From: pawel@tethys.ph.albany.edu
Subject: Re: Nazi camps
Reply-To: pawel@tethys.ph.albany.edu
Organization: SUNYA School of Public Health, Albany, NY
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 92 18:31:25 GMT

In article <1992Sep3.163236.25948@cbnewsl.cb.att.com>, saal@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (samuel.saal) writes:
>In article <1992Sep3.135739.11218@sarah.albany.edu>
>pawel@tethys.ph.albany.edu writes:
>
>>  My limited knowledge of English tells me that "Polish camp" means
>>a camp "owned, ran, supervised" by Poles and is not equivalent to
>>the statement "the camps were on Polish soil".
>
>Your knowledge of English is, as you state, severely limited.  Although
>the newspaper's term may be ambiguous to you, it is not incorrect. For
>example.  I've gone to Jewish summer camps in the US.  Does that mean that
>they weren't owned by Americans?  That they weren't owned by Jews? That
>they weren't on American soil? Any or all of them can be true and these
>summer camps could be called Jewish.  For that matter, they could probably
>be called American, or City (when I went to a camp based in NY City) and
>so on.


   Thank you very much for the explanation.  Now, if I may follow
your example: is it correct to call Nazi's death camps "Jewish death
camps in Poland" ?

  Please explain me one more thing (just to improve my English):
if we assume that somebody does not know anything about history,
would the term "Polish camp" be ambiguous for such person ?
Can it be understood by such person as meaning "camp owned by Poles"
or (from your example) "camp for Poles" ??


>  The reason I don't have a problem with retaining mention of Poland
>in the references is that I consider it revisionistic to minimize Polish
>complicity and complacency.                              
>
  
  This time, to avoid further misunderstandings I consulted my Webster's
dictionary.

  complicity - participation in a wrongful act
  ^^^^^^^^^^
  This is strong statement.  Could you give any examples of Polish people
willingly participating in designing or operating death camps ?  
An example of somebody like Demanyuk (Ukrainian who volunteered), maybe
names of Poles searched for by Israel for complicity ?

  complacency - self-satisfaction accompanied by unawareness of actual
  ^^^^^^^^^^^
dangers or deficiencies.

  I do not know whether I understand you correctly, but you seem to imply
here that because SOME Polish people were satisfied (?) by the Final
Solution the death camps should be called Polish ?

  I agree with you wholeheartedly that it is revisionistic to try to
minimize Polish complicity and complacency.  Unfortunately, is is equally
revisionistic to stretch the languange to fulfill this goal. I am
still not sure whether you have any actual historical knowledge about
what happened during WWII (or rather how was it possible), or just
try to satisfy your prejudice.  Do you want to understand what happened,
how 'civilized' nations made it possible, or just put a blame on
everybody obscuring the truth ?


>
>I've deleted the remainder of your diatribe as it is based on your own
>misunderstanding.
>
  OK. 
>
>-- 
>Sam Saal      kingfish!saal OR saal@kingfish.att.com
>	Vayiftach HaShem et Peah Ha`Aton

                                        P.Penczek
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish