Posted on 07/23/2010 8:53:29 AM PDT by Argentine-Firecracker
Roughly 50 men and women in the Warsaw Ghetto chose a special form of resistance. In a secret archive, they documented their path to doom for future generations, chronicling the Nazis' crimes as they were being perpetrated.
David Graber was 19 when he hurriedly scribbled his farewell letter. "I would be overjoyed to experience the moment when this great treasure is unearthed and the world is confronted with the truth," he wrote.
While German soldiers combed the streets outside, Graber and his friend Nahum Grzywacz buried 10 metal boxes in the basement of an elementary school on Nowolipki Street in Warsaw's Jewish ghetto. It was Aug. 2, 1942.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
So pointing out that others suffered at the hands of the Nazis is anti-semitic?
Until I lived in Central Europe and visited some of these infamous sites and talked to old survivors (Gentiles and Jews alike), I was not aware of the full extent of the extermination machine. Jews were singled out for extermination, but Poles were also to be eliminated. They were considered “subhuman”. Auschwitz was, initially, set up to accommodate the Poles.
One shocking discovery, at least for me, was to realize that Westerners, for the most part, do not realize that there were two Warsaw uprisings: the Warsaw Ghetto one, and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
Here’s an interesting site with more information about the Uprising: http://www.warsawuprising.com/zegota.htm.
Because by the time of WW II there were plenty of atheists and agnostics in Europe, including Poland.
To be sure, there were plenty of atheists and agnostics among people born into Jewish families, just as there were those born into Catholic families. Germans and their Polish sympathizers did not differentiate between them, and this is how we know the number of Jews (as defined by Germans) killed. About the rest we know that they are Gentiles.
See, you see an affront where there is none. Since you are here to correct injustices, do you think Khmelnitzki's atrocities were publicized enough in Ukraine? Ok, you think that we in the West speak too much about the Holocaust. But surely the Ukrainians never went through any analysis of Khmelnitzki's massacre of up to 180,000 Jews, the largest such loss among the Jews prior to Hitler. Are you trying to correct that injustice, too, for Ukrainians cannot sing enough praise to Khmelnitski?
People continue to talk and write about the Holocaust precisely because people like you have not done enough soul-searhing and continue to live with prejudices they inherited from parents. Those few survivors who managed to return from Germany were often denied their owned homes by their Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Russian neighbors. (In Poland, 1500 of Holocaust survivors are killed in 1945-1946; the Jewish population of Moldavia, just annexed by the Russians, increased in 1945-1946 because many of those who returned to Odessa were kicked out by their neighbors. You have relatives there, Vladimir, why don't you inquire after the facts?).
You think that we don't talk enough about the Holocaust? Just look at how Roma are treated in Europe, especially Romania and Hungary? This is just a few decades after the Holocaust to which, just as Jews, were subjected. Racism --- old, banal, stupid and quintessentially European --- is still alive and well.
Thank you for the link to the website.
Thanks. I don’t believe I have seen this documentary, although I have been to Terezin many times.
This is a story of Jews who were marked for death, suffered horribly, likely when they made this record had already lost their entire family and were fighting unbelievable odds leading to certain death.
And their only wish as they died: that their fight and suffering be remembered.
It’s certainly a testimony as to why we need The Second Amendment.
I find it hard to believe that only 2 million Poles were killed during WWII.
I think the actual number is closer to 3 milion especially given that 8 million were killed in neighboring Ukraine.
http://www.pac1944.org/correcting/WW2Stats.htm
Sorry, but you post was filled with errors.
You wrote:
“The situation is quite simple, really: (i) in modern history, only Jews and Roma (Gypsies) were singled out for complete annihilation, and”
Except for the Armenians, Tutsis, people of Dafur, etc.
“(ii) that task was successfully completed or mostly completed.”
No. Not even close - thank goodness. In some countries, yes, but the people were essentially impossible to wipe out because they were spread out in so many countries never occupied by the Nazis. Thus, they are all but gone in Poland or Germany, but thrived in America.
“The reason the issue is frequently revisited is that illuminates the dark places in human souls. You may want to ask, for instance, why do these facts irritate you so?”
They don’t. You might want to ask yourself why you invent lies like that. What irritates me is that non-Jews are rarely discussed, not that Jews are.
“Since you are so versed with that history, are you also irritated by the hero Bogdan Khmelnitzky who, while “liberating” Ukraine from Poland also “liberated” it from fellow Jewish Ukrainians, killing 180,000 of them with unimaginable cruelty?”
I am not irritated by events that happend centuries before my birth. Such things are unfortunate facts of history, but not personally irritating to me.
“Are you equally appalled by the rampant anti-Semitism in the modern Kievan Rus, even after WW II?”
Modern Kievan Rus? There is no such place in modern times. I find anti-semiticism appalling. I also find disregard for the suffering of non-Jews appalling.
“Or is it just speaking about the victims that bothers you?”
Nope. It amazes me how much effort you put into deliberately trying to twist what I wrote.
thank you for your informed and eloquent posting —
It was shocking and upsetting to me to see the rancorous anti-semitism on FR in response to the article.
“Stalin hated Jews as passionately as Hitler”
Stalin hated everyone except himself and this included his Jewish wives. There are reports Stalin’s father was Jewish and it is true that all his wives were Jewish as were his closest henchmen.
That he killed most of them says much about the paranoia of a genocidalist.
You wrote:
“The German people knew what was happening - their hands as dirty as the SS...”
Some did know. Not all knew by any stretch of the imagination.
very good point.
They didn’t even have to be praticisng Jews. They could have converted to Christianity, they could have been devout Protestants with a Jewish grandmother — they still went to the death camps.
You wrote:
“You really want to compare?”
Did I said I did? No. I just think that it would be good to more often mention the millions of other victims too.
“But you really want to compare that to an actual plan put into effect to torture and murder every single Jewish man, woman, child, toddler, infant.”
Actually the Nazis had plans of enslavement and mass murder for almost all the peoples of the East. The Jews and Gypsies were singled out as top priorities for extermination.
“Really, you think your comment to this story adds anything?”
It sure does. Just the kneejerk false accusations of anti-semiticism show something is wrong with how the issues are handled.
You wrote:
“wow, two gratuitous anti-semtic postings in a row.”
Not from me. I have made no such postings EVER.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Aftermath_and_historiography
Look at table about halfway down the article.
Which of course is a fact that those like Pat Buchanan, who felt that the Nazis had no beef with America overlook. Do you think Hitler would go through all of that trouble of eliminating all European Jews, and leave them to flourish here in the US?
The Polish Ghetto Uprising took place in April of 1943. At that time, the Soviets were still over 500 miles away and the Germans were gearing up for the Kursk offensive. The second uprising, by the Polish Home Army in August 1944, was the one where the Soviets sat on the other side of the Vistula watching until the Poles where wiped out, with the last holdouts surrendering in early October. The Russians wouldn't take Warsaw until January, concentrating their offensive resources on the Balkans through the Autumn.
in that context, and in the way that you did, it was both gratuitous and anti-semitic. And don’t pretend you don’t know,
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