Date: Wed, 02 Sep 92 09:51:13 +0200
From: ianf@random.se (Ian Feldman)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.polish
Apparently-To: rnews@sunet.se
X-Mailer: Fernmail 1.2b2
Organization: random design -- "Opinions, cheaply"
Summary: rewriting of history
Subject: Re: common Polish-German action (was: Nazi Camps)


  Stoer Mechthild FNT <stoer@hal.nta.no> writes on
# Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 19:17:49 GMT
  in regard to the subject matter:

> Ian Feldman in his first posting
> (proposing a common Polish-German-Jewish action)
> said he did not want to open new wounds
> but in fact opened them by hinting that
> maybe the German have something against a common action,
> and  maybe also the Poles.

  It's a matter of interpretation though I don't see how a mildly
  expressed generalization on observable hesitation of the Germans
  to disowning the Nazi past openly could be taken as "opening of
  new wounds."  If that is so then I don't know how such a tabu
  matter could be discussed, EVER.


> In his second posting he criticized John Reece's view
> that the Poles were in some way responsible for the Nazi camps
> but in the same text suggested that

>>  Perhaps the Poles collectively were too stoopid to see the larger
>>  opportunities that a nation-wide collaboration might have brought
>>  with it.

  Once again, this is a matter of interpretation but, surely, it
  couldn't have escaped your attention that the referenced passage
  was a sarcastic one in nature?  Especially if you consider the
  following (not quoted) context of it ([stoopid because] "After all,
  they never understood that they were next in line for the gas
  ovens").  Surely nobody is disputing that?


> That text called Mariusz Prokopczyk to the arms,
> who [...] could not refrain from hinting
> that maybe the Poles had a reason to be antisemitic...

>> 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

  Yea, the classic defense strategy of the ethnic Poles: "there are
  antisemitic tendencies in Poland BECAUSE the Jews [who keep
  forgetting that they were allowed to reside in the country for
  800+ years etc] are anti-Polish in nature."  The head RC church
  honcho, Captain Glemp, said so himself in the homily from Jasna
  Gora on August 26th, 1989 (and on other dates, but that one is
  at least fairly well documented): "if there is no anti-Polonism
  there will be no antisemitism here" (see ref).  Stands to reason.
  The Poles are really the ONLY victims around, maltreated by the
  int'l Jewish press, the bolschevik-mason-conspiracy and by their
  own native foreign elements that used to suck their blood in the
  open and now hide in the Governement etc (caution! sarcasm again).


  I first heard it from the mouth of Neal Acherson, the US (UK?)
  journalist appearing in a BBC series on Anti-Semitism through
  the ages (though it may have been a quotation): "Auschwitz is
  something that the Germans will never forgive the Jews for."

  This upside-down observation has its own logic.  It could also
  easily be transformed into: "Accusations of antisemitism is
  something that the ethnic Poles will never forgive the Jews
  [= the non-ethnic Poles] for."

  I've abstained from debating directly with Prokopczyk, Mazur
  and their ilk,  because it'd be like discussing commodity prices
  with a sack of potatoes.


> and (no comment)

>> If I would not believe that there
>> yours are also Jews with more human face and much better brain
>> then 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.

  Indeed. Fortunately those words (and other of similar variety)
  are now on the record both in the Polish online archive forum
  in Rapperswill and, elsewhere, on the NetNews monthly Usenet-
  -on-CD issues available from Sterling Software <sterling.com>,
  that's available to all.  With little luck sooner or later the
  Prokopczyks of this world will be made to choke on their own
  hate vomit.


> Is there a need to spit all this poison?
> I still believe that Ian honestly wanted to defend
> the Polish people against unjust insults
> (like "Polish camps" and John Reece's offenses)
> but later on insulted them himself,
> and that Mariusz got awfully carried away by his feelings,
> although he started out his first letter agreeing with Ian.

  Obviously, since the proposed discussion matter soon detoriated
  to attempts to _measure_ the collective guilt of the Jewish Poles
  towards the True Poles ("Ja jestem Polak, tu urodzony" --President
  Walesa during the 1990 campaign for the Presidency) by evaluating
  available scampy statistical record of grocery ownership and the
  like, then there must've been plenty of reasons to spit in public.


> To return to the issue at the beginning of this Polish-Jewish
> discussion, I want to mention that I wholeheartedly support
> the action against the wording: "Polish camps".
> They should be called what they were: "Nazi camps" or
> "Nazi-German camps".

  I thank you for your support.  Do not count on the revisionist
  brigade here (revision of history with the Poles-as-the-real-
  victims-of-Jews theory at its center) to be able to read thus
  far & then to stick with the subject matter.


> (I'm German by the way.)

  I am Polish, albeit not in Prokopczyks and Hermann Goebbels' eyes.
  In an earlier posting I didn't signed myself as I do below for
  nothing.  Took me 20-odd years to find a proper name to what I
  had been subjected to then.


--Ian "survivor of Polish ethnic cleansing of '68" Feldman

ref. p.12 of Research Report #7, 1989 "Controversy over the Carmelite
   Convent at Auschwitz 1988-89" issued by Institute of Jewish Affairs,
   11 Hertford Street, London W1Y 7DX  [= a Jewish, therefore auto-
   matically anti-Polish, biased and untrustworthy publication].
Newsgroups: soc.culture.polish