Polish leaders outraged over FBI head Holocaust remarks

[derspiess]

Three words: Polish Death Camps.

Elaborate.

[Martinus]

Ok but what exactly is your point?

[derspiess]

To make a topical swipe at Obama, of course.

[grumbler]

Poland cannot into "Thanks, Obama!"?

[Martinus]

To make a topical swipe at Obama, of course.

Well, your post(s) could be interpreted at least in three ways:

"Obama's administration insults Poles again, like with the 'Polish death camps'".
"Poles are insulted over stupid shit again, like with the 'Polish death camps'".
"Poles should not be insulted about being called accomplices of nazis. After all, there were Polish death camps."

Admittedly, the third option is least likely, but still this is Languish, so I needed clarification.

[derspiess]

Option 1.  Polish complicity or non-complicity in the holocaust is a topic worthy of discussion, but Poles are right to take offense at an SS concentration camp being called a Polish Death Camp.  Now Poles shouldn't lose too much sleep over it since Obama misspoke and I'm sure he wasn't laying blame on Poles, but it's not something that should have gone unadressed.

[Martinus]

Option 1.  Polish complicity or non-complicity in the holocaust is a topic worthy of discussion, but Poles are right to take offense at an SS concentration camp being called a Polish Death Camp.  Now Poles shouldn't lose too much sleep over it since Obama misspoke and I'm sure he wasn't laying blame on Poles, but it's not something that should have gone unadressed.

I think this is not really helping people (like me) who believe we should discuss openly Polish role in Holocaust and generally support movies like "Ida". Misspeaks like this help the antisemitic side in the Polish discourse, which claims that the whole Poles-blaming is a "Jewish plot" etc. - they can easily point to stuff like this and claim that this is already happening and the "Holocaust side" is rewriting history.

[Admiral Yi]

Does anyone know if Poles were frequently used as camp guards?  I've heard a lot about Ukrainians (and of course all the commandants were Austrians), not so much other nationalities.

[Martinus]

Does anyone know if Poles were frequently used as camp guards?  I've heard a lot about Ukrainians (and of course all the commandants were Austrians), not so much other nationalities.

No clue, really. Wikipedia claims there weren't any, but we all know it is not a reliable source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Poland

I wouldn't be surprised if there were some - but then, as I said before, many prisoners were actually of Polish etnicity so maybe Poles were not seen as trustworthy.

[dps]

Does anyone know if Poles were frequently used as camp guards?  I've heard a lot about Ukrainians (and of course all the commandants were Austrians), not so much other nationalities.

Define "Poles" in this context.  Parts of Poland were directly annexed into the Reich, and the former citizens of Poland living in those areas would have been considered German citizens even if of Polish ethnicity, so it's possible some of them did (though I have some doubts).  Poles living in the area under the Government General I wouldn't think did.  And some of the Ukrainians who were camp guards might have been pre-war citizens of Poland rather than the Soviet Union.

In other words, I don't really know.

[Valmy]

Define "Poles" in this context.  Parts of Poland were directly annexed into the Reich, and the former citizens of Poland living in those areas would have been considered German citizens even if of Polish ethnicity, so it's possible some of them did (though I have some doubts).

Well this was actually kind of a messy thing. IIRC there were two political entities formed from annexed Poland. The governors were told to 'Germanize' their province. One decided to just declare everybody who lived there to be German. The other decided to engage in a brutal regime of ethnic cleansing.

So yeah it would require some research to find out because, according to the Reich, all those Poles were Germans.

[derspiess]

Well this was actually kind of a messy thing. IIRC there were two political entities formed from annexed Poland. The governors were told to 'Germanize' their province. One decided to just declare everybody who lived there to be German.

I read an article a while back that said the German authorities were puzzled when people resisted this in parts of Poland and other areas like Slovenia.  I guess they asssumed that people there would be honored to have the opportunity to become German.  I mean, it should be pretty easy to get people to ditch their own language and ethnicity, right?

[Martinus]

Define "Poles" in this context.  Parts of Poland were directly annexed into the Reich, and the former citizens of Poland living in those areas would have been considered German citizens even if of Polish ethnicity, so it's possible some of them did (though I have some doubts).

Well this was actually kind of a messy thing. IIRC there were two political entities formed from annexed Poland. The governors were told to 'Germanize' their province. One decided to just declare everybody who lived there to be German. The other decided to engage in a brutal regime of ethnic cleansing.

So yeah it would require some research to find out because, according to the Reich, all those Poles were Germans.

I don't think this was just based on the decision by the governors, though.

Pre-war Poland had a very large German minority living within its borders, especially in Silesia, but also Wielkopolska and Kaszubia, and even those living in these areas who were not ethnicly German felt distinct enough from ethnic Poles (the latter is especially true for Silesians and Kaszubians who always were more of "distant cousins" for more "mainstream Poles".

German racist ideology also looked at these groups differently, with the likes of Silesians being treated as "mutt Germans" (similar to the way, say, Balts were treated), while Poles being treated as Slavs and thus a slave race.

The areas you mention were delineated in a way taking into account these distinctions (with the "General Governorship" being populated mainly by ethnic Poles and other subhumans).

The Wehrmacht conscripts that were also mentioned before were mainly taken from the ethnic Germans or Silesians/Kaszubians as well.

So this was not an accident but more of a design, really.

[Admiral Yi]

Were those guys embraced back into the fold after the war, or raped and sent west?

[Valmy]

My impression was that the orders to the governors were very vague by design and it was left up to the governor to decide what he thought would most please Hitler.