Poland’s overdue Holocaust education

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS / ^ | Monday, April 20, 2015 | Richard Cohen

[presidio9]

In the category of

[caww]

What he said was...."In their minds, the murderers and "ACCOMPLICES" of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn't do something evil." This is a factual statement..... For whatever reasons in their minds , be it protecting their own families, out of fear, or whatever...turning against or revealing Jews was indeed done...as was in 'every country' where the Nazi machine took over. That is historical as well.

The problem is every time a politician opens his mouth immediately the press jumps on it, or somebodies feelings are hurt or insulted...and the masses latch on and go with the flow.

This guy was Native 'German'....even they hid and helped the Jews...

[caww]

There were 'Germans' such as Schindler who saved many Jews....few know of this guy 'Berhold Beits" a 'German' Industrialist.

While at a dinner with his grandfather he met 'Reinhard Heydrich', chief of the Nazi SS special police and a principal designer of the “final solution” to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

Beitz heard Heydrich discussing the strategically important oil fields in what was then Poland and expressed interest in the work.... Then in his late 20s, Beitz soon received a military commission to serve as business manager of the 'Carpathian Oil company in Boryslaw', Many of the company’s workers were Jews.

In 1942, he saw babies tossed from windows during the liquidation of a Jewish orphanage, an experience that left him deeply scarred.

Beitz used his connections with Nazi officials as well as what he described as “self-assurance” and “incredible luck” to carry out a daring and risky rescue effort...... Permitted to review transports of Jews before they left for Nazi death camps, Beitz pulled from the trains his employees and others.... In August 1942, Beitz removed 250 Jews from a transport to the Belzec camp by calling them “professional workers.”

“I should have employed qualified personnel,” he said, “Instead, I chose tailors, hairdressers and Talmudic scholars and gave them all cards as [vital] ‘petroleum technicians.’

Meanwhile, Beitz secretly relayed to his Jewish acquaintances information about impending roundups and deportations. He and his wife, Else, risked their own security to hide Jews even in their home.

The exact number of Jews saved by Mr. Beitz is not easily determined. Some estimates place the number as high as 800. But he remained haunted by one person whose life he could not save.

Once, he went to the railway station before a transport and recognized among the deportees one of his secretaries and her elderly mother. Mr. Beitz pulled both women from the cattle car. The SS guard, unconvinced of the older woman’s value to the company, ordered her back onto the train.

Unable to bear such a separation, the secretary turned to Mr. Beitz. “Herr Direktor, may I [also] return to the car?” she asked.... She never came back.

[caww]

I’m not forgetting that....

Again...the neighboring communities knew all to well what was happening in these camps....they could have , unless they were ok with it, sent ambassadors to the World Body at that time. They could have left the country and gone to those who could do something about it.

The problem was it was all kept “secret” ....

[caww]

If you were a judge, how would you assess the “responsibility” of these people for what happened in the world between 1933 and 1945?

1 — Not responsible
2 — Minimally responsible
3 — Responsible
4 — Very responsible

1. One of Hitler’s direct subordinates, such as Heinrich Himmler or Joseph Goebbels
2. A German who voluntarily joined Hitler’s special elite, the SS
3. A German industrialist who financially supported Hitler’s rise to power and
continued to support him verbally
4. A judge who carried out Hitler’s decrees for sterilization of the “mentally
incompetent” and internment of “traitors”
5. A doctor who participated in sterilization of Jews
6. A worker in a plant making Zyklon B gas
7. The Pope, who made no public statement against Nazi policy
8. An industrialist who made enormous profits by producing Zyklon B gas
9. A manufacturer who used concentration camp inmates as slave labor in his plants
10. An American industrialist who helped arm Hitler in the 1930s
11. A person who voluntarily joined the Nazis in the 1930s
12. A person who agreed to publicly take the Civil Servant Loyalty Oath (swearing
eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler in 1934)
13. A person who complied with the law excluding Jews from economic and social life
14. A person who regularly, enthusiastically attended Hitler rallies

[dfwgator]

In Lodz, where my wife is from, the Germans had to create a no-go zone around the walls surrounding the Jewish ghetto and stipulated that anyone found within it would be shot on sight.

Lodz Ghetto was notorious for their leader, Chaim Rumkowski. The story is, when he was himself shipped to Auschwitz, the Jews got to him, before the Germans did.

[Cronos]

correction, yoe Poland the new German East had six or more death camps

Poland ceased to exist in 1939 -- it as a country was terminated and its people were to be exterminated as well to make room for Germans. The name was also wiped out and broken into districts incorporated into various German states.

[Cronos]

Firstly, caww -- there was no Poland (see my post above) -- it ceased to exist in 1939

Secondly, Poles were also tossed into German concentration camps

Thirdly the Armia Krajowe (the partisan anti-occupation underground) told the British and the American governments about the death camps -- but FDR and Churchill did nothing about this and the press did nothing either

Finally -- why were there so many camps on what was Polish territory? Because that's where most of Europe's Jewry was -- the Germans were and are efficient -- it's more efficient to kill people where they live rather than truck them a thousand miles away

And, btw, people were aware -- that's why the Israeli Yad Vashem (Righteous Gentiles), on that, the largest group of people who saved Jews are Poles.

In the Polish territories, unlike ANYWHERE else in occupied Europe, if you protected or helped a Jew, you and your family would be sent to the camps yourself or shot. So you took the risk of getting your family killed. Yet many Poles took that risk for their fellow Poles who were Jewish.

[Cronos]

caww "Don't play down Polands role in this or any other country that went along to get along with the Nazi's...and I speak of the citizenship...not just the leaders"

With due respect, your statement is wrong on many, many levels

1. Poland ceased to exist in 1939 -- Hitler wanted it and its people exterminated. He hated Poles just after Jews
2. Poland never officially surrendered, there was NO collaborationist government unlike France or Norway.
3. Poles who were not of German origin did not support the Nazis -- at the very least for the simple reason that the Nazis wanted to exterminate the Polish nation as well as the Jewish nation (oh and btw, many Poles of German origin didn't support the Nazis either)
4. Poland as a nation did not "get along with the Nazis" -- please read the history, it was occupied and torn apart. It was neither an ally like the Estonians or Lithuanians or Hungarians nor a collaborationist state like the Norwegian or French. It was a torn apart nation
5. The leaders fought against the Nazis. Even during the occupation -- WHO spread word to the Western world that a massacre was going on? The Polish partisan AK (and the West ignored it) -- WHO gave aid to the Jews in the ghettos and camps and even had a Jewish division (The Bielski brigade)? The Polish partisan AK? -

And the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943 was supported by Poles -- the GErman officer in charge of the liquidation wrote

When we invaded the Ghetto for the first time, the Jews and the Polish bandits succeeded in repelling the participating units, including tanks and armored cars, by a well-prepared concentration of fire. [...] The main Jewish battle group, mixed with Polish bandits, had already retired during the first and second day to the so-called Muranowski Square. There it was reinforced by a considerable number of Polish bandits. Its plan was to hold the Ghetto by every means in order to prevent us from invading it. [...] Time and again Polish bandits found refuge in the Ghetto and remained there undisturbed, since we had no forces at our disposal to comb out this maze. [...] One such battle group succeeded in mounting a truck by ascending from a sewer in the so-called Prosta [Street], and in escaping with it (about 30 to 35 bandits). ... The bandits and Jews – there were Polish bandits among these gangs armed with carbines, small arms, and in one case a light machine gun – mounted the truck and drove away in an unknown directiom

And finally A year later, during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, Batalion Zośka, one of the most notable Polish insurgent units, liberated hundreds of Jews from the Gęsiówka section of the Warsaw Concentration Camp

Please do read the history, caww

[Cronos]

I agree with Thomas -- caww, please do read

Here is the map of Polish territories after 1939 -- hint, Poland didn't exist

[Cronos]

The ones who made the choice of the lesser evil (Nazis) vs Soviets were the Finns, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians — and scarily, they were correct, the Communists were worse.

[Cronos]

No...it's that ‘the citizens’ knew what was happening at the camps . They knew what the Nazi Agenda was regarding the Jewish population.

And those citizens were next in line for termination as per the German publicized lebenstraum rule. Those citizens knew that if they even gave bread to the Jews, they and their families would be sent to concentration camps as well

[Cronos]

The Pope condemned the Nazis in his encyclical ""On the Unity of Human Society."

Hitler killed Catholics as well as Protestants (except his Nazi German "Protestantism" which aimed to "replace the Jewish Christ with an Aryan Christ" -- so not Protestant or Christian in any way)

finally, When 60,000 German soldiers and the Gestapo occupied Rome in 1943, thousands of Jews were hiding in churches, convents, rectories, the Vatican and the papal summer residence. On September 27, 1943, one of the Nazi commanders in Rome demanded that the Jewish community pay one hundred pounds of gold within thirty-six hours or three hundred Jews would be taken prisoner. When the Jewish Community Council was only able to gather only seventy pounds of gold, they turned to the Vatican. In his memoirs, the then Chief Rabbi Zolli of Rome writes that he was sent to the Vatican where he was met by the Vatican treasurer and secretary of state who told him that the Holy Father himself (i.e., the Pope) had given orders for the deficit to be filled with gold taken from the Treasury.

Please do read before making false statements

[Cronos]

There is considerable documentation in support of Pope Pius' fear that a formal statement would worsen, not improve, conditions for the persecuted. Ernst von Weizsacker, the German ambassador to the Vatican during World War II, wrote in his memoirs:

Not even institutions of worldwide importance, such as the International Red Cross or the Roman Catholic Church saw fit to appeal to Hitler in a general way on behalf of the Jews or to call openly on the sympathies of the world. It was precisely because they wanted to help the Jews that these organizations refrained from making any general and public appeals; for they were afraid that they would injure rather than help the Jews thereby

Pius learned precisely how firm this German threat was from the protest of the Dutch bishops against seizures of the Jews, for immediately following that protest and, as later confirmed by an SS officer, in direct answer to it, the Nazis stepped up their anti-Jewish activities in the Netherlands; a week after the pastoral letter was read at all the masses in Holland, the SS rounded up every priest and monk and nun who had any Jewish blood whatever, and deported them to concentration camps

[Cronos]

That the Pope was deeply antagonistic to the racism the National-Socialists advocated is evident from his work prior to his election to the papacy. The famous Mit Brennender Sorge shows the hand of Pacelli, then Vatican Secretary of State; more directly, as papal legate, Pacelli spoke these scathing words to 250,000 pilgrims at Lourdes on April 28, 1935:

They [The Nazis] are in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of the social revolution, whether they are guided by a false conception of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult.

This even caused the Nazi collaborationist Slovak government to say

"It is incomprehensible to the government that ecclesiastic circles and especially the Catholic clergy should today adduce so many protests against the elimination of the Jews, who in the past were most responsible for the misery of the Slovak people . . . . The Slovak clergy save for a few honorable exceptions has rarely showed such zeal for the interests of its own people as it does now for the interests of the Jews, and in many cases even for those who are not baptized . .

The Holy See's interest in the plight of the Romanian Jews is attested to by Archbishop Cassulo's own official messages and memoranda as well as the testimony of Rabbi Safran. On November 24, 1942, the apostolic nuncio sent Mihail Antonescu a note which read in part:

"Ever since the Romanian government has come to believe itself bound to examine the diverse aspects of the Jewish question in Romania and to solve it in accordance with the country's interests, the Holy See has been concerned, above all other considerations, with . . . the respect that must be assured to every innocent person who is abandoned and without support . . .

The action taken to help the Jews in Hungary was manifold. In the spring of 1944, the papal nuncio, Msgr. Angelo Rotta, warned that country on the first day of the deportation of Jews that the whole world knew what they really signified; on June 25, 1944, he delivered Miklos Horthy a letter which was a strong protest from the Pope.28 Prior to the onslaught on Hungarian Jews by the Fascists, Hungary responded to promptings from the Vatican and gave asylum to Jewish refugees from Poland and Slovakia. As the bloodbath swept Hungary, the Vatican notified its nuncios in Budapest and Bratislava to watch the situation and do all they could for the welfare of Jewish refugees.29 At about the same time, the Pope had the following message sent to the World Jewish Congress, with which he was in communication during the war:

"Whenever reports reached the Holy See that the situation of the Jews in Hungary was becoming worse, steps were immediately taken to assist these people and to alleviate their condition. The Holy See gives assurance that it will continue to act in behalf of these Jews. Following instructions from the Holy See, the Apostolic Nunciature in Budapest has repeatedly intervened with the Hungarian authorities so that violent and unjust measures would not be taken against the Jews in that country. The bishops of Hungary have engaged in an intense activity in favor of persecuted Jews. The action on the part of the Nunciature and the bishops will continue as long as necessary...The Holy Father...[sent] a personal open telegram to the Cardinal [Archbishop of Strigonium (Esztergom)], and in this communication His Holiness again manifested his heartfelt interest in promoting the welfare of all those exposed to violence and persecution because of their race or religion or on account of political motives. The Holy Father gives assurance that he will, in the future as in the past, do everything in favor of these people in Hungary or in any other European country.30

The Pope's words, discreet as they are, give little indication of how intense the clergy's activity was. The nuncio spoke out sharply, as did the Hungarian bishops, and simultaneously undertook as widespread rescue measures as possible. Helped by priests and nuns, he and the bishops sheltered several thousand Jews, distributed false papers, and provided information, clothing, and food; Laszlo Endre, the Undersecretary of the Interior in the Nazi government, said testily that as far as aid to the Jews is concerned, priests and clergy men . . . unfortunately are in the first rank. Protection and intervention have never been on such a large scale as today

[Cronos]

Archbishop (later Cardinal) Jules Gerard Saliege of Toulouse and read on August 23, strongly echoed the principles stressed over and over by Pius:

"There is a Christian morality . . . that confers rights and imposes duties. These duties and these rights come from God. One can violate them. But no mortal has the power to suppress them. Alas, it has been our destiny to witness the dreadful spectacle of children, women, and old men being treated like vile beasts; of families being torn apart and deported to unknown destinations. . . . In our diocese, frightful things are taking place in Noe and Recebedou [camps]. . . . The Jews are our brethren. They belong to mankind. No Christian dares forget that!35

A week later the priests of the diocese of Montauban read to their congregations a letter from their bishop, Pierre-Marie Theas:

"On behalf of my outraged Christian conscience, I raise my voice in protest [against the treatment of Jews], and I assert that all men, Aryans and non-Aryans, are brothers because they have been created by the same God; that all men, whatever their race or religion, have the right to be respected by individuals and states. The present anti-Semitic pressures flout human dignity and violate the most sacred rights of the human person and family. . . .36

That Pius' exhortations were effective, and that local officials charged with "the Jewish question" recognized this, there is no doubt. Witness a communication to SS Standard-Leader Dr. Knochen in early summer of 1943 concerning south-eastern France, then occupied by Italian forces:

"A treasonable propaganda is exploiting this difference between the conceptions of the German and the Italian governments in the matter of solving the Jewish question. it is inspired by the Vatican.

caww, educate yourself When the Nazis forbade ritual slaughter to the Jews, the Pope sent shohetim into Vatican City to perform the ritual slaughter and store food for the Jews sheltered there. Many Jewish citizens, expelled from government, scientific, and teaching positions, were invited to the Vatican; the president and two professors from the University of Rome and a famous geographer, all Jews ousted by the Fascists, received important positions in Vatican City. Bernard Berenson, who preferred to remain in Italy during the war, was given asylum in a villa near Florence, which belonged to the Holy See's minister to the Republic of San Marino, so that he could continue to work and live unmolested; he and his family stayed there, under the flag of the Vatican's diplomatic immunity, until British and American troops arrived in the late summer of 1944.

[caww]

I can’t buy that people were simply afraid.......even the local police in communities were assisting the Nazi’s to slaughter the Jews.....Bulgarian authorities were actually helping to round them up and set them off..... Estonian auxiliary forces assisted the German Einsatzgruppen in the mass shootings of Jews....Same in Ukraine, Belarous, Lithania, Astonia and on and on.

Look...Hitler ‘clearly and distinctly’ warned the entire world that the Jews would be wiped out unless evacuated by the Democracies..and he did so as he was filling the prisons...It was even published in our newspapers here.

[caww]

I really don’t care to get into what the Vatican did or didn’t do...there was plenty of bad events happening they went along with ...and like others plenty who tried to help...even the German people tried to hide and assist the Jews...

The idea is that the world knew and still this went on and on and on...often with the help of local authorities and peoples. People chose not to believe this was possible....even with the evidence in hand.

[Cronos]

Caww post 64: The Pope, who made no public statement against Nazi policy

then after I showed you overwhelming evidence that your statement was wrong, you change it to post 77 I really don’t care to get into what the Vatican did or didn’t do

really?

If you don't care about this, why make that false statement?

[Cronos]

There were no “plenty of bad events that they went along with...” — you can’t make false statements and then when shown they are wrong come up with “I really don’t care to get into what the Vatican did or didn’t do”

[Cronos]

caww: The idea is that the world knew and still this went on and on and on...often with the help of local authorities and peoples. People chose not to believe this was possible....even with the evidence in hand.

How many times to tell you -- there was no "local authority" in occupied Poland in WWII -- Poland was torn apart.

let's take it that caww is a Christian living in Kraków in 1942 and has a Jewish neighbor. The neighbor is going to be rounded up and sent to a camp. You probably know it's going to be hard like the Soviet gulags, but you also KNOW that if you help him and are discovered, you and your family are going to be sent to the camp. What do you do?