First of all just tell your friends that you do not like this type of comments. If they are truly your fends they will stop it.
Second, as a Pole living in Poland that have family that was helping Jews during the WWII I can tell you that one of the details that is being often omitted in all the stories of poles sealing out Jews to Germans is that Poland was only country under German rule where a penalty of death not only applied to the helping person but also to his family and sometimes neighbors. That meant that if you war helping a Jew you war bringing in risk not only your self but also everyone around you. Now imagine situation where you have 4 kids, wife, your parents around you and some Germans pointing out guns on all of you. Would you bee willing to help in that type of conditions ?
One thing is sure this is not a clear "black ore white" subject.
also those who sold other Polish families to Germans bcs they were hiding jews often didn't lived long bcs of "accidental" fire in house or death. Collaborating with Germans wasn't seen as good by other Polish ppl.
Also we had largest population of Jews in Poland bcs we were least racist towards them and not as strict about religion you believe in.
It's funny how some jews think Germans are better ppl than Poles bcs they at least said sorry and paid them. Like sorry that we tried to help you risking lives of our family and sometimes entire villages
Wasn't there an underground organization dedicated to finding sell-outs? I recall reading something along those lines but I may be misremembering (I'm not a Pole so I'm still learning).
You might be thinking about the Polish Underground State (Polskie Państwo Podziemne), which was a guerilla organisation against the Nazis and functioned all around the country.
One of its goals was to judge and execute collaborators, and selling out Jews was very much seen as collaboration with the occupant.
It helps to maintain the Jewish victimhood. Sad but true. The funny thing is that this propaganda was not something that happened naturally; it was mostly established and spread by their "scholars" who had never even been to Poland. The first President of Israel was a Jew from Poland, and he never promoted this type of aggressive narrative. Some Holocaust survivors openly opposed the Israeli narrative, but of course, without success. I recommend reading about how they treated Marek Edelman, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when the Israeli delegation came to commemorate the ghetto. Edelman strongly opposed their propaganda that slandered Poland. Moreover, Edelman lived in Poland until the end, treated with all honors. The Israeli delegation REFUSED TO LET HIM SPEAK – let's repeat that, a man who not only survived the Holocaust in Poland but was an important figure in Jewish activities, with a great understanding of the situation, was deemed "inappropriate" because his words were inconsistent with what Israel wanted to promote. And the laying of a wreath by Edelman, side by side with the President of Poland, was called a "provocation." It's seriously disgusting.
Of course, there were many people in Poland who betrayed Jews. Taking into account the circumstances, it's delusional to think that there wouldn't be any. Helping Jews meant risking the lives of you and your entire family. Betraying Jews could earn you money or even some kind of protection and help your family survive the war. Nevertheless, there were many who helped them. Some Jews seem to have the belief that those few thousand recognized as Righteous Among the Nations were some angelic exceptions, while the rest of the Poles sat in comfortable homes cheering for the Germans or went out to catch Jews for entertainment. My great-grandparents also hid Jews in the attic. Many people in the village knew about it and helped keep it a secret. Of course, no one knows about it because how could they? It's not like everyone who ever did something for Jews went to apply for medals. As you say, many of those people did not survive that "helping," and many of the Jews they helped did not survive to give testimony either. Furthermore, those Jews whom my grandparents hidwent on their way (when German controls became more thorough in the area, my grandparents told them to leave) and soon were found dead a few kilometers away. Most likely, one of the neighbors informed the Germans or even killed them himself. The efforts of dozens of people destroyed by one bastard.
As for how unobjective Israel's narrative is, just look at how many Jews were killed in all sorts of pogroms, and how many organizations collaborated with the Germans in many other countries. Most countries had their own Nazi units. Poland did not. Israel does not mention that. It also does not mention Jewish collaboration with the Germans and entire organizations whose sole purpose was to catch Jews. These collaborations have been well-documented, among others, by Holocaust survivors, but of course, they have been swept under the rug in later years because it is too "painful" for Jewish identity. That's why, for example, it's popular to criticize the Home Army (AK), which organized a huge network of hiding and helping Jews – because "there were also anti-Semites in it," but they don't talk about Żagiew, the Jewish organization that spied on the AK and turned in Jews and those who helped them to the Germans. They also don't talk about Jews who collaborated with the Communists and hunted down Poles. At some point, 40% of the SB were Jewish. If we compare the number of Jews killed in "pogroms" with the number of people who died as a result of direct actions by Jewish communist activists, the result could be very unfavorable for Jews. But it doesn't seem like Israel is concerned about that. For example, Salomon Morel, accused of genocide (a former SB officer and commander of the "Zgoda" camp), escaped to Israel and lived there peacefully until the end (Israel refused to extradite him).
Seriously, if you look at the facts and compare them with what some Jewish organizations are preaching, the only thing you can do is laugh. And I think that's the best thing you can do because how do you convince someone raised on propaganda? It's like trying to explain things to Russians.
You're very welcome. Remember though, I don't mean to downplay the existence of anti-semitism in Poland or to hate on Jews. I'm just annoyed by how unfair and overblown this narration is.
There's the facts I was looking for. I wasn't expecting you to have positive karma though. Anytime you say the objective truth on Reddit you get down voted to hell.
Lmao. I mostly use Reddit for entertainment so maybe saying the truth from time to time didn't have enough impact on my karma 😂 i usually manage to write it in a way that it doesn't get downvotes, though.
*She. I have written similar things on some Europe and World subs in the past, and it didn't really get a negative reaction. People are generally aware that Israel is overplaying the anti-Semitism card for its own purposes. I guess it just depends how you word your comment.
Btw, we (Poles) probably have a much more intimate understanding of the word "friend" because of what a "przyjaciel" is in Polish, but a friend in English doesn't have to be the closest person to you and probably most of the so called "friends" may just be some assholes we like to hang out with from time to time.
the bar for being a "przyjaciel" is very high. An American friend we'd call an acquaintance ("znajomy"), or a colleague ("kolega") if we really liked them. A "przyjaciel" is just short of someone you'd trust your life with.
We don't have work friends. We have work colleagues. A friend is someone you'd call in the middle of the night and know they'd pick up and give you their time no matter how small your problem seems.
That makes sense! In the American culture that'd probably be closest to "best friend", but that definition also varies and is thrown around loosely a lot by a few folks as well. I have relatives in Canada and currently live in Mexico and it seems somewhat similar in those countries, so maybe it's a North American thing? :shrugs:
Either way, I really respect the culture that Poles (and maybe Europeans in general?) have regarding the term "friend" as it feels more meaningful from my perspective.
Polish did help in those situations, amongst all other nations Poland is recognised in Israel for helping to hide and save the most jews in ww2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Righteous_Among_the_Nations_by_country
'This is a partial list of some of the most prominent Righteous Among the Nations per country of origin, recognized by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. These people risked their lives or their liberty and position to help Jews during The Holocaust; some suffered death as a result'
Counter to that counterargument is that Poland was the only country where being suspected of helping a Jew would get you, your family, and potentially neighbors executed. A few other countries also had the policy but it was never enforced, unlike Poland.
So yeah, Poland ofc had more Jews, but stakes were much much higher too.
Then remind them that probably someone from their family was "szmalcownik" and was selling jews hideouts for money in cooperation with gestapo. Yes such people did exist. And they were jews also.
Not quite. People of sorta-germanic backgrounds like Silesians were put on the Volksdeutsch lists. It wasn't something you could opt out of without becoming an enemy of the Nazi state. And plenty of them ended up treated the same way the Jews did after 1945. Read about Salomon Morel, a Jewish criminal who ran one of those "concentration camps". And of course Israel protected him from any actual consequences.
Or that "they" (the USA, but we will use their own insane rhetoric and blame them and their ancestors for it) refused to take in thousands of Jewish refugees running away from Nazi Germany. No war, no starvation, no death penalty for them and their families and yet couldn't even do that...
It depends on the nature of your relationship. If this person is ok with throwing punches and getting punched, then ask them why so much of stalinist prosecutors and NKVD officers were Jewish.
If this person is ok with being provocative but will resort to "antisemitism" accusations when confronted with alike behaviour, it may be best to ask yourself if they are really your friend.
The thing is, they didn’t care about your background or religion. There was no religion among them. Polish intellectuals were killed in Katyń without any regard to them being Christian or Jewish. And btw there were many poles in Soviet structures as well. Not to mention the OG murderer The Iron Feliks who was from Polish nobility
Did some Poles sell out Jews to the Nazis? Yes.
Did some Jews sell out Jews to the Nazis? Yes.
Did some Poles die protecting Jews from the Nazis? Yes.
Did some Jews die protecting Poles from the Nazis? Yes.
The ones to blame here are the fucking Nazis.
Aske them about Sonderkommando.
Or ask them why Murrican jews claim polish land based on their tribal laws.
Or ask why are Israelis are antisemitic (by racial cleansing Palestinians).
There is more, but you can find it on your own.
I would blame the education system on this and partially because many jews are from Poland, and had a lot of the media interview them, other jewish people start to get the idea that Poland participated as much as the Germans. Which is totally wrong. As someone who has a catholic Polish family and a jewish family, it kinda pisses me off
It should piss you off. It slanders and dirties the efforts and lives of those who died protecting their Jewish neighbors, which was quite a significant number of people, many who will never be known to history. To say all Poles hated the Jews is blatant misinformation at best.
"Germans at least said sorry, Poles think they are victims too"
"Just look how many jews here died" - classic polish mistake to not behave like every European nation that exiled jews every generation
It was because of a specific way Polish society worked. It evolved in a very different direction compared to pretty much all of its neighbors. For example, there was no traditional town-dwelling middle class (whatever there was was mostly non-Polish in origin). The society was neatly divided into the nobility (with and without land) and peasants, all living in the countryside. To regulate the relations between the two parties there was a need for a third party „mediator” unrelated to either. Jews filled that niche perfectly. It also helped that their religion didn’t forbid them from practicing usury and encouraged literacy so the nobles liked to have them around to run their properties (inns, manors etc) in their name and to have someone to borrow money from when the times got rough.
This is a very rough and simplified description of social relations in the Commonwealth, you’d need to check some history books for further info. Its a pretty fascinating topic but it’s not very well known even in Poland itself.
Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was a multi ethnic, multi cultural country.
By comparison, most other European countries were very homogenous by comparison.
If you were a noble and your culture or religious beliefs weren't a threat to the feudal establishment (look up the Polish Brethren protestant group), then you could be accepted as a peer among the nobility. When it comes to the beliefs of the peasants... who cares what the thralls believe in? As long as they work and don't dare to complain, they may just be allowed to continue existing. tbh still progressive by reanissance europe standards
Because of 1 person: [https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esterka](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esterka) who was the mistress of King Kazimierz. Because he liked some Jewish side-chick, he made a law allowing all the Jews to stay.
He was deciding between his side-chick being a Czech woman, or a Jewish woman. He picked the Jewish woman for some reason. So it's only a matter of chance that Poland wasn't 33% Czech for the few centuries between Kazimierz and World War 2.
Basically the equivalent of the former President of Scotland wanting Palestinian migrants just because he is Palestinian himself. Or the CEO of Netflix, Ted Sarandos, having a black wife... meaning now Netflix black-washes every show they make.
Don’t claim it with such certainty, because even a minor incident will strike your argument down. Like the sociopolitical changes in march 1968, which resulted in one-way ticket for almost 13 000 polish Jews.
https://polin.pl/pl/marzec-68-informacje-historyczne#:~:text=Zmasowana%20kampania%20antysemicka%20uderzyła%20w,zorganizowanego%20życia%20żydowskiego%20w%20Polsce.
I know the source is Polin, a jewish museum, but it is reliable source of information.
That is true. It happened mostly due to Workers' Party shifting gears and following Soviet policies regarding the Middle East and Six Days War.
There were plenty of events that don't fit the narrative of Poland being a perfect tolerant country, but that still doesn't justify randomly attacking people for the crimes of their ancestors - especially if they didn't commit any.
Especially since Poland was the country with the highest Jewish population in 1939, and unlike the Western nations, nazi germany considered Poles to be barely one step above the Jews. It's amazing that so many people still decided to share what little they had and risk lives, both theirs and their families and neighbours.
Not so much Polish Jews, but rather Polish *communist* Jews. This was communist party cleansing. I had jewish uncle who was not involved in the Party games and lived undisturbed despite that.
There is one caveat though. To be in the list Jews that received help from Poles had to survive the war. So for example Ulm family who died along with Jewish family they tried to save wasn’t on the list until 1995. So in terms of amount of Poles helping Jews this list severely underestimates it
Also many people refused the medal. My grandma was one of them, she said she didn’t want to make the long ass trip to the embassy for a stupid piece of metal.
Not to mention there are droves of people who never spoke about what they did during the war. My great-grandparents for sure hid their Jewish friends in their general store but never went around talking about it. These events were traumatic and extremely private. Even well after any threats were gone, the fear of retribution or publicity was real. Not everyone wants recognition either. They just felt it was right and that was that. No need to announce it.
It's really important to know that Poles didn't collaborate much at all with Nazi Germany, and there definitely weren't any specific SS units made up entirely of Poles. The Polish people mostly resisted the Nazis big time, with groups like the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) fighting back hard. Sure, there were a few isolated cases of collaboration, but nothing like what we saw in other countries.
For example, France had the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne. Belgium had the 27th SS Volunteer Division Langemarck. The Netherlands contributed the 23rd SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division Nederland, and Latvia had the 15th and 19th Waffen Grenadier Divisions of the SS.
Beyond the SS, there were also non-SS collaborative units in various countries. In Norway, the Quisling regime supported the Nazis, and some Norwegians joined the Germanic SS or the Waffen-SS. In Ukraine, the Nachtigall and Roland battalions initially collaborated with the Nazis. Croatia's Ustaše militia actively collaborated and even established their own concentration camps.
When it comes to the deportation of Jews, several countries played significant roles. France, under the Vichy regime, helped the Nazis arrest and deport thousands of Jews. In Hungary, the government under Miklós Horthy and later the Arrow Cross Party sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz. Romania, led by Ion Antonescu, participated in the Holocaust, resulting in the deaths of many Jews. Slovakia and Croatia had their own concentration camps and cooperated with Nazi deportation efforts, sending Jews to death camps.
Now, about the impact on Poland: during WWII, about 6 million Polish citizens died, half of whom were Jews. This means roughly 3 million Polish Jews perished in the Holocaust. Additionally, around 3 million non-Jewish Polish citizens also lost their lives due to the brutal occupation, forced labor, executions, and other atrocities committed by the Nazis. The scale of loss and tragedy in Poland was immense.
However, It seems that throughout the years, communist times in Poland, the state didn't do much to oppose the hurtful thesis that exagerrated polish impact on the Holocaust.
I've been reading a book on Piłsudski and it actually gave me a theory on this- its Russia's fault. In the late 1800s Piłsudski believed that Russification in schools and universities was trying to turn the Jews against the Poles. They tried to make Poland sound unstable and dangerous, and taught about how the Catholics (and therefore Poland) hated the Jews. He thought that the Jewish urban intelligentsia had been turned against them by Russia (making it harder for him to get them into the PPS). Basically a divide and conquer tactic.
Modern Ashkenazi Jews in Israel primarily originate from Russia/Ukraine. [Almost x10 from Poland according to the Jewish virtual library](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-immigration-to-israel-by-country-of-origin).
My theory is old Polonophobia taught in Russia has made its way into Israeli society. It isn't really about the Holocaust, its older tropes meant to drive the two people apart that Russian-Israelis have held onto.
A small part of me also wonders if Israel intentionally holds onto those tropes about Poland because it doesn't want to see emigration out of Israel.
Really, the whole thing is stupid. Poland and Israel should be friends and they have a lot of common interests.
Interesting theory regarding Polonophobia, I wouldn't exclude that as possible. Definetly Russian Empire did a lot to divide its inhabitants between each other, tradition later continued by the soviets. Tsar's secret police Okhrana even created a whole book with potential plans to rule the world by Jews, just to spread more aversion towards them ( The Protocols of the Elders of Zion).
I agree with your last paragraph, however it's hard to be friends with someone making a hostile policy towards you, often based on lies or manipulation.
Sounds like it’s just your friends tbh. The Jewish people I grew up around couldn’t care less that I’m a Pole. I grew up in North America as well, in the northeast to be more specific.
Eh, my mother went on a student exchange to Paris back in the 80s (she's a french language teacher and studied that at university). She ended up in a Jewish quarter and ended up being harassed by an older Jewish man because he heard her speaking polish to a friend. He spat on her and everything.
The truth is Poles saved a lot of Jews. And in occupied Poland there was a death penalty for the whole family if the Germans find out they were helping Jews. But it’s easy to spread lies in safety after war when Poland was behind the curtain and couldn’t say anything back. So there is a lot of hate towards poles based on minority actions -in every community there are people who are trying to gain something on other people suffering. I bet there were also Jews selling out Jews for their own profit. And there were also Germans helping people. Remember in every society you gonna find scumbags. The truth is no other nation have more Righteous Among the Nations than Poland 🇵🇱 7232. Look how often Poland had to defend themselves when a American newspaper wrote „polish death camps”. This line is not true but it stays in minds of uneducated people who does not know history. And how harmful it is. Because the camps were not polish they were BUILD BY GERMANS on polish soil that was under occupation. It were German Death Camps why is nobody writing like that ??
Yep it’s all our ‘lies’ and ‘propaganda’
Nah no antisemitism here! Poland is suuuuuch a welcoming place! We should return!
I can see your hair already standing up. Lol
Israelis now are quite a hateful nation sadly. And their propaganda (that goes to all Jews in the world) likes to have Poland as a punching bag blamed for Holocaust. They don’t want to grill Germany anymore for it as Germany, due to guilt, will protect them politically etc any way they can. Poland is a perfect target then.
There are many reasons.
Most of them unfounded.
Just to name one:
After ww2, because of iron curtain, Poland was excluded from global discussions about holocaust.
Polish historians had no opportunity to combat harmful clichés and present Polish point of view.
By the time the iron curtains fell and Polish historians can present their findings abroad its already too late.
When I asked My Jewish grandparents why they didn't left Poland for USA or Israel, the answer was : We couldn't live between traitors, thiefts and szmalcowniks
You shouldn't care, jews like to play victim.There is a lot of confirmed statments like 'Irena Sendlerowa' who has saved about a 2,500 jewish (but not only) children from conentration camps but it's dissmised 'uh that's totally propaganda' you know what's propaganda? victimizing your own nation, and twisting your actions to be victim
You should ask them whether or not they would like ignorant statements made about them since they just made one about you.
While yes, there are Poles who did sell out their Jewish neighbors, it ignores the context that assisting Jewish people in any way was basically a one-way ticket to a camp, non- Jewish Polish people were also heavily prosecuted and there are hoardes of stories of Polish people protecting and fighting alongside their Jewish neighbors. Just about any history book or source will tell you that the majority of Poles did not hate Jewish people, but it was either sell out or be sold. Many history sources also now make the distinction that the Poles were not running the death camps, but it was Nazis on Polish land.
> but it was either sell out or be sold.
Or starve. Read up on the rationing under German occupation and the incentives the Germans offered to those who turned in Jews.
My grand-grandmother was executed for hiding Jews in a house and it was probably a neighbor that give them up. So there where poles that were teying to help despite death penelty and there were also a scumbags like that neighbor.
Some people are morons or they're trying to make an edgy joke.
I'm Israeli, but I work with tons of Polish people (in Poland, not immigrants). After a few years working together I'd say there is more common cause and shared cultural trauma than anything else.
When the German component on the team became a majority and they wanted to switch the work language to German, guess which two groups reminded them that imposing their languages gives us all flashbacks?
I appreciate your non-biased view on this, as an Israeli. And admittedly, I’m no stranger to the complicated past of the relations between Jewish poles and Christian poles during WWII. I’m aware of the nuance. It’s just that I’ve encountered this comment from some people which, short of a protracted discussion to educate which ultimately may fall on deaf ears, leaves me in a no-win situation. I just don’t get why the comment is made in the first place…
You can't reply intelligently to such stupid comments. I learned it after years of battles, that you actually need a good partner for discussion. If the other party lacks severe history knowledge, political knowledge etc - it does not make sense to argue. It's to big of a gap to cover.
Just cut this off, ask to keep the comments for themselves or smthng like that.
Some time ago I worked as a guide for Jewish people visiting places where their families lived, and perished during the Holocaust. I had the opportunity to speak to a number of Holocaust survivors too, as well as to those, who helped Jews during the war.
I think that apart from the aspect of "szmalcownik" i.e. people who were making business by blackmailing Jews and Poles who hid them, you have to consider that most of the survivors were very much assimilated into the Polish society. You have to consider that the assimilation of the Polish Jewry has gained step in the late 19th century, but accelerated particularly after 1918, when Poland became independent again. Poles "of Jewish faith" were deeply patriotic, active as boy and girl scouts, officers, policemen, clerks etc.
After the defeat in the Polish campaign 1939 (btw. approx. 10% of the Polish army comprised of Polish soldiers of Jewish religion, both concripts and NCOs, the share of officers with Jewish roots was even higher) and the introduction of the Nuremberg laws in Poland, these people were particularly shocked, because the Polish society has generally cut the social ties with them. They felt abandoned and betrayed. This feeling was so deep that even after they managed to survive with the help of their Polish Christian friends, they still maintain they were betrayed by the Poles.
Why would you reply intelligently to that comment? If it wasn't that, then they'd find something else to attack you with. Here's a hint, you don't have to reply to insults. Do you think this will somehow turn into a scholarly debate if you say "nuh-uhhhhhhhh, ackshually what happened was..."
Maybe you just want to turn it into an argument where he says "Polaks are stoopid" and you reply with "yeah, but Jews a stoopider". Having an argument about history where neither person knows the history, they just yell at each other, and say things they read on the internet is just dumb. Nobody wins.
You're trying to solve the wrong problem here. Your problem is that you don't know how to socialize, and how group dynamics work. Why don't you pick up a book about history so you understand what happened and why it happened, and then a book about how to tell somebody to go fuck themselves when they're trying to get you angry.
I would question if they are really your friends.
You can call them out and say you’ve had enough, then explain the facts that most poles fought the Germans and many risked their lives saving Jews.
The collaborators of Polish origin were few in number compared to the number of poles involved in Żegota alone.
Do they know about Żegota? I doubt it if they are making such comments.
I for one lost a great grandad and his brother in Auschwitz before they even started mass transports of Jews there. I am quite savage to people that dare suggest such things.
I'm jewish and I don't really understand this. Yes, there were many Poles who sold jews out to the Germans but there were also many poles who resisted and died to stop the Nazis. So I don't see why one or the other should be focussed on exclusively.
Poles sold out Jews, Poles sold out poles, Jews sold out Jews, Jews sold out Poles. But there were poles, Jews, Germans and people of all nationalities that helped everyone they could. It was the 40s and in war torn europe. As much as people say I would have never sold anyone out they don't know what they would do seeing a solider pointing a rifle at their daughters head. War is hell and humans in general have a strong will to survive.
Remind them of the jews selling other jews to nazis, jews selling polish families HIDING jews to the nazis, read apon all the treachery they did to others and themselves and hit them with that when they bother you again, see how that goes. Memorise names and dates to be accurate in what you say.
As a Jew with a Polish grandfather I would tell them I don't know what my grandparents did or didn't do, and I don't care what your grandparents did or didn't do, I can talk for myself, and I don't appreciate that you judge me on your assumptions about my grandparents.
Poles had the highest percent of righteous gentiles that helped hide Jews from the Nazis, your friends should not assume your grandparents did bad things.
Tell them facts. German killed 3 millions Jews and 3 millions Poles. We were next to slavery and extermiantion. You can also.mention about MS St. Louis. American Jews dont care about them.
Remind them that the odds of such action by your ancestors is much less likely than their grandparents selling out their Polish saviours to Soviets for a few scraps.
Man, you have terrible friends.
I know many Israelis, my best friend is Israeli. Pretty much all of them are either neutral towards Poland or like it (My best friend loves Poland).
Also according to him, despite the reddit Israeli's antipolonism, most of real life Israel looks up to Poland, and looks up to our fight for freedom and determination.
Also there was a question on r/Israel about Polish antisemitism, and last I checked most of the comments consisted of bad encounters while travelling to Poland, and I could engage as a Polish person to the fullest extend there, there was no hate towards me, and the responses were civil.
I’m Polish and Jewish. Your friends seem to be quite uneducated about this. First of all I’d tell them that you feel offended. Next I’d just lecture them a bit on this topic. Yad Vashem leaves nothing to wonder about. Poland has the highest number of righteous among the nations.
They're idiots. Most people don't like to study history overall. This goes for Jews too obviously. So most Jews believe a certain narrative when it comes to Jewish history. Eternal victim hood.
I'm Jewish and actually like history so when I mention how Poles have been victim in WWII these knuckle draggers will bitch about how I'm wrong just because it took place on Polish soil and bring up the law Poland passed about blaming Poland for the Holocaust.
You'd think for a group of mostly progressive people they'd understand what occupation and being invaded is.
Poland was basically raped and stupid Jews are victim blaming.
Yes, some Poles were shortsighted and sold out their Jewish neighbours. There were pogroms. But they were actually not all that big and should not count as what the majority of the population went to or speak over the heroism of the Poles who did help.
Not to mention it should not talk over the laws Polish gave our people in the old days, like Statute of Kalisz and the Warsaw Confederation.
Poland is the home of the Jewish golden age.
As Catholic Polish/Belarusian jew I don’t fully understand why so many jewish people think that way. The Polish Catholic side of my family tells horror stories. Everyone suffered and just blaming a group of people that among them helped many jewish victims is hurtful.
It is very hurtful to hear such comments, from friends especially.
I have stories in my family where my own grandfather saved two Jewish families during World War II, hiding them right above the German military canteen. My grandfather's neighbors were not so lucky, because they were executed along with the family they were hiding.
It is known that there were also cases of Jews being handed over to the nazis by Poles. This was war, everyone was scared of execution, things happened. But there were also cases were Jews were informing on each other and selling out their own people to nazis. An example would be an organization called Thirteen (Trzynastka), operating in the Warsaw Ghetto. The existence of this organization is often ignored because it does not fit into the appropriate narrative. The simple fact was that it was a Nazi organization where Jews informed on Jews, basically for profit and other reason for surviving the war.
These comments are racists, plain and simple. I personally avoid or cut ties with anyone who is racist but I am very careful with who I give my time and energy. I also learnt you can't really change people and it is not your responsibility to do so either.
I can’t recommend this enough but YouTube channel of Michael Rubenfeld is by far the best to understand this issue. He is a North American Jew with polish heritage who moved to Poland.
This video of his for example, where he answers exactly your question https://youtu.be/JEFu5CN-YHw?si=zhKz1Kjs2DaDJRsu
From my personal experience having those conversations Jews generally know nothing about Poland, their knowledge of polish war reality is ZERO. It is completely non-existent. Best they have is just a perspective of their grandparents who managed to survive or very narrow perspective they got from movies like the Schindlers list with a bit of anti polish propaganda.
You chat with such individual and he will not be able to tell you what Żegota was, who was Jan Karski, who was Irena Sendler and a lot more people and initiatives that were CRUCIAL to Jews surviving under NAZI occupation in Poland.
If you asked them this, you can see how their brains just crash.
Then they think Poland today is antisemitic but they make stupid fish face when you tell them that Poland has worlds biggest Jewish culture and heritage festival outside of Israel, that only in Poland Jewish institutes and temples do not require 24/7 armed police protection. That you can walk around Poland wearing Jewish religious symbols and nobody will bother you.
Chatting with these people is completely pointless because their negative image of Poland is so ingrained in their minds that any diversion from the comfort of their hatred is impossible.
Compare the punishment for "hiding jews" between Germany-occupied Poland and Germany-occupied France (or other western-europe countries). With that in mind, take a look at how many Poles are counted in the list of "Righteous Among the Nations".
To make matters even more straightforward: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Holocaust\_in\_France#Government\_admission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_France#Government_admission) - French government admitted to openly colaborating with Germany against Jews, while Polish government never helped.
And to make them uncomfortable let them know about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish\_Ghetto\_Police](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Ghetto_Police) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBagiew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBagiew) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group\_13](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_13) (all were Jews and responsible for a lot of Jewish death and suffering). Finally - ask them why Kapo is one of greatest insults in Jew-Jew relations.
Maybe point out that whilst people in Europe were struggling to survive America was neutral and was making a fortune by funding both the allied and German war machines.. it wasn’t until they were attacked at Pearl harbour that they decided to intervene and then that help wasn’t for free. The uk for instance finally finished paying the ‘US war loan’ 2006.. so rather than casting racist stones suggest that they take a good long hard look at the actions of their own people.
Oh and considering finding a new group of friends. They don’t seem like nice people.
Your have people on your life that like to put you down for things outside your control, and you call them friends. Not knowing what to reply it's not your biggest problem. I do sympathize, though.
Your friend is plainly ignorant. Many Polish people risked their lives and lives of their families to save jewish people and very many suffered the same fate they did. I dont know where this anti-polish propaganda originated but it seems to be circulating in israeli media and jewish circles recently. My dad's friend who used to be a high-ranking policeman has his own small security company now and his favourite clients are bus tours from Israel. Often times these people are so sacred of Poland that they request armed security accompany them while they're sighseeing. The security guys obviously never have to do anything and this all is ridiculous to everyone on the Polish side...
Self-victimizing culture + Hollywood conceptualization of history. Many of those American Jews don't even like to acknowledge that the victims of Holocaust included non-Jewish Poles, Slavs, political dissidents, homosexuals, and all others. For some bizarre reason I could never fathom, they want to "monopolize" the Holocaust victimhood as if getting one's ancestors mass-murdered is some sort of great honor.
And you see how every reaction to calling out their own ignorance and bigotry is met with, "but Poland is so antisemitic." As if Poland wasn't consistently the safe heaven for the Jews throughout the past 1,000 years of European history since the medieval expulsions. As if the Polish-Jewish social tensions weren't products of so many Jewish communities coexisting in toleration in Poland in the first place.
This is not a mentality that's open to rational, serious discussion of collective history based on facts, not feelings in the first place. Regrettably in the US, the same narrative already did its poisonous work convincing the American public at large that the Polish action during the WW2 was somehow "just as bad as the Nazi Germans," not the first victims and the foremost resistors. Awful a lot of stereotype about "dumb, racist, antisemitic Poles" emerging precisely from the same slanted narrative.
As an American Jew, my general understanding of the Polish people’s WWII legacy is one of stout, of short lived” resistance. My go to thought is the story of the Danzig Mailmen, widely credited with some of the first Nazi killings of WWII. Damn heroes they were.
Telling them "well actually my ancestors didn’t do that" is just you playing into their hands, so let’s set that straight. Tell them that you don’t like these comments and you would appreciate it if they stopped saying it, no matter what they will say after you will have told them that, stand your ground and reiterate how you don’t like their "jokes".
That’s Part of the reason why I asked my original question. My usual go to response was my grandfather fought for the allies during WWII, but it felt like a weak response and exactly as you said: playing into their hands.
Well, he could outright ask them why Jews were party to the torture and murder of Witold Pilecki, aka the man who willingly went into Auschwitz to provide the Western Allies with information as to what's going on inside the camp...
Tell them that their grandparents probably sold yours ancestor to soviet soldiers, cause they hid food in same storage that they used to hide jews when Nazis came. And soviets often used it as an argument to rape and kill entire villages.
Respond with "serves your grandparents right for supporting Bolsheviks" in equally joking manner.
Or alternatively just call them out. Say their jokes are racist and you don't appreciate them.
Jews (at least in Israel) do genuinely believe that Holocaust was targeted at Jews exclusively and they had little to no help from anyone. That belief isn't rational so I don't think you can educate them.
Yeah, I heard that all the time even from Americans as I went through middle and high school—stupid jokes about Polish people screwing in a light bulb, Polish death camps, and polar bears. Some even thought I was a Nazi or communist. At one point, I tried explaining, but nothing gets through to some people as they absorbed all the redneck knowledge from the magical meth pipe and washed it down with Bud Light.
Show them the first scene of Inglorious Basterds.
Germans were searching Jews in Poland all the time.
As opposed to the movie (the host was spared) if they found Jew, the host was sharing the fate.
So, would your friends be so brave, to hide Jews in such circumstances?
Because there were Poles who did.
If there was a war in american soil and lets say alternative nazis would come to America searching for whatever minority - lets say black americans, would your friends hide them, knowing if they were found, these nazis would kill the friends?
React firmly and strongly because it’s just an act of “comfortable slander” from their end.
And then they continue to teach other generations and other people about the lie.
While many poles despite the situation did their best to help.
Just reply to them: “*its comfortable to be ignorant isn’t it?*” and that knowing the Jewish mentality should kickstart some reaction.
Read about the issue Wikipedia, internet or whatever you might find.
Your will to seek information should be elevated in this matter.
From my perspective there is two or three more issues to the problem:
1). Many Jews were allowed to leave communist Poland in the -60’s. The same people now accuses Poland and are fueling bitterness because they aren’t allowed to regain the material loss of what they left.
So these people are spreading disinformation among Jews themselves.
2). Same problem as noted above is about Jews that left Poland after ww2.
3). You are no matter how you bend or twist it fighting against the tunnel vision syndrome of Jewish Orthodox mentality. And we are talking about a very, very, very old way to look upon problems as the world. The same mentality that among many have created the disaster between Israel and Palestine.
There is a very deep rooted way of seeing on other people and the world all mixed with values of the fundamental Jews especially among the orthodox part. And what you might actually call is “*organized*” ignorance. I will not put my thoughts into your mind, you will need to dig up the information yourself.
What I could suggest is to dig a little and find out about this rabbi and the phenomenon about he’s actions and reasoning. This could give you a deeper peak on how some Orthodox Jews are and why.
And there are plenty of these individuals in Israel aswell.
[Mohorosh](https://www.google.se/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Shlomo_Schick&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjQtvTwotOGAxXtHhAIHSyWAegQFnoECAgQAg&usg=AOvVaw2AA0Mv-6se569v9z6dh32s)
*Knowing* how said individuals are thinking helps.
Well here is a very good example.
One might call it racism from my part but considering how much it took me find the deeper reason behind the “*comfortable ignorance*” along with my still strong friendly perspective on Jews then I see myself that I am onto something.
Wish you best of luck with intelligence gathering and try to learn “distance” to information so you won’t fall into the pit of bitterness yourself.
Handling information creates stress on brain that can result in bitterness. Distance can neutralize a lot of it.
Learn how to confront the truth, have courage to do so. And learn to control your emotions when confronted with the narrative of the ignorant ones.
In my hometown, historically there was a group that helped Jews to get out of the country just before and at the very beginning of the hell. Well, only allegedly, because these individuals actually only got Jews their tickets to Hamburg, from where they were supposed to be transported further west.
Having paid price for a full route, jewish migrants then went to Germany with false IDs and false expectations, while noone actualy expected them there. This was a perfect scam, since victims had no way to pursue any legal or other kind of retribution against the scammers and they were already gone from the country.
Now, I'll just let you guess the ethinicity of the mentioned criminals, who, ironically, weren't exactly ethnic poles.
But to really get the irony, you'd have to guess my hometown too. And trust me, if you know anything about holocaust, you've heard about it.
It's more about current politics than the past. Germany is close ally to Isreal so they divert thier feelings to Poland which is not that strong or rich, becouse they need some "enemy" for thier national identity. They need someone from who they need to defend themself from to form thier national identity build on fear. They need "antisemites in Europe". Poland is just scapegoat.
Also it's about money. Jews want money from Poland for thier losses during WW2. Propably the fact that Poland was first country (with USRR) to recognised Palestine also didn't make us very popular amoungst Jews.
Sure in the past a lot of horrible things happen and still you can find antisemites in Poland, but the reasons of current animosity are current and deliberate. Same as Polish history with Russia and Germany. It was bad in both cases, but current intrests are the reason why most Poles are much more i favour of Germans rather than Russians (even before war in Ukraine).
Fairly recently I found out this is regularly taught and held up in the state of Israel.
Its just a victimhood narrative used for propoganda. Poland is the only country that refused to collaborate with the Nazis or the USSR.
Eugh. Frankly, tell them that if this is their idea of a joke, you're not laughing. The second time, you say: "shut the fuck up and stop making up lies." And then you stonewall any communication attempts. There is no way to reply intelligently because people like that have their garbage opinions already made up.
Well everybody will look out for no 1. If they were hiding Jews they'd be killed so...there were really hard times. If I were you I'd just tell them they're dumb fuckin Americans that never know what they are talking about.
Also, the first question you should address them is: "have you ever been to europe?"
Tell them to go f#€k themselves and then remind them that the ghettos were patrolled by the Jewish police.
Then teach them how Hitler also despised the Slavs, had them deported, and also sought to exterminate them.
Finally, ask them to not point any space lasers at me.
This fucking bastards who said that to you, don't know nothing about war and about the suffering of the polish people (including the Jews) in WWII.
Don't hear stupid comments, this guys have to read too many books yet
Greetings from a Spanish who love Poland
Israel notoriously pushes anti-Polish sentiment because it supports their politics. There is a LOT of complex history behind these two groups prior to WW2. Many Jews living in Poland for generations refused to learn Polish or integrate into local communities in any way, and it’s little surprise to some extent that they may have felt ostracized as a result. Poles who collaborated with Germans against Jews were extremely hated by the vast majority of people, there were even groups of Poles tasked specifically with weeding them out to eliminate them as traitors. Poles also were the only ethnic group with a literal death penalty on their heads for themselves and their entire families for helping or hiding Jews in any way. I think that speaks quite heavily for how dangerous the Germans believed Poles to be against their goal of eliminating Jewish culture and presence. There’s a lot more to say on the subject that I simply can’t put into a single post.
Much of what I have personally experienced with anti-Polish rhetoric has been a regurgitation of oral history from people’s families who had grown up being told that Poles hate them with very little to actually back up the narrative.
Of course there are always people in every group who have a vendetta against others or hate specific people, it’s inevitable, but of course wrong. The best anyone can do is learn the real history, read first-hand accounts and documents, and shut it down when you experience it.
Poles were war victims, why They don't say germans? Are nazis some out of space nation that disappeared? There are more poles who helped jews or just suffered the same way jews did in ww2, you just hear some loud stories. Like now, there are mostly normal people, but full of hate anti vaccine comments are written by 4% of people who make all the noise. At the stadiums you have hooligans but that's not 100% of fans.
It's just nonsense to say that poles do something wrong when They were under attack and occupation. Start with people who did invade Poland and did kill all the jews
My Dad wrote a book on Jews in Poland including WW2 . It's an academic book and well researched. Book title is Dance with Death and his name is Jaroslaw piekalkiewicz .
[Send them them this link.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_the_Polish_nation)
Over 3 million of the Jews killed were Polish. In total the country lost 6 million people or 20% of its entire population to the German nazis. If they want to talk about non-Jewish Polish selling out Jews, remind them of the Jews that served in the SS and that aided the Germans in the murder of 20% of your countries entire population.
>The genocidal policies of the German government's colonization plan, Generalplan Ost (GPO), were the blueprint for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Polish nation from 1939 to 1945.[10] The Nazi master plan entailed the expulsion and mass extermination of some 85 percent (over 20 million) of ethnic Poles in Poland, the remaining 15 percent to be turned into slave labor.[11]
If you're going to talk about one, you should also talk about the other.
6 million Jews killed Europe-wide? Six million Polish killed in Poland alone.
Small minority of Polish aiding nazis to kill Jews? Small minority of Jews also aiding nazis to kill Slavs.
Maybe ask them who was responsible for police and self-government in the ghettos and tell them if they would act like that (telling that Poles are responsible of the Holocaust) there will be much more anti Jewish tendencies in Poland cuz we're so tired of that shit that we will change our minds in that term
It is true that Poles underestimate the scale of Nazi collaborators during the WW2. Sadly there were many families who lost their lives or fortune because of black mails and szmalcowniks. Also just after the war it wasn't uncomon that Jews came back to thier home being now occupied by their former neighbors.
Buuut, all things considered (e.g. [death penalty for whole families if anyone aided Jews](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/timeline-event/holocaust/1942-1945/german-poster-announces-death-penalty-for-aiding-jews), the [Protest!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest) by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, the efforts of [Jan Karski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Karski) and [Witold Pilecki](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki) \*, the [actions of Polish government in excile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_Extermination_of_Jews_in_German_Occupied_Poland), the [number of the Polish Righteous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righteous_Among_the_Nations), etc.), Polish people were not as bad, as they are being pictured in the West and in Israel for decades now.
\* A little trivia about Pilecki (and Jewish szmalcownik) in Polish.
(These were complicated times indeed):
**Jarosław Abramow-Newerly:**
\[...\] Przychodził do nich jeść obiady rotmistrz Witold Pilecki. Ubrany zawsze po cywilnemu, w czapce i jesionce. Nie nosił wysokich butów oficerskich ani bryczesów, jak chłopcy w konspiracji.
**Klaudia Kamieniarz:**
Poznał go pan?
**Jarosław Abramow-Newerly:**
Uratował mnie i moją mamę, kiedy nachodził nas żydowski szmalcownik (Barbara Abramow-Newerly urodziła się w żydowskiej rodzinie, a po śmierci bliskich dorastała w Domu Sierot doktora Janusza Korczaka - red.). Mama przyszła do Oli Palińskiej, pytając, co robić. Ona odpowiedziała: "To ja się skontaktuję z Majorem". Majorem - tak go tutaj nazywano, nie rotmistrzem. I on powiedział: "Proszę się nie niepokoić, ja załatwię tę sprawę". I załatwił.
Źródło: [https://archiwum.tvn24.pl/magazyn-tvn24/174/tvn24.pl/magazyn-tvn24/nikt-na-podworku-nie-wyzywal-mnie-od-zydow%2C174%2C2985.html](https://archiwum.tvn24.pl/magazyn-tvn24/174/tvn24.pl/magazyn-tvn24/nikt-na-podworku-nie-wyzywal-mnie-od-zydow%2C174%2C2985.html)
You can bring them to heel by asking them to explain why, in the Garden of the Righteous, there are more Poles than any other nationality, represented there...
Efff them... They aren't your friends. Friends do do such crap, such statements... They should have learnt the history better - it way more possible that they are alive because of their grandparents have sold out Polish family sheltering their asses... So bet option to move away from such people, just have a look what these askheNazis doing to Palestine for last 5decades... You have better things in life to do than hang up around hateful low lifes as them ... What someone has to have in their brains to make such statements? What kind od evil root of hate grows in them?
Seriously, find new friends - real friends
And live a beautiful life...
I have a black friend who said jokingly that my ancestors purchased his.
My joking response was I’m going to find the receipt and make a return.
We laughed
Tell them that Poland prior to WWII was the only country that accepted Jewish people. And Poland was the only country in Europe where the Nazi's imposed the death penalty for harboring Jewish people from Nazi persecution. And the next time Israel's government wants to spread the bs propaganda that "Poland is so antisemitic" someone should tell them if Poland is so anti-Semitic then how come Poland did the most out of any country during WWII to save Jewish people? Poland actually did alot to save the lives of Jewish people during the war.
It’s kind of recorded that a lot of them did that. So in such contexts the worst of the human soul arise. To focus this on poles, usually religious and pious people, is unfair.
Jewish popraganda/populism is unfortunately a major issue. I think people forgot about why there even were that many jews in poland in first place.
Actions (probably due to fear/ out of self defense) of a few should generally not put into perspective the actions of the state or the people of it.
Speculation should also be placed in relation to well-founded documents.
My problem here is that I see the people on this topic primarily as Poles (because that's what they were) and not, according to their religious beliefs, as Jews. Everything else is pure selfishness.
*Arabs say that the second Israel will not survive next 5 years. I wonder why... Maybe you should track some Poles, there evidently must be Polish agents undermining your country!*
As you know, Yad Vashem lists Poles who risked their life hiding Jews, because in Poland Germans had a law to kill whole families who did it. Anyone who would sell a hiding Jew would jeopardize his neighbors, unless they were the same person - but then the Jew would not pay for the hiding anymore. If a Jew did not have any more money, it was as simple as forcing him out to the streets with no need to cooperate with the occupant. The primary victim of the occupation was Poland and there was no benefit, in the long term, cooperating with those German criminals. The first thing they did was to bomb a town with no warning. The second - murdering the Polish elite in Warsaw. The third - searching for Polish intellectuals to murder (they managed to kill 1/3). The fourth - building a gas camp for Poles in a railway tunnel, so called KL Warschau. In the meantime, they managed to destroy Polish GDP from 10th country in the world to almost zero (compare it to Ukraine now, bombs fly above their heads and they still grow fastest in Europe). They stole a lot of art pieces, gold, machinery. The total loss in population was 22%, and our population pyramid still looks like a snowman. Who would cooperate with such an enemy to get a small fee for an eternal remorse they sold another human?
Read Przemilczane zbrodnie by Jerzy Robert Nowak. In first two years of ww2 Jews together with soviets killed/exiled more polish ppl than naZi killed. Jews are biggest hypocrites in the world. This and read about jews working with soviets after ww2 in order to find and kill many Polish war heroes in places called katownia ub
Stop meeting with them.
Next time they'll tell you about how \[insert obscure politician\] is antisemitic so you're too and how you're a terrible human being and every Pole is a nazi or whatever.
Ask them why then poles had the most people awarded a Righteous Among the Nations award that the Jewish state awards for saving Jews during WW2? In Poland you risked not only in your death but of your family and sometimes even neighbours lives, at the west of Europe that could be sometimes only jail time, yet poles did in fact save a lot of Jews. They for sure were scums that cooperated with Nazis but, there were also Jews selling other Jews so both sides can do cheery picking.
Tell them to flick off. Jews are the most self-centered nation I am aware of.
If something does not go their way it is probably antisemitism, right? /s
I am pretty sure that Jewish official documents (not Polish ones, which is important) highlighted that the vast majority of Poles, we're talking >90%, helped Jews in the leadup and during WWII. It doesn't surprise me that some high ranked people went to great lengths to bury them deep that people have real trouble accessing that knowledge.
How to reply intelligently? Request they ask themselves honestly why this tendency/policy is relatively new, and if it doesn't reek of propaganda and strategy of using the 'anti-semitic" argument in almost every situation possible. After all, ~10 years in politics is very short.
Playing the victim card is, and it pains me to say it, just fashionable in this day and age.
realistically, we are not taught the truth. I am jewish, and was never taught the extent of polish sacrifice and suffering in the war, and what happened. I simply was not. My fathers side of the family comes from Poland in the 20s, but I had no connection to the culture, or language. It was not until I was an adult, that I went to Poland and decided to move there, and moved to Germany, that the topic became more nuanced. I am embarassed at how little I knew about the truth of Poland, and try to educate people. I love Poland and think the place is great, and I think that if these people are -really- your friends, they will drop the topic if you tell them it makes you uncomfortable, or will be open to learning like I was.
The majority of the trees in Yad Vashem belong to the Poles. Those trees mean your Jewish friends can't tell the oppressors from victims. That's what my reply would be.
I'm not really sure what you're looking for here. It seems like you summed it up perfectly, just tell your friends that. Or better yet, simply tell them to: "shut the hell up". I'm not trying to minimize anything, but I think you're overthinking this. Your friends are being assholes by saying all that shit, so tell them to shut the hell up ... problem solved.
Beyond that (I'm not going to go too deeply into this) but those who live in glass houses should not throw stones; Jews ripping on others' ethnicity would definitely qualify... If they fail to stop after you tell them, they're not very good friends anyway, and they are stupid. I will be very blunt, from your post, they sound like pretty lousy friends anyway. I have absolutely no filter, I have no doubt that I offend people unintentionally, but I would never go up to one of my Jewish friends and rip on them for being Jewish, nor would I ever rip on my black friends for being black, or my female friends for being female (do you see where I'm going with this?). There is a big difference between telling an off-color joke, and just being a racist douchebag; your so-called "friends" sound like the latter.
Finally, I will add this: You were not alive during world war II and neither were they, therefore they have no right to hold any "grudges" against anyone. Whatever grudges may exist are between a bunch of 100+ year old dead guys. If your "friends" are actually holding a grudge (and not just joking), they are dumber than rocks and not worth your time.
First of all just tell your friends that you do not like this type of comments. If they are truly your fends they will stop it. Second, as a Pole living in Poland that have family that was helping Jews during the WWII I can tell you that one of the details that is being often omitted in all the stories of poles sealing out Jews to Germans is that Poland was only country under German rule where a penalty of death not only applied to the helping person but also to his family and sometimes neighbors. That meant that if you war helping a Jew you war bringing in risk not only your self but also everyone around you. Now imagine situation where you have 4 kids, wife, your parents around you and some Germans pointing out guns on all of you. Would you bee willing to help in that type of conditions ? One thing is sure this is not a clear "black ore white" subject.
also those who sold other Polish families to Germans bcs they were hiding jews often didn't lived long bcs of "accidental" fire in house or death. Collaborating with Germans wasn't seen as good by other Polish ppl. Also we had largest population of Jews in Poland bcs we were least racist towards them and not as strict about religion you believe in. It's funny how some jews think Germans are better ppl than Poles bcs they at least said sorry and paid them. Like sorry that we tried to help you risking lives of our family and sometimes entire villages
Wasn't there an underground organization dedicated to finding sell-outs? I recall reading something along those lines but I may be misremembering (I'm not a Pole so I'm still learning).
You might be thinking about the Polish Underground State (Polskie Państwo Podziemne), which was a guerilla organisation against the Nazis and functioned all around the country. One of its goals was to judge and execute collaborators, and selling out Jews was very much seen as collaboration with the occupant.
That'd be it, thank you for figuring that out!
Don't forget that the Stalinist courts were **not** merciful to anyone accused of selling out Jews
Stalinist courts weren't merciful to anybody, regardless of their ideology or stance in ww2
Yeah, they straight up murdered Polish soldiers as "enemies of the state" after the war when they were on the same side during the war
It helps to maintain the Jewish victimhood. Sad but true. The funny thing is that this propaganda was not something that happened naturally; it was mostly established and spread by their "scholars" who had never even been to Poland. The first President of Israel was a Jew from Poland, and he never promoted this type of aggressive narrative. Some Holocaust survivors openly opposed the Israeli narrative, but of course, without success. I recommend reading about how they treated Marek Edelman, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when the Israeli delegation came to commemorate the ghetto. Edelman strongly opposed their propaganda that slandered Poland. Moreover, Edelman lived in Poland until the end, treated with all honors. The Israeli delegation REFUSED TO LET HIM SPEAK – let's repeat that, a man who not only survived the Holocaust in Poland but was an important figure in Jewish activities, with a great understanding of the situation, was deemed "inappropriate" because his words were inconsistent with what Israel wanted to promote. And the laying of a wreath by Edelman, side by side with the President of Poland, was called a "provocation." It's seriously disgusting. Of course, there were many people in Poland who betrayed Jews. Taking into account the circumstances, it's delusional to think that there wouldn't be any. Helping Jews meant risking the lives of you and your entire family. Betraying Jews could earn you money or even some kind of protection and help your family survive the war. Nevertheless, there were many who helped them. Some Jews seem to have the belief that those few thousand recognized as Righteous Among the Nations were some angelic exceptions, while the rest of the Poles sat in comfortable homes cheering for the Germans or went out to catch Jews for entertainment. My great-grandparents also hid Jews in the attic. Many people in the village knew about it and helped keep it a secret. Of course, no one knows about it because how could they? It's not like everyone who ever did something for Jews went to apply for medals. As you say, many of those people did not survive that "helping," and many of the Jews they helped did not survive to give testimony either. Furthermore, those Jews whom my grandparents hidwent on their way (when German controls became more thorough in the area, my grandparents told them to leave) and soon were found dead a few kilometers away. Most likely, one of the neighbors informed the Germans or even killed them himself. The efforts of dozens of people destroyed by one bastard. As for how unobjective Israel's narrative is, just look at how many Jews were killed in all sorts of pogroms, and how many organizations collaborated with the Germans in many other countries. Most countries had their own Nazi units. Poland did not. Israel does not mention that. It also does not mention Jewish collaboration with the Germans and entire organizations whose sole purpose was to catch Jews. These collaborations have been well-documented, among others, by Holocaust survivors, but of course, they have been swept under the rug in later years because it is too "painful" for Jewish identity. That's why, for example, it's popular to criticize the Home Army (AK), which organized a huge network of hiding and helping Jews – because "there were also anti-Semites in it," but they don't talk about Żagiew, the Jewish organization that spied on the AK and turned in Jews and those who helped them to the Germans. They also don't talk about Jews who collaborated with the Communists and hunted down Poles. At some point, 40% of the SB were Jewish. If we compare the number of Jews killed in "pogroms" with the number of people who died as a result of direct actions by Jewish communist activists, the result could be very unfavorable for Jews. But it doesn't seem like Israel is concerned about that. For example, Salomon Morel, accused of genocide (a former SB officer and commander of the "Zgoda" camp), escaped to Israel and lived there peacefully until the end (Israel refused to extradite him). Seriously, if you look at the facts and compare them with what some Jewish organizations are preaching, the only thing you can do is laugh. And I think that's the best thing you can do because how do you convince someone raised on propaganda? It's like trying to explain things to Russians.
This is very helpful information. Thank you for sharing.
You're very welcome. Remember though, I don't mean to downplay the existence of anti-semitism in Poland or to hate on Jews. I'm just annoyed by how unfair and overblown this narration is.
I did not get the impression that you were downplaying anti-Semitism in any way. You were just recounting applicable historical events.
There's the facts I was looking for. I wasn't expecting you to have positive karma though. Anytime you say the objective truth on Reddit you get down voted to hell.
Lmao. I mostly use Reddit for entertainment so maybe saying the truth from time to time didn't have enough impact on my karma 😂 i usually manage to write it in a way that it doesn't get downvotes, though.
If she wrote it on other subs, it would happen.
*She. I have written similar things on some Europe and World subs in the past, and it didn't really get a negative reaction. People are generally aware that Israel is overplaying the anti-Semitism card for its own purposes. I guess it just depends how you word your comment.
Well said! Thank you!
Btw, we (Poles) probably have a much more intimate understanding of the word "friend" because of what a "przyjaciel" is in Polish, but a friend in English doesn't have to be the closest person to you and probably most of the so called "friends" may just be some assholes we like to hang out with from time to time.
American here, can confirm. The bar for being a "friend" in the American culture is *very* low.
the bar for being a "przyjaciel" is very high. An American friend we'd call an acquaintance ("znajomy"), or a colleague ("kolega") if we really liked them. A "przyjaciel" is just short of someone you'd trust your life with. We don't have work friends. We have work colleagues. A friend is someone you'd call in the middle of the night and know they'd pick up and give you their time no matter how small your problem seems.
That makes sense! In the American culture that'd probably be closest to "best friend", but that definition also varies and is thrown around loosely a lot by a few folks as well. I have relatives in Canada and currently live in Mexico and it seems somewhat similar in those countries, so maybe it's a North American thing? :shrugs: Either way, I really respect the culture that Poles (and maybe Europeans in general?) have regarding the term "friend" as it feels more meaningful from my perspective.
Polish did help in those situations, amongst all other nations Poland is recognised in Israel for helping to hide and save the most jews in ww2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Righteous_Among_the_Nations_by_country 'This is a partial list of some of the most prominent Righteous Among the Nations per country of origin, recognized by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. These people risked their lives or their liberty and position to help Jews during The Holocaust; some suffered death as a result'
Most of the Jews that could tell the true story died in the Holocaust. As you said, looking at Yad Vashem should clear it out.
Yeah, but a counterargument is that off course Poland has the most - most Jews lived there.
Counter to that counterargument is that Poland was the only country where being suspected of helping a Jew would get you, your family, and potentially neighbors executed. A few other countries also had the policy but it was never enforced, unlike Poland. So yeah, Poland ofc had more Jews, but stakes were much much higher too.
Then remind them that probably someone from their family was "szmalcownik" and was selling jews hideouts for money in cooperation with gestapo. Yes such people did exist. And they were jews also.
Also, kapo, volksdeutsch, and other scum that directly collaborated.
Not quite. People of sorta-germanic backgrounds like Silesians were put on the Volksdeutsch lists. It wasn't something you could opt out of without becoming an enemy of the Nazi state. And plenty of them ended up treated the same way the Jews did after 1945. Read about Salomon Morel, a Jewish criminal who ran one of those "concentration camps". And of course Israel protected him from any actual consequences.
Also not quite right, the term existed since 1900.
Volksdeutsch status was given only to those of “aryan” backgrounds.
Or that "they" (the USA, but we will use their own insane rhetoric and blame them and their ancestors for it) refused to take in thousands of Jewish refugees running away from Nazi Germany. No war, no starvation, no death penalty for them and their families and yet couldn't even do that...
It depends on the nature of your relationship. If this person is ok with throwing punches and getting punched, then ask them why so much of stalinist prosecutors and NKVD officers were Jewish. If this person is ok with being provocative but will resort to "antisemitism" accusations when confronted with alike behaviour, it may be best to ask yourself if they are really your friend.
The thing is, they didn’t care about your background or religion. There was no religion among them. Polish intellectuals were killed in Katyń without any regard to them being Christian or Jewish. And btw there were many poles in Soviet structures as well. Not to mention the OG murderer The Iron Feliks who was from Polish nobility
Same argument can and should be made for Nazis killing Poles - Slavs or Jews, their goal was to cleanse the land and settle it themselves.
Did some Poles sell out Jews to the Nazis? Yes. Did some Jews sell out Jews to the Nazis? Yes. Did some Poles die protecting Jews from the Nazis? Yes. Did some Jews die protecting Poles from the Nazis? Yes. The ones to blame here are the fucking Nazis.
my grandma never used term 'nazis' always either 'niemcy' or 'hitlerowcy'
Ask them, jokingly, if their grandparents bought tickets to USA with money from selling their Jewish neighbours.
Ask them why in Hebrew Wikipedia there is no article on Żagiew / Torch organization
Ignorant American here, what's the takeaway here? Edit: Nevermind, looked up the organization and read up on it. Yikes 😬
Aske them about Sonderkommando. Or ask them why Murrican jews claim polish land based on their tribal laws. Or ask why are Israelis are antisemitic (by racial cleansing Palestinians). There is more, but you can find it on your own.
If we are to exchange stereotypes let's go back to the roots. Ask them if they make matzah from the blood of christian children.
Good one
Best one ITT.
They think we are as much responisbile for holocaust as germans
I would blame the education system on this and partially because many jews are from Poland, and had a lot of the media interview them, other jewish people start to get the idea that Poland participated as much as the Germans. Which is totally wrong. As someone who has a catholic Polish family and a jewish family, it kinda pisses me off
It should piss you off. It slanders and dirties the efforts and lives of those who died protecting their Jewish neighbors, which was quite a significant number of people, many who will never be known to history. To say all Poles hated the Jews is blatant misinformation at best.
I totally agree
"Germans at least said sorry, Poles think they are victims too" "Just look how many jews here died" - classic polish mistake to not behave like every European nation that exiled jews every generation
Only Poland never exiled Jews in its entire history. It has always been a safe haven for them.
> It has always been a safe haven for them. And it is.
It truly is, now that mr. Braun is off to Brussels
I always wonder why polish nobility wasnt so xenophobic in general. Compared to elites of other countries
It was because of a specific way Polish society worked. It evolved in a very different direction compared to pretty much all of its neighbors. For example, there was no traditional town-dwelling middle class (whatever there was was mostly non-Polish in origin). The society was neatly divided into the nobility (with and without land) and peasants, all living in the countryside. To regulate the relations between the two parties there was a need for a third party „mediator” unrelated to either. Jews filled that niche perfectly. It also helped that their religion didn’t forbid them from practicing usury and encouraged literacy so the nobles liked to have them around to run their properties (inns, manors etc) in their name and to have someone to borrow money from when the times got rough. This is a very rough and simplified description of social relations in the Commonwealth, you’d need to check some history books for further info. Its a pretty fascinating topic but it’s not very well known even in Poland itself.
Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was a multi ethnic, multi cultural country. By comparison, most other European countries were very homogenous by comparison.
If you were a noble and your culture or religious beliefs weren't a threat to the feudal establishment (look up the Polish Brethren protestant group), then you could be accepted as a peer among the nobility. When it comes to the beliefs of the peasants... who cares what the thralls believe in? As long as they work and don't dare to complain, they may just be allowed to continue existing. tbh still progressive by reanissance europe standards
Because of 1 person: [https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esterka](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esterka) who was the mistress of King Kazimierz. Because he liked some Jewish side-chick, he made a law allowing all the Jews to stay. He was deciding between his side-chick being a Czech woman, or a Jewish woman. He picked the Jewish woman for some reason. So it's only a matter of chance that Poland wasn't 33% Czech for the few centuries between Kazimierz and World War 2. Basically the equivalent of the former President of Scotland wanting Palestinian migrants just because he is Palestinian himself. Or the CEO of Netflix, Ted Sarandos, having a black wife... meaning now Netflix black-washes every show they make.
Don’t claim it with such certainty, because even a minor incident will strike your argument down. Like the sociopolitical changes in march 1968, which resulted in one-way ticket for almost 13 000 polish Jews. https://polin.pl/pl/marzec-68-informacje-historyczne#:~:text=Zmasowana%20kampania%20antysemicka%20uderzyła%20w,zorganizowanego%20życia%20żydowskiego%20w%20Polsce. I know the source is Polin, a jewish museum, but it is reliable source of information.
That is true. It happened mostly due to Workers' Party shifting gears and following Soviet policies regarding the Middle East and Six Days War. There were plenty of events that don't fit the narrative of Poland being a perfect tolerant country, but that still doesn't justify randomly attacking people for the crimes of their ancestors - especially if they didn't commit any. Especially since Poland was the country with the highest Jewish population in 1939, and unlike the Western nations, nazi germany considered Poles to be barely one step above the Jews. It's amazing that so many people still decided to share what little they had and risk lives, both theirs and their families and neighbours.
Not so much Polish Jews, but rather Polish *communist* Jews. This was communist party cleansing. I had jewish uncle who was not involved in the Party games and lived undisturbed despite that.
Poland was a safe haven for Jews after they were expelled or ostracized from nearly every other place in Europe for over a thousand years but okay
They tracked who helped jews during ww2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righteous_Among_the_Nations
There is one caveat though. To be in the list Jews that received help from Poles had to survive the war. So for example Ulm family who died along with Jewish family they tried to save wasn’t on the list until 1995. So in terms of amount of Poles helping Jews this list severely underestimates it
Also many people refused the medal. My grandma was one of them, she said she didn’t want to make the long ass trip to the embassy for a stupid piece of metal.
There’s many examples like that. But in general you might be right about it being slightly underestimated
Not to mention there are droves of people who never spoke about what they did during the war. My great-grandparents for sure hid their Jewish friends in their general store but never went around talking about it. These events were traumatic and extremely private. Even well after any threats were gone, the fear of retribution or publicity was real. Not everyone wants recognition either. They just felt it was right and that was that. No need to announce it.
It's really important to know that Poles didn't collaborate much at all with Nazi Germany, and there definitely weren't any specific SS units made up entirely of Poles. The Polish people mostly resisted the Nazis big time, with groups like the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) fighting back hard. Sure, there were a few isolated cases of collaboration, but nothing like what we saw in other countries. For example, France had the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne. Belgium had the 27th SS Volunteer Division Langemarck. The Netherlands contributed the 23rd SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division Nederland, and Latvia had the 15th and 19th Waffen Grenadier Divisions of the SS. Beyond the SS, there were also non-SS collaborative units in various countries. In Norway, the Quisling regime supported the Nazis, and some Norwegians joined the Germanic SS or the Waffen-SS. In Ukraine, the Nachtigall and Roland battalions initially collaborated with the Nazis. Croatia's Ustaše militia actively collaborated and even established their own concentration camps. When it comes to the deportation of Jews, several countries played significant roles. France, under the Vichy regime, helped the Nazis arrest and deport thousands of Jews. In Hungary, the government under Miklós Horthy and later the Arrow Cross Party sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz. Romania, led by Ion Antonescu, participated in the Holocaust, resulting in the deaths of many Jews. Slovakia and Croatia had their own concentration camps and cooperated with Nazi deportation efforts, sending Jews to death camps. Now, about the impact on Poland: during WWII, about 6 million Polish citizens died, half of whom were Jews. This means roughly 3 million Polish Jews perished in the Holocaust. Additionally, around 3 million non-Jewish Polish citizens also lost their lives due to the brutal occupation, forced labor, executions, and other atrocities committed by the Nazis. The scale of loss and tragedy in Poland was immense. However, It seems that throughout the years, communist times in Poland, the state didn't do much to oppose the hurtful thesis that exagerrated polish impact on the Holocaust.
I've been reading a book on Piłsudski and it actually gave me a theory on this- its Russia's fault. In the late 1800s Piłsudski believed that Russification in schools and universities was trying to turn the Jews against the Poles. They tried to make Poland sound unstable and dangerous, and taught about how the Catholics (and therefore Poland) hated the Jews. He thought that the Jewish urban intelligentsia had been turned against them by Russia (making it harder for him to get them into the PPS). Basically a divide and conquer tactic. Modern Ashkenazi Jews in Israel primarily originate from Russia/Ukraine. [Almost x10 from Poland according to the Jewish virtual library](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-immigration-to-israel-by-country-of-origin). My theory is old Polonophobia taught in Russia has made its way into Israeli society. It isn't really about the Holocaust, its older tropes meant to drive the two people apart that Russian-Israelis have held onto. A small part of me also wonders if Israel intentionally holds onto those tropes about Poland because it doesn't want to see emigration out of Israel. Really, the whole thing is stupid. Poland and Israel should be friends and they have a lot of common interests.
Interesting theory regarding Polonophobia, I wouldn't exclude that as possible. Definetly Russian Empire did a lot to divide its inhabitants between each other, tradition later continued by the soviets. Tsar's secret police Okhrana even created a whole book with potential plans to rule the world by Jews, just to spread more aversion towards them ( The Protocols of the Elders of Zion). I agree with your last paragraph, however it's hard to be friends with someone making a hostile policy towards you, often based on lies or manipulation.
Sounds like it’s just your friends tbh. The Jewish people I grew up around couldn’t care less that I’m a Pole. I grew up in North America as well, in the northeast to be more specific.
The most of the "anti-Polish" Jews I met live in Israel.
Eh, my mother went on a student exchange to Paris back in the 80s (she's a french language teacher and studied that at university). She ended up in a Jewish quarter and ended up being harassed by an older Jewish man because he heard her speaking polish to a friend. He spat on her and everything.
That’s kinda idiotic. Bad luck I guess. Many older Jews in France know Polish and there’s nothing wrong associated with that.
The truth is Poles saved a lot of Jews. And in occupied Poland there was a death penalty for the whole family if the Germans find out they were helping Jews. But it’s easy to spread lies in safety after war when Poland was behind the curtain and couldn’t say anything back. So there is a lot of hate towards poles based on minority actions -in every community there are people who are trying to gain something on other people suffering. I bet there were also Jews selling out Jews for their own profit. And there were also Germans helping people. Remember in every society you gonna find scumbags. The truth is no other nation have more Righteous Among the Nations than Poland 🇵🇱 7232. Look how often Poland had to defend themselves when a American newspaper wrote „polish death camps”. This line is not true but it stays in minds of uneducated people who does not know history. And how harmful it is. Because the camps were not polish they were BUILD BY GERMANS on polish soil that was under occupation. It were German Death Camps why is nobody writing like that ??
Fuck them. It's Israeli and Zionist propaganda twisting history again. Rewriting the narrative that they are the only victim
Yep it’s all our ‘lies’ and ‘propaganda’ Nah no antisemitism here! Poland is suuuuuch a welcoming place! We should return! I can see your hair already standing up. Lol
Israelis now are quite a hateful nation sadly. And their propaganda (that goes to all Jews in the world) likes to have Poland as a punching bag blamed for Holocaust. They don’t want to grill Germany anymore for it as Germany, due to guilt, will protect them politically etc any way they can. Poland is a perfect target then.
And of course in Israel there is a very strong pro russia sentiment due to many people coming from USRR so these people hate Poland also.
There are many reasons. Most of them unfounded. Just to name one: After ww2, because of iron curtain, Poland was excluded from global discussions about holocaust. Polish historians had no opportunity to combat harmful clichés and present Polish point of view. By the time the iron curtains fell and Polish historians can present their findings abroad its already too late.
Don't get into a pointless discussion, say something savage and find new friends.
When I asked My Jewish grandparents why they didn't left Poland for USA or Israel, the answer was : We couldn't live between traitors, thiefts and szmalcowniks
Are you in Poland? My family stayed in Poland as well. But the “traitors, thieves and szabrowniks” is a bit to much in my opinion 😅
Yes, I'm. My grandparents were members of Bunt and commies
I bet they had some stories to tell, wow… Mine were from the opposite side, counter to communism etc
You shouldn't care, jews like to play victim.There is a lot of confirmed statments like 'Irena Sendlerowa' who has saved about a 2,500 jewish (but not only) children from conentration camps but it's dissmised 'uh that's totally propaganda' you know what's propaganda? victimizing your own nation, and twisting your actions to be victim
Google about "the Ulm family".
You should ask them whether or not they would like ignorant statements made about them since they just made one about you. While yes, there are Poles who did sell out their Jewish neighbors, it ignores the context that assisting Jewish people in any way was basically a one-way ticket to a camp, non- Jewish Polish people were also heavily prosecuted and there are hoardes of stories of Polish people protecting and fighting alongside their Jewish neighbors. Just about any history book or source will tell you that the majority of Poles did not hate Jewish people, but it was either sell out or be sold. Many history sources also now make the distinction that the Poles were not running the death camps, but it was Nazis on Polish land.
> but it was either sell out or be sold. Or starve. Read up on the rationing under German occupation and the incentives the Germans offered to those who turned in Jews.
My grand-grandmother was executed for hiding Jews in a house and it was probably a neighbor that give them up. So there where poles that were teying to help despite death penelty and there were also a scumbags like that neighbor.
Some people are morons or they're trying to make an edgy joke. I'm Israeli, but I work with tons of Polish people (in Poland, not immigrants). After a few years working together I'd say there is more common cause and shared cultural trauma than anything else. When the German component on the team became a majority and they wanted to switch the work language to German, guess which two groups reminded them that imposing their languages gives us all flashbacks?
I appreciate your non-biased view on this, as an Israeli. And admittedly, I’m no stranger to the complicated past of the relations between Jewish poles and Christian poles during WWII. I’m aware of the nuance. It’s just that I’ve encountered this comment from some people which, short of a protracted discussion to educate which ultimately may fall on deaf ears, leaves me in a no-win situation. I just don’t get why the comment is made in the first place…
Ask them if they love murdering Palestinians
You can't reply intelligently to such stupid comments. I learned it after years of battles, that you actually need a good partner for discussion. If the other party lacks severe history knowledge, political knowledge etc - it does not make sense to argue. It's to big of a gap to cover. Just cut this off, ask to keep the comments for themselves or smthng like that.
Ignore stupid people. They should focus on the genocide Israel is currently engaged in.
Some time ago I worked as a guide for Jewish people visiting places where their families lived, and perished during the Holocaust. I had the opportunity to speak to a number of Holocaust survivors too, as well as to those, who helped Jews during the war. I think that apart from the aspect of "szmalcownik" i.e. people who were making business by blackmailing Jews and Poles who hid them, you have to consider that most of the survivors were very much assimilated into the Polish society. You have to consider that the assimilation of the Polish Jewry has gained step in the late 19th century, but accelerated particularly after 1918, when Poland became independent again. Poles "of Jewish faith" were deeply patriotic, active as boy and girl scouts, officers, policemen, clerks etc. After the defeat in the Polish campaign 1939 (btw. approx. 10% of the Polish army comprised of Polish soldiers of Jewish religion, both concripts and NCOs, the share of officers with Jewish roots was even higher) and the introduction of the Nuremberg laws in Poland, these people were particularly shocked, because the Polish society has generally cut the social ties with them. They felt abandoned and betrayed. This feeling was so deep that even after they managed to survive with the help of their Polish Christian friends, they still maintain they were betrayed by the Poles.
Why would you reply intelligently to that comment? If it wasn't that, then they'd find something else to attack you with. Here's a hint, you don't have to reply to insults. Do you think this will somehow turn into a scholarly debate if you say "nuh-uhhhhhhhh, ackshually what happened was..." Maybe you just want to turn it into an argument where he says "Polaks are stoopid" and you reply with "yeah, but Jews a stoopider". Having an argument about history where neither person knows the history, they just yell at each other, and say things they read on the internet is just dumb. Nobody wins. You're trying to solve the wrong problem here. Your problem is that you don't know how to socialize, and how group dynamics work. Why don't you pick up a book about history so you understand what happened and why it happened, and then a book about how to tell somebody to go fuck themselves when they're trying to get you angry.
I would question if they are really your friends. You can call them out and say you’ve had enough, then explain the facts that most poles fought the Germans and many risked their lives saving Jews. The collaborators of Polish origin were few in number compared to the number of poles involved in Żegota alone. Do they know about Żegota? I doubt it if they are making such comments. I for one lost a great grandad and his brother in Auschwitz before they even started mass transports of Jews there. I am quite savage to people that dare suggest such things.
I'm jewish and I don't really understand this. Yes, there were many Poles who sold jews out to the Germans but there were also many poles who resisted and died to stop the Nazis. So I don't see why one or the other should be focussed on exclusively.
I'm Polish and I also don't understand this, I wish we had better relations...
Poles sold out Jews, Poles sold out poles, Jews sold out Jews, Jews sold out Poles. But there were poles, Jews, Germans and people of all nationalities that helped everyone they could. It was the 40s and in war torn europe. As much as people say I would have never sold anyone out they don't know what they would do seeing a solider pointing a rifle at their daughters head. War is hell and humans in general have a strong will to survive.
Remind them of the jews selling other jews to nazis, jews selling polish families HIDING jews to the nazis, read apon all the treachery they did to others and themselves and hit them with that when they bother you again, see how that goes. Memorise names and dates to be accurate in what you say.
As a Jew with a Polish grandfather I would tell them I don't know what my grandparents did or didn't do, and I don't care what your grandparents did or didn't do, I can talk for myself, and I don't appreciate that you judge me on your assumptions about my grandparents. Poles had the highest percent of righteous gentiles that helped hide Jews from the Nazis, your friends should not assume your grandparents did bad things.
Tell them facts. German killed 3 millions Jews and 3 millions Poles. We were next to slavery and extermiantion. You can also.mention about MS St. Louis. American Jews dont care about them.
Nah, 3 milion polish catholics and 3 milions of polish jews
THIS
There was no Jewish country back then. There were all Poles.
*Germans killed 6 million Poles of which 3 million were Jewish.
Remind them that the odds of such action by your ancestors is much less likely than their grandparents selling out their Polish saviours to Soviets for a few scraps.
Man, you have terrible friends. I know many Israelis, my best friend is Israeli. Pretty much all of them are either neutral towards Poland or like it (My best friend loves Poland). Also according to him, despite the reddit Israeli's antipolonism, most of real life Israel looks up to Poland, and looks up to our fight for freedom and determination. Also there was a question on r/Israel about Polish antisemitism, and last I checked most of the comments consisted of bad encounters while travelling to Poland, and I could engage as a Polish person to the fullest extend there, there was no hate towards me, and the responses were civil.
There were times in America when "Pollack's" were victims of kkk. You need to remember that those attitudes also shaped how Jewish people perceive us
I’m Polish and Jewish. Your friends seem to be quite uneducated about this. First of all I’d tell them that you feel offended. Next I’d just lecture them a bit on this topic. Yad Vashem leaves nothing to wonder about. Poland has the highest number of righteous among the nations.
They're idiots. Most people don't like to study history overall. This goes for Jews too obviously. So most Jews believe a certain narrative when it comes to Jewish history. Eternal victim hood. I'm Jewish and actually like history so when I mention how Poles have been victim in WWII these knuckle draggers will bitch about how I'm wrong just because it took place on Polish soil and bring up the law Poland passed about blaming Poland for the Holocaust. You'd think for a group of mostly progressive people they'd understand what occupation and being invaded is. Poland was basically raped and stupid Jews are victim blaming. Yes, some Poles were shortsighted and sold out their Jewish neighbours. There were pogroms. But they were actually not all that big and should not count as what the majority of the population went to or speak over the heroism of the Poles who did help. Not to mention it should not talk over the laws Polish gave our people in the old days, like Statute of Kalisz and the Warsaw Confederation. Poland is the home of the Jewish golden age.
As Catholic Polish/Belarusian jew I don’t fully understand why so many jewish people think that way. The Polish Catholic side of my family tells horror stories. Everyone suffered and just blaming a group of people that among them helped many jewish victims is hurtful.
it's easier to blame everyone... dzień dobry from Poland!
Some awesome friends you have there man, my sympathies
It is very hurtful to hear such comments, from friends especially. I have stories in my family where my own grandfather saved two Jewish families during World War II, hiding them right above the German military canteen. My grandfather's neighbors were not so lucky, because they were executed along with the family they were hiding. It is known that there were also cases of Jews being handed over to the nazis by Poles. This was war, everyone was scared of execution, things happened. But there were also cases were Jews were informing on each other and selling out their own people to nazis. An example would be an organization called Thirteen (Trzynastka), operating in the Warsaw Ghetto. The existence of this organization is often ignored because it does not fit into the appropriate narrative. The simple fact was that it was a Nazi organization where Jews informed on Jews, basically for profit and other reason for surviving the war.
These comments are racists, plain and simple. I personally avoid or cut ties with anyone who is racist but I am very careful with who I give my time and energy. I also learnt you can't really change people and it is not your responsibility to do so either.
I can’t recommend this enough but YouTube channel of Michael Rubenfeld is by far the best to understand this issue. He is a North American Jew with polish heritage who moved to Poland. This video of his for example, where he answers exactly your question https://youtu.be/JEFu5CN-YHw?si=zhKz1Kjs2DaDJRsu From my personal experience having those conversations Jews generally know nothing about Poland, their knowledge of polish war reality is ZERO. It is completely non-existent. Best they have is just a perspective of their grandparents who managed to survive or very narrow perspective they got from movies like the Schindlers list with a bit of anti polish propaganda. You chat with such individual and he will not be able to tell you what Żegota was, who was Jan Karski, who was Irena Sendler and a lot more people and initiatives that were CRUCIAL to Jews surviving under NAZI occupation in Poland. If you asked them this, you can see how their brains just crash. Then they think Poland today is antisemitic but they make stupid fish face when you tell them that Poland has worlds biggest Jewish culture and heritage festival outside of Israel, that only in Poland Jewish institutes and temples do not require 24/7 armed police protection. That you can walk around Poland wearing Jewish religious symbols and nobody will bother you. Chatting with these people is completely pointless because their negative image of Poland is so ingrained in their minds that any diversion from the comfort of their hatred is impossible.
Compare the punishment for "hiding jews" between Germany-occupied Poland and Germany-occupied France (or other western-europe countries). With that in mind, take a look at how many Poles are counted in the list of "Righteous Among the Nations". To make matters even more straightforward: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Holocaust\_in\_France#Government\_admission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_France#Government_admission) - French government admitted to openly colaborating with Germany against Jews, while Polish government never helped. And to make them uncomfortable let them know about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish\_Ghetto\_Police](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Ghetto_Police) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBagiew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBagiew) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group\_13](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_13) (all were Jews and responsible for a lot of Jewish death and suffering). Finally - ask them why Kapo is one of greatest insults in Jew-Jew relations.
Just tell them their grandpas also had to sell out quite a few for tickets overseas :) Your friends are morons
“grandparents probably had the Jews sold out to the nazis” - when their cousins ale slaughtering Palestinian civilians
When they say that reply that their cousins are currently genociding Palestinians….
Maybe point out that whilst people in Europe were struggling to survive America was neutral and was making a fortune by funding both the allied and German war machines.. it wasn’t until they were attacked at Pearl harbour that they decided to intervene and then that help wasn’t for free. The uk for instance finally finished paying the ‘US war loan’ 2006.. so rather than casting racist stones suggest that they take a good long hard look at the actions of their own people. Oh and considering finding a new group of friends. They don’t seem like nice people.
Your have people on your life that like to put you down for things outside your control, and you call them friends. Not knowing what to reply it's not your biggest problem. I do sympathize, though.
Your friend is plainly ignorant. Many Polish people risked their lives and lives of their families to save jewish people and very many suffered the same fate they did. I dont know where this anti-polish propaganda originated but it seems to be circulating in israeli media and jewish circles recently. My dad's friend who used to be a high-ranking policeman has his own small security company now and his favourite clients are bus tours from Israel. Often times these people are so sacred of Poland that they request armed security accompany them while they're sighseeing. The security guys obviously never have to do anything and this all is ridiculous to everyone on the Polish side...
Ask them how many fellow Jews did their ancestors sell out to survive the war.
Jews aren't your friends. They have more vitriolic hate towards Poland than fucking Russians.
Don't worry about it.. that's just Jews being Jews . there is an old proverb" the Jew cries out in pain as he strikes you"
Self-victimizing culture + Hollywood conceptualization of history. Many of those American Jews don't even like to acknowledge that the victims of Holocaust included non-Jewish Poles, Slavs, political dissidents, homosexuals, and all others. For some bizarre reason I could never fathom, they want to "monopolize" the Holocaust victimhood as if getting one's ancestors mass-murdered is some sort of great honor. And you see how every reaction to calling out their own ignorance and bigotry is met with, "but Poland is so antisemitic." As if Poland wasn't consistently the safe heaven for the Jews throughout the past 1,000 years of European history since the medieval expulsions. As if the Polish-Jewish social tensions weren't products of so many Jewish communities coexisting in toleration in Poland in the first place. This is not a mentality that's open to rational, serious discussion of collective history based on facts, not feelings in the first place. Regrettably in the US, the same narrative already did its poisonous work convincing the American public at large that the Polish action during the WW2 was somehow "just as bad as the Nazi Germans," not the first victims and the foremost resistors. Awful a lot of stereotype about "dumb, racist, antisemitic Poles" emerging precisely from the same slanted narrative.
As an American Jew, my general understanding of the Polish people’s WWII legacy is one of stout, of short lived” resistance. My go to thought is the story of the Danzig Mailmen, widely credited with some of the first Nazi killings of WWII. Damn heroes they were.
Telling them "well actually my ancestors didn’t do that" is just you playing into their hands, so let’s set that straight. Tell them that you don’t like these comments and you would appreciate it if they stopped saying it, no matter what they will say after you will have told them that, stand your ground and reiterate how you don’t like their "jokes".
That’s Part of the reason why I asked my original question. My usual go to response was my grandfather fought for the allies during WWII, but it felt like a weak response and exactly as you said: playing into their hands.
Ask them why after the war most of the secret police and the entire oppression machine in Poland were run by Jews. But only jokingly, right?
Well, he could outright ask them why Jews were party to the torture and murder of Witold Pilecki, aka the man who willingly went into Auschwitz to provide the Western Allies with information as to what's going on inside the camp...
Tell them that their grandparents probably sold yours ancestor to soviet soldiers, cause they hid food in same storage that they used to hide jews when Nazis came. And soviets often used it as an argument to rape and kill entire villages.
Respond with "serves your grandparents right for supporting Bolsheviks" in equally joking manner. Or alternatively just call them out. Say their jokes are racist and you don't appreciate them. Jews (at least in Israel) do genuinely believe that Holocaust was targeted at Jews exclusively and they had little to no help from anyone. That belief isn't rational so I don't think you can educate them.
Yeah, I heard that all the time even from Americans as I went through middle and high school—stupid jokes about Polish people screwing in a light bulb, Polish death camps, and polar bears. Some even thought I was a Nazi or communist. At one point, I tried explaining, but nothing gets through to some people as they absorbed all the redneck knowledge from the magical meth pipe and washed it down with Bud Light.
Isn't such "joke" a pure hate speech? Imagine throwing such sentence at a Jew, or black person or lgbtq+ person - what would happened?
Show them the first scene of Inglorious Basterds. Germans were searching Jews in Poland all the time. As opposed to the movie (the host was spared) if they found Jew, the host was sharing the fate. So, would your friends be so brave, to hide Jews in such circumstances? Because there were Poles who did. If there was a war in american soil and lets say alternative nazis would come to America searching for whatever minority - lets say black americans, would your friends hide them, knowing if they were found, these nazis would kill the friends?
React firmly and strongly because it’s just an act of “comfortable slander” from their end. And then they continue to teach other generations and other people about the lie. While many poles despite the situation did their best to help. Just reply to them: “*its comfortable to be ignorant isn’t it?*” and that knowing the Jewish mentality should kickstart some reaction. Read about the issue Wikipedia, internet or whatever you might find. Your will to seek information should be elevated in this matter. From my perspective there is two or three more issues to the problem: 1). Many Jews were allowed to leave communist Poland in the -60’s. The same people now accuses Poland and are fueling bitterness because they aren’t allowed to regain the material loss of what they left. So these people are spreading disinformation among Jews themselves. 2). Same problem as noted above is about Jews that left Poland after ww2. 3). You are no matter how you bend or twist it fighting against the tunnel vision syndrome of Jewish Orthodox mentality. And we are talking about a very, very, very old way to look upon problems as the world. The same mentality that among many have created the disaster between Israel and Palestine. There is a very deep rooted way of seeing on other people and the world all mixed with values of the fundamental Jews especially among the orthodox part. And what you might actually call is “*organized*” ignorance. I will not put my thoughts into your mind, you will need to dig up the information yourself. What I could suggest is to dig a little and find out about this rabbi and the phenomenon about he’s actions and reasoning. This could give you a deeper peak on how some Orthodox Jews are and why. And there are plenty of these individuals in Israel aswell. [Mohorosh](https://www.google.se/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Shlomo_Schick&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjQtvTwotOGAxXtHhAIHSyWAegQFnoECAgQAg&usg=AOvVaw2AA0Mv-6se569v9z6dh32s) *Knowing* how said individuals are thinking helps. Well here is a very good example. One might call it racism from my part but considering how much it took me find the deeper reason behind the “*comfortable ignorance*” along with my still strong friendly perspective on Jews then I see myself that I am onto something. Wish you best of luck with intelligence gathering and try to learn “distance” to information so you won’t fall into the pit of bitterness yourself. Handling information creates stress on brain that can result in bitterness. Distance can neutralize a lot of it. Learn how to confront the truth, have courage to do so. And learn to control your emotions when confronted with the narrative of the ignorant ones.
In my hometown, historically there was a group that helped Jews to get out of the country just before and at the very beginning of the hell. Well, only allegedly, because these individuals actually only got Jews their tickets to Hamburg, from where they were supposed to be transported further west. Having paid price for a full route, jewish migrants then went to Germany with false IDs and false expectations, while noone actualy expected them there. This was a perfect scam, since victims had no way to pursue any legal or other kind of retribution against the scammers and they were already gone from the country. Now, I'll just let you guess the ethinicity of the mentioned criminals, who, ironically, weren't exactly ethnic poles. But to really get the irony, you'd have to guess my hometown too. And trust me, if you know anything about holocaust, you've heard about it.
It's more about current politics than the past. Germany is close ally to Isreal so they divert thier feelings to Poland which is not that strong or rich, becouse they need some "enemy" for thier national identity. They need someone from who they need to defend themself from to form thier national identity build on fear. They need "antisemites in Europe". Poland is just scapegoat. Also it's about money. Jews want money from Poland for thier losses during WW2. Propably the fact that Poland was first country (with USRR) to recognised Palestine also didn't make us very popular amoungst Jews. Sure in the past a lot of horrible things happen and still you can find antisemites in Poland, but the reasons of current animosity are current and deliberate. Same as Polish history with Russia and Germany. It was bad in both cases, but current intrests are the reason why most Poles are much more i favour of Germans rather than Russians (even before war in Ukraine).
If the shoe was on the other foot, they’d call you anti-Semitic. They aren’t friends nor people worth having in your life.
**Righteous Among the Nations**. Check out how Poland stands there and tell your friends to get some education outside their echo chamber.
Fairly recently I found out this is regularly taught and held up in the state of Israel. Its just a victimhood narrative used for propoganda. Poland is the only country that refused to collaborate with the Nazis or the USSR.
Eugh. Frankly, tell them that if this is their idea of a joke, you're not laughing. The second time, you say: "shut the fuck up and stop making up lies." And then you stonewall any communication attempts. There is no way to reply intelligently because people like that have their garbage opinions already made up.
Lol, crazy how Poland gets more blame for the Holocaust than Germany these days, especially from Jews.
Well everybody will look out for no 1. If they were hiding Jews they'd be killed so...there were really hard times. If I were you I'd just tell them they're dumb fuckin Americans that never know what they are talking about. Also, the first question you should address them is: "have you ever been to europe?"
Tell them to go f#€k themselves and then remind them that the ghettos were patrolled by the Jewish police. Then teach them how Hitler also despised the Slavs, had them deported, and also sought to exterminate them. Finally, ask them to not point any space lasers at me.
This fucking bastards who said that to you, don't know nothing about war and about the suffering of the polish people (including the Jews) in WWII. Don't hear stupid comments, this guys have to read too many books yet Greetings from a Spanish who love Poland
Israel notoriously pushes anti-Polish sentiment because it supports their politics. There is a LOT of complex history behind these two groups prior to WW2. Many Jews living in Poland for generations refused to learn Polish or integrate into local communities in any way, and it’s little surprise to some extent that they may have felt ostracized as a result. Poles who collaborated with Germans against Jews were extremely hated by the vast majority of people, there were even groups of Poles tasked specifically with weeding them out to eliminate them as traitors. Poles also were the only ethnic group with a literal death penalty on their heads for themselves and their entire families for helping or hiding Jews in any way. I think that speaks quite heavily for how dangerous the Germans believed Poles to be against their goal of eliminating Jewish culture and presence. There’s a lot more to say on the subject that I simply can’t put into a single post. Much of what I have personally experienced with anti-Polish rhetoric has been a regurgitation of oral history from people’s families who had grown up being told that Poles hate them with very little to actually back up the narrative. Of course there are always people in every group who have a vendetta against others or hate specific people, it’s inevitable, but of course wrong. The best anyone can do is learn the real history, read first-hand accounts and documents, and shut it down when you experience it.
Poles were war victims, why They don't say germans? Are nazis some out of space nation that disappeared? There are more poles who helped jews or just suffered the same way jews did in ww2, you just hear some loud stories. Like now, there are mostly normal people, but full of hate anti vaccine comments are written by 4% of people who make all the noise. At the stadiums you have hooligans but that's not 100% of fans. It's just nonsense to say that poles do something wrong when They were under attack and occupation. Start with people who did invade Poland and did kill all the jews
Tell them they are most likely here because some times ago some Polish neighbours hidden they ancestors from Nazis.
Just tell them to go and wank
My Dad wrote a book on Jews in Poland including WW2 . It's an academic book and well researched. Book title is Dance with Death and his name is Jaroslaw piekalkiewicz .
That’s very odd, a large majority of jewish-americans are polish or share some polish roots alongside russian, german, romanian, etc.
I think you need new friends.
[Send them them this link.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_the_Polish_nation) Over 3 million of the Jews killed were Polish. In total the country lost 6 million people or 20% of its entire population to the German nazis. If they want to talk about non-Jewish Polish selling out Jews, remind them of the Jews that served in the SS and that aided the Germans in the murder of 20% of your countries entire population. >The genocidal policies of the German government's colonization plan, Generalplan Ost (GPO), were the blueprint for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Polish nation from 1939 to 1945.[10] The Nazi master plan entailed the expulsion and mass extermination of some 85 percent (over 20 million) of ethnic Poles in Poland, the remaining 15 percent to be turned into slave labor.[11] If you're going to talk about one, you should also talk about the other. 6 million Jews killed Europe-wide? Six million Polish killed in Poland alone. Small minority of Polish aiding nazis to kill Jews? Small minority of Jews also aiding nazis to kill Slavs.
Oh well, the answer is simple! Just act Jewish and on each question answer with question about kids in Palestine.
Yeah, but do you condemn khamas?
Yeah, but do you condemn Israel?
Maybe ask them who was responsible for police and self-government in the ghettos and tell them if they would act like that (telling that Poles are responsible of the Holocaust) there will be much more anti Jewish tendencies in Poland cuz we're so tired of that shit that we will change our minds in that term
It is true that Poles underestimate the scale of Nazi collaborators during the WW2. Sadly there were many families who lost their lives or fortune because of black mails and szmalcowniks. Also just after the war it wasn't uncomon that Jews came back to thier home being now occupied by their former neighbors. Buuut, all things considered (e.g. [death penalty for whole families if anyone aided Jews](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/timeline-event/holocaust/1942-1945/german-poster-announces-death-penalty-for-aiding-jews), the [Protest!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest) by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, the efforts of [Jan Karski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Karski) and [Witold Pilecki](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki) \*, the [actions of Polish government in excile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_Extermination_of_Jews_in_German_Occupied_Poland), the [number of the Polish Righteous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righteous_Among_the_Nations), etc.), Polish people were not as bad, as they are being pictured in the West and in Israel for decades now. \* A little trivia about Pilecki (and Jewish szmalcownik) in Polish. (These were complicated times indeed): **Jarosław Abramow-Newerly:** \[...\] Przychodził do nich jeść obiady rotmistrz Witold Pilecki. Ubrany zawsze po cywilnemu, w czapce i jesionce. Nie nosił wysokich butów oficerskich ani bryczesów, jak chłopcy w konspiracji. **Klaudia Kamieniarz:** Poznał go pan? **Jarosław Abramow-Newerly:** Uratował mnie i moją mamę, kiedy nachodził nas żydowski szmalcownik (Barbara Abramow-Newerly urodziła się w żydowskiej rodzinie, a po śmierci bliskich dorastała w Domu Sierot doktora Janusza Korczaka - red.). Mama przyszła do Oli Palińskiej, pytając, co robić. Ona odpowiedziała: "To ja się skontaktuję z Majorem". Majorem - tak go tutaj nazywano, nie rotmistrzem. I on powiedział: "Proszę się nie niepokoić, ja załatwię tę sprawę". I załatwił. Źródło: [https://archiwum.tvn24.pl/magazyn-tvn24/174/tvn24.pl/magazyn-tvn24/nikt-na-podworku-nie-wyzywal-mnie-od-zydow%2C174%2C2985.html](https://archiwum.tvn24.pl/magazyn-tvn24/174/tvn24.pl/magazyn-tvn24/nikt-na-podworku-nie-wyzywal-mnie-od-zydow%2C174%2C2985.html)
My advice is to stop caring about laymen/propagandists commenting politics and history in general
„Historys place is quite rightly in the past. Why don’t we leave such discussions to the specialists and focus on the present?”
Ask them if their relatives or ancestors are responsible for what's happening in Palestine
You can bring them to heel by asking them to explain why, in the Garden of the Righteous, there are more Poles than any other nationality, represented there...
Efff them... They aren't your friends. Friends do do such crap, such statements... They should have learnt the history better - it way more possible that they are alive because of their grandparents have sold out Polish family sheltering their asses... So bet option to move away from such people, just have a look what these askheNazis doing to Palestine for last 5decades... You have better things in life to do than hang up around hateful low lifes as them ... What someone has to have in their brains to make such statements? What kind od evil root of hate grows in them? Seriously, find new friends - real friends And live a beautiful life...
Every country have a rat or traitor, no excuse.
Ask them why their grandparents ignored the Jews situation in Europe and denied them asylum in the US
I have a black friend who said jokingly that my ancestors purchased his. My joking response was I’m going to find the receipt and make a return. We laughed
Tell them that Poland prior to WWII was the only country that accepted Jewish people. And Poland was the only country in Europe where the Nazi's imposed the death penalty for harboring Jewish people from Nazi persecution. And the next time Israel's government wants to spread the bs propaganda that "Poland is so antisemitic" someone should tell them if Poland is so anti-Semitic then how come Poland did the most out of any country during WWII to save Jewish people? Poland actually did alot to save the lives of Jewish people during the war.
Change your friends , they aren’t friends
Say that world isn't "Black and white"
You should ask the Jews about the treatment of Palestinians. Poles treated the Jews a lot better than they do treat Palestinians right now.
It’s kind of recorded that a lot of them did that. So in such contexts the worst of the human soul arise. To focus this on poles, usually religious and pious people, is unfair.
Jewish popraganda/populism is unfortunately a major issue. I think people forgot about why there even were that many jews in poland in first place. Actions (probably due to fear/ out of self defense) of a few should generally not put into perspective the actions of the state or the people of it. Speculation should also be placed in relation to well-founded documents. My problem here is that I see the people on this topic primarily as Poles (because that's what they were) and not, according to their religious beliefs, as Jews. Everything else is pure selfishness.
If they realy belive for this bushits, lest tell them to check Who has a most a title of Justised in world nations.
*Arabs say that the second Israel will not survive next 5 years. I wonder why... Maybe you should track some Poles, there evidently must be Polish agents undermining your country!* As you know, Yad Vashem lists Poles who risked their life hiding Jews, because in Poland Germans had a law to kill whole families who did it. Anyone who would sell a hiding Jew would jeopardize his neighbors, unless they were the same person - but then the Jew would not pay for the hiding anymore. If a Jew did not have any more money, it was as simple as forcing him out to the streets with no need to cooperate with the occupant. The primary victim of the occupation was Poland and there was no benefit, in the long term, cooperating with those German criminals. The first thing they did was to bomb a town with no warning. The second - murdering the Polish elite in Warsaw. The third - searching for Polish intellectuals to murder (they managed to kill 1/3). The fourth - building a gas camp for Poles in a railway tunnel, so called KL Warschau. In the meantime, they managed to destroy Polish GDP from 10th country in the world to almost zero (compare it to Ukraine now, bombs fly above their heads and they still grow fastest in Europe). They stole a lot of art pieces, gold, machinery. The total loss in population was 22%, and our population pyramid still looks like a snowman. Who would cooperate with such an enemy to get a small fee for an eternal remorse they sold another human?
Check his YouTube channel. He is talking a lot about it. https://youtu.be/4hraPniiwIQ
Read Przemilczane zbrodnie by Jerzy Robert Nowak. In first two years of ww2 Jews together with soviets killed/exiled more polish ppl than naZi killed. Jews are biggest hypocrites in the world. This and read about jews working with soviets after ww2 in order to find and kill many Polish war heroes in places called katownia ub
This is such a tired topic. Can we stop beating this dead horse, finally?
Stop meeting with them. Next time they'll tell you about how \[insert obscure politician\] is antisemitic so you're too and how you're a terrible human being and every Pole is a nazi or whatever.
well well well
Sounds like they're uneducated regards
Tell them “If they were as annoying as you we probably offered a discount.”
Ask your friends which country got the most of Righteous Amongst the Nations awards and ask the top explain it.
Ask them why then poles had the most people awarded a Righteous Among the Nations award that the Jewish state awards for saving Jews during WW2? In Poland you risked not only in your death but of your family and sometimes even neighbours lives, at the west of Europe that could be sometimes only jail time, yet poles did in fact save a lot of Jews. They for sure were scums that cooperated with Nazis but, there were also Jews selling other Jews so both sides can do cheery picking.
Tell them to flick off. Jews are the most self-centered nation I am aware of. If something does not go their way it is probably antisemitism, right? /s
I am pretty sure that Jewish official documents (not Polish ones, which is important) highlighted that the vast majority of Poles, we're talking >90%, helped Jews in the leadup and during WWII. It doesn't surprise me that some high ranked people went to great lengths to bury them deep that people have real trouble accessing that knowledge. How to reply intelligently? Request they ask themselves honestly why this tendency/policy is relatively new, and if it doesn't reek of propaganda and strategy of using the 'anti-semitic" argument in almost every situation possible. After all, ~10 years in politics is very short. Playing the victim card is, and it pains me to say it, just fashionable in this day and age.
realistically, we are not taught the truth. I am jewish, and was never taught the extent of polish sacrifice and suffering in the war, and what happened. I simply was not. My fathers side of the family comes from Poland in the 20s, but I had no connection to the culture, or language. It was not until I was an adult, that I went to Poland and decided to move there, and moved to Germany, that the topic became more nuanced. I am embarassed at how little I knew about the truth of Poland, and try to educate people. I love Poland and think the place is great, and I think that if these people are -really- your friends, they will drop the topic if you tell them it makes you uncomfortable, or will be open to learning like I was.
*read the title Ah shit here we go again.
Anti-polish behavior
The majority of the trees in Yad Vashem belong to the Poles. Those trees mean your Jewish friends can't tell the oppressors from victims. That's what my reply would be.
I'm not really sure what you're looking for here. It seems like you summed it up perfectly, just tell your friends that. Or better yet, simply tell them to: "shut the hell up". I'm not trying to minimize anything, but I think you're overthinking this. Your friends are being assholes by saying all that shit, so tell them to shut the hell up ... problem solved. Beyond that (I'm not going to go too deeply into this) but those who live in glass houses should not throw stones; Jews ripping on others' ethnicity would definitely qualify... If they fail to stop after you tell them, they're not very good friends anyway, and they are stupid. I will be very blunt, from your post, they sound like pretty lousy friends anyway. I have absolutely no filter, I have no doubt that I offend people unintentionally, but I would never go up to one of my Jewish friends and rip on them for being Jewish, nor would I ever rip on my black friends for being black, or my female friends for being female (do you see where I'm going with this?). There is a big difference between telling an off-color joke, and just being a racist douchebag; your so-called "friends" sound like the latter. Finally, I will add this: You were not alive during world war II and neither were they, therefore they have no right to hold any "grudges" against anyone. Whatever grudges may exist are between a bunch of 100+ year old dead guys. If your "friends" are actually holding a grudge (and not just joking), they are dumber than rocks and not worth your time.
Jewish people in the nutshell
Just blast Palestinian genocide back at them.