Sheer Ignorance of Polish Contribution In WWII

Posted by Oui | May 30, 2012 | 10 |

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I just can’t believe the utter ingnorance about the facts of the Second World War displayed in BooMan’s fp story Poland Needs to STFU.

Obama’s ‘Polish Death Camps’ Gaffe Leads To Diplomatic Incident

(Outside The Beltway) – Poles and Polish-Americans expressed outrage today at President Obama’s reference earlier to “a Polish death camp” — as opposed to a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland.

“The White House will apologize for this outrageous error,” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted. Sikorski said that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “will make a statement in the morning. It’s a pity that this important ceremony was upstaged by ignorance and incompetence.”

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

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Oui

1904 World Fair -- Meet me at St. Louis!

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Oui

12 years ago

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We all know of IBM and the hollerith machines to administer the occupants of the German death camps and the expulsion of U.S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. from London by Churchill. A bit of Nazi sentiment?

U.S. Corporations and the Nazis

“A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. . . .

“Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.” – William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937.

A large volume of documentary evidence exists that reveals that many of the richest, most powerful men in the United States, and the giant corporations they controlled, were secretly allied with the Nazis, both before and during World War II, even after war was declared between Germany and America. This alliance began with U.S. corporate investment during the reconstruction of post-World War I Germany in the 1920s and, years later, included financial, industrial and military aid to the Nazis.

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

Author

Oui

12 years ago

Warsaw stresses: Death camps in Poland were German

(JPost) – All references to Poland during the war should be said as `Nazi German-occupied Poland,'” Junczyk-Ziomecka said.

“The consul-general is expressing understandable frustration with an unfortunate practice,” David Marwell, director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, which focuses on the Holocaust, said.

“Although the phrase `Polish Death Camp’ may simply be shorthand to describe location, there are many who wrongly conflate the geography of the camps with those who ran them. When it comes to such important issues, absolute clarity and accuracy are essential.”

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Representatives of the Anti- Defamation League in New York agreed.

“The Anti-Defamation League has expressed full support for the efforts of the government of Poland to ensure that the official names of the death camps in Poland emphasize that the camps were built and operated by Nazi Germany,” Todd Gutnick, the ADL’s director of media relations and public information, said.

“For example, in 2006 the League wrote to the directorgeneral of UNESCO to ensure that the official name of the Auschwitz death camp, as recorded on UNESCO’s world heritage site registry, emphasizes that the camp was German and run by the Nazis.

“As an agency which prioritizes remembrance of the Holocaust, we share Poland’s concerns over the frequent description of the camps as `Polish.’ Such a description implies that the camps were built in the name of the Polish people. This is manifestly not the truth,” Gutnick said.

Fundamentally Freund: A Jewish wedding in Warsaw

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

Author

Oui

12 years ago

About those death camps in Poland….

(Philly Burbs) – The American Jewish Committee has tried for years to instruct world leaders not to commit Obama’s error. In 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, the AJC was emphatic:

“We would … remind those who are either unaware of the facts or careless in their choice of words, as has been the case with some media outlets, that Auschwitz-Birkenau and the other death camps, including Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka, were conceived, built and operated by Nazi Germany and its allies. … The camps were located in German-occupied Poland, the European country with by far the largest Jewish population, but they were most emphatically not ‘Polish camps.’ This is not a mere semantic matter. Historical integrity and accuracy hang in the balance.”

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

Author

Oui

12 years ago

Pres Komorowski plays down Obama ‘death camp’ gaffe

(The News) – Pri me Minister Donald Tusk continued that “we expect diligence, care, and respect from our friends on issues of such importance as World War II.”

Meanwhile, a statement from Poland’s Jewish community signed by Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich described Obama’s remark as “highly regrettable,” noting that although “it should be obvious that he was only referring to the geographic location… we are expecting Barack Obama to personally correct his statement.” Polish opposition leaders, including conservative Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Law and Justice and Leszek Miller of the Democratic Left Alliance, have also denounced Obama’s remarks.

Kaczynski said that “the Polish nation has been offended in an exceptionally drastic way,” and called for a personal apology from Obama. America’s Kosciuszko Foundation – a Polonia organisation – together with the Polish Foreign Ministry, has been attempting to stamp out references to “Polish death camps” in the international press for several years.

The campaign has had some success, with papers including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The San Francisco Times outlawing such references. The Associated Press news agency has adopted a similar resolution.

Alex Storozynski, chairman of the Kosciuszko Foundation, has claimed that referring to German Nazi death camps as Polish (owing to the fact that they were on occupied Polish territory) is “Orwellian doublespeak” that “distorts history.”

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

shergald

12 years ago

I’m surprised the Obama administration is allowing this obvious error to hang out there this long.

Still, I wouldn’t underestimate the role of anti-Semiticism in Polish society even today. When he ran for president in the 90s, decades after the Holocaust, Lech Wałęsa accused his opponent of being half Jewish as if it were still a stigma.

Superpole

12 years ago

Reply to shergald

Those wanting a bit of insight regarding Polish anti-Semitism- I recommend reading “Hiding in the Spotlight” by Greg Dawson.

it details the life of two incredible Russian Jewish sisters.. how their family got caught up in the madness when the Germans marched into Russia.. the two sisters miraculously got thru it and ended up in the U.S. Their parents/grandparents were murdered by the Germans at Dobritsky Yar.

Author

Oui

12 years ago

Reply to Superpole

Hiding In Spotlight, Jewish Pianist Survived WWII

(NPR) – The piano tuner helped Zhanna and her sister get work playing at a musical theater that was frequented by German soldiers. The sisters’ piano playing skills helped them outlast the war — though their names are listed among those who died during the German occupation of Ukraine.

“It was presumed that nobody had escaped those death marches,” Greg Dawson explains. “As far as I know, they are the only two of the 16,000 who escaped.”

Jews in the Ukraine and Nazi death squads

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

Superpole

12 years ago

Reply to Oui

It’s as if God spared these two sisters, to bear witness to what the Hell happened. we obviously need witnesses, with all of the denial out there regarding the holocaust.

Author

Oui

12 years ago

Jedwabne pogrom in 1941

The start of World War II in Europe began with theinvasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. Likewise, on September 17, 1939, the Soviet Red Army invaded the eastern regions of Poland while in secret agreement with Germany. The area of Jedwabne was originally occupied by the Germans who crushed Polish resistance being offered by local Polish cadets. Jedwabne was then transferred to the Soviets in accordance with the September 28, 1939, German-Soviet Boundary Treaty. As soon as the Soviets entered Jedwabne, the local Polish government was dismantled. At first, many Polish Jews were relieved to learn that the Soviets, rather than the Nazis, were to occupy their town, and unlike gentile Poles, publicly welcomed the Red Army as their protector. Some people from other ethnic groups in Kresy, particularly Belarusians, also openly welcomed the Soviets. Administrative jobs were offered to Jews who declared Soviet allegiance. Some Jews joined a Soviet militia overseeing deportations organized by the NKVD. At least one witness testimony says that during round-ups, armed Jewish militiamen were seen to be guarding those prepared for deportation to Siberia. A total of 22,353 Poles (entire families) were deported from the vicinity. Red Army troops requisitioned food and other goods, undercutting nearly everyone’s material needs. The Soviet secret police accompanying the Red Army routinely arrested and deported Polish citizens – both gentile and Jewish – spreading terror throughout the region. Waves of arrests, expulsions and prison executions continued until June 20-21, 1941.

Following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the German forces quickly overran the territory of Poland which had been occupied by the Soviets since 1939. The small town of Wizna near Jedwabne saw several dozen Jewish men shot by the invading Germans under Hauptsturmführer Hermann Schaper, as did other neighboring towns. The Nazis distributed propaganda in the area, revealing crimes committed by the Soviets in Eastern Poland and saying that Jews might have supported them. In parallel, the SS organized special Einsatzgruppen (“task forces”) to murder Jews in these areas and a few massacres were carried out. The guidelines for such massacres were formulated by Reinhard Heydrich, who ordered his officers to induce anti-Jewish incidents on territories newly occupied by the German forces. Local communities were encouraged to commit anti-Jewish pogroms and robberies with total impunity.

The Polish Institute of National Remembrance now estimates of the number of people deported to Siberia to be 320,000

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

Superpole

12 years ago

If the Poles have a bad attitude, it might have something to do with being located smack in the middle between Germany and Russia.

Look at the historical map of Poland- the size of their nation has increased/decreased like a balloon.

Despite a ten-year nonaggression pact signed in 1934, Hitler attacked Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Soviet troops invaded from the east on Sept. 17, and on Sept. 28, a German-Soviet agreement divided Poland between the USSR and Germany.

Sound like fun? In a four week period, Poland was attacked by TWO nations, then taken over and divided by those two nations. Any help from England, France, the U.S.?

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107891.html

Sheer Ignorance of Polish Contribution In WWII

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