Over the past couple of weeks, you might have spotted a poster around Greenpoint promoting a Polish protest.
Last Sunday, Polish nationalist demonstrators gathered in Manhattan’s Foley Square to protest the U.S.’s passage of the Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act, which became law last year and calls for Holocaust survivors and their families to receive compensation for their seized and stolen property during World War II.
Polish resistance fighters during WWII fought against Nazi occupation and helped save Jewish lives, but recently the Israeli and Polish governments have argued over a new Polish law making it a crime to say that Poland participated in any crimes against Jewish People during WWII, as The Forward explains:
The demonstration comes as there has been considerable pushback from Poland and the Polish government against the historical evidence of Polish participation in the carrying out of the Holocaust in Poland. Last year, Poland passed a law effectively making it illegal to blame Poland or the Polish people for Nazi crimes. The law passed amid widespread sentiment in the country that Poland has been falsely accused of playing a role in the Holocaust, and its government has insisted that international media not use phrases like “Polish death camp” when referring to Auschwitz, which is in Poland.
On Sunday, several protestors carried signs reading “Holocaust Industry,” “Treat anti-Polonism like anti-Semitism” and “Stop slandering Poland in the media.” Others spoke to the considerable losses that the Polish population endured under Nazi occupation.
NYC-based artist Molly Crabapple documented the rally and found some of the Polish protestors to be abrasive, “One demonstrator waved a dollar bill to taunt Jewish counterprotesters,” Crabapple tweeted.
Polish nationalists held signs saying “stop the holocaust industry” and accusing Jews of welcoming Nazi and Soviet invasions pic.twitter.com/pGeMCP4SmH
— Molly Crabapple (@mollycrabapple) March 31, 2019
Newsweek also covered the protest and confirmed that the differences in recollection of WWII history between Poland, the U.S. and Israel is not likely going to be settled anytime soon:
In Poland, as in all other nations under Nazi occupation, historians have found evidence of anti-Semitic collaboration between Poles and the occupying Nazis. Simultaneously, Polish resistance groups are among some of the most celebrated anti-Nazi partisans of the entire war.
Oh come on now. These Polish Americans were merely protesting all of the Anti-Polish Bigotry in the “American” goverment and “American” media and you are going to condemn them??? I SUPPORT THEM!!! You REALLY think this law against Poland that they are protesting…the “JUST” act S.447 is FAIR to Poland?? In this law….it sets up Poland to pay for WW2 Jewish properties that were virtually all destroyed….by the GERMANS….not the Poles!!!
So after the war….Poles built up and RESTORED these properties….and NOW they have to pay foreign Jewish groups for them??? Why don’t these Jewish organizations go after the people who destroyed these properties….the GERMANS!!!???
And according to American law…..the properties of heirless CITIZENS go to the NATION that they were CITIZENS of. NOT to foreign international entities that have NO relation to these people, other than common TRIBE and ethnicity.
So today you have Jewish groups outside of Poland DEMANDING to get “reparations” for WW2 Polish Jews who they have NO relations to other than common TRIBE and ethnicity.
NO….these WW2 Polish Jews were CITIZENS of Poland. Hence, their properties go to the NATION they were CITIZENS of which is Poland……NOT to Jewish Special Interest groups across the world.
And yes, “Holocaust Industry” correctly describes these Jewish organizations who are using the Holocaust to extort nations like Poland on behalf of WW2 Jews.
The author of the book “The Holocaust Industry”…Norman Finkelstein….is the son of Holocaust Survivors and he did a good job of DOCUMENTING (with many Jewish source footnotes) of how the Holocaust Industry will NOT give Jewish reparation money to Jewish survivors or their heirs. Instead it goes mostly to the pockets of the Holocaust Industry. Like when the Holocaust Industry extorted the Swiss banks for “Holocaust reparations”
Using a biased source like the Forwards is unfair. At least provide a Polish source to counterbalance it. The mention of ” historical evidence of Polish participation in the carrying out of the Holocaust in Poland. ” is highly subjective and frankly insulting to the memory of so my Polish people who died fighting fascism. if I were Polish I would be angry with this very one-sided report of the protest.
The depiction of the Polish protesters as nationalists is not accurate. Calling them Fascists and Nazies by Ms. Crabapple and her Antifa friends is outrageously insulting as according to German Nazi ideology, Poles and Jews are subhuman. As far as the use of the term Holocaust Industry, this was coined by a son of Jewish Holocaust survivors who points out that the billions of dollars given for Holocaust does not reach them but lines the pockets of the those administering those funds. Several high level participants such as Mr Singer were arrested and convicted. On a Federal government website it states that somehow 25 percent of Holocaust survivors live in poverty while the national average is much lower. How is that? Where is the money going? One may agree or disagree with Mr. Finkelstein, but how does believing him get to qualify as anti-Semitism? The Polish demonstration was not anti-Semitic. The counterdemonstration was definitely perceived by the Polish population as anti-Polish. Clearly the counterdemostrators have poor knowledge of WW II history, otherwise they would not be interpreting some of the statements as antiSemitic, and they wouldn’t be calling them Fascists or Nazis.