From: podgorny@npac.syr.edu (Marek Podgorny)
Subject: Re: Document that! (was Re: Violent antisemitism?)
Organization: Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at Syracuse University (NPAC)
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 00:00:49 EDT

In article <1992Sep10.182216.8607@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> stank@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (Stan Krieger) writes:
>Michal Szleper writes:
>>Stan Krieger writes:
>>
>>>...  ANYONE in an occupied country who assisted the Germans is in
>>>fact MORE guilty than the average German.  The German could at least
>>>claim "following orders"; what excuse did the Poles, etc., have? ...
>>
>>Stan Krieger, it looks like your hate to the Poles has shadowed
>>your brain.
>
>What are you talking about?  I'm sticking to facts, and is the best
>you can do is to post some stupid accusation about me?

Stan, old chap, cant you make distinction between an accusation and
a diagnosis?
>
>The ONLY thing that I'm responding to is the DENIAL that Poles helped
>the Germans murder Jews.  Another FACT is that it weren't for the
>anti-Semitism among the Poles, my parents probably would've been
>Holocaust victims, and you wouldn't have to bother with answering my
>postings (it was because of the anti-Semitism that surfaced in the
>1920's, after Poles no longer had to answer to the Russians, that my
>grandparents emigrated to the U.S.).
 
A fact is that FACTS do not carry probability tags. This remark is
just to point out to the weakness of your logical inference engine.

>
>The only reason that Polish anti-Semitism shouldn't be singled out is
>that, as confirmed by modern events in Yugoslavia and some of the
>former Soviet Union states, such behavior is apparently the norm
>among European ethnic groups.  But it shouldn't be denied that it did
>occur.
>-- 


Stan, is somebody denying existence of anti-Semitism in Poland? There
are people there that hate Germans, other resent Catholic Church, some hate
peanuts butter, and then some dislike Jews. My subjective estimate is
that at present, anti-Semitism is more a political than a sociological
phenomenon in Poland. However, this is NOT the subject of the discussion
here. The subject is: are the Poles guilty of Holocuast; if yes - to what
degree; if no - why not? 

The arguments of different sort and moral caliber have been presented here.

We were told that saving somebody's live for money is only marginally better
than not saving his life at all. Admittedly, I have some problems with
moral qualification in this case: an ideal world of moral values and the
brutal reality seem to be very far apart.

We were presented with nice examples of
relativity: Poles, living under the regimee that shoot on place anybody
trying to help Jews, saved despite of this pretty bad working conditions
saved some 50,000 Jews (see Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews,
NY 1975, chapter 7), are considered to have done nothing for Jewish nation.
How many Jews have been however handed out to Germans? We do not know.
I do not think however we have to know. In a moral calculus, good and
bad deeds do not cancel.

American Jews, who failed to organize any serious political lobbying
in US to stop Holocaust, and this despite of the considerable political
and financial power, are considered to have done anything possible.
Somebody asked here: "what could they have done - NYC is 4000 miles
from Auschwitz!". Well, I can imagine a number of things: they could
use their contacts and their money to make every large newspaper
in this country to write about Holocaust. They could organize printing
of false personal documents and send them to Poland using
existing subversion channels. They could organize printing of the false
currency used in GG at this time and send it there (Germans falsified
pounds and dollars for their purpose on a large scale). They could
insist on the airborne strikes against transportation lines and
retaliatory strikes agains German cities. Have they effectively
and succesfully done anything like that? 

	I am not blind or single-sided. I certainly believe that many
Jews have been delivered to Gestapo by greedy Poles. I recognize
signs of the state-supported anti-Semitism in Poland before WWII.
I feel ashamed by these facts as badly as I feel ashamed by today's
political platform of Mr. Glemp, and I agree that the attitude
of moral responsibility denial is wrong. This notwithstanding, I cannot
comprehend people stating that the witness, even a complacent one,
is more guilty that the hangman!

What strikes me in the Stan's statement of faith is a total 
depersonification of the main force behind Holocaust: 

>>>The German could at least claim "following orders"; i
>>>what excuse did the Poles, etc., have? ...

And who, for the Jewish God sake, gave the orders to the Germans, Stan?
What was this force majeure driving the whole nation to the state of
murderous amok? Don't you see that articulating your  mindless statement,
shifting the weight of guilt from the opressor to the witness, you 
testify and subscribe to the Nazi Uebermensch philosophy? The shining
boots of an SS-killer that your (and perhaps my) grandparents had to watch,
lying with their faces in the mud, seem to have robbed part of the
Jewish population (a part you seem to belong to) of ability to recognize
shit in the boots. Even today, you seem to be too scared to say loud:
"you are my tormentor" in the right direction, and content yourself
with spiting on lesser beings.

What, at the end, does not surprise me that much - Germany was for
centuries an unreciprocated love of the Jewish nation ....

>Stan Krieger                     All opinions, advice, or suggestions, even
>AT&T UNIX System Laboratories    if related to my employment, are my own.
>Summit, NJ
>smk@usl.com

Marek Podgorny, NPAC, Syracuse University
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish