Poland May Sue Author of Book on Treatment of Jews

[spidge]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye90

I've read that the communist government did nothing at all to prevent it, and at times even promoted it. Any factual base to that?

The Polish underground would not give weapons to or support the Jews of the ghetto uprising in Warsaw.

The Polish underground were known to have huge stockpiles of machine guns, mortars and small arms but told the Jews, we will not support you.

Towards the end of the war the Poles expected the Russians to support them in their uprising. The Russians just sat back and waited for the Germans to slaughter the Poles.

[Antipodean Andy]

Originally Posted by Kyt

Sniper how could you make such an outlandish statement? We have enough problems without the likes of Andy coming over here.

Wouldn't even let a British citizen in? That's a bit rough!

Kyt's just afraid that some of his books might go walkabout. Me, being the innocent that I am, would have been coerced by Kitty of course!

[Kyt]

You a British citizen Andy? Traitor, what you doing in Oz?

I'm seriously worried about my books with you two blood-suckers around.

[Antipodean Andy]

Originally Posted by Kyt

You a British citizen Andy? Traitor, what you doing in Oz?

Dad's a Pom, ergo I have a British passport and feel compelled to sign the occasional petition through the PM's office! Born in Kalgoorlie so fair bit of red dust in the veins (and the head). Mum's side is Tasmanian so probably related to half the west coast of that state. Spidge can confirm that the scar from the second head has healed well...

I'm seriously worried about my books with you two blood-suckers around.

I would be too.

[Kyt]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...506350,00.html

Polish Prosecutor's Office decides not to press charges against Jan Gross over his new book, titled Fear, which focuses on pogrom against Jews in city of Kielce

The author of a book accusing Poles of persecuting Jews in the years immediately after the Holocaust will not face charges of slandering the Polish nation, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Jan Gross's book Fear, which claims that anti-Semitism remained prevalent in Poland under the communist regime after 1945, was published in Polish last week and immediately sparked a national debate about Polish-Jewish relations.

"The prosecutor's office decided there was nothing illegal (in the book)," said Boguslawa Marcinkowska, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office in the southern city of Krakow.

"Jan Gross presented his own vision of Polish-Jewish relations during war and Communist times, choosing historical facts and giving his own interpretation of them," she added. The prosecutor checks controversial publications and decides whether they merit legal action.

Gross has already accused Poles of actively assisting the Nazis in persecuting Jews in World War II.

Poland had the biggest Jewish population in Europe in 1939, but nearly all its Jews were among the six million who perished in the Holocaust. Survivors then fled Communist anti-Semitic propaganda, leaving only a few thousand Jews in Poland.

In "Fear" Gross focuses on a 1946 pogrom in the southern city of Kielce, where the disappearance of an eight-year-old boy led to a bloody attack on the Jewish community.

Some Polish historians blame the pogrom on communist security forces, who they say encouraged the killing of some 40 people in Kielce, but the book revived controversy over what happened in Poland during both the Nazi and communist eras.

Unfinished business
"This book revives unfinished business, it doesn't concentrate on what's going on now. It only says some Jewish Holocaust survivors were occasionally murdered by their neighbors," Piotr Kadlcik, the head of Poland's Jewish community, told Reuters.

"If we had discussed Poland's past openly after World War II, people like Gross would not cause any tension. There were Poles who killed Jews, just as there were Poles who risked their lives to save them," he said. "This is obvious."

If convicted of slandering the Polish nation, Gross could have been jailed for up to three years.

Gross was not immediately available for comment, but in an interview with the daily Rzeczpospolita published on Jan. 11, he rejected charges his book was directed against Poland.

"I am convinced anti-Semitism was one of the main poisons that were injected into the Polish identity," he told the daily, holding nationalist and Catholic circles responsible.

[BDF]

Originally Posted by Kyt

Another country that doesn't like some aspects of its history

Javno - World

Actually, this has nothing to do with 'not liking an aspect of Polish history' but rather attributing a crime of the Stalinist regime to Poland and the general Polish population.
There were 16 NKVD-organised pogroms in the various Soviet controlled satellite states at the time, four in Budapest alone.
The law under which the prosecutors office was considering charging Gross (they have since decided not to) has to do with the denial of Nazi and Soviet crimes or attributing them to others than the real perpetrators.
Gross makes the case that because of the people sentenced to death for the pogrom in a show trial (who werent even in Kielce at the time and were tortured to confess) were Polish, the nation as a whole is responsible.

S

[BDF]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye90

I've read that the communist government did nothing at all to prevent it, and at times even promoted it. Any factual base to that?

Yes, there was infighting and power struggles at the time between Jewish and non-Jewish communists.

[BDF]

Originally Posted by spidge

The Polish underground would not give weapons to or support the Jews of the ghetto uprising in Warsaw.

The Polish underground were known to have huge stockpiles of machine guns, mortars and small arms but told the Jews, we will not support you.

Towards the end of the war the Poles expected the Russians to support them in their uprising. The Russians just sat back and waited for the Germans to slaughter the Poles.

Nonsense, all of the weapons in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising originated from the Polish underground army.


From wiki:
Support from outside the Ghetto was limited, but Polish Resistance units from Armia Krajowa (AK) (the Home Army)[8] and Polish Communist Gwardia Ludowa (the People's Guard)[9] attacked German sentry units near the ghetto walls and attempted to smuggle weapons and ammunition into the ghetto. Polish resistance also provided the insurgents with badly needed weapons and ammunitions from its meager stocks.[10] AK also disseminated information and appeals to help the Jews in the ghetto, both in Poland and by way of radio transmissions to the Allies.[8] Several ŻOB commanders and fighters escaped through the sewers with assistance from the Poles.[8]

One Polish unit from AK, the National Security Corps (Państwowy Korpus Bezpieczeństwa), under the command of Henryk Iwański, fought inside the Ghetto along with ŻZW. Subsequently, both groups retreated together to the so-called "Aryan side". Although Iwański's action is the most well-known rescue mission, it was only one of many actions undertaken by the Polish resistance to help the Jews.[11] In the first day of uprising 19 April 1943 three units of AK under command kpt. Józef Pszenny tried to breach the Ghetto walls with anti-tank mines but the Germans defeated this action. AK engaged the Germans between April 19 and April 23 at different locations outside the ghetto walls, in a futile attempt to breach them.[8]

Participation of the Polish underground in the uprising was confirmed by a report of the German commander Jürgen Stroop. He wrote that German soldiers were "...permanently under gun fire behind the ghetto. It means from the Aryan side"... "When we invaded the Ghetto for the first time, the Jews and the Polish bandits succeeded in repelling the participating units, including tanks and armored cars, by a well-prepared concentration of fire". He described Iwański's action: "The main Jewish battle group, mixed with Polish bandits, had already retired during the first and second day to the so-called Muranowski Square. There, it was reinforced by a considerable number of Polish bandits".[12]

Witold Pilecki of the Polish home army had himself cought and sent to Auschwitz to document what was going on. Jan Karski, courier for the Polish underground, broke into ghettos and Belzec concentration camp also to document the plight of Jews. The he escaped to London and later the US. How many weapons did the rich Jews with whom he met in the US send? How many guns did Ben Gurion send? Or the US government? ZERO

Keep in mind, if you have been fighting Nazis and Soviets for 3 years, why should you give your rifle to someone who has not been fighting for the same amount of time?

[Kyt]

Welcome BDF

A couple of points:

1) The report states that he was to be charged with slandering the Polish nation, prosecutors said on Friday. That's not to say that media reports are accurate but it certainly sounded like the State took issue with his analysis rather than actual denial.

2) The few instances of AK participation mentioned in the wiki article don't really mitigate the fact that before and during the Rising the majority of requests for assistance from the Jewish leadership was rebuffed. And the strains, and sometimes outright hatred between the Jewish and Polish resistance has been amply documented in such books as Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw by Norman Davies and The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland 1942-1944 by Shmuel Krakowski

[BDF]

Originally Posted by Kyt

Welcome BDF

A couple of points:

1) The report states that he was to be charged with slandering the Polish nation, prosecutors said on Friday. That's not to say that media reports are accurate but it certainly sounded like the State took issue with his analysis rather than actual denial.

2) The few instances of AK participation mentioned in the wiki article don't really mitigate the fact that before and during the Rising the majority of requests for assistance from the Jewish leadership was rebuffed. And the strains, and sometimes outright hatred between the Jewish and Polish resistance has been amply documented in such books as Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw by Norman Davies and The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland 1942-1944 by Shmuel Krakowski

The specific law in question is simply Poland's 'expanded' holocaust denial law. There is no law on the books in Poland saying you cant slander Poland. There is free speech.

They were rebuffed because theyre simply werent enough weapons to go around. The animosity between certain Jewish resistance groups and Poles had to due more with the alliances of the Jewish groups with the Soviets than antisemitism. Jews fighting in the AK, for instance, werent hated. Jews like the Bielski partisans, who murdered 129 civilian Poles in Naliboki and stole food supplies from peasants, which were airlifted back to Moscow, were.