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Guest Post: Eastern Europe's Crisis Of Shame
Authored by Jan T. Gross, originally posted at Project Syndicate,
As thousands of refugees pour into Europe to escape the horrors of war, with many dying along the way, a different sort of tragedy has played out in many of the European Union’s newest member states. The states known collectively as “Eastern Europe,” including my native Poland, have revealed themselves to be intolerant, illiberal, xenophobic, and incapable of remembering the spirit of solidarity that carried them to freedom a quarter-century ago.
These are the same societies that clamored before and after the fall of communism for a “return to Europe,” proudly proclaiming that they shared its values. But what did they think Europe stands for? Since 1989 – and particularly since 2004, when they joined the EU – they have benefited from massive financial transfers in the form of European structural and cohesion funds. Today, they are unwilling to contribute anything to resolve the greatest refugee crisis facing Europe since World War II.
Indeed, before the eyes of the entire world, the government of Hungary, an EU member state, has mistreated thousands of refugees. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán sees no reason to behave otherwise: the refugees are not a European problem, he insists; they are a German problem.
Orbán is not alone in this view. Even Hungary’s Catholic bishops are following Orbán’s line, with Laszlo Kiss-Rigo, Bishop of Szeged-Csanad, saying that Muslim migrants “want to take over,” and that the Pope, who has called on every Catholic parish in Europe to take in a refugee family, “doesn’t know the situation.”
In Poland, a country of 40 million people, the government initially expressed a readiness to accept 2,000 refugees – but only Christians (Slovakia proposed a similar stipulation). Refugees are not an Eastern European problem, a Polish journalist told National Public Radio in the United States, because these countries did not participate in the decision to bomb Libya (neither did Germany).
Have Eastern Europeans no sense of shame? For centuries, their ancestors emigrated in droves, seeking relief from material hardships and political persecution. And today their leaders’ heartless behavior and callous rhetoric play to popular sentiment. Indeed, the electronic version of Poland’s largest newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, now publishes a stunning notice at the end of every article about refugees: “Because of the extraordinarily aggressive content of remarks advocating violence, contrary to the law, and calling for racial, ethnic, and religious hatred, we will not allow readers to publish comments.”
Not so long ago, in the immediate postwar years, Eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors fled from the murderous anti-Semitism of their Polish, Hungarian, Slovak, or Romanian neighbors to the safety of displaced persons camps in, of all places, Germany. “Safe Among the Germans” proclaimed the title of an important book by the historian Ruth Gay about these 250,000 survivors. Now Muslim refugees and survivors of other wars, having found no refuge in Eastern Europe, also are fleeing to safety among the Germans.
In this case, history is not a metaphor. On the contrary, the root cause of the Eastern European attitudes now on grim display is to be found in World War II and its aftermath.
Consider the Poles, who, deservedly proud of their society’s anti-Nazi resistance, actually killed more Jews than Germans during the war. Although Poland’s Catholics were cruelly victimized during the Nazi occupation, they could find little compassion for the fate of Nazism’s ultimate victims. In the words of Józef Mackiewicz, a conservative, anti-Communist Polish writer with impeccable patriotic credentials: “During the occupation there was not, literally, a single person who would not have heard the saying – ‘One thing Hitler has done correctly is to wipe out the Jews.’ But one should not talk about this openly.”
Of course, there were Poles who helped Jews during the war. Indeed, the number of Polish “Righteous Among Nations,” recognized by Israel’s Yad Vashem for their wartime heroism, is the largest among all European countries (unsurprisingly, given that prewar Poland had Europe’s largest Jewish population by far). But these remarkable individuals typically acted on their own, against prevailing social norms. They were misfits who, long after the war had ended, insisted on keeping their wartime heroism a secret from their neighbors – afraid, it seems, that their own communities would otherwise shun, threaten, and ostracize them.
All occupied European societies were complicit to some degree in the Nazi effort to destroy the Jews. Each made a different contribution, depending on country-specific circumstances and conditions of German rule. But the Holocaust played out most gruesomely in Eastern Europe, owing to the sheer number of Jews in the region and the incomparable ruthlessness of the Nazi occupation regimes.
When the war ended, Germany – because of the victors’ denazification policies and its responsibility for instigating and carrying out the Holocaust – had no choice but to “work through” its murderous past. This was a long, difficult process; but German society, mindful of its historical misdeeds, has become capable of confronting moral and political challenges of the type posed by the influx of refugees today. And Chancellor Angela Merkel has set an example of leadership on migrants that puts all of Eastern Europe’s leaders to shame.
Eastern Europe, by contrast, has yet to come to terms with its murderous past. Only when it does will its people be able to recognize their obligation to save those fleeing in the face of evil.
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Whaaaaaa!
Eastern Europe et al are being smart. Soon as the muslims come, they demand everybody to bend to their ways of life. If not, riots and death.
Well Jan T. Gross, maybe you should read up a little on someone that had the same outlook on all those poor refugees:
Google: "Elin Krantz" : http://ozziesaffa.blogspot.com/2013/11/elin-krantz-just-another-dead-whi...
Maybe this once beautiful woman will help you feel a little less ashamed of Poland.
Every once in awhile even ZH posts BS articles.. Perfect example is this one by Jan T. Gross.. Eastern Europe has no shame?!?! Really? because my grandfather who lived in Greece told me during WW2 Jews were accepted in Greece and the Greeks did there part in hiding them from the NAZIS.. Also the Greeks in the island of Kefalonia where occupied by Italian forces with there dictator Mussolini. The Greeks convinced the Italian soldiers to fight along side with the real enemy the Nazis.. This article fails in epic proportions to explain the forces behind for destabilizing Europe and causing the migrants to run for the hills.. Proxy wars created by USA and Israel. GOD DAM it's happening in OUR country here in the USA no borders means no rule of law.. Today rule of the jungle is more like it.. Plus do you see Belgium, Switzerland and Israel taking on refugees?? NO of course not those countries are for ZIONIST ONLY!!!
Greek collaboratorist gov't rounded up the entire Jewish population of Thessaloniki to the Germans for disposal. What a fucked up filthy minded collection of posters. BTW, are you a Greek?
All true.
But, technically, Greece is not considered Eastern Europe. It is cosnidered a balcan country, and a pretty peculiar one at that, being the only one togeher with Albania, of being neither majority Slavic and/or having been under the Austro-Hunagarian Empire.
If you really want to get pissed off go watch Barbara Lerner Spectre go on about how Europe "has not yet learned how to be multicultural" and she states that "jews have a leading role" in Europe's "transformation" into Multicultural mode.
I'm not a violent person but watching this bigot trash makes me want to put my fist through her face.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ
Ah yes, the original sin in the EU "multi-cultural world-view", being "white". Yes, those Jews in Israel are SOOOO multi-cultural, living in their apartheid state of oppression, Jew vs. non-Jew.
How should these eastern EU countries behave, after being spoilt for decades. They were hushed into EU according to anti-Russian plans, not for their bristling economy.
And note the special mention of Orban of Hungary. He just took place 2 on MSM-enemies, taking over from Erdogan, who seems to be shoveling his grave instead.
And that topped by a praise for Merkel, who only helps her masters to destabilize Europe and Germany.
And the refugees are brought by the stork.
That article is for laughs, if it were not so tragicly convenient for some.
Where does this Gross guy live? I bet he left his native Polnd due the (relatively) poor contry conditions to migrate to USA. And yet he wishes the same (relatively, ok) poor country to allow in and feed tens of thousands immigrants? For shame, sir, for shame. I hope he puts his mey where his mouth is and donate at least what is needed to sustain ONE single refugee for ONE year... where will we see his 20.000$ check?
Screw this article, and screw the author. Poland seeks to maintain it's sovereignty for Poles? Well good for them for not wanting to encourage another invasion into their country. At this point in history, they probably lost count of how many times an invading army crossed their frontiers on either side.
The writer conveniently ignores the fact that Poland opened their country in the 15th century to thousands of Jews seeking asylum from the Spanish Inquisition, where they thrived for a at least a few centuries, but NEVER assimilating. If it weren't for the Germans and Russians, they would still be there. But blame the Poles, right?
FUCK YOU Jan Gross, peddle your multi-cultural bullshit screed elsewhere. WTF Tylers?
Written and submitted by a Zionist shill, if ever there was one. Trying to guilt Europe into abandoning it's right to self-determination? What is this crap doing here Tyler?
"My greatest flaw. I surround myself with idiots."
- Victor von Doom
At least these people are exposing at least one of the agendas they have going. Just remember the people who are writing this shame based articles, because they are being emboldened and cannot keep their mouths shut, we now know exactly who is behind it.