Posted on 01/25/2010 7:53:17 PM PST by smokingfrog
A leading Polish Catholic bishop caused a stir on Monday when he was quoted as saying that Jews had "expropriated" the Holocaust as a "propaganda weapon".
The comments by Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, a former head of the Polish bishops' conference, prompted concern among Jewish leaders in both Poland and Italy after they were published on the conservative Italian Catholic website www.pontifex.roma.
Pieronek later went on Polish television to say his comments had been manipulated and he denied one phrase in which he was quoted as saying "the Holocaust as such is a Jewish invention".
He also said that he did not "authorise" the publication of the interview, which was still on the website on Monday evening.
"It is undeniable that the greatest number of dead in concentration camps were Jews but there are also Polish gypsies, Italians and Catholics on the list," he was quoted as saying.
On Wednesday some countries will mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Polish President Lech Kaczynski and ministers from many European countries are due to attend commemorative events at Auschwitz on Wednesday.
"It is not right to expropriate that tragedy for propaganda," Pieronek was quoted as saying, adding that memorial days should be held for the "victims of communism, for Catholics, for persecuted Christians and so on."
He continued: "But they, the Jews, enjoy good press because they have powerful financial means behind them, enormous power and the unconditional backing of the United States and this favors a certain arrogance that I find unbearable."
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
Yes, however, only the Jewish people faced the intentional threat of extinction as such. That is a qualitative difference between the treatment of the Jews and the treatment of non-Jews.
Who burnt all the books? The Amish?
Prior to the discovery of the New World the Spanish had spent nearly 700 years taking the Iberian Peninsula back from the Muslims and had developed a culture in which those who had forfeited their souls through the rejection of Christ had no human value. Upon arriving in the New World the Spanish encountered a cultural horror that made Islam seem pale and weak. Human sacrifice, slavery, ritual and commercial cannibalism were widespread. At the center of this was the religion of the natives. Were it encountered today there would be a similar response by civilized people to stamp out the religions that fostered these practices.
Interesting parallel between two nations, Slovakia and Poland.
Both nations were Slavic and Catholic, yet Hitler left the Slovaks alone, yet persecuted the Poles. Of course the Slovaks, through Father Tiso, were in fact full-blown collaborators with the Nazis.
Hitler may have had such arrangement with the Endecja, but their antisemitism was only matched with their hatred of the Germans.
Put into perspective, "The Holocaust" ranks only third in 20th century in terms of the numbers of victims. History is rife with holocausts. To claim that only a part of one is "The Holocaust" diminishes all of the victims and exonerates all perpetrators other than those motivated by antisemitism.
I will say the one thing that makes the Nazi Holocaust stand out is the fact that the Nazis had the audacity to film it, and meticulously document it.
The Croatian Ustaše and Romanian Iron guard were explicitly Catholic Fascist movements allied with the Nazis. On the other hand Franco not only refused to join the Axis, but accepted refugees and refused to let the Germans take Gibraltar. (Some have argued that this is because Franco was a Moranno, but this is meaningless. He was a Catholic.)
Sound like Hitler now.
And Hitler was a great admirer of Pilsudski, even making a point to post an Honor Guard at his grave after the Nazi invasion of Poland.
Which begs the question, What if Pilsudski had lived in 1939? What course would they had taken with regards to Poland. Hitler knew of Pilsudski’s hatred of the Russians and might have tried to make a deal with him.
But those purges tended to be targeted mainly at politicians, not innocent men, women and children.
I thought that at one time too, but I actually did some research. Tens of millions of innocent men, women and children died at the hands of Stalin and Mao. You just won't hear about it from Hollywood, the MSM, and academia who are far more forgiving of the transgressions of the left than of the Nazis.
Oh Really? Yeah, thanks for that warning Bishop. The Roman Catholic Church knows NOTHING about exploiting suffering for their own benefit. NOTHING at all...
Actually, it was "stated and planned" Nazi policy to practice genocide against all Slavs, Poles in particular, as well as against Jews, gypsies, and others.
The genocidal program against the Slavs was more one of gradual attrition (through contraception, abortion, starvation, disease, etc.) than through industrial-scale extermination. But the final result was to be the same.
He also refused to join Hitler in the war, and refused to enact the anti-Semitic laws the Nazis tried to push on him.
The Romanian Iron Guard weren't "explicitly [Roman] Catholic". (Very few Catholics in Romania, then or now.) Romanian Orthodox, maybe.
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