How Poles Are More Vilified as 'Bestial' Brute Jew Killers Than German Nazis Themselves

Haaretz ^ | Feb 19, 2018 | Danusha Goska

[nickcarraway]

Increasingly, ordinary Poles, caricatured as staunchly Catholic, simple-minded and chauvinistic, are positioned as the quintessential Holocaust perpetrator. That's far more comfortable than blaming 'elite' German Nazis

To many observers, not least those who are neither Polish nor Jewish, the highly critical press coverage of Poland's new Holocaust law which seeks to criminalize declaring the complicity of the Polish nation in the murder of Jews in WWII, appears both simple and clear.

Poles contributed enthusiastically to the genocide of six million Jews. Poles did so because they are staunchly Catholic, simple-minded and chauvinistic. Right-thinking observers must perpetually goad Poles to drop their defenses, acknowledge their guilt, and make amends.

Polish-Jewish relations are thus reduced to a calculation performed with black and white beads on one rod of an abacus. The black beads represent the bad, anti-Semitic Poles. The white beads represent the exceptional, prejudice-free Poles. A "true" historical retelling is only achieved when the black beads far outnumber the white beads. The token righteous white bead – Jan Karski – is the main concession to any semblance of balance. Karski was the Polish Home Army officer who brought the first eyewitness account of the Holocaust to Roosevelt.

The abacus approach dominates public discussion. But it is intellectually and ethically bankrupt, not just because it distorts beyond recognition a thousand years of Polish-Jewish interaction and the unique horror of 1939-1945. The abacus prevents historical clarity and ethical responsibility. And this debate matters very much in the era of Trump.

In my book "Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype", I explored how people talk about the Holocaust, its victims and its executors. Many, though not all, of those I interviewed talked about Poles quite differently from how they talked about Germans.

Visceral vocabulary and animal references were prominent. This trend can be found in Fania

[Cronos]

JR, as I said That killing of 42 innocentJews is indefensible - it was plain wrong. -- but you cannot call it a stain on the Polish people - this was one incident in one city. You can call it a stain on the people of Kielce, but not on the whole nation.

It was a sin, a murder, a horrible, evil thing committed by the people of Kielce and unforgivable

I dispute it being deeper and wider for the simple reason that there were no other instances in the post war period.

[JewishRighter]

I’m sorry, but I disagree, but you should see from all of my posts that the shame of Kielce is part of a much larger picture, some good, some bad and it doesn’t change my view that many Poles were (and are) very good people, even heroic and that the Polish people and nation suffered horribly in WWII and its aftermath.

[Cronos]

I think we can agree to disagree. We do differ on the level of the stain while both agreeing that it was a horrible atrocity.

[dfwgator]

No threat of German reprisal a year after the war.

There certainly were threats of NKVD reprisals. Realize the Soviets had a vested interest in driving a wedge between Poles and Jews.

And don't forget, it was also the Polish Communist government that forced most of Poland's remaining Jews out of the country in 1968.

[JewishRighter]

Spoken and done like a gentleman. It is such a pleasure to discuss things with intelligent, civilized people.

[JewishRighter]

That’s an interesting point. I’m going to look into that angle and I thank you for raising it. What piques my curiosity is whether the Soviets had established that level of control and manipulation in their very recently acquired satellite by the time of the Kielce pogrom. There had to be a latent period while they were getting the organization framework, intelligence and surveillance assets in place, especially down to the town and village level.

[dfwgator]

A Huge Lie Revealed! The Truth about the Kielce Pogrom Comes to Light

“The pogrom in Kielce is a historical fact. This is undeniable. The question rather, is who agitated and brought about the violent scuffles? Were they in fact the effect of a spontaneous reaction on the part of the crowd? Or, rather, was the entire occurrence a series of events perfectly prepared and carried out from beginning to end according to a plan?”

http://www.doomedsoldiers.com/kielce-pogrom-the-truth-about-the-kielce-pogrom-comes-to-light.html