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In article <62nrps$ac4$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, pankiewicz@pwr.wroc.pl
(Jerzy Pankiewicz) wrote:

> In soc.history.war.world-war-ii Scott K. Stafford  wrote:
> 
> : I also suspect that Poles are feeling a little guilty over their own 
> : cheerful participation in the slaughter of Jews in Poland. 
> Which Poles? 

According to Gutman:



The German authorities gave the Polish police the duty of dealing
primarily with criminal activities, but they were also used widely in
combatting smuggling and in measures taken against the Jewish population,
The Polish police patrolled the Generalgouvernement ghettos and searched
for Jews who had escaped the ghettos and camps and had sought refuge among
the Polish population or in the forests. In carrying out these tasks, the
Police police demonstrated their comoplete devotion to the Nazi
authorities, apart from the few policemen who gave assistance to the Jews.

The Polish police played a particularly important role in WARSAW, the
center of the opposition movements in occupied Poland; 3,150 policemen
were stationed there in June 1942, inclusing 60 officers.  The Polish
police commanders in Warsaw were Marian Kozeilewski (October 1939 to May
1941), Aleksander Reszczynski (May 1941 to March 1943), and Francisek
Prymusinski (March 1943 until the Warsaw Polish uprising in August 1944),
all with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

The Polish police were used to guard the gates of the Warsaw ghetto, and a
force of 400 policemen was designated to patrol the ghetto. In the
suppression of the WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING, 367 Polish policemen were used
within the German force under Gen. Ju:rgen STROOP. The Polish police also
sought out Jews who had escaped from the ghetto to the "Aryan" side of the
city, and assisted the Germans in seizing Poles on the streets of Warsaw
for forced labor in Germany.

>From  1942 the Polish police were employed in the struggle against
PARTISANS. Their losses in that year were eighty-four dead and ninety
wounded. In June 1942 a special Polish police regiment, Regiment 202, was
formed to fight against the partisans, initially against partisan units of
Jews and former Soviet prisoners of war in the forests of the Kolbuszowa
area. In late 1943 the regiment was transferred to comabt partisans in the
Ukraine, were it disintegrated and was destroyed in battle. All the
streams of the Polish underground violently censured the bahaviour of the
Polish police - for the scope of its collaboration with the German
occupier, its practice of extortion, the moral degradation it
demonstrated, and its large-scale participation in the persecution and
massacres of the Jews. Several policemen were executed by the underground
for collaborating with the Nazis, including the Warsaw police commander
Reszczynski and the police officer Roman Sweicicki.

On July 27, 1944, after the liberation of the Lublin district, the Polski
Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego (Polish Committee for National Liberation)
issued an edict disbanding the POlish police and terminating its service,
as a body that had served the Nazi occupier. In its place a new police
force was created, the Milicja Obywatelska (Civil Militia).



Source: Gutman, _Encyclopedia of the Holocaust_, pp.1178-1179.

...And:



There also existed various gangs of Poles, some of them underworld types,
who methodocally, almost professionally, engaged in uncovering Jews who
were hiding or were posing as non-Jews, extorting money and possessions
>from  them and handing them over to the Germans. No figures are available
for the number of Jews victimized by these gangs (or by individual Polish
Jew-hunters, the so-called _symalcowniki_). But to jusge by the memoirs of
survivors who had been in hiding, hardly a single Jew in that situation
avoided falling intot he hands of extortionists at one point or another.
Obviously, the existance of such blackmailers and informers deterred many
Jews from trying to seek rfuge among the Polish population - especially
Jews whose appearance and pronunciation identified them as Jews, which was
true of the greater part of Polish Jewry.



Source: Gutman, _Encyclopedia of the Holocaust_, pp.1171-1172.

> Do you mean me or my family?

Was any of Mr. Pankiewicz's family a member of the Polish police,
underworld, a or symalcowniki? 

> And what about your responsibility for
> extermination of native Americans?

Unless, Mr. Stafford is over a hundred years old, I would guess that the
odds of that are somewhat remote! 

> And what about your responsibility for 
> not allowing Jewish refugees into the U.S.A.
> since 1933? 

Aside from Mr. Pankiewicz's rhetoric, what historical evidence does he
have that Jewish refugees were not allowed to emigrate the United States?
Such claims. moreover, are contradicted by the historical record. Though
Jewish emigration to the United States from 1933-1940 was restrictive, it
was restrictive to _all_ who wished to emigrate to the United States. This
was reflection of the general resistance to immigrants due to the
Depression-era economic situation as well as anti-immigrant sentiments
(including anti-Semitic sentiments) within the United States. In spite of
such resistance to emmigrants, Jewish or otherwise, _were_ allowed in the
United States. Hilberg's analysis of the issues of pre-war and post-war
emigration of Jews to the United States (and elselwhere) is quite
informative as to the complex issues involved: 



The most effective rescue is that which is undertaken before the danger
point has been reached. In the Jewish case this meant emigration before
the outbreak of war. However, the prewar migration was limited by two
decisive factors. The first of these was the inability of the European
Jess to forsee the future. The second was the limitation upreception
facilities for prospective emigrants. Most of the world's surface offered
no economic base for a new productive life, and the two countries which
historically had been the most feasible goals of Jewish emigration, the
United States and Palestine, were saddled with entry restriction.

In the United States the maximum number of immigrants to be admitted in
one year was fixed in accordance with teh following formula:

                                                Population of U.S. in 
                                                1920, whose "national
Yearly quota of admissible persons              origin: was traced to
   born in a given country                           such country
-------------------------------------- = --------------------------------
         150,000                                Total population of
                                                European descent in 
                                                   U.S. in 1920

On April 28,1938, the "national origin immigration quotas" were
consequently distributed as follows:

Great Britain               65,721
Germany (including
   Austria)                 27,370
Eire                        17,853
Poland                       6,524
Italy                        5,524
Sweden                       3,314
Netherlands                  3,153
France                       3,086
Czechoslovakia               2,874
USSR                         2,712
Norway                       2,377
Switzerland                  1,707
Denmark                      1,181
Hungary                        869
Yugoslavia                     845
Finland                        569
Portugal                       440
Lithuania                      386
Roumania                       377
All other states under       
  the quota system           less than 300

Until 1939 the United States provided a ready haven for
German-and-Austrian-born Jews who wanted to emigrate and who had the money
for train and ship fare. "In the State Department," said Secretary Hull, "
we began to fill the German, Austrian, and later Czech immigration quotas
almost entirely with Jews, and in addition we issued scores of thousands
of visitors' visas to Jews in the hope that after coming to this country
they would find refuge in other countries or could eventually be recieved
permanently." Nevertheless, by 1939 the German quota was oversubscribed,
and the Polish-born Jews in the Reich-Protektorat area shared with the
entire population of Poland a yearly quota of 6524.

The Jews were therefore dependant upon Palestine as well. Here, however,
they encountered all the difficulties created by British Middle Eastern
policy. The British were thinking not only about the Jews but also about
the Arabs. In the event of war the support of the world Jewish community
was assured in any case. The Jews could not choose sides; the Arabs could.
That consideration was decisive.

[...]

The year 1939 was thus a year of crisis. The number of Jews who were
clamoring to get out was greater than the number whom the world was
willing to recieve. In the year before the war the Jews of the
Reich-Protektorat area were seeking alternate places of refuge in far-off
areas that offered little hope for work and subsistence. Many children
were recieved in England. Thousands of families booked passage for Cuba,
to wait there for quota entry into the United States. Many thousands
clogged ships on the way to Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Tens of thousands
went only as far as France, Belgium, and Holland, where most of them were
overtaken by German armies in 1940. The total picture can no longer be
assessed with accuracy, for the Jews went on from one country to the next.
The following table is therefore only an approximate listing of the number
of Jews arriving at final destinations:

   United States          155,000
   Palestine               70,000
   Other coutries out
   of German reach        130,000
   Countries overtaken
   by Germans             100,000

The breakdown by area of departure is approximately this:

   Reich                  300,000
   Austria                130,000
   Bohemia-Moravia         25,000

Polish Jewry had no chance. The quota to the United States was
oversubscribed, and movement to Palestine was no longer possible.
Emigration to places like Australia, South America, and the Union of South
Africa, even if unrestricted, would have been too costly for the millions
of poverty-stricken Polish Jews.

With ethe onset of the war and the beginning of the "final solution of the
Jewish question" in Europe, the problem of emigration was fundementally
altered. Before the war the Jews made every attempt to hold on, and the
Germans applied every pressure to effect a Jewish mass departure; by 1941
all the Jews of German-dominated Europe wanted to leave, but now the
German machinery of destruction held them captive.

[...]

Up to May 8, 1945, the Jewish masses could not be rescued from catastrohe;
now the survivors had to be saved from its consequences....

[...]

Blocked by the British, the Jews poured into the American zones. From
January to April, 1946, the rate of entry was 3000 a month into the
American zone of Germany and nearly 2000 into American-occupied Austria,
including the vienna area. In April of that year the Jewish displaced
population in Western-occupied Germany was 3000 in Berlin, 15600 in the
French zone, 15,600 in the British zone, and 54,000 in the American zone;
the comparable figures for Austria were 1000 in the British zone and 65000
in the American zone. By the end of 1946 the number of displaced Jews in
the Western zones of Germany and Austria had risen to about 204,000; the
American zone contained 183,600, or about 90 percent of them. 

The concentration of so many displaced persons in the American zones
prompted Senetor Connolly to express the opinion that the United States
was "the biggest sucker in the world" and that in Germany the Americans
were "accepting people from all the other zones and feeding them." Senetor
Connolly's remark indicated that, whereas the Palestine issue was
dictating British actions, the cost of maintenance would become the cheif
problem in the American zones. Under Xontrol Council Law No. 2, the care
of displaced persons on German soil was a German responsibility. From 1946
on, however, the United States was guaranteeing to the Germans a minimum
standard of living, and to make good that gaurantee, the United States
Army was spending in Germany over $500,000,000 a year under the budget
heading "Government and Relief in Occupied Areas" (GARIOA). Insofar,
therefore, as the German economy did not supply the needs of the displaced
persons (and it supplied in the main only fringe services of
administrative character), the clothing and feeding of the DP's had to be
financed from GARIOA. And while non-Jewish DP's were leaving the American
zone to go back to their homes, more and more Jews arrived on the scene.

[...]

When the International Refugee Organization assumed UNRRA's caretaking
functions on July 1, 1947, it attempted to improve the accomodations,
clothing, and food rations of the DP's. Nevertheless, the combined rate of
military and international spending was only enough to guarantee to the
survovors continued life, and it fell to Jewish organizations to invest
substantial sums for the innumerable needs of a completely rootless
community. Between 1945 and 1948 a quarter of a million Jews had become
DP's. Germany had created these displaced Jews, but it took the whole
world to prolong their displacement for years. The Jews were being dammed
up: they were coming in a massive flow but could only leave in a trickle.
One of the small openings was an order by President Trumann, dated
December 22, 1945, that visas within the quota limits be distributed so
far as possible to DP's of "all faiths, creeds and nationalities" in the
American occupation zones. Most other openings were smaller still. The
war-torn countries of Europe were largely closed; the British Dominions
were not anxious to recieve mases of Jews, and the Jews themselves were
more and more resolved to move to their national home. In 1946 the
authorized migration to Palestine was beginning to be supplemented by
small, crowded ships attempting to ccrash the British blockade. Several
thousand Jews were landed. Sixteen thousand were intercepted and interned
on the island of Cyprus. One ship, the "Exodus," was boarded, and its
passengers were sent back to Germany. But in 1948 the British were ready
to quit. When on May 15 of that year the Jewish state was established in
Palestine, the log jam was finally broken.

One month after the mass movement of Jews to Israel got under way, the
United States too opened its doors. Special legislation was required for
the large-scale admission of the stranded DP's, and a skeptical COngress
had debated such legislation for a year. the lawmakers' skepticism was
reflected in the thinking of Texas Representative Gossett of the
Immigration Subcommittee of the House. If the United States was going to
follow humanitarian motives, he reasoned, why not admit Chinese, Indians,
and all other suffering groups in unlimited numbers? Conversely, if
economic considerations were gong to be decisve, America could get better
people than DP's. With regard to Polish Jews, he was convinved of one
thing: their rightful place was behinf the Iron Curtain. "Somebody," he
said, "has to fight communism in those countries, and are not some of
these people equipped to do that?" Told about the pogroms, he asked
Secretary of State Marshall, "But the thing that puzzles me is why there
would be any persecution of Jews in Poland when hald the Polish Government
are Jews?" 

The final outcome of the doubts and opposirion was the passage of a
compromise bill at the end of a long legislative day at two o'clock in the
morning. The act excluded all DP's who had arrived in Germany, Austria, or
Italy after December 22, 1945. Of 202,000 DP's who were to be admitted
between July 1, 1948, and June 30, 1950, 80,800 visas were to be set aside
for Balts and 60,600 for persons who were engaed in agricultural pusuits
(Balts or others); on the other hand, the eligible DP's could be admitted
without regard to quota limitation, in that 50 percent of the quota of
succeeding years could be mortaged to reach the 202,000 total. Aming the
preferences prescribed for the selection of the 121,000 non-agricultural
DP's, one catagory comprised clothing and garment workers. Apert from that
provision, the Jews had only one advantage: their organizations were well
prepared. They could employ major resources to speed the processing of
DP's and to provide assurances of support for the period of their
integration. That preparation paid off; during the two-year about 40,000
Jewish DP's were admitted to the United States shores.

In the winter of 1949/50 hearings were resumed with a view to extending
the Dosplaced Persons Act. The Jews were interested in three amendments:
They wanted the removal of the cutoff date of December 22, 1945, in order
that the later infiltrees could come into the United States; they asked
that eligibility be granted to the Shanghai Jews; and they desired that
clothing workers and agricultural workers be given equal chances in the
preference scheme. 

Let us point out that the Jews were not the only petitioners. Polish,
Greek, and Italian interests were working too. Above all the
German-American organiazations were demanding major concessions. Though
Senator Langer of Norht Dakota had secured one-half of the German-Austrian
quotas from July, 1948, to June 1950, for ethnic German refugees, the
German-Americans were decidedly not satisfied....

[...]

...The Jews got their got their revisions; an additional 22,000 Jewish
DP's were brought into the country. The German-American organizations
secured authorization for the admission of an additional 54,744 ethnic
German refugees.

In the final tally the quarter of a million Jewish DP's found their homes
in the following places:

   Israel           142,000
   United States     72,000
   Canada            16,000
   Belgium            8,000
   France             2,000
   Others            10,000
                    -------
     Total          250,000

It is noteworthy that before the war the United States recieved more than
twice as many refugees as Palestine. After the war - in spite of the DP
ACT - that ratio was reversed.

Nor was this all. In the eastern countries the Jewish communities could no
longer maintain themselves. The catastrophe had brought to Jewwry rampant
physical privation. Inthe immediate postrwar years the principal American
Jewish relief organization - the Joint Distribution Committee - gave aid
to more than 300,000 Jews in ROumania and Hungary alone. Tens of millions
had to be spent to prevent disease, starvation, and death....



Source: Hilberg, _The Destruction of the European Jews_, pp.715-718,733-737.

Additinally, Gutman offers the following summarization:



Bwteen 1945 and 1942, the United States accepted about 400,000 DPs, of
whom perhaps 20 percent were Jewish. (Exact figures are impossible to
obtain.) Great Britian admitted about 100,000 people, but figures are not
available for the percentage of Jews. Some 136,000 Jewish DPs went to
Israel, but here again statistics are only estimates.

The problem of the DPs need not have lasted as long as it did. Great
Britian, however, was slow to relaize that it would have to relenquish
control of Palestine, and the United States was even slower in realizing
that unless it made some attempt to recieve DPs, the problem simply would
not go away. All nations looked to America to take the lead. The fact that
so many DPs were Jews also complicated the matter. The world did not want
them. Witht eh establishment of Israel in 1948, Jews were at last able to
go there.



Source: Gutman, _Encyclopedia of the Holocaust_, p.389.

> It's exactly the same.

No, it is not. Aside from the example of Polish persecution and active
assistance in the genocide of Jews, as exampled by the Polish Police,
gangs, and symalcowniki, there remains the additional issue of endemic
anti-Semitism in the Polish population and its expression in the actions
of the Polish government. For example, according to Read and Fischer:



The military government that took power in 1936 passed new and even more
restrictive laws against the Jews. Known as the "government of colonels,"
though most members of the junta were now generals, the new rulers turned
the country into what has been described as a "national-totalitarian
state." Though not quite as totalitarian as those in Poland's two mighty
neighbors, Germany and the Soviet Union, the new regime was distinctly
authoritarian and extremely nationalistic, and the increased influence of
the Polish Fascist parties insured that anti-Semitism became one of the
pillars ot its political program. In fact, it was only this anti-Semitic
stance that held the Polish right together.

The new laws that were passed almost immediately when the colonels came to
power extended far beyond the question of ritual slaughter: They included
various means of restraining Jews from practising different trades and
professions- an echo of events in Nazi Germany. As is so often the case,
the downgrading of Jews to second-class citizens was initially due to
economic factors. Poland's economy in the thirties was in a desperate
state, partly because of the country's chronic instability, partly as a
result of the world Depression, from which she was unable to recover as
quickly as her neighbors since she was industrially underdeveloped.
Inevitably, the Jews were the obvious scapegoats, who could be blamed and
punished for Poland's ills. By denying them work, the Poles could keep
what little there was for themselves. 

In 1936, with unemoployement standing at 466,000, the economic situation
did, in fact, slowly begin to improve. But the persecution of the Jews
continued in various forms, to some extent encouraged by the Catholic
Church, which had long set its face against the so-called murderers of
Christ. The CHurch did not officially preach anti-Semitism- but it did not
object when, for example, Catholic associations for the legal, medical,
and other professions were among the first in Poland to require of their
members pure Aryan blood.

Against a background of steadily increasing anti-Jewish activity, the
first pogrom in modern Poland took place on March 9, 1936, in the village
of Prztyk, to the south of Warsaw near Radom, where Sendel and Rifka
Grynszpan came from. A mob of Polish peasants attacked Jewish houses in
the village square, smashing windows and furniture, killing a Jewish
shoemaker and his wife and severely beating their children. The Jews of
Przytk fought back- some had filled bottles with benzine ready to throw
-and a twenty-year old religious Jew called Shalom Lasky produced a
revolver and shot dead one of the attackers. 

The violence increaed sporadically throughout Poland during 1936 and 1937,
mostly on a small scale, unpleasant and frightening but with few deaths,
culminating in a much larger pogrom in the city of Brest-Litovsk on May
13, 1937, under the slogan "We owe our troubles to the Jews!" In August
1936, in another echo of Nazi practice, the Polish government ordered all
shops throughout the country to include on the shop sign the name of the
owner as it appeared on his birth certificate. This served to identify
Jewish-owned shops, and painted graffiti soon began to appear on them,
duabs mirroring in Polish those that were already so common in the German
Reich: JEWS GET OUT!, DON'T BUY AT JEWISH SHOPS, and GET OUT TO PALESTINE!

Polish Jews began to question their future in a country governed by the
generals and colonels of the ruling junta. They tried to flee in
ever-increasing numbers, but already doors were starting to close. In
1936, a record 11,596 men, women, and children from Poland, nearly 2,500
more than from Germany, arrived in Palestine. But in 1937, the Palestinian
Arabs began a revolt against Jewish immigration into their country. The
numbers that year were cut to 3,636 as the British imposed tighter
restrictions, vainly attempting to reduce the troubles and the numbers of
deaths: Between April 1936 and the end of 1937, 113 Jews had been killed
by Arabs, and 15 Arabs by Jews in reprisal raids. 

By 1938, with stricter quatas being imposed by countries such as Britain
itself, the United States, France, Switzerland, and Brazil, which until
then had all taken relatively large numbers of refugees, the prospects of
escape were fading fast for the 3.25 million Jews in Poland. 

The situation in Poland was bad news for all the Polish Jews resident in
Germany- many of them, like the Grynszpans, since before the First World
War. Since 1935, the Nazis had been steadily tightening the screws on
German Jewry, determined to force Jews out and making it abundan6tly clear
that they did not care where they went. This naturally alarmed the Polish
and Eastern European Jews living there, considerable numbers of whom began
to investigate the possibility of returning "home."

Such a development was not to the Polish government's liking. The last
thing they wanted was an exodus in reverse, a mass return of Jews from
abroad: They were trying to find ways of getting rid of their indigenous
Jewish population. The counselor of the Polish embassy in London, M.
Jazdzewski, put the matter quite bliuntly during an official call at the
British Foreign Office later that year. "Poland's Jewish question," he
said, "is more than pressing. It is becoming intolerable. It is not a
question of any responsible person in Poland widhing to get rid of the
Jews because they are unpopular, but simply that their numbers are now so
great and are increasing so rapidly that it is becoming impossible to find
livelihoods for all of them." After pressing Britain to find homes for
Polish Jews in Northern Rhodesia- present-day Zambia -Jazdzewski concluded
by repeating that "for Poland the question of finding an outlet for her
Jews is one of vital necessity." 

While "finding an outlet" for Jews from inside Poland posed insurmountable
problems, preventing the return of those who had already gone could well
be feasible. It would have to be handled with a certain delicacy, to avoid
upsetting either the Western democracies or the Germans, but this too
could surely be achieved. On March 12, 1938, however, the matter suddenly
became more urgent, with the Austrian _Anschluss_. Many of Austria's
Jewish population came origionally from Poland. %Thousands fled across the
border to escape the wave of violent anti-Semtism that was unleashed in
Vienna and the rest of Austria. Clearly, something would have to be done,
and done quickly.

On March 31, 1938, the Polish government passed a law giving it the right
to revoke the nationality of any Polish citizen who had been living abroad
more than five years. There was no specific mention of Jews in the new
law, and the government vehemently denied that it was intended to apply
only to them. But no one was fooled- not the Germans, and certainly not
the Polish Jews living in Germany....

Further action by the Polish government was postponed for the outcome of a
world conference at Evian, Switzerland, called y President Roosevelt in
July to attempt to find a solution to the refugee problem. But with the
failure of the Evian conference, swiftly followed by further German
advances, this time into Poland's immediate neighbor to the south,
Czechoslovakia, after the Munich settlement, they soon gave another turn
to the screw. On October 6, they announced a decree stating that all
Polish passports must bear a new control stamp, without which they would
be considered invalid.

This seemingly innocous contrivance- which again made no mention of the
Jews -threatened to have far-reaching consequences. In the future, Polish
citizens whose passports did not bear the new stamp could be refused
reentry: anyone who failed for any reason to comply with that new
regulation would be unable to return to Poland and could find that he or
she had become a stateless person overnight. Those living in Germany would
have no right of domocile in either country.

The German authorities had no illusions about the purpose of this latest
measure: "By decree," Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfu"hrer of the SS and chief
of the German police, reported in a memorndum to Hitler, " the Polish
government obviously intended to make it impossible for the numerous
Polish Jews living abroad- particularly in Germany -to return to Poland.
Practically, this would mean that some 70,000 Polish Jews in Reich
territory would have to be tolerated permanently in Germany." 

The decree was due to take effect on October 30, 1938, leaving the Germans
just two weeks in which to persuade the Poles to withdraw or amend it.
Their reaction was swift and positive. Hans Adolf von Moltke, German
ambassador in Warsaw, was instructed to inform the Polish government that
unless the Polish government withdrew the decree, so that it would "in no
way  affect the onligations of the Polish government to admit holders of
Polish passports into Poland immediately... even if their passports do not
bear the inspection stamp," all Polish Jews would be expelled from the
Reich 'immediately, on the shortest possible notice." 

On October 29, the Poles replied, again denying that the decree was
specifically aimed at the Jews, and refusing to halt it. By the, the
Germans had already startred rounding up some fifteen thousand Polish Jews
throughout the Reich, from Berlin to Vienna, from Hamburg to Graz. Parents
were taken from their homes, children were arrested as they came out of
school and taken to the police station, their school bags still in their
hands. As the operation continued throughout October 28 and 29, men,
women, and children were even drgged out of bed and herded to railway
stations without being allowed to pack....

Of the fifteen thousand Jews dumped on the frontier, or pushed over it,
the Polish government refused to admit nearly half of them. Seven thousand
wer stranded in Zbaszyn- it was not until July 1939, only a matter of
weeks before the outbreak of war, that the government finally relented and
admitted those still surviving to proceed into Poland proper. 



Source: Read and Fischer, _Kristallnacht: The Unleshing of the Holocaust_,
pp.42-45,48. 

I would challenge Mr. Pankiewicz to cite an example of equivalent mass
persecution of Jews in the United States during the same period. I daresay
he cannot because none like it took place. Ergo, the actions of Poland and
the United States towards Jews was _not_ "exactly the same." This, of
course, does not take into account that United States, between 1933 and
1950, willingly accepted more Jewish emigrants (some 300,000) than any
other country.

[snip]

> There has been published a book in Australia
> in which a Jew described transports of Jewish corpses
> from 'Schindler'....

And does Mr. Pankiewicz have a citatation for this? Or is he merely
repeating mendacious hearsay? 

>...A real heroe - Schindler.

Indeed he was. According to Gutman:



In October 1944, with the approach of the Russian army, Schindler was
granted permission to reestablish his now-defunct firm as an armaments
production company in Bru"nnlitz (Brnenc, Sudenentland) and takek with him
the Jewish workers from Zablocie. In an operation unique in the annals of
Nazi-occupied Europe, he succeeded in trnasferring to Bru"nnlitz some
seven hundred to eight hundred Jewish men from the GROSS_ROSEN camp, and
some three hundred Jewish women from AUSCHWITZ. In Bru"nnlitz, the eleven
hundred Jews were given the most humane treatment possible under the
conditions: food, medical care, and religious needs. Informed that a train
with evacuated Jewish detainees from the Golesow camp was stranded at
nearby Svitavy, Schindler recieved permission to take workers to the
Svitavy railway station. There, they forced the ice-sealed train doors
open and removed some one hundred Jewish men and women, nearly frozen and
resembling corpses, who were swiftly taken tothe Bru"nnlitz factory and
nourished back to life, and undertaking to which Schindler's wife, Emilie,
particularly devoted herself. Those whom it was too late to save were
buried with proper Jewish rites.

[...]

In 1962, Oskar Schindler planted a tree bearing his name in the Garden of
the Righteous at YAD VASHEM, Jerusalem.



Source: Gutman, _Encyclopedia of the Holocaust_.

Mark

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"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line seperating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties--bit right through every human heart--and all human hearts."

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"

---------------------------------------------------------------------


From mvanalst@rbi.com Sun Nov  9 08:46:23 EST 1997
Article: 147595 of alt.revisionism
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From: mvanalst@rbi.com (Mark Van Alstine)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Oskar Schindler
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 23:44:26 -0800
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In article <6353h2$1ab4$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, pankiewicz@pwr.wroc.pl
(Jerzy Pankiewicz) wrote:

> In soc.history.war.world-war-ii Mark Van Alstine  wrote:
> : massacres of the Jews. Several policemen were executed by the underground
> : for collaborating with the Nazis, including the Warsaw police commander
> : Reszczynski and the police officer Roman Sweicicki.

> The problem was that Reszczynski worked for the Home Army
> and was murdered by Soviets.  

And Mr. Pankiewicz's evidence of this is? Why none of course! 

> If Gutman believes
> that even the Warsaw commander was able to 
> do his own policy under Nazis he is ignorant.

And Mr. Pankiewicz's evidence of this is? Why none of course! Methinks it
is not Gutman who is the ignoramus here....

Moreover, Reszczynski was not doing _his_ "own policy" but the policy of
his Nazi masters! Namely, to detail Polish policemen, which he commanded,
to prevent Jews from escaping from the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw. To wit:



The Polish police were used to guard the gates of the Warsaw ghetto, and a
force of 400 policemen was designated to patrol the ghetto. In the
suppression of the WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING, 367 Polish policemen were used
within the German force under Gen. Ju"rgen STROOP. The Polish police also
sought out Jews who had escaped from the ghetto to the "Aryan" side of the
city, and assisted the Germans in seizing Poles on the streets of Warsaw
for forced labor in Germany.



Source: Gutman, _Encyclopedia of the Holocaust_, p.1178.

> The number of policemen who worked for the underground
> has been falsified by Communist police and pseud-historians
> like Gutman's co-author Krakowski.

And Mr. Pankiewicz's evidence of this is? Why none of course! Evidently,
Mr. Pankiewicz feels free to bandy about mendacious accusations of
falsification and denigrating ad hominens such as "pseud-historians" [sic]
against respected historians and researchers! For shame! Needless to say,
Mr. Pankiewicz's "rebuttal" need not be taken seriously.

Be that as it may, Gutman does not state in the text I quoted that Polish
police (i.e. the "Blue Police") "worked for the underground." Just the
opposite! Gutman clearly states that the Polish police worked for the
_Nazis_! To wit:



The German authorities gave the Polish police the duty of dealing
primarily with criminal activities, but they were also used widely in
combatting smuggling and in measures taken against the Jewish population,
The Polish police patrolled the Generalgouvernement ghettos and searched
for Jews who had escaped the ghettos and camps and had sought refuge among
the Polish population or in the forests. In carrying out these tasks, the
Police police demonstrated their comoplete devotion to the Nazi
authorities, apart from the few policemen who gave assistance to the Jews.



Source: Gutman, _Encyclopedia of the Holocaust_, p.1179.

Futher confirmation that the Polish police were Nazi lap dogs is confirmed
by the Nazis themselves. On page 12 of the summary report on the
liquidation of the Jewish quarter of the Warsaw ghetto, written by Warsaw
SS and Police Leader SS Major General and Major General of the Police
Jurgen Stroop, dated May 16, 1943, it is written: 



The Polish Police was authorized to pay Polish policemen one-third of the
cash belonging to any Jew they arrested within the Aryan part of Warsaw.
This measure has already produced results.

The Polish population has by and large welcomed the measures implemented
against the Jews. Toward the end of the grand operation, the Governor
issued a special proclamation to the Polish population that was submitted
to the undersigned for approval before publication. This proclamation
informed them to the recent assassinations in the city of Warsaw and the
mass graves found in Katyn. They were asked to assist in the fight against
Communist sganets and Jews (see enclosed poster). 

The grand operation was terminated on 16 May 1943, with the dynamiting of
the Warsaw Synagogue at 2015 hours.

Now there are no enterprises left in the former Jewish quarter. Everything
of value, the raw materials, and machines have been transferred. The
buildings and whatever else there was have been desyroyed. The only
exception is the so-called Szielna Prison of the Security Police, which
was exempted from destruction.



Source: _Milton_, _The Stroop Report_. (No page numbers.) 

Furthermore, from the same report Stroop listed, under the page heading
"Forces Used" ("Einsatzfrafte") in the liquidation of the Jewish quarter
of the Warsaw Ghetto the following: "Polish Police 4 officers/363 men."

[snip]

> The another problem is that quite a big part of Gutman's text's
> may speak about Jewish police, only the word Polish
> should be substituted by Jewish. Read Hannah Arendt.

Perhaps Mr. Pankiewicz has difficulty with the English language? The text
I quoted from Gutman was from the entry "Polniche Polizei" -i.e. Polish
Police. _Nowhere_ in this entry is _Jewish_ police mentioned. It deals
_exclusively_ in regard to the _Polish_ Police -i.e. the "Blue Police."  

> : On July 27, 1944, after the liberation of the Lublin district, the Polski
> : Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego (Polish Committee for National Liberation)
> PKWN was a Soviet organised and controlled organisation,
> i.e. not much better than Nazi.
> 
> : issued an edict disbanding the POlish police and terminating its service,
> : as a body that had served the Nazi occupier. In its place a new police
> : force was created, the Milicja Obywatelska (Civil Militia).

> Milicja Obywatelska recruited relatively many criminals
> and committed many crimes....

And Mr. Pankiewicz's evidence of this is? Why none of course! 

More to the point: So what? The issue under discussion is about the Polish
Police and their absolute willingess as an organization to collaborate
with the Nazis in the persecution oand murder of Jews. Perhaps Pankiewicz
could make an attempt to stay on topic here?  

[snip]

> : for the number of Jews victimized by these gangs (or by individual Polish
> : Jew-hunters, the so-called _symalcowniki_).

> Szmalcownicy, to be exact. And szmalcownicy were of several
> nationalities - not only Poles but also Jews, Ukrainians,
> Germans (Volksdeutsch). 

That would hardly come as a suprise. The point, however, was that some
_Poles_ felt there was no problem in collaborating with the Nazis by "Jew
hunting." 

> Nazis had informers in any occupied country.

Indeed they did. That, however, is no justification for collaborating with
the Nazis. Again the point was that some _Poles_ felt there was no problem
in collaborating with the Nazis by "Jew hunting." 

> The main differrrence was that there
> were 3 milion mostly non-assimilated Jews in pre-war Poland and
> small numbers of assimilated Jews in many countries.

Indeed there were. That, however, is no justification for collaborating
with the Nazis. Needless to say, almost all of those three million Jews
were murdered by the Nazis. In part with the help of the Polish Police. 

> People who worked for Nazis informed not only about
> hiding Jews but also about Polish underground.
> The HA commander Grot - Rowecki has been arrested
> with cooperation of Polish informers. Does it
> mean that Poles were anti-Polish?

No, it means that the Polish underground captured a Nazi collaborator. 

> : Was any of Mr. Pankiewicz's family a member of the Polish police,
> : underworld, a or symalcowniki? 

> Was any of Mr Mark Van Alstain's family a  Nazi or Soviet
> spy?

Nope. 

Now, given that Mr. Pankiewicz asked "Which Poles. Do you mean me or my
family?" when Mr. Stafford wrote: "I also suspect that Poles are feeling a
little guilty over their own cheerful participation in the slaughter of
Jews in Poland; and when I have detailed that it was the Polish Police,
underworld, and symalcowniki who were Nazi collaborators in mass murder,
the question stands: 

Was any of Mr. Pankiewicz's family a member of the Polish police,
underworld, a or symalcowniki? 

(Interesting, is it not, that Mr. Pankiewicz feels free to make similar 
inquiries to myself and Mr. Stafford, but is affronted when the same is
asked of him! Evidently the kitchen, so to speak, is too hot for Mr.
Pankiewicz!) 
 
> : The military government that took power in 1936 passed new and even more
> : restrictive laws against the Jews. Known as the "government of colonels,"
> : though most members of the junta were now generals, the new rulers turned
> : the country into what has been described as a "national-totalitarian
> : state." 

> In Poland a parliament passed laws, eventually
> the President (a civilian). The government
> didn't.'national-totalitarian' - wow, you have sources man!

Indeed I do have sources. I also cite them. Unfortunately, Mr. Pankiewicz
does not -as is evidenced again by his lack of supporting documentation
for his claims.

> : pillars ot its political program. In fact, it was only this anti-Semitic
> : stance that held the Polish right together.

> It's  a nonsence. 

And Mr. Pankiewicz's evidence of this is? Why none of course! 

> The main right party (National Democrats)
> opposed the government, some of their politicians
> were imprisoned. 

And Mr. Pankiewicz's evidence of this is? Why none of course! 

> No such terror was used against serious Jewish parties. 

And Mr. Pankiewicz's evidence of this is? Why none of course! 

Moreover, there were indeed Polish pogroms against the Jews in Poland.
Again, according to Reed and Fischer:



Against a background of steadily increasing anti-Jewish activity, the
first pogrom in modern Poland took place on March 9, 1936, in the village
of Przytyk, to the south of Warsaw near Radom, where Sendel and Rifkin
Grynszpan came from. A mob of Polish peasants attacked Jewish houses in
the village square, smashing windows and furniture, killing a Jewish
shoemaker and his wife and severely beating their children. The Jews of
Przytyk fought back- dome had filled bottles with benzine ready to throw
-and a twenty-year-old religious Jew called Shalom Lasky produced a
revolver and shot dead one of the attackers.

The violence increased sporadically throughout Poland during 1936 and
1937, mostly on a small scale, unpleasant and frightening but with few
deaths, culminating in a much larger pogrom in the city of Brest-Litovsk
on May 13, 1937, under the slogan "We owe our troubles to the Jews!" In
August 1936, in another echo of Nazi practice, the Polish government
ordered all shops throughout the country to include on the shop sign the
name of the owner as it appeared on his birth certificate. This served to
identify Jewish-owned shops, and painted graffiti soon began to appear on
them, daubs mirroring in Polish those that were already common in the
German Reich: JEWS OUT!, DON'T BUY AT JEWISH SHOPS, and GET OUT TO
PALESTINE!



Source: Read and Fischer, _Kristallnacht: The Unleshing of the Holocaust_,
p.43. 

> ...'Polish right together' - really, do they even know where Poland was?

More to the point, does Mr. Pankiewicz know Polish history? Evidently not....

> : The new laws that were passed almost immediately when the colonels came to
> : power extended far beyond the question of ritual slaughter:
> Ritual slaughter was formally limited, but government
> sabotaged the law to prevent agriculture.

>  They included
> : various means of restraining Jews from practising different trades and
> : professions-
> Which 'various professions'?
> Producing Catholic devotional articles?

Obviously, Mr. Pankiewicz prefers dealing out innuendo than to dealing
with history. Why is that? 

> : first pogrom in modern Poland took place on March 9, 1936, in the village
> : of Prztyk, to the south of Warsaw near Radom, where Sendel and Rifka
> : Grynszpan came from. A mob of Polish peasants attacked Jewish houses in
> : the village square, smashing windows and furniture, killing a Jewish
> : shoemaker and his wife and severely beating their children. The Jews of
> : Przytk fought back- some had filled bottles with benzine ready to throw
> : -and a twenty-year old religious Jew called Shalom Lasky produced a
> : revolver and shot dead one of the attackers. 

> According to my (Jewish) source....

Which Mr. Pankiewicz fails to provide. How telling. 

> ...the pogrom in Przytyk started
> after a crime committed by a Jew. Wasn't it a murder
> of a peasant?

Aside from the fact that Mr. Pankiewicz offers notthing but
unsubstantiated hearsay (and aside from the fact that said attacking
peasant in question was evidentlty shot dead _during_ the anti-Jewish
pogrom at Przytyk in self-defense), is Mr. Pankiewicz trying to justify
wanton attacks on innocent bystanders for the actions of an alleged
individual? Sure sounds like it. One can only wonder if Mr. Pankiewicz
then supports the actions of the Nazis in taking- and killing -innocent
Polish hostages for the actions of Polish partisans? 

> : Polish Jews in Northern Rhodesia- present-day Zambia -Jazdzewski concluded
> : by repeating that "for Poland the question of finding an outlet for her
> : Jews is one of vital necessity." 


Mr. Pankiewicz appears to have a problem with properly notating his
editing. (Or perhaps he has a problem in dealing with the topic?) The full
text of the passage reads:



The situation in Poland was bad news for all the Polish Jews resident in
Germany- many of them, like the Grynszpans, since before the First World
War. Since 1935, the Nazis had been steadily tightening the screws on
German Jewry, determined to force Jews out and making it abundantly clear
that they did not care where they went. This naturally alarmed the Polish
and Eastern European Jews living there, considerable numbers of whom began
to investigate the possibility of returning "home."

Such a development was not to the Polish government's liking. The last
thing they wanted was an exodus in reverse, a mass return of Jews from
abroad: They were trying to find ways of getting rid of their indigenous
Jewish population. The counselor of the Polish embassy in London, M.
Jazdzewski, put the matter quite bliuntly during an official call at the
British Foreign Office later that year. "Poland's Jewish question," he
said, "is more than pressing. It is becoming intolerable. It is not a
question of any responsible person in Poland widhing to get rid of the
Jews because they are unpopular, but simply that their numbers are now so
great and are increasing so rapidly that it is becoming impossible to find
livelihoods for all of them." After pressing Britain to find homes for
Polish Jews in Northern Rhodesia- present-day Zambia -Jazdzewski concluded
by repeating that "for Poland the question of finding an outlet for her
Jews is one of vital necessity." 



> Quite many Jewish politicians presented the same opinion.

Aside from Mr. Pankiewicz's response being a non sequiter when viewed in
the context of the full passage, which is regard to _Poland's_ repsonce to
its "Jewish question," his massaging the text to disort the context by
which to frame his red herring in is of questionable intent as to his
motives and rather dissapointing. 

Be that as it may, does Mr. Pankiewicz's suggest that "Quite many Jewish
politicians presented the same opinion" as M. Jazdzewski? What evidence
does Mr. Pankiewicz provide that this is so? Why none of course! Does Mr.
Pankiewicz take into consideriation _why_ M. Jazdzewski said what he did:
Because Polish Jews living in Germany were becoming alarmed by Germnay's
increasing hostility and persecution of Jews and that they were
investigating "the possibility of returning 'home'?" No. Instead, Mr.
Pankiewicz drags his "Jewish politicians" (_what_ Jewish politicians?) red
herring across the discussion in lieu of dealing with topic. Pretty lame.

> : wer stranded in Zbaszyn- it was not until July 1939, only a matter of
> : weeks before the outbreak of war, that the government finally relented and
> : admitted those still surviving to proceed into Poland proper. 

> In fact the majority of refugees were allowed into Poland
> long before July 1939. 

> : I would challenge Mr. Pankiewicz to cite an example of equivalent mass
> : persecution of Jews in the United States during the same period.

> I would challenge the author to compare overpopulated
> agricultural Poland weeks before the WWII and big and rich U.S.A...

IOW, Mr. Pankiewicz cannot and instead attempts to cover his intellectual
nakedness with the fig leaf of specious prattle.


As a reminder, Mr. Pankiewicz has stated that:

"There has been published a book in Australia in which a Jew described
transports of Jewish corpses from 'Schindler.' A real heroe - Schindler" 

...And to which I replied: 

Indeed he was. According to Gutman:



In October 1944, with the approach of the Russian army, Schindler was
granted permission to reestablish his now-defunct firm as an armaments
production company in Bru"nnlitz (Brnenc, Sudenentland) and takek with him
the Jewish workers from Zablocie. In an operation unique in the annals of
Nazi-occupied Europe, he succeeded in trnasferring to Bru"nnlitz some
seven hundred to eight hundred Jewish men from the GROSS_ROSEN camp, and
some three hundred Jewish women from AUSCHWITZ. In Bru"nnlitz, the eleven
hundred Jews were given the most humane treatment possible under the
conditions: food, medical care, and religious needs. Informed that a train
with evacuated Jewish detainees from the Golesow camp was stranded at
nearby Svitavy, Schindler recieved permission to take workers to the
Svitavy railway station. There, they forced the ice-sealed train doors
open and removed some one hundred Jewish men and women, nearly frozen and
resembling corpses, who were swiftly taken tothe Bru"nnlitz factory and
nourished back to life, and undertaking to which Schindler's wife, Emilie,
particularly devoted herself. Those whom it was too late to save were
buried with proper Jewish rites.

[...]

In 1962, Oskar Schindler planted a tree bearing his name in the Garden of
the Righteous at YAD VASHEM, Jerusalem.



Source: Gutman, _Encyclopedia of the Holocaust_.

Will Mr. Pankiewicz properly cite this book? Will he deal with my
response? Or will he evade doing so and thus confirm that he was indeed
being mendaciously untruthful? 

Mark

---------------------------------------------------------------------

"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line seperating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties--but right through every human heart--and all human hearts."

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"

---------------------------------------------------------------------

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