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Tuesday, December 28, 2010
I want to compose a longer post on
this topic when I have more time. For now, below is an edited cut-and-paste of
a comment on an Amazon review.
It is a mistake to frame popular
understanding of World War Two as a zero-sum competition between Poles and Jews:
Either people know about the Jews who suffered under the Nazis, or people know
about the Poles. If people learn about the Jews, the Jews win and the Poles
lose. If people learn about the Poles, the Poles win and the Jews lose.
In the real world, it doesn't work that way. People can, and
should, know and care about both. They should also know about the handicapped
people, and the homosexuals, and the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Gypsies, aka
Romani, and the Soviet POWs, all of whom suffered horribly under the Nazis.
Poles and Polonians have not done their part to make Polish
suffering known. Jews have not always and only been the opponents of Poles
trying to make their story known. In fact, many Jews have supported Poles in their
efforts to make the Polish story known.
It's not the
Jews who are primarily responsible for focus on Jews' suffering. It's the
Nazis. It was the Nazis who targeted Jews with a genocidal scheme. The genocide
of the Jews under the Nazis is of a different order than what happened to the
Poles.
Yes, Poles were abducted, transported, enslaved, tortured,
and murdered, by both Nazis and Soviets, and then betrayed by the Allies,
primarily America and England, but Poland did not lose a comparable percentage
of its population as did the Jews, and we can't pretend that that is not true.
Place responsibility where responsibility belongs: Poles and
Polonians in America, England, Australia and elsewhere can and must tell their
own story. There is no excuse for Polonia's failure to do so. Poles and
Polonians must enter graduate programs, research and write books, fund
scholarship, and buy, read, and review books. And Poles and Polonians must
learn to abandon their all too often resorted to postures of spite, sarcasm, undercutting,
and a lack of respect for each other. Poles must learn, once and for all, to
unite with and support other Poles.
There's no excuse
for Polonia's failure to do these things. None whatsoever. The money is
certainly there: Martha Stewart is unimaginably wealthy and is of Polish
descent. There is the Kosciuszko Foundation and the Polish American Congress.
There are political leaders like Barbara Mikulski. Where is their list of
accomplishments in this matter?
Polonia has, indeed,
failed. Blaming the Jews for Polonia's failures is a moral and strategic
dead-end.
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