Re: How Could Szpilman Stay in Poland?

[Alex Jacobowitz <alexbjacobowitz...>]

The general run of American Jews
> have enough trouble ... as it is, without making
> outrageous comparisons to the Germans, whose crimes
> are without parallel. 

If we recognize that France and the French
> includes everything from resistance heroes to Vichy
> scum, then why lump everything about Poland and the
> Poles into one reductive pot? 

Lee, you seem to "fly in" your own "face" with
that comment. If we exclude the extreme cases,
both war criminals and righteous goyim, we´re left
with the overwhelming middle. In Germany,
the "middle" as Goldhagen shows us, was methodically
determined to totally remove the Jews from German
life. And Poles were determined to do the same,
removing the Jews from Polish life, except insofar
as Jews could be used in the liberation of Poland,
and sometimes not even then. Wanna hear the truth
from Poles themselves? Get Eva Hoffman´s book
Shtetl, about the Jews of Bránsk.

By the way, here in Germany, people don´t say
that the "Germans" were responsible for the
savagery, but the "Nazis". If you´re on some
kind of crusade to avoid the Poles being put
on the absolute lowest level, feel free to do it.
But all the sources that I know of say that
basically the Germans - or Nazis - functioned 
well in the destruction of east European Jewry, but
the Poles did it with fervor.

Small graces.

Alex JACOBOWITZ
>   Lee Goldberg

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