The report said many Jews preferred to flee, even to Germany, after the war.
A declassified US State Department report from 1946 documented the abhorrent treatment of Poland’s Jews before, during and after World War II. The report equated Polish and Nazi treatment of the Jewish population and said many Jews preferred to flee, even to Germany, after the war.
The document, titled “The Jews in Poland Since the Liberation,” was obtained by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and shown exclusively to The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, the same day a Polish governmental delegation arrived in Israel to discuss Warsaw’s contentious “Holocaust law,” which has caused a diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
“There is little doubt that the current anti-Jewish manifestations in Poland represent a continuation of activities by rightwing groups that were at work before 1939, when even major political parties had antisemitic programs,” the report said. “In other words, there is not much that is essentially new or different in the current antisemitic agitation.
However, the antisemitic overtones in prewar Polish politics predisposed many Poles to the acceptance of Nazi racial theories, and there is evidence that Poles persecuted the Jews as vigorously as did the Germans during the occupation. The retreating Nazis, moreover, left in their wake a heavy residue of their racial theories.
Even before the liberation of Poland, antisemitic propaganda emerged in Polish émigré circles.”
The Intelligence Research report, dated May 15, 1946, was distributed by the US Office of Intelligence Coordination and Liaison as a restricted document.
It was declassified in 1983.
It describes how antisemitism “reached such dimensions in the Polish Army under General Wladyslaw Anders that many Jewish soldiers felt compelled to desert those forces and seek enlistment with other Allied armies.”
By mid-1944, it said, widespread antisemitism was reported in Lublin and other parts of Poland. By April 1945, “more reports were current and a dozen Polish towns were named as places where Jews had been killed, allegedly by members of the Polish Home Guard (Armia Krajowa), the armed force formed by and loyal to the Government-in-Exile.”
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Wiesenthal Center, said the documents directly contradict current arguments by Polish leaders that antisemitism was the result of communism.
He pointed to a part of the report that discussed rampant antisemitism and treatment of Jews as second-class citizens long before the communists took power in Poland and indeed, well before the war, with religious leaders, political parties and both high and low-level officials preaching and practicing antisemitism.
“In the jockeying for political preference in Poland after 1919, most of the major political parties – with the exception of leftist groups – followed an antisemitic line,” the report reads. “Catholic Church leaders, from Cardinal Hlond down, preached antisemitism and favored an economic boycott of the Jews.
Polish nationalists sought to win peasant and working-class support by attributing many of Poland’s internal difficulties to the Jews.” Lawless elements attacked Jews, adding physical peril to the already discouraging social and economic conditions.”
A widespread Polish argument in the current disagreement with Israel over Holocaust history acknowledges that some Poles may have acted badly during WWII, but denies that antisemitism was prevalent in Polish society. “This is absolutely not true,” Hier stressed. Some members of the Polish government have said only Israel holds this view of Poland’s history, he noted, but the impartial report written by the US government soon after WWII “absolutely tells a different story and one that would be very difficult for the president of Poland to deny.”
The report also referred to the post-war era, when some Jews opted to move to Germany rather than remain in Poland.
“So violent have been the antisemitic incidents reported – and so widespread is the fear for their lives among the handful of Jewish survivors – that some Polish Jews have been reported seeking to escape to the American Zone in Germany rather than remain in Poland,” the report said.
“Others, who have gone back to Poland, are reported to be returning to Western Germany after only a short stay.
Polish Jews in displaced persons centers in Germany have, moreover, almost unanimously declined to return to their former homeland,” the document said.
Hier said, “It’s very important that this report be made public so that people all over the world can read what a 1946 assessment of the issue of how Polish Jews were treated in Poland.”
Copies of the report are currently being held at the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London and in the US National Archives in Washington.
While the report is accessible, it has remained widely unknown until now.
The Wiesenthal Center obtained the document in the course of research while publishing books about the Holocaust.
Hier said he believes widespread knowledge of the report can provide insight into why Jews are upset by the new law. He emphasized that his organization is not an enemy of Poland, but a group that brings hundreds of visitors to the country. “They have to acknowledge that antisemitism in Poland was a problem of longevity. You just have to read this report, which was not written by Jews, to see how real antisemitism was in Poland,” he said.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
In this instance I brought it in because it happened that part of your comment was about Hess’s wife who happened to be Catholic and supposedly a prostitute. With all Catholics there was a close connection with Ireland, her priest confessor was almost sure to be Irish. And the London prostitutes I mentioned were Irish and some went to the Continent, the easiest being to Belgium which was basically a Catholic country with several seminaries sited there…No harm done was there??
As for Felix being a Quigley he’d be bound to mention Ireland as often as he thinks about it. I don’t even know where he’s living….maybe still in Ireland…??
@ Edgar G.:I never said I was unfamiliar with the term bloviating. Neither you nor he introduced me to it. I was just praising him for using a more than 2 syllable word to relieve the awkwardness of him claiming that he was merely being sarcastic when he counter-challenged my challenge of the NY Times as a credible source. I was just politely defusing the situation and changing the subject with a little cynical flattery as i have done with you. Learn to.read between the lines will you? I don’t have mars, ascendant and dragon’s head conjunct in Libra for.nothing!
@ Edgar G.:
Why do you and Felix have to bring Ireland into everything?
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I read much of the above in Wiki a day or two ago. I mentioned that anything about Hess could be looked up on the internet.
It all sounds very smart, and no doubt he was a great man in his own way. In his “Rome And Jerusalem”, he had the Jewish character down pat, so he understood his people.
As for his wife being either this or that… It takes no great education to have her husband’s colleagues to direct how to publish select editions of his books etc. In fact to make them “select” she would have to consult colleagues. Without an in-depth, accurate account we just don’t know.
It is historical fact that there had been an incipient potato famine for years in Ireland, which broke out in earnest in 1845, which lasted for years and resulted in an estimated 2 million deaths on the roads, and massive emigrations abroad mainly to the US and London. The population which had been over 8 millions before 1845, became 4 mill in 1900 and in the 1930s was 2.8 mill. Large numbers of illiterate Irish girls went to London, and sometimes on to the Continent and became prostitutes, having no other skills to keep them alive…..unless there were cows to milk, or rows to hoe etc.
This Famine was very comprehensively detailed by the great female writer Cecil Woodham-Smith in her “The Great Hunger” It was far better than any history I had learned in school. Riveting in fact.
***To be a seamstress then, meant almost being a tailor without a sewing machine, and a skill which required several years to acquire, either by apprenticeship or in a School For Young Ladies… . In London, at that time there were reputed to be over 10,000 Irish prostitutes active on the streets and houses. I saw one report from a prominent surgeon who counted 185 during his walk home from his surgery.*** So again, we really don’t know. And, at this late stage it doesn’t matter.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
You seem to conflate a sincere truth into B.S……. To me, the meaning of B.S. a term I never have spoken in my life, is a load of phony-baloney. So we have different understandings of it’s meaning.
As an example, for you to say that “bloviating” was a brand new word to you, is my understanding of what B.S. is……… We can agree to differ, because we certainly do.
@ adamdalgliesh:
She was a Catholic seamstress. One account said that Engels had an affair with her when he was transporting her to France to meet her husband and speculates this had an effect on Hess’s becoming a second thoughter. But, you know does gossip like this really matter? This man is a founding father as both a communist and a Zionist hence my referring Felix Quigley to him.
My attitude towards organized religion is the same as Stalin during WW2 or Ben Gurion in the beginning of the state.
That’s why I support the exemptions for the ultra-orthodox. It’s basic to their conception of the religion. That’s why Volozhin was closed at the behest of secular Jews working for the Czar.
The coalition must be maintained. It seems only reform minded Jews want to “unify” and impose their views on everybody else.
It really doesn’t have to be “fair” or “democratic.”
And Hess would have agreed. He believed that wherever emancipation (which implies non-sectarian equality of rights and responsibilities) conflicted with Jewish self-determination, the latter must prevail.
Early biographers of Hess wrote that his wife was an ex-prostitute, However, a recent biography by an Israeli leftist somewhat defensively denies this; she was an educated and intelligent woman, he writes, and how could an educated woman have ever been a prostitute (????????). Actually, all sorts of women were, and are, driven to prostitution by extreme poverty and inability to find a “respectable” job that pays a living wage. In the nineteenth century, many prostitutes wanted nothing more than to marry a respectable man and lead a respectable, conventional life. I’m glad that Hess, who was desperately poor himself, enabled one such woman to quit “the life,” and obtain an education.They are said to have been a loving couple in a stable relationship. After Hess died, his widow published the definitive edition of his selected works.
@ adamdalgliesh:
“
Hess never broke with Marx, but continued to be active in Marx’s First International and a friend of Marx until his death. I have no idea what he Marx thought of Rome and Jerusalem, or if he ever read it. He left behind no comments on it. Marx’s essay “On the Jewish Question,” written in his twenties, is frankly and unambiguously antisemitic. Hess is said to have written an antisemitic pamphlet himself at around the time that Marx published “On the Jewish Question.” But he later changed his mind.
To be fair, my mother — big of her considering his betrayal and abandonment — said that when he was growing up in Hungary in the 20, 30s and 40s, he would have been lynched if he had been seen walking down the street with a non-Jewish girl.
“I hail from a long line of devout, strict, orthodox contrarians — none of whom got along with their fathers either.” – Sebastien Zorn
But, that’s just my personal bullshit, like you kehilla is yours Edgar.
The National project. That’s all that matters.
Focussss.
and like a lot of Hungarian Jews, Koestler, Herzl, Bela Kun.
Hero (1992). All there is, is bullshit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSijB9-Hw7g
Good Life Advice (last scene of Hero)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIFOCUGNTaY
This character always reminds me of my father
After my mother, my father dated and married a few women of different races and nationaties, the only common requirement appears to have been that they were all 25 years younger and none of them Jewish.
But, he rescued a lot of Jews during the Shoah. Counts for more in my book. In fact, the most. The rest was just his personal bullshit. Who cares.
Didn’t speak to him for the last few years of his life but I reluctantly went to his memorial service after my half-brother and a cousin asked me to. Not sure if his view had changed. There was a female rabbi. Of no importance, though.
Proud to have him in my family tree. Rescuers are royalty. And that includes Kushner, and I suppose, by extension, me. You may curtsey now.
@ Edgar G.:
I come from parents who scrambled to hide the Christmas Tree when my maternal grandfather (the only grandparent who was still alive when I was born) was coming by.
My only exposure to religion except for occasionally visiting cousins or great uncles for Passover or Chanukkha was that I went regularly to a liberal Episcopal church in the neighborhood — but only for Cub Scouts and Kundilini Yoga classes.
Until in the 70s my mother sister and i became New Age and my father remained agnostic
Definitions:
Edgar G. Said:
I am, basically, but the old fashioned kind. My people are my politics, The physical survival of my people; individuals don’t matter to me except on a one-one to basis.
I loathe the practice of judging people I or you don’t know personally on a personal basis. I am not my brother’s keeper.
“Rubber-necking is not compassion.” – Sebastien Zorn
@ Edgar G.:
I come from a Kehilla where they bury the Jew who married out, outside the enclosed area on the periphery…..
@ Sebastien Zorn:
It’s deleting your replies because it’s on my side, I bribed it with a better grade of oil to liubricate it’s works or should I have said “chip”.. Still very handy for you at this point.
@ Edgar G.:
I should have added “philosophical” to “political”.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
It may not strike you, with your mind-set, as relevant, but although I do wander sometimes, I believe it relates to your post, but not in a political sense. You are really talking like an Ultra Liberal Democrat who believes more in his politics than his People.
But…..I say…as Mr.Mann (Bernard Gorcey) said in “the Great Dictator”…..”Vell..I just dun’t see it det vay…” One of the best one line pieces of humour in the whole movie…considering the context.
It distresses me to hear that another Jew has married a goy. It destroys a family. I must have been born with that feeling. Not too hard to believe is it? Of course I’m a pre-war child who grew up amid violent Anti-Semitism and a “War against The Jews”. We lived for 5 years on the verge of being grabbed by the Nazis Our home was half destroyed by German bombs as I mentioned here la while back. You already mentioned your dipping in various streams of belief and it boggled my mind…..and a lot more…. But that’s you. I’m me.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I don’t think of Felix as arrogant, but earnest and sincere.
@ Edgar G.:
It is deleting all my replies so there is no point. I wonder if this will get through. Nothing you said strikes me as relevant. What individual Jews do with their lives, who they marry, how they live is irrelevant. All that matters is the Zionist project and he launched it.
He also delivered attacks on reform judaism that are relevant to this day. He didn’t have children, but so what if he had? They either would have converted to Judaism or become Christians. Who cares about what one person does in his private life? Better that than promoting a brand of Judaism that negates nationanhood of the Jewish people and calls for relinquishing the homeland and betraying fellow Jews like today Reform, etc. Better to leave entirely.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I’ll write a small megillah for you specially;
.
“Yes I know about Hess. And what I don’t know I can look up as everyone can. Those you mention are not me, and “machers’ say a lot more than their prayers and mean them less. I have an enormous antipathy to a Jew, especially not an ignoramus, and coming from a long line of Rabonim, marrying a shiksa. The children are lost, the way 70% of American Jews are going today. We destroy ourselves, no need for enemies to wipe us out. The Goyim only need to sit back and wait.
It took “German” Anti-Semitism to change his mind but not his atheism. There was also Jew hate in France.
I made many Goyishe friends, and I mean friends, who seriously told me that “The Jews killed Jesus; you killed our god..and you suffer from generation to generation for ever.” and crap like that. I was then in my 20s and these nitwits, otherwise good people, actually believed this crap, and didn’t feel embarrassed to say so. I’ve had people feeling under my hair to see if I had little stubs of horns, like Jews were supposed to have (along with thin hooves hidden by shoes, and little tails, supposedly cut off at birth.) Even though their eyes told them differently. This was IRELAND, “The Land of Saints and Scholars”, as they described themselves.
At one time in my youth over 90% of ALL priests around the world were Irish. They were proud of it.
I am not what you’d call religious by any means and a lot of the Talmudic stories unbelievable, except by credulous cretins…which came from the minds of men who had nothing better to occupy their minds, BUT…I am 100% Jew. I stand for traditional Judaism and my People. I revered our Community elders, because I knew what they went through just to be alive that day, also my teachers. Just like any normal person (your cue for a stab) .During the war it was said that Hitler had 3 cornered ears just like Haman…..
Hess was indeed a great thinker.. but he should have thought 100 times before marrying one of the persecutors. Of course by then I suppose he had no religion.. regardless of his later support for Zionism. Neither had Ben Gurion, but he was an acknowledged Jew..”
@ Edgar G.:
“When Theodor Herzl first read Rome and Jerusalem he wrote that “since Spinoza Jewry had no bigger thinker than this forgotten Moses Hess.” He said he might not have written Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) if he had known Rome and Jerusalem beforehand. Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky honored Hess in The Jewish Legion in the World War as one of the people that made the Balfour declaration possible, along with Herzl, Rothschild and Pinsker.”
Started out as a Communist journalist on the same paper as Marx. Introduced Engels to Marx. Phrase in Communist manifesto: “Religion is the opiate of the People” attributed to him.
Changed his mind when faced with German anti-semitism.
Wrote earliest Zionist manifesto. 1862.
Don’t be as arrogant as Felix. SZ
@ Sebastien Zorn:
The only significant thing about blowfish is that although edible they are so poisonous that one has enough to kill dozens of people. When I was in Japan about 50 years ago, they were a delicacy, but I wouldn’t “bite”.. I wanted to complete my business there before becoming adventurous, which i did to the extent of having a bath in a large wooden structure with lovely girls scrubbing my back. i’d forgotten all about that until now.
I’m glad i didn’t see the Moses Hess stuff. I heartily disapprove of men coming from Talmudic families marrying shiksas. For me it’s unforgivable when there are loads of highly intelligent beautiful Jewish girls who remain unmarried.
Or as my sainted fahther liked to say to me: “When they shit on your head, put on your steel helmet and wear it!”
Charming fellow, my father.
In this case it’s just a machine, nothing personal, nothing to wear; time to move on or aaargghh.
@ Edgar G.:
The machine has a life of its own. Happens to me all the time. I bet you don’t know that I posted all kinds of quotes from Moses Hess that disappeared. Don’t sweat it. If it’s that important, repost it, otherwise forget it. Especially chit chat. Geez! If I can say that here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA1sx-vyWVk
Incidentally, I was rather hurt and offended that none of you thought the pictures of blowfish I enclosed a link to were cute!
boo hoo.
@ Ted Belman:
TED- I can’t understand this. I actually saw the comment printed. Sebastien, in reply to Yamit 82 who introduced it, said it was new to him. I posted that I had often used it on Martin Sherman’s essays,where he took three times as long to make his points, as neccessary. And if it was new to him perhaps he didn’t read my posts etc.
It wasn’t a serious comment just a little pin-pricking. But I saw it transferred to the page and read it over. So we don’t know what happened. I didn’t put it on a different subject; it was 3-4 posts below that of Sebastien’s, So it’s a mystery and I accept that you did not censor. Thank you for responding.
@ Edgar G.:
I looked in spam and in trash and found no such comment.. I can only assume that the comment never appeared.
@ Edgar G.:
I deleted nothing.
@ Edgar G.:
http://www.aish.com/h/pur/t/ts/Stalin-and-the-Purim-Miracle.html
@ Edgar G.:@ Edgar G.:
I will not be posting again until I find out why TED deleted my comment concerning the word “bloviation”, when mentioned by Yamit82.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Well I’m certainly glad you told me this. And I have just checked in on the internet, as being true. I distinctly recall when young, that our English and Irish newspapers actually reported that they had been executed, and have thought so for for over 60 years. Thank you Adam, again.
@ Edgar G.: Actually, Edgar, after Stalin died, the Jewish doctors were released and exonerated. They were never executed. Criminal charges against some Jewish community leaders were also dropped. Over the next four years, Khrushchev released large numbers of political prisoners in the concentration camps, both Jews and Gentiles. Most were eventually given formal “certificates clearing them of all charges, which was called “rehabilitation.” There were no more mass executions of people on completely arbitrary or invented charges, as there were under Stalin. However, discrimination against Jews, and a nearly total ban on Jewish religious worship and Jewish cultural activity continued.
This statement by an Israeli scholar, from an article in TimesofIsrael that someone in this comment section cited as evidence for the “200,000 Jews murdered by Poles” theory, suggests to be that some historians of the period don’t buy the Polish genocide theory. “At least a few” Poles murdered Jews doesn’t sound like a vast number to me. I did not come across any reference to widespread Polish participation in the Holocaust in the standard histories of the Holocaust that I have read, such as the recent work the years of extermination by Saul Friedlander.
@ adamdalgliesh:
I’m wondering what the unexpected resistance from his docile Politburo associates was all about. When he conveniently died, as you say, his docile associates called it a Zionist Plot, or maybe a Jewish Plot and executed a large group of innocent Jewish doctors. It looks as if it was he, who kept them docile…
@ sabashimon:
DOUBLE DITTO..!!
@ adamdalgliesh:
I should imagine Adam, that the Jewish hatred of Poland that exceeds that against other countries, may stem from the fact that Jews lived there for many centuries in the most degraded conditions, approximating that of Russia. Since Russia ruled Poland for much of that time, the treatment compared, and in fact may have exceeded it because of the strict adherence to Catholicism practiced by the vast majority of Poles, which religion was violently Anti-Semitic.. So in later years, whilst much of Russian Anti-Semitism was official, the Jews were in the Pale of Settlement, comparatively left alone other than petty officialdom opressions. For a period of course, not all the time. But The Baltic States and Poland. were part of Russia at least from the late 18th century, and the Jews were more vulnerable.
This is just an off the cuff response, but I think that in part, it has somevalidity.
@ Sebastien Zorn: I am no Holocaust minimizer, Sebastian. I just think that it was the Germans that done it, not the Poles. Nearly all scholars of the Holocaust and most Holocaust survivors agree.
@ adamdalgliesh:
“Israel has driven away one of its few friends in Europe, and placed the few Jews still in Poland in jeopardy………”
It would seem to me that in a country that WASN’T inherently anti-Semitic, how Israel behaves would have no bearing on how that country’s Jews are treated.
But hey, that’s just me
@ yamit82:
Yes, he is engaging in revisionist history. I agree. It’s been well documented for a long time. This guy is a holocaust minimizer which took root after holocaust denial failed to fly. I can’t stomach even addressing him directly. I’ve encountered a lot of Polish anti-semitism online even before this.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/complicity-of-poles-in-the-deaths-of-jews-is-highly-underestimated-scholars-say/
@ yamit82: Fascinating, yet somewhat contradictory and muddled. Also, contains some misinformation. There are reliable reports that Stalin was planning to deport the Jewish population of the Soviet Union to Siberia, But this never actually happened. First Stalin unexpectedly encountered some resistance to his plan from his usual docile comrades on the Politburo. Then he conveniently died. Between 1945 and 1953, the Stalinist regime gradually ramped up persecution and discrimination against Jews. Large numbers of Jews who held senior executive positions were fired from their jobs. Quotas for Jews were reintroduced at universities and medical schools. Some Jewish community leaders were executed, and Yiddish culture and the Yiddish language were suppressed. But there were no mass killings of Jews. Antisemitic policies remained in place after Stalin’s death, but there were no mass killings It is not true that a million Jewish communists were sent to Eastern Europe after the war. There were never even remotely that many Jewish Communists in the Soviet Union. The number of Jews who moved from the Soviet territory to other East European countries numbered at most 300,000 or so. Nearly all were returning natives of those countries. And most of these returned refugees soon found their way to Israel or the United States with the tacit consent of the Communist authorities. Most were not Communists. I know several people who were among these refugees from Russia and/or Eastern Europe , and/ or their children, who are now Americans. Some of them may have had Communist sympathies while they were living in the Soviet Union, because they were brainwashed along with everyone else. But few of them retained those sympathies once they were on Israeli or American soil. The behavior of the Soviet rulers toward Jews was complex and ambivalent. The Soviet authorities rescued and protected some Jews and murdered many others. The same arbitrary and capricious behavior was manifested towards many other ethnic groups as well. While Hitler aimed at the annihilation of the Jews and a few Christian religious sects, such as the Amish and Hutterites, asw ell as some (not all) Romany tribes, Stalin’s murders were almost completely arbitrary and without rhyme or reason. Anyone of any race or religion might be put to death. And anyone might get lucky and survive. People were often rounded up to be sent to the camps on a random basis, simply to fill up the quotas of slave laborers required fro Stalin’s building and industrial projects. Stalin was pretty much an equal opportunity murderer. He even killed many of his best friends.
It should be noted that the declassified U.S. intelligence report , while describing antisemitism as widespread in Poland before, during and after the war, apparently did not say that Poles killed large numbers of Jews during the Holocaust, or that Poland was responsible for the Holocaust. That being the case, it was irresponsible for the Simon Wiesenthal Center to make use of the report to buttress these allegations.
Ukrainians, Rumanians, Hungarians, Lithuanians Latvians were all far more deeply implicated in the Holocaust than the Poles. The Rumanians butchered hundreds of thousands of Jews when they joined Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The Hungarian fascists killed thousands of Jews in 1944, and helped Eighman to round up tens of thousands more. The Ukranian collaborators massacred tens of thousands of Jews at Babi Yar and elsewhere in the Ukraine. Ukrainians, not Poles, staffed the Nazi death camps and operated the gas ovens. Lithuanian and Latvian collaborators also butchered tens of thousands of Jews in the ghettoes established by the S.S. in those countries.The Vichy regime as well as fascist militias in France of course handed over 75,000 French Jews for deportation to the death camps. All of these countries except for France have also made efforts to whitewash and rehabilitate Nazi collaborators as patriots in recent years. and to minimize or deny the role of their countrymen in the
Holocaust. Present day manifestations of antisemitism, even including the murder of several Jews, have been much more prevalent in these countries in recent years than in Poland. In Russia, too, manifestations of antisemitism, including the murder of several Jews, vandalizing of synagogues,etc. have been far more common in recent years than in Poland. But while Israel has indeed been critical of these behaviors by politicians in these countries, as it should be, there has been nothing remotely like the outburst of outrage by both Israel and Diaspora Jewish organizations over the Polish “Poland is innocent” law.
Obviously, many Jews have a special rage at Poland that greatly exceeds their anger at other European countries that were far more deeply implicated in the Holocaust. I don’t know why this is so. Jews generally seem willing to forgive even the Germans, but not the Poles. Sociologists should investigate why this is so.
adamdalgliesh Said:
Sounds like revisionist history to me Most Jews left Poland 1946-47 those few who remained were hard core Commies
kielce pogrom1946
Kielce pogrom
Don’t call me Russian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkQCQvMTFiY
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
Uncle Ivan Doesn’t Want Jew
Hugo Schmidt-Fischer Said:
Many nations were instrumental in the Holocaust: just about every European nation, America, and some Arabs. But the Soviets made the Holocaust possible. Notoriously full of Jews, the communist establishment prepared a mortal blow for Germany: with the 1939 non-belligerence pact Stalin lured Germany into attacking Britain, to further weaken the aggressor. With massive rearmament he hinted to the Germans of his own aggressive intent, forcing them to amass troops near the Soviet border. The Germans understood Stalin’s trap: he wanted to crush much of their army with a single strike. Such treachery called for revenge, and in the German mind Jews should be targeted.
The Soviets showed Germany that mass ethnic extermination works and is tolerated by international community. Soviet work camps were less deadly than German camps for Jews, but still more deadly for Jews than for gentiles. Soviet camps were no less deadly than German camps for gentiles: thus, 400,000 of 1.8 million Germans taken prisoner after the war died. German forced labor camps were modeled on Soviet ones; no other country practiced them at the time.
The Soviet Union openly started ethnic repression against Jews in 1940. But months before, the Russians had divided Poland with Germany so that Jewish towns fell to the Nazi regime, whose pattern of anti-Semitic repression was well-established by then. When some Polish Jews managed to flee the Nazis, the Russians interned them in Central Asia; ironically, most internees survived in that area, free of German occupation, which gave birth to a persistent canard that Soviet Jews sat out the war in safety.
Stalin allowed a considerable number of Jews to survive, but those were largely the families of ranking communists. About a million such Jews, mostly from Eastern Ukraine and Russia, fled before the advancing German troops. After the war, they changed the face of East European Jewry: it was transformed into a mass of hardcore communists.
Soviet policy explicitly aided the Nazi extermination efforts. Though information on mass murders became available from the first day of the war, it was deliberately suppressed. Given the variety of information sources and Soviet media, it took an order from the highest level to quash all the information on Jewish massacres. Even in the occupied territories, Soviet propaganda remained present through radio broadcasts, leaflets, and rumors—but the Jews were left unaware of their fate, and didn’t flee. This is not an issue of a state’s responsibility to its citizens: perhaps the trains were lacking, but Jews could still be told to flee on foot, and many might have escaped. The logistics bottleneck is over-touted: the retreating Soviets evacuated millions of communist activists’ family members, and the space could have been found for Jews. In many instances, Soviet authorities dissuaded and prohibited Jews from fleeing. The Red Army cordons turned away scores of Jewish refugees, notably from Latvia.
The Soviet establishment facilitated the Holocaust by passing to Germans the housing data on Jews. Most Soviet offices destroyed their documents before Germans took the cities: burning all papers was a standard practice. But housing and registration documents were left to Germans intact in every town, and allowed them to identify Jews, many of whom were assimilated and could not be identified in any other way.
Soviet propagandists made a great effort to counter the German propaganda. Soviet broadcasts dispelled every other German allegation, but were consistently silent on a single one: that Jews provoked the war. The population hated Jews and Jewish Bolsheviks anyway (half a million Russians served in the German army), and took the Soviet silence for tacit confirmation of German anti-Semitic propaganda. Common Soviet people collaborated with Germans in identifying the Jews.
The Holocaust enterprise was directed by Germans but manned by Slavs. Death squads and camps employed tens of thousands of Ukrainians, Slovaks, and Croats—but also many Russians.
The Soviets were careful not to obstruct the Holocaust. In their tens of thousands of bombing raids through Poland into Germany, Russian aircraft commonly overflew the death camps—but not a single bomb was ever dropped on them. The Russians bombed targets just miles away from the death camps, but not the camps themselves. Soviet partisan guerrillas waged a full-scale war on Germans in Byelorussia, sabotaging railroads and installations – but there was no concerted effort to stop the ongoing massacres, arm the ghetto inhabitants, or even inform them of the danger.
The Russians reconfirmed their policy toward Jews in 1953, when the entire country lauded the anti-Semitic rhetoric of its leadership. The intended relocation of Jews to Siberia, stopped by Stalin’s death, was unlike any other ethnic relocation, except the Poles’. Jews were herded specifically for death: pressed into cattle cars as during the Nazi massacres, transported to the coldest place in Siberia, where the only housing waiting for them was the shacks made of roofing felt, which allowed them no chance to survive the winter.
After the war, the Soviets covered German massacres of Jews while trumpeting and inflating other atrocities. The word “Jewish” was excised from reports and commemorations: rather, vague “Soviet citizens” were murdered. That policy cannot be explained by the state’s pandering to popular anti-Semitism; the state was unconcerned with popular feelings, and experience suggests that anti-Semites are not at all uncomfortable with Jews being mentioned in Holocaust accounts. The government suppressed the Jewish massacres for the same reason it suppressed many other wartime accounts, such as the massive collaboration with Nazis: shameful events that implicated the communist regime were stricken from the annals. The regime did not want questions about its own complacency and explicit aid to the murderers.
The Soviet Union didn’t actually save Jews. The Germans killed just everyone whom they could find, almost 100 percent of the Jews in the German-occupied Soviet territory. No statistically significant additional numbers of Jews would have been killed if the war had lasted for another few years. The Soviet Union nurtured the Nazi regime, provoked the war, and—regardless of the eventual victory—is responsible for Holocaust.
Mr. Schmidt-Fischer, this is a very eloquent and persuasive statement of yours. But I would still like more specific evidence for these claims. Given the efficiency of the Nazi regime, it seems extremely unlikely that as many as 200,000 Jews could possibly have escaped from the ghettoes after they were imprisoned there any the S.S. Of those who did escape, many may have been among the 500,000 Jews who did somehow manage to flee Poland, most of them to Soviet-ruled territory, during World War II. I personally know one Polish-Jewish family that have told me that they survived the war in Kazakhstan, Central Asia, with some modest help from the Soviet government,and much more from friendly local Kazakh peasants. After the war, they somehow succeeded in obtain visas to go to the United States.
Most of these 500,000 Jewish survivors eventually emigrated to Israel or the United States; but a certain number returned to Poland and lived reasonably comfortable lives there for many years, until the persecutions of the Communist Party’s “Anti-Zionist” campaign of 1967-68. In addition, some of those who fled from Jewish communities may have died from starvation, cold and disease in the dense Polish forests, where many attempted to find refuge, or were recaptured by the Nazis while attempting to flee Even some Jews were sheltered by Poles who did their best to save them nevertheless died. According to the published account of one surviving Jewish family (I don’t have it in front of me right now), A Polish farm family sheltered them for more than four years and fed them at great risk to themselves, in a secret underground shelter that the farmer and his sister constructed beneath their barn. beneath their barn. But despite their best efforts nonmember of the Jewish family died because their Polish protectors could not not find a doctor whom they could trust to visit the patient and administer medication.
My understanding is that the historian who has made these claims, a Polish-American man named Grosz if I remember his name correctly, has not presented much documentation for his claims of massive Polish participation in the Holocaust, and most other historians of this period in Polish-European history have not supported his claims. Any further information on these matters that you can provide to us, Mr. Schmidt-Fischer, will be read with great interest by me.
adamdalgliesh Said:
Within the Nazi extermination hell, according to historians, there was a shrinkage of 200’000 – 300’000 Jews that escaped Ghetto walls, barbed wires or cattle wagons. About 30’000 survived. The rest were finished off by local peasants and citizenry.
So this was hardly a 0.001 of Jews were killed by Poles as you are insinuating. And the murder figures in post War Poland were higher as well, than alleged by you.
Yes, there was support for Jews both formally, from the Polish government in exile, as well as from few brave individuals in Poland.
In fact, for decades, Jews and Yad Vashem and Israel, were the only ones to recognize this. Because after the War, righteous saviors in Poland kept their heroics secret, fearing for their lives. Their neighbors could kill them as happened from time to time, or their careers would be destroyed. I’m referring to after the War, and regarding Polish citizens that had saved Jews. Support for Jews did occur, but it was minute.
Agreed, Israel should cultivate Poland as a friend and importantly a friendly voice within the EU. It is still a friend in making, not yet convinced, but on the way.
Poland and Israel share common interests against the great threats, which both countries are starting to recognize. Both countries, because Israel as well has not yet articulated for itself, the inherent depravity of its enemy which no peace process will wash away.
Israel’s strong stand in the cold war, its victories against Soviet influence and arms are one reason for genuine sympathy to the Jewish state. Israel’s stand against an invading Islam is another reason. But rewriting Poland’s history, in order to strengthen relations is not the correct way forward.
Poland owns the responsibility for its failure in this new law for 100%.
But quite frankly, Israel’s foreign ministry has been caught sleeping. If they had engaged Sejm lawmakers 18 months ago, a more fortunate version of the law would have emerged. One that would have pointed out German culpability, without the foolish attempt of whitewashing Polish wrongs that can never be undone.
Instead of over 20 Ministers, Israel would do better with 5 or 10. One of which would be a foreign minister in full dedicated capacity, not as a side job.
Unquestionably, antisemitism was prevalent before, during and after World War II, as it was in France, Holland, Belgium, Italy England. and many other European countries, and in the United States as well. But so far, the anti-Poland “hawks” have not produced any evidence, at least in the general news media, that large numbers of Jews were murdered by Poles during or after World War II. The Jbwabwne massacre did occur, but it seems to have been an isolated incident. There were a small number of other murders of Jews by Poles scattered around Poland, but they did not result in nearly as many Jewish deaths as the Jbwabne incident. While there were few members of the Polish underground army who murdered Jews during the war, this type of behavior was not common among the resistance fighters and was not done on orders from the underground army’s high command, or from the Polish exile government in London. In fact, the Polish exile government denounced the murder of the Jews and helped to expose it to the American and British publics. The Polish London government also worked with the Jewish Agency for Palestine on plan for a joint Polish and Haganah task force to raid Auschwiitz and liberate its inmates. It was nixed by the British and American military commands. 99.9 per cent of the 3 million Polish Jews who were murdered during the war were killed by the Germans, not Poles. There were also some murders of Jews by Poles in the chaotic years after the war ended, but the communist-led government of the time definitely did not condone this behavior. It jailed the perpetrators when it could identify them. The total number of Jewish victims was probably less than one thousand, and may have been about 100. A vastly larger number of Germans were killed by the Poles after the war, including several hundred thousand who died in Polish concentration camps. None of these events from the distant past justify the massive, sudden outburst of rage at Poland by so many Jews in Israel and the Diaspora now. Israel has driven away one of its few friends in Europe, and placed the few Jews still in Poland in jeopardy, over an obscure historical dispute that has no connection to Israel’s present-day security problems. Such one-sided and unfair attacks on Poland are nothing short of madness. Why do we Jews have such an overwhelming determination to self-destruct?
The Nazi’s actually got educated by the Poles.
So the new law in Poland has it wrong. Crimes committed by the Third Reich can be ascribed to the Polish Nation and the Polish State was complicit.
Actually, it was the other way round.
In 1924 and 1925 Poland’s Premier Wladyslaw Grabsky introduced anti Jewish policies so severe that it resulted in a great immigration movement to Palestine, known as “the Grasski Aliyah”.