Yesterday we visited the village of Dobrzyn for some shopping and a bit of sightseeing. It’s a very small and typical Polish town, population ca. 2000. Nevertheless, there are several things of historical interest.
This is, for example, where (Germanic) Prussia began, as a group of knights organized to defend against another group (confusingly, also called “Prussians”) invading from what is now Lithuania. Prussia began as the Order of Dobrzyn in the 13th century. All that remains is a mound where the old fort used to be, overlooking the Vistula. A few crosses also mark the spot.
Dobrzyn was also a shtetl—a town that had a substantial Jewish population. And there are still a few remnants, which, as a cultural Jew with Eastern European genes, I found fascinating. Jews in 19th century Poland weren’t allowed to own land, and were segregated in their own part of town. Unable to farm, they became traders, merchants, and craftsmen. They were also more literate than the surrounding, non-Jewish population, with the lingua fraca being Yiddish. Because of their mercantile connection with Germany, the second language of the shtetl Jews was not Polish but German.
Several old Jewish houses remain; they are very distinctive and I’m told they are about a hundred years old .
Beyond their segregation in shtetls, the Jews had a horrible history in Poland. There was, of course, the mass slaughter of the Holocaust. Before World War II, Poland had the largest Jewish community in Europe: over three million. After the war, fewer than 300,000 were left, so that at least 90% of them were exterminated. (Many of the survivors were hidden, pretended they weren’t Jews, or migrated to Russia.)
Because Poles continued to kill Jews for several years after the war (including those who returned to reclaim their property), almost all the remaining Jews eventually left, many going to Israel. Today the Jewish population of Poland is miniscule: about 20,000—roughly 0.7% of the prewar numbers.
In Dobrzyn we visited the butcher shop, which had a lovely selection of homemade Polish sausages.
I was there, however, to buy a bone for Emma the d*g, the first d*g food of any sort I’ve ever bought. They were fresh out of bones, so I purchased a pig foot, which the d*g ate with relish (meaning avidity, not the condiment!) Sadly, the photo of me giving the pig foot to Emma, didn’t come out, but it may have been to much of a shock to the readers, anyway!
The human comestibles last night consisted of a large spinach and cheese pie (made with five kinds of cheese), topped with dried tomatoes and cranberries, with salad on the side.
Dessert: Polish poppy-seed cake (makowiec), one of my favorites:
After dinner, of course, one must have a postprandial cuddle with the cat. Hili is insistent on her fusses:
This is the other cat who lives here, Fitness. As with all black cats, his fur is actually very dark brown, which is evident in the sunlight:
This morning Andrzej and I walked down to the Vistula with a visiting abdominal surgeon, Wojchiech Szczesny (the pronunciation of his name is impossible for non-Poles, even if you hear it), who has his own website and crusades against quackery and homeopathic medicine in Poland.
We were accompanied on our walk by both Emma the d*g and Hili the cat, who trotted along in front, behind, and beside, always aware of where we were but pretending to be on her own.
That all looks positively blissful. I have a Polish sister-in-law, I must take her up on her invitation to visit Poland with her some day.
“Emma the d*g and Hili the cat, who trotted along in front, behind, and beside, always aware of where we were but pretending to be on her own”.
A friend recently went on holiday for 2 weeks and my wife and I offered to collect the mail. They live at the end of the street and we would stroll down there with the key. We got into the habit of taking Darwin along and he behaved in just the same way, always aware of us, lagging behind to the point where we thought he’d gone off alone, and then he’d hear the ‘Brip brip brip’ of his paws beating on the ground as he sprinted past us to be first home.
Cats eh?
Bob(Big)
One sentence caught my attention : Because Poles continued to kill Jews for several years after the war (including those who returned to reclaim their property), almost all the remaining Jews eventually left, many going to Israel.
Could you be so kind and give me some links to the information about Poles killing Jews several years after the war?
I actually never heard of it and I am not sure if I should be embarrassed because I lack so much knowledge about my own country and its history. Honestly. I am shocked. It sounds terrifying.
Thank you in advance and enjoy your stay in Poland
Yes, it was not uncommon.
The biggest one was the Kielce pogrom, described here.
Read the article; it’s a horrible story of murder based on a false story and the myth of blood libel.
As Wikipedia notes:
Another Wikipedia article describes the anti-Jewish violence in Poland between 1944 and 1946, after Poland had already been liberated from the Nazis.
Another description of Polish postwar anti-Semitism, written by Elie Wiesel for the Washington Post, can be found here. It’s a review of a book by Jan T. Gross, which sounds like the most thorough description of the problem.
Thank you for information. I will read it all and educate myself. As I have written in other comment here I have never been taught anything about these incidents while being at school. It made me more than offended at first. Now I am just ashamed but as very incisively stated in other comment the country we’re born in and educated is an accidental part of our life.
Many residents in nations conquered by the Nazi German armies were only too happy to join in the slaughter of the Jews. Latvia was notorious. Riga was a center for anti-Semetism. This sort of thing was very common.
Disgusting history of Xian Europe regarding their Jewish neighbors. Full stop. For the handful of Schindler-types, there were armies of Himmler-types. Long history of progroms all over the place in Europe.
There were approximately 10,000 concentration camps in Germany by the end of WWII, used to round up, starve, torture, work to death, and exterminate: Jews, homosexuals, handicapped people, slavs, political opponents, etc.
(Compliance with the Nazis was kind of like Torquemada’s Proof of God’s Existence: 1. See that bonfire? 2. Therefore God exists.)
Every person in Germany between 1939 and 1945, who was old enough to understand, knew about the camps. They may have known the exact details of what was going on in there; but they knew it was unjust, cruel, and simply wrong. And they knew people died there (by what means doesn’t really matter).
I forgot to write my last thought on this:
Remember well that the Nazis were voted into office by a very well educated modern citizenry. Eternal vigilance.
A very important point lest we forget.
It’s not so simple. The Nazis being “voted in,” I mean. The Nazi Party did not have a majority in the Reichstag when Hitler seized power through very undemocratic means.
http://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/what-hitler-was-not-elected/
I know. He more or less appointed himself as the supreme leader and dictator through the means of different strategies and criminal actions after his party was elected into the reichstag.
However, the point was that he was popular and was voted into office. (He did a lot of strong arm influencing as well.) After that …
I also forgot to specifically mention (and should not have): Gypsies were also rounded up by the Nazis.
No to mention people with mental disabilities that didn’t fit in to their sick ideas of how the human species should be.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_T4)
Homosexuals also.
I think I had those two covered …
My bad. You did.
The second I saw those “Jewish” houses, I was reminded of the scenes in “Shoah”, showing some older (suspicious) Poles living in similar houses outside Treblinka, who adamantly maintained their re-written histories of how they acquired their new homes — 40 years before the filmmakers came a-knocking in the early 80s.
At more than 9-hours, it’s not exactly a feel-good movie. Highly recommended, if you’d like to supplement your education above that given in the schools. Do keep in mind that there were very few safe havens in all of Europe. France was a nasty place to be Jewish, for example.
Here is part one, English subtitles.
I encourage you to read book “Fear” (“Strach”) written by John Gross about post-war Jewish pogroms in Poland.
The book was published in Poland in Polish language and immediately caused furious backlash from various sides, mainly Polish press, calling Gross various epithets, but mostly trying to deny any actions of Poles against Jews or wanting to keep such facts under the rug of silence.
Such common amnesia in Poles is caused perhaps by not presenting these facts in school history classes in Polish national education system. Even if they are mentioned, they are euphemised by using form of “Kiece incidents” without providing any crude details. Perhaps in fear that students may feel embarrassed that Poles did similar things as Nazis did and this would ruin perfect image of their nation that the government is trying to build in their minds.
I have received my education in Poland and I remember my shock and embarrassment when I started discovering these facts. It was one of many elements that caused me to question notions of nationality and patriotism and at the end to refuse them as only accidental parts of my life. Today I prefer to call myself human.
Thank you for the suggestion. I will certainly purchase or borrow “Strach” and read it.
As a matter of fact as a young woman living in Poland and still receiving education here I have never heard of it. I hope it doesn’t result from my ignorance. I highly doubt it as I really cannot recall any mentions in my history textbooks about “Kielce incidents” or any other form of violence towards Jews. It was always Nazi’s fault and we didn’t have anything to do with it. We were always described as the good ones hiding Jews in our closets and being truly compassionate and devoted to helping them. We actually have a new museum in Warsaw called “Jewish Museum” which was built as some form of tribute to their history ( I haven’t been there yet so I cannot say anything more).
It deeply saddens me but nonetheless I will educate myself on this topic not to live with the knowledge given me by some kind of propaganda.
The other side of the coin is that at least we honor now their history. I am sure we wouldn’t be doing this knowing that thousands of murders can be ascribed to Poles as well.
You exactly nailed down how it is to get the education inside of the Polish school system. Our program is highly biased by emphasized that Poles were most of the time victims of oppression by others and practically never oppressed others.
“Kielce incidents” are not the only naughty thing you may investigate on your own. Try to find some facts on subject of concentration camps kept by Poles or NKWD camps in Silesia. There were indeed such things (they were not death camps and in such scale as Nazis did, to be fair) and people were dying there in scores. The subject is so controversial that many of people I was discussing this subject just cannot admit the simple historical facts and deny them up-front without even slight consideration.
Similarly during communism the facts about Katyn or Stalin’s oppression and were also not present at all in the handbooks as well in the classroom because they were not well co-sounding with enthusiastic pro-Soviet propaganda. I was learning about these stories outside of the school.
Are you doing any book signings in Europe?
I belief it is not so cool anymore to give a dog a bone. You see, the bony fragments may penetrate its gastro-intestinal tract that can spoil a beautiful day. But then, cats come first…
As far as I am aware raw bones are okay, including chicken bones. Cooked bones can be dangerous.
I can’t think that giving chicken bones to a d*g raw, or otherwise, is at all advisable.
Chicken bones are bad & you have to be careful that the bone will not break into shards. My parents’ neighbour gave their dog a bone of some sort & he ended up at the vet when all the shards got stuck in his intestines!
I’m not inclined to give cooked or uncooked chicken bones to a d*g, it’s just that an acquaintance in another forum insisted that raw chicken bones were safe and cooked ones weren’t. I have given meaty beef bones to a friend’s d*g on a number of occasions with no ill effects.
Since I may get a d*g in the next year this topic really interests me and I’ll ask around a bit more.
Raw meaty bones are an ideal food for cats and dogs. If the bones are from a species bigger than the cat or dog would be hunting, they should be ground (with the meat) into small pieces. That’s especially the case if introducing raw food to an animal unfamiliar with the concept.
See here:
http://www.catinfo.org/
for all the gory details.
Cheers,
b&
P.S. Not subscribing because I don’t think I want to think quite so much about the Holocaust…. b&
Good times. This all reminds me very much of my time living in Germany.
Seems to be sunny most of the time so far. Is that unusual? Seems like that part of Europe would be cloudy gray more than half the time.
Sorry to disappoint you, but that sausages were definitely not homemade.
The relationship between the old polish Peasantry and the local Jews across Poland around the time of WWII is so very sad. According to Claude Lenzmann’s 10 hours film 2008, ‘Shoah’, surviving peasants talked of their dislike of Jews upon the grounds that they formed a dominant culture in Polish rural life, controlling business and trade; exchanging goods and services among themselves at Wholesale, while charging the peasants Retail prices. There were also hints at exploitive money-lending, and access to the better houses. The hatred of Jews continued among many rural Poles long after the War. I felt the anti-Semitism in the mid-sixties. And there was a more recent documentary film of about 1998-2005 of a Polish American Jew who returned to a Polish village and confronted the two living Polish peasants who had killed his father who was in hiding from the Nazis, by a river-bank. His father was on his way to fetch milk. They found the his bones, and the milk pan. Apparently they murdered him for so little gain.; his watch or something like that. The American reported the two aged brothers, but there was no outcome. Anybody remember it? But to be clear, the Polish peasants are quite distinct from Polish educated intellectuals.
I did not notice your reference to “Shoah” (1985) when I posted up above, providing links. I think I also mistakenly replied to Jerry instead of “disputation machine”.
Regarding the peasantry… I can drive ten minutes east from my house in Colorado Springs and go visit the local peasantry if I was so inclined. It’s nice out there, with large rolling hills of prairie grass, the occasional antelope, and lots of funny trailers where the local peasantry are home-skooled. There’s also a nice compound where you can legally buy anything from a wrist rocket to a rocket grenade. There’s still plenty of good ol’ fashioned anti-Semitism out yonder, too. So come on out sometime! I can show you around, and we can have a hoot’n holler!
It is not hyperbole to say that, given a big enough economic catastrophe out here, the local peasantry could just start a toasty little Shoah of their own, starting with browns & Blacks & Jews… and eventually working their way around to people with glasses, like me. And they vote. And we let them.
When will they ever learn… when will they… e-e-e-ver learn?
Something tells me Dragon Man ain’t no anti-Semite. But then again… could be a Semitic anti-Semite. Tough to tell. I don’t feel like driving out Dragonman Dr. wayabouts to ask him. Wouldn’t be prudent.
There was a Prussian language once, related, as I recall to Lithuanian – the Prussians as well as the Lithuanians (the last European people to be converted to Christianity)were the targets of the Teutonic knights and the crusades that took place within Europe (which most Western Europeans and Americans don’t know about). I know that you, Jerry, believe (wrongly) that poetry ended with Yeats, but you might have a look at the poetry of Johannes Bobrowski, a wonderful Prussian poet who wrote in German, as well as, perhaps, at the poetry and prose of Czeslaw Milosz, who was originally from a mostly Polish-speaking area of Lithuania (then part of Poland) and about whom my feelings are mixed, but who was at his best a magnificent poet.
The original Prussians were speakers of a now-extinct Baltic language related to Lithuanian and Latvian. They resisted Christianisation, and often raided the Polish borderlands, so in the early 13th c. Duke Konrad I of Mazovia (the part of Poland containing Warsaw) invited the Teutonic Knights to fight his pagan neighbours. The Knights were one of the three most notorious military/religious orders formed in the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Crusades (the other two were the Templars and the Hospitallers). Mostly of German descent, they were looking for a new home, having just been expelled from Hungary (whose king had realised he would soon have no control over them). Duke Konrad promised the Knights any land they would take away from the Prussians. They did their job well, conquering and assimilating the Prussians; but then (quite predictably) they established a powerful independent state of their own on the southeast coast of the Baltic and became a serious threat for Poland and its new ally, Lithuania.
The Knights’ capital was Marienburg (Polish Malbork), with one of the largest and most spectacular castles of medieval Europe.
Your hosts’ cherry orchard interests me. Presume they’re all sweet/black cherries. Any sour/pie cherries? And where do they wind up? Sold to be eaten fresh / some go to making jams/liqueurs? I have a memory of some wonderful cherry jam from Poland when we lived in Stockholm.
Those are all sour cherries – very good for pies, but not only. They are sold to factories which freeze them and sell to the producers of jams, juices, pies and to be sold in shops – frozen.
Jams made on those cherries are delicious. Jerry can attest to the quality of my jams!
I am Professor Ceiling Cat, and I approve of these jams!
Yumm!
My wife makes a fabulous cherry pie which she perfected over a couple of years. But she will only make it if I agree to pit the cherries!
But there are excellent implements for pitting cherries! That should not be a problem.
Yep, I have a very simple one and it works great! For olives too!
Alas, I have no such implements available to me. I have to do it the hard way. About time I change that though! This weekend I am off to the kitchen supply store.
Sour cherries are the best! My parents have a tree that just grew in their yard (maybe planted by a squirrel) & the cherries from it are delicious!
Thanks for the input! In the US, Michigan grows a lot of cherries, and some of them go into beer-making, like this one, which is quite good altho it seems to vary from year to year. Are any cherry beers produced in Poland?
I just checked, because I’ve never heard about beer made out of cherries, but there is! Well, it is a more or less normal beer with the addition of cherry juice.
Hope you get a chance to try Bell’s cherry ales sometime. It might provide a new market for some of your cherries.
Jerry, only goys say “comestibles”. Next time, say “noms”.
Don’t you mean “noshes”?
I think he does …
Once in college I was driving with a friend when we saw a van that had printed on the side, “The Kosher Nosh Man – Follow Me To A Great Party!” So we followed him. He parked in front of a house and we pulled along side and said, “Hey Kosher Nosh Man, where’s the great party?” He said, “You have to follow me.” I said, “We did.” He said (with a great big smile), “It’s right here!” And he pointed at the house. We didn’t try to crash the party, but I’m sure it was great.
Yes. Apologies. Spirited typing.
typo alert: lingua franca
Handling pork and feeding a d*g—that’s a double sacrilege, Jerry! Lol
the Jews had a horrible history in Poland
As I’ve mentioned to a (amazingly still) jewish friend of Polish origin – Just think, my (catholic) great grand parents may have thrown rocks through your (jewish) great grand parents store front windows.
Talk about six degrees of separation.
Is it amazing that he/she is still Jewish, or still a friend?
I’ll get back to you on that.
Thanks for the great photos and stories.
I can tell that you’ve had you diversity training — feeding that d*g! (Clutching my pearls and gasping!) 🙂
I can’t get enough of that “clutches pearls” metaphor!
Two things:
1. “which the d*g ate with relish (meaning avidity, not the condiment!)” That’s funny.
2. Regarding the relationship between the Jews and non-Jews in Poland – You have previously written about how you don’t really consider “the Jews” to be a race/ethnic group, but rather a religious/cultural group. I looked for a specific example of this in previous posts, but couldn’t find one, so I apologize for the lack of specificity. I think it was in the context of discussions of racism and Islamophobia and anti-semitism. It is my understanding that the Jews in Eastern Europe were substantially segregated from the non-Jews (including reproductively) for many generations, such that the Jews in Poland were more closely related to the Jews in Russia, than to the non-Jews in Poland. All the Jews I know with ancestors from Eastern Europe (including my own family) consider themselves Jews from Poland or Jews from Ukraine, and very specifically NOT Poles or Ukranians who happen to be Jewish. I consider Ashkenazi Jews to be a distinct ethnic group. I wonder if I misunderstood your past comments, if your position has changed, or if you think I am wrong. You probably don’t have time for a careful response now, but maybe some other commenters could weigh in.
Or not.
As an urban USAan, I find it really cool and refreshing to see a cat going for an unfettered walk with the family. Its such a small pleasantry, but one which I’ve missed out on.
My wife’s grandparents were persecuted Jews in Poland in the 1930’s and had to put my wife’s mother and aunt in a childrens’ home. Both my wife’s mother and aunt died alcoholics as a result of their traumatic childhood.
I forgot to add, mmmmmm poppy seed cake! I love poppy seed cake!
Title should be, “Poland, part dwa”.
That poppy-seed cake looks amazing. Has anyone got a recipe they wouldn’t mind sharing?
Poppy seed cake can be made at home (i made some in my life) but it is rather difficult and enormously time consuming. The best thing to do is buy it from a specialist. But if there is no specialist around, you can try – there must be a recipe online somewhere.
I make it (usually once a year, for Christmas). Preparing the popyseed filling is the difficult part. The seed has to be boiled in milk first, then strained dry and crushed with a mincing machine very thoroghly — at least three or four times. This may take a couple of hours if you like a poppyseed cake with a lot of filling (and that’s my version: a minimum of dough and two kilo of stuffin’). Then the poppyseed mass has to be fried (yes, fried) in a mixture of honey and butter. I gradually add almonds, raisins, shredded walnuts and hazelnuts, candied orange peel, vanilla, and a little cocoa powder. The filling must be left to cool before eggs are added: yolks beaten with sugar and then the whipped whites. The final addition is a dose of brandy, and the filling is ready (well after midnight).
That sounds better than the picture! Would it be possible to email me the details? twiggy120@hotmail.co.uk I would love you long time.
OK, I’ll do my best to quantify the recipe (in reality, the amounts of the ingredients vary).
@Alex: Details sent
Alex, would you mind forwarding a copy of that recipe to me if you have a chance?
Thank You.
ppdernst@bellsouth.net
Forwarded.
Thank You!
My mother cheated and used Solo canned poppy seed filling, and she was hard core south side Chicago Polish (Brighton Park). http://www.solofoods.com/product/solo-poppy-seed-cake-and-pastry-.
I remember my brother trying to get her recipe for poppy seed cake from my Babcia but eventually he gave up as he realized that the procedure was more qualitative than quantitative, hard and fast measurements did not apply but rather an iterative process of adding various ingredients until it was judged to be correct based on years of experience.
More like a genome than a blueprint 😉
Dear Professor Ceiling Cat,
Can you obtain the recipe for that spinach and cheese pie? Sounds yummy!
Dough: 300 gram flour, 125 gram butter or margarine, 3 tablespoons of water, 1 teaspoon of salt. Mix well together, put in the refrigirator for 1/2 hour.
In another bowl mix: feta cheese, cottage cheese , Brie or camembert (cut into small pieces, and two kinds of hard cheese (grated). Add 2 aggs, 1 deciliter cream, salt, peppar, oregano.
Fry 2 onions and a piece of garlic. Add plenty of spinach. Fry until spinach is soft. Add salt and peppar.
Mix spinach with the cheeses.
Line a form with the dough from the refrigirator, fill with spinach/cheese mixture, decorate with dried tomatoes and crannberries.
Bake about 1 hour in 210C.
Smacznego
Thank you for taking the time to post that.
Thanks!
Heavenly. What a friend we have in cheeses. Bless you.
Thank you!
Beyond their segregation in shtetls, the Jews had a horrible history in Poland. There was, of course, the mass slaughter of the Holocaust. Before World War II, Poland had the largest Jewish community in Europe: over three million. After the war, fewer than 300,000 were left, so that at least 90% of them were exterminated. (Many of the survivors were hidden, pretended they weren’t Jews, or migrated to Russia.)
Because Poles continued to kill Jews for several years after the war (including those who returned to reclaim their property)
This piece may be read as if the Holocaust in Poland was committed by Poles, which is not exactly true. Notwithstanding pogroms of Jews by Poles during and after WWII, another nation was involved and actually principally responsible for killing Jews within Polish territory during WWII.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that, as everyone knows that the bulk of the killings in Poland, as elsewhere during WWII were carried out by Germans.
Sure you did not, but I wouldn’t be so optimistic about “everyone” when it comes to historical knowledge, or any knowledge for that matter.
You are certainly exactly correct. The Nazis were primarily responsible for the Holocaust.
In most (all?) of the countries they conquered (including places like France and the Netherlands), the Nazis found plenty of enthusiatic local accomplices (along with many locals who took great personal risks to protect the targets of the Holocaust.)
So it’s a messy picture.
Without the Nazis, the Holocaust would not have happened. Without local accomplices, it very likely would have killed significantly fewer people. Not a simple equation.
Yes, the Nazi’s were the catalyst for the Holcaust but the Poles enthusiastically aided and abetted in it.
Compare and contrast the behaviour of the Nazi occupied countries in WWII.
Denmark actively resisted the Nazi regime’s attempts to deport its Jewish citizen, in other countries citizens stood by and did nothing while Jews were rounded up and in some countries the citizens actively supported and participated in the slaughter.
@steve oberski
Like JBlilie said, not a simple equation.
Denmark occupation was relatively mild, the Danish governement was working throughout much of the WW2, and was instrumental in protecting Danish Jews.
In Poland, virtually Polish institutions were abolished by the Nazis, from the governement to high schools and universities, to newspapers. Poles (including non-Jews) were destined for ultimate extermination or Germanization. Executions, in particular of cultural elites, started right after German occupation began. There is a reason (many reasons, actually) why 3,000 Danes died in WW2 (not counting Danish volunteers fighting in the German army) vs. ~6 million Poles, half of them Jews, half non-Jews.
Not to mention that cladenstinely evacuating 8,000 Danish Jews is quite a different task comapared to evacuating 3 million Jews from Poland.
Finally, in Poland Nazis imposed a death penalty for helping a Jew.
So the circumstances were rather different in Poland vs. Denmark, and yet other in other countries.
Thus, I think that trying to “compare and contrast” what happened in different countries with an intention of establishing some sort of hierarchy leads nowhere.
I think that we should decry that in all European countries and within all nationalities under Nazi rule there were people who helped the Nazis. And we should praise those who risked a lot, sometimes tough prison time, sometimes lifes of them and their families, to help other human beings survive.
I highly recommend reading “The Pianist”, which is a memoir of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who survived Nazi occupation in Poland. He survived despite Germans, Polish Jews, and non-Jewish Poles assisting the Nazis in the plan of extermination of Jews. And thanks to Polish Jews, non-Jewish Poles, _and_ a German army officer who helped him survive.
Steve, among the 24,811 people commemorated at Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations”, there are 6,394 Poles (the largest contingent, about 25% of the total) and 22 Danes. So much for proportions. Among the “righteous” Poles there are quite a few Catholic priests and nuns, and pre-war right-wing nationalist activists — people you might a priori suspect of holding anti-Jewish sentiments.
No nation anywhere is monolithic. There are still anti-Semites in Poland, just as there are neo-Nazis in Germany and KKK members in the US. They should be resognised as what they are these days — the lunatic fringe, no matter how noisy. During the German occupation, there were Poles who handed Jews over to the Germans or killed them themselves, and there were others who saved their Jewish compatriots or got executed together with their families for hiding a Jew. The Polish underground intelligence sent emissaries to the western Allies to alert them of Hitler’s Final Solution and the existence of death camps — detailed reports that were basically ignored.
@Piotr
Again, not a simple equation.
Many Danes from Danish Resistance who helped saving Danish Jews are listes under a single “Righteous” entry, by their own request. Many more than 22 were involved in helping Jews. Also, even if you don’t take this into account, the ratio of the number of righteous do the Jewish population is 0.0028 (22/7800) in Denmark and 0.0021 (6400/3e6) in Poland.
To make the equation even more complicated, AFAIK Yad Vashem requires that a person must have taken no money from the Jews they helped tobe listed as “Righteous”. Which prevents including people who did that only for their benefit, but also those whose motive was to help, but they accepted the Jews’ contribution to the familiy budget. Many families in Nazi-occupied countries were under extreme hardship, food was rationed and had to be bought on black market. Having another person (or a few persons) to feed was not easy. I don’t see anything non-righteous if in such case they accepted money.
I meant no offence to the Danes. The mass evacuation of Denmark’s Jewish population by boat was a heroic action, and it deserves the highest praise. One could go on listing the differences between the wartime realities of Denmark (semi-independent) and Poland (annihilated as a state and totally controlled by the occupants). I only objected to Steve’s simplistic and stereotyping comparison.
My paternal grandparents came to Canada from Poland in the late 1920’s so my direct connection with Poland is far away in time and space. Add to that the fact that the maternal side of my family was not Polish so unlike my cousins, to my regret, I do not speak Polish.
I’m sure that what you say is true given that my sample set is restricted to immediate family, suffice it to say that I grew up subjected to simplistic stereotypes that painted a much rosier picture of the role of the Poles in the Holocaust and as a result tend to be somewhat strident when the topic comes up.
I’m suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between.
It used to be painted rosy by the communists as well (for their own ends). I’m glad the topic is no longer taboo in Poland and people here have realised we have tons of skeletons in our national closet, just like about everybody else.
Fitness is a lovely cat!
Reading the comments here I realize what an eye-opener internet is. At least for them who want to open their eyes.
Great post! Thanks.
Spelling correction – Wojciech not Wojchiech. Yes – I can pronounce his name. His last name probably has a hook under the e – just like a more famous Wojciech Szczesny who plays goalkeeper for Poland and Arsenal.