Polish leaders outraged over FBI head Holocaust remarks

[The Brain]

The Poles are guilty of charging the strange "magic iron carriages" with lances. Which should be enough.

[Monoriu]

I still don't understand why the FBI head would say something like this.  That's like the HK police chief publicly commenting on, say, Rwanda.  The first reaction from the public would be a gigantic "WTF, are you out of your mind?  What does this have to do with me?!?!?!?1".  This will be followed by swift removal and civil service disciplinary action about unnecessarily stirring up international trouble by what is essentially a personal hobby of his that nobody cares about. 

[Valmy]

The I is for incompetent. Granted not sure what a member of the FBI is doing commenting at the Holocaust museum in the first place.

[Razgovory]

I don't think the FBI would get the wrong guy.

Yeah I don't understand why the FBI is involved in this in the first place 

That's because you are thinking that the head of the FBI is the FBI.  He's just a guy who made a speech.    The rest of the bureau isn't involved.

As far as the topic is concerned, this issue (the exceptionalism of German antisemitism and the Holocaust) has been debated in US academia since at least the 1990s.  The two seminal works on the subject are probably Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning, and Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen. 

Browning argues that the people who carried out the Holocaust were, like the subjects of the Milgram Experiement, merely deferring to authority and submitting to peer pressure. He notes that non-Germans also served in these roles, and argues that they did so for similar reasons.  This appears to be Comey's thesis as well.

Goldhagen argues that the Germans participated because of the exceptional nature of German antisemitism, in that German antisemitism didn't seek the suppression of the Jews, but their elimination from German society.  He argues that, while non-Germans participated in the Holocaust, they did so out of fear, not hatred.  The Polish ambassador obviously believes something more along these lines.

I didn't think anyone took Goldhagen's work seriously.

[Razgovory]

I still don't under why the FBI head would say something like this.  That's like the HK police chief publicly commenting on, say, Rwanda.  The first reaction from the public would be a gigantic "WTF, are you out of your mind?  What does this have to do with me?!?!?!?1".  This will be followed by swift removal and civil service disciplinary action about unnecessarily stirring up international trouble by what is essentially a personal hobby of his that nobody cares about.

Well the FBI is still rather concerned about Nazis.  Still shoots them on occasion in fact.  How is the topic of Hong Kong collaboration with Japan received these days?

[Monoriu]

I still don't under why the FBI head would say something like this.  That's like the HK police chief publicly commenting on, say, Rwanda.  The first reaction from the public would be a gigantic "WTF, are you out of your mind?  What does this have to do with me?!?!?!?1".  This will be followed by swift removal and civil service disciplinary action about unnecessarily stirring up international trouble by what is essentially a personal hobby of his that nobody cares about.

Well the FBI is still rather concerned about Nazis.  Still shoots them on occasion in fact.  How is the topic of Hong Kong collaboration with Japan received these days?

Nobody talks about it 

[grumbler]

I still don't understand why the FBI head would say something like this.  That's like the HK police chief publicly commenting on, say, Rwanda.  The first reaction from the public would be a gigantic "WTF, are you out of your mind?  What does this have to do with me?!?!?!?1".  This will be followed by swift removal and civil service disciplinary action about unnecessarily stirring up international trouble by what is essentially a personal hobby of his that nobody cares about.

The head of the FBI is a guy.  He may have an interest in the Holocaust, and may have done some research about it, or whatever.  The Holocaust museum has all kinds of people speaking there.  It is ironic that you would suggest that this is a hobby of his that "nobody cares about" when you are posting about his hobby on a board that has nothing to do with him.  You seem to care.

[Monoriu]

I still don't understand why the FBI head would say something like this.  That's like the HK police chief publicly commenting on, say, Rwanda.  The first reaction from the public would be a gigantic "WTF, are you out of your mind?  What does this have to do with me?!?!?!?1".  This will be followed by swift removal and civil service disciplinary action about unnecessarily stirring up international trouble by what is essentially a personal hobby of his that nobody cares about.

The head of the FBI is a guy.  He may have an interest in the Holocaust, and may have done some research about it, or whatever.  The Holocaust museum has all kinds of people speaking there.  It is ironic that you would suggest that this is a hobby of his that "nobody cares about" when you are posting about his hobby on a board that has nothing to do with him.  You seem to care.

Yes, that's because I am a nerd.  Most people aren't nerds.  The Holocaust would be an obscure topic here. 

[Jaron]

America is run by Jews, so its still a topic of interest here.

[Martinus]

Anne Applebaum strikes back:

FBI director got it wrong on the Holocaust

By Anne Applebaum April 19 at 1:15 PM

The Polish ambassador to Washington has protested, the Polish president has protested, the speaker of the Polish parliament (to whom I am married) has protested — and the U.S. ambassador to Warsaw has apologized profusely. Why? Because James Comey, the director of the FBI, in a speech that was reprinted in The Post arguing for more Holocaust education, demonstrated just how badly he needs it himself.

In two poorly worded sentences, he sounded to Polish readers as if he were repeating the World War II myth that most drives them crazy: Namely, that somehow, those who lived in occupied Eastern Europe shared full responsibility for a German policy. Comey put it like this:

"In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn't do something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do."

There are a number of problems with that pair of weak sentences, starting with the vast difference between Germany and the rest. During the war, Germany had a state policy of exterminating the Jews. This policy involved not "accomplices" but hundreds of bureaucrats, tens of thousands of soldiers, train schedules and plans. Germany also encouraged the creation of collaborationist governments in other countries – Vichy France, for example – some of which used their own police officers to send their Jewish citizens into the German death camps.

Germany also occupied Poland, but there was no Polish "Vichy." During the war, there was no Polish state at all. Indeed, it was the absence of the Polish state that enabled the Germans to create a lawless, violent world, one in which anyone could be arbitrarily murdered, any Jew could be deported — and any Pole who helped a Jew could be shot instantly, along with his entire family. Many were. Millions of others died too – Polish intellectuals, priests and politicians were all Nazi targets.

In the course of the war, most of Poland's infrastructure, industry and architecture were destroyed. In that atmosphere, many people were frightened by or indifferent to the fate of the Jews, and some murdered in order to avoid being murdered. But that doesn't mean that "in their minds" they "didn't do something evil."

Although the circumstances were different, Germany's leading role is equally clear in Hungary. The wartime government of Adm. Miklós Horthy did pass anti-Semitic legislation and did align itself with the Nazis. But the mass murder and deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz began only in March 1944, when that government dissolved and was replaced with a straightforward German occupation. Once the Hungarian state had been dissolved, in other words, Hungary also became a lawless, violent zone where anything was possible.

So no, it is not true, as Comey made it sound, that "murderers and accomplices" in Germany, Poland and Hungary and lots of other places were somehow responsible for the Holocaust. And no, it isn't true that the Holocaust is a story of so many otherwise "good" people who "convinced themselves it was the right thing to do."

On the contrary, it's a story about the power of fear, the danger of lawlessness and the horror that was made possible by a specific form of German state terror in the years between 1939 and 1945 – a terror that convinced many people to do things that they knew were terribly, terribly wrong. If the FBI director wants to take some lessons from Washington's excellent Holocaust museum, that's very admirable. But first he should make sure he's understood what he's seen.

[Tamas]

Yeah comparing Poland where IIRC resistance fighters somewhat got involved with helping Jews and uncovering the death camps and Hungary where there were very sporadic private efforts to help Jews and otherwise a pretty complacent cooperation in robbing Jews blind before and after they were boarded on cattle wagons, is not fair.

On the other hand anti-semitism and general xenophobia is a very nasty thing in Eastern Europe (look at Ukraine in WW2 FFS) and just because Poland had significant portions of its population stand up against it, it shouldn't be excuse enough to pretend its not an integral part of their society like it is for the rest of the region.

[Martinus]

As I said, I am fine with saying that some people in Eastern European countries collaborated with the nazis and aided Holocaust (although, again, one cannot really compare the situation on the indigenuous non-Jewish populace under German occupation in countries like Denmark, France or Belgium with the situation in Poland - they truly were apples and oranges).

My biggest beef is listing Germans in the same breath as Poles and Hungarians.

[grumbler]

I think that, if the intent of Comey was to provide us with the comic relief of watching a bunch of Polish leaders and their wives fall all over themselves trying to be offended by a true statement, he succeeded very well. 

Mentioning Germany in the same sentence as Poland and Hungary and many other places is only offensive to people absolutely determined to be offended.

Applebaum and others seem to forget that there were genocides in other places at other times, and they were not products of "a specific form of German state terror."  The claim that no Poles and Hungarians would have gone along with a genocide absent something about this "specific form" doesn't hold water.  That's not to say that Poland and Hungary were exceptional in this at all.  As Comey notes, it was true of "many other places."

That said, I know a formerly Polish who lived through the Holocaust.  He thought the Ukrainian special police were far more brutal than the German.  The Ukrainian specialty was beating a man to death on the street in front of his wife or, preferably, wife and family. Right after Sabbath services was their favorite time to strike.

Do you really think that these guys had been terrorized into this behavior?

[derspiess]

Three words: Polish Death Camps.

[Martinus]

Three words: Polish Death Camps.

Elaborate.