Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby Jeckel » Tue Feb 06, 2018 7:33 am

It isn't as if European countries have ever been that strong on freedom of speech to begin with. Banning opinions because they are unpopular or incorrect, arresting people for tweets, and the entire idea of 'hate speech' to name a few examples of anti-free speech attitudes. This is just another example of Europe sliding ever father down that slippery slope.
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby A Combustible Lemon » Tue Feb 06, 2018 9:49 am

Have the EU considered calling them nazis more, I heard that helps.
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby satan_n_stuff » Tue Feb 06, 2018 3:00 pm

Jeckel wrote:It isn't as if European countries have ever been that strong on freedom of speech to begin with. Banning opinions because they are unpopular or incorrect, arresting people for tweets, and the entire idea of 'hate speech' to name a few examples of anti-free speech attitudes. This is just another example of Europe sliding ever father down that slippery slope.


Europe is not Poland. Also you might want to check this out. Use actual arguments when trying to make a point, not empty rhetoric.
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby D-LOGAN » Tue Feb 06, 2018 3:42 pm

In fairness the law isn't about denying the holocaust happened or that there were death camps in their country. It’s about fighting the idea that they willingly ran death camps as allies of the Nazis, which is what they’re objecting to. And the thing is, the Poles have a lot to be proud of about their actions during the war=

Grouped by nationality, Poles represent the biggest number of people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. To date, 6,706[3] Christian Poles have been awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel – more than those of any other nation by far.

Some estimates put the number of Poles involved in rescue at up to 3 million, and credit Poles with saving up to around 450,000 Jews from certain death. The rescue efforts were aided by one of the largest anti-Nazi resistance movements in Europe, the Polish Underground State and its military arm, the Armia Krajowa. Supported by the Polish Delegation, these organizations operated special units dedicated to helping Jews; of those, the most notable was Żegota Council based in Warsaw with branches in Kraków, Wilno and Lwów.

Polish citizens were hampered by the most extreme conditions in all of German-occupied Europe. Occupied Poland was the only territory where the Germans decreed that any kind of help for Jews was punishable by death for the helper and their entire family. Of the estimated 3 million non-Jewish Poles killed in World War II, up to 50,000 were executed by Nazi Germany solely as the penalty for saving Jews.


And to be fair I have seen some people try to downplay the suffering of the Polish Nazi rule or imply or outright state, that Poland was an ally of the Nazi regime like Japan or Italy, instead of the reality of how they were the victims of it. Poland never actually surrendered to the Nazis, and there was no collaborating Polish government as there was in Vichy France or the Quisling regime in Norway. And at the end of the day the Germans had no time for the Poles (except for Poles of German descent, and even then they separated those into groups based on how German-y they were to their mind), the rest were just untermensch who were slated for extermination.
And as I say, suffer they most certainly did-

The Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) estimates total deaths under the German occupation at 5,470,000 to 5,670,000 Jews and Poles,[7] 2,770,000 Poles,[8] 2.7 to 2.9 million Polish Jews [9] According to IPN research there were also 150,000 victims of Soviet repression


So it aint like the Germans just showed up one day and the Poles were just like, ‘meh let’s keep our heads down,co-operate and wait till everything blows over’ and in the end were better off than before, which again I’ve seen people suggest. Plus after the Germans got kicked out they then had to deal with over 40 years of communist rule and oppression, and they were no laughing matter either. So I get why they’d be so touchy over this.

Of course all that’s not to say there wasn’t collaboration or profiteers or anti-Semitism etc. either-

Depending on a definition of collaboration (and of a Polish citizen, based on ethnicity and minority status), some scholars estimate number of "Polish collaborators" at around several thousand in a population of about 35 million (that number is supported by the Israeli War Crimes Commission).[77] The estimate is based primarily on the number of death sentences for treason by the Special Courts of the Polish Underground State (however whether these are indeed reflective of the actual number of collaborators is still debated).


Indeed there was a Polish police force who were conscripted and used to round up Poles for forced labour and patrol Jewish ghettos. And massacres of Jews were committed by Poles at the behest of the Germans. Plus there was of course a divide and conquer mentality encouraged by the Nazis to turn the ethnic groups under their control against each other.

According to the studies of historian Gunnar S. Paulsson, during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw 70,000–90,000 Polish Gentiles aided Jews, while 3,000–4,000 were szmalcowniks, or blackmailers who collaborated with the Nazis in persecuting the Jews


And there are those who suggest there was more collaboration and anti-Jewish sentiment than has been reported:

as historian John Connelly concludes: "To say the least, Jews who escaped the ghettos were not shown the solidarity Poles expected from Poles... yet if no individual Pole can be held guilty of the crime, as a community Poles certainly can be accused of shared indifference, of what one might call a "structural collaboration" that made the Nazi agenda of killing Polish Jews so infernally successful."[76] Yehuda Bauer calls the claim that 60,000 Poles saved Jews "a blunt lie": "There is no doubt that a very brave minority amongst Poles aided Jews. But if it was 60,000, the history of the Holocaust in Poland would've looked completely different."[90]


So of course there were collaborators and bad blood but that appears to be the vast minority and certainly not as bad in Poland as it was in other countries under Nazi control. Hell there were Jewish collaboraters with the nazis, fuck I'm sure some of my lot got in bed with them. Yet I tend to see more animosity directed at the Poles than other countries that would be far more deserving of it. And given I’m seeing a lot of anti-Polish sentiment floating about I think there’s a chance there may be some connection there.

So yeah I get why the Poles would be a little zealous about defending their reputation.

Of course having said alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll of that, I still oppose banning the term ‘Polish Death Camp’ as I’m against banning any kind of speech other than direct, legitimate calls to violence or things like perjury, revealing confidential information or conspiracy etc.

I’m against criminalizing holocaust denial or using nazi symbols or communist symbols or anything to that effect. As far as I’m concerned, you should be allowed walk down the street wearing a shirt that says:

"I Hate Niggers.
The Holocaust Didn’t Happen.
The Kulaks Had It Coming.
Bin Laden Did Nothing Wrong.
Eric Harris And Dylan Klebold Were American Heroes.
The Age Of Consent Should Be 2."

And have it decorated with swastikas, hammer and sickles and those ISIS markings, and be free from any legal comeuppance. Although obviously it’s not to be recommended. How does that saying go- “play stupid games ….” Being offended by something, should never to my mind be a reason to make it illegal. Unless it's something that is an immediate and genuine call to violence, or something along the lines of perjury, breaching confidentiality, conspiracy etc. then I don't believe the law should have any power over it.

Plus I don’t think this is even what they think it is, I mean ‘Polish Death Camps’ to me at least isn’t saying ‘These Are The Camps Those Nazi Loving Poles Set Up To Kill The Jews’ it’s just a reference to the fact that these are Death Camps, that were in Poland.

Being a little touchy there guys. To me at least. And when one feels the need to have to police words, it comes off in my mind to be a sign of weakness. If someone's talking shit about you, fight back with words.

satan_n_stuff wrote:
Jeckel wrote:It isn't as if European countries have ever been that strong on freedom of speech to begin with. Banning opinions because they are unpopular or incorrect, arresting people for tweets, and the entire idea of 'hate speech' to name a few examples of anti-free speech attitudes. This is just another example of Europe sliding ever father down that slippery slope.


Europe is not Poland. Also you might want to check this out. Use actual arguments when trying to make a point, not empty rhetoric.


Well I'm very much concerned with the ever worsening state of free speech in my continent satan_n_stuff, and I for one take every one of the incidents I see of whittling it down as worrisome, and part of an overall pattern that troubles me and makes me want to speak out, out of concern for where I feel it would end. In this case it's something I'd be happy to call a slippery slope.

And if that's a thought process you don't like, so be it. It's still an argument and one anyone is free to use it. You are not the decider of how people make points here.
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby Aquila89 » Tue Feb 06, 2018 6:58 pm

I'm against making Holocaust denial illegal too (and making the denial of Communist crimes illegal; both are illegal in my country). But I think the "Polish death camp" law is a bit worse, because people who use that term, or claim that the Poles helped the Nazis usually do so out of ignorance. Are they really going to punish that - not knowing history well enough?

Holocaust deniers don't deny the Holocaust because they haven't heard of it, but because they think it was invented by an international Jewish conspiracy. But people who use the term "Polish death camps" don't think that there is an international Polish conspiracy to cover up the fact that the camps were actually operated by Poles. They just don't know any better. Or simply mean "death camps in Poland".
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby cmsellers » Tue Feb 06, 2018 8:38 pm

Logan, even if Poland's behavior in WWII was blameless, I'm sure you would agree that it does not make it acceptable for them to prohibit people from saying otherwise. I agree with Aquilia that while banning Holocaust denial is bad, this is is far. The principle behind criminalizing Holocaust denial is that people who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I think that those are the sort of good intentions that pave the road to Hell, but the intentions of this bill are entirely ignoble. This bill is about nothing more than the hurt feelings of Polish nationalists, and its goal seems to be at least in part to prevent people from learning from history.

For all that some Poles behaved heroically during WWII, neither the Polish state nor the Polish people are blameless in the fate of their Hebrew countrymen. During WWII, the Polish government ceased to exist in Poland, but in addition to the antisemitic collaborators you found everywhere, many Polish goyim benefited from taking over Jewish property. After WWII, the fear of Jews reclaiming the property that had been taken from them led to pogroms against the survivors of the Holocaust, and the Polish government tended to side with the goyisch Poles. If Hitler hadn't been hellbent on eradicating the Poles for Lebensraum, it seems likely that Poland would have joined Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania in working with the Nazis.

The Catholic Poles were victims of WWII, but they in turn victimized the Polish Jews as well. (Also the Czechs and German-speaking Poles, but those are different issues.) And it seems likely that this bill is intended in part to prevent people from pointing this out, from departing from the narrative that the Slavic Poles had it just as bad as the Jews, maybe even worse.
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby A Combustible Lemon » Wed Feb 07, 2018 2:36 am

I'm glad to see that despite all the people claiming they only care about the free speech issue, one man is brave enough to make sure that the truth will not be suppressed, there were Polish Death Camps, and the Poles all stole their wealth from the jews.
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby DamianaRaven » Wed Feb 07, 2018 3:54 pm

cmsellers wrote:Would you feel the same way if they were criminalizing homosexuality or legalizing rape?


Yes and no. I'd be outraged and verbally censorious, but also accepting of the reality that there's really nothing that we (as Americans) can do about another country's law... unless someone wants to declare war about it. Things like that tend to work out on their own without the Almighty Americans swooping in to save the day.
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby BROWNRECLUSE » Thu Feb 08, 2018 3:07 pm

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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby IamNotCreepy » Thu Feb 08, 2018 3:38 pm

BROWNRECLUSE wrote:
779d297.png


Ah, the classic Streisand Effect...
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby selena81 » Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:36 am

Grouped by nationality, Poles represent the biggest number of people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust


pretty easy when it was also the european country with by far the largest jewish population: about half of all the murdered jews was polish (3 out of 6 million)

'jedwabne' is one of the problematic stories of poles murdering jews, that this law wants to sweep under the carpet
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sat Mar 03, 2018 3:39 am

I can understand why the Poles wouldn't want to be associated with things that the Nazis did.
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby Aquila89 » Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:55 am

The Prime Minister of Poland now wants to have the law changed by removing the criminal provisions from it.
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby NathanLoiselle » Wed Jun 27, 2018 12:20 pm

Perhaps instead of making all this hoopla illegal they should improve their education. Both for the children and the immigrants.
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Re: Polish government to ban "Polish death camps"

Postby Aquila89 » Wed Jun 27, 2018 1:08 pm

I don't understand how that is supposed to work by the way. Now they have a law but no punishment for those who break it? What's the point of that?
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