New York's Undocumented (Polish) Day Laborers

Village Voice ^ | July 25, 2001 | Michael Kamber

[Inyokern]

Shmatta, no mopo

[Alberta's Child]

Maybe this story is related to the following recent item from The Onion:

Polish Rapper Under Fire For Use Of The Word 'Polack'

DETROIT - MC Krakow, a popular Detroit-based rapper of Polish descent, came under fire Tuesday for his use of the word 'Polack' on his new album World Warsaw III.

"When MC Krakow casually uses the P-word, it dredges up decades of hurtful portrayals and cruel jokes for our people," said Sandy Serwacki, president of the Polish Anti-Defamation Society. "In just the song 'Ten-Inch Pierogie' alone, he uses the word 27 times."

In an official statement, MC Krakow defended his use of the word: "When I say, "Y'all be my Polacks," or "Yo, what up, Polack?," it's my way of taking the word back. Our people need to re-claim and embrace 'Polack' with pride, just like Eminem did with the word 'faggot.'"

[gaijin]

Read "Pointville". It's about, of all places, rural Iowa, and what happened there.

Relevent, and verrry enlightening.

[Landru]

So what.
These are white people of European ancestry!!
Can't you see that?
I'm afraid to inform that in the United States of America, home of the brave & land of the free?
These people are *not* members of a protected class!!
Therefore, they simply do not count.
They may, of course, clean the toilets of *a* protected-class peoples.
Naturally, they're *free* to do so; only if they freely so-choose, and, are hungry & would *like* to eat?

...shhhhh; *that's* the, "freedom" part.

[GROUCHOTWO]

It's "Postville" and, as interesting as it is, it is only the tip of the iceberg. BTW, the Lubavitchers moved to Iowa after a 'fatwa' was placed on buying Satmar kosher meat. The Satmars are by published accounts even bigger law-breakers(more violent) that the Lubavitchers.

[Inyokern]

It's "Postville" and, as interesting as it is, it is only the tip of the iceberg.

Are illegal Polish cleaning women moving to Pottsville?

[Inyokern]

No matter how far the Jews move from Poland, the Poles follow them, shmatta in hand.

[Sabramerican]

Unrequited love?

[Inyokern]

Unrequited love?

I think they secretly miss us. I really do.

What else could explain this?

[Tasha]

There must be some kind of love-hate relationship between the Jewish and the Polish people.
One time my father asked his buddy, a Lieutenant of the Democratic Party in Chicago, why the Poles and the Jews are constantly at each others' throats. His buddy is an Irish guy, and his answer was very simple: The two groups are the same. Both of them try to prove how different they are from each other. He said he had watched them for 20 years and he honestly couldn't see any difference between them. The love-hate relationship has probably gone on since Chicago was built.

[Sonny M]

There's more to it then that. I live in Greenpoint, next to Williamsburgh. The Jews really do believe that the polish helped the Nazi's kill them, and the polish here are very very catholic and devout.Some of them also feel that everyone forgets, alot of them were killed in WW2, "Everyone only remembers the jews, what about us?" Its very personal. Saying they are the same is like saying the english and the irish are the same too.

[Inyokern]

Actually, I think this is the REAL reason Poles hate Jews:

Jewish Nobel Prize Winners for Science	Polish Nobel Prize Winners for Science
Altman, Sidney	Sklodowska-Curie, Maria
Axelrod, Julius
Baltimore, David
Barany, Robert
Benacerraf, Baruj
Berg, Paul
Bethe, Hans Albrecht
Bloch, Felix
Bloch, Konrad
Blumberg, Baruch S.
Bohr, Niels
Born, Max
Brown, Herbert C.
Calvin, Melvin
Chain, Sir Ernst Boris
Charpak, Georges
Cohen, Stanley
Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude
de Hevesy, George
Edelman, Gerald M.
Ehrlich, Paul
Einstein, Albert
Elion, Gertrude B.
Erlanger, Joseph
Feynman, Richard P.
Franck, James
Friedman, Jerome I.
Furchgott, Robert F.
Gabor, Dennis
Gell-Mann, Murray
Gilbert, Walter
Gilman, Alfred G.
Glaser, Donald A.
Glashow, Sheldon L.
Goldstein, Joseph L.
Haber, Fritz
Hauptman, Herbert A.
Hertz, Gustav
Hoffmann, Roald
Hofstadter, Robert
Jacob, Francois
Josephson, Brian D.
Kandel, Eric R.
Kapitsa, Pyotr Leonidovich
Karle, Jerome
Katz, Sir Bernard
Klug, Sir Aaron
Kohn, Walter
Kornberg, Arthur
Krebs, Sir Hans Adolf
Landau, Lev Davidovich
Landsteiner, Karl
Lederberg, Joshua
Lederman, Leon M.
Lee, David M.
Levi-Montalcini, Rita
Lipmann, Fritz Albert
Lippmann, Gabriel
Loewi, Otto
Luria, Salvador E.
Lwoff, Andre
Marcus, Rudolph A.
Mechnikov, Elie
Meyerhof, Otto Fritz
Michelson, Albert Abraham
Milstein, Cesar
Moissan, Henri
Mottelson, Ben Roy
Muller, Hermann Joseph
Nathans, Daniel
Nirenberg, Marshall W.
Osheroff, Douglas D.
Pauli, Wolfgang
Penzias, Arno A.
Perl, Martin L.
Perutz, Max Ferdinand
Prusiner, Stanley B.
Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Reichstein, Tadeus
Reines, Frederick
Richter, Burton
Rodbell, Martin
Schally, Andrew V.
Schwartz, Melvin
Schwinger, Julian
Segre, Emilio Gino
Stein, William Howard
Steinberger, Jack
Stern, Otto
Temin, Howard Martin
Varmus, Harold E.
von Baeyer, Johann
Waksman, Selman
Wald, George
Wallach, Otto
Warburg, Otto Heinrich
Weinberg, Steven
Willstatter, Richard Martin
Yalow, Rosalyn

[Revolting cat!]

the Polish government's longtime position

Oh, I see. So it is "the Polish government's longtime position" and not a historical fact? I like the "longtime" especially, since it implies the long discredited Communist government as well. Hmmmm.

But that is a minor quibble. An interesting article. One question I have, why must these Jewish women employ these cleaning ladies if, as they say, they cannot afford them? Is it, I suspect, a European petty bourgeois tradition? (The petty bourgeois in Asian countries practice similar customs, it must be said.)

[Inyokern]

One question I have, why must these Jewish women employ these cleaning ladies if, as they say, they cannot afford them? Is it, I suspect, a European petty bourgeois tradition?

Good question.

Another question is why do these Polish women work for Jews if they say they hate them? Why do they come all the way across the ocean to work for Jews, whom they chased out of Poland?

[CommiesOut]

Good question.
Hm... maybe because American Jews are good like Harry Potter?
More

[Inyokern]

Bump. Illegal immigrant thread.

[Revolting cat!]

To answer your question in post # 15, you'd have to be an Eastern European (Jew or Pole) to understand. It's a love/hate relationship from both sides. And just who chased sho out from Poland is an open question, isn't it? As I understand it, in the past 50 years it's been the Commies (many of them secularized Jews themselves or like Gomulka, Polish proles married to secularized Jews,) who have been chasing the remaining Jews out of Poland, by way of releasing the public's anger (it never helped, I've read.)

Ugly history, to be sure.

[Inyokern]

"We want to be respected," the Polish women say, fairly seething as they talk about standing on the corner like prostitutes, about scrubbing someone else's floor, about the good jobs they had in Poland before the end of Communism.

"I wouldn't be here if the Communists were still in power, everybody worked, we had free health care"

Sounds like they miss communism. Strange that the Poles miss communism and the Jews don't. One would think, listening to you.....

[FITZ]

As for the wages: "They get off the boat and the next day they are making more than minimum wage. We usually pay them seven dollars an hour. We are poor people; the average family here has 12 children; many of the husbands make less than they're paying the cleaning woman. How can we pay them more?"

This doesn't make any sense. How can a husband who is the sole support of 12 children and a wife, and who makes less than $7 or $8 and still afford a maid? Poor people and even not so poor people clean up their own houses.