From: lbs@neptune.phys.ufl.edu (Lech Borkowski)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,soc.culture.polish
Subject: Re: Nazi camps
Date: 9 Sep 92 02:05:39 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.jewish
Organization: University of Florida Physics Department - CMT Group

In article <1992Sep8.131332.26088@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> saal@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (samuel.saal) writes:
>In article <1992Sep3.183125.14985@sarah.albany.edu>
>pawel@tethys.ph.albany.edu writes:

>I urge you to visit Yad Vashem in Israel, the Weisenthal Center in
>California, or the Holocaust Memorial in Washington DC (when it is
>completed).  You will learn the answer to your question ain a way far more
>vivid than I can provide by simply listing names.  You'll also learn about
>the Poles who resisted the Nazis without resorting to antisemitism.

 Not everyone can buy an airplane ticket just like that and fly
there. I would love to go to Israel, but who will sponsor my trip? 
But you can post names of some of the individuals of Polish 
descent that you suggest contributed to the genocide in a significant way. 
Let us know what they did and where. Most likely I will lack
the evidence to judge one or the other way - that is for a court
and historians to decide (with our active involvement). But at least 
we would know some names of the people that you accuse 
of participation in the genocide. And I could check various 
references what they say about those names. There are enough names 
of Polish anti-Semites but the fact that someone is an anti-Semite 
doesn't make him/her a participant in the genocide.

 Or are you talking about "spiritual" involvement in the genocide
by applauding the action of the German Nazis? Here we have
to distinguish between the anti-Semites who would like to "keep
control" over the Jewish population by e.g. rationing the access
to universities and those anti-Semites who would like to kill
all Jews. We call the latter ones the Nazis, right?

>>  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 ?

>No.  All I'm saying is that because they were on Polish soil, surrounded
>by Polish people, it is not illegitimate to call them Polish camps.

 When you write that the camps were on Polish soil, surrounded
by Polish people, you are suggesting that the Poles were conducting
their lives as usual, as if nothing has happened and didn't care
if anyone was dying in the Nazi camps. Now, the German occupation 
in Poland (and former Soviet Union) was a state of terror. People
were executed and tortured all over the country. Of course your chances
to survive the war were greater if you just tried to avoid any 
activity suspicious to the German occupiers and merely tried
to live. And a lot of people did just that. Even helping the Jews
being transported to the concentration camps was a risky
activity - if the German guards did not like that you brought
some water or food to the train if it was standing somewhere,
they could shoot you in a split of a second. Knowing that,
how many people would try to bring water or food?
And knowing that for saving Jews at your place or for just
being involved in this activity you were risking the life
of your whole family?

 I already said earlier that the German occupation was totally
different when comparing countries like Denmark and France
to Poland and the Soviet Union. Do you deny that?

 In Lanzman's Shoah we saw villagers who were just taking care
of their fields "as usual", when the Jews were exterminated 
in the camp very close to the place were they lived. Now,
what kind of action the villagers could take? Should they 
have run against the Germans with bare hands? Should they
have stopped plowing the fields to protest the genocide?

 Look, I am not denying the fact that more Jews should
have been saved in Poland. I am just saying that the comparison
between France or Denmark and Poland doesn't make much sense.
The death threat does make people behave differently, doesn't it?

>Sam Saal      kingfish!saal OR saal@kingfish.att.com

 Lech Borkowski
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish