| Response to Carolyn 19 Apr 10 I applaud Carolyn's expressed intention of exposing the unspoken truth. Sadly, though, she has overlooked a whole throng of 800-pound gorillas. Allow me to point them out. Uncovering the mass graves at Katyn was **hugely** advantageous for the Germans in the spring of 1943. It generated tremendous stresses in the Allied camp, as the German propaganda ministry well understood and gleefully anticipated. It was over this affair that Stalin broke off diplomatic relations with the Polish government in London, already deeply strained because the entire Polish officer corps captured by the Soviets in 1939 had long been conspicuously and unaccountably missing. Yes, the Germans allowed a Red Cross mission, including independent Polish forensic experts, to investigate the site. Their motivations were entirely political, as noted above. The notion of German "concern for humanity," which Carolyn refers to here, is breathtaking in its falsity. It would be laughable if it weren't so troublingly common and characteristic. Like the Soviets, and in full partnership with them for almost two years, Nazi Germany slaughtered Polish elites by the tens upon tens of thousands. It was Hitler's explicitly stated intention to enslave and eventually exterminate the Polish nation in order to acquire precious Lebensraum (living space) for the great master race of German folk. Can your readers possibly be ignorant of this fact? Can readers who are exercised about the abuse of Palestinians today be totally indifferent to – or, perhaps, quietly enthusiastic about – the annihilation of Polish people, on a much grander scale, seventy years ago? The quintessentially Hitlerian concept of untermenschen, "subhumans," was applied to no other nation more hatefully than it was against the Poles. Is this a formulation that "truth-tellers" and "patriots" in the USA ought to find acceptable? It's hardly surprising that the Germans defeated the Polish army in 1939. Why is Carolyn so proud of this fact? I detect vainglory and triumphalism in the way she mentions it. These are not the kind of emotions we ought to be indulging; they are not the hallmark of a spiritually mature person. Germany was far stronger, more populous, more developed, and less hampered with liabilities than Poland. Poland's strategic and geographical position was militarily hopeless. The intervention by the USSR, in the third week of fighting, without question hastened the inevitable outcome. The Germans used up more than 80% of their ammunition in a few weeks, and they sustained greater losses against Poland than they did in a vastly more equal (and equally brief) contest against France, the Low Countries and Britain some eight months later. To their eternal disgrace, France and England did not honor their treaty obligations to support Poland. If they had, the war would have ended soon, as Germany's vital industrial heartland in the west was undefended and could have been easily captured by the French. Hitler had to throw the whole weight of his war machine at Poland to achieve a quick victory, even with the Soviets fighting on his side. For a deeper understanding of what was really going on here, we must note that big bankers and industrialists had built up the military establishments of **both** Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Arguably, they were aiming at a conflagration that would devastate all parties without much discrimination. Poland resisted intense pressure to collaborate with either of the two totalitarian superpowers against the other. Polish independence was the last, fragile barrier that held back the gathering impetus to a second, major European war. Once Poland was destroyed, Germany and Russia had a common border, and the way was open for them to tear each other's guts out. Who gained by this? Can we detect a parallel today, in how the Moslem and the Christian worlds have been set up to war against each other? When we take sides in the Nazi-Soviet conflict, when we interpret WW II from this beguiling angle – i.e., the good and noble Germans against the wicked Jewish commies – we are only getting suckered, once again, into an old, Hegelian dialectic snare. We ought to know better than this by now. Carolyn's praise for German "thoroughness" is absolutely right and proper. Please note how well this quality is expressed in the ability of polemicists like Carolyn to avoid any reference to German aggression and bestiality, or to evince any trace of compassion or remorse. Auschwitz is indeed – by some – exploited in the most disgraceful fashion. The poisoning of souls with hatred, especially young ones, is among the most distressing phenomena of our times; the damage is so hard to undo, and the long-term consequences are so dire. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a death-camp survivor in his own right, someplace in his writings framed the essence of the matter perfectly: "The line between good and evil runs through every human heart." We are so deeply inclined to point the finger of blame at others, and there will never be any shortage of reasons to support this view – whatever the particularity of our partisanship. Yet the key we are all looking for, the answer to our tragic, human dilemma – like the Kingdom of God itself – lies within each one of us. When we examine Polish responses to the colossal and unprovoked assault that Poland sustained, the perception of heroism and victimhood, about which Carolyn so ardently complains, is anything but misplaced. Of course, one can always point to exceptions, but overwhelmingly, the broad characterization of hero/victim versus villain/perpetrator could scarcely appear more fitting to a fair-minded observer than it does with reference to Poles and Germans in the context of WW II. But that's only to the extent that we're looking for heroes and villains, that we're stuck on feeding a victim-and-victor mentality. As I've just noted, this does not take us where we need to go; it's not really what the present world crisis requires that we become. Regarding Carolyn's attack on the Polish character and her allusion to the festering of Polish resentment against Germany, my own extensive, if necessarily subjective observations do not support this view. I find Polish people remarkably magnanimous, forgiving, and able to leave the hurts and wrongs of the past behind – without, however, consigning them to oblivion or surrendering them to dishonorable and malevolent revision. If there is anyone who walks around with a chip on their shoulder, it's German chauvinists like Carolyn, as witnessed so eloquently in the callous, contentious, myopic and one-sided statement she has posted here. Carolyn has every right to be as she is and to express her views. What concerns me is why anyone finds them worth posting and passing along. It's disturbing that this forum and others like it are propagating messages which not only express interethnic antipathy, but do so in a manner that's as unbalanced and uncalled for as Carolyn's letter. Evidently, the demagogues are stepping up their activities on every front. What I wish for Carolyn, personally, is that she will be able to transcend these narrow and destructive mental paradigms and someday soon experience the radiant tenderness that bathes our hearts in grace when we learn to let go, to forgive, and to love those who have injured us (even if we don't always like them). The lesson is difficult, but it's profound: paradoxically, the lowly are uplifted. We're told that our Maker "hates a proud and haughty spirit," so surely in the end no good can come to us from living out of such modalities. One last observation: in a forum that focuses on Jewish abuses, that challenges the notion of a "Chosen People," that exposes Jewish hypocrisy, and that decries the indifference of Jewish criminals to the suffering they've caused, it's quite bizarre to find these same propensities being fostered and exalted in the German psyche. One could survey the entire planet and be hard pressed to find a nation that has not in some way, at some time, been in conflict with and suffered injury at the hands of its neighbors. The Japanese were set up by the Americans, provoked, and lured into a trap at Pearl Harbor. We inflicted a catastrophic defeat on them at Midway because we could read their secret codes. It's questionable whether, man to man, we could have beaten them in a fairer fight. We dropped atomic bombs on them and incinerated Tokyo. I've known many Japanese over many years in my personal and professional life, yet I have never sensed that they bear a grudge against us. They mourn their losses in dignified privacy, and in their memory they honor the victims of our atrocities; but they don't hate us, nor do they plot revenge. Many examples like this could be cited from world history. "Never forgive; never forget." Where have we heard this before? Of all the peoples in the world, I can think of only two that harbor so jealously a sense of their own uniquely aggrieved status and who are so utterly callous about, and unwilling to acknowledge or regret, the grief they've brought to other nations. Correct me if I'm wrong about this. But I find it curious and perplexing. -Bob I judged the Poles by their enemies. And I found it was an almost unfailing truth that their enemies were the enemies of magnanimity and manhood. If a man loved slavery, if he loved usury, if he loved terrorism and all the trampled mire of materialistic politics, I have always found that he added to these affections the passion of a hatred of Poland. She could be judged in the light of that hatred; and the judgment has proved to be right. Attributed to Gilbert K. Chesterton, British writer --- On Sun, 4/18/10, ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@
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