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[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]
The gang-up on Israel we have seen since October 7 did not spring up ex nihilo. It has long and deep roots. Poland, for instance, has tried to forget that it was not just a blameless victim of the Nazis. There were Poles who during the war hid Jews, and Poles make up one-fourth of the names of Righteous Gentiles at Yad Vashem. But there were also Poles who helped the Nazis, leading them to places where Jews were hiding. Just after the war, when the few Jews who had survived the camps returned to reclaim their homes, they were often forced by the Poles who had taken over their homes and businesses to go away empty-handed. Jews were not just expelled, but in some places murdered by the Poles occupying their property, so as to prevent them from ever bringing a claim.
The Polish government has in recent years come down hard on Polish historians researching and writing on the subject of Polish mistreatment, betrayal, and murder of Jews during and after the war. Two of them, Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking, have been declared guilty of the defamation of Edward Malinowski, who was the prewar mayor of a Polish village called Malinowo. More on the travails of these historians, and the attempt of Polish authorities to suppress the findings of historians studying what really happened to Jews in Poland, are discussed in this 2021 article that has taken on new significance in light of how the world has treated Israel since October 7:
Two Polish historians of the Holocaust, Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking, are fighting a court ruling that pronounced them guilty of defaming a long-deceased Polish village official. Grabowski and Engelking are the editors of “Dalej Jest Noc. Losy Żydów w Wybranych Powiatach Okupowanej Polski” (“Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland”). It was published in 2018, to significant academic acclaim and surprisingly brisk sales for a two-volume, seventeen-hundred-page scholarly title. One chapter, written by Engelking, mentioned Edward Malinowski, the prewar mayor of a small village called Malinowo. According to testimony uncovered by Engelking, Malinowski led the Nazis to Jews who were hiding in the forest outside the village; twenty-two people were killed. Last month, a Warsaw district court found that this passage of “Night Without End” defamed Malinowski, and ordered Grabowski and Engelking to apologize in print. Grabowski and Engelking have appealed the ruling.
The two historians’ legal troubles stem from the Polish government’s ongoing effort to exonerate Poland of any role in the deaths of three million Jews in Poland during the Nazi occupation. When facts get in the way of this revisionist effort, historians pay the price. In 2016, Polish authorities began investigating the Polish-American historian Jan Tomasz Gross, the author of the groundbreaking book “Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland.” He was accused of insulting the Polish people for his observation that Poles killed more Jews than Germans during the Second World War. The case dragged on for three years, with Gross subjected to hours of police interrogations; the government also threatened to strip Gross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, a state honor he had received in 1996. (The state dropped the investigation after Gross retired from his job at Princeton.) Over 2019 and 2020, Dariusz Stola, the head of Warsaw’s acclaimed museum of Polish Jewry, found himself slowly squeezed out of his job, again by the Polish government….
If Poland wants to convince the world that all Polet were blameless, that the murder of Polish Jews was entirely a German affair with which Poles had nothing to do — something we know to be false thanks to Polish historians, by no means all of them Jewish — it is certainly not helping itself with the decision of the country’s National Bank to issue a commemorative silver coin honoring a figure who was both a noted guerrilla leader fighting the Soviet-backed communists in postwar Poland, and an antisemite who murdered Jews. More on this ill-advised plan to honor such a personage can be found here.
Poland’s National Bank has announced that it will issue a special silver coin commemorating a leading figure in the post-war anti-communist underground who was accused of murdering Jews in the country’s Podhale region.
The coin honoring Józef Kuraś, to be issued on March 15, forms part of a series commemorating the “doomed soldiers” who fought the Soviet Union’s takeover of Poland in the aftermath of World War II. Kuraś joined the anti-Nazi resistance in 1939, emerging as a leading figure in the anti-communist movement in April 1945. For nearly two years, units of Kuraś’s “Błyskawica”organization were active in southern and central Poland. In Jan. 1947, Kuraś is understood to have committed suicide rather than be taken prisoner by the communist authorities amid a gun battle in the village of Ostrowsko….
“Since the publication of Jan Gross’s groundbreaking books in the 2000s, Poland made a lot of progress as a democratic nation in dealing with the legacy of antisemitism – but over the last years much of that progress has been reversed and a far-right nationalist outlook on Polish history has prevailed in many institutions,” Rafal Pankowski, executive director of the “Never Again” Association, told The Algemeiner in an email.
“This is one more instance of a glorification of a notorious antisemitic figure by an important state institution,” Pankowski added.
To glorify this person who, however stubbornly he may have resisted the Communist takeover of Poland, was also an antisemite responsible for murdering dozens of Jews, including orphans, and perhaps many more, is most unwise. It is tantamount to a declaration that “we can’t base our judgements of someone on how he viewed or treated the Jews. We’ve heard quite enough about their victimhood. What about our victimhood at the hands of the Communists? Why should we not honor someone who bravely fought the Communists, even if he was not perfect when it came to dealing with Jews? He was a Polish patriot, and for that he is being honored.”
Unfortunately, that appalling point of view has been adopted by too many people in Poland. It will take a great effort to educate young Poles as to how Jews were actually treated – some well, but also some very badly, even murderously – by Poles, during and after the war. But it’s a task that must be undertaken.
Show me a country where no Jew haters live.
absolutely. every country has its bad actors. i believe we tend to forget ww2 in poland germany prussia ukraine was a time when, politically the hatred of jews was sold to the people as the “answer”. anyone who spoke out was considered resistance and swifty carried off in the middle of the night in germany anyway. never to be seen again. its a powerful incentive to follow the political line. outside of germany, the bad actors were probably just taking advantage of the situation and promoting their own wealth.
my polish/prussian great grand parents in prussia had a large farm in the konigsberg area pre ww2 (now russian kaliningrad). after the war the land owners from this area (mostly old) were sent to russian work camps where they died miserably. the russians then acquired title of the land.
adapt and take ground, is the rule of war. governments do it. and citizens will follow by example.
the transfer of wealth from the poor to the elite (bad actors) is alive and well in america and worldwide. its all about money.
Anti-Semitic Biden and Blinken and the democrat party are in the process of turning Israel into an
enemy of America while simultaneously turning Islam and the depraved psychopathic murderous berserk Moo–Slums into an American ally.
What a betrayal treachery and stab in the back of not only Israel but America and US citizens.
Biden and Blinken and the democrats are fully morally corrupt and depraved and capable of manufacturing pogroms in America.
Maybe that will be part of Biden’s second term policies.
Oh dear, Hugh. Though I had assumed it would not be long before us Poles/Polonians were blamed for the current tragedies in the Middle East. I think I may have hoped for a bit more of a pause. Apparently telling me how horribly my Polish father behaved and how I must denounce him is “a task that must be undertaken”. But surely it is a task that has been well undertaken already?! Is there yet more “untering” ahead? Think of the much lauded and applauded books “Maus” and “Painted Bird” just for a start. If there is a lot more of it to come then I guess everyone else can relax at least.
As I said, my father was Polish, a para fighting in the Polish Army on the Allied Side (at least he was in the Original Version of WW2). And I loved him very much.
So I note that in shining contrast to “the world”, the Creator requires me to honour my parents, not to despise and denounce them. I loved both my parents very much, so who am I drawn to, and what do I want to be “no part” of?
It’s not, as Basil Fawlty would say, a proposition for Wittgenstein.
The world has got us so divided. But the inspired word of our loving and impartial Creator, the God of Abraham, is a light shining in a very dark place. And I want everyone to know that. It is his life-saving message to all of us damaged children of Adam.
There should be some serious focus on the role Ukraine played in gathering up it’s Jews and shipping them off to Auschwitz. The Ukranian SS battalions arrested them or killed them with glee.
And the idiots in the U.S. government who have a woody to keep the Ukraine piggy bank intact are complicit in the Jew hatred and their love for Hamas and Iran. Democrats and the filthy RINOs.
Hello Intrepid, but why? The Ukrainian people have been through so much, and are going through to much right now. Hadn’t Stalin killed millions in the Ukraine before WW2 even started?
I do understand that the millions killed by Stalin have no political weight, but didn’t every one of them matter to the Creator of Life, the God of Abraham?
Why does “the world” always require us to judge each other and find each other wanting? Wouldn’t we all be getting along a lot better if we didn’t?
Ukraine has Jewish blood on its hands, left over from WWII right up the the Wagner gangs that existed at the start of their current war. Does it really matter who did the killing…Stalin or Hitler? Or Putin? It was Ukrainians that carried out the policies
If you want to sit around and wring your hands and clutch your pearls that is your business. But sitting on the fence and whining about God will not solve anything. But it does always seem to to be your M.O.
Vladimir Putin gave Nazism in the Ukraine as one of his reasons for attacking them. I saw an article a while back which described how a Ukrainian town was very narrowly prevented from naming a street after a well-known Nazi, which gave me pause for thought.
Sue, I like you, you’re a nice person, for your own good and peace of mind do not bother yourself with “Intrepid” he will suck you into his endless pit of rage.
He will insult you to no end and he must always have the last insult. You will never have the last word, but you will always receive the last insult.
Leave that creature alone and go in peace Sue, stay in peace. Your peace of mind is more important.
Thank you for your kind words THX. Appreciated.. But it still seems incredible that the Ukraine can be referenced without even one mention of the millions of Ukrainians murdered by Stalin.
I think I had better go off and buy some pearls to clutch at, pronto. I can’t manage the hand wringing – sorry Intrepid – my hands are so arthritic these days. I am grateful I can still type.
Try some Advil. It works for arthritis.
Gee T, if she comments to me I will respond in kind, not because of what you say about me but because she is wrong.
Unlike you, who no longer has the cojones to respond, because you have nothing new to say to me, who just keeps reposting the same garbage all the time by the same dead and almost dead people, I can only say, I will not give up the field to you.
You think this is your private comment board and somehow you have the right to take it over with your childish long-winded Objectivist crap, and that no one has the right to call you out. You have already been called out by Greenfield. I still have what he wrote to you.
He said “The idea that you and your particular belief system, for which you are an absolutely terrible representative, represent ‘reason’, is as much of a fallacy as the idea that Fauci represents science.”
You should take the hint and leave considering all of the downvotes you get. But you won’t since you are an emotionally needy narcissist. You already gave us your “farewell to the troops” post when you said you were done with FPM last November, and you couldn’t even stick with that. The idea that you think you actually have something important to say to the rest of us, that we must hear, is always cause for laughter and ridicule.
So I will continue.
Generational guilt and collective guilt is such a wrong thing.
Religion has caused so much division. In the world. Better we are atheists with no religion and no conflict.
You go be an atheist. Everything was just great under those atheist regimes like the Soviets and the Nazi Party. Or the Chicoms.
No ,Clem.
Atheism is simply a negative, it tells you what an atheist does not believe in, but tells you nothing about what the atheist does believe in.
Religion is an early form of philosophy, before men had enough knowledge to understand the universe and graduate to, or develop, a rational philosophy. Religion was inescapable as a first step, just as a baby must first crawl before he can walk, or a baby gurgles gibberish until he learns how to speak.
Please look into Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism.
“What then is the solution? It is not atheism as such — and I say this even though as an Objectivist I am an atheist. “Atheism” is a negative; it means not believing in God — which leaves wide open what you do believe in. It is futile to crusade for a negative; the Communists, too, call themselves atheists. Nor is the answer “secular humanism,” about which we often hear today. This term is used so loosely that it is practically contentless; it is compatible with a wide range of conflicting viewpoints, including, again, Communism. To combat the doctrines that are destroying our country, out-of-context terms and ideas such as these are useless. What we need is an integrated, consistent philosophy in every branch, and especially in the two most important ones: epistemology and ethics. We need a philosophy of reason and of rational self-interest, a philosophy that would once again release the power of man’s mind and the energy inherent in his pursuit of happiness. Nothing less will save America or individual rights.
There are many good people in the world who accept religion, and many of them hold some good ideas on social questions. I do not dispute that. But their religion is not the solution to our problem; it is the problem. Do I say that therefore there should now only be “freedom for atheism”? No, I am not Mr. Kemp. Of course, religions must be left free; no philosophic viewpoint, right or wrong, should be interfered with by the state. I do say, however, that it is time for patriots to take a stand — to name publicly what America does depend on, and why that is not Judaism or Christianity.” – Leonard Peikoff, “Religion versus America
“
Somehow I don’t think he will be looking into Randy’s philosophy of Objectivism. Unlike you we have lives that don’t revolve around stacks of books.
That’s a joke, right? Not a good one.
Two great movies. One about the plight of Jews in Poland and the other about the plight of Jews in Hungary. The Pianist [Poland] and Hanna’s War [Hungary].
Sadly, this article is yet another example of whitewashing the WW2 Germans’ and WW2 Germany’s massive GUILT for its genocide of Jews across Europe.
The article fails to mention many things in its quest to unfairly smear ethnic Poles. For example:
1. The Israeli War Crimes Commission (since renamed, but this statistic has never been refuted), only 0.1% (that is, one-tenth of 1%) of “Polish” people resident in Poland were accused of harming Jews during WW2. So, there is ZERO basis for casting blame on “Poland” in this article. NOTE: That 0.1% would have been about 30,000. people – but See Item 2 following. A retraction and a re-write is definitely in order here, Hugh.
2. The article makes Zero Mention of the (totally verifiable) fact that there were at least 200,000 VolkeDeutsche resident in Poland at the start of WW2. These are ethnic Germans who lived in Poland, some for many generations. They spoke Polish, and were recruited – well in advance of September 1939 – as willing spies, secret militai, and collaborators with the German intelligence services and military. They made extensive lists of Jews all over the country, for future capture, and made lists of prominent Poles in all types of leadership positions for capture, interrogation and killing once hostilities started. Also, these VolkeDeutsche secretly stockpiled food, fuel, weapons and military supplies for at least a year before the war started, which enabled the German army to launch its blitzkrieg so successfully against Polish military and civilians targets. VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Of the estimated 30,000 supposed “Poles” who harmed Jews during WW2, it COULD be that virtually ALL of them were VolkeDeutsche, ie, ‘ Germans in Polish clothing’ . In such a biased smear article as this one from Hugh is, any fairminded reader can see why these Extremely Guilty VolkeDeutsche are NOT mentioned at all ! Very sadly, it seems that the author is not interested in the full truth. I strongly suggest that Hugh – and Everyone ! – look up “The Role of German VolkeDeutsche in WW2 Poland”. What you learn will be Very Illuminating indeed ! And you will see why the author would have considered the VolkeDeutsche roles in WW2 Poland to be Inconvenient Truths.
Hello Daniel – The facts? My feeling – rightly or wrongly – is that the facts are not wanted on the (doubleplusun)Good Ship Current Version of WW2. Thanks for trying anyway.