Posted on 02/02/2018 1:48:30 PM PST by Lukasz
The U.S. State Department on Wednesday urged Poland to re-evaluate a proposed law that would make it illegal to suggest Poland bore any responsibility for crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany on its soil during World War II, Reuters reports.
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
If you were between Germany and the Soviet Union in the 30’s and 40’s, life was a series of bad choices.
Some Poles surely took advantage of the Nazi’s to hurt and kill Jews.
Some were incredibly brave and sheltered them, and helped them.
I’d guess most did neither, concerned as they were with their own survival.
We became a superpower, for one reason, by moving past the past. Israel will do the same thing if it is smart. And I don’t say that as an insensitive bastard. Who cares what Poland does? or doesn’t do? about what happened 70 years ago?
The important thing is to know who is your enemy and who is your friend. I don’t understand why only America is Israel’s friend. They are a “diverse” democracy with an educated populace who have given the world much in terms of technology and medical health and yet they are hated in Western Europe. Why? Poland is small potatoes in this.
Yes, I agree. Poor Poland.
On the other hand, America did fight the Cold War for 40 years to defeat Communism in Europe.
The Polish and American armies often conduct maneuvers together.
That said, our State Department should butt out of Polish affairs. No country in Europe has the equivalent of our First Amendment.
I assume Poland would enforce the law the same way Germany enforces it’s ban on advocating Nazism. Violators would be charged.
Now that's the $64,000 question...right up there with why Ukraine's Poroshenko opposes the Polish law banning 'Bandera ideology'.
We can only move past the past because enough of us acknowledge and repent for it.
I lived in Russia. The country can’t move forward because they’re not sorry. For anything. They don’t talk about the “dark parts” of their past so the unresolved trauma just shows up in different forms. Stalin is in fact MORE celebrated today than he was in the latter years of the USSR. And he killed more people, Russians, than Hitler.
Putin says people who over demonize Stalin are just trying to smear Russia period. When in fact its Russians who suffer the most by continuing to celebrate figures like him.
Oh don’t even try pulling the “Ukrainians are Nazis” fast one on me. It’s Russia that’s allied with Iran, Turkey, and Assad who HATES Israel.
The same way all the other laws against expressing non-officially approved opinions about WWII are enforced in numerous European countries. The State Department has no problem with European countries jailing people for “Holocaust denial.” The US government has extradited people to Germany and the UK to face multi-year prison sentences for speech Jews don’t like. Look up the “heretical two” for an example.
I oppose all laws against free speech, but the sentiment behind this law is correct.
You don’t know? The worldwide Jewish Lobby has “claims”(in their words) against Polish property. They want a vast amount of land in Poland to be given to Jews who claim their ancestors owned it once. That’s in the background of this dispute and all Israeli/Polish relations.
Poland has held firm in not giving into extortion. Expect pressure on Poland to escalate due to this new dispute. There will be calls for sanctions, boycotts and attempts to ridicule and insult Poland from the usual suspects. Look for it.
Poland is being punished for its refusal to conform to the New World Order and the European Union with its critics using this law as an excuse.
I don’t approve of the law because it is anti-speech, but the Polish government does not want Poles blamed or implicated in the Holocaust, that is their contention.
Is that what Poland is doing...pulling a fast one?
Seems to me Poland is playing things straight down the middle.
You, on the other hand...
Russia warns Poland not to touch Soviet WW2 memorials
The Russian foreign ministry condemned the new Polish "de-communisation" law as "an outrageous provocation", and warned of unspecified "consequences".
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40775355
Russia is unrivaled in Europe in how it sabotages and blackmails its OWN people: Gulag victims and their descendants, historians, archivists, and museum curators who don't tow the Stalin-glorifying, horror-justifying, Putin party line. Save for like, a handful of polite little memorials.
And due to your constant defense of Putin and his system, you have ZERO credibility on this issue.
“Americans raised on “The Longest Day” and “Saving Private Ryan” have no idea how we are perceived in Eastern Europe. Certainly nothing heroic; we were the allies of Joseph Stalin that prolonged their socialist nightmare for another 45 years.”
We were Stalin’s enemy - his GREATEST ENEMY - from 1945 until his death in 1953. Then we were his successors’ GREATEST ENEMIES - until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Did you know, for instance, that a survey of fleeing Hungarian refugees in 1957 indicated that one-half of U.S.-bound refugees expected armed American intervention on behalf of the rebels because of the pro-rebel content broadcast over radio by the U.S.? See Laszlo Borhi, “Rollback, Liberation, Containment, or Inaction? U.S. Policy and Eastern Europe in the 1950s,” Journal of Cold War Studies, no. 1.3(1999), 88-89.
The simple fact is that everyone in Eastern Europe who hated Soviet oppression looked to the U.S. for help in the late 1940s, 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. And I mean EVERYONE: Estonian Forest Brothers, Ukrainian Banderists, you name it.
There are neo-Nazis everywhere including the U.S.
This is all Tillerson and the Democrats at Department of State. I’m sure POTUS doesn’t care at all.
They sophisticated, business-suited ones have stronger pull in political parties in Europe.
The fringe-kind have more mainstream acceptance among youth culture in places like Russia.
Russia lost 600,000 men liberating Poland from the Nazis, I think they earned the right to be sensitive about how war memorials erected in their honor there are handled.
Banderist ideology has no similar claim to make, unless you consider the slaughter of thousands of Poles in Ukraine honorable.
Danzig massacres - Poland was slaughtering ethnic Germans prompting Hitler to invade. This could be dismissed as German propaganda, but I believe it to be true. There was a lot of blame to go around in that awful war... To not allow dissent on this point is anti liberty. From a book I once read: “More than 58,000 Dead and Missing were lost by the German minority in Poland during the days of their liberation from the Polish yoke, as far as can be ascertained at present. The Polish nation must for all time be held responsible for this appalling massacre consequent upon that Polish reign of terror. Up to November 17, 1939, the closing day for the documentary evidence contained in the first edition of this book, 5,437 murders, committed by members of the Polish armed forces and by Polish civilians on men, women and children of the German minority had already been irrefutably proved. It was quite apparent even then that the actual number of murders far exceeded this figure, and by February 1, 1940, the total number of identified bodies of the German minority had increased to 12,857. Official investigations carried out since the outbreak of the German-Polish war have shown that to these 12,857 killed there must be added more than 45,000 missing, all of whom must be accounted dead since no trace of them can be found. Thus the victims belonging to the German minority in Poland already now total over 58,000. Even this appalling figure by no means covers the sum total of the losses sustained by the German minority. There can be no doubt at all that investigations which are still being conducted will disclose many more thousand dead and wounded. The following description of the Polish atrocities which is not only confined to murders and mutilations but includes other deeds of violence such as maltreatment, rape, robbery and arson applies to only a small section of the terrible events for which irrefutable and official evidence is here established.” - THE POLISH ATROCITIES AGAINST THE GERMAN MINORITY IN POLAND, 1940
and the victorious Russians wonder why they have to constantly fend for their narrative and why the losers of the Great Patriotic War live better than they do.
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