From: s1137020@giaec.cc.monash.edu.au (Mariusz Prokopczyk)
Subject: Re: common Polish-German action
Organization: Monash University College Gippsland, Churchill, 3842, Australia
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 18:55:04 GMT

In article <a6bf2b2f@random.se> ianf@random.se (Ian Feldman) writes:
>
>  Well, to set the record straight, the Poles are indeed guilty of
>  disorganized oppression of their minorities, both before, during
>  and after the WWII.  They didn't do enough to save their Jewish
>  and Gypsy brethren because, as prof.  Wladyslaw Bartoszewski once
>  pointed out, "they are of this land but not to our liking" ("on
>  jest z ojczyzny mojej, ale go nie lubie").

I am astonished by your "excellent" evaluation whether Poles did or did not
do enough to save Jewish or Gypsies. I would like to know what is your
basis to come to such conclusions. May be not enough Poles had lost
their lives for protecting others? It looks like your initial "gentle"
persuasion in the face of total fiasco is turning slowly into an outright
accusation. I just wander what do you expect now from it?

>  Yes, the Poles
>  individually committed many a crime in wartime Poland, but no
>  visible/ large scale/ organized collaboration with the enemy for
>  the extermination of the Jews has happily ever taken place.  Nor
>  did the most common manifesation of that Polish oppression of the
>  Jews, "szmalcownictwo" (blackmailing Jews in hiding to come over
>  their liquid assets), ever come close to an accepted social
>  behavior.

From seeing the hatred to Poles expressed by many Jewish authors
writing here, I am slowly getting the picture why there were so many
antysemitic reactions in polish society. Shall we start to list what
Jews were doing in Poland before, during and after IIWW to counter
your opinions?

>  Perhaps the Poles collectively were too stoopid to see the larger
>  opportunities that a nation-wide collaboration might have brought
>  with it.  After all they never understood that, had the war
>  continued, they were next in line for the gas ovens.

I can see you are really starting to use not only unfounded accusations
but also clearly offending language. If I would not believe that there
are also Jews with more human face and much better brain then yours
I would be inclined to say that those Poles were really naive by risking
their lives for ... sorry I will not say, it would offend those thinking
Jews.

>  In any event: to equalize that type of ethnic non-sentiment with
>  the suggested partial __responsibility__ for the Nazi camps in
>  Poland is beyond my share of Normal Logick[tm], however.  Taken at
>  a face value it amounts to no less than blaming the victim for
>  having allowed himself to become one.  Worse, it bears traces of
>  the perennial "symmetry" argument: Nazis were exterminating Jews
>  and oppressing everyone; however, since Poles were oppressing Jews
>  then somehow they're guilty for the extermination of them, too.
>
>  Well done, John Reece.  You relly ought to become a spokesman for
>  Intel, perhaps in the crisis damage control section of its PR
>  departement.
>
>--Ian "survivor of Polish ethnic cleansing of '68" Feldman
>  <ianf@random.se>; not an Intel spokesman; a spokesman at random

You are trying to be smart Ian, but judging from what you are saying
I doubt if you are intelligent enough to fool anybody.

Mariusz Prokopczyk

Newsgroups: soc.culture.polish