Posted on 01/31/2005 2:40:20 PM PST by Joanna Najfeld
The Polish KoLiber Association's Letter to the Editor of the NYT re. Mr. Craig Smith's Jan 27 article "World Leaders Gather for Auschwitz Ceremony"
To the Editor:
Dear Sir,
I am writing on behalf of myself and the organization I represent to express our utmost outrage as members of the Polish nation, at the depiction of Polish-Jewish relations by Mr. Craig Smith in his article, "World Leaders Gather for Auschwitz Ceremony," published in your January 27th, 2005 edition.
We feel deeply offended by the harmful and untrue ideas expressed in the following statement: "for Russia it is a commemoration of its often-overlooked role as liberator, while for Poland and other Central European countries it is both part of a gradual recognition of their complicity in the killing and an opportunity to draw closer to Europe."
Please, be informed that Poland is not recognizing its complicity in the killing, as there was no such complicity on the part of our Nation. The author's statement to the contrary belies either his objectivity and/or basic knowledge of the facts of world's history.
(continued below...)
(Excerpt) Read more at koliber.net ...
To refresh the author's memory, it was the Germans who invaded Poland in 1939 and shortly after built concentration camps to slaughter people of many nations, mainly Jews and Poles. Polish authorities never collaborated with the Nazi occupants.
On the contrary, Poles constitute the majority of those awarded the honorary title "Righteous Among the Nations" by the Yad Vashem Institute, a title awarded for heroic conduct in saving the lives of Jews during the times of the Nazi genocide. To deny the heroic role of Poles as the nation who saved most Jews, often at the expense of their own lives, is at best evidence of ignorance of basic historical facts.
As to the "Russia's often-overlooked role as liberator", we advise you to reflect over the reasons for this state of affairs. Wartime acts of genocide were committed by both Germans and Russians, who invaded Poland in September 1939 and shortly after started slaughtering thousands of Polish troops in Katyn. In the meantime, they built their own concentration camps at Kolyma and in Siberia, some of which lasted for much longer than the German ones and were witness to just as much pain and suffering.
Moreover, the victims of Communism vastly outnumber the victims of Nazism, which is not to excuse the latter in any way, but rather to point out that it is only natural that Soviets were considered more of a new occupying force, than liberators of the Nazi concentration camps in Poland. After all, following the Soviet "liberation" of Poland, we have been subject to nearly half a century of brutal Communist rule - dark times in the history of Poland not easily forgotten.
For all the reasons mentioned and also for the sake of the credibility and good name of your world-wide respected newspaper, we urge you to issue an apology and a correction of those false, harmful and ultimately offensive words of Mr. Smith, written, hopefully, out of lack of knowledge rather than on purpose.
Yours faithfully,
Joanna Ewa Najfeld Spokesman, The KoLiber Association, Poland najfeldATkoliber.net www.KoLiber.net
on behalf of: Pawe³ Podsiedlik Chairman, The KoLiber Association, Poland www.KoLiber.org
A copy of this letter is available at our websites:
http://www.koliber.net/index/index.php?action=show&object=article&id=2993 http://koliber.org/informacje.php?co=2&id=1168
I notice the NYT ignored their OWN complicity in Stalin's murder of millions of his own citizens.
Exactly.
It is true that many individual Poles behaved heroically in saving Jews.
It is equally true that many individual Poles jumped at the chance to avenge themselves on those they had hated for a very long time.
No Polish government participated in the slaughter, as to varying degrees the Dutch, Belgian, French, Italian, etc. governments did. Unfortunately, this may have been only because the Germans would allow nothing resembling a government, even a puppet government, among the "subhuman" Poles.
He probably used the NY Times as a source, LOL, their archives are no better than their daily fishwrap.
Gee, gotta' pity those poor Russians. Those horrible, ungrateful Poles don't feel grateful that the Russians liberated them from the Germans and then proceeded to turn the entire Polish nation into a prison camp.
[/Sarcasm off]
The left wing people who live in the free United States supported the Communist Stalin, and even Hitler before Hitler invaded the USSR, so it would be only natural that they would blame Poland and not their God Stalin. Read history the left went on strike to keep war supplies from being sent to the UK up until Germany invaded the USSR. After that they supported sending supplies to the USSR and to the UK.
Oh, Bravo! The NYT exposes their ineptitude on a daily basis, and as a friend of the U.S., Poland is no friend of the NYT.
I was just reading Malcolm Muggeridge's account of Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fraud from the Times who was their bureau chief in Moscow in the 1930s. Muggeridge was there at the same time, and he said that not only was Duranty obviously covering up Stalinist atrocities, his editors back in New York were completely aware that he was. Of the many slavishly-devoted Liberals of the day who parroted the Soviet line, Duranty was considered the most extreme example of blatant propagandist among his fellow reporters. The Times has a long history of unapologetic boosterism for totalitarian regimes, so it is no wonder that it puts out a story extolling the role of the Soviets as "liberators." There is no one in Poland who considers the Soviets liberators, and in fact the impression I get is that they hate the Russians far more than they do the Germans. The Times is a despicable piece of garbage.
There was, I believe a government in exile in England. For certain there were Polish troops and at least one Polish squadron in the Battle of Britain July-Sept 1940
A Holocaust and a half--and the Old Gray Whore of record was up to its neck in blood.
And of course it would be the tiniest of footnotes that Stalin and Hitler inked a friendship treaty, which, followed by Barbarossa, caused whiplash on the NYT editorial staff.
Unfortunatelly, NYT fishwrap is not alone. In all other MSM Auschwitz is regularly called POLISH CONCENTRATION CAMP or POLISH EXTERMINATION CAMP.
This is blattant case of Nazi revisionism - Auschwitz is GERMAN NAZI EXTERMINATION CAMP IN OCCUPIED POLAND.
I suggest that Polish organisations (e.g. Polish American Congress, Polish Army Veterans Association, Polish Home Army, Polish Legion of American Veterans, U.S.A.) create joint fund, hire top gun lawyer's firm and SUE EACH AND EVERY media outlet calling Auschwitz "polish concentration camp".
Don't fool ourselves, the majority of American population can not show Poland on the map, let alone knowing the history of WWII and who is responsible for THE HOLOCAUST.
It is also important to remember that 10,000 Nazis have settled in U.S. after the war. Many of them never faced justice for the crimes committed in Europe.
They are EAGER to tar Poles in order to finally escape justice.
The proceeds from the damages should be used for public education of what happened in WWII Poland.
Nazis are slowly regsaing in peace what they have lost in war.
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Polish%20contribution%20to%20World%20War%20II
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/List%20of%20Polish%20divisions%20in%20WWII
You are right, but this is also our fault - we don't promote our history.
I asked this question before on another thread, but got no response.
If you compared two occupations - German and Russian / Nazi and Soviet - which one was the lesser evil?
Can you post any links or references to the actual articles where NYT uses the expression POLISH CONCENTRATION CAMP or POLISH EXTERMINATION CAMP?
Here is the article that got everyone fired up. I don't see ANYTHING offensive there.
January 27, 2005
World Leaders Gather for Auschwitz Ceremony
By CRAIG S. SMITH
KRAKOW, Poland, Jan. 26 - Heads of state, prominent Jews, Nazi death camp survivors and a handful of their liberators began gathering here Wednesday in a heavy snowstorm to commemorate the freeing of thousands of people from the nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 60 years ago.
As many as 1.5 million people, including 1 million Jews, met their death at the Auschwitz complex, which included three main camps and 39 smaller camps 40 miles southwest of Krakow. Most were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the second of the main camps, that has come to symbolize the much broader Holocaust in which 6 million Jews died.
The commemoration Thursday, the largest ever, marks the liberation of the camp on Jan. 27, 1945. It will take place at a memorial built between the ruins of two of the camp's gas chambers.
The ceremony this year has an air of urgency as Jewish organizations work to ensure that awareness of the Holocaust persists after living memories of it die. This is likely to be the last major anniversary to be attended by both camp survivors and their former Soviet Red Army liberators. Only seven liberators are expected to attend the ceremony Thursday. All of them are in their 90's.
A forum on Thursday, sponsored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Israel and the European Jewish Congress, will seek commitments from European leaders to institutionalize the teaching of the Holocaust, drawing on educational programs and materials developed by Yad Vashem.
"The numbers of world leaders coming and the readiness of the media to follow the commemoration is greater than before, but the event is also more important now with a new anti-Semitism building in Europe," said the head of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev, arguing that without a systematic approach to teaching about the Holocaust, its meaning for future generations may fade. "We need a concrete commitment out of this ceremony."
That commitment is all the more critical now because a growing number of Europe's young Muslims are resisting, even rejecting, efforts to teach them about the Holocaust, arguing that there is not enough attention paid to the killing of innocent Muslims by Israel or the United States-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Teachers are reluctant to teach about the Holocaust in some schools, particularly in France, Belgium and Denmark. Mr. Shalev said that most of his organization's educational exchanges with France are now with the country's private Jewish institutions.
The commemoration will be attended by heads of state from Russia, Poland, Germany, France and Israel along with political leaders from nearly 40 other countries. Vice President Dick Cheney will attend on behalf of the United States. He arrived Wednesday and met with the Polish President, Aleksander Kwasniewski, a staunch supporter of the war in Iraq who is facing increasing public pressure to bring Polish troops home.
"We have to remind our youth that these great evils of history were perpetrated not in some remote uncivilized world but in the very heart of the civilized world," Mr. Cheney told a gathering of survivors and their families at the Galicja Jewish Museum in Krakow Wednesday. Exhibits there trace several centuries of Jewish history in southern Poland.
The commemoration means different things to each nation: for Russia it is a commemoration of its often-overlooked role as liberator, while for Poland and other Central European countries it is both part of a gradual recognition of their complicity in the killing and an opportunity to draw closer to Europe. Poland and several other former Soviet bloc countries joined the European Union last year and the rest are waiting to join.
A recent string of anti-Semitic attacks across Europe and other unsettling events, such as the widely publicized photograph of Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, wearing a Nazi uniform at a costume party earlier this month and a walkout by far-right German legislators during a minute's silence for Nazi victims on Friday, have raised concerns that the horrors of the Holocaust are being forgotten.
Moshe Kantor, chairman of the European Jewish Congress, warned that the rise in anti-Semitic incidents should not be ignored.
"From broken windows to death camps was the blink of an eye," Mr. Kantor said, referring to the four years between the 1938 attacks on German Jews known as Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, and the 1942 Wannsee Conference at which German leaders discussed the "final solution to the Jewish question in Europe."
At a dinner Wednesday, Mr. Kantor talked of the need to pass on personal recollections of the Holocaust, not just statistics or historical accounts. As an example, he told of meeting an elderly woman during a visit to the Birkenau camp several years ago. She remarked to him that the camp looked different when she was interned there because there was no grass then; starving prisoners had eaten it all.
Which was the lesser evil? Nazi vs Soviet? Both equally evil.Total disregard for humanity.IMO,Hitler would have surpassed Stalin/Lenin.
Source: FOX NEWS, January 28
This is offensive. Cheney toured GERMAN NAZI CAMP'S brick buildings.
I've read it. If you read my message #22 on this thread and, especially, the linked article from the Polish embassy site you will see that they are right.
WHAITASECOND!
That's FOX, not Nu Ork Times.
Why don't you complain to the big mouth?
Just because someone writes an opinionated and slanted piece at the same time identifying himself as a person of Jewish Faith does not mean that he is telling the truth.
I myself am a person of Jewish origin.
Look further than just one link, the truth is out there, you can't deny it.
This is an important article. Can someone translate it and post?
The phrase "Polish concentration Camp" appeared for the first time in 1972. It is evident that it is carefully planted, planned to bear fruit once The Holocaust survivors are not alive any more.
This is NAZI REVISIONISM AT WORK.
Have you heard the phrase "Transinistria"?
Romania deported Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina across the Dniestr where most of them were imprisoned in camps and starved to death. Hundreds of thousands died. There were massive pogroms in Iasi, Bucharest, and other cities. Romania's Jews were spared deportation, which by the terrible standards of the Nazi governments makes the Iron Cross look good, but please don't tell us that Antonescu was a protector of the Jews. Everything was about opportunity and whatever value they could get out of the Jewish community as hostages.
Please, as if there is a single soul in the country reading the article who doesn't know that "Polish" refers only to the location. Most people are pretty well-informed about the link between the Holocaust, the Nazis, and Germany. You shouldn't get upset.
The New York Times has a documented history of misusing the phrase Polish Concentration Camps. Look in their archives. Your ignorance on the subject does not change reality.
You gotta be kidding. Almost a half of adult Britons have never heard of Auschwitz
And they live within arm's reach of Poland and have many Poles living in England.
It would be interesting to see similar poll in U.S. of A, having in mind American < a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1120_021120_GeoRoperSurvey.html">affitinty to history and geography
The power of media is REPETITION and FIXATION of ERRONEUS INFORMATION in public mind until it becomes a common knowledge and undisputed 'fact'.
I've heard that statistic and I question both its accuracy and its relevance. (In Britain, the camp most associated with the Holocaust is Belsen, because it was liberated by British troops in 1945.)
Those people who have not heard of Auschwitz are very unlikely to be reading articles in the New York Times about its liberation, and they're certainly not going to imprinted with the idea that it was a Polish crime because of one word in the article. If they don't know about it, odds are it's because they don't care.
Communists killed more people than Nazis - it should be obvious for everyone with at least basic education. What's your problem ?
"I am beginning to think that half of Poland is Jewish."
Why ?
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