Poland May Sue Author of Book on Treatment of Jews

Another country that doesn't like some aspects of its history

Javno - World

 

Patterns Of Anti-Jewish Violence In Poland, 1944-1946

A detailed history of the immediate post-war anti-semitism in Poland

http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft Word - 3128.pdf

 

More details on the Gross book:

http://www.signandsight.com/features/1642.html

 

Truly bizarre to learn the above. I have to admit to being amazed that this happened in a country where a significant proportion of the population would have been persecuted. It doesn't make sense.

 

I've read that the communist government did nothing at all to prevent it, and at times even promoted it. Any factual base to that?

 

Can't see how the Poles can do this as they are all over here. I work with a Pole who was a captain in the Polish Army and the standing joke he says in Poland is 'Last one out please turn the lights off.

Sniper eep:

 

From what we've been hearing down here, they're well regarded as workers in the UK. I'm sure there's two sides to the story but not much different from the Kiwis coming here for more opportunities or the pilgramage for any Aussie youngster still being working in the UK for a "gap" year or thereabouts.

 

Yes Andy they are good workers, but they have also dropped our wages because they'll do the job cheaper. They take on 2 or 3 jobs which means they can do this. Also in this area there are so many of them that 1 in every 15 houses have now got Poles in and the traffic signs are now in English and Polish. Believe me i have nothing against them, they seem to be quite friendly especially the guy i work with but they are not intergrating like the ones who stayed here after WW2. I'm sure though that the next generation will intergrate. As for the other Commonwealth people wanting to come back, i think the door sould be left open for you all to make it easier. I know how hard it is for some to do this, i went through it with my wife who is a Canuck.

Sniper eep:

 

We had an issue here last week or so where a mine construction builder was crushed between his elevated platform and the building he was working on. His colleagues couldn't get to the controls as he was slumped over them...and they couldn't make the three Thai scaffold workers on the ground override the controls because those three workers didn't understand English...

Makes you wonder how they passed the safety induction on site in the first place.

 

Sniper how could you make such an outlandish statement? We have enough problems without the likes of Andy coming over here.

As for the Poles, like all nationalties, thre's good people and bad. Most I've known have been the children and grandchildren of the post-war generation. The grandmother of one friend used to tell me of the time when she and her family were completely ostracised by her neighbours for being a foreigner. That is until the 1960s when they wanted her to sign a petiion to stop the Asians moving into the houses on her road. She told them where they could shove their petition considering how they'd treated her. Lovely women who still had a very thick accent after 40+ years. Swore vodka could cure any ailment.

 

The Polish underground would not give weapons to or support the Jews of the ghetto uprising in Warsaw.

The Polish underground were known to have huge stockpiles of machine guns, mortars and small arms but told the Jews, we will not support you.

Towards the end of the war the Poles expected the Russians to support them in their uprising. The Russians just sat back and waited for the Germans to slaughter the Poles.

 

Wouldn't even let a British citizen in? That's a bit rough!

Kyt's just afraid that some of his books might go walkabout. Me, being the innocent that I am, would have been coerced by Kitty of course!

 

You a British citizen Andy? Traitor, what you doing in Oz?

I'm seriously worried about my books with you two blood-suckers around.

 

Dad's a Pom, ergo I have a British passport and feel compelled to sign the occasional petition through the PM's office! Born in Kalgoorlie so fair bit of red dust in the veins (and the head). Mum's side is Tasmanian so probably related to half the west coast of that state. Spidge can confirm that the scar from the second head has healed well...

I would be too.

 

Poland won't sue author of book on Jews' treatment

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3506350,00.html

 

Actually, this has nothing to do with 'not liking an aspect of Polish history' but rather attributing a crime of the Stalinist regime to Poland and the general Polish population.
There were 16 NKVD-organised pogroms in the various Soviet controlled satellite states at the time, four in Budapest alone.
The law under which the prosecutors office was considering charging Gross (they have since decided not to) has to do with the denial of Nazi and Soviet crimes or attributing them to others than the real perpetrators.
Gross makes the case that because of the people sentenced to death for the pogrom in a show trial (who werent even in Kielce at the time and were tortured to confess) were Polish, the nation as a whole is responsible.

S

 

Yes, there was infighting and power struggles at the time between Jewish and non-Jewish communists.

 

Nonsense, all of the weapons in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising originated from the Polish underground army.


From wiki:
Support from outside the Ghetto was limited, but Polish Resistance units from Armia Krajowa (AK) (the Home Army)[8] and Polish Communist Gwardia Ludowa (the People's Guard)[9] attacked German sentry units near the ghetto walls and attempted to smuggle weapons and ammunition into the ghetto. Polish resistance also provided the insurgents with badly needed weapons and ammunitions from its meager stocks.[10] AK also disseminated information and appeals to help the Jews in the ghetto, both in Poland and by way of radio transmissions to the Allies.[8] Several ŻOB commanders and fighters escaped through the sewers with assistance from the Poles.[8]

One Polish unit from AK, the National Security Corps (Państwowy Korpus Bezpieczeństwa), under the command of Henryk Iwański, fought inside the Ghetto along with ŻZW. Subsequently, both groups retreated together to the so-called "Aryan side". Although Iwański's action is the most well-known rescue mission, it was only one of many actions undertaken by the Polish resistance to help the Jews.[11] In the first day of uprising 19 April 1943 three units of AK under command kpt. Józef Pszenny tried to breach the Ghetto walls with anti-tank mines but the Germans defeated this action. AK engaged the Germans between April 19 and April 23 at different locations outside the ghetto walls, in a futile attempt to breach them.[8]

Participation of the Polish underground in the uprising was confirmed by a report of the German commander Jürgen Stroop. He wrote that German soldiers were "...permanently under gun fire behind the ghetto. It means from the Aryan side"... "When we invaded the Ghetto for the first time, the Jews and the Polish bandits succeeded in repelling the participating units, including tanks and armored cars, by a well-prepared concentration of fire". He described Iwański's action: "The main Jewish battle group, mixed with Polish bandits, had already retired during the first and second day to the so-called Muranowski Square. There, it was reinforced by a considerable number of Polish bandits".[12]

Witold Pilecki of the Polish home army had himself cought and sent to Auschwitz to document what was going on. Jan Karski, courier for the Polish underground, broke into ghettos and Belzec concentration camp also to document the plight of Jews. The he escaped to London and later the US. How many weapons did the rich Jews with whom he met in the US send? How many guns did Ben Gurion send? Or the US government? ZERO

Keep in mind, if you have been fighting Nazis and Soviets for 3 years, why should you give your rifle to someone who has not been fighting for the same amount of time?

 

Welcome BDF

A couple of points:

1) The report states that he was to be charged with slandering the Polish nation, prosecutors said on Friday. That's not to say that media reports are accurate but it certainly sounded like the State took issue with his analysis rather than actual denial.

2) The few instances of AK participation mentioned in the wiki article don't really mitigate the fact that before and during the Rising the majority of requests for assistance from the Jewish leadership was rebuffed. And the strains, and sometimes outright hatred between the Jewish and Polish resistance has been amply documented in such books as Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw by Norman Davies and The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland 1942-1944 by Shmuel Krakowski

 

The specific law in question is simply Poland's 'expanded' holocaust denial law. There is no law on the books in Poland saying you cant slander Poland. There is free speech.

They were rebuffed because theyre simply werent enough weapons to go around. The animosity between certain Jewish resistance groups and Poles had to due more with the alliances of the Jewish groups with the Soviets than antisemitism. Jews fighting in the AK, for instance, werent hated. Jews like the Bielski partisans, who murdered 129 civilian Poles in Naliboki and stole food supplies from peasants, which were airlifted back to Moscow, were.