After the hideous spate of anti-Semitic attacks, including deadly attacks, in the NYC area recently, you knew two things.
Many would refuse to name the assailants
Someone would find a way to blame it all on Poles -- and maybe even another Bohunk group, like Slovaks.
Esteemed scholar Deborah Lipstadt does just that. In a piece in The Atlantic Monthly, Lipstadt cannot summon the courage to name and analyze the real perpetrators of these horrific attacks.
Rather, Lipstadt blames Poles. Why? Because Szczecin refused to put in place a memorial plaques to commemorate a Holocaust victim. Szczecin wanted the memorial stone to state that the Jewish person being commemorated had been murdered by German Nazis. Poles make this request exactly because of the Bieganski stereotype, that transfers guilt for the Holocaust from Nazi Germany to Poles.
Slovaks are responsible for the Monsey stabbing because Jewish gravestones were desecrated in Slovakia. This desecration is vile and inexcusable.
Blaming the Monsey stabbing on anyone but the perpetrator, never mind Poles and Slovaks living thousands of miles away, is also vile and inexcusable.
Deboarah Lipstadt, identify the perpetrators of this and other recent attacks on Jews in the NYC area.
Blaming Poles and Slovaks is all too easy. And wrong.
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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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