tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post2948639698723266301..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Our Wayward and Flickering Existence: Notes Toward an Infinite Regress HistoricismCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-49610620357116086152011-01-03T15:13:18.016-05:002011-01-03T15:13:18.016-05:00Dear Jan: with all due respect, this is my last co...Dear Jan: with all due respect, this is my last comment to you. I have added a clarification/correction in the weblog post itself [highlighted in red], but I cannot change the actual text because I was quoting something already published in 2001: my PhD dissertation. To do so now would be unethical. I'm not interested in discussing the Holocaust or issues of anti-Semitism with you as you are clearly a bully.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-71880580920208093922011-01-03T14:01:51.711-05:002011-01-03T14:01:51.711-05:00Dear Eileen,
If you really agree then why not ch...Dear Eileen,<br /> <br />If you really agree then why not change the wording or at least put a clarification next to the text as our discussion is in the comment section hence unseen.<br /> <br />Further could you please explain why you raised Polish anti-Semitism in response to Jim's reasonable request to change the wording? How does this differ to anti-Semites who when challenged raising points about Jews to justify their words?<br /> <br />If you have read up on this topic why did you recommend the book neighbours? Which parts do you supports when most of the information in it is wrong or misleading?<br /> <br />Agreeing means nothing unless you change the wording.Jan Niechwiadowicznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-69230265257889048022011-01-02T14:51:53.879-05:002011-01-02T14:51:53.879-05:00Dear Jan: for the third time, I AGREE with you abo...Dear Jan: for the third time, I AGREE with you about the phrase "Polish death camps" and, OF COURSE, the better phrase would be something like "Nazi-run death camps in occupied Poland." As a professor of medieval history and culture, I worry about faulty historical memory all of the time. You're preaching to the choir.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-47620851529057849812011-01-01T14:49:25.387-05:002011-01-01T14:49:25.387-05:001. Regarding the incorrect wording in your blog:
...1. Regarding the incorrect wording in your blog:<br /><br />What if I called Kielce a Jewish massacre? When challenged, I explain this to mean a massacre of Jews rather than run by Jews. Then instead of letting it go, I talk about Jews collaborating with the Soviets, what would happen? I would rightly be called an anti-Semite. This is because a minority defend what Poles did to Jews by making claims about the Jewish role in the Soviet occupation. It is dishonest to use the role played by some Jews (or anything for that matter) to justify what happen at Kielce. What makes that any different to the way you raised the role played by Poles when the discussing what to call the German death camps? There is none. Anti-Semites use the role of Jews to justify their actions just as those spreading anti-Polish sentiment use the role of Poles to justify theirs incorrect wording.<br /><br />You should have simply acknowledged that you got it wrong. Polish anti-Semitism has nothing to do with the death camps. By linking the two, you use the same tactics as the Nazi supporters who wish to shift the blame onto Poles for the holocaust.<br /><br />The tactics you are using have been condemned by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, Imperial War Museum (Toronto), United States Holocaust memorial Museum, American Jewish Committee, ADL, Yad Vashem, Australia Society of Polish Jews and Their Descendants, Israel government, International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Jewish community in Poland, World Jewish Congress, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Australian Press Board, Australian Press Board, Ontario Press Council, Labour Friends of Poland, OSCE, Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada (Montreal Chapter), the United Nations, (Minister of Foreign Affairs Republic of Poland, Polish American Awareness Foundation, Institute of National Remembrance, Polish American Congress and Federation of Poles in Great Britain.<br /><br />Your blog still spreads the lie which if disagrees then take it up with the above. This is not a Pole playing games as we are supported by the Jewish world. If for some strange reason you want the original text to appear then why not put a clarification next to it? If you won’t then your prejudice is clear. <br /><br />Prejudice is wrong and your blog contains it. Correct your blog or be a bigotry the choice is yours.<br /><br />2. About the book Neighbours<br /><br />Do you really believe Jan T. Gross version of the massacre at Jedwabne? E.g. are really going to claim 1,600 Jews were murdered? The truth as you say is not black and white but you act like the Gross version is the truth when anyone who has study this topic knows his version is wrong but with a some grains of truth. Directing people to his work rather than the more correct versions shows yet more bias against Poles.<br /><br />3. What do people know<br /><br />If you have studied this topic then you should be aware that people don’t know the truth any more. Here in the UK one in 6 youngsters said Auschwitz was a Second World War theme park while 1 in 20 said the Holocaust was a celebration at the end of the war. Not that the adults did any better with almost a quarter believing Churchill is a myth.Jan Niechwiadowicznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-16389667001538918302010-12-31T16:12:44.767-05:002010-12-31T16:12:44.767-05:00Dear Jan,
as someone who has spent many years stu...Dear Jan,<br /><br />as someone who has spent many years studying the Holocaust and the post WWII debates surrounding the historiography of that event, your comments here are nothing less than a character assassination which is in no way grounded on facts. I agreed, in my very first response in the comments thread here that I never meant to imply that the camps in Poland were anything but Nazi-founded, Nazi-executed, and Nazi-run camps located in an occupied Poland. I think you want to leap over what I am truly trying to say here about the difficulties of "remembering" traumatic and personal histories in order to keep hitting me with some kind of big stick. The actual history of conflicts in Europe in the early part of the 20th century is a highly complex one. This is a weblog, to which we invite comments everyday. I cannot undo my original phrase because that would constitute an unethical erasure of what I said in the first place. I can, however, correct the phrase in my comments, as I have now done twice. If there is something more than semantics to be argued here, please let me know, because I maintain my larger point: history is never black and white and the blame for anti-Semitic activities before, during, and after the war, and in many countries, extends beyond the Nazis. The Nazis were, for definite worse, the greatest and most technologically efficient and devastating perpetrators of a particular genocide at a particular point in time. They do not however hold the sole lease on violence against others who we deem as too "different" from "us," whoever "us" might be at any given time: in my own distant and closer history, that includes the medieval Crusades as well as violence against American blacks during the period of slavery but also during the Civil Rights era, as well as the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the ongoing genocide in Darfur, etc.<br /><br />I have never been a bigot in my life and all of my scholarship works against bigotry in favor of a more broad humanism or zoepolitics that would not recognize differences, per se, in order to never let them harden into violence, either in its defensive or more offensive tactical forms. The problem of historical memory, as you rightly point out, is a chief impediment to such a humanism or zoepolitics, especially when many of us insist as being the pure "innocents" of any traumatic historical event. I could claim that, since I was not alive then, I have no guilt or compliance relative to the Holocaust or the institution of slavery. But I actually feel the opposite as anyone with even a shred of historical consciousness should feel. It's easy enough for everyone to agree never to say the phrase "Polish death camps" so to not perpetrate an historical falsehood about who founded, executed, and ran the camps, and for what purposes. Fixing the phrase, however, which I happily would, does not solve the larger and much more complicated ethical and philosophical questions and the connections between human selfishness and bigotry, violence, war, and evil.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-77236105134323438812010-12-31T15:26:24.833-05:002010-12-31T15:26:24.833-05:00It great to see bigotry is alive. The way you shi...It great to see bigotry is alive. The way you shift the blame for the Holocaust onto the Poles is most heartening. The Nazis & their allies are cheering you. <br /><br />It is pleasing that you ignored Shana Penn (Director Media Relations United States Holocaust memorial Museum) & didn’t change the wording: The most common error of concern is the identification of Nazi concentration camps on Polish soil as being “Polish concentration camps” instead of, as they were in reality, Nazi-run camps in German-occupied Poland during World War II.<br /><br />What does Timothy G. Ash (British historian) know? I was amazed to hear the announcer describe him as a guard in "the Polish extermination camp Sobibor". What times are these, when one of the main German TV channels thinks it can describe Nazi camps as "Polish"? In my experience, the automatic equation of Poland with Catholicism, nationalism and anti-Semitism – and thence a slide to guilt by association with the Holocaust – is still widespread<br /><br />How mad is Luigi Cajani (Professor of modern history at the Università La Sapienza) by saying unhappy expression “Polish concentration camps” to refer to Auschwitz, Treblinka and so on. This expression is certainly wrong and misleading, because it conflates the geographical location of the Nazi death camps with their historical<br /><br />You will be pleased to know your work & Nazi supporters mean that Violetta Cardinal (director Upside Down) thinks the falsification of history in North America is “reaching the critical point,” and explains that she wanted her film to shock people. It shows how damaging such falsifications as “Polish concentration camps” can be, and how, if left unopposed, they “strip Poles of their self-esteem and dignity.”<br /><br />I urge you to write to the American Jewish Committee as they strangely stated We would like to remind those who are either aware of the facts or careless in their choice of words, as has been the case with some media outlets, that Auschwitz-Birkenau & other death camps…were conceived, built and operated by Nazi Germany and its allies.Jan Niechwiadowicznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-16433420682506362322010-12-31T14:31:24.650-05:002010-12-31T14:31:24.650-05:00Great piece EJ. A few days away from reading this,...Great piece EJ. A few days away from reading this, and this is the line that sticks with me:<br /><br /><i> The 1960s and 1970s were a magical zone in Ireland at that time</i><br /><br />I know you're talking about your own experience, particularly your childhood, but most would say that the 60s and 70s in Ireland were <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles" rel="nofollow">anything but "magical,"</a> depending on where one was on the island. I don't mean to rebuke you, of course; I don't doubt the truth of what you say; rather, I'm observing the heterogeneity of any moment, something so often lost on our students (convinced of the lachrymose history of the Middle Ages when they're not going the other way and romanticizing it), or something lost on us, on me, at this moment having a nice Dec 31 afternoon while who knows what ecstasy or suffering, human and inhuman, is occurring.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-53119226896595039062010-12-30T13:20:26.025-05:002010-12-30T13:20:26.025-05:00Thank you, Sarah and Jonathan, for your kind comme...Thank you, Sarah and Jonathan, for your kind comments here.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-52197027273918239032010-12-30T07:15:10.470-05:002010-12-30T07:15:10.470-05:00This article - and tenth medieval's comment - ...This article - and tenth medieval's comment - is one of the reasons I read In The Middle.<br /><br />Since I am oppressed right now bringing two objects into being - I am not going to allow myself further thought or comment - but BRAVO!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-62623724712279902552010-12-28T18:00:25.651-05:002010-12-28T18:00:25.651-05:00I too have a post on death brewing, but nothing li...I too have a post on death brewing, but nothing like as thoughtful as this one: this is a real challenge, and written with an affecting personal touch. Apropos of which, I have also to say, I'm sorry for your loss, and happy to see some of the story that must be told to make that loss meaningful; it was worth the telling, despite your misgivings.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-91485506434794662222010-12-27T01:12:58.883-05:002010-12-27T01:12:58.883-05:00terrific article!terrific article!Brandon Vickerynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-54968187262789861862010-12-26T11:51:34.596-05:002010-12-26T11:51:34.596-05:00I am more than happy to acknowledge that by "...I am more than happy to acknowledge that by "Polish death camps," I merely meant the death camps, founded and operated by the German Nazis, that were located in Poland. I think that is implied for anyone who knows their WWII history. On the other hand, whereas many Polish persons suffered heavily during this war (and also before and after it, for a variety of reasons--Poland has had many attackers and oppressors), Jew and non-Jew alike, some Polish persons were complicit with the Nazis and there is a long history of anti-Semitism in Poland, as the massacre at Jedwabne makes clear, on which subject I would refer everyone to the book by Jan T. Gross, "Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland." For me, there is no black-and-white, good guys vs. bad guys to history, as Lanzmann's film also makes clear. I say this also because I have Polish Catholic relatives (in-laws) who, to this very day, are very anti-Semitic and who accept no blame whatsoever for everything that happened to the Jews in Poland during WWII, which I find disheartening. I am also descended from Irish Catholic relatives who are likewise anti-Semitic and also racist. This is not a subject I have ever taken lightly.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-59201879065211088572010-12-25T10:07:43.718-05:002010-12-25T10:07:43.718-05:00The article states 'history of the Polish deat...The article states 'history of the Polish death camps,' which is offensive and perpetuating a falsehood. History needs to be correct written and the above statement is incorrect. It should state 'Nazi death camps established on occupied Polish soil' which is correct. Please correct the offending remarkAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com