Trump told a crowd in Warsaw, “America loves Poland, America loves the Polish people.”
On Thursday, President Trump delivered a speech in Warsaw’s Krasinski Square. Trump started out by telling the crowd, “America loves Poland, America loves the Polish people.” He went on to praise what the Polish people did during the Nazi occupation.
Well, just exactly what did the Polish people do during the Nazi occupation in WW2?
Prior to WW2, only 9.5 percent of the Polish population was Jewish. During the Nazi occupation 3,000,000 Polish men women and children of the Jewish faith – 90 percent of the Jews in Poland – died either in extermination camps or in slave labor concentration camps. The Nazis constructed six extermination camps - Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno and Majdanek – and numerous slave labor concentration camps within Poland because that’s where the largest concentration of European Jews were.
Jews from all over central and eastern Europe, including the German occupied parts of the Soviet Union, were sent to the Polish extermination and slave labor camps. Since it was the goal of the Nazis to rid Europe of all Jews, they deliberately worked the slave laborers to death. In the end 6,000,000 Jews perished in the Nazi camps in what has become known as the Holocaust.
This brings me back to the Polish people that Trump praised so profusely. Most Poles hated the Jews. Before WW2, there had been several Progroms in which many Jewish people were killed by Polish Jew-haters. During the occupation there were many Poles only too eager to help the SS round up Jewish men, women and children for deportation to the Nazi death camps.
It is true that many Poles hid out Jews from the Nazis – God bless them! There are 6,706 Polish men and women recognized as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ by the state of Israel. But the majority of Polish people were only too glad to be rid of those damn Jews.
Even after the end of WW2, an estimated 1,000-2,000 Holocaust survivors were slaughtered in violence by Poles against returning Jews.
So when President Trump talks about loving Poland and the Polish people, and praising the Poles for their actions under the Nazi occupation, he is certainly not speaking for me. Apparently Trump and his speech writers are not versed in WW2 history and the part many Poles played in the extermination of Jewish men, women and children.
If I were Jared Kushner, the president’s Jewish son-in-law and advisor, I would have grimaced and bitten my tongue as I sat there listening to Trump heap praise onto those who abetted the Nazis in the murder of 3,000,000 Polish Jews.
Now don’t get me wrong. I do not hate the Polish people, but I sure as hell don’t love them!
2 comments:
“Jews from all over central and eastern Europe, including the German occupied parts of the Soviet Union, were sent to the Polish extermination and slave labor camps.”
Your hatred (lack of love) of the Polish people blinds you to the historical truth.
All the death camps were:
1. Designed by Germans,
2. Managed by Germans, and
3. Had the German phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" hanging over the entrance.
While Sobibor was part of the GERMAN-occupied Poland, Auschwitz was part of "The Greater German Reich," and maps from the period 1939-45 reflect that this was part of Hitler's Germany that had expanded east.
PS. I know that the American Democrat-controlled propaganda machine always uses the word of “Nazis” but even the survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising used the word “Germans,” not Nazis for the perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Mr. Grusgecki, when I used the term 'Polish' camps, I was referring to their geographical location and I made it quite clear that the camps were constructed by the Nazis. You can call them Germans if you like but the whole Holocaust occurred under the supervision of the SS, and you cannot get any more Nazi than the SS.
My lack of love for the Polish people arises from the fact that many Poles abetted the murder by the Nazis of three million Polish men, women and children of the Jewish faith. And the majority of Poles were anti-Semitic and glad to be rid of the Jews.
Conversely, I also recognize that many Poles helped Polish Jews from becoming victims of the Holocaust.
I appreciate your making a comment to this post.
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