Saturday, January 31, 2009

Zionism in the Age of the Dictators

Lenni Brenner

Zionism in the Age of the Dictators

21. Zionism in Holocaust Poland
As soon as the Nazis invaded Poland, the Jews were doomed. Hitler intended that the conquest of Poland would provide “Lebensraum” for German colonists. Some Poles, the racially better stock, would be forcibly assimilated to the German nation, the rest would be ruthlessly exploited as slave labourers. Given these radical goals for the Slav population, it was obvious that there could be no place for the Jews in the expanded Reich. The Nazis permitted, and even forcibly encouraged, Jewish emigration from Germany and Austria until late in 1941, but from the beginning emigration from Poland was reduced to a trickle in order that the flow from Greater Germany would not be obstructed. At first the occupiers allowed American Jews to send in food packages, but that was only because Hitler needed time to organise the new territory and conduct the war.

The working class does not capitulate
Within days of the German invasion the Polish government declared Warsaw an open city, and ordered all able-bodied men to retreat to a new line on the River Bug. The Bund’s central committee considered whether it would be better for the Jews to fight to the end in Warsaw rather than see their families fall to Hitler, but they doubted that the Jews would follow them in resisting, nor would the Poles tolerate their bringing ruin to the city; thus they decided to fall back with the army. They appointed a skeleton committee to remain, and ordered all other party members to follow the military eastward. Alexander Erlich has explained their position:
It must sound naïve, because we now know that Stalin was about to invade from the East, but we thought the lines would stabilize. We felt certain we would be more effective even with a beleaguered army than we could ever be in territory held by the Germans. [1]
When the Bund Committee drew near the Bug, they heard that the evacuation order had been countermanded. Mieczyslaw Niedzialkowski and Zygmunt Zaremba of the PPS had convinced General Tshuma, the military commandant, that it was psychologically crucial for the future resistance movement that Poland’s capital should not fall without a fight. The Bund instructed two of its senior leaders, Victor Alter and Bernard Goldstein, to return to Warsaw. The road back was hopelessly clogged, and they decided to head south and then try to approach Warsaw again from that position. They got as far as Lublin, where they split up. Alter never succeeded, but Goldstein did reach Warsaw on 3 October. By then the city had fallen, but only after a determined defence by troops from the surrounding area and worker battalions organised by the PPS and the Bund.

The Zionist leadership disperses
Most of the prominent Zionist leaders left Warsaw when the army evacuated the city but, unlike the Bundists, none returned when they heard that the capital was to be held. After the Soviets crossed the border, they either escaped into Romania or fled northward to Vilna, which they heard had been handed over to Lithuania by the Soviets. Among the refugees were Moshe Sneh, the President of the Polish Zionist Organisation, Menachem Begin, then the leader of Polish Betar, and his friends Nathan Yalin-Mor and Israel Scheib (Eldad). [2] Sneh went to Palestine and was to command the Haganah from 1941 to 1946. Begin was eventually arrested in Lithuania by the Russians and, after an ordeal in Stalin’s camps in Siberia, he was released when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. He left the USSR as a soldier in a Polish army-in-exile and arrived in Palestine in 1942; later he headed the Irgun in the 1944 revolt against Britain. Nathan Yalin-Mor and Israel Scheib (Eldad) later rose to become two of the three commanders of the “Stern Gang”, a group which had split from the Irgun. Of the Zionists only the youth of Hashomer and HeChalutz sent organisers back into the Polish maelstrom. The others sought, and some obtained, Palestine certificates and left the carnage of Europe.
Did they abandon their people to push on to Palestine? With Begin the record is clear. He told an interviewer, in 1977:
With a group of friends, we reached Lvov [Lemberg] in a desperate and vain effort to try to cross the border and try to reach Eretz Yisroël – but we failed. At this point, we heard that Vilna would be made the capital of an independent Republic of Lithuania by the Russians. [3]
When Begin was arrested, in 1940, he was intending to continue on his journey to Palestine and he had no plans to return to Poland. In his book, White Nights, he wrote that he told his Russian jailors in Vilna’s Lukishki Prison that:
I had received a laissez-passer from Kovno for my wife and myself. and also visas for Palestine. We were on the point of leaving, and it is only my arrest that prevented me from doing so.
A few pages later he added: “We were about to leave ... but we had to surrender our places to a friend.” [4]
Two of his most recent biographers, fellow Revisionists Lester Eckman and Gertrude Hirschler, have recorded that he was condemned by his movement for his flight, but they claim he thought of returning:
he received a letter from Palestine criticizing him for having fled from the Polish capital when other Jews were stranded there. As captain of Betar, the letter stated, he should have been the last to abandon the sinking ship. Begin was torn by feelings of guilt; it took strenuous efforts on the part of his comrades to keep him from this impulsive act, which probably would have cost him his life. [5]
Begin does not refer to this in White Nights, but explains that “there is no doubt that I would have been one of the first to be executed had the Germans caught me in Warsaw”. [6] In fact there was no special persecution against Zionists in general or Revisionists in particular in Warsaw or anywhere else. On the contrary, even as late as 1941, after the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Germans appointed Josef Glazman, the head of the Lithuanian Betar, as the inspector of the Jewish police in the Vilna ghetto. Begin wanted to go to Palestine because he had been the one at the 1938 Betar Congress who had shouted the loudest for its immediate conquest. An interesting postscript to this emerged on 2 March 1982, during a debate in the Israeli Parliament. Begin solemnly asked: “How many people in Parliament are there who had to wear the Star of David? I am one.” [7]
Begin fled from the Nazis and there were no yellow stars in Lithuania when he was there as a refugee.

The Judenrats
Upon their arrival in Warsaw the Germans found Adam Czerniakow, a Zionist and President of the Association of Jewish Artisans, as the head of the rump of the Jewish community organisation and they ordered him to set up a Judenrat (Jewish Council). [8] In Lodz, Poland’s second city, Chaim Rumkowski, also a minor Zionist politician, was similarly designated. They were not, in any way, authorised representatives of the Zionist movement, and both were insignificant figures prior to the war. Not all the councils were headed by Zionists; some were headed by assimilationalist intellectuals or rabbis and even, in one city (Piotrkow), by a Bundist. However, more Zionists were chosen for membership or leadership of the puppet councils than all the Agudists, Bundists and Communists combined. The Nazis most despised the pious Hasids of the Aguda, and they knew the Bundists and the Communists would never act as their tools. By 1939 the Nazis had a number of dealings with the Zionists in Germany and also in Austria and Czechoslovakia, and they knew that they would find little resistance in their ranks.
The vacuum of experienced Zionist leadership was augmented by the fact that for some months the Nazis permitted certificate-holders to leave Poland for Palestine. The WZO used the opportunity to pull out more of the local leadership, including Apolinary Hartglas, who had preceded Sneh as head of the Zionist Organisation. In his Diary Czerniakow told how he had been offered one of the certificates and how he had contemptuously refused to abandon his post. [9] In February 1940 he recorded how he raged at one man who left when he came to pay his final farewells:
You louse, I will not forget you, you louse, how you pretended to act as a leader and are now running away with the others like you, leaving the masses in this horrid situation. [10]
Yisrael Gutman, one of the scholars at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Institute, has written on this subject.
It is true that some of the leaders had good reason to fear for their personal safety in a country which had fallen to the Nazis. At the same time there was in the departure of these leaders an element of panic, which was not counterbalanced by an attempt to concern themselves with their replacement and the continuation of their former activities by others ... Those left behind were mostly second or third rank leaders, who were not always capable of tackling the acute problems of the times, and they also lacked vital liaison contacts with the Polish public and its leadership. The leaders who remained included some who held aloof from underground activity and tried to obliterate traces of their past. [11]
Some scholars have shown that not all leaders or members of the Jewish Councils collaborated, but the moral atmosphere within them was extremely corrupting. Bernard Goldstein, in his memoir The Stars Bear Witness, described the Warsaw Council in the early months before the establishment of the ghetto; the council, in order to mitigate the terror of the press gangs, provided the Germans with labour battalions. They set up a subpoena system. Everyone was supposed to serve in rotation, but:
the operation very quickly became corrupt ... rich Jews paid fees running into thousands of zlotys to be freed from forced labour. The Judenrat collected such fees in great quantity, and sent poor men to the working battalions in place of the wealthy. [12]
By no means every branch of the council apparatus was corrupt. They applied themselves briskly to education and social welfare, but few councils did anything to engender a spirit of resistance. Isaiah Trunk, one of the most careful students of the Judenrats, succinctly summed them up.
I explicitly said that most of the Judenrats had a negative approach to the matter of resistance ... In the eastern regions the geographical proximity to partisan bases offered possibilities of rescue, and this to a certain extent influenced the attitude of the Judenrats ... where there was no possibility of rescue through the partisans, the attitude of the great majority of the Judenrats toward the resistance was absolutely negative. [13]
There were some outright collaborators, like Avraham Gancwajch in Warsaw. At one time a “right” Labour Zionist, he headed the “13”, So-called after their headquarters at 13 Leszno Street. Their job was to catch smugglers, spy on the Judenrat and generally ferret out intelligence for the Gestapo. [14] In Vilna, Jacob Gens, a Revisionist, chief of the ghetto police and de facto head of the ghetto, certainly collaborated. When the Nazis heard about a resistance movement in the ghetto, Gens tricked its leader, the Communist Itzik Wittenberg, into coming to his office. Gens then had him arrested by Lithuanian policemen. [15] The General Zionist Chaim Rumkowski of Lodz ran his ghetto in singular style and “King Chaim”, as his subjects referred to him, put his portrait on the ghetto postage. Not all were as debased as these. Czerniakow co-operated with the Nazis and opposed resistance, but during the great “Aktion” in July 1942, when the Germans took 300,000 Jews, he committed suicide rather than co-operate further. Even Rumkowski insisted on going to his death with his ghetto, when the Nazis made it clear that not even collaboration would lead to the survival of a “core” of his charges. In their minds they were justified in what they were doing, because they thought that only by abject co-operation could a few Jews survive. However, they were deluded; the fate of individual ghettos, and even of individual councils, was determined in almost every case either by Nazi whim or regional policy and not by whether a ghetto had been docile.

“The parties haven’t any right to give us orders”
All Jewish resistance has to be seen in the context of Nazi policy towards the Poles. Hitler never sought a Polish Quisling; the country was to be ruled by terror. From the beginning thousands were executed in collective punishments for any act of resistance. PPS members, ex-officers, many priests and academics, many of these likely to be believers in solidarity with the Jews, were murdered or sent to concentration camps. At the same time the Nazis sought to involve the Polish masses in the persecution of the Jews through material rewards, but there were always those who were prepared to help the Jews. The most important group was the PPS, which had stolen every type of official stamp and forged Aryan papers for some of its Bundist comrades. The Revisionists maintained contact with elements in the Polish military. Thousands of Poles hid Jews at the risk of certain death, if they were caught.
The most important advantage the Germans had was the absence of guns in the hands of the people, as the Colonels had always ensured that weapons were kept out of civilian reach. The PPS and the Bund had never developed their militias beyond occasional target shooting, and were now to pay the penalty. Effectively the only guns available were those hidden by the retreating army and these were now in the custody of the Armia Krajowa (AK), the Home Army, which took its orders from the government-in-exile in London. Under British pressure the exiles had to include token representation from both the PPS and the Bund, but control of the AK remained with the anti-Semites and their allies. They were loath to arm the people for fear that, after the Germans were driven out, the workers and peasants would turn the weapons against the rich; they developed the strategic doctrine that the time to strike was when the Germans were suffering defeat on the battlefield. They insisted that premature action would serve no purpose and just bring down Nazi wrath on the people. Naturally this meant that aid to the Jews was always ill-timed. The PPS, having no weapons of its own, felt obliged to join the AK, but they were never able to obtain sufficient weapons to assist the Jews independently in any serious way.
Those Jews who had resisted pre-war Polish anti-Semitism were the first to resist the Nazis. Those who had done nothing continued to do nothing. Czerniakow insisted that the Bund provide one member of the Warsaw Judenrat. The Bundists knew from the start that the council could only be a tool of the Germans, but felt obliged to agree and nominated Shmuel Zygelboym. Zygelboym had been the party leader in Lodz and had fled to Warsaw in the hope of continuing to fight after the Polish Army had withdrawn from his city. He then helped to mobilise the remnants of the Warsaw Bund alongside the PPS.
Zygelboym had reluctantly agreed to the setting up of a forced labour roster as preferable to arbitrary seizures by press gangs, but in October 1939, when the Judenrat was ordered to organise a ghetto, he would no go further. He told the council:
I feel I would not have the right to live if ... the ghetto should be established and my head remained unscathed ... I recognise that the chairman has an obligation to report this to the Gestapo, and I know the consequences this can have for me personally. [16]
The council feared that Zygelboym’s stance would discredit them among the Jews if they meekly accepted the Nazi order, and they rescinded their initial decision to comply. Thousands of Jews arrived outside their headquarters to get further information, and Zygelboym used the occasion to speak. He told them to remain in their homes and make the Germans take them by force. The Nazis ordered him to report to the police the next day. The Bund understood this to be a death sentence and smuggled him out of the country; however, his action did succeed in having the order to establish a ghetto temporarily cancelled.
The last gallant battle of the Bund took place just before Easter 1940. A Polish hoodlum attacked an old Jew and began to tear his beard out of his face. A Bundist saw the incident and beat the Pole. The Nazis caught the Bundist and shot him the next day. Polish pogromists started raiding Jewish neighbourhoods as the Germans stood by. They wanted the raids to continue to prove that the Polish people supported them in their anti-Jewish policy. The assaults on the Jews far exceeded anything the Naras had ever mounted in independent Poland; the Bund felt it had no choice but to risk the wrath of the Nazis and went out to fight. To make sure no Polish deaths would be used as a pretext for further forays, no knives or guns were used; only brass knuckles and iron pipes. Hundreds of Jews, and PPS members in the Wola district, fought the pogromists over the next two days, until finally the Polish police broke up the street war. The Nazis did not interfere. They had taken their propaganda pictures and for the moment they chose not to punish the Jews for their action. [17] This episode marked the end of the leadership of the Bund within Polish Jewry.
Within a few months of the German occupation the leaders of the Hashomer and HeChalutz Zionist youth groups, who had also fled to Lithuania, sent representatives back into Poland, but not with any idea of organising a rising. They saw their duty as suffering with the people in their duress and in trying to maintain morale through maintaining high moral standards. The first military actions by a Zionist group came from Swit (Dawn), a Revisionist veterans, grouping. They had ties to the Korpus Bezpieczenstwa (KB or Security Corps), a small Polish unit then loosely connected with the AK, and as early as 1940 the KB sent several Jews, among them a number of physicians, into the area between the Rivers Bug and the San, where they worked with elements of the AK. [18] However, neither Swit nor the KB had any plans for large-scale resistance or escape from the ghettos. [19]
Serious consideration of armed Jewish resistance only began after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. From the onset the Nazis abandoned all restraints in their activities in the Soviet Union. Einsatzgruppen (Special Duty Units) started systematically slaughtering Jews and by October 1941, four months after the invasion, over 250,000 Jews had been killed in mass executions in White Russia and the Baltic states. By December 1941 the first reports of gassings on Polish soil, at Chelmno, convinced the youth movements, the Bund, the Revisionists and the Communists that they had to assemble some military groups, but the bulk of the surviving leaders of the mainline WZO parties either did not believe that what had happened elsewhere would happen in Warsaw or else they were convinced that nothing could be done. Yitzhak Zuckerman, a founder of the Jewish Fighting Organisation (JFO) which united the WZO’s forces with the Bund and the Communists, and later a major historian of the Warsaw rising, has put it baldly: “The Jewish Fighting Organisation arose without the parties and against the wish of the parties.” [20] After the war some of the writings of Hersz Berlinksi, of the “left” Poale Zion, were posthumously published. He told of an October 1942 conference between his organisation and the youth groups. The question before them was whether the JFO should have just a military command or a military-political committee, and the youth groups wanted to avoid the domination of the parties:
The comrades from Hashomer and HeChalutz spoke out sharply about the political parties: “the parties haven’t any right to give us orders. Except for the youth they will do nothing. They will only interfere.” [21]
At the Conference on Manifestations of Jewish Resistance at the Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority in April 1968, bitter words were exchanged between those historians who had partaken in the struggle and those who still sought to defend the passive approach. Yisrael Gutman challenged one of the latter, Dr Nathan Eck:
Do you believe that if we had waited until the end and acted according to the advice of the party leaders, the revolt would still have taken place, or that there would then have been no point in it whatsoever? I believe there would have been no revolt at all and I challenge Dr Eck to offer convincing proof that the party leaders intended at all that there should be an uprising. [22]
Emmanuel Ringelblum, the great historian of the destruction of Jewish Warsaw, described the thinking of his friend Mordechai Anielewicz of Hashomer, the commander of the JFO:
The Mordechai who had matured so rapidly and risen so quickly to the most responsible post as commander of the Fighters Organisation now greatly regretted that his fellows and he had wasted three war years on cultural and educational work. We had not understood that new side of Hitler that is emerging, Mordechai lamented. We should have trained the youth in the use of live and cold ammunition. We should have raised them in the spirit of revenge against the greatest enemy of the Jews, of all mankind, and of all times. [23]
The debate within the resistance focused on the key question of where to fight. Generally speaking, it was the Communists who favoured getting as many of the youth as possible into the forests as partisans, whereas the young Zionists called for last stands in the ghettos. The Communists had always been the most ethnically integrated party in the country and, now that the Soviet Union had itself been attacked, they were wholly committed to the struggle against Hitler. The Soviets had parachuted Pincus Kartin, a Spanish Civil War veteran, into Poland to organise the Jewish underground. The Communists argued that the ghettos could not be defended and the fighters would be killed for nothing. In the woods they might not only survive, but be able to start attacking the Germans. The Zionist youth raised real questions about retreating to the forests. The Red Army was still a long way off and the Polish Communist Gwardia Ludowa (People’s Guard) was viewed with great suspicion by the Polish masses, because of their previous support for the Hitler-Stalin pact which had led directly to the destruction of the Polish state. As a result the Gwardia had very few weapons and the countryside was full of anti-Semitic partisans, often Naras, who had no hesitation about killing Jews. However, there was an additional sectarian element in much of the young Zionists’ thinking. Mordechai Tanenbaum-Tamaroff of Bialystok was the most vehement opponent of the partisan conception, yet the town was in an immense primeval forest. [24] He wrote:
In the vengeance that we want to exact the constant and decisive element is the Jewish, the national factor ... Our approach is fulfilment of our national role within the ghetto (not to leave the old people to their bloody fate!) ... and if we remain alive – we will go out, weapon in hand, to the forests. [25]
This line was maintained in Warsaw where Mordechai Anielewicz, feeling that thoughts of a last-minute escape would destroy the iron will required to stand and face certain death, deliberately made no plans to retreat. [26]
The results were disillusioning; the Hashomer and HeChalutz had hoped their example would rally the ghettos, but they did not understand that the spirit of the people had been broken by the four years of humilation and pain. The ghettos could not be armed, and therefore theY saw revolt as only increasing the certainty of their death. Yisrael Gutman was quite correct when he insisted:
The truth is that the Jewish public in most of the ghettoes neither understood nor accepted the path and assessment of the fighters ... Everywhere the fighting organisations were engaged in bitter argument with the Jewish public ... The youth movements achieved in Warsaw what they did not in other places of revolt. [27]
The Warsaw ghetto had two potential sources of arms: the People’s Guard, which wanted to help but had few guns, and the Home Army that had guns but did not want to help. They ended up with few weapons, mostly pistols, and they battled bravely for a few days as long as their sparse arsenal held out. The Revisionists had to form their own separate “National Military Organisation”, because the other political tendencies refused to unite with a group they considered Fascist. However, the Revisionists were able to provide one of their detachments with German uniforms, three machine guns, eight rifles and hundreds of grenades. Some of their fighters escaped through tunnels and sewers and were driven to the forest by some Polish friends, were trapped by the Germans, escaped again, took refuge back in the Gentile sector of Warsaw and were finally surrounded and murdered. The end came for Anielewicz, in the ghetto, on the twentieth day of the rising. Marek Edelman, then a Bundist and deputy commander of the JFO, says he and 80 other fighters shot themselves in a bunker. [28] Zuckerman, another deputy commander, says Anielewicz was killed by gas and grenades tossed into the hide-out. [29]

“Jews dream of getting into me homes of workers”
Emmanuel Ringelblum, a Labour Zionist, had also returned to Poland from abroad. He was in Switzerland for the Zionist Congress in August 1939 when the war broke out, and he chose to return to Poland via the Balkans. He then set about the task of recording the momentous events. The value of his work was obvious to the entire political community and he was eventually chosen for a hiding-place on the Aryan side of Warsaw. He died in 1944, when his hiding-place was discovered, but not before he had written his masterpiece, Polish-Jewish Relations during the Second World War. The writing was blunt: “Polish Fascism and its ally, anti-Semitism, have conquered the majority of the Polish people”, but he took great pains to analyse Poland class by class and even region by region. [30]
The middle-class population in toto has continued to adhere to the ideology of anti-Semitism and rejoices at the Nazi solution to the Jewish problem in Poland. [31]
He confirmed the pre-war evaluation of Lestchinsky and the other observers concerning the steadfastness of the workers in the struggle against anti-Semitism:
Polish workers had long before the war grasped the class aspect of anti-Semitism, the power-tool of the native bourgeoisie, and during the war they redoubled their efforts to fight anti-Semitism ... There were only limited possibilities for workers to hide Jews in their homes. Overcrowding in the flats was the greatest obstacle to taking in Jews. In spite of this, many Jews did find shelter in the flats of workers ... It must be stressed that in general Jews dream of getting into the homes of workers, because this guarantees them against blackmail or exploitation by their hosts. [32]
Ringelblum’s testimony, that of an eyewitness and of a trained historian, shows the path the Jews should have taken both before and during the war. Whatever the failings of the PPS and KPP as parties, there is no doubt that many Polish workers stood with the Jews to the death, and that many workers did more in defence of the Jews than many Jews. It is not suggested that more than a few hundred or a couple of additional thousand Jews might have been added to those who were in fact saved, but revolts in the ghettos, when they lacked arms, never had a chance of success even as symbolic gestures. The Nazi commandant’s internal report on the Warsaw rising acknowledged only sixteen deaths among the Germans and their auxiliaries and, although this figure may be too low, the rising was never a serious military matter.
Mordechai Anielewicz’s apotheosis to historical immortality is entirely justified, and no criticism of his strategy should be construed as attempting to detract from the lustre of his name. He voluntarily returned from Vilna. He dedicated himself to his stricken people. However, the martyrdom of the 24-year-old Anielewicz can never absolve the Zionist movement of its pre-war failure to fight anti-semitism – in Germany or in Poland – when there was still time. Nor can his return make us forget the flight of the other Zionist leaders, even in the first months of the occupation, nor the unwillingness of the remaining party leaders to initiate an underground struggle.

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Notes
1. Author’s interview with Alexander Erlich, 3 October 1979.
2. Yitzhak Arad, The Concentration of Refugees in Vilna on the Eve of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem Studies, vol.IX, p.210.
3. Hyman Frank, The World of Menachem Begin (Jewish Press, 2 December 1977)
4. Menachem Begin, White Nights, pp.84-5, 87.
5. Lester Eckman and Gertrude Hirschler, Menachem Begin, p.50.
6. Begin, White Nights, p.79.
7. David Shipler, Israel Hardening Its Stand on Visits, New York Times (3 March 1982), p.7.
8. Bernard Goldstein, The Stars Bear Witness, p.35; and N. Blumenthal, N. Eck and J. Kermish (eds.), The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow, p.2.
9. Blumenthal, Eckand Kermish, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow, p.117.
10. Ibid., p.119.
11. Yisrael Gutman, The Genesis of the Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto, Yad Vashem Studies, vol.IX, p.43.
12. Goldstein, The Stars Bear Witness, pp.35-6.
13. Isaiah Trunk (in debate), Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust, p.257.
14. Emmanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, p.250.
15. Lester Eckman and Chaim Lazar, The Jewish Resistance, p.31.
16. Bernard Johnpoll, The Politics of Futility, p.231.
17. Goldstein, The Stars Bear Witness, pp.51-3.
18. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, The Blood Shed Unites Us, p.32.
19. Reuben Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi Occupied Europe, pp.565-70.
20. Yitzhak Zuckerman (in debate), Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust, p.150.
21. Hersz Berlinski, Zikhroynes, Drai (Tel Aviv), p.169.
22. Yisrael Gutman (in debate), Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust, p.148.
23. Emmanuel Ringelblum, Comrade Mordechai in Yuri Suhl (ed.), They Fought Back, p.102.
24. Joseph Kermish, The Place of the Ghetto Revolts in the Struggle against the Occupier, Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust, p.315.
25. Ibid.
26. Yisrael Gutman, Youth Movements in the Underground and the Ghetto Revolts, Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust, p.280.
27. Ibid., pp.275, 279.
28. Marek Edelman, The Way to Die, Jewish Affairs (September 1975), p.23
29. Yitzhak Zuckerman, The Jewish Fighting Organisation – ZOB – Its Establishment and Activities, The Catastrophe of European Jewry, p.547.
30. Emmanuel Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish Relations During the Second World War, p.247.
31. Ibid., p.197.
32. Ibid., pp.199, 203.

Friday, January 30, 2009

As a polish american I have to say thank you to the Prime Minister of Turkey to express the World Solidarity.

As a polish american I have to say thank you to the Prime Minister of Turkey to express the World Solidarity.

Erdogan storms out of WEF over Gaza
Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:19:49 GMT


Erdogan criticized the audience of international officials and corporate chiefs for applauding Peres' emotional defense of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.
Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed out of a Davos forum after a heated debate with Israel's President Shimon Peres and slamming moderator David Ignatius.

Erdogan walked off in front of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other panel members complaining that his comments on the conflict were cut short by the Washington Post's moderator David Ignatius.

The Turkish premier noted to reporters following the incident that he was treated unfairly by the moderator who allowed him only 12 minutes to make his points while giving Peres a full 25 minutes to deliver an impassioned defense of Israel's 22-day offensive that devastated Gaza. Arab League chief, Egypt's Amr Moussa rose to shake his hand as the prime minister made his exit.

"I do not think I will be coming back to Davos after this because you do not let me speak," the prime minister shouted as he left, though he said later he could reconsider.

Erdogan criticized the audience of international officials and corporate chiefs for applauding Peres' emotional defense of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead.

Erdogan, who leads one of the few Muslim countries to have diplomatic ties with Israel and who has sought a peacemaker's role in the Middle East conflict, said Israel had carried out "barbaric" actions in Gaza.

"I find it very sad that people applaud what you have said because many people have been killed," he shouted at Peres before being cut off by Ignatius.

Erdogan and Peres spoke by telephone after the debate and the 85-year-old Israeli president apologized for the events, Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported.

Dear friends from Turkey and Turkish Embassy in Washington DC.

As a polish american I have to say thank you to the Prime Minister of Turkey to express the World Solidarity.

Tayyip Erdogan you a true hero of the free world.

Thank you.

Poland was benefiting from Turkish solidarity throughout the 19th and 20th century.
So you may count on us Polish Community in US and people in Poland since we do know how important it is.

As the Polish Embassy booklet published for the occasion mentions, "following the events and war of 1831, the 1848 Hungarian revolt, the Crimean War and the 1863 rebellion, Polish army soldiers who were left without a country found refuge and welcome in the Ottoman Empire, accorded to them by the sultan.” Moreover, as President Demirel reminded his audience, the Ottoman Empire did not recognize the partition of Poland by its enemies like Austria, Russia and Prussia, and these acts of friendship were never forgotten by the Polish people.

The first Poles who fled to the Ottoman Empire were the Crimean Tartars in 1831 after having fought with the Russians in the Crimea. The Ottoman Empire and Poland were geographic neighbors, and as the erudite Mr. Demirel recalled, the sultan refused Austrian pressure to return the rebellious Poles to Austria, the sultan categorically retorting, "It is either the Poles who have taken refuge in our midst or my throne."

They were settled in a barren and hilly site called Adampol, as a tribute to Prince Adam, near Istanbul, which later came to be called Polonezköy. For the past 160 years these Poles have tilled the land and made a living through agriculture and husbandry but freely maintained their Polish culture and traditions

In 1989 Lech Walesa and Polish Solidarity movement previously impossible dreams were coming true. Symbolized the new developments in the history of our country - optimism, which resulted from the fact that the Polish people took responsibility for their country and took its matters into their own hands.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Air Attack on innocent civilians Poland 1939 Gaza 2009

Air Attack on innocent civilians Poland 1939 Gaza 2009
Strzelanie do bezbronnych cywili,wrzesień 1939.


Strzelanie do bezbronnych cywili,wrzesień 1939.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Na szczególną uwagę zasługuje praca polskich księży i sióstr zakonnych w Libanie.

Na szczególną uwagę zasługuje praca polskich księży i sióstr zakonnych w Libanie.




.... Na szczególną uwagę zasługuje praca polskich księży i sióstr zakonnych w Libanie। Odbiega ona w znaczny sposób od działalności jaką popularnie kojarzy się z misjami. Liban od wieków zamieszkują chrześcijanie i misjonarze spoza Bliskiego Wschodu przede wszystkim wspomagają lokalny Kościół. Ich misje skierowane są do wszystkich Libańczyków bez względu na wyznanie.





.... Polskie duchowieństwo od wieków miało kontakty z libańskimi chrześcijanami. Niektóre z tych postaci zostały przedstawione w poprzednich artykułach. Obecnie w Libanie pracuje trzech księży, brat zakonny i siostra zakonna.
.... Brat jest członkiem Braci Szkół Chrześcijańskich, którzy mimo wyższego wykształcenia nie przyjmują święceń kapłańskich, aby całkowicie poświęcić się służbie wychowawczej w szkole. Po ukończeniu studiów na Wydziale Filozofii Uniwersytetu w Lyon oraz Teologii na Facultés Catholiques w Lyon w 1947 roku przybył do Libanu z misją pracy wśród młodzieży szkolnej.
.... W latach 1954-57 brat Wxxxx wykładał teologię w nowicjacie Braci w Betlejem, obok szkoły podstawowej i średniej im. Dzieciątka Jezus, dzisiaj przekształconej w Uniwersytet. Po przeniesieniu nowicjatu do Włoch, objął kierownictwo szkoły. W 1971 roku wrócił do Libanu i kierował księgarnią "La Procure des Freres" w Bejrucie aż do wybuchu wojny w 1975 roku. Od tego czasu pracuje jako katecheta w liceum Mont la Salle, gdzie założył także trójjęzyczny kwartalnik "Les Dossiers JBS". Dzięki zaangażowaniu brata Władysława powstał ruch Maryjny "Róży Duchownej", którego celem jest zachęcenie do odmawiania różańca, a następnie Zakon Róży Duchownej, ustanowiony przez biskupa Tripoli w 1996 roku, uznany przez rząd libański w 1998 roku. Zakon zamierza wybudować ośrodek, do którego sprowadził Obraz Matki Boskiej Częstochowskiej i ma zamiar poświęcić Jej kaplicę w miejscowości Deddeh al Koura w północnym Libanie, jako centrum ruchu pielgrzymowego. Brat xxxxxx napisał także książkę pod tytułem "Entre Lourdes et Fatima, la Belle Histoire de N-D de Gietrzwald, Pologne, 1877".
.... Pracą wśród młodzieży zajmują się także księża Salezjanie. Na początku należy wspomnieć ś.p. ks.Franciszka Tomasika, kapelana w Armii gen. Andersa, oddelegowanego do opieki nad polskimi studentami w Libanie, założyciela i dyrektora liceum w Zouk Mikael. Bardzo lubiany, na dobre wpisał się w pamięci swoich wychowanków. Po wyjeździe Polaków postanowił zostać na Bliskim Wschodzie. Prowadził pracę misyjną w Syrii, gdzie zmarł. Został jednak pochowany w ośrodku salezjańskim El-Houssoun w Libanie.
.... Kolejnym Salezjaninem jest ks. xxxxxxx, orientalista, absolwent Pontificio Istituto di Studi Arabi e Islamici w Rzymie, który przybył do Libanu w 1987 roku, pod koniec wyniszczającej wojny, podczas której Zgromadzenie straciło zarówno księży jak i szkołę w Bejrucie. Pozostał tylko dom w El- Houssoun, w górach Libanu, w regionie Byblos - dawniej nowicjat, a w czasie wojny szkoła podstawowa i liceum.
Ks. xxxx podczas inauguracji DBT Fidar, 2002
Z uwagi na dogodne położenie, bez zgody księży, milicja chrześcijańska przekształciła je w koszary wojskowe. Pozwolono jednak na pozostanie dwóch Salezjanów. Stan ten trwał do 1986 roku, kiedy Zgromadzenie postanowiło na nowo rozpocząć działalność w El-Houssoun, a młody polski ksiądz miał pomagać ówczesnemu dyrektorowi szkoły, ks. xxxx. W 1989 roku armia syryjska ropoczęła zmasowane ataki na dotąd spokojne tereny wokół El-Houssoun, a dom Salezjanów stał się Centrum Uchodźców, których liczba jednorazowo potrafiła osiągnąć 1000 osób. Ks. xxxxx, w tej sytuacji, musiał zapewnić im niezbędne warunki do życia, narażając często swoje własne. Stał się tym samym odpowiedzialny za jeden z największych ośrodków pomocy uchodźcom w środkowym Libanie. Z tego powodu został członkiem ogólnolibańskiego centrum pomocy uchodźcom, w którego skład wchodziły takie organizacje jak Czerwony Krzyż, Caritas - Liban, itp. Dla dzieci i młodzieży uchodźców zorganizowano zajęcia szkolne i rekreacyjne. Dzięki temu księża z xxxxo oraz zgromadzona wokół nich młodzież stali się znani w całym Libanie, a dom w El- Houssoun został centrum młodzieżowym. Współpraca organizacji pozarządowych i UNICEF zaowocowała w latach 1989 - 1992 projektem "Wychowanie w Pokoju", który w założeniu miał doprowadzić do spotkania dzieci i młodzieży różnych religii i regionów, jednocześnie próbując zniwelować uprzedzenia i bariery narosłe w czasie wojny. W ramach programu Centrum Don xxx organizowało kolonie letnie, w których brały udział dzieci i młodzież z różnych wspólnot wyznaniowych, w tym z mieszanych rodzin polsko-libańskich.
Ks. xxxxxw z uczniem
.... Dzięki energii i zaangażowaniu ks. xxxx 10 młodych Libańczyków odbyło niezwykłą podróż lądem na Światowe Spotkanie Młodych w Częstochowie w 1991 roku. W następnych latach kilkakrotnie grupy młodzieży z Libanu miały okazję odwiedzić Polskę.
.... W 1994 roku do ks. xxxx dołączył drugi Polak, ks. xxxxx, doświadczony misjonarz ze stażem pracy w Palestynie i Iranie, który pracuje także jako korespondent dla Radia Watykańskiego. Obaj księża są również konsultantami polskich mediów w kwestiach bliskowschodnich, między innymi z uwagi na biegłą znajomość języka arabskiego.
.... Do dnia dzisiejszego księża prowadzą, zgodnie z misją xxxx, działalność wychowawczą oraz formacyjną dla dzieci i młodzieży w formie kolonii letnich, spotkań, grup turystycznych i artystycznych. Przez kilka lat w działalności Salezjanów pomagali studenci z Polski. Ks. xxxxx był także przez trzy lata odpowiedzialny za duszpasterstwo młodzieży w diecezji maronickiej Jbeil/Byblos. Z racji pełnienia tej funkcji wchodził w skład komitetu organizującego pielgrzymkę Jana Pawła II do Libanu. Dzięki temu, podczas niezapomnianego spotkania z młodzieżą w xxx, papież mógł wysłuchać polskich pieśni religijnych w oryginale i w języku arabskim, przetłumaczonych właśnie przez ks. xxxx.
.... Z uwagi na utratę szkół przez Zgromadzenie salezjańskie oraz w odpowiedzi na potrzebę stworzenia miejsca, które pozwoliłoby na kształcenie zawodowe, w 2002 roku otwarta została szkoła techniczna Don xxx Technique w nadmorskiej miejscowości El - Fidar, w regionie Byblos. Jest to jedna z najnowocześniejszych tego typu placówek w Libanie. Obecnie szkoła prowadzi kursy zawodowe, ale docelowo będzie umożliwiała zdobycie średniego wykształcenia technicznego. Od dwóch lat oferuje również nauczanie "on - line" w dziedzinach informatyki i pedagogiki. Jest to nowość w szkolnictwie na terenie Libanu. Wielkim uznaniem cieszy się także Biuro pośrednictwa pracy, które pomaga w podjęciu pracy swoim absolwentom i nie tylko. Dyrektorem szkoły został ks. xxx a finansami zajął się ks. xxx.
.... 10 października 2004 roku zespół muzyczny pod dyrekcją ks. xxx wystąpił w Warszawie podczas koncertu, zorganizowanego przez Telewizję Polską oraz Fundację "Dzieło Nowego Tysiąclecia" z okazji IV Dnia Papieskiego. Podobne zespoły w zmiennych składach występowały we Włoszech (2002) i Francji (I 2006), zawsze na czele z ks. xxx, spotykając się z dużym zainteresowaniem lokalnych mediów.
.... Dużą rolę w pracy misyjnej na terenie Libanu odgrywa Zakon Braci Mniejszych Kapucynów. Ich działalność to szeroko pojęte duszpasterstwo parafialne, posługa duchowa i sakramentalna, a także działalność wydawnicza i edukacyjna w prowadzonych przez Kapucynów szkołach w Bejrucie (dzielnice Badaro i Hamra) oraz w Batroun.
.... W Vice Prowincji Bliskiego Wschodu, do jakiej należy libańska wspólnota, można odnaleźć także zakonników z Polski, a dokładnie z prowincji krakowskiej. Przed II wojną światową do Libanu przybył o. xxxxxx, który wspaniale wypełniał swoją posługę pośród Polonii, ale też wśród miejscowej ludności. Napisał słownik polsko-arabski, współtworzył Komitet Pomocy Dzieciom Polskim oraz otaczał duchową opieką Brygadę Karpacką. W roku 1945 został mianowany przez ks. Kantaka sekretarzem dekanatu polskiego i biura metrykalnego. Starał się o utworzenie polskiego cmentarza, zasłużył się także badaniem pobytu J. Słowackiego w Libanie. Pod koniec maja 1948 roku o. Peregryn Malinowski wrócił do Polski.
O.Paweł z Polonią, Bejrut 2006
.... Obecnie od września 2003 roku, za zgodą przełożonych z Polski, w Bejrucie, w dzielnicy Badaro pracuje o. xxxx, Kapucyn z Krakowa, absolwent Papieskiej Akademii Teologicznej oraz Wydziału Filozofii i Antropologii Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Kierując się ideałami św. Franciszka zajmuje się on przede wszystkim osobami samotnymi, pogubionymi duchowo, ubogimi i bezradnymi. Stąd właśnie jego obecność wśród więźniów i osób chorych niezależnie od wyznania, troska o lekarstwa i ubrania dla tych najbardziej potrzebujących. O. xxx zajmuje się również kwestiami ochrony praw człowieka jako członek FRANCISCANS INTERNATIONAL, wspólnej międzynarodowej organizacji Franciszkanów przy ONZ, umożliwiającej przepływ informacji, badania, analizy, obronę i działania w łączności ze strukturami i agencjami ONZ oraz organizacjami pozarządowymi. W ramach FRANCISCANS INTERNATIONAL o. Paweł zajmuje się także edukacją dzieci, których nie stać na uczęszczanie do szkoły, ponieważ opłaty są zbyt wysokie dla budżetu rodzinnego. To z myślą o nich napisał program socjalny: "EDUCATION FOR HOPE, HOPE FOR EDUCATION" (Edukacja dla nadziei, nadzieja dla edukacji), poprzez który szuka środków na naukę dla dzieci ubogich. Swoimi spostrzeżeniami i wiedzą antropologiczną dzieli sie ze studentami Uniwersytetu Św. Józefa oraz odpowiada na zaproszenia różnych szkół bądź instytucji, dla których prawa człowieka są bardzo ważne. Ponadto posługuje chorym w domach i szpitalach. Towarzyszy ich rodzinom w dźwiganiu ciężaru cierpienia. Wraz z grupą libańskich przyjaciół organizuje zajęcia pozalekcyjne dla dzieci z ubogich rodzin, korzytając także z życzliwości Sióstr Franciszkanek Misjonarek Maryji z dzielnicy Nabaa. Pomaga w parafii Matki Bożej Anielskiej na Badaro, której jest wikariuszem i ekonomem. Pracuje także z grupą św. o. Pio, należącą do Międzynarodowej Federacji Grup Modlitwy z siedzibą w San Giovanni Rotondo we Włoszech.
.... Polonia libańska znalazła się zatem w szczególnej sytuacji, kiedy może liczyć na pomoc aż trzech polskich duszpasterzy. Przez ostatnie 10 lat formalnie opiekę nad Polakami sprawował ks. xxx. Z wielkim oddaniem, pomimo znacznej odległości od Bejrutu księża Salezjanie wypełniali swoją posługę kapłańską służąc Polonii. Ich centrum w El- Houssoun oraz w Fidar zawsze gościnnie przyjmowało rodaków. Do tradycji należy majówka w xxx w górach, która gromadzi dużą grupę uczestników. Przez lata ośrodek księży służył jako główna przystań dla żołnierzy polskich z kontygentu UNIFIL. Dla nich młodzież organizuje co roku koncert kolęd, a żołnierze z kolei nie zapominają o symbolicznych paczkach pod choinkę. Księża Salezjanie są również promotorami kultury polskiej. Pamiętny pozostał koncert zespołu Żuki zorganizowany w Byblos oraz koncert muzyki jazzowej. Dzięki ich obecności i tak intensywnej pracy z młodzieżą coraz większa liczba Libańczyków interesuje się i poznaje kulturę polską.
.... Przez kilka lat obowiązki duszpasterskie dla Polonii sprawował o. xxxx z zakonu Bernardynów. Obecnie posługuje nam o. Paweł Kurysz, Kapucyn. Kontynuuje on także tradycję odprawiania rekolekcji wielkopostnych, zapoczątkowanych przez księży Salezjanów oraz dodatkowo odprawia rekolekcje adwentowe. Ta bardzo ważna działalność wszystkich polskich kapłanów na rzecz rodaków oraz fakt, że są oni, pomimo wielu obowiązków, dostępni dla wiernych jest bardzo doceniana.
.... Ogrom potrzeb powstałych na skutek wojny spowodował, że do Libanu w 1990 roku przybyła także polska misjonarka. xxxxz Zakonu Sióstr Miłosierdzia Św. Wincentego á Paulo (Szarytek) po ukończeniu Wyższego Międzyzakonnego Medycznego Studium Zawodowego w Warszawie wyjechała do Centrum Misyjnego w Paryżu, gdzie zajmowała się pracą wśród bezdomnych, aby następnie objąć prowadzenie przychodni przy szkole Sióstr Szarytek w Kairze. Po 6 latach zaproponowano jej wyjazd do szpitala w Bhannes, w górach Libanu. Był to okres wzmożonych walk w tamtym rejonie i szpital opuściła duża część personelu. W tej sytuacji s. xxxx musiała przede wszystkim zająć się rannymi. Po zakończeniu walk w częściowo zniszczonym szpitalu jako siotra oddziałowa przez 5 lat pracowała z chorymi na gruźlicę, następnie na oddziale wewnętrznym i położniczym, cały czas borykając się z brakiem personelu.
xxxx z Pacjentem, Bhannes 2005
Dzięki pomocy Caritas Austria wybudowano pawilon przeznaczony dla chorych na gruźlicę, który decyzją ministerstwa zdrowia został zamieniony na oddział dla przewlekle chorych. Jest to jedno z niewielu tego typu miejsc w Libanie, w którym przyjmowani są także ubodzy pacjenci, niezależnie od wyznania, często nie objęci już systemem ubezpieczeń, co z kolei prowadzi do stałego braku środków na prowadzenie takiej działalności xxxx jest odpowiedzialna za opiekę nad chorymi, kontakty z ich rodzinami oraz całą administrację, mając do pomocy jednorazowo pielęgniarkę oraz pomoc pielęgniarską. Nie trzeba wspominać jak ciężka jest to praca, gdy ma się na uwadze fakt, że często pacjenci są w stanie agonalnym. Dlatego oddział stał się bardziej hospicjum. Zasługą xxx jest więc także stworzenie takiej atmosfery, aby pobyt na oddziale odbywał się w jak najbardziej humanitarnych warunkach, co jest docenione przez rodziny chorych, nie tylko chrześcijan.
.... Z uwagi na rozległe obowiązki xxxx nie ma okazji uczestniczyć w życiu Polonii. Jednak w przypadku jakichkolwiek problemów jest zawsze gotowa do pomocy rodakom. Na początku swojego pobytu w Libanie zajmowała się żoną Bolesława Bakee oraz obecnie jej drugim mężem, który pomógł sprowadzić prace malarza do Polski. Na jej oddziale wracał do zdrowia także Polak, muzyk, który przyjechał do Libanu na koncerty w ramach festiwalu Al-Bustan.
.... Niezwykła atmosfera Libanu spowodowała, że kraj ten stał się drugą ojczyzną dla polskich misjonarzy, a Libańczykom ich praca w znaczący sposób przybliżyła Polskę. Osoby, które chciałyby wspomóc działalność polskich misjonarzy prosimy o kontakt ze "Wspólnotą Polską w Libanie".

Drzonków Pokaz Ogierów 05.02.2008 - Corrado Boy

Drzonków Pokaz Ogierów 05.02.2008 - Corrado Boy

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Video of UK Jewish MP: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza Video of UK Jewish MP: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza

Video of UK Jewish MP: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza Video of UK Jewish MP: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza




















Video of UK Jewish MP: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza Video of UK Jewish MP: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza
from Rabble, January 20, 2009.



Sir Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.

During a Commons debate on the fighting in Gaza, he urged the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.

Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed."

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

He accused the Israeli government of seeking "conquest" and added: "They are not simply war criminals, they are fools."http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8

Monday, January 19, 2009

Israeli teenagers are a nuisance in Poland

Israeli teenagers are a nuisance in Poland
11 05 2007

Source: Przekrój weekly of May the 10th 2007
Link to original article in Polish
Author: Anna Szulc
English translation: MoPoPressReview
The list of losses Israeli teenagers’ visits leave behind is long and costly. It begins with burned carpets in Polish hotels, and ends with Jewish teenagers’ trauma. But more and more often with local residents’ trauma too.

Roberto Lucchesini, originally from Tuscany, for several years now a resident of Krakow, hasn’t been sleeping well recently. Before he will be able to move his arms normally again, he will have to go through long rehab. All this because of how he was treated, in broad daylight in front of passers-by and several teenagers who were hermetically closed in their coach-buses. Israeli bodyguards, equipped with firearms, binded his arms behind his back over his head with handcuffs. In Krakow, in the middle of the street. A moment before, the Italian was trying to make coach drivers parking in front of his house turn their engines off. - ‘Israelis handcuffed me, threw me on the ground, my face landed in dog excrement, and then they were kicking me’. After that the perpetrators were gone. Italian had to be freed by the Polish police.

Lucchesini moved to Kazimierz, a district of Kraków, that used to be a Jewish commune of which the only things left now are synagogues and memories, often painful. He found an apartment with a view on the synagogue. - ‘Back then I had thought this was the most beautiful place on Earth’ - he says - ‘after some time I understood that the place is indeed beautiful, but not for its today’s residents’.

Kicking instead of answers

Jews search tourist

Other resident of Kazimierz, Beata W., office worker is of similar opinion. Israeli security searched her handbag on one of the streets, without telling her why.
- ‘When I asked what was this all about, they told me to shut up. I listened, I stopped talking, I was afraid they’d tell me to get undressed next’ - she says annoyed.
A young polish Jew, who as usual in Sabbath, went to pray in his synagogue couple months ago, also didn’t get his answer. He only asked, why can’t he enter the temple. Instead of an answer, he got kicked.
- ‘I saw this with my own eyes’ - says Mike Urbaniak, the editor of Forum Of Polish Jews and correspondent of European Jewish Press in Poland. - ‘I saw how my friend is being brutally attacked by security agents from Israel, without any reason.’

All this apparently in sake of Israeli childrens’ safety.
- ‘For Poles it may be difficult to understand, but security agents accompany Israelis at all times, both in Israel and abroad’ - explains Michał Sobelman, a spokesman for Israeli embassy in Poland. - ‘This is a parents’ demand, otherwise they wouldn’t agree for any kind of trip. Poland is no exception.’

But it was in Poland, as Mike Urbaniak reports, where Jews from Israel brutally kicked a Polish Jew in front of a synagogue, and then threatened him with prison. In plain view of the Israeli teenagers.

- ‘We are very sorry when we hear about such incidents’ - Sobelman admits - ‘Detailed analysis is carried out in each case. We will do everything we can, to prevent such situations in the future. Maybe we will have to change training methods of our security agents, so that they would know Poland is not like Israel, that the scale of threats here is insignificant?

Professor Moshe Zimmermann, head of German History Institute at Hebrew University in Jerusalem thinks however, that the problem is not only in the security agents’ behaviour. He thinks Israelis basically think that Poles aren’t equal partners for them. And it’s not only that they think Poles can’t ensure their children’s safety.

- ‘They are not equal partners to any kind of discussion. It applies also to our common history, contemporary history and politics. In result Israeli youth see Poles as second category people, as potential enemies’ - he explains bluntly.

An instruction on conduct with the local inhabitants given away to Israeli teenagers coming to Poland couple years ago may confirm professor’s opinion. It contained such a paragraph: ‘Everywhere we will be surrounded by Poles. We will hate them because of their participation in Holocaust’.

Jews hate Poles

- ‘Agendas of our teenagers’ trips to Poland are set in advance by the Israeli government, and are not flexible’ - says Ilona Dworak-Cousin, the chairwoman of the Polish-Israeli Friendship Association in Israel. - ‘Those trips basically come down to visiting, one by one, the places of extermination of Jews. From that perspective Poland is just a huge Jewish graveyard. And nothing more. Meeting living people, for those who organise these trips, is meaningless.’

A resident of Kraków’s Kazimierz district, who is of Jewish descent, says that there is nothing wrong with that: - ‘Israelis don’t come to Poland for holiday. Their aim is to see the sites of Shoah and listen to the terrifying history of their families, history that often is not told to them by their grandparents, because of its emotional weight. Often young people who are leaving, cry, phone their parents and say “why didn’t you tell me it was that horrible?”. To be frank, I am not surprised they have no interest in talking about Lajkonik‘.

However according to Ilona Dworak-Cousin the lack of contact with Poles, causes Israeli youth to confuse victims with the perpetrators. - ‘They start to think it were the Poles who created concentration camps for Jews, that it is the Polish who were and still are the biggest anti-Semites in the world’ - adds Dworak-Cousin, who is Jewish herself.

The above mentioned Kraków resident has a different opinion. - ‘I don’t believe anyone was telling them that the Poles had been doing this. That’s why there is no need for discussing anything with the Poles’.

Teenagers behaving badly

However, many Israelis say that although the instruction was eventually changed, the attitude to Poles has not changed at all.
- ‘Someone in Israel some day decided, that our children going to Poland have to be hermetically surrounded by security’ - says Lili Haber president of Cracovians Association in Israel. - ‘Someone decided that young Israelis cannot meet young Poles, and cannot walk the streets. Basically these visits aren’t anything else but a several-day-long voluntary prison.’

RIch brat jews

Voluntary, but also very expensive: 1400 USD per person. Not every Israeli parent can afford such a trip.

- ‘Moreover, as it turns out, the children are too young, to visit sites of mass murders’ - adds dr Ilona Dworak-Cousin. Traumatic experiences that accompany visits in death camps have its consequences. Kids become aggressive. And instead of getting to know the country of their ancestors, in which Jews and Poles lived in symbiosis for over 1000 years, Israeli teenagers cause one scandal after another.

Shitting in beds

It happens sometimes, that somewhere between Majdanek and Treblinka, young Israelis spend their time on striptease ordered via the hotel telephone. It happens sometimes, that the hotel service has to collect human excrement from hotel beds and washbasins. It happens sometimes, that hotels have to give money back to other tourists, who cannot sleep because Israeli kids decided to play football in hotel corridor. In the middle of the night.

Jews block streets

6-year-old Krzys from Kazimierz played football too. On Sunday night on 15th April, after shooting two goals, he wanted to go home, as usual. He lives near a synagogue, in front of which hundreds of young Israelis have gathered on celebrations preceding March of Living. Just before Szeroka street he was stopped by some not-so-nice men. - ‘This is a semi-private area today. There is no entry’ - he was told. It didn’t help, when he told them, his mum will get upset if he won’t be home on time.

Security officers, which is interesting, were Polish this time and accompanied by the Polish police. They also denied access to the area to a Dutch couple, who had reserved a table at one of the restaurants on Szeroka street six months ago. - ‘Is this a free country?’ - One of the tourists tried to make sure.


On a normal day you can access Szeroka street from several sides. That evening from none. I tried to get through myself, without any success. Only eventually, the police helped me to pass the security line.

- ‘There are no official restrictions here’ - they were convincing me a moment later, although the “unofficial practice” was different.

- ‘We have only set certain restrictions in movement’ - Sylvia Bober-Jasnoch, a spokeswoman for Malopolska Region Police press service, explained to me later.

The police cannot say anything else. Polish law does not allow residents to be denied access to the streets they live at. Even during the so called mass events (however the celebrations on Szeroka did not have that status) residents have the right to go back to their homes and tourists have the right to dine in a restaurant. Also Israeli security agents have no right to stop or search passers-by.

I tried to find out more on the rights of Israeli security agents in Poland. First at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from where my question was sent to…. the Ministry of Education. I have also sent questions to the Home Office. Although I was promised, I received no answer. Only person eager to talk on that matter was Maciej Kozłowski, former ambassador in Israel, currently the Plenipotentiary of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Polish-Israeli relations.

- ‘Regulations are imprecise’ - admits Kozłowski. ‘Basically bodyguards from a foreign country should not move around Poland armed. However for the government of Israel security matters are a priority. Any convincing that their citizens should use the services of Polish security turned unsuccessful’.

Airplane like battle field

The Polish-Italian couple, Robert Lucchesini, his wife Anna, and their two-year-old daughter, cannot understand Polish government’s attitude. Which contrary to the Israeli government, is not able to ensure the safety of its citizens. Safety is not the only thing among the pair’s priorities, but also peace and quietness. They are however being woken up every morning by the loud noises of engines, of the Polish coach-buses with groups of Israeli youth. Their Polish drivers brake driving regulations all the time. They’re allowed to park at the square near the synagogue (in front of Robert’s house) only for up to 10 minutes. They stay there much longer, even hours. With their engines turned on. Reason? Youth’s safety - they would be able to leave quicker in case of a threat. And because Israeli kids need to be served coffee. Because even though Kazimierz is full of cafes, Israeli teenagers don’t go there. They are being told: no contacts with environment, no talking to passers-by, no smiles nor gestures.

This has been going for years. Israeli groups contact with Poles only there where they have to. First in airplanes.

Slapped stewardess

- ‘A plane after such group has landed, looks like a battle field’ - admits a worker of LOT Polish Airlines asking for his name not to be published. - ‘The worst thing is these kids’ attitude to Polish staff. Recently a stewardess was slapped by a teenager in her face. Because he had been waiting for his coca-cola too long’.

Leszek Chorzewski, LOT spokesman, admits that Israeli youth is a difficult customer. - ‘They demand not only more attention then other passengers, but also more security precautions’ - he adds. These precautions are long aircraft and airport controls conducted by Israeli services. These are also the high demands of the teenagers’ security agents.

Katarzyna Łazuga, student from Poznań, could see that first hand. She participated in a tourist guides’ training on one of Polish airports. ‘Young people from Israel entered the room we were in’, she recalls. - ‘Our group was then made to stop classes and rushed out of the room. Israeli security officers told us to go out, right now and without any talking. Because… we were “staring” at their clients. Yes, we were looking at them. They were catching attention, they were good looking.’

Young Israelis see Poles also there, where they board - in Polish hotels. If any of them still wants to have them. Most of those in Kraków don’t want to any more.


- ‘We have resigned from admitting Israeli youth once and for all’ - admits Agnieszka Tomczyk, assistant manageress in a chain of hotels called System. ‘We could not afford to refund the loses after their stays any more’.

Shiting in beds

These loses being: demolished rooms, broken chairs and tables, human excrements in washbasins or trash bins, or like in Astoria, other hotel in Kraków, burned carpet. Astoria also backs out from having Israeli groups. One of the reasons is that the teenagers’ security agents were ordering other guests, whom they didn’t like, to leave.

- ‘I understand that Israeli security agents are over-sensitive to any disturbing signals. They are coming from a country where bombs explode almost daily, and young people die in terrorist attacks’ - ensures Mike Urbaniak. - ‘But Poland is one of the safest countries in Europe. Here, excluding tiny number of incidents, Jews are not being attacked, and Jewish institutions don’t need security, which is very unusual on a world scale’.

Huge business

Chasidim, travelling in great numbers from Israel, also (surprisingly) don’t need security agents. Including for example many Orthodox Jews, who came to visit our country recently, as they wanted to pray at Tzadik of Lelów’s grave. They came to the market square in Kazimierz without any security assistance and without any fear.

- ‘They chatted eagerly with tourists interested in their outfits, with passers-by who don’t see Jews with side curls every day’ - adds Urbaniak.

In Kazimierz chasidim are nothing unusual. Like groups of Israeli teenagers. This year 30,000 Israeli teenagers are coming to Poland, and they will have 800 security agents to protect them.

Roberto Lucchesini reported to the Polish police that he got beaten by Israeli security. Krakow Prosecution Office is investigating the case, and so is its counterpart in Israel.

- ‘Results of this investigation are of medium importance’ - thinks Ilona Dworak-Cousin. - ‘What matters is if the youth that visits Poland, will still treat it as hostile and completely alien country’.

Polish-Israeli Friendship Association in Israel and Cracovians Association in Israel both try to convince the government of their country, not to send any more teenagers to see only the death camps in Poland. Chances are slim.

- ‘These trips are mostly a huge business for people who organise them’ - says Lili Haber - ‘including Israeli bodyguards’.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Polish protesters beat up in an official ceremony with Israeli Ambassador David Peleg protesters arrested.

Polish protesters beat up in an official ceremony with Israeli Ambassador David Peleg protesters arrested.

In the news video (in Polish - sorry), you will see a small group protesters, standing near the wall, not bothering anybody, holding a large sign that reads

"Stop the butchery in Gaza"

You will see a man in a yarmulka get up from his chair, walk all the way across the room, and start to swing punches at the surprised protesters.

Poland is a civilized country, after all, and while things like that happen, they tend to at soccer matches between hooligans, not in an official function with an Israeli ambassador with lots of cameras present.

This is not Israel where women are stoned by fanatical Orthodox Jews for wearing red color clothes (MSNBC article).

It looks like it is OK to beat up a woman with your manly, macho fists if the woman is palestinian.



To skandal. Zatrzymano ludzi pobitych, a nie udało się ustalić tożsamości tego, kto ich pobił, choć wyraźnie widać go na filmie a na dodatek był jednym z zaproszonych gości (wystarczy sprawdzić listę zaproszonych żeby się dowiedzieć kto to był). Nasza policja jest najbardziej absurdalną i niedołężną policją świata.

Gaza is the Warsaw Ghetto - George Galloway - 2 Jan 09

Gaza is the Warsaw Ghetto - George Galloway - 2 Jan 09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrK90LvqbRk

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Warsaw Poland WWII 1944 = Gaza Palestine today 2009

Warsaw Poland WWII 1944 = Gaza Palestine today 2009

You want to stop terrorism do not participate in it.when you occupy land of the Palestinian they have all the right to rezist. Like Polish peole rezist Hitler and Stallin
It is time we all stood up to the liars in our media and in our congress, senate and in the White House and say, No more, no more—Israel must stop this barbarism, this Hitlerian behavior or must be condemned and cut off from any aid from the United States and its allies in the world. If we do any less, then we are complicituous in this new holocaust, and no parades, moral duty to stand up and demand this stop.
Rising - The Forgotten Soldiers of WWII 1944 Gaza Palestine today 2009
By Lech Alex Bajan - Jan 13th, 2009 at 12:40 pm EST






The humanitarian crisis continues in Gaza - 13 Jan 09


Powstanie Warszawskie - Godzina "W"




Israel to Get $30bn US Defense Aid

RAMALLAH/GAZA CITY, 30 July 2007 — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday announced a new $30 billion US defense aid package to preserve Israel’s regional military superiority, as he appreciated Washington’s wishes to boost moderate Arab states through weapons sales.

“This is an increase of 25 percent for the military aid to Israel from the United States. I think this is a significant and important increase in defense aid to Israel,” Olmert said at the opening of the weekly Israeli Cabinet meeting.

Olmert added that the aid package was offered during his meeting with US President George W. Bush in Washington on June 20.

“This would mean a lot to Israel’s security, and this is a good opportunity to thank President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,” Olmert said.

Other Israeli ministers stressed during the Cabinet meeting Israel’s need to secure its “quality advantage” over its neighbors in the Mideast and the US’ major role in maintaining this advantage.

“Defense aid to Israel is still a top priority for the United States,” Olmert told the Cabinet, adding that Israel enjoys more financial assistance than other countries in the Middle East.

“We have renewed agreements and a renewed commitment from the Americans that would help preserve our advantage over the Arab countries,” Olmert said, referring to reports by the New York Times and the Washington Post that the US is mulling a $20 billion arms deal with Gulf states and increasing military aid to Egypt to $13 billion over 10 years.

The deal with Gulf states includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to their fighter jets and new naval vessels. It has reportedly raised concerns in Israel and among its supporters in the Congress. However, Olmert said that Israel fully understood the US’ need to support the moderate states in the region.

“We understand the US’ need to assist the moderate Arab states, which are standing in one front with the United States and us in the struggle against Iran,” Olmert said, referring to its nuclear program.

Israeli security officials called the increase in military aid “an unusual achievement.”

According to Israeli diplomatic sources, the final details about the new aid package to the Jewish state will be worked out during the visit by US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns to the region, adding that his visit is slated for mid-August.

US defense aid to Israel began in 1973 but a regular 10-year aid plan — with the previous one expiring this summer — was institutionalized in 1977 as part of the Egypt-Israel peace agreement, the official said.

The military aid is made up of 75 percent US military hardware, ranging from ammunition to warplanes, with the other 25 percent in cash, which goes mainly toward securing new Israeli-made weapons.




Support Our Allies - They Support Us?
"...For Your Freedom and Ours..."
Gen. T. Kosciuszko (Poland and America's Patriot)
POLAND IS GETTING ONLY 25-40 $ MILLIONS per year

- Poland sent combat troops to Iraq, Afghanistan , Kosovo, Panama, Haiti, Polish Army's Peacekeepers in Golan Heights, Americans during the war.
- Polish troops are responsible for security in 1 of the 4 zones in Iraq
- 20,000 soldiers from 17 countries served under Polish command
Poland sent its elite commando unit, GROM, which means thunder. It helped secure the port at Umm Qasr, which was vital to delivering aid to Iraq. The unit also secured nearby oil platforms before they could be sabotaged.

In the first Gulf War, Polish intelligence officers snuck into Iraq to rescue a group of CIA operatives trapped behind enemy lines.

Poland's secret agents disguised CIA agents as Polish construction workers and smuggled them out of Baghdad.
This was not the first time Polish soldiers risked their lives for our freedom. Generals Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko were two of the first foreigners to fight in the American Revolution. Kosciuszko designed and oversaw the construction of West Point. After that, he returned to Poland, where he led a democratic uprising. As a result of that fight, Poland had the first written democratic constitution in Europe, second in the world only to the U.S.

USA DEPORTED POLISH WOMAN IN US SINCE 1989 PERFECT CITIZEN FORMER SOLIDARITY, PERFECT MOTHER, NO CRIMES

I have to bring to your attention. What kind of:
How autocratic our Homeland Security in US is.

New US military aid to Israel and the Lieberman-Kyl amendment bring the US closer to war with Iran, say Greens
GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Monday, October 8, 2007

Contacts: Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, mclarty@greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene@gp.org

Greens: Bush has no credibility on Iran, but Democrats and Republicans are lining up behind Bush's next military disaster


WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders strongly cautioned that the combination of a $30 billion military aid package for Israel and growing threat of a US or US-backed Israeli attack on Iran could trigger a major regional conflagration in the Middle East.

"There's little doubt that the $30 billion in US taxpayers money sent to Israel will be used for two things: to maintain Israel's illegal and murderous military occupation of Palestinian lands, and to prepare for a military assault on Iran," said Paul "zool" Zulkowitz, a member of the Green Party's Peace Action Committee (GPAX). "The new military aid for Israel and the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, passed on September 26 with strong bipartisan support, have brought the the US closer to war with Iran."

Greens stressed that White House claims that Iran is assisting Shiite militias in Iraq and plans to produce nuclear weapons for possible use against Israel or western nations have been contested. Iran has denied such intentions; Greens noted that such use would amount to suicide for Iran.

"The Bush Administration, after its deceptive rationales for invading Iraq, should have no credibility on Iran or any other foreign policy," said Justine McCabe, Connecticut Green and co-chair of the party's International Committee. "Unfortunately, Democrats -- especially presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- have signed on to the AIPAC-Neocon-Republican line that an attack on Iran is 'not off the table.' If a global war starts because Bush ordered an attack, it'll be a bipartisan disaster, like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the continuing Middle East crisis."

In one scenario, confirmed by Newsweek, Vice President Cheney considered asking Israel to launch a missile attack either on a nuclear power site in Natanz, Iran, or on an alleged Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear installation in northern Syria, which might result in a retaliatory strike that would motivate a larger US military assault on Iran. Israel has already launched an air strike on the suspected Syrian site in September.

"The Lieberman-Kyl amendment designates Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a 'foreign terrorist organization.' The amendment makes the Iran military a target in President Bush's 'war on terror.' This is a major step towards a military confrontation with Iran, whether the attack comes from the US or Israel or both," said John V. Walsh, delegate from the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party to the Green Party's National Committee.

The Green Party has called for an international effort towards nuclear disarmament of all Middle Eastern and western Asian nations, including Israel and Pakistan, which are known to possess nuclear weapons, as part of a greater global nuclear disarmament project. Greens have called the Bush Administration hypocritical for condemning Iran while expanding US nuclear weapons programs and after removing the US from antinuclear treaties. The party has called for the US to rejoin the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and eliminate American nuclear weapons. Greens have also accused the Bush Administration of squandering pro-US sentiment that exists among many Iranians in its attempt to vilify their country.

The Green Party has sharply criticized both Democrats and Republicans for maintaining support for Israel's six-decades-long violations of civilian human rights and bowing to the demands of AIPAC and certain Christian rightwing lobbies that the US endorse the Israeli government's military ambitions and ethnic policies. (Israel has placed the Gaza Strip under siege and threatens to cut off water and fuel supplies, to punish civilians over rocket attacks launched by militias.)

The Green Party calls for negotiation by both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; a cut-off in US military aid to Israel; and an economic boycott of Israel until the latter recognizes full human rights, including the right of return for Palestinians and abolition of internal apartheid laws. Greens have called for support for Israeli and Palestinian groups seeking peaceful resolution, observance of human rights, and a halt to all violence and coercion directed against civilians.


MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 202-823680

EMAIL: office@raqport.com
or polonia@raqport.com

Monday, January 12, 2009

Israel to Get $30bn US Defense Aid We need jobs not another WAR!

Israel to Get $30bn US Defense Aid We need jobs not another WAR!

RAMALLAH/GAZA CITY, 30 July 2007 — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday announced a new $30 billion US defense aid package to preserve Israel’s regional military superiority, as he appreciated Washington’s wishes to boost moderate Arab states through weapons sales.

“This is an increase of 25 percent for the military aid to Israel from the United States. I think this is a significant and important increase in defense aid to Israel,” Olmert said at the opening of the weekly Israeli Cabinet meeting.

Olmert added that the aid package was offered during his meeting with US President George W. Bush in Washington on June 20.

“This would mean a lot to Israel’s security, and this is a good opportunity to thank President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,” Olmert said.

Other Israeli ministers stressed during the Cabinet meeting Israel’s need to secure its “quality advantage” over its neighbors in the Mideast and the US’ major role in maintaining this advantage.

“Defense aid to Israel is still a top priority for the United States,” Olmert told the Cabinet, adding that Israel enjoys more financial assistance than other countries in the Middle East.

“We have renewed agreements and a renewed commitment from the Americans that would help preserve our advantage over the Arab countries,” Olmert said, referring to reports by the New York Times and the Washington Post that the US is mulling a $20 billion arms deal with Gulf states and increasing military aid to Egypt to $13 billion over 10 years.

The deal with Gulf states includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to their fighter jets and new naval vessels. It has reportedly raised concerns in Israel and among its supporters in the Congress. However, Olmert said that Israel fully understood the US’ need to support the moderate states in the region.

“We understand the US’ need to assist the moderate Arab states, which are standing in one front with the United States and us in the struggle against Iran,” Olmert said, referring to its nuclear program.

Israeli security officials called the increase in military aid “an unusual achievement.”

According to Israeli diplomatic sources, the final details about the new aid package to the Jewish state will be worked out during the visit by US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns to the region, adding that his visit is slated for mid-August.

US defense aid to Israel began in 1973 but a regular 10-year aid plan — with the previous one expiring this summer — was institutionalized in 1977 as part of the Egypt-Israel peace agreement, the official said.

The military aid is made up of 75 percent US military hardware, ranging from ammunition to warplanes, with the other 25 percent in cash, which goes mainly toward securing new Israeli-made weapons.




Support Our Allies - They Support Us?
"...For Your Freedom and Ours..."
Gen. T. Kosciuszko (Poland and America's Patriot)
POLAND IS GETTING ONLY 25-40 $ MILLIONS per year

- Poland sent combat troops to Iraq, Afghanistan , Kosovo, Panama, Haiti, Polish Army's Peacekeepers in Golan Heights, Americans during the war.
- Polish troops are responsible for security in 1 of the 4 zones in Iraq
- 20,000 soldiers from 17 countries served under Polish command
Poland sent its elite commando unit, GROM, which means thunder. It helped secure the port at Umm Qasr, which was vital to delivering aid to Iraq. The unit also secured nearby oil platforms before they could be sabotaged.

In the first Gulf War, Polish intelligence officers snuck into Iraq to rescue a group of CIA operatives trapped behind enemy lines.

Poland's secret agents disguised CIA agents as Polish construction workers and smuggled them out of Baghdad.
This was not the first time Polish soldiers risked their lives for our freedom. Generals Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko were two of the first foreigners to fight in the American Revolution. Kosciuszko designed and oversaw the construction of West Point. After that, he returned to Poland, where he led a democratic uprising. As a result of that fight, Poland had the first written democratic constitution in Europe, second in the world only to the U.S.

USA DEPORTED POLISH WOMAN IN US SINCE 1989 PERFECT CITIZEN FORMER SOLIDARITY, PERFECT MOTHER, NO CRIMES

I have to bring to your attention. What kind of:
How autocratic our Homeland Security in US is.

New US military aid to Israel and the Lieberman-Kyl amendment bring the US closer to war with Iran, say Greens
GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Monday, October 8, 2007

Contacts: Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, mclarty@greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene@gp.org

Greens: Bush has no credibility on Iran, but Democrats and Republicans are lining up behind Bush's next military disaster


WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders strongly cautioned that the combination of a $30 billion military aid package for Israel and growing threat of a US or US-backed Israeli attack on Iran could trigger a major regional conflagration in the Middle East.

"There's little doubt that the $30 billion in US taxpayers money sent to Israel will be used for two things: to maintain Israel's illegal and murderous military occupation of Palestinian lands, and to prepare for a military assault on Iran," said Paul "zool" Zulkowitz, a member of the Green Party's Peace Action Committee (GPAX). "The new military aid for Israel and the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, passed on September 26 with strong bipartisan support, have brought the the US closer to war with Iran."

Greens stressed that White House claims that Iran is assisting Shiite militias in Iraq and plans to produce nuclear weapons for possible use against Israel or western nations have been contested. Iran has denied such intentions; Greens noted that such use would amount to suicide for Iran.

"The Bush Administration, after its deceptive rationales for invading Iraq, should have no credibility on Iran or any other foreign policy," said Justine McCabe, Connecticut Green and co-chair of the party's International Committee. "Unfortunately, Democrats -- especially presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- have signed on to the AIPAC-Neocon-Republican line that an attack on Iran is 'not off the table.' If a global war starts because Bush ordered an attack, it'll be a bipartisan disaster, like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the continuing Middle East crisis."

In one scenario, confirmed by Newsweek, Vice President Cheney considered asking Israel to launch a missile attack either on a nuclear power site in Natanz, Iran, or on an alleged Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear installation in northern Syria, which might result in a retaliatory strike that would motivate a larger US military assault on Iran. Israel has already launched an air strike on the suspected Syrian site in September.

"The Lieberman-Kyl amendment designates Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a 'foreign terrorist organization.' The amendment makes the Iran military a target in President Bush's 'war on terror.' This is a major step towards a military confrontation with Iran, whether the attack comes from the US or Israel or both," said John V. Walsh, delegate from the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party to the Green Party's National Committee.

The Green Party has called for an international effort towards nuclear disarmament of all Middle Eastern and western Asian nations, including Israel and Pakistan, which are known to possess nuclear weapons, as part of a greater global nuclear disarmament project. Greens have called the Bush Administration hypocritical for condemning Iran while expanding US nuclear weapons programs and after removing the US from antinuclear treaties. The party has called for the US to rejoin the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and eliminate American nuclear weapons. Greens have also accused the Bush Administration of squandering pro-US sentiment that exists among many Iranians in its attempt to vilify their country.

The Green Party has sharply criticized both Democrats and Republicans for maintaining support for Israel's six-decades-long violations of civilian human rights and bowing to the demands of AIPAC and certain Christian rightwing lobbies that the US endorse the Israeli government's military ambitions and ethnic policies. (Israel has placed the Gaza Strip under siege and threatens to cut off water and fuel supplies, to punish civilians over rocket attacks launched by militias.)

The Green Party calls for negotiation by both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; a cut-off in US military aid to Israel; and an economic boycott of Israel until the latter recognizes full human rights, including the right of return for Palestinians and abolition of internal apartheid laws. Greens have called for support for Israeli and Palestinian groups seeking peaceful resolution, observance of human rights, and a halt to all violence and coercion directed against civilians.


MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193

Monday, January 5, 2009

Warsaw 1942 Getho Palestine Gaza 2009 must see and do something

Warsaw 1942 Getho Palestine Gaza 2009 must see and do something

The Warsaw Uprising 1944 / Powstanie Warszawskie



The Warsaw Ghetto
"The Warsaw Ghetto"

POLISH MINISTRY OF INFORMATION

PRINTED AS A PRESS BULLETIN





Extermination of the Polish Jewry "What Happened in the Warsaw Ghetto"

London – Tuesday 1st December 1942 – No 57

The Polish Government has recently received from Poland the following on the measures taken by the German authorities to exterminate the population of the ghetto.

The Origin of the Warsaw Ghetto:

The German authorities created the Warsaw ghetto in October 1940. All the Jews in the city were ordered to transfer to the Jewish quarter assigned to them by 1 November 1940, while all the Aryans were ordered to remove elsewhere out of this quarter.

The Jews were allowed to take only personal articles with them, and were forbidden to take their furniture, though in practice this rule was not strictly observed. All the Jewish shops and businesses in the Aryan areas of the city were closed down and sealed.

The original terminal date for the transfer was postponed to 15 November 1940, after which Jews were not allowed to leave the ghetto. But Aryans were allowed to enter without passes down to 25 November 1940. After that the ghetto was completely closed, the entire area was surrounded by a wall and the right of entry and exit was granted only to the holders of passes issued by a special German office.



One entrance to the Warsaw ghetto

Anyone leaving the ghetto without a pass became liable to the death sentence, and the German courts have passed such sentences in a large number of cases. Even after the ghetto was closed a large number of commercial and industrial enterprises owned by Aryans were left within the walls.

All the trading and commercial businesses were transferred outside the walls by the spring of 1941, but Aryan industrial enterprises were left inside and gave employment to both Aryans and Jews.

Life in the Ghetto

After the sealing of the ghetto official intercourse with the outside world was maintained through a special German department, the Transferstelle.

In the spring of 1942 at a period when relations between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw had been systemized, trade between the two parts of the city averaged a sum of 13 groshe daily per head of the ghetto population

At this same period a kilogramme (2 ¼ lbs) of bread cost over ten zlotys and a kilogramme of potatoes some five zlotys. From the earliest days of the ghetto commerce with the outside world was based chiefly on smuggling, which was carried on, on a large scale.

The Germans themselves participated in this violation of their own prescriptions, drawing large incomes from trading profits and bribes. In economic terms this illegal trade consisted of the selling up of Jewish property and possessions in exchange for food.



Jews wait to receive food coupons at a welfare office located at 14 Mranowska St.

The ghetto depended on smuggling for its food supplies, as the amount supplied on the ration cards was much lower even than that allowed to Poles, and was quite inadequate to maintain life.

It amounted to about half a kilogramme of bread per person weekly, and hardly anything to else. As time went on large workshops were organised for Jews to work on German orders. But smuggling remained the chief form of trade with the outside and when it came to an end during the period of “liquidation” of the ghetto the disparity between prices in the Jewish quarter and outside became even greater.

Bread inside the ghetto cost 60 to 85 zlotys a kilogramme, outside it was 8 to 12 zlotys, sugar was 400 to 450 zlotys a kilogramme inside and 35 to 70 zlotys outside, potatoes were 16 to 30 zlotys a kilogramme inside, and 3.50 zlotys outside.

The mortality rate inside the ghetto rose steadily month after month. This was due not only to the terrible need of the people, but to the harsh winters of 1940/41 and 1941/42, epidemics of spotted typhus, typhoid and tuberculosis.

Every day dozens of bodies were found in the streets – in 1941 the mortality amounted to some 13 percent of the total population, and during the first quarter of 1942 it amounted to over 15 percent, per annum. On the other hand, the birth rate fell almost to nothing.

None the less the population of the Warsaw ghetto remained almost stable throughout all the period of its existence. Officially it was about 433,000, but in fact it fell to 370,000. The reason is that more Jews were continually being driven into the ghetto from other countries such as Germany and Holand as well as from various smaller towns and places around Warsaw.

The Strengthening of Anti- Jewish Measures



A Jew stopped by German police in the ghetto

The occupying authorities continually resorted to various forms of terror steadily growing in violence and accounting for dozens of victims inside the ghetto every day, apart from the daily executions carried out beyond its confines.

Armed and uniformed Germans would pour into a house at night, drag out those destined as victims and kill them in the street. Adult Jews found outside the ghetto walls were shot on the spot, while children were drowned in clay pits or thrown into the towns canals.

After the outbreak of war between Germany and the Soviet Union and the German occupation of the Eastern areas of Poland, in July 1941, news began to arrive of mass machine-gunning of Jews in the more easterly towns and local centres.

At first the stories were hardly to be believed, but they were confirmed again and again by eyewitnesses. In the winter and early spring of 1942 these mass murders of tens of thousands of Jews grew more and more systematic.



Burying the dead in the Warsaw Ghetto

Throughout the whole of the Vilno province only one centre of Jewish life was left in the city of Vilno itself, where some 12,000 Jews remained. In the city of Vilno over 50,000 Jews were murdered, in Rowne 14,000 in Lwow 50 percent of the Jewish population, and in Kowel 10,000.

Later similar reports were received from Stanislawow, Tarnopol, Stiryj and dozens of other smaller towns. It became obvious that the terror was moving westward from the eastern borders, while in the extreme west, in Poland’s “incorporated” western provinces, Jews had already been completely eliminated, only specialist craftsmen working for the German army being left, herded in isolated barracks.

New methods of extermination were being applied. The use of poison gas was resorted to for ten thousand people in Chelm. A camp was organised at Belzec for the special purpose of execution by electrocution and here in the course of about a month, in March and April 1942 80,000 Jews from the Lublin, Lwow and part of the Kielce provinces were executed.

Out of Lublin’s 30,000 Jews only 2,500 were left, 70 of these being women. Auxiliary to the main work of extermination the Jews were being deported from the smaller centres of population and concentrated in the larger towns. In the course of these operations alone some 10 percent, lost their lives.

Himmler Orders Extermination

After Himmler’s visit to the General Gouvernment in March 1941, and his order for the extermination of 50 percent, of the Jews by the end of 1942, there could no longer be any doubt that this great mass murder could be halted only by events of great military and political importance.

In the spring of 1942 the news came that a new extermination camp had been opened at Sobibor, in Wlodawa County. It was expected that the work of liquidating the Warsaw ghetto would begin in the middle of April, and then at the end of May.

In June the rumour spread that it had been postponed for a time. But Himmler’s visit to the General Gouvernment in the middle of July 1942 hastened the execution of the plans and intensified their severity as compared with the original design.

Mass Murder under the Guise of Deportation



Notice announcing the death penalty for those who assist Jews who have left the ghetto without authorization

Preliminary to the liquidation, steps were taken aimed at eliminating foreign Jews from the scope of the measures. To this end a registration of all such Jews was carried out on 17 July 1942, and they were then interned in the Pawiak prison.

From Monday, 20 July onward the task of guarding the ghetto bounds was entrusted to strong cordons of junaks, i.e. security battalions consisting of Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians and certain Soviet prisoners of war of these nationalities, as well as of Russian whites.

After this the Polish police performed only auxiliary service at the exit gates. This change also marked the end of the smuggling between the ghetto and the rest of the Warsaw, while the numbers of Jews shot at the boundaries increased.

The Junaks opened fire at windows of houses adjacent to the ghetto walls. Large forces of German police, armed with machine-guns, were also posted at every exit, an SS man being placed in charge of each post.

German police on motor-cycles patrolled the ghetto walls continually day and night. These preparations were watched by ghetto inhabitants with feelings of dread and terror.

On 21 July 1942 at eleven a.m. German police cars drove up to the building of the Jewish Council in Grzybowska Street. The SS officers who arrived in them ordered the Chairman Mr Czerniakow to summon the members of the Council.



German police and SS arrest Jews on Nowolipie Street in the Warsaw ghetto

On their arrival they were all arrested and carried off in police cars to the Pawiak prison. After a short period of detention the majority of them were released. About the same time police cars drove into the ghetto’s streets. Uniformed Germans broke into the houses looking chiefly for members of the Jewish intellectual class, and killing them on the spot, in their homes, not troubling to identify them.

Among those who were thus killed was a non-Jew Professor Raszej, who, armed with an official pass, was visiting the ghetto in the course of his medical duties. At the same time round-ups were made in the streets, these being noteworthy for the fact that only the better-dressed people were detained.

It later transpired that these passers-by who were fortuitously arrested, and also those members of the Jewish Council who were detained, were to be used as hostages.

So the day passed without either Mr Czerniakow or any other member of the Jewish Council, being informed of what it all meant and what was planned.

Next day, 22 July after ten o’clock a.m. police cars again drove up before the Jewish Council building. When those members of the Council who had been released were summoned, a long order on the “trans-settlement of the Jewish population of Warsaw” was dictated to them.

The essential details were given in the placard which was afterwards posted up, the other details concerning the technique of the deportations:

The number to be deported daily was 6,000

These persons were to be assembled in the building of the hospital on Stawki Street, which was to be emptied for the purpose at once. They were then to be taken to the “transhipment” point at Stawki Street, where there were railway sidings used for the ghetto official trade and industries.

The persons subject to deportation were to be handed over by the Jewish civil police every day before 4p.m, the first consignment to be supplied that same day, 22 July 1942 at 11 o’clock. The members of the Jewish Council with the arrested hostages would answer with their heads for the strict fulfilment of this order. At the express German request the first persons to be assembled for deportation that same day were those held in the Jewish prison, shelters etc.

On 23 July 1942, at seven p.m. two uniformed Germans again arrived at the building of the Jewish Council. They demanded to see Mr Czerniakow. Shortly after they had left his office after the interview he committed suicide.

It is not exactly known, what was the subject of their conversation, for Czerniakow said nothing to anybody about it before his death. But, from the notes he left and also a letter to his wife, it appears that he had been ordered to produce not six thousand but ten thousand people for deportation the following day, and thereafter at the rate of 7,000 a day.

After his death Mr Lichtenbaum, an engineer, became Chairman of the Jewish Council.

The Deportation Order



Jews forcibly deported from the Warsaw Ghetto

Next day ten thousand were in fact assembled at the transhipment point, and 7,000 every day after. The quota was made up of people taken from their homes or rounded up in the streets.

In order to encourage the Jewish police to greater activity the Germans obviously showed them favouritism at this stage: for instance, they provided them with safe-conducts stamped with the German police stamp, which freed from deportation not only their families (wives and children) who were excluded from deportation by the order, but other relations also.

As the order of 22 July 1942, excluded from deportation all workers in the large German – owned enterprises, together with their families, there was considerable competition among the inhabitants of the ghetto to obtain work in these enterprises, or rather to obtain certificates stating that they worked there.

Sums running into thousands of zlotys were paid for such certificates, the money, of course, being pocketed by the German owners of the works etc. It later transpired that not only these certificates of employment, but even the safe- conducts given to the Jewish police had no real value, for the Germans did not respect them and, despite their own order, arbitrarily deported anybody and everybody, without regard to their documents.



Jews from the Warsaw ghetto are boarded onto a deportation train at the Umschlagplatz

The actual process of deportation was carried out more and more brutally every day, and after some days the Germans themselves actively engaged in the work, with the aid of the junaks, independently of the Jewish police.

The Germans cordoned off a whole block of houses, entered the courtyard and opened fire. This was intended as a signal for everybody to leave their homes and assemble in the yard.Anyone who failed to get out quickly enough or who tried to hide was killed on the spot. All infirm, old and crippled people were also killed in their homes.

No consideration was shown for families as such, wives were torn away from their husbands, and children, even quite small tots, from their parents.

Mass Murders

To the accompaniment of incessant firing, at the transhipment point the Germans separated any old and infirm who had escaped so far, carried them straight to the Jewish cemetery, and killed them there.

Every day between sixty and a hundred persons were disposed of in this way. The others were packed into goods trucks, 120 people being crushed into trucks with room for forty. The people choked with lack of air, but the tracks were sealed up and the trains set out.

The floors of the trucks were covered with quicklime and chlorine. The route taken by such a train was marked by the bodies alongside the lines. The deportees were carried off to three execution camps at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.

Here the trains were unloaded, the condemned were stripped naked and then killed, probably by poison gas or electrocution. For the purpose of burying the bodies a great bulldozer has been taken to Treblinka, and this machine works without stopping.

The stench of the decomposing bodies has nauseated all the peasants for three miles around and forced them to flight. In addition to Treblinka, there were also camps at Belzec and Sobibor.



A sign in Polish from the Belzec killing center that reads, "Attention! All belongings must be handed in at the counter

It has not been possible to ascertain whether any of those who have been carried off have been left alive. We have information only of extermination. Out of the 250,000 people deported only two small transport trains, four thousand people altogether, were sent to work behind the front line in the Brzesc and Malachowicze direction.

As a rule young and physically healthy people escaped this fate, because of their value as labour power, the main victims being old and infirm and children. All the children in the children’s homes and shelters were carried off.

Among these was an orphans’ home run by Janusz Korczak a well known Polish writer. He refused to leave the children, though he would have been allowed to remain. He and the manageress of the home went with the children to the assembly point.

The deportations have been going on unbrokenly ever since 22 July – every day between three and ten thousand people are carried off. Those who are left convulsively cling to the faint hope that they may escape the fate of those who have gone.

By 1 September some 250,000 people had already been carried off. For the month of September 120,000 ration cards were printed, for October only 40,000.

According to information obtained from the German Labour Bureau (Arbeitsamt) which confirmed the figure as to the number of ration cards prepared for October, only 40,000 skilled workers are to be left in the ghetto, held in barracks, as suitable for German war production.

Meantime, the Germans were taking steps to murder off the Jews of the smaller localities outside Warsaw. These murders took place under the very eyes of the Polish inhabitants, who were shocked to the depths of their souls.

Children were shot, pregnant women were killed, people who attempted to run away and hide were hunted like animals, and hundreds of bodies in the streets, by the wayside, along the railway lines were seen by large numbers of Poles.

The liquidation of the ghettos in the nearby places of Falenica, Rembertow, Nowy Dwor, Kaluszyn and Minsk Mazowiecki was carried out during a break in the work of deporting the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto, from 20 August to 24 August. The deportations from the Warsaw ghetto began again on 25 August.


Jews forced to board trucks for deportation

It is impossible to give a brief review of the steps taken by the Germans to eliminate the Warsaw ghetto- concludes the report received from Poland – without attempting to give people free from the German terror some idea of the scale and intensity of the mass murders which by 1 September 1942, had been committed on some 250,000 Jews, and which are still going on.

Any such attempt to give the people of Great Britain or America some idea of these unprecedented mass murders must begin by appealing to them to believe things that would seem incredible. They must get it clearly in their consciousness that all these things are true, the truth amid which we have to live and die.

The facts which we relate are not specially selected – they are facts of everyday existence in Poland. They are not isolated facts, every one of them can be matched by tens and hundreds of similar facts every day.

Since 22 July last anything from several dozen to several hundred Jews have been murdered every day in Warsaw, by shooting in the streets and houses. These murders are committed every day during round-ups of people who are carried off to be killed. Among the six to ten thousand people rounded up every day, for deportation, between fifty and a hundred old people, cripples, and infirm are taken to the cemetery to be shot and buried.

If anyone has any doubt whether it would be possible to kill off five, six or ten thousand people in one day, they can be convinced by the thousands of witnesses at Otwock, Rembertow, Siedlce, Minsk Mazowiecki, Lomza and many other localities.

People at each of these places have seen anything from two to ten thousand people murdered in the course of a few hours.

That gives some idea of the mass scale of these murders. The brutality with which they are carried out is on the same scale. These people carried off to death have to endure the maximum of suffering. Not less than a hundred people are packed into trucks suitable for forty. The trucks are sealed, the floors are covered with a thick layer of un-slaked lime. Sometimes, in order that the effect of the lime shall be greater, the deportees are ordered to take off their boots and shoes.



A Jewish man walks with three young children alongside a deportation train in the Warsaw ghetto

To inflict further suffering on mothers the children are torn from them. Orphanages are carried off in their entirety. The staffs do not abandon their children. But they can do no more when the moment comes for loading into trucks. The children are loaded into separate trucks, and the staffs are sent off by other trains.

For a German to shoot someone on the spot is regarded as an act of humanity, as is throwing anyone out of a sixth floor window. When one of the murderers throws a mother and her child out of the window on to the stones below, he evidently has a very soft heart. Such incidents are noted by the dozen every day.

Some of the acts of brutality are horrible even amid this horror. A pregnant Jewess escaped from the ghetto, and took shelter in a house in the Grochow district of Warsaw, where she was protected by Poles, and gave birth to the child.

But a German gendarme found her, shot her on the spot, and trampled the newly born infant to death. Must we tell you even more? Surely that is enough to indicate the scale of the cruelty?

As an indication of the scale of despair among the people let us tell you of the suicides. The suicides not only of individuals but of whole families together. By gas or by cyanide.

Every day someone takes poison. Several people, even up to a score, will commit suicide in one hour. To prevent people taking poison the chemists’ shops in the ghetto have all been closed.

Numbers of people have gone mad. Some of the victims implore the junaks to shoot them. But they have to pay for the privilege. The junaks demand fees of a hundred zlotys for shooting.

Annexes To The Report



Report Annex mentioning extermination at Belzec

Extraordinary Report from the Jew – extermination Camp at Belzec 10 July 1942

According to information from a German employed at the extermination camp, it is situated in Belzec, by the station, and is barred off by barriers of barbed wire. Inside the wire, and all round the outside, Ukrainians are on guard.

The executions are carried out in the following fashion:

When a trainload of Jews arrives at the station in Belzec, it is shunted by a side track up to the wire surrounding the place of execution, at which point there is a change in the engine crew and train guards.

From the wire onward the train is serviced by German drivers who take it to the unloading point, where the track ends. After unloading, the men go to a barracks on the right, the women to a barracks situated on the left, where they strip, ostensibly in readiness for a bath.

After they have undressed both groups go to a third barracks where there is an electrified plate, where the executions are carried out. Then the bodies are taken by train to a trench situated outside the wire, and some thirty metres deep. This trench was dug by Jews, who were all executed afterwards.

The Ukrainians on guard are also to be executed when the job is finished. The Ukrainians acting as guards are loaded with money and stolen valuables: they pay 400 zlotys for a litre of vodka, 2,000 zlotys and jewellery for relations with a woman.

Notes:

This is faithful transcript of the document, mistakes have not been corrected.



Sources:



The National Archives KEW

PRO

Holocaust Historical Society

US NARA

USHMM

Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942


Before World War II started on September 1, 1939, there were 375,000 Jews living in Warsaw, as many as in all of France, and more than in the whole country of Czechoslovakia. Only the city of New York had a larger Jewish population than Warsaw.

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A man carries the body of one of three children killed yesterday in Israeli shelling of the northern Gaza Strip's seafront, at the morgue of Beit Lahia hospital 10 June 2006. Hamas ended an 18-month ceasefire today, firing 11 rockets at Israel. A statement by the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' armed wing, said the attacks were in response to the killing of 10 Palestinians, including three young children, by Israeli artillery fire yesterday. Medical sources said five of those killed at the beach were members of the Ghali family from Gaza. AFP PHOTO/ SAMUEL ARANDA

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