Was the destruction of Warsaw by the Third Reich really a major ordeal for most non-JewishPoles or more a symbolic blow? (WWII, war)
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It’s mind boggling that the main streets of the inner city of Warsaw were the epicenter of a Jewish ghetto that was first used by the third Reich and then liquidated and totally destroyed and it would seem like what ???? They are destroying the capital with Jews inside ? And this is not a red flag these third Reich guys are evil? But actually no. Most Poles who were not Polish Jews I think
They were fine with it
Like it wasn’t happy news for Poles by any stretch but not anything they lost sleep over , more like when your soccer team loses in over time. They saw the inner city as Marxist and even some sentiments of good riddance but why
If this wasn’t true you would have had extreme hatred of third Reich but you didn’t have that as far as I know. Out of respect for Holocaust and political correctness you’ll hear yes it’s terrible but that’s down the throats of academia not the true feelings of real Poles and that’s kind of a shame and that can’t be forced …. You can’t change that
Last edited by Freesponge; 08-07-2022 at 06:02 PM..
Poland was attacked without warning on September 1, 1939 and very quickly overrun. Large parts of Warsaw were destroyed and thousands of Poles were killed. The occupation was even worse. Millions of Poles, Jew and non-Jew alike, were killed. More of Warsaw was destroyed. It's not like in Germany proper, where the Jews were killed but the non-Jewish Germans were left alone. In Poland, everyone was a target. Most likely, the non-Jewish Poles, when they saw the Ghetto being destroyed, probably thought along the lines of "We're next."
Poland was attacked without warning on September 1, 1939 and very quickly overrun. Large parts of Warsaw were destroyed and thousands of Poles were killed. The occupation was even worse. Millions of Poles, Jew and non-Jew alike, were killed. More of Warsaw was destroyed. It's not like in Germany proper, where the Jews were killed but the non-Jewish Germans were left alone. In Poland, everyone was a target. Most likely, the non-Jewish Poles, when they saw the Ghetto being destroyed, probably thought along the lines of "We're next."
But they didn’t seem that opposed to the third Reich back then it was like …. Marxism is bad man look what it brought us to …
The Polish public raised a massive resistance to Nazi occupation. Thousands of Poles also worked to save Jewish lives during WWII, as illustrated by the high number of Poles counted in the Righteous Among the Nations.
The Polish resistance movement in World War II (Polski ruch oporu w czasie II wojny światowej), with the Polish Home Army at its forefront, was the largest underground resistance movement in all of occupied Europe,[a] covering both German and Soviet zones of occupation. The Polish resistance is most notable for disrupting German supply lines to the Eastern Front (damaging or destroying 1/8 of all rail transports), providing intelligence reports to the British intelligence agencies (providing 43% of all reports from occupied Europe), and for saving more Jewish lives in the Holocaust than any other Western Allied organization or government.
Poland made the fourth-largest troop contribution in Europe,[130][131][132] and its troops served both the Polish Government in Exile in the west and Soviet leadership in the east. Polish troops played an important role in the Normandy, Italian and North African Campaigns and are particularly remembered for the Battle of Monte Cassino.[133][134] Polish intelligence operatives proved extremely valuable to the Allies, providing much of the intelligence from Europe and beyond,[135] and Polish code breakers were responsible for cracking the Enigma cipher.[e] In the east, the Soviet-backed Polish 1st Army distinguished itself in the battles for Warsaw and Berlin.
If you want to point fingers at any nation for not doing enough to stop the Nazis, start somewhere other than Poland. Have you seriously not heard of the Warsaw Uprising, even?
Moreover, Hitler did not consider Poles Aryan, and as such being ethnically Polish was cause for ethnic cleansing as well, although being rid of the Polish was lower priority than being rid of Jews, so while millions of Poles were sent to concentration camps, others were allowed to continue living as a lower caste to serve Germans. Educated and high ranking ethnic Poles were killed. Poland being a "crossroads" region, some of the population was of more Germanic heritage and others of more Slavic. If you were found to be Germanic enough, your kids could be taken into Nazi custody to be retrained as "true Aryans" rather than being left to labor and/or die with the rest of the Poles. How generous and sensitive, huh? https://www.dw.com/en/the-children-t...ims/a-52739589
So it's a rather foolish to say that Poles didn't mind the Nazis as long as they weren't Jewish themselves.
Moreover, Hitler did not consider Poles Aryan, and as such being ethnically Polish was cause for ethnic cleansing as well, although being rid of the Polish was lower priority than being rid of Jews, so while millions of Poles were sent to concentration camps, others were allowed to continue living as a lower caste to serve Germans. Educated and high ranking ethnic Poles were killed. Poland being a "crossroads" region, some of the population was of more Germanic heritage and others of more Slavic. If you were found to be Germanic enough, your kids could be taken into Nazi custody to be retrained as "true Aryans" rather than being left to labor and/or die with the rest of the Poles. How generous and sensitive, huh? https://www.dw.com/en/the-children-t...ims/a-52739589
So it's a rather foolish to say that Poles didn't mind the Nazis as long as they weren't Jewish themselves.
The Poles continued with their anti-Semitism after the war ended.
"After liberation, Jewish survivors emerged from labor and concentration camps, crept carefully from hiding places, and cast off borrowed identities. They stood up and looked around at the smoking ruins and mountains of rubble that much of Europe had become while they had been incarcerated or hidden. Their first step, after evading death, was to search for family, friends and neighbors who might, like themselves, have somehow managed to remain alive in the inferno against all odds. Many decided to go back to their prewar homes, but in some places, especially in Eastern Europe, Jews met with severe outbursts of antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence. This seems ironic: if anything, there should have been sympathy for these people who had lost everything – their homes, years of their lives, and in many cases, their entire families – especially after the raw facts of the Holocaust were known.
Instead, returning Polish Jews encountered an antisemitism that was terrible in its fury and brutality. The most shocking such episode was the Kielce pogrom – a violent attack in July 1946 by Polish residents of Kielce against survivors who had returned, in which 42 Jews were murdered. The Kielce pogrom became a turning point for Holocaust survivors; it was for them the ultimate proof that no hope remained for rebuilding Jewish life in Poland. The pogrom sounded an internal alarm: during the months that followed it, survivors fled from Eastern Europe any way they could. If approximately 1,000 Jews per month left Poland between July 1945 and June 1946, immediately after the pogrom the numbers spiked dramatically: in July 1946, almost 20,000 fled; in August 1946 that number swelled to 30,000, and in September 1946, 12,000 Jews left Poland."
Then, in 1945, there was a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in Poland, sparked by rumors that Jews had committed ritual murder: the age-old canard that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood for ritual purposes such as making matzo or wine. Even the Vatican accepted the ritual murder myth, writing in a memorandum that "the influx of Russian Jews [into Poland] coincided with the mysterious vanishing of Christian children."
You can read the individual stories of the Holocaust survivors who tried to go back to their pre-war homes.
Poland was attacked without warning on September 1, 1939 and very quickly overrun. Large parts of Warsaw were destroyed and thousands of Poles were killed. The occupation was even worse. Millions of Poles, Jew and non-Jew alike, were killed. More of Warsaw was destroyed. It's not like in Germany proper, where the Jews were killed but the non-Jewish Germans were left alone. In Poland, everyone was a target. Most likely, the non-Jewish Poles, when they saw the Ghetto being destroyed, probably thought along the lines of "We're next."
Accurate. The Poles, as Slavs, were thought of as "Untermenschen", by the nazis. Basically, sub-human. The Nazis may have used some Poles and Ukrainians to help them in their "final solution", but Slaves were certainly on the "list".
Unlike other European countries, the penalty for a Pole who assisted, aided, or hid a Jewish person or family, was death. That wasn't so in, for example, in The Netherlands. The people who hid Ann Frank and her family, were never arrested to my knowledge. Yet, another Dutch family who hid Jews was sent to a concentration camp. I am referencing Christian humanitarian and evangelist Corrie ten Boom.
Poles were not even sent to concentration camps. Certainly, they were not set free. The policy for a Pole who assisted a Jew was death.
In reading a book about righteous gentiles - (non-Jews) during the Holocaust, if anything, Poles were over-represented.
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