Poland seeks Auschwitz renaming

[Behind the Aegis]

Poland wants the official name of Auschwitz-Birkenau changed to remind the world that the death camp was built and run by Nazi Germany.

The government in Warsaw is anxious that the grim history of the Auschwitz site, listed as a Unesco world heritage site, is not linked to Poles or Poland.

Poland wants Unesco to change the official name to "Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau".

More than a million people, almost all Jews, died there between 1940 and 1945.

more...

[The Sushi Bandit]

1. I aint touchin this with a 10 foot POLE!

no pun intended!

[file83]

4. LOL - maybe we should rename the USA....

"Former Country of Freedom Supported by the Constitution but is No Longer The United States of America"...?

[saigon68]

2. Since Poles turned Jews in for rewards from the NAZIs

This attempt to whitewash the past

Is fitting with their new role as the Chimpanzee's Iraq enablers. </Sarcasm>

[cap]

8. the history is quite complicated

there was a lot of anti-semitism in Poland... and you are right, a lot of betrayal done deliberately.
There was also a lot of forced betrayal as well. The Nazis treated Eastern Europe a lot harsher than Western Europe. The people helping Ann Frank went to a labor camp. People helping Jews in Poland got shot on the spot in front of their village along with all their family. This treatment also happened with the resistance. There's a lot of post-war literature dealing with betrayal in Poland. 100,000 Polish Christians died at Auschwitz.

In defense of Poles, the largest contingent of people recognized at Yad Vashem, the memorial to the righteous Gentiles in Israel, are Polish. The people supplying the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were Poles -- the supplies came from Gentiles.

There are now almost no Jews in Poland... I think only 5000 Jews are left. There is an effort in Poland to recognize Jewish contributions to their history and culture. The impact of the Jews is much like that of blacks on American society. You cant tell our history without recounting the contributions of blacks... same as in Poland. The impact of Jewish humanism on liberal Polish thinking is humongous.

As far as Poland and the Chimp, there were large anti=war demonstrations against Bush when he came to visit. There were reports in Polish Newsweek and in Polish papers about the Bush family involvement in Auschwitz. Like the US, the elites arent listening to their people when they committed troops.

[saigon68]

10. From all I have read

The Poles were accurately depicted in the Novel Mila 18

[BronxDiva]

20. Mila 18

I'll have to read the book to know what you're talking about,
but I've had family helping, not turning in, Jewish friends.
Grandfathers were also shipped off to work camps.  They
survived but never talked about their experience.  One
great-grandfather, that we know of, died in a concentration
camp.  Others disappeared never to be heard from again.

[saigon68]

44. Read the Book

Although a novel and thus more entertaining, there are dozens of other books that I have read over the years that back up the main premise that most Poles were ambivalent about the plight of the Jews in Poland. And some Poles were down right Anti-Semitic.

THERE IS ANOTHER ONGOING THREAD THAT BACKS ME UP ON THIS



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2202609

[cap]

28. havent read novel mila 18...

but I suggest some of the post war literature written by Poles themselves. There is a lot of discussion of betrayal and the guilt of the survivors. To get an idea of the distortions of society read the Painted Bird by Jerzy Kozinski. Horrible, horrible stories of people being killed and their bodies put on horse drawn sleds and let loose in the forest to scare the resistance. Under the Nazis, the Poles were treated like serfs. The plan was to kill the Jews and then let the Poles die of overwork and slow starvation so that the German state could expand eastward.

My family is Polish -- Catholic and Jew. We come from an area that is now Lithuania but has moved back and forth between Poland, Lithuania and Russia. Our home town is Vilnius, the Jerusalem of Lithuania...a center of Jewish learning. It is also the site of some of the major pogroms. Before the Nazis, it was very heavily Jewish -- I believe 30-40%. There was a high degree of intermarriage between the two religions. Warsaw also had a very high percentage of Jews -- 30-40% as well. People like my family sheltered their kinfolk and their neighbors at a high cost to themselves.


Also, if you look at the history of rebellions in Poland, there was a high participation rate of Polish Jews who allied themselves with Polish Catholics to fight for a free Poland. There was a very high degree of Jewish involvement in the Polish labor movement as well. If you would like to read a very positive view of Polish Jewish relationships, I might suggest ADAM MICKIEWICZ's Pan Tadeusz. This is a poem celebrating the friendship of a Pole and a Jew. It is the national poem of Poland... kids memorize sections of this poem in school.

A certain amount of the problems -- not all -- can also be blamed on the occupying forces, German, Russian and Austrian, who heated up local grievances and played each side off. People in Eastern Europe treat each other barbarically. Historically, it is a zero sum game. You grab power and wreak vengeance on everyone else. Look at Bosnia. Look at riverbend's discussion of sunni and shia for a modern day version of this in Iraq -- her family is sunni and shia. Nobody was wise enough to understand how much of their grievances were exacerbated by outside influences... none of the groups in Eastern Europe have really discovered a mechanism to really get along with each other.

There are many Poles today who do not acknowledge their own prejudice and participation in AntiSemitism. There are also many Jews who do not acknowledge the efforts of Catholics on their behalf and the terrible price paid on their behalf....All of us did not walk away from our families. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was supplied by Catholic Poles who were coordinating a simultaneous uprising with the Polish Home Army. An American example would be not to acknowledge the Abolitionist movement, the Underground Railroad and the support of white liberals in the civil rights movement. White America did not do enough to end slavery and the subsequent injustices. But a categorical statement condemning the white race can not be made either.

There are no Jews in Poland today because people on both sides gave up on each other. Maybe this separation could not be helped... maybe both sides should have tried harder... I dont know the answer to this. It is truly asking a lot for a people so victimized as the Jews in Poland to try harder to get along; but there has to be some opening made somewhere for a hand to be extended. Catholic Poles have to look beyond the pain of their occupations and humiliations. The pain is so loud that nobody can hear each other. A healing of this breach is very necessary. It is like discussing American history and culture without talking about jazz, soul music, and Martin Luther King's effect on all civil rights movements: women's, gays, Latinos, etc. You cant discuss Polish history without acknowledging the Jews. You cant discuss Jewish history and culture without talking about Eastern Europe and Poland. Both parties really need a healing...but the healing cant take place without an acknowedgement of both the grievances as well as the positive forces that brought the two people together. Each side is so locked into the pain of their own histories. Each pain is so unacknowledged by the other side. I would really like to see some process like that of South Africa's Councils on Truth and Reconciliation. We must tell the truth in order to obtain forgiveness. And the truth is both positive and negative. In South Africa, Blacks have acknowledged the righteous whites as well as told the story of the atrocities of arpatheid. I would very much like to see a reconciliation between Polish Jews and Catholics. If we dont acknowledge the negative truths, we cant expiate the sins. But, if we dont look at the positive, we have nothing to build on to obtain a reconciliation.

[Hekate]

43. Cap -- thank you for your informative posts in this thread

You've been very helpful to this discussion and I've learned a lot from you tonight.
:hug:

Hekate

[saigon68]

45. Thank you for your reply

My knowledge comes from my grand mother Lewandowska who was born in Szczecin, Polska.

I have been a student of the 1943 uprising for the last 30 years. My opinion is the few Jews left alive in 1945, gave up on Poles and their catholic church in general after WW 2.

I will not debate your conclusions, for your experience they are probably valid.

Again thank you for an alternative (to mine) point of view.

Mila 18 is a novel about the Ringleblum archive


http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/exhib/ghetto/35nn.html


and Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of the Warsaw resistance, died that day in the Mila 18 bunker, along with 100 of his comrades.



http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Poland/WarsawGhetto/WarsawGhetto03.html

[Coventina]

27. And the broad brush says Americans support George Bush

Do you feel that describes yourself?

Poland suffered horribly in WW2 at the hands of the Nazis.

My ex-boyfriend's grandparents (Christians) were interred in the camps and managed to survive. The grandfather was very physically strong, so the Nazis broke his knees. They were lucky.

FWIW, I disagree with trying to change the name, I don't think it's helpful. But I disagree with your attitude that Polish = collaborator.
It's untrue and unfair.

[blackhorse]

31. Thank you

... for a reasonable post.

I know a Polish woman who lost a sister and a brother to the Nazis. The family was Catholic. The sister was sent to Auschwitz for "economic crimes", and the brother went to Gross-Rosen after being accused of delivering resistance newsletters.

The attitude of many at DU toward Poland is IMO quite shallow. Because the current leadership of Poland has unwisely involved the country in the Iraq war, Poland seems to be seized upon by many here as a convenient punching bag. Frankly, I wonder how many of these people have ever considered how screwed over Poland was in the fifty years between the German invasion and the collapse of communism. A free hint to those prone to disagree with this assessment is to check out the Polish civilian losses in the war, and then look at those losses as a percentage of the whole. IIRC, Poland had the largest per capita losses, something like 18% of its prewar population. This works out to around six million civilians, of which the loss ratio is split more or less evenly for Christians and Jews.

Like every other topic that we'd rather oversimplify, Poland and its conduct during the war cannot be readily summarized if one wishes to remain intellectually honest. Poland was a hotbed of anti-semitism and Polish Christians in some cases helped the Nazis conduct the Holocaust. Other Poles refused and were themselves sent to camps -- because the Germans were ready to use any excuse to send what they saw as a sub-human slavic race to their camps. The Polish resistance to occupation was one of the fiercest in Europe and the country paid a hefty price for it, including the wanton destruction of their capital city by Germans who were enraged that the Poles refused to submit in the expected manner. The Polish army resurrected not once, but twice, and was the only allied army of the war to have fought on every major front of the war in Europe. But to summarize Polish participation in the war by saying only that the Poles helped the Nazis kill Jews is a gross oversimplification that serves no one but those fascists who wish to re-write the history of the Second World War and excuse the Nazis for their crimes.

At the end of the war, the country on whose behalf the allies ostensibly went to war for, was left to be dominated by the Soviets and subjected to further purges of what was left of their better human material for forty-five years. Not that there was that much left of people in Poland who could lead and still had real integrity; the Nazi terror had specifically eliminated anyone in Poland who they thought could represent a threat to their murderous agenda.

Beyond all that, I urge all DU'ers to consider their anger with the occupation of Iraq, and then think about the Nazi occupation of Poland. Given human nature, it is not at all surprising that some Poles collaborated with the Nazis. If anyone here thinks Americans under occupation would react any differently, hoo-boy, then those people are really kidding themselves. My take is that an America under occupation would be notorious for its sheer numbers of awful collaborators (and the freep and militia types would be very strong in their participation). Every country has its immoral swine; Poland was no exception, and the U.S. wouldn't be either. All the collaboration proves is that reality, unlike the perceptions which we choose to believe, is often an ugly situation.

Bottom line is that Poland needs help. It, like other east European countries, has needed genuine assistance and guidance since 1989. Poland didn't get it from the West and the Vatican filled the vacuum. So, if we look at Poland now and see an ultra-conservative, ultra-religious country that is being distracted with material goodies and crap politics ... well, then that situation in some part exists because the West really didn't give a damn after it won its "victory" in the Cold War.

BH

[LostinVA]

39. And, another thing to remember

A large proportion of the intelligentsia was imprisoned and/or murdered, as was the leading lights of the Left, and many leaders and politicans... as well as progressive clergy (including many nuns and priests).

[Hekate]

42. self-delete

too tired --

[file83]

3. Is this like "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince"???

So they want to name Auschwitz now, "Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau"???

This is seems absurd. Auschwitz was Auschwitz before Hitler, so what gives? Are they going to rename all the locations where concentration camps were?

[smirkymonkey]

29. LOL!

Very grim subject, but very clever post! :rofl:

[norml]

5. How about, Swastika Wonderland?

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ww2era.htm

Or maybe they could rename it "Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau Which We Poles Had Nothing To Do With".

[no_hypocrisy]

13. Shortening your second suggestion: "It wasn't us!"

[DRoseDARs]

6. Until now I'd never associated the camp w/Poland nor knew it was there...

Talk about drawing attention to one's self. :eyes:

[darkmaestro019]

7. I only know that cos I researched a LOT.....two years or so....

for a novel...but yeah, you're right. Sort of like walking down the street shouting at the top of your lungs that you are not, in fact, drunk. Most people don't know it was physically located in Poland, or that Auschwitz/Birkenau were almost separate camps, though very close together..... Birkenau was the site of the infamous Block 10 where Mengele (practiced?)

EDIT: I sure never learned any of that in school, either. Somehow it was always more important to spend months on the American Fairy Tale AGAIN AND AGAIN so that we were still moaning and sighing over Patrick Henry and the Boston Tea Party and such when summer vacation came around. We never quite made it to WW1, 2, Nam, Korea, etc....never. Never! I know next to nothing about Vietnam aside from cultural reference type things, though I intend to change that as my next project.

Oh, yeah, once we studied the Holocaust for about a week because the Anne Frank exhibit was in town and we were "cramming" for the trip, I guess.

[LostinVA]

16. I grew up in an area in NJ with a pretty large Jewish population

we started learning about this in second grade. We had people with numbers come in to our schools and talk to us. My best friend as a kid, Pam Wasserman, had a grandmother who lived with them whose whole family had been murdered in the camps. She wore the tattoo. Get that? Whole family. Not nuclear or extended family... HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. No living relatives. NON.

[nerddem]

21. cherry hill? (nt)

[LostinVA]

22. Very close! Down by Bridgeton/Hopewell Township

[darkmaestro019]

41. I was in north FL

I'm sure there's a Jewish population, but not a very visible one, from my experience. I just never understood why EVERY history class from first grade on was all Pilgrims and "Indians" and Paul Revere. Nothing past 1900 or so in any detail at all, and we wonder why the system has become what it is--it's hard not to let history repeat itself when you didn't see the original episodes aired...

[sandnsea]

9. You're in Reno?

If you went to high school there, I can vouch for you. Not your fault. I knew a young man who went to school there and thought there were 52 states.

[Kindigger]

11. Won't be long

until we can rename lots of things such as "The Park formerly known as Glacier".

Off the subject I know, I just woke up. Good Morning DU :hi:

[Behind the Aegis]

12. Good morning...

Of course, it might not be too long before we rename Israel as "Palestine."

[iamjoy]

14. Israel Used To Be Called Palestine

I mean, when it was under British rule, right?

[sellitman]

19. Here is a little history of the term "Palestine"

Hope this helps!


The Palestinian misnomer


The words “Palestine” and “Palestinians” have become household terms referring to the Arab population of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Gaza Strip. This meaning is planned to be codified in the name of the possible future Arab state discussed between the PLO and Israel. The adoption of this terminology as official, however, would be a mistake contradicting history and perpetuating dangerous falsehoods. This argument is based upon well-known facts that have long been textbook material.

The term “Palestine” was introduced by the Romans in the 2nd century CE in their attempt to eradicate all traces of the Jewish existence in Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel. The name was derived from the Hebrew name of Philistines (plishtim), long since defeated and extinct enemies of the Jews, who 3200 years ago occupied a small piece of land between Tel Aviv and Gaza. “Palestine” (Syria Palaestina) was to replace the name “Judaea,” after the last Judean war where the Roman troops, vastly superior in number and weapons, had been repeatedly defeated until all the resources of the Jews were exhausted. The name of Jerusalem was to be replaced by “Aelia Capitolina,” which, fortunately, has never become part of common language. The term “Palestine,” whose official use ceased after Romans, would, however, be revived to designate the area mandated to Great Britain by the League of Nations as a consequence of the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Mandatory Palestine included the territory both to the east and to the west of the Jordan River—contemporary Jordan (formerly Transjordan) and Israel. The British were charged with “placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home.”

After the British had decided to create the emirate of Transjordan—the Arab state in Palestine “across the Jordan river,” —they reneged on the promise to the Jews that was contained in the original mandate where “recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

More: http://www.pitt.edu/~mmv/israel.htm#misnomer

[barb162]

35. That's a nice concise history.

Thank you

[iamjoy]

47. I've Always Wondered

people make a big fuss over the West Bank - and I wondered if there was an "East Bank."

I kind of figured there was, and that under the Balfour Declaration, the East Bank was Jordan and that was supposed to be the homeland for the "Palestinian" Arabs. From this article it sounds like it was the League of Nations mandate, not Balfour that divided the land sometimes referred to as Palestine.

[LostinVA]

15. The Poles (and thus Poland) were treated horribly during WWII

The only group treated worse were the Jews. Anyone in the intelligentsia was targeted for extermination, including all clergy, nuns, etc. All they wanted to have left were, basically, Polish "rednecks." Their children weren't schooled. Their land was raped, their people starved, many, many put into concentration camps. There was a flourishing partisan network, and many of theses -- and regular Poles -- put their life on the line helping their fellow Poles who were Jews.

Yes, there was institutionalized anti-semitism, especially among the uneducated classes, very similar to racism in the US in the South pre-Civil Rights era. And yes, people turned in their friends for money, and yes, some returning Jews were murdered, and yes, some partisan groups killed escaped Jews. THese things happened in many countries, but for some reason, the Poles get tarred with thuis...

However.... the Poles were very brave during the war, and suffered incredibly. The Nazis goal wa sto make them into a sub-human slave caste, and they did.

A friend of mine is Polish, 50. Half her family was killed in WWII. Some were professors and doctors, some helped hide Jews and were caught. I asked her about this yesterday, and she agreed with it: it was a Nazi camp, not a Polish camp. Even the non-Nazi guards there weren't Polish -- they were mainly Ukrainian, and POlish girls were given to them to be in a camp brothel and raped. Her great aunt was one of these women. She had been a lawyer. She never left the camp alive.

And yes, tehre is still anti Jewish sentiment there today. But they weren't teh ones who did this.

So... I don't blame the Poles for wanting it changed.

[coffeenap]

18. And, to show even more of the intricacy, I have a friend whose father

was an educated Ukrainian Christian. He was imprisoned and starved almost to death, escaped Sobibor, then made it to the US due to the sacrifice of individuals across Europe. He later died due to the lasting complications of lead poisoning received from the very bowls displayed at the US Holocaust Museum in DC.

The truth of that time is reflected in each and every individual who had to face it.

[BronxDiva]

25. Hitler from the west and Stalin from the East

Thousands were executed in Katyn. If you're from northern New Jersey, have you seen Katyn Massacre memorial in Jersey City?

[LostinVA]

34. No, I'm from Southern NJ

But I've read so much about Katyn.... horrible.

[Lucy - Claire]

46. I had an elderly Polish next door neighbour...

He was a Polish Catholic, displaced from his home, lost all his family, wife and children included. All he had was a sister in Poland. He had to wait 30 years to get a visa to see her once before he died.
My neighbourhood was full of displaced Polish Catholics, I was a little girl then but I remember the sadness and
depression the carried like a black cloud. Mr Jan Dublanski died a heart broken man.
I also understand why they want to disassociate, from the death camp. Many thousands of them died there too, it was not a Polish operation.

[coffeenap]

17. As long as they keep it, don't touch it, teach about it, and retain it

as a UNESCO heritage site, the name change doesn't bother me much. The vital thing is to leave it there and teach the truth. If renaming it keeps it safe from neo-nazis or other people who are uncomfortable with it (and I include political leaders in this group), then it is a small price to pay. Peace to you, BtA.

[LostinVA]

23. And, they are still keeping the name, just changing the qualifiers

It'll still be "Auschwitz-Birkenau." (Birenkau, btw, means "birch trees." For some reason, that always creeps me out some...)

[BiggJawn]

24. "Auschwitz" isn't Polish. Not like "Gdansk".

if Gdansk was still called "Danzig", would you think it Polish?

They should leave it alone and worry more about how the most brutal Kapos in the camp were usually Polish.

[sofa king]

32. You're right, the Polish spelling is "Osweicim."

[BiggJawn]

33. Yeah, I think they worry about nothing too much.

Auschwitz=Nazi Death Camp
Osweicim="What the fuck is THAT, a Homeopathic Flu remedy?"

[Igel]

53. Oswiecim. With an 'accent' over the 's'.

The easy way to remember the order of the 'i' and the 'e': in 'ie', the 'i' only really tells you the 'w' is palatalized. With the order 'ei' you'd get a hard 'w', and a diphthong.

[fshrink]

26. Yeah. We didn't know.

There are reasons why the nazis didn't build these massively elsewhere. But, yeah, let's ignore these too. As far as I'm concerned and aside from my admiration and respect for the Gdansk and Sczeczin's rioters in the early 70s, the large majority of Poland has always been, and is, somewhere between right and extreme-right. These people even insisted that some religious crap be included in the European constitution; something Europe had never heard about since the early 50s, when the community began to form. Germans have acknowledged and reflected upon their past, Poles still refuse to. I wonder what the local auhtorities do with the money they get from the visits to, yes, Auschwitz, Poland? Bet it's not turned over to Germany.

[nodehopper]

30. yes, well

"The government in Warsaw is anxious that the grim history of the Auschwitz site, listed as a Unesco world heritage site, is not linked to Poles or Poland."

Maybe if the Polish people and the Polish officials didn't happily and complicitly participate in the "final solution" their concern would be justified.

I'm just saying. You had occupied countries like Denmark that hid their Jews or sent them out of the country at great risk to themselves. Then you had places like Poland and the Ukraine where the Nazi ideology met fertile ground of preexisting antisemitism and where the occupied felt much more affinity with the Nazis than with the Jews and happily participated in exterminations.

[barb162]

37. let's remember there were Poles who fought the Nazis too

and Ukranians....

http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous/index_righteous.html

Poland has the highest number of "Righteous" at the Museum in Israel and Ukraine had over 2000

Poland and millions of its people, Jews, Christians and others, suffered and died under the Nazis. I have seen some sites state up to almost 6 million Polish Christians (3, 000,000) and Polish Jews(3,000,000) died, basically all of its Jews.

[TankLV]

38. Try walking in their shoes at that time before you make such ignorant

generalizations.

The ignorance is astounding.

[Igel]

55. You think France and WWII, and you probably think

'partisans' and 'resistance', of the French Free Forces. You think Poles and you think of kapos and anti-Semitism.

The Polish partisan movement outstripped the French partisan movement. The Polish "free forces" outnumbered the French Free Forces 10 to 1, and never participated in an action that directly led to a free Poland (whereas the French concentrated on liberating French territory).

France surrended when it looked bad, had insufficient support and forces, and turned Vichy, retaining their officers and most of their intelligentsia; Petain turned over Jews to the Nazis; they allowed Nazi forces to have refuge on their territory, free passage, and use of their forces. (I've read, but don't take as authoritative, that part of the capitulation was even that the French Navy would support the Germans, but backed down when threatened with being destroyed.) France has repudiated the actions of the then-French government and population. Coerced, you know, however voluntarily some of the citizens participated. Let's not deal with French anti-semitism: while not as bad as elsewhere, it was there, and flourished under Petain. We're expected to assume that had an extermination camp been set up in Aquitaine that there would have been riots and the Jews released and feted; there's no evidence of this, of course. National pride, offensive to an ally, wink-wink nudge-nudge.

Poland was divided up by the Soviets and Germans, invaded first by the Germans and then, under the guise of 'helping their Slavic brethren' by the Soviets. Both slaughted Polish officers and intelligentsia, neither tolerated any resistance. France, among many others, watched and said little, dashing Polish hopes. Still, figuring that anything that hurt the Germans helped to free Poland, the Poles helped to free France and fought in Italy. Of course, the Allies decided the French were good guys for their efforts and their intense suffering, and they remained not just an ally but an Ally after the war, giving the French a place at the post-war negotiation table. Then the French (with the other allies, natch) agreed to Soviet demands to compensation by giving them a 100-mile-wide strip of eastern Poland, causing rather large post-war population dislocations; the Poles were 'made whole' by being given a similar strip of eastern Germany (more population shifts!). Then the Poles were given to the Soviets.

Anti-semitism in Poland varied by social situation and geography. Lodz, in the West was 1/3 Jewish, and Jews enjoyed pretty much full rights, both socially and politically, as much as the Russian masters would allow. Head east and you get shtetls and pogroms, and a "Russian" attitude; not so in the western cities or, really, in the central ones, where things were no worse for Jews than in France--the usual anti-Semitism. Poland had to have a concentration camp simply because they had more Jews than France; Oscwiecim was damned convenient for disposing of German Jews and Jews from farther east--and served to help dispose of the smaller number of French Jews, as well. It had its share of people that tried to help Jews; the problem was what to do with them--the occupation was longer, more brutal, the Jews less assimilated, and there was no way to smuggle them to anywhere better.

If there was any justice, it was that the most anti-Semitic section of Poland was stripped of their land and deported west.

[barb162]

36. The new name would clarify the origins of the camp, but,

everyone would probably still call it by its common one word name

[IndianaGreen]

40. Poland to probe 1940s murder after Israeli meets alleged killer

There were Poles like those with the White Eagle resistance that opposed the Nazis, and there were Poles that aided the Nazis, and there were Poles that remained largely indifferent to the plight of the Jews. Who can forget the story of the humble Polish priest that carried a Jewish woman on his back to help her. That priest became Pope John Paul II.

Here is another story about Poland and the Holocaust:

Last update - 04:17 02/04/2006

Poland to probe 1940s murder after Israeli meets alleged killer

By Amiram Barkat , Haaretz

In 1943, at the height of World War II and the systematic annihilation of European Jewry, Gitl Lerner, a 45-year-old Jewish woman, hid with five of her children in the home of a Polish farmer. The six managed to escape a transport to the Majdanek death camp and found shelter along with two Jewish youths. On the night of October 30, Polish farmers in the area stabbed Lerner and the five children to death.

Sixty years later Roni Lerner, an Israeli businessman and Gitl's grandson, set out to track down his family's murderers. In the course of his investigation, Lerner, pretending to be a historian, met the sole surviving murderer and uncovered the horrific case, which the prosecution in Poland has now reopened as a result.

Under Polish law, there is no statute of limitations on murders committed during World War II or the country's Communist era. However, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who assisted Lerner in his contacts with the Polish prosecution, says that despite admirable Polish willingness to bring criminals to trial, the proceedings drag on and convictions have been exceedingly few, in view of the number of suspects still alive.

With the help of an Israeli film crew and local researchers, Lerner managed to locate the last remaining suspect in the murder. The suspect, Joseph Radchuk, a 92-year-old farmer, led Lerner and his people to the place where the victims were buried 60 years ago. Lerner is going to Poland today at the head of a delegation to exhume the skeletons and bring them for burial in Israel, alongside his father's grave. "I won't leave my family members in that cursed land of Poland," he said before departing Israel.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/701236.html

[FlaGranny]

48. I really hate these

types of threads. "They are bad." "No, they're not bad." Poland IS/EQUALS/NO DIFFERENT FROM: USA, Great Britian, South Africa, Russia, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Israel, Venezuela, Iraq, India, Norway, etc., etc., etc. All these countries are inhabitedby HUMAN BEINGS, some of which are good people, some bad people, and some in between. Polands only problem? It is inhabited by HUMANS. It amazes me that people can and do generalize by nationality.

[truthisfreedom]

49. and what will the Iraqis demand that we rename Abu Ghraib?

Former US Torture Center Abu Ghraib?

[sakabatou]

50. Just because you rename something doesn't take away the stigmatism

[LostinVA]

51. What stigma? The Poles are right

Auschwitz WAS a Nazi camp. The Poles were treated horribly by the Nazis -- only the Jews were treated worse. Someone on this thread mentioned the worst kapos being POlish. That's not true -- most kapos were Black Triangle Germans... and many of them WERE cruel. They were chosen for their sadism... they also were used to separate the prisoners.

The Poles bear no stigma because of Auschwitz.

[blackhorse]

54. Hard to get the message across ...

... to some people, isn't it?

Also, for all the wizards who think the Germans chose Poland as the place to build the camps because Poland had currents of antisemitism, guess again: The answer is simply logistics. The bulk of the Jews that the Nazis wanted to murder were located in Poland and Russia. Poland was the first country invaded by the Germans, and conveniently, located adjacent to Russia. Aber natürlich, the bulk of the death camps were built in Poland.

Sheesh.

BH

[derby378]

52. A little historical perspective

From medieval times up until the American Revolution, Poland was the liberal neighbor that autocratic European states just couldn't abide. Poland had a king, true, but it also had a legislature that wielded a considerable amount of power. It even permitted use of the liberum veto, which we cannot imagine any government permitting today, but back then it was considered an honorable last-ditch defense against mob rule in Parliament. And when Jews could find no peace in Russia, Prussia, Spain, or anywhere else, many of them fled to Poland, where they knew they could enjoy a greater measure of religious freedom - Poland was also a home for the Unitarians back in the days when Rome was consolidating power over European Christianity.

There were two attempts to obliterate Poland from the map of Europe. The first and more successful attempt started in 1772, when Russia, Prussia, and Austria united in order to partition Poland amongst themselves. Through military force, Czarina Catherine the Great of Russia installed a government in Warsaw overseen by the weak king Stanislas August I, which made the partitioning project easier for all three nations to achieve. Poland was effectively wiped off the map in 1797, when all three nations finished taking bites out of Poland. In 1794, however, Tadeusz Kościuszko organized a peasant rebellion against Russia, the senior partner in the partition. Kościuszko already had military experience from serving alongside George Washington in the American Revolution. Under Kościuszko's command, huge sections of Russian-occupied territory were liberated and handed back to the Poles, with the biggest military victory being achieved against the Russians at Racławice in the summer of 1794.

Catherine the Great's response to Kościuszko's rebellion was to send one of her best military leaders, Field Marshal Aleksandr Suvorov (who had a reputation as a hard drinker), to smash the rebellion. Kościuszko already had other problems, including dissention among his commanders and intervention from Prussian and Austrian military units, but when Suvorov's army faced Kościuszko's peasant soldiers at Maciejowice, the superior discipline of the Russians enabled them to hold their ground against the swarms of pike charges by the Poles. The Russians lashed out, and Kościuszko's rebellion was finished at Maciejowice. Then, for good measure, Suvorov's soldiers marched into the Warsaw suburb of Praga and proceeded to butcher most of the population in an orgy of rape and bloodshed. Warsaw surrendered, the remaining rebel units soon followed suit, and Kościuszko was taken prisoner, held in St. Petersburg until he was pardoned in 1796 by Czar Paul I.

Poland went missing from European maps for about 125 years starting in 1797. The second attempt to partition Poland out of existence, of course, was when Germany and the Soviet Union signed a secret agreement that allowed them to march into Poland and seized pieces for themselves. Although the occupation was much shorter, it amassed a much higher body count.