan Karsky is immortalized by his evidence and documentation of the German-polish genocide.

POINT NUMBER (6) any documentation made by a non accomplice without clear photographs could be saddled with the attendant features of dialectism, in other words, story(ies) are told based on speculation, exaggeration, fiction with an aim of justifying one’s act, or applaud one’s self, origin or country. In most cases stories are formed simply to attribute undue glory.

POINT NUMBER(7) There are set of conspicuous tabloid on this site ” AFRICA to GAZA AID CONVOY and MASA ISRAEL JOURNEY for the benefit of those in doubt or are not sure of this hideous Nazi-Polish act.

From the foregoing, The highly Distinguished on this case in the position of no other person than President Barrack Obama was 100% RIGHT to have referred to the Nazi German death camp as “THE POLISH DEATH CAMP” because the Pole aided by providing a campground and abetted by providing mercenary for the killing of and spotting THE JEWS in Poland.

Emorex Philip on June 3, 2012 at 4:56 am

Janusz, you claim “Happy to see Jews annihilated? Only psychopaths could have been happy to see anybody annihilated, more so your neighbours, people with whom you have lived in small towns and villages. Were there psychopaths among the Poles? Yes, as in every nation.”

So you answer to my question is “no, the Poles were not happy to see the Jews annihilated.” And you also disagree with the famous Polish writer Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, who wrote in 1942: “Our feelings toward the Jews haven’t changed. We still consider them the political, economic and ideological enemies of Poland.”

Then urther discussion with you is not warranted. If you cannot reach that level of truth, then you certainly aren’t ready to accept the real truth about the Poles in WWII. As I said when this thread first started, dential of painful and difficult truths is a natural phenomenon, and frequently takes the form of collective amnesia. You are simply part of that collective amnesia, and your response to it has to become a apologist for Poland.

This is why I suggested that you see/hear the DVD Shoah. I think it was issued in the 1980’s. It includes interviews with Poles who were THERE and witnessed some events first-hand.

Did the director just happen to find Polish witnesses whose physical expressions and voices evince HAPPINESS and SATISFACTION in the destruction of the Jews of Poland? Did he film dozens and dozens of Polish witnesses and managed to find those who would express such things? Did he TRICK them into showing emotions that they did not really have through artful direction? Or did the director simply capture the truth? Which is correct?

Occam’s razor appropriate to use here, in which we select from among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby gives the simplest explanation? The simple explanation is that those Poles interviewed in Shoah reflected the collective views of Poles at the time, and, if anything, their expressions of joy were MUTED by time.

I would also suggest that you read the paper “Bystanders, blackmailers, and perpetrators: Polish complicity during the Holocaust,” by Jacob Flaws again, as you’ve not learned anything from it. Debbie posted the link to it, but here it is again: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2938&context=etd

But I rather doubt that you will. Facing a bitter truth is a often a very difficult thing to do under normal conditions, and will be especially so for you because there are so many other apologists that will give you comfort with your collective amnesia. In this way, you can feel pride, rather than shame. Looked at in this way, your choice is understandable.

So, I’ll end it here. To continue would almost be like arguing with a Holocaust denier. Like you, Holocaust deniers like to pretend that they are only concerned with the “evidence” and that the “evidence” points to the conclusion that the Holocaust is a myth. But what do the Holocaust deniers cite as evidence? They point to “evidence” like that “discovered” by Fred Leuchter in his “The Leuchter Report” as being definitive proof that the gas chambers at Auschwitz did not exist. But Leuchter had no education, credentials, training, experience, or even knowledge of the subject that he opined on. In short, Leuchter was a fraud. And so the deniers move on to other fraudulent “experts,” for new “evidence.” If not one red herring, then another and another is offered, ad nauseam.

Ralph Adamo on June 3, 2012 at 12:42 pm

    Since further discussion with me is not warranted, we will stop it, but just for the sake of having broader knowledge, even you will not changed your “fixed notions”, I have more sources for you: “Why Do We Allow Non-Jewish Victims to be Forgotten?” by Dr. Richard C. Lukas at http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/lukas.html and also extensive work by Professor Strzembosz about Jedwabne pogrom, to get the context: “The Ignored Collaboration” at http://www.internationalsearchcenter.org/en/holocaust-forgotten-or-revisited/the-ignored-collaboration

    Janusz Andrzejewski on June 3, 2012 at 3:32 pm

    To Ralph Adamo, to finish this discourse I have to again point out another of your distortions. From my comment it is clear that I did not disagree with Zofia Kossak-Szczecka’s comment at the time when it was made (1942), instead I disagreed with it in application to present time Poland. Everyone who read my comment (which is at the end of the comments to Ms. Schlussel’s article) can clearly see it.

    Janusz Andrzejewski on June 3, 2012 at 4:39 pm

      Professor Strzembosz work “The Ignored Collaboaration”, based on accounts of witnesses kept in Hoover Institute and on his own interviews made in 1990-s, all accounts listed by their numbers and quoted, is a chilling picture of the deportations and repressions conducted against Polish gentiles at Jedwabne, by mostly Polish Jews, either being part of Soviet NKVD or collaborating with NKVD, after Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland, including Jedwabne, after September 17, 1939. All, prior to the Jedwabne pogrom of the Jews, which occurred in July of 1941, after Germans have taken Jedwabne from the Soviets. As professor Strzembosz wrote, nothing excuses the pogrom, but the Jewish repressions against Polish gentiles under Soviet occupation after September 17, 1939 until the entry of Germans in 1941, give another dimension to the events which transpired. Even though, nothing excuses the pogrom.

      Janusz Andrzejewski on June 3, 2012 at 5:16 pm

Nearly all the thing you are saing in that “article” are untrue. I’m Polish and nearly whole my family died in german camps !! They were treated worst than animals in labs nowadays,poisoned and experimented with awful substances, beaten and tortured and many other awful things. Half of them were shooted like ducks by germans…the second half still help Judes after what happend to the rest of their family… What shity propaganda are you doing here ?! How can you even desire Poles to help Israel in their own war ?! The thing is, I was in Israel 3 years ago,I was in Jerusalem too…after seeing what you-Judes-who suffer so much during holocaust are doing to poor civils I’m disgusted…and you’ve got no orders or sth to do it ! What the hell ?! Do you think that making war with yours enemies is a satisfacion for you ?! You are not a bub of the universe !

Do not lie people…the easiest way to prove you are saing a lot of lies here is the thing that Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe, that is why most of Jude people lived there, not in other countries… ! How can you ignore that fact. If Judes feel stigmatizes in my country that days, their wouldn’t live in Poland in such numbers.
I’m living in Cracow-there is a distinc called Kazimierz which whole belonged and still belonges to Judes. Nobody has problems with that ! So do not lie anymore…
And Obama’s words shows how ignorant and unprepared he was. That is the stuff.
I’m inviting you to visit auschiwitz, birkenau and the rest of camps befeore you even try to comment anything. There were a lot of people- JUde people in camps…but there were also nearly the same number of Poles who died there ! So read sth before you say anything.

Speech is a silver,but silence is a gold !

Natalia on June 4, 2012 at 7:39 am

One might suspect that the author of that hate-filled anti-Polish rant must have been high on something? After all, Debbie Schlussel is an experienced political analyst and an educated person. Holding both Law and MBA degrees from the University of Wisconsin, she is an attorney, political commentator, radio talk show host and columnist in the New York Post and Jerusalem Post. She also speaks several languages including Hebrew and Russian.

The only apparent explanation for such primitive, historically unjustified Polonophobia must be a deep-seated personal grudge. Schlussel charges that nearly her entire family in Poland was wiped out by Poles. Only one brother of her paternal grandmother’s 11 siblings survived after the Poles murdered the rest along with her parents and seized their farm. Her maternal grandmother had only one surviving sister and brother out of ten siblings murdered by the Poles, and her “maternal grandfather’s entire family was wiped out by the Poles.”
If those accusations are true, then Schlussel’s bitterness might be understandable, but should and educated person allow emotions to cloud their ability to reason. Her writings reflect the old canard of alleged “Polish complicity in the Holocaust.” That reveals total ignorance not only of history but also of human psychology and human behavior in extreme circumstances.

It can also be stated that, were it not for Jewish complicity in creating the Soviet machinery of terror, there might have been no Bolshevik revolution, no Stalinist purges, artificial famines, gulags, Katy? and other communist atrocities. The launch of the 1917 October Revolution was conceived at a top-secret meeting of Bolshevik party’s Central Committee. Although Jews did not account for more than five percent of Russia’s population, of the 12 participants six were Jewish, four Russian, one Georgian (Stalin) and one Pole (Dzier?y?ski). Although more Poles have been credited by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Institute of saving Jews during World War II than any other nation, it also true some behaved in a less than exemplary manner.

Most Poles were focused on their own survival and neither helped nor harmed the Jews. Yes, a minority turned Jews over to the Germans, seized their property or harmed them in other ways. But Jews also collaborated with the Nazis. The German controlled Judenräte (councils of Jewish elders) were guilty of direct complicity in the Holocaust. They provided the Nazis with detailed lists of names and addresses of local Jews who could then be easily rounded up for herding into ghettos or transferring to extermination sites.

The Jewish Ghetto police operating under German supervision were known for their cruelty towards fellow-Jews and shameless appropriation of their property. Jewish kapos (trustees) helped run the German death camps, kept fellow-prisoners in line, manned the crematoria and performed other tasks on orders from their Nazi masters. The Gestapo and other German services also had their network of Jewish informers who spied and snitched on their fellow-Jews to the Nazis.

This is not to single out any ethnic group for its complicity with occupation forces, but only to point out that war is hell. The constant threat to life, limb and property, the ubiquitous death and destruction brutalize people and make the desperate struggle for survival, even delaying the inevitable by a single day, the supreme priority. Human psychology functions along very similar lines regardless of the nationality of those involved. Only he who has never sinned may throw stones.

Robert Strybel on June 4, 2012 at 11:38 am

Nice trolling Debbie.

Iknow! on June 5, 2012 at 5:02 am

6 millions of Polish citizens had died in WW2. More than Jews. Don’t blame Poland – all what you wrote is a lie. And the last thing Debbie – just learn a bit in topic in which you write.

Evidence on June 5, 2012 at 5:08 am

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