Talk:The Holocaust in Poland/Archives/2013/November

Title

There is article "Holocaust in Nazi-occupated Lithuania", so this one should be Holocaust in Nazi-occupated Poland, due to fact, there was no such state as independend Poland during WW2. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.6.242.136 (talk) 17:24, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Need for expantion

While most of this article is true, there are some things that need further explaining.

It is a common misconception that occupied Poland was a country of horror where only public executions ever happened. In fact, most people were just trying to live their lives under German rule. Though the German policy towards the people was way harsher than in France or Netherlands, most Poles were by no way heroes. It should be enough to say that the Polish Secret State was quite active in Warsaw and it's suburbs but to make a military action in Cracow they needed to move people from the capital.

While it is literally true that there were never a collaborative quasi-government in the occupied Poland, it was just because the Germans never needed or wanted such a thing. There are at least two known cases where signoficant people from pre-war Poland were tryng to establish such a quasi-government, but their attempts were just ignored by Germans. [I know of one - Studnicki. He was hardly a "significant figure", just a university professor with no political experience or credentials. The Germans if I recall correctly imprisoned him in Buchenwald, so they didn't "just ignore" him - they treated him as a lunatic.Gspaulsson (talk) 21:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)]

Another thing - there were of course several thousand heroes who risked their life to help Jews survive and a similar number of so-called Jew-hunters (Polish people who were searching for hiding Jews and reporting them to Germans for money, their Polish name "szmalcownik" is related to their motives - in Polish slang "szmal" or "szmalec" means "money"). ["Szmal" meaning money is post-war slang. The wartime term came from the same root as "Schmaltz", and meant "grease". There are various theories about the connections.Gspaulsson (talk) 21:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)] But both heroes and Jew-hunters were thousands among millions of Poles who were just unconcerned about their Jewish neighbours getting killed. Many Poles were even openly satisfied about it.

[This whole description is situated within what I call the "rescuer-rescued" paradigm. Genuine rescuers were indeed rare. But a more realistic reading of Jewish experiences in occupied Poland is the "escaper-helper" paradigm, which I introduce in my book Secret City (although that language hadn't yet occurred to me while I wrote it). Jews neither expected to be rescued nor sat around waiting to be rescued: they took active steps to try to survive, including organizing escapes from ghettos, camps and trains (and trying a lot of other ideas that proved to be less successful). Having escaped, they then turned to people (not necessarily Poles - Germans, fellow Jews, Ukrainians, whoever was available) and asked for help if they needed it. By far the largest group of survivors - those who went east in 1939-40 - neither asked for nor needed help. They rescued themselves. When Jews did ask for help, sometimes they were helped,sometimes turned away, sometimes denounced. But the typical survivor story involves survival patched together out of many acts of help and self-help, not one or two grand and heroic acts of rescue.

(Basic definition: rescue involves initiative on the part of the rescuer. Help involves initiative on the part of the Jew. Rescue should lead to survival, or contribute in a large way to survival; help might involve giving directions or lending a bit of money.]

It has always been self-evident that survival involved many acts of help and therefore many helpers (few of them heroic enough to merit recognition as Righteous Gentiles), while a single szmalcownik or gang of szmalcowniks could find dozens of victims. Therefore we have always known (but rarely say) that the number of helpers was some multiple of the number of Jews in hiding, while the number of hunters was some fraction. Therefore there were many more helpers (please note - not rescuers) than hunters. This has often been pointed out, for example by Yithak Zuckerman, who exaggerated considerably when he said that "one swine could betray a hundred Jews, while it took a hundred Poles to save one Jew". And Ringelblum estimated that there were 40-60,000 helpers in Warsaw, while he spoke of szmalcowniks "in their hundreds, if not thousands".

The most quoted and abused passage in my book tried to refine Ringelblum's numbers: I wrote that in Warsaw, 70-90,000 people (please note, people, not necessarily Poles) were involved in helping (please note, not rescuing) Jews in Warsaw, while there were 3,000-4,000 (in the Polish edition I wrote 2,700, which has to be taken as plus or minus) hunters. So I have both more helpers and more hunters than Ringelblum, the main reason for the difference being that he was not in a position to work out how many Jews were in hiding and seriously underestimated).

A much more significant, but rarely-quoted statistic is that 92% of the population was not involved with Jews one way or the other. The 8% or so of the population that helped Jews were not at all representative - they were part of a spontaneously arising underground (my "Secret City"), which like all undergrounds drew in people who were thought to be trustworthy. In the Polish edition, I cite Wieslaw Kielar, who survived Auschwitz because he was able to make contacts with some decent SS guards. He estimates that 8% of the SS guards at Auschwitz were decent. Therefore it is nothing for Poles to be especially proud of, or for Jews to be surprised at, that 8% of the population of Warsaw was also decent.

Probably, of course, there were more decent people than that - but they were never asked to help and thus never drawn into the "Secret City". Conversely, there were undoubtedly many more than 3-4,000 rabid antisemites in Warsaw, but because the Secret City hid its secrets very well, they were unable to penetrate it and do more harm.

Reality is always more complex and nuanced than the polemicists on either side of debates like these are prepared to recognize. Alas, my book is therefore destined to remain misunderstood, particularly by idiots like Kalman Brattman, aka "isurvived.com", who seems to have developed a particular hatred for me. A pox on him, and on Chodakiewicz too, who gives me the kiss of death. You can find some intelligent and perceptive reviews on my website, www.secretcitybook.com.Gspaulsson (talk) 21:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)]

While there were valid military reasons not to help the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in their fight and, above all, not to let the fight spread to other parts of the city, there were virtually no attempt made to let the Ghetto open and enable Jews trapped there, to flee. The only attempt was made by communist Gwardia Ludowa, not recognized by the "official" Secret State.

[The story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising INEVITABLY leaves out the Revisionist ZZW, which contributed 1/3 of the fighters and probably 3/4 of the weapons. The Revisionists already had plans before the war to go to the Yishuv and fight for independence, and so many of them joined the Polish army to get military training, started stockpiling weapons even before the war, and made friends and contacts - not with the GL, but with what ended up being the KB, Korpus Bezpieczenstwa, the internal police force of the AK, and also with members of the syndicalist PAL (Polish People's Army). Cezary Ketling has left a detailed description of ZZW weapons stockpiles in Praga (right-bank Warsaw) and of the tunnel under Muranowska St. that the ZZW built. Being professionally-trained soldiers, they conceived of the uprising as a standard military holding action, with prepared routes of retreat. A group of KB fighters entered the ghetto during the uprising and fought alongside their ZZW allies. Once they had held out as long as they could, the ZZW-KB force retreated through their prepared tunnel (there was also a second tunnel, under Karmelicka) to a safe-house also prepared in advance, ready to fight another day.

That was unfortunately their mistake: they put all their eggs in one basket by hiding together. Their hiding-place was discovered or betrayed, there was a gunfight with the Germans, and all of them perished, leaving few credible witnesses to tell the tale.

Mordechai Anielewicz was NOT "the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising": he was the leader of the ZOB. The leader of ZZW was Pawel Frankel.

The ZZW has been written out of history because ZOB got to write the history. Also I suspect because ZZW was much more professional, realistic, better-armed and better organized than the romantic amateurs of ZOB. To tell the true story would show ZOB up.

OK, that's unnecessarily harsh on ZOB. They just had a different conception of the fight. ZZW thought in military terms, ZOB saw it as a political statement. Undoubtedly, ZOB's uprising was the grander and more historically significant gesture. Still, they ought to give credit where it is due, and stop complaining that "the Poles did nothing to help" (I am extremely allergic to the word "the" in that sentence). The AK did provide ZOB with some weapons and made some symbolic gestures of support. It did quite a bit more for ZZW, which actively sought help and cultivated contacts much sooner. Of course it is also true that ZOB, being left-wing, was mistrusted by the AK leadership, whereas they had no such problems with the right-wing Revisionists.

My biggest rap on ZZW was that they didn't spread around the locations of their tunnels before they left, otherwise more people could have fled. An attempt by the AK to blow a hole in the wall to let people escape was a nice symbolic gesture, but impracticable, as the walls were heavily guarded. In practice, no rescue effort from outside could have succeeded, short of perhaps a Soviet air raid (there were a few on Warsaw around that time).

But in any case, Jews did flee: by my estimate, 13,000 out of the 60,000 left alive after the 1942 Aktion, or about 23%. Once again, they didn't wait around to be rescued, they rescued themselves, and it is silly to fault some average Pole in Mokotow (or some Italian villager who had never met a Jew in his life) because he didn't do anything to rescue Jews. He might help if he was asked, but otherwise what was he supposed to do?

You see how the whole rescuer-rescued paradigm leads to unrealistic expectations and distorted assessments, whereas the escaper-helper paradigm is much truer to the realities both of the Jewish experience and of ordinary human behaviour? Rescuer/rescued ends up pointing the moral finger at people for not being what 99% of human beings have never been - self-sacrificing heroes whose horizon extends beyond their own problems and interests. It also paints a misleading and demeaning picture of Jews as passive victims or as the passive and grateful "rescued". They weren't either: they were active agents of their own (attempted) survival. Gspaulsson (talk) 21:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)].

One can't say that Poles participated, or even appreciated the Holocaust as a rule, but it is a fact, that most of them were trying hard not to think of it and ignore the trains of death.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.210.136.57 (talk • contribs) [The only place in Europe where any attempt was made to disrupt the transports was in Belgium. So far as I know, there was only one such attempt, and since Jews were active in the Belgian underground, I would guess that this was an act of Jewish self-help. I wish I knew more about it. But it does raise the question: Jewish partisans did engage in quite a bit of railway sabotage. Why didn't it seem to cross anyone's mind to try to stop a deportation train?Gspaulsson (talk) 21:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)]

The page should be broken up into sections and is lacking references. Also, the above info is very much relevant and should find its place in the article. Pascal.Tesson 12:25, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the need for sectioning. More refs would be nice, although it does have some even inline references, which is quite good. As for the above info, some of this info may be useful, but some comments of our anon are erroneus or irrelevant.

It is certainly true that most Poles just 'wanted to live through the war'. I see nothing special here, this was certainly true for all people all around the war.

To say that Poles were not heroes is more controversial. Certainly most of them were not - but on the other hand "Polish citizens have the highest amount of Righteous Among The Nations" (and that's also the highest per capita, too).

[Not the highest per capita. The Netherlands had a population of 8.5 million vs. 27 million ethnic Poles. I haven't looked at the stats on the Righteous recently, but it's something like 3,000 Dutch to 5,000 Poles Gspaulsson (talk) 21:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)]

Weakness of Polish Secret State is again debatable. Sure, it was not strong enough to throw the Germans out, but it was probably the second largest resistance organization in Europe (after Yougoslavian YNLA I believe) and could carry out major actions like Warsaw Uprising or the entire Operation Tempest.

It is not true that Germans did not want a Polish collaborative government. Yes, I do believe around '39-40 (?), after Vichy was created, there was a minor Polish politician who approached Germans about the creation of a gov in Paris but was rebuked. I can't recall his name. How 'significant' he was (and who was the other) is a matter of debate, especially for when we can dig out their names. But see Kazimierz Bartel - Germans tried to create a Polish collaborative gov after Barbarossa, but failed. Not that either of this seems very relevant here.

Anon later states that the number of Poles who helped the Jews was equal to those who prayed on them. I would like to have some reference for this, because I do have a reference to the contrary: this has some specific mnumbers about the aftermath of the Ghetto Uprising: "The 27,000 Jews in hiding in Warsaw relied on about 50-60,000 people who provided hiding-places and another 20-30,000 who provided other forms of help; on the other hand, blackmailers, police agents, and other actively anti-Jewish elements numbered perhaps 2-3,000, each striking at two or three victims a month. The active helpers of Jews thus made up seven to nine per cent of the population of Warsaw; the Jews themselves, 2.7 per cent; the hunters, perhaps 0.3 per cent" That would indicate that for every "szmalcownik" we have 20 heroes.

[Ah, the infamous statistics from my book again. I have pointed out the fallacies above: not 20 heroes, but 20 decent people (a few of them deserving to be called heroes), and part of an underground that selected positively for them while excluding the szmalcowniks. The ratio between those actively involved pro and con is not an accurate reflection of the ratio between the potentially pro and con.Gspaulsson (talk) 21:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)]

Last but not least, AK did help in the Ghetto Uprising. From our article on the Ghetto Uprising: Polish units from Armia Krajowa (AK) and Gwardia Ludowa sporadically attacked German sentry units near the ghetto walls and attempted to smuggle weapons and ammunition inside. One Polish unit from AK, namely KB under the command of Henryk Iwański, even fought inside the Ghetto together with ŻZW and then retreated together to the Aryan side. The AK tried twice to blow up the Ghetto Wall, but without much success. I have now referenced this information to this.

--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 16:27, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[Yes, quite so re ZZW and KB, and Iwanski's brother was killed in the action.Gspaulsson (talk) 21:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)]

• Dear Mr. Paulsson, I read your comments with great interest and tend to agree with virtually everything you said. After writing a dozen Wikipedia articles on the subject of Holocaust rescue by the Poles, I’d like to appeal to your remarkable sense of balance and encourage you to try to avoid getting caught up in semantics in this regard. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, rescuer is a person who takes someone out of harm or danger; helper - on the other hand - is a person who contributes to the fulfillment of a need. Rescue (be it your original thought) is a term a lot more appropriate in describing those harboring Jewish fugitives, since rescuing (verb) - means to bring someone out of trouble, even if only temporarily. Your "rescuer-rescued" paradigm therefore, which you refer to in your book Secret City, is best suited for describing the roughly 100,000 Poles involved in such action, and a lot more convincing than escaper-helper paradigm which you introduced later. On a separate note, website "isurvived.com" which you mention is a hate ridden attack page promoting nothing but ethnic strife between our peoples. I think it should be banned from around here also, because it routinely breaks all copyright laws like any other hate site. --Poeticbent talk 17:54, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I was curious to see how a 'hate' site looks like so I took a look at the site that is being mentioned here <isurvived.com>. I see nothing about the Holocaust there, nothing about the Poles, nothing about any hate. The site is about "Your Lifestyle Resource."[sic!]

Keep continuing with this crap. It is very entertaining for many Poles in Chicago.

Marcin —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.76.173.159 (talk) 07:05, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

September 1939 crimes

The Germans murdered hundreds of Jews. Xx236 10:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

German 17th Infantry Division

[1]

Anon's request

I would appreciate some very solid evidence of this apparently rampant anti semitic attitude that has existed in Poland from prior to 1931. thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.215.243.84 (talk • contribs)

prewar population?

Wasn't the prewar population 3.3 million, not 3 million like it says in the article? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.166.34.51 (talk) 21:11, 28 March 2007 (UTC).

Short introduction is needed

I doubt that an average reader understands the context. Even the name doesn't explain, it should be rather Holocaust in Germany occupied Poland.

In fact the current article is rather about Attitude of Poles toward Jews during Holocaust than about the holocaust itself. Xx236 17:28, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

tortured and beaten to death

The majority was burned in a barn.Xx236 (talk) 09:03, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

A few things to keep in mind

The dichotomy between 'Poles' and 'Jews' that this discussion has been relying on is a false one. Some Polish people before the war were Jewish. Most were not. The same was the case in Austria, Germany, etc. As well, some European Jews (like Scholem) were Zionists and identified very strongly with their religious roots; some (including Tuwim and Tarski) were not. Many (like Popper) were internationalists and had no time for nationalisms of any sort. All this is important to bear in mind because the notion that there were somehow two societies in Poland -- a homogenous, Catholic Gentile one and a distinct Jewish one -- is misleading. I had both Jewish and Catholic Poles in my extended family, as well as Armenians, Austrians and so forth. This was very typical in Galicia.

As well, contrary to what is said above, the Nazi occupation *was* brutal. One could be shot where one stood for whistling Chopin or singing a Polish song, for example. Remember that Poles were all slated for extermination so as to make room for the 'better' races. Because the German elites respected Dutch and French culture, nothing that happened in the West compares to the brutality that Poles (whether Jewish, Catholic, or Freethinker) had to endure. Things were clearly the worst for Jewish people. But everyone lived day-to-day, trying to survive. Many didn't make it.

One more thing: please don't let your dislike of modern day Polish conservatism and Catholicism or of Polish antisemitism (which is all reasonable enough) distort your view of history. Read about the Odessa massacre, just to pick a random example. Poles never did anything of that sort. There were no Polish SS battalions. You don't have to like Poles, but don't smear them. It's just not fair. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.44.175.209 (talk) 17:16, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

One million Polish collaborators in the Holocaust

I have revert such a claim. It is highly controversial and per WP:UNDUE as a fringe and controversial theory requires more reliable sources.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:15, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

It is reliably sourced, and it says "seven thousand to about one million". Boodlesthecat ^Meow? 19:17, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Which I expect is a misinterpretation of the original source. Thousands is a number I have seen often in many reliable scholarly estimates; a million - never. The publication you cite (Klaus-Peter Friedrich. Collaboration in a "Land without a Quisling": Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II. Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, (Winter, 2005), pp. 711-746) likely mentions various brackets, but I find it dubious it would assign the same weight to estimates of several thousand and one million as you seem to imply.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:20, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

The direct quote from the article is "Estimates of the number of Polish collaborators vary from seven thousand[197] to about one million.[98] The refs he uses are 197. Lukas, Forgotten Holocaust, p. 117, and 198. Madajczyk, "'Teufelswerk,"' p. 146. If you have sources that dispute this, please share them. Boodlesthecat ^Meow? 19:50, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Update: I've read the article in question. First of all, the lowest estimate (p. 712) is "no collaboration" at all (old Polish historiography, biased but notable enough to be mentioned). Second, p. 715 offers a very useful definition of collaboration (he also comes back to that on p. 743) - note that Friedrich includes the German minority in Poland (who had Polish citizenship) among the "Polish collaborators" (people who claimed such ethnicity would become the Volksdeutsche). Are they Polish or German? Sure, we can claim now 3 millions of Polish collaborators - as long as we don't mention that those "Poles" were the ones who signed a piece of paper claiming they are ethnic Germans, and were supposed to sever any contact with the Polish subhumans... In 1939, before the German invasion, 800,000 people called themselves a German minority. During the war there were about 3 millions declared Volksdeutsche (p. 725). Of course, many of those were still Poles, with poor command of German language. 90% of Volks stayed in Poland after the WWII. Many - but not all - of them committed various crimes against Poles and Polish Jews; they were stigmatized after the war (p. 728), and in extreme cases deported to Germany... do we define them as Polish collaborators or not?

Friedrich notes on p. 715 page: "it is difficult to apply to Poland the concept of collaboration used for Western Europe"..."There was no basis for state collaboration.". Very notably, there is a big difference between collaborating with Nazi Holocaust and collaborating with the Germans (a difference which you seem to skip over in your one sentence short summary). Are we going to include, for example, 200,000 Polish bureaucrats (p. 716) that worked on the lower levels of General Government, for the most part not having anything to do with the Holocaust and just doing various mundane jobs? What about tens of thousands of Baudienst (Polish laborers, p. 720) who in 1939, under German command, restored the infrastructure destroyed in the war and who kept on working on similar tasks later (reaching 45,000 in 1944)? Yes, the Baudiensts built defense installations, dug up mass graves, some of them (although as an exception to the rule, p. 722) even helped round up Jews... but evading conscription and service was punishable by death. The Blue Police numbered 16,000 at its height (p. 722). They participated in rounding up Jews and other crimes, but they were not in command, had no autonomy, were common victim of assassinations by resistance, and even so - contained a high percentage of resistance symphatizers and undercover operatives. On p. 743 he notes that many government officials, policemen and others collaborated both with the Germans (obviously) but also supported the resistance. How do we define such "double collaborators"? On p. 716 and 717 he notes that the number of collaborators diminished in time (after German setbacks, and after people realized their true cruelty and intent).

On p. 744 he indeeds gives the brackets of Polish collaborators for 7,000 (Lukas, Forgotten Holocaust, p. 117) to 1 million (Madajczyk, Teufelswerk, p. 146). The question is, of course, what is their definition of collaborator. Friedrich himself several times stressed the importance of that definition, and the problem of blurry lines. In any case, I have no problem with restoring those estimates (With proper attribution - please look in the article and find out full bibliographical info for the Lukas and Madajczyk works), but in a proper place (stressing the million estimate in lead of various articles is not neutral!), and in proper big picture. For example. I have no problem with the numbers of people tried and executed by the underground courts. But to suggest as you did in your sentence that only 10,000 of the million of equally guilty Polish collaborators were tried is an obvious error.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:13, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Update. There is a good response to Friedrich here: [2] John Connelly, Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 771-781. Crucially, on. p. 778 I would like to draw your attention to the following quote: "The leading expert [on Polish Special Courts, Leszek Gondek] calls the phenomenon of collaboration marginal." Next, Connelly writes: "I do not believe that KPF valuable piece gives us reasons to abandon the existing views of Polish collaboration. His case study shows that only relatively small percentage of Polish population engaged in activities that may be described as collaboration when seen against the backdrop of European and world history."--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 02:46, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Belated reply (didn't see this until now). Connelly has a different view than Friedrich (who he cites as having made an "invaluable contribution" to the literature). However, our article is not quoting Friedrich's views, it is citing a range that Friedrich cites in his article. Nowhere does Connelly comment on or dispute this citation. And our article does not, as you claim, suggest "that only 10,000 of the million of equally guilty Polish collaborators were tried" because we cite a range of estimates given by Friedrich (6,000-1 million). We clearly do not say there were one million collaborators. It's clearly stated as the upper value of a range and clearly cited. It would be preferable, though, to make the estimate of collaborators and the figures of tried and executed seperate sentences for further clarity. Boodlesthecat ^Meow? 20:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem with us citing the number of million as the upper bracket, as long as we keep the equally well referenced qualifications from Connelly ("the phenomenon of collaboration [was] marginal", "only relatively small percentage of Polish population engaged in activities that may be described as collaboration") which puts the numbers in perspective. Further, I still insist that we should do a survey of other sources and determine what's the most popular 'average' estimate.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:45, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem adding additional reliable sources that put forth other estimates, I was clearly objecting to outright removal of the figures given by Friedrich. I doubt if we will find a "most popular 'average' estimate", and probably will have to cite a few reliable sources and their estimates. Boodlesthecat ^Meow? 18:05, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

That's fine. Are we ready to unprotect the article? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:57, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

It's okay with me. My objection was the replacement of the range with the single estimate. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 02:51, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Flame war or what?

Naturally, I have reverted the mind-boggling blanket revert as of 04:26, 31 July 2008 by Malik Shabazz with his puzzling explanation as follows: "Undid revision 228933025 by Poeticbent. Lukas was already being cited as a lowball figure; also, see WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE)

Please keep your cool Malik Shabazz. If you have a beef against Lukas than give me something to read. Otherwise the actual data comes from the best possible and widely respected source which is the Israeli War Crimes Commission? There's nothing "fringe" or "undue" about that. --Poeticbent talk 17:40, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Please keep your own counsel, assume good faith, and stop referring to other editors' changes as "mind-boggling" and a "flame war". You're making an obvious attempt to pass off Lukas's research — which he acknowledges is outside the mainstream (i.e., fringe) — as if it were gospel truth.

Lukas was already cited, together with other reliable sources — which you deleted. I'm sorry, but you can't throw aside the sources whose numbers you don't like in order to advance your POV. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 18:35, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I have no objection to acknowledging those Poles who aided Jews during the Holocaust if this means adding notable views from reliable sources. But we should not delete material on Polish colaboration with Nazis when it occured. Also, when there is a range of estimates we should provide the range and not pick one particular estimate. Commissions, courts, and professional historians all use a variety of methods for reconstructing events from the mass of data and in this situation there are a number of notable estimates, not one authoritative view. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:35, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry but these now twice repeated blanket reverts of data originating from the Israeli War Crimes Commission coupled with your fantastic claims and mysterious sources that cannot be confirmed online (refered to as "reliable") are all a clear indication of your joint unwillingness to foster the quality of information expected of Wikipedia. There's nothing more I can say. --Poeticbent talk 20:02, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

What is so "fantastic" or "mysterious" about this source:

Klaus-Peter Friedrich. Collaboration in a "Land without a Quisling": Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II. Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, (Winter, 2005), pp. 711-746. Friedrich cites Richard C. Lukas, Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944 for the lower figure and Czeslaw Madajczyk, "'Teufelswerk': Die nationalsozialistische Besatzungspolitik in Polen," in Eva Rommerskirchen, ed., Deutsche und Polen 1945-1995: Anndherungen-Zbliienia (Diisseldorf, 1996) for the one million figure.

As I wrote, it cites Lukas as the low end of a range of estimates.

Every reliable source doesn't have to be accessible by Google. Anybody with access to a good university library or a subscription to JSTOR can find the article. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 20:33, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Does the author write about ethnic Poles or all Polish citizens regardles of ethnic background ? --Molobo (talk) 22:18, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

The author uses the same phrase used in the article, "Polish collaborators". — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 22:23, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

So he doesn't specify it means all Polish citizens regardless of ethnic background or just ethnic Poles ? --Molobo (talk) 22:25, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

• Shall we invite Mr Ernst Zundel to settle our differences or are you already overlooking our discussion sir? And, how many millions of collaborators would you like us to get through around here, sir? Just one? I think number three has a better ring to it. And, how about the so called biblical seven? I think seven million sounds best. What do you say? --Poeticbent talk 16:45, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Poeticbent, please make an effort to follow the Wikipedia Talk page guidelines and use this page for discussing improvements to the article. Using the talk page to post hostile rants containing aggressive and offensive ethnic-based innuendo is a destructive, rather than constructive approach to fostering cooperative editing. Thank you. Boodlesthecat ^Meow? 02:21, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

You want to discuss improvements to this article? Than tell me please, why weren’t you the first to notice that there’s something terribly wrong with these numbers restricted from public access and never again mentioned by any respectable formal authority on the subject. Instead, you engaged in your usual edit warring. But, regardless of the nature of your inquiry, these preposterous claims from JSTOR are deplorable even for a layman like myself. – If there were one million collaborators in a country of around twenty million, one collaborator for every twenty citizens of Poland: men, women and children, than who were they for goodness' sake? Klingon, Ferengi, Romulan, or maybe Species 8472? There must have been at least one in every extended Polish or Jewish family (from Warsaw to Szczebrzeszyn), one in every dugout, one in every attic, one in every AK unit, ten of them in Dr Korczak’s orphanage (statistically speaking). What an amazing NSDAP paradise. Did they all speak German on top of their mother tongue? Or, perhaps squeal silently by pointing fingers at each other under the cover of darkness? – Let's be serious. The only estimate fit to be used in this article is the one originating from the Israeli War Crimes Commission; or, let's not mention any numbers at all in the name of peace. --Poeticbent talk 17:33, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

These "preposterous claims from JSTOR" from not from JSTOR, they are from a reliable source carried by JSTOR. I assume that when you read something you disagree with in a book, you do not hold your local bookdealer responsible. In any case, if you have reliable sources to add that dispute or add additional context, background or other useful information, please feel free to add it. But disputing a reliable source simply because you don't like it is not enough. Boodlesthecat ^Meow? 17:46, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Information is lacking in the article

The article lacks info on Jewish patricipation and collaboration:

• Group 13
• Żagiew
• Abraham_Gancwajch
• Jewish_Police_(Holocaust)

--Molobo (talk) 22:23, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Wrong timing to protect the article

Wrong timing, because the source [Ref 8] shoudn't be included into the Wikipedia historical article in the first time and then protected yet. Such sources are most reliable when coming from the original records - in this case from German records which are known to be most detailed and precise going back centuries ago - especially, if someone wants to establish how many collaborators were active during WWII Poland. It's beside me why the so called German historian - Klaus-Peter Friedrich - who has obviously an easy access to the Berlin Hall of Records, has neglected this and estimated his number on communist press. We don't have access to the supplied reference but we have access to his other findings also concerning the Holocaust in Poland, just see here to get an idea on which sources this guy depends. Besides, such a divergence in estimating the correct number of collaborators - three magnitudes higher than found by more scholarly sources sounds exactly as it is: an original research by someone looking for holes where there are none. It's like trying to prove the Holocaust never happened supplying the notable sources from say Iran, just in reverse. Or like someone tried to prove there were between 20 and 20 million acknowledged American spies in the USSR 1950's only, the research based on CIA files (lower number) and on Lyublyanka interrogation transcripts (higher number). greg park avenue (talk) 15:20, 1 August 2008 (UTC) Do you want us to read the original article? It's included in a C.E.O.L. database, so a hint would be useful how to get there. The article is about the Communist propaganda rather than about the Holocaust, so I don't understand your comment. The author publishes in Jewish Quaterly in Poland, so he seems to be a historian. Xx236 (talk) 13:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Rewriting

This article needs a rewrite, it reads like "tit for tat" between "Poles helped Jews" and "Poles did not help the Jews", with way too little content on the Nazi organized Holocaust proper - or suffering of the Polish Jewry.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:07, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Partially done - the content is now structured logically - but we are missing much info on the fate of the Jews (how they lived, how they died...).--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:45, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

As of now, the article is still so poorly written as a result of edit wars and random copy-paste jobs that I can no longer use is as an internal link for my projects. I fact I’ve been carefully avoiding linking anything to it for fear of spoiling the rest. Are there any objections to improving it further? For example, I’d like to know if I could rewrite it per wp:mos for encyclopedic style and general cohesion, without being reverted and wasting my time? Naturally, I would not be deleting anything of importance, but rather simply making sense of it as a whole. --Poeticbent talk 16:07, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Quoting or mentioning of unreliable sources like Gross are not helping you. You are also forgetting about so called Polish hostages - which were people for comunities for ex. willages taken hostage by SS or Gestapo to ensure certain reaction from people. Plus if you go to the list of the richeous among ... you will see the number of Polish richeous and you will be able to compare that to numbers from other countries if you are so willing to slender Poles lets' hear what you want to say about Germans French Czech or Slovacs--12.198.27.100 (talk) 00:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Name

Almost all articles in Category:Holocaust by country follow similar naming guidelines. This is one of the exceptions, and should be moved to Holocaust in Lithuania. Comments? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:03, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Name POV

Current misleading name is simply way to asses these crimes as committed by Poles in Poland in Polish concentration camps. Since 1939 to 1945 there was no Polish state and proper name should be Holocaust in occupied Poland or better Holocaust in German Nazi-occupied Poland. Mathiasrex (talk) 07:37, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

The name is typical of other Holocaust articles, including The Holocaust in Belarus, The Holocaust in Estonia, The Holocaust in Latvia, The Holocaust in Lithuania, The Holocaust in Norway, The Holocaust in Russia, and The Holocaust in Ukraine. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 16:48, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

But 90% Jewish victims of Holocaust were exterminated in German Nazi camps in Poland. Question is very important because contemporary media frequently making a mistake naming these camps Polish death camps or Polish Nazi death camps. Mathiasrex (talk) 17:33, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Malik Shabazz, keep it in line with the other names but be clear within the article who was occupying Poland and who executed the Holocaust in Poland.--Jacurek (talk) 20:10, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I truly sympathize with Mathiasrex's concerns, quite aware of the fact that there was no independent Polish state between 1939 and 1945. However, we ought to follow the Wikipedia policy guidelines with regard the once established naming conventions. In search for example, there's a prevalence of choices:

• about 14,100 for "The Holocaust in Poland" (minus) -wikipedia.
• 19 for "Holocaust in occupied Poland" (minus) -wikipedia.
• 2 (two!) for "Holocaust in German Nazi-occupied Poland" (minus) -wikipedia.

Our naming conventions notwithstanding, the above results – indicating preference among scholars – are quite overwhelming by themselves. Basically there's no contest, so I took the liberty of removing the NPOV flag from the article. I hope you understand. --Poeticbent talk 15:34, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. There is a question where do we draw the line between simplicity in titles and attempts to erase potential confusion of the readers, further influenced sometimes by some national biases and POVs. I don't think that there is a need to add "Nazi-occupied" or even "occupied" to most articles dealing with Polish history in 1939-1945, this is why we have history of Poland (1939-1945) and not "history of Poland occupied by Nazis and Soviet (1939-1945)". I think the clarification is needed only in exceptional cases, such as the issue of "Polish concentration camps".--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:33, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Good Article

Thanks to Poeticbent, the article has drastically improved over the past few weeks. I wonder if we should submit it to WP:GAC? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:36, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Article is POV

I'm not saying it's horrendous, but it's far from actually neutral. Right now it largely reads like a Polish apologist's account of what went on. Facts are cited or omitted in many cases based on what makes Poles look good. E.g. claiming that Poles form the majority of righteous gentiles. Poland started WW2 with more Jews than any other country by a large margin, and of course more Jews were deported there. Hence Poles would have far more likelihood to have a chance of being Righteous Gentiles than others. Then following up with the 1% to 10% figure, as though it is actually accepted fact: it is not, it is the opinion of one academic and one journal article. This in turn makes it look like Yad Vashem has something out for Poles.

The job of the encyclopedia is to report the consensus and disagreement of scholarship in a field in a neutral way. Given that such a huge chunk of scholarship (i.e. the chunk that believes that the Poles were fairly complicit in the Holocaust) is being underrepresented, I wouldn't call it neutral.

The article also gives Poland quite a bit of a whitewash in related events before and after the actual Holocaust. Anti-semitism in Poland had a long and venerable tradition long before the Holocaust and this is highly understated. What's more, Polish reactions in Holocaust historicity have been pretty atrocious since then as well. I could cite specific examples, but I'm sure you can find them on your own quite easily.

Nirf (talk) 22:27, 14 November 2010 (UTC) Nir

Have to agree with these comments, unfortunately. It's two years later and problems persist. Just one example, concerning the reaction of Polish Catholic church to the Kielce pogrom:

The massacre in Kielce was condemned by a public announcement sent by the diocese in Kielce to all churches. The letter denounced the pogrom and "stressed that the most important Catholic values were the love of fellow human beings and respect for human life. It also alluded to the demoralizing effect of anti-Jewish violence, since the crime was committed in the presence of youth and children." Priests read it without comments during Mass, "[h]inting that the pogrom might have in fact been a political provocation."[90][91]

This is all our article says, presenting the Polish church's response in the best possible light. In reality the church response was much more mixed. In the very same reference (!) used to support the above statement, it is stated that (in a press conference after the pogrom, the head of Polish church): "Hlond did not condemn the pogrom or call on Poles to desist from killing Jews".

In other words, whoever wrote the above sentences selectively read the reference to use only the part which puts the Polish church's reaction in a very favourable light, and ignored the rest. JustSomePics (talk) 21:46, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Jewish Collaborators

One should also mention, in this article, large number of Jewish Collaborators in Poland, Germany and other countries - at all levels. Hasidic Jews had the greatest disadvantage - they were not able easily to change appearance and largest number of them lived in Poland. Hasidic Jews are to this day discriminated against by Non-Hasidic Jews - (from personal experience.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.33.131.98 (talk) 23:37, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Copyrights

Some words of adice. Please do not lift paragraphs from copyrighted originals. Use your own words, or put the copy-pasted text in quotation marks (if it's not too much, and still comprehensible). And do not play around with important parts of wp:rs material stable for years, and free of infringment. Sideline commentary may vary from author to author, as it usually does, so let's draw attention to the facts. No need for excess verbosity. Thanks, Poeticbent talk 00:21, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I did put in some quotes to make absolutely sure I presented the author's research accurately, but I am perfectly fine with paraphrasing, if other editors involved here are.

As for "article being stable for years", unlike you I see this as a major problem, not a plus. For some reason, maybe the tone of this talk page, editors seem to have been scared away from contributing to this important topic. Hence the article is stale and out of date, and does not present the latest research. Thus the most cited reference is Paulsson's paper from 1998. A lot of groundbreaking research has happened in the 15 years since then, and some of Paulsson's conclusions have been invalidated. Specifically, Paulsson did his research using statistics from Warsaw, but these cannot just be extrapolated and applied to the Polish countryside. Polish historians investigating provincial archives are thus presenting a rather different picture of chances of Jewish survival there (much lower than they were in Warsaw) and of Polish involvement in the killings of Jews (much more widespread than previously believed).

I plan to continue updating the article with more up to date references during the next few months, as my time permits. JustSomePics (talk) 16:11, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Article Still Lacks NPOV

Please discuss the fact that virtually the entire article helps present the viewpoint that the Poles did not collaborate at all in the Holocaust, and in fact helped Jews where possible. I brought up this issue three years ago, and even gave an example of selective presentation of facts to present one viewpoint. The only person who responded to my post agreed with me, and gave another (excellent) example. Therefore I can only conclude that nobody believes this article is NPOV. If nobody responds to my post within the next few weeks I'll add the link indicating problems with the neutrality of the article.

Thanks, Nirf (talk) 20:17, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

What do you want from us, Nirf? I'd rather you bring in some third-party reliable sources first, in support of your wp:soapbox. Three years ago you said Poles were responsible for the Holocaust. Anything new out there? Poeticbent talk 21:01, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Exaggerating my previous statements is not the way to start a civil debate on this article, Poeticbent. I'm sure you are aware of the difference between "complicit" and "responsible". In any case, as I already said, there are two examples just above in the talk page that have never been addressed. You can start by addressing those. Fundamentally though, as I said, entire large swathes of the article read like somebody trying to convince you that the Poles are the good guys. That is not the job of this article. Some scholars, like Jan T. Gross, would give you a very different general picture of what went on. The Holocaust survivor that I spoke to for 3 hours last week did as well. The article should stick to presenting the basic facts and outline of what happened. It should note that there were some Poles who helped, and some that harmed, and that various scholars disagree about the extent of those two populations. Opinions should be in quotes or paraphrased and attributed to scholars, and scholars who present different viewpoints should be presented. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nirf (talk • contribs) 21:13, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to add (as nobody is responding to my comments, but doubtless there will be a howl when I put the NPOV tag on), that to give some specific sources, the general characterization of the situation given in the second paragraph is completely at odds with what you'll find at other major reputable sites. For instance the Yad Vashem exhibit at Auschwitz characterizes the number of people willing to help Jews as "very few". The Berlin Holocaust memorial notes the active cooperation of regular Polish police at some of the extermination sites. Research by Barbara Engelking, to give another example, documented thousands of cases where Jews fleeing in the countryside were betrayed by Poles. By itself, these numbers are the same order of magnitude as the Polish Righteous Among Nations. In summary, and to re-emphasize: Wikipedia is presenting something as a consensus view which is not in fact consensus. If this article was written about Denmark, it would be uncontroversial, but it's not, it's about Poland. Whatever the personal views of people responsible for this page, there is a legitimate, mainstream scholarly viewpoint that is being completely ignored. Nirf (talk) 17:43, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

You are welcome to improve this article - please go ahead. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 20:19, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

What research by Engelking are you specifically referring to? She's written a lot about the subject.Volunteer Marek 22:21, 24 June 2013 (UTC)