Read the review here. Thank you to Jerzy for sending this in.
Monday, January 30, 2023
The Holocaust: An Unfinished History by Dan Stone. Book Review from the Daily Mail
9 comments:
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.
These themes include the false and damaging stereotype of Poles as brutes who are uniquely hateful and responsible for atrocity, and this stereotype's use in distorting WW II history and all accounts of atrocity.
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Very interesting. I will certainly obtain and review this book. On the one hand, by blaming all European nations, it takes the focus off Poland as the designated whipping boy in Holocaust-related messaging. On the other hand, this book reduces German-Austrian guilt by effectively making all the European nations actors in the Holocaust. If everybody is guilty, then no one is guilty.
ReplyDeleteThe article correctly situates Auschwitz in Germany-occupied Poland. However "Ghetto Lodz in Litzmannstadt, Poland" is controversial. The Ghetto had the same name, Litzmannstadt, like the city. The ciity was occupied in the same way Auschwitz was - both areas were annexed to German Reich. German Jews obtained orders to travel to Litzmannstadt, which was absent on pre-war maps and the Jews had limited (or none) access to German press.
ReplyDeleteThese words misinforms "Nor did that deep-rooted racism disappear with the defeat of the Nazis. When displaced Jews — the few who had survived, that is — returned to Poland they were subjected to violent attacks. Hungarian Jews were met with incredulity and disdain by those who had stolen their homes and were unwilling to hand them back." Antisemitism in pre-war Poland was mostly economical, cultural, religious and political, but not racist. If there existed racism in post-war Poland, it was imposed by perfect German Nazi propaganda. Many Jews who came to Poland after the war did not return. They used to live in Eastern Poland, were deported or run away to the Central and Eastern Soviet Union and came to Poland after the war, like my father did, born in contemporary Belarussia and deported to Siberia. The Jews settled in Lower Silesia and Szczecin, hoping to obtain some form of authonomy. The Jews were attacked in Communist Poland and Hungary and in independent Czechoslovakia, in its Slovak part. There were also pogroms in Soviet Union, later continued by Stalin's anti-Jewish operation. Jews were murdered in trains, like in Western movies, but former slave workers returning from Germany were also murdered. Some Jews were murdered because they were police officers, together with other ethnicities. It was part of the civil war, the main vicitm of which were thousands of ethnic Poles, frequently former members of the Home Army. Western people belive that the war finished May the 8, 1945. Partisan war continued in Baltic states, Poland and Western Ukraine.
ReplyDeleteThe Second Gentelman visited Auschwitz. Here is an article from Forward https://forward.com/opinion/533989/doug-emhoff-interview-poland-holocaust/ and comments by AzorInfo:
ReplyDelete1) Gorlice was part of Austria-Hungary until 1918
2) Please explain how, "the emphasis placed on the non-Jews who suffered during the war",
3) Calling Poles "accomplices" of the Nazis is defamation against an occupied nation without a state
Wojtek44 quotes https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2018-02-19/ty-article-opinion/how-poles-are-vilified-as-bestial-brute-jew-killers/0000017f-f385-d497-a1ff-f385615a0000
ReplyDeleteFrom the quoted Forward article "Emhoff spoke with a survivor who spent three years hiding in the Polish forests as a young boy. He told Emhoff that “the trauma of these young children fleeing violence in their homeland” reminded him of his own past. " It is impossible to survive in a Polish forest without help of local people, even during the Sommer, eating raspbeeries. War winters were harsh. It was possible to steel food, but peasants were opressed by anyone (Germans, Blue police, partizans, criminals), so they defended themselves to survive.
ReplyDelete"The Times of Israel" about Emhoff in Poland. "his grandparents, who had escaped persecution in Poland" They had escaped common poverty, not persecutions. It was Austria, not Poland.
ReplyDelete"Haaretz" "He will tour Oskar Schindler’s enamel factory museum where he will focus on the legacy of righteous gentiles." Nazi Schindler is a model righteous gentile in a country where hundreds have died helping Jews. "Eagle Pharmacy" would be a better place.
ReplyDeleteHello Jerzy, I don't imagine for a moment that Hollywood would have lauded Oskar Schindler had he been Polish! Wouldn't he either have been ignored, or depicted as a baddie, or used to denigrate all things Polish.
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