Israel should apologize to Poland, U.S. ambassador says

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

WORLD NEWS FEBRUARY 20, 2019 / 3:28 AM / UPDATED 10 MINUTES AGO

Israel should apologize to Poland, U.S. ambassador says

WARSAW (Reuters) - Israel’s Acting Foreign Minister Israel Katz should apologize to Poland for his remarks, U.S. Ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher said on Wednesday, commenting on the diplomatic row between two countries.

“I just felt that two strong allies like Israel and Poland, of course they are strong allies of the United States, shouldn’t be using that kind of rhetoric. We are too important to each other not to work these things out,” Mosbacher told reporters.

Reporting by Alan Charlish; Writing by Marcin Goclowski; Editing by Alison Williams

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-poland/israel-should-apologize-to-poland-u-s-ambassador-says-idUSKCN1Q90TG

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Oh, dear lord.

Poland enthusiastically sent Jews to the concentration camps.

There were about 3 million Jews in Poland in 1939. About 3,000 after the war. Need I say more?

But I will. I married an American of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage in 1980. In this country he was not obviously Jewish (unlike, interestingly enough his older brothers) and often had the peculiar pleasure of being a fly on the wall, able to observe things that might otherwise have been passed by.

I'm not Jewish. All four of my grandparents came from Ireland, and so to say I'm not Jewish is important here. And to point out that my husband, while Jewish, often seemed not Jewish is equally important.

After we married, on our honeymoon, we went to Eastern Europe. We started in Vienna, where my one year of high school German was useful. Then we went to Hungary, where my high school German was even more useful. Then we went to Poland.

My husband's grandparents had all come from that part of Europe. We had with us a copy of the internal passport his Uncle David had at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, which showed where he'd lived and where he had worked. In Vienna we looked up those addresses, and at more than one of them (this was 1980) guest workers lived and worked there. An interesting continuity.

So then we went to Poland, to Cracow and Katowice. In Katowice we saw buildings that had clearly been Synagogues. And as we walked the streets, a man came out, seemingly from no where and addressed my husband in English. He (my husband) was startled, and the man said, "You're Jewish, aren't you?", which really threw my husband because he was used to not being recognized as such. But he said yes, he was. The man wanted to bring us to a nearby place and show us records from before WWII, about the local Jews.

Here's the other important thing. As I mentioned above, I'm Irish. The incident I've just referred to, the man talking to my husband totally ignored me. I was invisible to him. Clearly I was not one of his tribe, and didn't matter.

For me this was a wonderful lesson in ... I'm not certain how to name it. Ethnicity? Tribal affiliation? Whatever. We are all members of at least one, and more likely several affiliations. My example is of only one such affiliation.

[agingdem]

2. Shut up Georgette...

knows nothing ...my parents, both Polish Jews, survived Auschwitz..the Holocaust did not happen in a vacuum..Poland was a willing participant

[COLGATE4]

3. Pre-war Poland was a hotbed of antisemitism. As a previous poster

correctly points out, Poland went from a country with a population of some 3,000,000 Jews to one with a population of 3,000 Jews after the war. The numbers speak for themselves.