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Germany responsible for the Holocaust, not Nazis: Polish Prime Minister
The Local Germany ^ | 28 Jan 2019 | AFP

Posted on 01/30/2019 3:55:31 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege

Hitler's Germany was responsible for the Holocaust, not the Nazis, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Sunday, as Poland marked 74 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

"Hitler's Germany fed on fascist ideology... But all the evil came from this (German) state and we cannot forget that, because otherwise we relativise evil..."

"The Polish state acts as the guardian of the truth, which must not be relativised in any way."

"I want to make a promise here to (preserve) the complete truth about that era," he added, in a speech in the southern city of Oswiecim to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

Sunday's ceremony at Auschwitz was attended by a number of former prisoners at the camp.

Morawiecki's speech comes after last year's row over a Polish law that made it illegal to accuse the Polish nation or state of complicity in Nazi German crimes.

After protests from Israel and the US, Poland amended the law to remove the possibility of fines or a prison sentence.

Morawiecki appeared to be responding to an idea often mentioned in Poland, which claims that historians try to attribute responsibility for the genocide of Jews exclusively to the Nazis, without recalling the role played by the German state and Germans as a nation.

(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.de ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: antisemitism; germany; hitler; holocaust; mateuszmorawiecki; memory; nazis; poland; wwii
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Yep.


21 posted on 01/30/2019 4:29:01 PM PST by rrrod (just an old guy with a gun in his pocket)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

And the Poles helped out in whatever way they could.


22 posted on 01/30/2019 4:30:34 PM PST by babble-on
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To: colorado tanker

They seized power..... by winning an election.


23 posted on 01/30/2019 4:31:25 PM PST by babble-on
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To: CondoleezzaProtege
There's a quite a bit lost in translation. Try this excerpt:

“It was Hitler’s Germany which fed itself with Fascist ideology, which was later and still is today, named so by all historians . . . . “But all the evil came from that country and we cannot forget that, otherwise relativization of evil occurs."

He's saying that the proximate cause for Nazism and the Holocaust both is the German Nationality, the state, the people.

24 posted on 01/30/2019 4:37:00 PM PST by IndispensableDestiny
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To: Carl Vehse

WTF has that got to do with this article?


25 posted on 01/30/2019 4:39:53 PM PST by jmacusa ("The more numerous the laws the more corrupt the government''.)
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To: TigersEye

Have you read many WW2 histories in the last say, twenty years? Its always “Nazi’’’ this and “Nazi’’ that. It’s never “German or ‘’Germans’’.It’s as if the Nazis were this thing that fell out of the clouds one day into Germany.


26 posted on 01/30/2019 4:43:00 PM PST by jmacusa ("The more numerous the laws the more corrupt the government''.)
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To: babble-on

Eastern Europe is the bright spot in a darkening world.


27 posted on 01/30/2019 4:44:42 PM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: babble-on

Eastern Europe is the bright spot in a darkening world.


28 posted on 01/30/2019 4:44:42 PM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: babble-on

That shows great ignorance of what was going on at the time.


29 posted on 01/30/2019 4:44:43 PM PST by x
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To: babble-on
They seized power..... by winning an election.

Actually, no. Hitler lost to Hindenburg for the Presidency. The Nazis won a plurality and as the largest party in the Reichstag were allowed to put together a coalition government. They brought Hitler in as their Chancellor, which apparently was permitted at the time. Over roughly the next year, the Nazis pulled off a coup that eliminated all opposition, including their coalition partners. A few subsequent elections were allowed, but by then the Nazis were the only legal political party.

To be sure, however, the Nazis were popular in the early years.

30 posted on 01/30/2019 4:56:11 PM PST by colorado tanker
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Of course the Germans did it.

They’re anti-Israel today and are importing all sorts of anti-Semites from abroad.

We never should have let them become a nation again.

But we are a magnanimous country.


31 posted on 01/30/2019 5:13:41 PM PST by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

By this logic, we all share responsibility for the American genocide against the unborn (and occasionally the newborn).


32 posted on 01/30/2019 5:41:57 PM PST by UnwashedPeasant (Trump is fixing the world's problems just to distract us from Russia.)
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To: jmacusa
"WTF has that got to do with this article?"

It is the exact same logic, applied to current events and to all of us.

33 posted on 01/30/2019 5:43:27 PM PST by UnwashedPeasant (Trump is fixing the world's problems just to distract us from Russia.)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Poles are good people. He is right, Germany bears responsibility. But in the far east of Poland there were people who were cheerful and helpful Jew murderers.
Lviv scoured their city for Jews.

But I supposed you have to decide if you think Lviv was Pole or Uke.
The Poles fought hard against the Germans, and were generally not collaborators. Many ran great risk to hide Jews. But there was an element in eastern Poland and Western Ukraine and in the Baltics that were very helpful to the Nazis.

But at this point, the Poles should not worry about it and focus on the true enemy, islamists in Europe and make sure moslems and africans are kept out.


34 posted on 01/30/2019 5:49:50 PM PST by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ....)
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To: Zhang Fei

“All a Jew had to do to be accepted was conversion to Christianity in some form. Before the Nazis, that also worked in Germany, to the point that some high-level Nazis with partial Jewish ancestry got special exemptions.”

Idiotic. Yes, there were a few like Reinhard Heydrich and Emil Maurice who had Jewish backgrounds. But for everyone else accepting conversion would never save your life.

A full Jew was anyone with three Jewish grandparents. That definition was fairly simple. Defining part-Jews—Mischlinge (“mongrels”)—was more difficult, but they were eventually divided into two classes. First-degree Mischlinge were people who had two Jewish grandparents but did not practice Judaism and did not have a Jewish spouse. Second-degree Mischlinge were those who had only one Jewish grandparent.

The efforts to prove one’s non-Jewish ancestry generated a new cottage industry employing hordes of “licensed family researchers,” offering their services to anxious Germans afraid of a skeleton in the family closet.

Any of the three classes were targeted for extermination unless the nazis wanted to use them.


35 posted on 01/30/2019 5:59:24 PM PST by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ....)
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To: UnwashedPeasant

No it isn’t. Its moral idiocy. The subject has to do with a period of world history. Jesus Christ,go away. Why is it all the looney tunes here bother me? As a fact the Nazis were anti-abortionists, excepting of course when it came to the Jews.


36 posted on 01/30/2019 6:10:20 PM PST by jmacusa ("The more numerous the laws the more corrupt the government''.)
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To: jmacusa
I haven't read much about it but I've gotten the same impression from the popular media. In regards to that sugar coated history I am reminded of these words from our DoI ...

"... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ..."

Or their unjust powers. Governments don't occur in a vacuum. Or fall from the sky.

37 posted on 01/30/2019 6:10:39 PM PST by TigersEye (This is the age of the death of reason.)
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To: TigersEye
“Governments don't occur in a vacuum. Or fall from the sky’’. True indeed.George Washington once observed "Government is not eloquence .It is force,like fire a troublesome servant and a fearful master. As such it should never be put into the hands of the incompetent''. He should have added ''or the evil and malicious''.
38 posted on 01/30/2019 6:16:42 PM PST by jmacusa ("The more numerous the laws the more corrupt the government''.)
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To: colorado tanker

Franz von Papen and Wilhelm Frick were the two men most responsible for ‘’legalizing’’ the Nazi Party and getting a tired and befuddled Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor. von Papen was sentenced to eight years but was released in 1949 . Frick was hung at Nuremburg.


39 posted on 01/30/2019 6:20:27 PM PST by jmacusa ("The more numerous the laws the more corrupt the government''.)
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To: jmacusa

Yes, indeed! Mere incompetence would be a sweet relief from what the world is often faced with and we are less and less an exception to that these days. As a people, we may choose not to bear responsibility for it but we will certainly bear the consequences.

Nazi Germany was not an aberration of mankind but an abdication of responsibility and conscience and will.


40 posted on 01/30/2019 6:31:08 PM PST by TigersEye (This is the age of the death of reason.)
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