MY SAY: ANTI-SEMANTIC IN POLAND?
The brouhaha regarding Poland’s new law is misunderstood. Poland’s defenders explain that it is all a matter of semantics. What are referred to as the “Polish death camps” were really German/Nazi camps. The correction is fair enough. But correcting a phrase leads so many Polish defenders to air-brush the complicity of Polish anti-Semites in aiding the Nazis. Oh yes…of course there were exceptions…noble people hid and helped Jews at great risk to their lives. But the majority did not and the word “Żyd”- Polish for Jew was an invective and curse.
My parents were Polish, and I speak Polish but I prefer to focus on present antisemitism hounding the Jews throughout Europe and in the entire Arab world, but to call the Polish history of brutal anti-Semitism “revisionist history, plagiarism and slander” is outrageous. My parents left Poland in 1930 because of the anti-Semitism that flourished long before the Nazi invasion. Of my family that remained- grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins – all were herded into the ghetto, and killed along with millions of “Zyds” with the undeniable indifference or outright collusion of the Poles. As usual it is blamed on economics:
Exhibit A: Today on Frontpage it is explained thus:
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269267/polands-new-law-criminalizing-speech-about-danusha-v-goska
“It’s undeniable that in interwar Poland, that is, between the end of WW I in 1918 and the onset of WW II in 1939, anti-Semitism flourished. The interwar period, for complicated historical reasons, saw one of the worst outbreaks of anti-Semitism in Poland’s history. Interwar anti-Semitism was largely predicated on economic grievances. Jews had occupied the middleman minority caste. Most Poles were impoverished peasants. They wanted to own shops and study to become doctors and lawyers. For some, not all Poles, these honorable ambitions veered into the dark, twisted path of anti-Semitism.”
What a pathetic explanation and excuse. rsk
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