JYT: Poland Better Acknowledge Their Role in the Holocaust™

Nationalism is on the rise in Poland, and **** don’t like to see nationalist sentiment among European goyim, be they from the Western side of Europe or the Eastern side.

This past November, 60,000 Polish nationalists marched on Poland’s independence day. In July of last year, Trump’s pro-nationalism speech in Warsaw drew raucous applause. In reaction to this trajectory, Jewish media has been in panic mode.

The Atlantic publishes a piece called “Poland and the Uncontrollable Fury of Europe’s Far Right”. In recent months, Newsweek has issued a steady stream of alarmist pieces such as “Neo-Nazis And Hitler Supporters Thrive With Impunity In Poland, Jewish Leader Says”. Etc.

We can expect much more of this in the wake of Polish lawmakers passing a very significant piece of legislation this past January:

WARSAW (Reuters) – Polish lawmakers approved a bill on Thursday that would impose jail terms for suggesting Poland was complicit in the Holocaust, drawing concern from the United States and outrage from Israel, which denounced “any attempt to challenge historical truth”.

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) says the bill is needed to protect Poland’s reputation and ensure historians recognize that Poles as well as Jews perished under the Nazis. Israeli officials said it criminalizes basic historical facts.

CNN then dutifully publishes “Poland’s Holocaust law should terrify you” and, today, the **** who run the NYT are kvetching. An above-the-fold story, titled “Lessons on the Holocaust, From Warsaw’s No. 35 Tram” by Jacob Mikanowski, begins with the by-now, standard, “My column is precluded from criticism because of Holocaust”, bromide of a preface:

My grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles, the generation who lived through World War II, never visited a concentration camp. Neither have I. To remember the Holocaust, it’s enough to ride the No. 35 tram through Warsaw. On its voyage from north to south, it passes sites of public commemoration, like the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes; the Umschlagplatz, where Jews from the ghetto were herded into railcars for transport to the death camps; and the Pawiak prison, the main holding place for political prisoners during the Nazi occupation…

Cue the slow violins.

What is the point of the article?

The history of the Holocaust in Poland is painful and complex. A new law passed by Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party aims to make it simple. Signed by President Andrzej Duda on Feb. 6, the legislation imposes punishment of up to three years in prison for those who “publicly and against the facts attribute to the Polish nation or the Polish state responsibility or co-responsibility for Nazi crimes committed by the German Third Reich.” In other words, in Poland it may now be illegal to blame Poles for the Holocaust.

The law is a blow to free speech and historical truth alike…

So, when someone takes issue with aspects of the the Holocaust Narrative™, free speech concerns are thrown out the window, and the issue is framed as ‘hate speech’. Dozens of Western countries without First Amendment protections have initiated such laws, with no Jewish organizations protesting this ‘infringement’ upon free speech. One does not find many Jews objecting to, say, Germany’s law against criticism of but when it comes to this Polish law, well that’s a different story.

Since the rapid ascent of the conservative, unabashedly anti-migrant, nationalist, Polish-pride, Law and Justice Party came to power (a party which was only formed in 2001), **** in the media will continue to ply story after story involving framing-narratives of the personal victim, the Forever Oppressed ***.

In the Associated Press, Vanessa Gera has a piece titled “Polish Jews stunned, scared by eruption of anti-Semitism”, as if the intended narrative wasn’t already clear:

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Matylda Jonas-Kowalik has spent most of her 22 years secure in the belief that she would never know the discrimination, persecution or violence that killed or traumatized generations of Polish Jews before her. She once thought the biggest problem that young Jewish Poles like herself faced was finding a Jewish boyfriend or girlfriend in a country dominated by Catholics.

But an eruption of anti-Semitic comments in public debates amid a diplomatic dispute with Israel over a new Holocaust speech law has caused to her to rethink that certainty. Now she and others fear the hostile rhetoric could eventually trigger anti-Semitic violence, and she finds herself thinking constantly about whether she should leave Poland.

“This is my home. I have never lived anywhere else and wanted this to keep being my home,” said Jonas-Kowalik, a Jewish studies major at Warsaw University. “But this makes me very anxious. I don’t know what to expect.”

Poland’s Jewish community is the surviving remnant of a vibrant and diverse Polish- and Yiddish-speaking community that numbered 3.3 million on the eve of the Holocaust.

And, naturally, no context is provided for the following salient comments from prominent native Poles:

Amid Israeli criticism, a prominent Polish right-wing commentator used an offensive slur to refer to Jews. Rather than being punished, he was welcomed on TV programs, including a state television talk show where he and the host made anti-Jewish comments, including jokes about Jews and gas chambers.

The negative comments just kept on coming. A Catholic priest said on state TV that it was hard to like Jews, and his words were then quoted by the ruling party spokeswoman. An adviser to the president said he thought Israel’s negative reaction to the law stemmed from a “feeling of shame at the passivity of the Jews during the Holocaust.”

Commentators have also suggested that opposition to the Holocaust law was a cover for Jews wanting money from Poland, a reference to reparations that international Jewish organizations seek for prewar Jewish property seized by the communists…

The current wave of discrimination comes just weeks before the 50th anniversary of an anti-Semitic campaign orchestrated by Poland’s communist regime in March 1968. That campaign began with rhetoric eerily similar to the things being said today and ended up with 20,000 Jews forced to relinquish their possessions and their Polish citizenship and flee the country.

From the Jewish perspective, any phenomenon under discussion (from ‘free speech’ to Polish nationalism) is invariably framed as: Is it good for the Jews?

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