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A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

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Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#131

Post by Profragile »

danjc wrote: post #80
yeukhon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is so sad that rape is a common war crime in every war since very ancient time. Rape during WW2 was probably one of the biggest crimes after mass genocide. I am familiar with the Japanese’s rape crime but this is the first time I am hearing about this. Allies are no exception. The psychology behind committing such crime is beyond the “sexual urge” excuse.

I think rape (at least in those contexts) is mostly about power

You don't really think that... you just repeat it because some retard said so.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#132

Post by krzat »

CapacitorSet wrote: post #121
krzat wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you are trolling or what. By that logic Jews were rightfully sent to the death camps because they were enemies of the state.

That's quite a leap in reasoning. How did you come to that conclusion?

Nazi regime -> Polish communist regime enforced by soviets

Enemy of the state -> Spy

It's OK to kill enemies of the state -> It's ok to kill spies

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#133

Post by dang »

zeveb wrote: post #118
dang wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please keep nationalistic flamewar off HN. This is a highly international community and the last thing we need is old regional resentments breaking out all over the place.

I think that pointing out that Soviet atrocities were worse than Nazi atrocities (and Maoist atrocities were worse still) isn't a matter of 'regional resentments' but of ground truth.

Maybe, but I think the data we see on Hacker News points against that view.

It's moot either way, though. "Nazis vs. Soviets" is a reductio of internet forum topics and the sort of flamewar material that's off topic here.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#134

Post by mamon »

CapacitorSet wrote: post #120
mamon wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably just a troll, but for sake of the others reading this: Pilecki was the officer of Polish Home Army, which was a branch of Polish Underground State - which in turn was basically the pre-war Polish government, with its top officials being in exile in London. So, Pilecki was by no means a spy: he was a member of legal Polish intelligence agency, reporting to legal Polish government and passing intelligen…

I'm not trolling. Rather, I'd think you were trolling, considering the earlier comment where you thought I was calling him a spy for having participated in the Polish resistance. Speaking of Pilecki, of course he thought he believed he was acting in the name of a legal government, but that's not what is being discussed here. The Soviets were correctly claiming him to be a foreign spy, since he was spying for a countr…

Espionage might have been the official charge against Pilecki, yes. But Soviets used that as an excuse to kill pretty much everyone they didn’t like so I wouldn’t take that charge too seriously.

And how can they view Pilecki as a spy when he was providing intel to their British allies on their common enemy? Any reasonable country would consider Pilecki a hero, not a spy. You know, the old "Enemy of my enemy, friend of my friend" rule.

Unless of course Soviets were still respecting Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and considered Germans the allies and Brits the enemies, then prosecuting Pilecki for spying on Germans would make sense.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#135

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

zeveb wrote: post #116
greedo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As well as almost any Polish professionals: Teachers, professors, lawyers, government officials, religious figures. The goal of the Germans was to dismantle almost all of Polish society and replace it with German society.

The Soviets also had the goal of exterminating the Polish professional class, hence their massacres at Katyn & elsewhere of, among others, Polish Boy Scouts. Few people realise that the Soviet Union took roughly one-third of Poland when it & Germany invaded Poland at the beginning of the Second World War — and it kept that territory after the war. Polish society in those conquered territories was replaced with Russia…

This is the point of view taught in Polish schools, so it's unthinkable for a Pole to think otherwise. However, Lithuanians, Belorussians and Ukrainians would beg to disagree.

For me the most fascinating is the case of Lithuania. Polish children are taught about the Commonwealth, common history, fighting together... So when they hear about anti-Polish sentiment there, it makes no sense to them. People are surprised and can't understand it. That's the fault of presenting a one-sided version of history and completely ignoring the POV of your neighbors.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#136

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

b0rsuk wrote: post #77
lucozade wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What insinuation are you referring to? To my knowledge there's no evidence that Germany and Poland colluded in the annexation of Czechoslovakia but Poland definitely did take the opportunity to annex part of it. And the Germans weren't particularly unhappy about that as it played very well for them internationally.

The Nazis were delighted to ally with Poland for that. They had more foresight and understood this opportunistic move would greatly damage Poland's diplomatic relations with its allies. And it did. I was one of main reasons why Allies dragged their feet to help Poland.

This is another point rarely mentioned in Polish schools when teaching about the origins of WWII.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#137

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

_m4r wrote: post #57
olavk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> soviets really brought us more harm than nazis durning WW2 I presume you are not counting the three million Polish Jews who were murdered by the nazis?

This is very wide topic and I would like to not discuss it over Internet because I've had plenty of similar discussions with people I've met, and it would really require us to write essays :| Soviets killed about six million of polish people (until 1956). Not to mention harm that was done to the polish culture, dignity, economy, science for the 45 years.

I think you're confusing Rusians with Germans. The most radical calculations mention 20 million as the collective number of people killed under the Stalinist rule, mainly Russians. Polish deaths were at most half million:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish_c...

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#139

Post by divbyzer0 »

bobthechef wrote: post #68

Another man with a related story was Jan Karski [0]. Interestingly, Jozef Cyrankiewicz, future communist PM of Poland who testified against Pilecki, smuggled Karski out from the Nazis. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Karski

Excellent book by Jan Karski.

Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World. Reads like fiction. He also entered a concentration camp to report on the activities there.

Interviews with him can be found on youtube.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#140

Post by b0rsuk »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #136
b0rsuk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nazis were delighted to ally with Poland for that. They had more foresight and understood this opportunistic move would greatly damage Poland's diplomatic relations with its allies. And it did. I was one of main reasons why Allies dragged their feet to help Poland.

This is another point rarely mentioned in Polish schools when teaching about the origins of WWII.

I like to say that Poland has two official religions:

  * Catholicism
  * History of Poland
As a Pole, I'm dismayed that history is taught as something to treasure, not something to contemplate, discuss and take insight from. History is just not treated as something to learn from. Criticism of Polish history is widely considered offensive. The standard tactic for handling ugly actions performed by Poles is denial. Just don't acknowledge them. If that's not possible, play them down.

This is the direction recent act about "Polish death camps" is heading in. It will outlaw saying Poles were originators of any WW2 war crimes. This is ridiculous. Yes, several million of Poles were killed in WW2. But there are black sheep in any society, and certainly there are in an oppressed one. When you harm a group of people, some of them will invariably hit back. How often do you hear that widely admired Józef Piłsudski was a terrorist and a train robber in his early years ? That Polish resistance conducted assassinations and bombings, not just on soldiers but also on civilians they determined to be collaborators ? Kazimierz Wielki (Casimir the Great), praised for development of Poland under his rule, was a cynical womanizer.

Even a single person can be both good and bad. By whitewashing Polish history, Poland shoots itself in the foot. You shouldn't expect to get correct output if you provide incomplete input. Poland has aspirations to be a regional power and to form an alliance of countries under its leadership. It's not going to happen as long as Poles refuse to remember their wrongdoings towards other nations and groups. Poles will just continue to wonder why most neighboring nations don't like them. You need to remember your mistakes to avoid them in the future and/or to apologize for them, if only in a symbolic manner. Look at what Germany is doing. Yes, Germans supported terrible genocide under Hitler, but they're now doing a lot to prevent that from happening in the future. And Germany is doing really well as far as diplomacy goes.

The eye-opening moment for me was when I was preparing for final exams. We had extra history lessons, and our teacher would force us to think. She would tell us what happened, and asked us why did king X or pope Y do that. Or she would divide us into two groups, like Spartans and Athenians, give us source text and ask to prepare a speech arguing our city-state is better (contemporary Greeks considered Sparta to be a realized utopia).

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