Holocaust memorial ceremony cancelled after Poland censors Israeli speech - Polidicks

Holocaust memorial ceremony canceled after Poland censors Israel.. The new Polish “Holocaust law” was felt by Israeli students in Poland Monday, when a joint Israeli-Polish Holocaust remembrance ceremony was cancelled after Polish authorities tried to censor the speech of an Israeli mayor. Kiryat Bialik Mayor Eli Dukorsky had been set to address a delegation of students from his city who were visiting Poland. His speech included personal accounts of the Holocaust and references to Polish bystanders and collaborators, as well as Righteous among the Nations. But before he delivered his speech, the mayor of Kiryat Bialik's Polish "twin city" Radomsko, Jarosław Ferenc, with whom he was to participate in a joint ceremony, told him that local authorities had asked to review the speech. The Israeli mayor obliged to the request and the Polish mayor subsequently asked him to remove parts of the speech that referred to Polish complicity in the Holocaust. That's my mayor, and kids from my town.

what so wrong with admitting you had some Polish bystanders and collaborators?

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

Poland is currently, much like many parts of the world, being faced with a nationalist, supremacist surge that is putting their ilk in positions of power. Ideally they'd pretend nothing ever happened and just lay blame on minority populations for anything that might have happened. But its a big enough subject that the world hasn't forgotten so they settle for just trying to make it less talked about and deny any responsibility for what happened.

That would require them to admit the Poles made mistakes, and the current government seems to want to give the impression that's impossible.

"we have to prove to the world that we weren't involved in the holocaust by treating jews like shit and denying the holocaust!"

If it's done in a historical context, there should be no issue. However, when somebody is constantly guilt tripping you over something your country did when you weren't even born, I can imagine people will eventually tell you to knock it off.

Oh boy, do I have a story for you!

So, the Israeli government ? I have a feeling memorials aren't a good way to combat hatred all over the world. I doubt being aware of the past changes anything for those in power. For some they could even use past events as an hypocritical diversion. We don't need precedent so much as we should be reminded of the ideals of humanity. Look at the present and do things to improve the future, for everyone. But hey, wake up. That's never going to happen. The least I can do as an individual is to never involve myself with the military as you don't know what, or who you're really fighting for and benefit to.

I meant more about the thing a while back where the polish gov seemingly denied polish involvement in the concentration camps. And a more general feeling I hold that the polish government is steadily getting crazier and more right wing.

Memorials aren't a way to combat hatred. Memorials are ways to remember. To honor the memory of those that dies and those that survived. We have those ceremonies to salute our parents and grandparents and their families who were murdered there, and to prove to ourselves and to the world that despite it all, we're still standing. Maybe this is offensive to some people. It's definitely offensive to a few. But hey, this is also to a great degree a big FUCK YOU to those people. For better or for worse, the survivors of the Holocaust built their new ethos, their entire culture about being the opposite of those Jews that went like lambs to the slaughter. We've spent the last few decades transforming ourselves from the polite, agreeable Jews of old to a nation of loud mouthed, violent assholes because NEVER AGAIN. And we're sending our kids to see the death camps right before we fly IAF fighter jets over them every years because NEVER AGAIN. Don't like it? Come at us bro. We have jets and guns and pointy sticks, because this is what happens when we don't, kids? See? This is where they killed your grandma. It's an Israeli thing.

I wish people wouldn't need to be aggressive. I want to avoid this mentality, in a sort of "adding fuel to the fire" way. Seeing things makes me want to give up.

As far as I can tell the polish government is fighting the following 1) Holocaust as European original sin 2) Holocaust suffering as particularly monopolized hy Jews, rejecting the claims of a muddied relationship to it and demanding equivalence 3) Brown-baiting any movement towards nationalism as Israeli hypocrisy, which depends on painting Polish conservatives as fellow travelers to the communist party in the 60s. This party was more nationalistic, it made identifying the overrepresentation of Jews in the previous government as part of de-stalinization while rehabilitating those resistance fighters and others condemned by state security. The party was also the target of liberal leaning protests in 68, which matured into pro-EU neoliberal tendencies by the collapse of communism. This is resented by conservatives and nationalists.

I feel this was necessary. The mayor did well to address poland’s ridiculous negationism in this case. What good is it to take part in commemoration when you aren’t allowed to tell it how it happened? It’s a very confrontational approach but Poland doesn’t get to retell history the way they wish had happened, much less impose their narrative on a territory where so many camps existed. These places are more relevant to the history of European jews than they are to the history of Poland. To cancel the commemoration ceremony in this context is an arms race to jews, everywhere.

Good Old Doublethink...

Censoring Jews seems like a pretty bad way to get the message of "Poland doesn't and didn't oppress Jews!" Across, lol.

The issue here is they really have no alternative given the large nationalist movement, they effectively lose either way. Let people talk about it and piss off the nationalists or censor it and piss off a lot of other people. Surprised they cancelled the entire thing for that reason though, that just shows the government that their laws work, it would have been more effective to go and talk about it anyway, can you imagine the media shitstorm if the speaker was arrested for it compared to the event simply being cancelled?

History is literally ignoring you right now. Acting like 1. things didn't happen will never make those things disappear and 2. human beings are both prejudiced and have violent tendencies, and those are biological traits. Wishing them away will not change evolution, and it can't change the past. You confront, you acknowledge and you move on, or you end up like Palestinians and Israelis treat each other right now, because a giant chunk of Palestine's problem is even admitting WHY they are sharing land right now, and a giant chunk of Israel's problem is acknowledging they are very much becoming the very thing they fought against in the first place. Avoidance solves nothing.

Might as well ask why it's a problem to admit that there were some Jewish bystanders and collaborators. Problem is - they spread that to not some Polish people but far larger group.

So, asking a speaker to censor the account of his own mother from a speech is not a problem because it, what, spreads the notion that Polish persecution of Jews was not a rare, isolated thing? “At the end of the war, her family returned to Poland to search for the rest of their extended family, all of whom were murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazis and their henchmen,” his speech read. “My mother’s only memory is that at the end of the war, when the train stopped at the station, Poles threw stones at it and shouted ‘Jews go home.’”

people have been saying this, but I haven't seen any proof that the polish were in any way responsible for the Nazi concentration camps. do you have any papers, or books that I could see that support your claim?

Fulcrum phrased it wrong. The Polish law outlaws referring to the concentration camps as "Polish concentration camps" but also outlaws any mention of war crimes or atrocities performed by the Polish nation.