remaros

The "Poland has not fully learnt lessons of the Holocaust" bit might be just offhand and inconsiderate, but the part about "responsibility," well, @Ostrov_A, you've got some nerve. Looks like it’s you who’s got some learning to do. First of all, don’t confuse geography with history. The Holocaust happened in Polish lands under German occupation. Taken by force, governed, administrated, policed and exploited by German state agencies. A touch of politics: when a foreign power takes your country you don’t have much say there. A rule of thumb. And when they take control, they take responsibility. And, believe us, they did. The bulk of European Jews were killed in facilities set up and overseen by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Reich Security Main Office, or by the RSHA or Interior Ministry personnel. By the SS, Sicherheitspolizei, Gestapo, Ordnungspolizei and Gendarmerie and other agencies, all of them managed from Berlin. And last time we checked, Berlin was in Germany. The RSHA was assisted by other departments of the German Government, such as the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Ministry of Justice, Foreign Office and Reich Chancellery. And the Deutsche Reichsbahn provided 2,000 trains to take Jews to camps, charging the SS 20 Reichsmarks for adults and 10 Reichsmarks for kids under fifteen. Before the Jews got killed, the SS rented them out like cattle to German civilian administration in the occupied territories, to build roads or regulate rivers, or to companies like Hugo Boss, Thyssen Krupp, Daimler-Benz, BMW, Audi, Bayer, AGFA, Siemens, Dr. Oetker, Zeiss, Bosch, Maggi, BASF and IG Farben, to make them money. No Polish passport holders among their shareholders. Meanwhile, Poland, whose lands were under occupation, had a government in exile, which alerted the world to the Holocaust of Jews, which set up underground departments and relief agencies helping the persecuted, which organized resistance and took out German police personnel, and which forbade its citizens to help the Germans on pain of death. And parallel to the politics and policies of the Polish state, thousands of Poles rescued Jews simply because it was the right thing to do, regardless of the politics and policies of the German state and the death penalty such assistance carried. Many, like the Ulma family, paid with their lives and got the Righteous title. Others, like the Kowalski family from Ciepielów, just paid with their lives. More examples? See here: youtube.com/hashtag/notjustu…). Sure, there were some black sheep who turned against their fellow citizens and participated in the extermination of Jews. Except such betrayal put them in the crosshairs of the Polish Underground State and outside the Polish nation. Don’t confuse these renegades with the whole nation, like you confuse geography with history or the Polish state with German state. For homework, read/watch these: our resources on Poles rescuing Jews in WW2: tinyurl.com/mj7p68j6 website on German camps: en.truthaboutcamps.eu/ website dedicated to the Ulma family: rodzinaulmow.ipn.gov.pl/ule/ short video on history distortion: tinyurl.com/27fmpu33 overview of Poland's situation under German occupation: tinyurl.com/y2fvt65t overview of German-perpetrated Holocaust in occupied Poland: tinyurl.com/3b4hysrk overview of key German camps: tinyurl.com/2jvcxnzd