Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Masha Gessen, the Polish Government, the Polish-Jewish Museum and the New Yorker

The insufferable Masha Gessen has an article in the insufferable New Yorker about the Polish government and the Jewish museum. 

I can't take Gessen. I just can't. She appears frequently on WNYC, the New York area NPR affiliate, and she nauseates me. She talks down. Exclusively. Down. Because she is superior and you are inferior. Everyone in the world is less intelligent, less aware. less hip than she. And they are probably Christian peasants. 


Can I cite her ever saying anything about Christian peasants? No, I can't. 


I also get the impression that Gessen thinks that there are about five worthy people in the world, they are all her personal friends, and they all live on a coast, and are wearing all black. 


How does it feel to go through life like that? 


The New Yorker was the go-to publication when I was writing Bieganski


Grab your copy of Bieganski and check out every time I cite the New Yorker. Then get back to me. 


What, you don't have a copy of Bieganski? 


Here's one passage in Bieganski that quotes the New Yorker. There are many such passages. 


Aptly summing up Borat's distinguishing characteristics, David Edelstein wrote in the New Yorker that Borat is typified by his “minuscule IQ, cultural backwardness, rampant libido, sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism.” Edelstein continued:

To understand what Baron Cohen's Borat is up to in part, it helps to consider the most notorious scenes in Claude Lanzmann's nine-and-a-half-hour Holocaust documentary, Shoah, in which the director trains his camera on Polish peasants who lived near the Nazis' most lethal concentration camps while they were in full swing. Under Lanzmann's probing, these old men and women — some of them residing on property seized from the Jews — murmur that yes, it was a terrible thing, the exterminations. Just terrible. But of course, the Jews did bring it on themselves, didn't they? I don't know whether Baron Cohen saw Shoah, but Lanzmann's gotcha journalism on untutored anti-Semites paved the way for what amounts to a (riotous) libel on Eastern Europe.
(Edelstein)

Here we see the logic, the ethic, and the anodyne of Bieganski. Eastern European peasants deserve to be mocked as people who bathe in toilet bowls. They are responsible for the Holocaust. It is their very qualities, so different from those of the modern academic, movie star, or journalist and his audience, their qualities associated with peasantry, that cause them to be monsters. Modern people are exculpated from the crime of anti-Semitism.


Anyway, if you want to read Gessen in the New Yorker writing about Polaks, go here


Here is a key excerpt: ""It meant that Poles should stop apologizing for their sins, foremost among them their coöperation with the Nazis in exterminating European Jewry."

21 comments:

  1. This phrase shows how effectively Poland has been moved to the Axis Side:
    "It meant that Poles should stop apologizing for their sins, foremost among them their coöperation with the Nazis in exterminating European Jewry."

    So, in the Original Version of WW2, Poland was attacked by both Stalin and Hitler, who carved it up between them, and the Polish Amry fought on the Allied Side.

    Then for a while we were victims of the Nazis, although relegated to "and other" status.

    But now in the Complete Revised Version, we ARE the Nazis.

    What next? Will Germany begin to move to the Allied Side? Has that already begun to happen?

    And how much of anything "the world" tells us can we safely believe?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sue thanks for that. I should add it to the main post.

      Delete
  2. You know where I stand on this, and on what it means.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Germany is already on Axis side, they were "liberated" in 1945 according to Angela Merkel. Normandy format was created by leaders from France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine met on the margins of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day allied landings in Normandy. Polish soldiers Polish airmen and several "Polish ships took part in missions on D-Day protecting the landing operations.: Germans participated killing thousands of Allied soldiers."The 1st Polish Armoured Division landed later in the campaign and played a critical role in the battle of the Argentan-Falaise Pocket and in opening the way for the Allies to liberate Paris." The commander general Maczek worked as a barman after the war. At the sam etime former Nazi officers were rich and respected citizens of Germany.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello Mr. Pankiewicz,

      At least now general Maczek gets some belated recognition.

      https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17948429.polish-wartime-hero-honoured-city-made-home/?ref=twtrec

      https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-how-a-polish-general-hunted-the-nazis-in-a-tank-1.7768608

      Delete
  4. Nina Simon summarises the article: "a country that exterminated us", later replaces the phrase with "The situation at the Polin museum reflects the longstanding contradiction of Polish sentiment about Jews."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is troublingly blatant. Though, on the doubleplusgood side, it ought to strengthen our faith in everything our Creator, the God of Abraham, warns us about "the world" (the current world system of things). I hope it will anyway.

      And can it also strengthen our faith in his promises of a rescue?

      Delete
  5. Inquiring Polish minds want to know: Why do Masha Gessen and those in her circle hate Poles more than they hate Germans?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hello,

    It's off the topic, but I want to share this story.

    In 2013 German tv station ZDF used words "polish death camps Auschwitz and Majdanek" on it's internet site.
    ZDF was sued by Karol Tendera a former prisoner of Auschwitz. He demanded public apology to be shown on the same site. Court ruled in favor of Mr. Tendera.
    Court battle lasted for several years. Few days ago ZDF has withdrawn their complaint. Court's decision is therefore legally valid and final.
    Yesterday Karol Tendera has passed away. He was 98 years old.

    https://patrianostra.org.pl/en/karol-tendera-camp-number-1000430/

    ReplyDelete
  7. Zybertowicz about anti-Polonism and Polonophobia http://www.currenteventspoland.com/news/Anti-Polonism.html?fbclid=IwAR2xkPkxqSDOCZmBvdXw5Miv7i0ufK4A1a-ZQRG8BQkefRXt9ukN3FIRZbA

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hello,

    Was there something wrong with my previous post?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've wrote a comment two days ago. It didn't show up, so I assumed that it was against some rules.
      Maybe there's a problem with blog again?

      Delete
    2. Well, that message hasn't been saved anywhere. And I don't recall exactly what I've wrote. But my rant wasn't important anyway.
      So I will now just share the news. Links below.

      https://polandin.com/44650891/auschwitz-camp-survivor-who-sued-german-tv-station-has-died

      https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7989/Artykul/2376150,Auschwitz-survivor-Karol-Tendera-dies-at-98

      Delete
    3. I think I found it. I went to "comments awaiting moderation" and found it there. I thought I had posted it. My error. Just not paying close enough attention.

      Delete
  9. Mila you will note that I am not posting your message The first time you attempted to post anonymously. Now you are trying to post under one name.

    You will note that others here are real people, not trolls. We post under our first and last names.

    now grow up and show some courage and post under a real first and last name, or stop wasting my time with your cowardice.

    Meanwhile, you keep trying to say that Poles hate Jews but love Germans.

    If anyone would like to address Mila's point, please do.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We hate Jews so much that we preserve those goddamn death camps instead razing them to the ground.

      We hate Jews so much that we organize festivals of Jewish culture.

      We hate Jews so much that we build museums dedicated to their history and suffering.

      We hate Jews so much that our President celebrates Hanukkah.

      We hate Jews so much that one of main streets in Warsaw is named Jerusalem Avenue.

      We hate Jews so much that their synagogues don't need armed guards.

      We hate Jews so much that our teens clean their cemeteries.

      We hate Jews so much that we build monuments on their mass graves.

      We hate Jews so much that we name schools and streets after famous sons and daughters of that nation.

      We hate Jews so much that every Polish child reads books of Jewish writers and learns to recite poems of Jewish poets.

      We hate Jews so much that we eat challahs, bialys, bagels, cebularze and latkes.

      I don't know where Mila lives, but I hope that her non-Jewish neighbours will one day hate her just like Poles do.

      Delete
    2. Very well put. Unilateral concessions get us nowhere.

      Delete

Bieganski the Blog exists to further explore the themes of the book Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.
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