Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Who Were the Real Terrorists in Kielce 1946?

Updated February 1, 2008:

This blog presents another essay by the mysterious Eastern Orthodox expatriate US academic Stojgniev O’Donnell (a pseudonym). This blog differs with O'Donnell in a number of areas, but we agree with him in others.

I have published a number of O'Donnell's essays, which I receive through an intermediary as he does not deal directly with any US-based media. Unfortunately, in this essay he moves away from critical-Semitism (which we promote here) into the bigoted terrain of anti-Semitism. Critical-Semitism is humanistic, truthful and rational and anti-Semitism is the opposite of all three.

This blog strongly rejects the Jewish propaganda line that all criticism of Jews, their religion or their state is anti-Semitism, or that anti-Semitism is some bizarre unfathomable evil that occurs for no reason whatsoever.

I think maybe O'Donnell was angry when he wrote it. I strongly suggest that authors let sit pieces that they write when they were angry, and come back to them later when they are in a calm frame of mind and edit them accordingly. This is what we do here at this blog, when we remember to.

Still, because the history of Jews and Poles has been so tragic, it is useful to publish the Polish side of the affair in an effort to try to understand the roots of the problem.

This essay deals with a pogrom of Jews in Kielce, Poland, in 1946, after World War 2 was over, from a Polish nationalist point of view. Although I have not read it, Jan T. Gross'
Fear - Anti-Semitism After Auschwitz is supposed to be an excellent work that deals comprehensively with the terrible Kielce pogrom.

Out of a pre-war Jewish population in Kielce of 25,000, only about 200 Kielce Jews survived the war. The surviving Jews returned from the forests and camps and found that Poles had stolen their homes. This was the setting in which the famous pogrom took place.

It is fascinating how Jewish Zionists can rage beet-red about "Poles stealing the homes and land of Jews", while being oblivious to the nightmarish Jewish state occupying Palestine, which has stolen every inch of land it illegally claims.

Although only 39 Jews were killed in the pogrom (relatively few compared to other pogroms), the Kielce Pogrom had great significance for Polish history. After WW2 ended, many Jews had hopes of continuing to live in Poland. For many of them, Kielce ended all of that.

As Stephen Pollard notes, Kielce convinced many of them of the need for a Jewish state (this is actually a dubious assumption on the part of Zionist Pollard). Debate about the Kielce Pogrom and the Polish role in it has continued in recent years.

A Polish commission in 2000 concluded that a mob of local Poles spontaneously attacked and killed the Kielce Jews as a result of "unfortunate coincidences of an historical nature", and dismissed a conspiracy theory that the pogrom was instituted by the Soviet Union.

Last month, on July 6, a memorial to the victims of the pogrom was laid in Kielce on the 60th anniversary of the pogrom. The Polish President's office read a statement at the ceremony describing the pogrom as "a great shame and tragedy for the Jews and Poles". This blog concurs completely in that sentiment.

The essay below deals with an article by Adam Michnik, the Jewish editor or Poland's largest newspaper. This article also sheds light on current Polish affairs and indicates that, alas, all is still not well between the Poles and the Jews.

The piece makes some pointed critiques, which are commonly made, of secular, liberal Jews in the media using that forum to aggressively push a particular type of Jewish tribal agenda onto a non-Jewish population.

Note the anti-Russian and anti-Soviet sentiment in O'Donnell's piece, typical of Polish religious nationalism.

Suffice to say that O'Donnell's views are pretty typical of Slavic Eastern Orthodox Christians in Poland, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia and to a much lesser extent among Orthodox Christians in Greece and the Arab World.

Socially conservative yet anti-imperialist and to some extent anti-Western, these Orthodox have also had a tempestuous relationship with the Jews.

These difficulties, and the reasons behind them, have of course been shrouded in fog by the Politically Correct theory of anti-Semitism, which holds that anti-Semitism is a form of mental illness, is not understandable by anyone but a psychiatrist or a prison warden, and occurs for no known reason at all.

I call this the mystification of anti-Semitism, and while it serves ego-defensive purposes for the Jews and philo-Semites who have contrived this nonsense, it surely sheds little light on anti-Semitism.

Furthermore, by promoting Zionism and the Jewish state (one of the worst mistakes the Jews have made in recent years) this mystification serves more nefarious ends. For it is Zionist dogma, elucidated by Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism himself, that the Gentiles will always hate the Jews, everywhere the Jews are, for eternity.

Such it has been, such it is, such it will be.

Hence the need for the armed gangster-state ghetto (It even has a wall around it!) called Israel.

A further elaboration is that worldwide, an eternal epidemic of anti-Semitism has occurred, continues to occur, and most importantly, will always occur, ever since the Jews appeared on Earth, for no intelligible reason whatsoever other than merely a manifestation of evil.

The insidious and disgusting sentiments working here? All Gentiles are anti-Semites. Anti-Semitism is incomprehensible other than as an infection of evil.

Putting the two together, we realize that many ultranationalist Jews actually believe that all Gentiles are evil people. Hence, apparently on some level, they hate us (Israel Shahak said a majority of Israelis had a deep hatred of all Gentiles). And they accuse us of being "haters".

In truth, Jewish suffering has not been particularly unique. Throughout most of the history of feudal Europe, Christian serfs would have gladly traded places with Jews. Certainly there were pogroms and other forms of prejudice and racist hatred, but serfdom for the serfs themselves was one centuries-long pogrom.

If one reviews the history of any ethnic group, tribe or nation, one will find that they have often been in conflict, often armed conflict, with various neighbors for various reasons. Wars have been ongoing, and many members of the tribe or nation were killed. The land was often overrun by invaders, often repeatedly, much of their land stolen, and many of their people killed.

Painful as it may sound, the history of the Jews (until the 1940's anyway) is probably not that much more painful that that of many tribes and nations. Even the extermination attempt in the 1940's was not unique, sadly, as there have been many attempts to exterminate various ethnic groups.

The Tutsis lost possibly 70% of their population in the genocide in 1994. By any accounting, that is more than the 1/3 of Jews lost in the Shoah. One-third of the population of East Timor was killed after Indonesia invaded, equivalent to the Shoah as a percentage. Many American Indian tribes have been wiped clean off the map altogether.

I am not an expert on Slavic Orthodox Christian anti-Semitism but in Poland, in general, Catholic anti-Semitism was religiously-based, or more accurately based on confessionalism (religious bigotry without religious belief). In a nutshell, the Poles wanted Jews to convert to Catholicism and intermarry with Poles. The Jews would do neither, and hence anti-Semitism ensued.

The Chmielnicki Rebellion in the Ukraine from 1648-1654, during which about 20,000 Jews and 100,000 noblemen were killed, has achieved permanent victimology status amongst Jews as merely an outbreak of murderous anti-Semitism, and nothing else.

That it was, but many Jews had formed a middle class that allied itself with the brutal feudal lords. The Jews were often the only face of feudal rule that the serfs ever saw.

The rebellion was probably mostly just a peasant rebellion of serfs against the feudal lords and their allies. Many people were killed on all sides.

Chmielnicki, who led the rebellion, actually implored the Jewish poor to join the fight against their brethren who were allied with the feudal classes. The Jewish poor refused. To this day, Chmielnicki is seen as a hero in the Ukraine, while Jews regard him as some kind of Hitler and see his fame as emblematic of anti-Semitism in the region.

Chmielnicki is probably more akin to, say, Tupac Amaru, who led the Inca against the Spaniards in the late 1700's, or Mao Zedong, or Ho Chi Minh, or Desallines in Haiti in 1804, or other leaders of peasant rebellions. It is useful to note that peasant rebellions, whether involving Jews or non-Jews, are typically bloody affairs.

For example, in 1804, in the Haitian Slave Revolt, the Haitian slaves rose up against French slave-holding families in Haiti and killed most of the 25,000 population of them. This blog regards that wild massacre, as, in general, a great day for humanity (though the children of the slaveowners could have been spared).

Another interesting aspect of the Chmielnicki Rebellion is that the Jews look at the rebellion and the 1600's in which it occurred, as one of, as noted above, an insane outbreak of murderous anti-Semitism, and little else. From the Jewish point of view, this was the century in which people went nuts in the Ukraine and slaughtered Jews for no reason. Not much else happened of consequence in the region at that time.

Never mind that the Jews killed were the public face of inhuman feudal brutality, as noted above. We need also to note that during this same period, Poland was wracked another terrible outbreak of anti-Semitism, but this occurred in the context of general chaos, wild warfare and multiple invasions of Poland by various foreign powers.

During the period in which Jews narcissistically mourn their own losses as the only salient tragedy of the time, an incredible 1/3 of the population of Poland (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) was exterminated. This is a population loss equivalent to the Jewish Shoah. So, while Jews were definitely being killed in Poland during this time, the Poles themselves were also being slaughtered like flies.

Whether Jews were being killed to a greater extent than Poles is open to debate. The critical point here is that this was not so much only another wild outbreak of incomprehensible Nazi-like slaughter of Jews (the myopic Jewish view) but instead, it was simply a period of mass slaughter of the population at large by various actors for various reasons.

The number of dead in the Chmielnicki Rebellion has also been exaggerated, which has been a general tendency of Ashkenazi Jews who have cultivated a victimhood epic. Exaggeration of one's own losses, and the resulting embrace of victimhood, is probably a general human tendency and not limited to Jews.

Jewish sources originally said that 2.4 to 3.3 million Jews were killed during Chmielnicki, and modern-day Jewish sources put the figure at 500,000. An Israeli historian has produced a more accurate figure of about 19,000 Jewish dead out of a population of 40,000. Nobles suffered much more, as they were virtually exterminated from the Ukraine - scarcely one survived.

Nevertheless, one gets the impression that Jewish activists look at Poland in the 1600's and see only dead Jews and no other corpses.

A useful book that deals peripherally with Polish-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish relations is Primo Levi's " If Not Now, When?" (review here) about a group of armed Jewish anti-Nazi partisans operating behind enemy lines in Belarus, Ukraine, Poland and Germany in World War 2.

They meet up at one point with a group of Polish resistance fighters. The Jews air their grievances about Polish treatment of Jews to the Poles, who retort with a history of equally lamentable treatment of Poles at the hands of all sorts of invaders and local abusers.

The Jews end up concluding that the Poles have been just as abused as the Jews have, but in their twisted way, many of the Poles took out their rage on the local Jews instead of on the real abusers. Both sides leave with a refreshed understanding of each other. By the way, I enjoyed Levi's book and recommend it.

With that background, we can move on to the piece. As usual, my comments, if any, will appear in bold brackets:


I am no expert on the history of the events that took place in Kielce, Poland in July 1946 and resulted in the death of a group of Jews. And I have no intention of becoming an expert, for several reasons. First of all, I am convinced that the version of the Kielce events which is promoted by Jews as historical reality is, in fact, a clever distortion of the truth.

[RL: I do not think that this is completely accurate, though the standard Jewish line includes various inaccuracies.

The aberrations include that 80, or 50, or however many, Jews were killed - no, it was 39 - and that the Polish army and police and gleefully joined in the killing - in fact, the
Polish army fought off the mob for some time, and took the wounded to the hospital, although some other soldiers joined in the pogrom.]

The Jewish version of the notorious “pogrom” has been crafted by Jews because of the propaganda value of its symbolism. Kielce is one of those shticks with which Jews love to thrash Poles. (Always the Jews glorify their distinctiveness. They can’t speak German unless it becomes “Yiddish.” They can’t get their butts kicked unless it’s a racist “pogrom”).

[RL: For the record, Yiddish and German are distinctive languages. Yiddish is not even a dialect of German; it is a separate language altogether. Yiddish is actually a sort of a German-Slavic creole with many Hebrew words mixed in.]

Life is too short to be distracted by what happened in Kielce. Some Jews were murdered by Poles. A Polish boy mysteriously disappeared for awhile (though he turned up unharmed after the violence) and there were rumors of ritual murder.

Substantial evidence suggests that the Kielce “pogrom” was engineered by Soviets in Poland, who used the incident to slander postwar Poland in the international press, while at the same time shoring up and legitimizing the unpopular Soviet occupation, which was bitterly opposed by the vast majority of the Polish population.

[RL: This view is quite popular in Poland, especially with Polish nationalists. A major Polish commission reviewed all evidence about this Soviet conspiracy theory and rejected it out of hand as unproven. There are many problems with the theory.

The main one is that there is little, if any, hard evidence supporting it, only a cui bono theory that suggests that the Soviet Union could have benefited from it.

Another mark against this theory is that, despite the blatherings of Jewish ultranationalists, the Soviet Union was not anti-Semitic at the time or prior, and was not until the disappointing "rootless cosmopolitan" campaign of 1948.]


The reason I raise this topic is because of an interesting article on Kielce by Adam Michnik, the notorious Jewish “dissident” and contemporary media magnate. Michnik’s article appeared in his newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza: “Pogram Kielecki: Dwa rachunki sumienia” (3-4 July 2006, pp. 12, 13, 14 and 10-11 July 2006, pp. 22, 23, 24).

How did Michnik (real name: Adam Szechter) go from poor dissident to publisher of the most powerful daily in postcommunist Poland? I leave it to the reader to draw his own conclusion.

Michnik’s newspaper is a source of rabid anti-Polishness; anti-Christianity; political correctness; strident support of homosexuality, love parades, and social deviance; and propaganda for all of contemporary America’s and Western Europe’s wickedest nonsense on relativism and multiculti.

Michnik occasionally and strategically writes with sympathy about the Catholic Church, which enjoys the backing of the great majority of the Polish population.

[RL: Jewish hostility towards Christianity, to one degree or another, is often seen in even very assimilated US Jews, and is most pointed towards Catholicism, and not so much towards Protestantism. Jews have long memories, and Christian anti-Semitism in Europe was, for the vast majority of its history, Catholic.

We see this Catholic anti-Semitism in Latin America also. Typically, it took the form of a complaint that "Jews killed Jesus". Hence the furor when Mel Gibson, a deeply conservative Catholic, made the movie,"The Passion". Protestants in general have never cared much about Jews one way or the other, though lately many Protestant fundamentalists have become passionate Zionists.]


Michnik’s people will pen some insignificant article on a minor religious celebration, illustrated perhaps with a color photo, while in the same issue publishing a couple of deeply ideological articles which seek to compromise the Polish Church.

[RL: I confess it is beyond me why the secular, liberal, Westernizing Jews that tend to own media outlets so often play with fire in this way.

We have seen so many reports like this of Jewish ethnic activists in the media aggressively pushing a particular secular, liberal, Westernizing Jewish agenda onto a non-Jewish population that it cannot possibly anti-Semitic fantasy. However, to dislike Jews due to the activities of these "media Jews" is a mistake.

Many Jews, especially Orthodox Jews and particularly in Israel, are deeply conservative on social issues like multiculturalism, abortion, homosexuality, etc. They don't have much in common with the species of liberal "media Jew" described above.

Contrast the "media Jew" behavior with the mindset of Overseas Chinese, another minority very similar to Jews in that a tiny minority has often achieved huge economic power in a number of societies. Yet the Overseas Chinese tend to keep their heads down, assimilate, and not provoke the majority.

Pogroms have occurred against the Overseas Chinese, as they have against Jews, which suggests an economic basis for at least some of these violent uprisings. Yet perhaps Jews could learn a thing or two from the Overseas Chinese about how to not go out of one's way to provoke a majority population.]


In the article on Kielce, Michnik demonstrates his mastery of the Jewish art of propaganda.

He goes so far as to quote long passages about the Kielce “pogrom” written by Kielce Archbishop Czeslaw Kaczmarek and later delivered to the American ambassador in Warsaw (international Jewry at that time was agitating the West to defend Poland’s helpless, innocent Jews against racist Polish anti-Semitism).

Archbishop Kaczmarek eloquently explains the Poles’ suspicion of Jews:
Here after the large-scale murder of Jews committed by the German government in recent time in Poland, also in Kielce, there was no negative antagonism towards Jews and there was no anti-Semitism. Everyone sympathized with the Jews, even their most determined enemies. The Poles had saved many Jews, and without Polish aid, not a single Jew would have survived…Jews are unpopular, even hated, throughout Poland. There is no doubt about that.

Jews are hated by those Poles who belong to no political party, but also by those who belong to the ruling [communist] party…The origins of that antagonism are well known, but certainly they have no racial basis. Jews in Poland are the chief propagators of the communist system, which the Polish nation completely rejects….

Jews are everywhere in the government, in [Polish] institutions outside of Poland, in industry, in administrative offices, in the military, and everywhere in the most important, most influential positions. They control the nation’s press; they control all censorship today in Poland. They control the security apparatus and they are responsible for arrests (p. 13).
Something similar took place in other countries of the postwar Soviet bloc, as Jews in the name of communism and the brotherhood of nations with violence and terror “settled their accounts” with Christians.

[RL: The Cardinal's account is self-contradictory and problematic. As a Leftist, I don't necessarily have problems with Jews being Communists. It was true that there were many Jews among the Communists in Europe and the Soviet Union, especially in leadership roles.

These Jews were often outside of normative Jewish culture, religion and even mainstream Jewish identity. The notion that Jews in the Communist movement may have unfortunately used their power to attack their ancient enemies is a long-standing complaint of anti-Semites that deserves examination.

Certainly in the late 1920's and early 1930's in the Soviet Union, the abuse of the Christian religion was almost taken to the form of a fetish.

But note also that the institutional Christian churches in these Eastern Bloc states often opposed the Communist regimes. Jews as part of these regimes (and other government officials) consequently attacked these churches, as they attacked any other dissidents.

The notion that Jewish Communists were attacking dissidents not as Communists first, but as Jews first, is problematical and remains to be proven.

Many Communist Jews in the Eastern Bloc were probably trying to put into practice the noble Jewish tradition of being a "light unto nations". They may have been misguided, but they were probably sincere about wanting a better world.

Furthermore, many Eastern Bloc Jews probably saw Communism as a remedy for long-standing, often irrational anti-Semitism in the region. Note that in the 1960's, the Polish Communist government could no longer be considered Jewish-dominated, and even orchestrated a disgusting anti-Semitic campaign called the Polish 1968 Political Crisis.]


Here I should remind those foolish and naive Poles who worship America that the latter country does not allow any discussion or investigation of the Jews’ role in the communist terror.

[RL: This is simply not true at at all. There are no laws against it. However, there is a taboo associated with the subject. The Nazis made much of the association between Jews and Communism, so anyone equating Jews with Communism since then has been, partly properly, seen as treading in Nazi footsteps.]

According to the American academy, there was no collaboration between Jews and communists (I was recently told that point blank by one American professor).

[RL: Well, that is definitely a bald-faced lie.]

Michnik (along with a handful of other Jews) occasionally admits, however, that Jews truly were responsible for communist terror.

[It's not proper, as I have noted above, to ascribe all Eastern Bloc Communist repression to Jews. I believe that Jews were a minority even amongst, say, the Polish Communist Party.

In the early days, even in Poland, Communism was actually fairly popular, despite what O'Donnell implies, especially among working-class Poles.

Initially, conditions for workers and especially peasants were dramatically improved. Recall that Polish feudalism did not truly die until 1945, and it was the Communists who put the stake into feudalism's dying heart once and for all.

But the Polish Communists made a number of stupid mistakes, especially very heavy-handed repression, and by the mid-1950's or so, much of their popularity had evaporated.]


It is permissible in America for a Jew, but not for a non-Jew, to point out parallels between Jews and communists.

The main point of Michnik’s article is that the Catholic Church is to blame for the murder of innocent Jews in Kielce. (The ultimate implication, then, is that such an institution cannot be legitimate). Michnik quotes other Poles in the Catholic hierarchy and points out the moral failings of their political incorrectness.

And yet Michnik is so daring in his propaganda, so convinced of his skill at selling his “buy-one-get-one-free” illusion, that he is willing at times to argue the side of truth, i.e. the Polish point of view.

Archbishop Kaczmarek’s explanation, as quoted by Michnik, is a balanced, unemotional explanation of the Jewish role in the postwar communist terror in Poland. Reading Archbishop Kaczmarek’s text, one understands that, for historical reasons, Poles will never ever trust a Jew.

[RL: I think that is dubious. People have short memories, and Polish Communism is dead anyway.]

Michnik quotes some words delivered by a certain Rabbi Kahane in Kielce at the ceremonious burial of the Jewish victims of “Polish terror.” Michnik doesn’t provide background information on Kahane, but I have in my mind a definite, colorful snapshot of a spiteful rabbi puffed up with pride and venom.

Michnik, confident in his skill of disinformation, asks:
Polish reality, obligated at that moment, in 1946, to appeal publicly to the Jewish public for [Jews] to avoid cooperation with the communist regime imposed upon Poland, and especially with the security system, which was in fact for Poles a system of persecution? Was not the rabbi obligated to condemn the violation of human rights [in Poland], the persecution of people [from the non-communist, anti-Nazi underground], the excesses of censorship, the fake elections?
[RL: On the other hand, the only proper attitude of the Polish people towards Kielce itself is the statement of the Polish government at the July 7 ceremony discussed above - that it was a shame and a tragedy for both the Jews and the Poles.]

In attempting to appear impartial, Michnik raises some legitimate, essential questions. Why were Jews silent when Jewish communists were arresting, persecuting, and murdering innocent Christians?

[RL: We have dealt with the "Jewish Communists persecuted Christians" bit on this blog before. Recall that over 95% of Poles and 80% of Russians were at least nominal Christians, even during Communism. So any Communist repression was likely to target "Christians" simply because they were a majority of the population.

This essay of O'Donnell's seems to be an example of a Polish phenomenon called Zydokomuna and his complaints about persecution of Poles an example of Polonphobia. Both articles are excellent background for this post.]


The implication is this: Why was your Jewish Holocaust more important than ours?

[RL: It is interesting to note that 3 million non-Jewish Poles were killed in WW2. Poland lost an incredible 1/3 of its total population. That is 1/2 of the Jewish Shoah right there. 22 million Russians died in WW2. That is almost 4 times the number of deaths in the Shoah. Where are the "Russian Holocaust" Museums in America?]

We live in a time of struggle with Jews. The inclination of the Jew is to lead the world to Armageddon.

[RL: This is just rank anti-Semitic nonsense, but as far as the gangster, thuggish state of Israel goes, combined with its determined and often-fanatical opponents, there seems to be some truth in this. Which is another reason that state should have never been created.]

As I have noted before, a great virtue for the Christian is knowing when and how to ignore Jews.

[RL: I think it is important to note the ethnic biases which may be lurking in the propaganda of various ethnic groups. At that point, one can at least choose to ignore that propaganda or decide that it has an ethnic basis that may not be relevant to one's own group.]

One should never permit one’s life to be directed by Jews. Those non-Jews who spend their life in hatred of Jews are foolish, for their hatred is exactly what the Jew thrives upon – it confirms the Jew’s ethnocentrism.

[RL: Unfortunately, I conclude that this is true. Anti-Semitism indeed feeds Jewish ethnocentrism, which then feeds further anti-Semitism, which then...get it? Albert Einstein, who was Jewish himself, noted that Jews were determined to be at war with the whole world and then were surprised when the world did not react favorably to them.

Hostility towards outsiders, along with xenophobia and accompanying paranoia and a victimization fetish, go hand in hand with ethnocentrism. All ethnocentric groups (that means all humans, really) have the potential to display such tendencies. As a group becomes more ethnocentric, they will tend display these qualities more.

Jews, being perhaps the most ethnocentric tribe on Earth, would be expected to display xenophobia and accompanying paranoia along with a penchant to see themselves as eternal victims, in spades.

The solution, as noted by progressives from Marx on, is simply the assimilation of the Jews and the tearing down of all ghettos, physical and mental. Such is the road to liberation.]


I pity those Americans who have, in contempt, adopted the pejorative name “kike.” Never have I heard a non-Jew use that word in conversation. I have encountered “kike” only among Jews, who are hoping and dreaming that someone would legitimize their ethnocentricity by calling them a “kike.” The name “Jew” is enough. Jew says it all.

When a Jew mentions Kielce or Jebwabne, I simply smile and comment on the weather. I refuse to allow a Jew to dictate my thoughts. The point of this article is this: as the Jews become more powerful, they become more daring in their allusions.

[RL: As Kevin MacDonald notes, as Jews increase their power over non-Jews, anti-Semitism seems to increase. It is this, not some incomprehensible sickness of the soul, that holds the key to our understanding of much anti-Semitism.

The question then is, which way forward?

Is there something to be said for the Overseas Chinese tendency to keep one's head down and be discreet? Belligerence and overreach have caused the Jews untold heartache through time. Minorities prosper and live in peace at the whim of majorities, like it or not. Hence, pragmatism mandates reasonable discretion on the part of any minority.]


Adam Michnik and other Jews have come to believe that Poles are so simple-minded that they can be persuaded that Kielce is proof of the inherent evil of Polish society and the Polish Church. The reality is that Michnik, in particular, and Jews, in general, are deceiving charlatans. It is in their nature to deceive non-Jews.

[RL: Once again, more anti-Semitic blather, but let us note one thing. O'Donnell's rage, amply displayed in this piece, comes from something that is not well-known.

I was taught somehow, possibly through the standard pro-Jewish Holocaust line, that Polish Jews had heavily collaborated with the Nazis in killing Jews. Let us note that the degree of Polish collaboration with Nazis in Occupied Poland is controversial.

For some alternate views on the Nazi occupation of Poland that show that many Poles collaborated with the Germans and, more commonly, delightfully helped themselves to Jewish property after the Jews were gone, contradicting my general tone in this post, see here, here and here.

It is true that some Poles participated in 22 massacres of Jews during the Holocaust and a number of Poles collaborated with the Nazis. But one point of view is that, unlike Lithuania, Ukraine or other East European states, Polish enthusiasm for collaboration and pogroms during the Holocaust was less than other East European nations.

In fact, most Poles did not cooperate with the Nazi persecution of the Polish Jews at all, and most of the Jews who were killed in Poland were killed by Germans alone (with some exceptions such as the Jebwabne Pogrom).

In the cases where the Nazis had "local" collaborators, it is more accurate to describe them as the Polish Government in Exile did in the famous letter below, as "the dregs of Eastern Europe", rather than only Poles. In other words, Nazi collaborators in Poland came from a variety of East European nations.

There are more Poles listed than any other national group in the Righteous Among Nations Award given by Israel for those who helped to save Jews during WW2.

In Nazi-occupied Poland, hiding Jews was punished by the death penalty. Poland was the only Nazi-occupied country that formally instituted the death penalty for sheltering Jews. Nevertheless, as we noted above, more Poles saved Jews than any other national group.

The Polish government in exile was the first government to tell the world of the existence of concentration camps and the Nazi policy to exterminate the Jews (a copy of that famous document is here).

Anyone who insists, as one of my commenters did at the end of this piece, that the vast majority of Poles collaborated with the Nazi Final Solution, or that the Poles have always been some of the worst anti-Semites on Earth, needs to carefully read this remarkable 15-page historical document.

This document, describing the reality of life in Nazi-occupied Poland in stark, brutal terms, focuses on the plight of the Jews, and describes the Nazi destruction of Polish Jewry in rich, detailed terms. The document could have been written by the ADL or the Israeli government.

We should also note that the Polish government in exile was the only government that set up an organization specifically dedicated to saving the Jews of Poland - this organization was called Zegota.

When I first read O'Donnell's post here, I could not understand his anger and I thought that he was just degenerating into anti-Semitic irrationalism (as he does from time to time). But now that I have learned the reality of the dynamic between Poles and Jews in WW2, I am beginning to understand his anger.

Yes, a number of Poles collaborated and some even killed Jews themselves, but this occurred in most Nazi-occupied countries. But the vast majority of Poles refused to get involved, and a huge percentage of the population either joined or supported an often-suicidal Polish resistance.

The Polish resistance was one of the largest, most potent and accomplished of all of the resistance armies in the Nazi-occupied lands. The Polish resistance, with the support of millions of Poles, worked feverishly to save every Jew in Poland as part of their resistance project. They even organized an amazing resistance organization in the bowels of the Auschwitz itself.

A Pole, Witold Pilecki, was the only person who volunteered to be imprisoned at Auschwitz and the first person to organize a resistance organization there. Those few Jews who survived (a horrifying 90% were exterminated - 3 million in total out of 3.4 million, or 1/2 of the entire Shoah) survived only at the whim of their Polish neighbors who hid them.

The reality of the Polish-Jewish dynamic in Occupied Poland was, as elsewhere in Nazi-occupied lands, more complex than the sound bites the propagandists feed us. Some Poles collaborated but many more did not. Some Poles killed Jews, and many more worked night and day to save them and fight Nazism.

In that light, Jewish chauvinist propaganda depicting Poles as super-Nazi collaborators and the worst anti-Semites on Earth is not only erroneous but it is also disgusting and unfair. And this is the misguided agenda of Organized Jewry (exemplified here by Mr. Michnik).

This agenda needs to be condemned alongside Poland's historical anti-Semitism and the refusal of many Poles to take responsibility for Kielce. Kielce happened, 60 years ago, but it's all over now. It's time to put it to rest and move on towards Polish-Jewish healing instead of this endless, divisive pummeling of dead beasts.

In that context, Jewish obsession with Kielce and other Polish horrors seems misplaced. The latest philo-Semitic notion is that "the world was silent" after Kielce - that seems highly dubious to me.

Instead, Poles should be commended for refusing to collaborate in the Judaicide. Michnik's harping on aberrations like Kielce would not appear to be conducive to rebuilding Polish-Jewish relations.]

No comments:

Post a Comment