What really happened to Bambi's mom

goldie doodle… golden doodle if you will

“Never be cruel, never be cowardly, and never ever eat pears! Remember, hate is always foolish, but love is always wise.”

-Twelfth doctor

recently my friend's comics professor told her that it's acceptable to use gen AI for script-writing but not for art, since a machine can't generate meaningful artistic work. meanwhile, my sister's screenwriting professor said that they can use gen AI for concept art and visualization, but that it won't be able to generate a script that's any good. and at my job, it seems like each department says that AI can be useful in every field except the one that they know best.

It's only ever the jobs we're unfamiliar with that we assume can be replaced with automation. The more attuned we are with certain processes, crafts, and occupations, the more we realize that gen AI will never be able to provide a suitable replacement. The case for its existence relies on our ignorance of the work and skill required to do everything we don't.

Amen

my daily affirmation as an author

An unidentified woman uses the end of a ribbon to dry her eyes as she mourns her husband, one of at least 41 people killed in the Kielce Pogrom, an outbreak of violence against the Jewish community centre’ gathering of refugees in the city of Kielce. It was Poland’s bloodiest postwar Pogrom. Associated Press Photo from New York - 1946.

For those who don’t understand the significance of the picture or date, this particular pogrom, the Kielce pogrom, was one of the most despicable in human history. After the Holocaust, survivors were trying to make their way home, or whatever was left of home, to meet up with their loved ones and see who else had survived. (For example, my cousin came home from Auschwitz to discover that his father was still alive but his mother and siblings were murdered.)

Out of the fear that the Jews would claim their stolen property, Jewish refugees were attacked and murdered. This is AFTER the Holocaust, after the death camps, after the Nazis had been overthrown. For those who like to pretend that antisemitism ended after the Holocaust, remember that over 40 Holocaust refugees, who had survived 6 years of ghettos, death camps, marches through snow, starvation and disease, were viciously murdered by non-Nazis. By civilians. By regular people. That these people looked at refugees looking for their family and said, “We didn’t finish the job.”

Does it sicken you? Because it should.

As an American Pole I feel this is an important piece of history that should not be forgotten. There are many anti-semitic Poles who will wax on about how so many Poles lost their lives to save Jews and etc but so few will talk about the horrors the Jewish refugees experienced upon returning to places they had called home. I grew up listening to relatives who had smuggled food into the Krakow ghetto as children, relatives who went on to hide a family of young Jews in their home and help them escape to America, and by whose goodwill they were able to emigrate to America years later, be ragingly anti-semitic at every turn. It’s disgusting. 

It’s so easy to not tell the whole story. How ones that wanted to help victims were stopped by sovietised militia, how it all started as a PROVOCATION (as almost always: telling people that a kid was kidnapped into a cellar. There was a boy missing but he was safe elsewhere and lived in guilt to older years) ORGANISED BY A SOVIET PROVOCATEURS (they wanted so bad to make it in a few places before Kielce to scare Jewish people away from Poland) AND AN ANTISEMITIC POLITICAL ORGANISATION (active even before the war, they were nasty). And then the files about it puffed out of existence when finally Poland stopped being a puppet state. As someone who studied this horrific tragedy, it pisses me off when someone just dumbs it down into: “Greedy poles killed jews” “Polish people are anti-semitic” like we all are a homogenic stupid mass that hates Jewish people!

History is not black and white! It’s not right to simplify such complicated subjects!

@ten-reasons-why-not

@itsdetachable

Congratulations, you’re the Pole we’re talking about.

Congratulations, you don’t know me.

I’m also pissed off when I see this shitty attitude of “we were going to be next.” or the “it wasn’t our fault.” But my point isn’t that it wasn’t the fault of the people that did it or bystanders that didn’t react. It’s so easy to judge from behind your screen, in safety of your home, knowing what happened from some website, not having a gun pointed at you, not having to decide on a spot under pressure. My point is that you can’t make a judgement based of just internet post, not knowing the whole story or at least not have read some sources.

I’ve seen an old man break and cry at the cruelty that he knew happened, that he fully understood only after the fact. At the cruelty that he didn’t do much about, because how a teenager can stop an angry, deranged mob of adult men frustrated to the core about the war that just finished. He knew that the’re up to no good, that something bad is going to happen and was scared, and was deeply traumatised for his whole life at the pure evil of humankind he witnessed. For so many years he stayed silent about it, for so many years he couldn’t confront this.

It was so traumatic for this towns’ people that even now, after all those years it’s a taboo, a thing almost noone wants to confront, to talk about openly. But I’ve talked, I’ve seen the sadness and guilt even in eyes on people born long after the pogrom. I’ve seen how fear of speaking out stops them, how catolic upbringing influences them to stay silent.

We have our problems as poles. We have to face them. To break free of our prejudices, but will not be easy.

My point is, that it’s hurtful to say that Polish people in general are antisemitic, racist or evil. People like that are everywhere, and saying that about a whole nation is equal to saing it about those that speak against injustice, that try to build better future.

There is a change going on, people start to speak against injustice and cruelty. We spoke against priests that were doing bad things to children and catolic church covering up their crimes a few years back, and that was a BIG step towards speaking up about our problems. We have a long road before us, but we try.

There are some things that are just so complicated, hard to explain or to even comprehend, that you can’t just go in the internet and say whatever making a quick judgement. More so if don’t know anything of the subject, didn’t even studied it.

The Kielce pogrom happened, it was evil, read more about it if you want to understand it more (if have a strong stomach), but please don’t say that all Polish people are antisemitic, it is hurtfull to make a general, prejudiced judgement like that.

@prismatic-bell

@ten-reasons-why-not

@itsdetachable

I stopped reading after “it wasn’t the fault of the people who did it.”

I’m sorry an expression of Jewish grief and anger didn’t make sure to absolve your precious Polish people of any wrongdoing because individuals had no autonomy to decide if they’d commit murder or turn their neighbors in to the Nazis or ransack their stuff.

I guess Hitler and Stalin were there holding their hands “stop hitting yourself”-style the whole time.

Come on, Prismatic. I don’t think doubleprev centering the trauma experienced by the bystanders in a thread about the actual victims is appropriate, and nobody in this thread actually said all Poles are antisemitic or treated Poles as a homogenous mass like crayon is claiming, but the words they typed were “my point isn’t that it wasn’t the fault of the people that did it or bystanders that didn’t react.” The rest of the post is kind of undercutting that point, and regardless it wasn’t the time or place for them to say any of that, but you didn’t have to do an “I think Coolsville sucks.”

Fair enough, I misread.

I still don’t think they have much worthwhile to say given how they reacted here, though.

Yeah, like… in some contexts maybe it’s worthwhile, but nobody was actually assigning collective guilt to poles, just saying that it needs to be acknowledged more, and “well the agitators had to try several towns before one fell for the blood libel and started a pogrom” isn’t worth much if the other towns, and Poland as a whole, refuse to acknowledge this shit because of their “Catholic upbringing” or whatever, or do shit like giving holocaust survivors their fucking homes back / paying reparations if that’s no longer possible because they failed to do it in the 40s/50s.

Meanwhile @athingofvikings’ family has been unable to retrieve their property because the government says they can’t guarantee the family’s safety if they try.

@fidgetycrayon so tell me, is it Nazis and Soviet agitators in the 2020s refusing restitution to Holocaust survivors and their families? Because I would LOVE to know.

@prismatic-bell

It is not them. Our goverment is full of shit and fighting for power on emotions of people (as many other goverments do). There was and is a lot of inner fighting in Poland about it.

We have the similar problem with getting back things stolen by Nazis or reparations for damages (when war was finished our whole country was in ruins, not mentioning the creme de la creme of our nation killed in Katyń by soviets). The solution from after the war was made for us, by “mighty and powerful” of those times.

But you have to have in mind the situation after the war, almost whole country in ruins, there was a massive housing crisis, PRL goverment took over not only Jewish property but also of Polish citizens, decisions on a higher level were made in years after (till late 80’) in Moscow. Most of the Holocaust survivors that had a direct bond with those places died already one by one, with a passage of time, a lot of documents are lost. There is a fear of false claims. And now its not easy to prove definitive ownership of the property.

I think that people that lived their whole life in those buildings are also just scared to be thrown out of their homes with nowhere to go. That fear of losing livelyhood is alive.

Many lives would be ruined in the process. There is no easy solution for that.

Definitely not for me to decide.

You literally can’t say “terrible things happened to Jews at the hands of Poles” without saying “BUTBUTBUTBUT WE HAD IT BAD TOO!!!! OMG #NOTALLPOLES IT WASN’T OUR FAULT FEEL BAD FOR US,”, can you?

Like you really don’t realize how fucking wrong and antisemitic it is that you had to take a post about antisemitic violence in the country from which HALF THE HOLOCAUST’S JEWISH VICTIMS CAME, and make it about goyim.

I want you to sit with how fucking disgusting that is. You literally can’t even let us grieve without sticking your Nazi-loving goyische asses in the middle.

Don’t you dare calling me “Nazi-loving”. You’re projecting on me some personality that is what I fight almost daily and despise. You’re responding with a heart so full of hatred. I understand that you’re full of grief and anger about a recent surge of antisemitic violence, but please don’t pull it all out on someone that made an honest mistake of not knowing that the comment is under the original post also. I’m new to tumblr.

I took it personal, true. I mistook reposts as antipolish, and I wouldn’t respond to it if the main post wasn’t about Kielce.

I’m supporting the original post, it needs to be spoken about.

I didn’t make it about as you said “goyim”. I literaly mentioned only about people that experienced or were involved in the Kielce pogrom ( that was a main topic of the post). About two experiences, one of a child and one of a young citizen. I’m telling parts of the story, not making them clean and innocent. I needed to add that the grief of victims’ close ones and citizens was mutual, because it was. That they were, we are together in it. Kielce pogrom was the biggest tragedy that happened in this town.

I spoke how disgusting, despicable crime it was and there is and wasn’t any “but” to that.

You didn’t make it about goyim? Then what is this shit? Putting words in our mouths so you can wail about how we treat goyische Poles as a “homogenic stupid mass that hates Jewish people”?

Nobody here was shitting on Poles writ large. We were talking about JEWISH LIVES LOST but waaaaaaahhhh some goyische Polish boy couldn’t step in so let’s talk about him, instead. Waaaaaaah your town feels bad so let’s talk about them, instead. Waaaaaaah you were under Nazi and Soviet control so clearly we should feel bad for you and ignore the THREE MILLION FUCKING JEWISH LIVES your people stood idly by and watched slaughtered (and don’t claim they didn’t know–there were reports as early as 1942). You’re the victims, not the Jews.

If that’s your “support,” then stuff it up your ass. We don’t fucking care how fucking bad you claim the bystanders felt, do you understand? They attacked us on lies, found out they were lies, and went right on ahead, then cried crocodile tears later about how sorry they were for MURDERING MORE THAN FORTY PEOPLE (oh, but I forgot, it wasn’t them, it was Soviet saboteurs, right? No Pole ever killed a Jew, that’s just libel and makes you mad, right?)

Our people were slaughtered. Your people slaughtered our people and I don’t give a fuck if they want to throw a pity party for themselves.

Try throwing it for the THREE MILLION PEOPLE they butchered. It won’t help, but at least it’d suggest a sense of shame.

@prismatic-bell

Seriously, please get some help. I’ve explained to you and others many times what I meant and apologised for not being specific and putting my rushed and emotional comment under the main post. There is no reason to continue this.

I don’t want to make you sick from being angry. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I may not be right in everything, but I think it’s better for all to stop this feud. I meant no harm, and I’m sorry if I did gave you any.

Down below are some of my responses that may clarify my intentions, if they doesn’t I don’t think anything will.

Victims of Kielce pogrom will never be forgotten!

Best wishes of health from me, to you and others I’ve responded to here. This respost will be last.

Oh, cut the pity party. You tell me to “get help,” you claim “nobody knows” how the pogrom started (we do), you finish by subtly suggesting we’re the problem because maybe “this is why people stay silent.” Even now you’re still trying to make victims of perpetrators.

Your apology is noted, which is not to say it’s accepted.

As a closing remark, since you don’t seem to understand why I and others are so pissed, I’ll give you what you want and make you the center of this discussion.

I want you to imagine that some other Polish Tumblrite has made a post about the Katyn Massacre and mourning those who were killed, and someone else giving a fuller explanation of the massacre and what happened. And to make this closer to what Jews experience, I want you to imagine that 99% of your town was killed at Katyn.

Under the explanation comment, someone says “as a Russian-American, I feel like it’s important we remember this. There are many Russians who will wax poetic about Russians who resisted the Soviet regime and etc., but few will discuss the suffering the Poles went through with Russification.”

So far, so good. We have a memorial; an explanation; some solidarity.

And then someone comes in and says “it’s so easy not to tell the whole story. How Russians who wanted to help Poles were stopped by the Cheka, how it started as a PROVOCATION. I grew up near Katyn and there was a man in my town who I watched break down and cry because he was just a teenager and couldn’t interfere. It’s still a scar on my town and nobody wants to talk about it to this day. It’s very hurtful to say all Russians are anti-Polish!”

Do you kind of want to slap that person across the face, just a little bit?

Do you feel like they’re speaking in solidarity with you?

When they go on to say they’ve studied Poles all their life, do you feel like they’re being compassionate, or just speaking over you?

When people get mad and they just keep insisting that Russians felt bad about Katyn, do you feel like they understand?

And when a post that should have been about mourning your people gets derailed into explaining again and again why the Russian has acted inappropriately, and they simply cannot bring themselves to say “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it from your side,” how do you feel?

Do you get it now?

@prismatic-bell I wouldn't think of slapping that person, I would feel at least pity for those people, if not forgave them. I would think that they speak in solidarity, clumsily but still they tried. But that may be, I think, a naive/soft part of my character.

I wrote about you needing to get help because I got worried about you, how angry you got. It wasn't ironic, I was worried that it will hurt you. I'm not a native speaker and used an expression that meant something completely different. I'm sorry for that. I did not understand then why exactly you got so angry.

Then later I've talked it all over with someone I responded to at the first place and understood where my fault was.

I understood that I should have not written about it at all at the first place.

My point was at first that even If it were a provocation it wouldn't make murderers and their acomplices not guilty. They were guilty.

Not important nuances of how this started are not to be discussed outside of academic discourse on psychology, history or related fields.

And what I did was disrespectul, even if it wasn't meant to be.

I'll post my proper apologies soon.

The US is bombing my home country Venezuela.

Venezuela has been in a dictatorship as long as I have been alive. Since 1998. My parents are happy about a coup and hope Maduro dies or gets arrested, which yes. Fuck Maduro, fuck Chavismo. But I've read way too much about the history of US dipping their hands into South America, installing puppet states, fucking everything up and this is not a win. Even if Maduro dies or gets arrested, the US just wants the country's resources, they are not magically going to fix everything, there is a corrupt reason for this to be happening that is yet to unfold and I'm so tired. Fuck Trump.

I wish I could find better words to explain this to non-venezuelans, or Venezuelans of an older generation who are just tired of failed "socialism" and beelined straight to far right borderline extremism as if that was better. For now my family back home is safe and I wish every person in Caracas the same.

An unidentified woman uses the end of a ribbon to dry her eyes as she mourns her husband, one of at least 41 people killed in the Kielce Pogrom, an outbreak of violence against the Jewish community centre’ gathering of refugees in the city of Kielce. It was Poland’s bloodiest postwar Pogrom. Associated Press Photo from New York - 1946.

For those who don’t understand the significance of the picture or date, this particular pogrom, the Kielce pogrom, was one of the most despicable in human history. After the Holocaust, survivors were trying to make their way home, or whatever was left of home, to meet up with their loved ones and see who else had survived. (For example, my cousin came home from Auschwitz to discover that his father was still alive but his mother and siblings were murdered.)

Out of the fear that the Jews would claim their stolen property, Jewish refugees were attacked and murdered. This is AFTER the Holocaust, after the death camps, after the Nazis had been overthrown. For those who like to pretend that antisemitism ended after the Holocaust, remember that over 40 Holocaust refugees, who had survived 6 years of ghettos, death camps, marches through snow, starvation and disease, were viciously murdered by non-Nazis. By civilians. By regular people. That these people looked at refugees looking for their family and said, “We didn’t finish the job.”

Does it sicken you? Because it should.

As an American Pole I feel this is an important piece of history that should not be forgotten. There are many anti-semitic Poles who will wax on about how so many Poles lost their lives to save Jews and etc but so few will talk about the horrors the Jewish refugees experienced upon returning to places they had called home. I grew up listening to relatives who had smuggled food into the Krakow ghetto as children, relatives who went on to hide a family of young Jews in their home and help them escape to America, and by whose goodwill they were able to emigrate to America years later, be ragingly anti-semitic at every turn. It’s disgusting. 

It’s so easy to not tell the whole story. How ones that wanted to help victims were stopped by sovietised militia, how it all started as a PROVOCATION (as almost always: telling people that a kid was kidnapped into a cellar. There was a boy missing but he was safe elsewhere and lived in guilt to older years) ORGANISED BY A SOVIET PROVOCATEURS (they wanted so bad to make it in a few places before Kielce to scare Jewish people away from Poland) AND AN ANTISEMITIC POLITICAL ORGANISATION (active even before the war, they were nasty). And then the files about it puffed out of existence when finally Poland stopped being a puppet state. As someone who studied this horrific tragedy, it pisses me off when someone just dumbs it down into: “Greedy poles killed jews” “Polish people are anti-semitic” like we all are a homogenic stupid mass that hates Jewish people!

History is not black and white! It’s not right to simplify such complicated subjects!

@ten-reasons-why-not

@itsdetachable

Congratulations, you’re the Pole we’re talking about.

Congratulations, you don’t know me.

I’m also pissed off when I see this shitty attitude of “we were going to be next.” or the “it wasn’t our fault.” But my point isn’t that it wasn’t the fault of the people that did it or bystanders that didn’t react. It’s so easy to judge from behind your screen, in safety of your home, knowing what happened from some website, not having a gun pointed at you, not having to decide on a spot under pressure. My point is that you can’t make a judgement based of just internet post, not knowing the whole story or at least not have read some sources.

I’ve seen an old man break and cry at the cruelty that he knew happened, that he fully understood only after the fact. At the cruelty that he didn’t do much about, because how a teenager can stop an angry, deranged mob of adult men frustrated to the core about the war that just finished. He knew that the’re up to no good, that something bad is going to happen and was scared, and was deeply traumatised for his whole life at the pure evil of humankind he witnessed. For so many years he stayed silent about it, for so many years he couldn’t confront this.

It was so traumatic for this towns’ people that even now, after all those years it’s a taboo, a thing almost noone wants to confront, to talk about openly. But I’ve talked, I’ve seen the sadness and guilt even in eyes on people born long after the pogrom. I’ve seen how fear of speaking out stops them, how catolic upbringing influences them to stay silent.

We have our problems as poles. We have to face them. To break free of our prejudices, but will not be easy.

My point is, that it’s hurtful to say that Polish people in general are antisemitic, racist or evil. People like that are everywhere, and saying that about a whole nation is equal to saing it about those that speak against injustice, that try to build better future.

There is a change going on, people start to speak against injustice and cruelty. We spoke against priests that were doing bad things to children and catolic church covering up their crimes a few years back, and that was a BIG step towards speaking up about our problems. We have a long road before us, but we try.

There are some things that are just so complicated, hard to explain or to even comprehend, that you can’t just go in the internet and say whatever making a quick judgement. More so if don’t know anything of the subject, didn’t even studied it.

The Kielce pogrom happened, it was evil, read more about it if you want to understand it more (if have a strong stomach), but please don’t say that all Polish people are antisemitic, it is hurtfull to make a general, prejudiced judgement like that.

@prismatic-bell

@ten-reasons-why-not

@itsdetachable

I stopped reading after “it wasn’t the fault of the people who did it.”

I’m sorry an expression of Jewish grief and anger didn’t make sure to absolve your precious Polish people of any wrongdoing because individuals had no autonomy to decide if they’d commit murder or turn their neighbors in to the Nazis or ransack their stuff.

I guess Hitler and Stalin were there holding their hands “stop hitting yourself”-style the whole time.

Come on, Prismatic. I don’t think doubleprev centering the trauma experienced by the bystanders in a thread about the actual victims is appropriate, and nobody in this thread actually said all Poles are antisemitic or treated Poles as a homogenous mass like crayon is claiming, but the words they typed were “my point isn’t that it wasn’t the fault of the people that did it or bystanders that didn’t react.” The rest of the post is kind of undercutting that point, and regardless it wasn’t the time or place for them to say any of that, but you didn’t have to do an “I think Coolsville sucks.”

Fair enough, I misread.

I still don’t think they have much worthwhile to say given how they reacted here, though.

Yeah, like… in some contexts maybe it’s worthwhile, but nobody was actually assigning collective guilt to poles, just saying that it needs to be acknowledged more, and “well the agitators had to try several towns before one fell for the blood libel and started a pogrom” isn’t worth much if the other towns, and Poland as a whole, refuse to acknowledge this shit because of their “Catholic upbringing” or whatever, or do shit like giving holocaust survivors their fucking homes back / paying reparations if that’s no longer possible because they failed to do it in the 40s/50s.

Meanwhile @athingofvikings’ family has been unable to retrieve their property because the government says they can’t guarantee the family’s safety if they try.

@fidgetycrayon so tell me, is it Nazis and Soviet agitators in the 2020s refusing restitution to Holocaust survivors and their families? Because I would LOVE to know.

@prismatic-bell

It is not them. Our goverment is full of shit and fighting for power on emotions of people (as many other goverments do). There was and is a lot of inner fighting in Poland about it.

We have the similar problem with getting back things stolen by Nazis or reparations for damages (when war was finished our whole country was in ruins, not mentioning the creme de la creme of our nation killed in Katyń by soviets). The solution from after the war was made for us, by “mighty and powerful” of those times.

But you have to have in mind the situation after the war, almost whole country in ruins, there was a massive housing crisis, PRL goverment took over not only Jewish property but also of Polish citizens, decisions on a higher level were made in years after (till late 80’) in Moscow. Most of the Holocaust survivors that had a direct bond with those places died already one by one, with a passage of time, a lot of documents are lost. There is a fear of false claims. And now its not easy to prove definitive ownership of the property.

I think that people that lived their whole life in those buildings are also just scared to be thrown out of their homes with nowhere to go. That fear of losing livelyhood is alive.

Many lives would be ruined in the process. There is no easy solution for that.

Definitely not for me to decide.

You literally can’t say “terrible things happened to Jews at the hands of Poles” without saying “BUTBUTBUTBUT WE HAD IT BAD TOO!!!! OMG #NOTALLPOLES IT WASN’T OUR FAULT FEEL BAD FOR US,”, can you?

Like you really don’t realize how fucking wrong and antisemitic it is that you had to take a post about antisemitic violence in the country from which HALF THE HOLOCAUST’S JEWISH VICTIMS CAME, and make it about goyim.

I want you to sit with how fucking disgusting that is. You literally can’t even let us grieve without sticking your Nazi-loving goyische asses in the middle.

Don’t you dare calling me “Nazi-loving”. You’re projecting on me some personality that is what I fight almost daily and despise. You’re responding with a heart so full of hatred. I understand that you’re full of grief and anger about a recent surge of antisemitic violence, but please don’t pull it all out on someone that made an honest mistake of not knowing that the comment is under the original post also. I’m new to tumblr.

I took it personal, true. I mistook reposts as antipolish, and I wouldn’t respond to it if the main post wasn’t about Kielce.

I’m supporting the original post, it needs to be spoken about.

I didn’t make it about as you said “goyim”. I literaly mentioned only about people that experienced or were involved in the Kielce pogrom ( that was a main topic of the post). About two experiences, one of a child and one of a young citizen. I’m telling parts of the story, not making them clean and innocent. I needed to add that the grief of victims’ close ones and citizens was mutual, because it was. That they were, we are together in it. Kielce pogrom was the biggest tragedy that happened in this town.

I spoke how disgusting, despicable crime it was and there is and wasn’t any “but” to that.

You didn’t make it about goyim? Then what is this shit? Putting words in our mouths so you can wail about how we treat goyische Poles as a “homogenic stupid mass that hates Jewish people”?

Nobody here was shitting on Poles writ large. We were talking about JEWISH LIVES LOST but waaaaaaahhhh some goyische Polish boy couldn’t step in so let’s talk about him, instead. Waaaaaaah your town feels bad so let’s talk about them, instead. Waaaaaaah you were under Nazi and Soviet control so clearly we should feel bad for you and ignore the THREE MILLION FUCKING JEWISH LIVES your people stood idly by and watched slaughtered (and don’t claim they didn’t know–there were reports as early as 1942). You’re the victims, not the Jews.

If that’s your “support,” then stuff it up your ass. We don’t fucking care how fucking bad you claim the bystanders felt, do you understand? They attacked us on lies, found out they were lies, and went right on ahead, then cried crocodile tears later about how sorry they were for MURDERING MORE THAN FORTY PEOPLE (oh, but I forgot, it wasn’t them, it was Soviet saboteurs, right? No Pole ever killed a Jew, that’s just libel and makes you mad, right?)

Our people were slaughtered. Your people slaughtered our people and I don’t give a fuck if they want to throw a pity party for themselves.

Try throwing it for the THREE MILLION PEOPLE they butchered. It won’t help, but at least it’d suggest a sense of shame.

@prismatic-bell

Seriously, please get some help. I've explained to you and others many times what I meant and apologised for not being specific and putting my rushed and emotional comment under the main post. There is no reason to continue this.

I don't want to make you sick from being angry. I don't want to hurt your feelings. I may not be right in everything, but I think it's better for all to stop this feud. I meant no harm, and I'm sorry if I did gave you any.

Down below are some of my responses that may clarify my intentions, if they doesn't I don't think anything will.

Victims of Kielce pogrom will never be forgotten!

Best wishes of health from me, to you and others I've responded to here. This respost will be last.

An unidentified woman uses the end of a ribbon to dry her eyes as she mourns her husband, one of at least 41 people killed in the Kielce Pogrom, an outbreak of violence against the Jewish community centre’ gathering of refugees in the city of Kielce. It was Poland’s bloodiest postwar Pogrom. Associated Press Photo from New York - 1946.

For those who don’t understand the significance of the picture or date, this particular pogrom, the Kielce pogrom, was one of the most despicable in human history. After the Holocaust, survivors were trying to make their way home, or whatever was left of home, to meet up with their loved ones and see who else had survived. (For example, my cousin came home from Auschwitz to discover that his father was still alive but his mother and siblings were murdered.)

Out of the fear that the Jews would claim their stolen property, Jewish refugees were attacked and murdered. This is AFTER the Holocaust, after the death camps, after the Nazis had been overthrown. For those who like to pretend that antisemitism ended after the Holocaust, remember that over 40 Holocaust refugees, who had survived 6 years of ghettos, death camps, marches through snow, starvation and disease, were viciously murdered by non-Nazis. By civilians. By regular people. That these people looked at refugees looking for their family and said, “We didn’t finish the job.”

Does it sicken you? Because it should.

As an American Pole I feel this is an important piece of history that should not be forgotten. There are many anti-semitic Poles who will wax on about how so many Poles lost their lives to save Jews and etc but so few will talk about the horrors the Jewish refugees experienced upon returning to places they had called home. I grew up listening to relatives who had smuggled food into the Krakow ghetto as children, relatives who went on to hide a family of young Jews in their home and help them escape to America, and by whose goodwill they were able to emigrate to America years later, be ragingly anti-semitic at every turn. It’s disgusting. 

It’s so easy to not tell the whole story. How ones that wanted to help victims were stopped by sovietised militia, how it all started as a PROVOCATION (as almost always: telling people that a kid was kidnapped into a cellar. There was a boy missing but he was safe elsewhere and lived in guilt to older years) ORGANISED BY A SOVIET PROVOCATEURS (they wanted so bad to make it in a few places before Kielce to scare Jewish people away from Poland) AND AN ANTISEMITIC POLITICAL ORGANISATION (active even before the war, they were nasty). And then the files about it puffed out of existence when finally Poland stopped being a puppet state. As someone who studied this horrific tragedy, it pisses me off when someone just dumbs it down into: “Greedy poles killed jews” “Polish people are anti-semitic” like we all are a homogenic stupid mass that hates Jewish people!

History is not black and white! It’s not right to simplify such complicated subjects!

@ten-reasons-why-not

@itsdetachable

Congratulations, you’re the Pole we’re talking about.

Congratulations, you don’t know me.

I’m also pissed off when I see this shitty attitude of “we were going to be next.” or the “it wasn’t our fault.” But my point isn’t that it wasn’t the fault of the people that did it or bystanders that didn’t react. It’s so easy to judge from behind your screen, in safety of your home, knowing what happened from some website, not having a gun pointed at you, not having to decide on a spot under pressure. My point is that you can’t make a judgement based of just internet post, not knowing the whole story or at least not have read some sources.

I’ve seen an old man break and cry at the cruelty that he knew happened, that he fully understood only after the fact. At the cruelty that he didn’t do much about, because how a teenager can stop an angry, deranged mob of adult men frustrated to the core about the war that just finished. He knew that the’re up to no good, that something bad is going to happen and was scared, and was deeply traumatised for his whole life at the pure evil of humankind he witnessed. For so many years he stayed silent about it, for so many years he couldn’t confront this.

It was so traumatic for this towns’ people that even now, after all those years it’s a taboo, a thing almost noone wants to confront, to talk about openly. But I’ve talked, I’ve seen the sadness and guilt even in eyes on people born long after the pogrom. I’ve seen how fear of speaking out stops them, how catolic upbringing influences them to stay silent.

We have our problems as poles. We have to face them. To break free of our prejudices, but will not be easy.

My point is, that it’s hurtful to say that Polish people in general are antisemitic, racist or evil. People like that are everywhere, and saying that about a whole nation is equal to saing it about those that speak against injustice, that try to build better future.

There is a change going on, people start to speak against injustice and cruelty. We spoke against priests that were doing bad things to children and catolic church covering up their crimes a few years back, and that was a BIG step towards speaking up about our problems. We have a long road before us, but we try.

There are some things that are just so complicated, hard to explain or to even comprehend, that you can’t just go in the internet and say whatever making a quick judgement. More so if don’t know anything of the subject, didn’t even studied it.

The Kielce pogrom happened, it was evil, read more about it if you want to understand it more (if have a strong stomach), but please don’t say that all Polish people are antisemitic, it is hurtfull to make a general, prejudiced judgement like that.

@prismatic-bell

@ten-reasons-why-not

@itsdetachable

I stopped reading after “it wasn’t the fault of the people who did it.”

I’m sorry an expression of Jewish grief and anger didn’t make sure to absolve your precious Polish people of any wrongdoing because individuals had no autonomy to decide if they’d commit murder or turn their neighbors in to the Nazis or ransack their stuff.

I guess Hitler and Stalin were there holding their hands “stop hitting yourself”-style the whole time.

2. Not only Jewish people grief. That was my Polish grief, as well of many that didn’t voice it, at the fact of horrific crime of pogrom ever happening.

3. Please, try to read it properly this time and don’t put words into my mouth.

The false idea that it was the fault of Soviets and not Polish people is disrespectful to the victims. The Kielce pogrom was commited by Poles. Jewish people tried to return to their home only to be murdered by their Polish neighbors who didn’t want them to return. There is no “provocation” that can forgive or lessen that. And especially not the same tired antisemitic rhetoric that had been repeated so many times, in Poland just as in so many other countries, to justify mass murder. It will be 80 years since the pogrom come July, and you still can’t condemn it without simutaniously excusing it and saying the people who committed it weren’t bad.

The grief of the victims and the discomfort and guilt of the perpatrators and bystanders are not the same.

I will never forget asking my granddad about what it was like growing up in Poland before WW2, and being told “What should I talk about there for? We are here now and here we are safe and things are good” (whether he’d say that now was besides the point).

Here we are (were) safe. There we were not. Here we are Americans, there they would not let our family forget they were not Poles.

@rose-in-a-fisted-glove

I'm not saing that it wasn't a crime commited by Poles. It was done by people of mainly Polish nationality, provocation was just an excuse, an excuse that shouln't have happened or worked. The people that did it were just plain evil. Just remembering the accounts of what happened makes me sick.

I was mentioning a story of a man that couldn't stop it and still felt guilty like he did it, because it was a personal account of a bystander. It is important to me to mention that this pogrom, this murder was not supported. Lack of punishment that came was not a voice of towns population. The kid mentioned first was a different story, a story so fogged and changed so many times noone knows what exactly happened, its good that he felt in some way responsible, anyone else should at his place.

And I mentioned a little about antisemitism in Poland and in Kielce (too little but it's too broad of a subject for a tumblr post, to know when it is not manipulation and brainwashing but just rotten will). It's complicated, hard to cure (usually imposible to), but I hope there is a chance that by small steps, empathy, work of activism we'll get better. Maybe I'm just gullible but I try.

The horrors that Jewish people suffered in WW2 were incomparably worse than what happened to Poles. I know about it. I know also how injust the treatment they suffered was before the war, like it always happens to those that stand out. That is why so many hide their ancestry here.

But I also know how before the war life in shtetls, even when it came with hardships, ill will from antisemites, Jewish communities flourished. Against all odds! The gaping hole left after the war stayed empty and didn't heal well, it is an obvious saddening scar, that will remain.

I've been studying history of Jewish people in Poland for many (as for my lifespan) years, being myself a plain ex-catolic Pole, trying to learn about how's and why's, about relations . With all my heart I want peace, I want and try to fight for equality, where everyone, every side treats eachother with respect. I know there is no easy solution. I try to fight, usually it feels like futile, and it's so hard to face opressors, but there are some wins, those keep me up. Those wins are precious in darker times that came upon us. Maybe my rambling is not meant for the internet. In moments like that I start to wonder if it is why also people stay silent, to not be misunderstood.

An unidentified woman uses the end of a ribbon to dry her eyes as she mourns her husband, one of at least 41 people killed in the Kielce Pogrom, an outbreak of violence against the Jewish community centre’ gathering of refugees in the city of Kielce. It was Poland’s bloodiest postwar Pogrom. Associated Press Photo from New York - 1946.

For those who don’t understand the significance of the picture or date, this particular pogrom, the Kielce pogrom, was one of the most despicable in human history. After the Holocaust, survivors were trying to make their way home, or whatever was left of home, to meet up with their loved ones and see who else had survived. (For example, my cousin came home from Auschwitz to discover that his father was still alive but his mother and siblings were murdered.)

Out of the fear that the Jews would claim their stolen property, Jewish refugees were attacked and murdered. This is AFTER the Holocaust, after the death camps, after the Nazis had been overthrown. For those who like to pretend that antisemitism ended after the Holocaust, remember that over 40 Holocaust refugees, who had survived 6 years of ghettos, death camps, marches through snow, starvation and disease, were viciously murdered by non-Nazis. By civilians. By regular people. That these people looked at refugees looking for their family and said, “We didn’t finish the job.”

Does it sicken you? Because it should.

As an American Pole I feel this is an important piece of history that should not be forgotten. There are many anti-semitic Poles who will wax on about how so many Poles lost their lives to save Jews and etc but so few will talk about the horrors the Jewish refugees experienced upon returning to places they had called home. I grew up listening to relatives who had smuggled food into the Krakow ghetto as children, relatives who went on to hide a family of young Jews in their home and help them escape to America, and by whose goodwill they were able to emigrate to America years later, be ragingly anti-semitic at every turn. It’s disgusting. 

It’s so easy to not tell the whole story. How ones that wanted to help victims were stopped by sovietised militia, how it all started as a PROVOCATION (as almost always: telling people that a kid was kidnapped into a cellar. There was a boy missing but he was safe elsewhere and lived in guilt to older years) ORGANISED BY A SOVIET PROVOCATEURS (they wanted so bad to make it in a few places before Kielce to scare Jewish people away from Poland) AND AN ANTISEMITIC POLITICAL ORGANISATION (active even before the war, they were nasty). And then the files about it puffed out of existence when finally Poland stopped being a puppet state. As someone who studied this horrific tragedy, it pisses me off when someone just dumbs it down into: “Greedy poles killed jews” “Polish people are anti-semitic” like we all are a homogenic stupid mass that hates Jewish people!

History is not black and white! It’s not right to simplify such complicated subjects!

@ten-reasons-why-not

@itsdetachable

Congratulations, you’re the Pole we’re talking about.

Congratulations, you don’t know me.

I’m also pissed off when I see this shitty attitude of “we were going to be next.” or the “it wasn’t our fault.” But my point isn’t that it wasn’t the fault of the people that did it or bystanders that didn’t react. It’s so easy to judge from behind your screen, in safety of your home, knowing what happened from some website, not having a gun pointed at you, not having to decide on a spot under pressure. My point is that you can’t make a judgement based of just internet post, not knowing the whole story or at least not have read some sources.

I’ve seen an old man break and cry at the cruelty that he knew happened, that he fully understood only after the fact. At the cruelty that he didn’t do much about, because how a teenager can stop an angry, deranged mob of adult men frustrated to the core about the war that just finished. He knew that the’re up to no good, that something bad is going to happen and was scared, and was deeply traumatised for his whole life at the pure evil of humankind he witnessed. For so many years he stayed silent about it, for so many years he couldn’t confront this.

It was so traumatic for this towns’ people that even now, after all those years it’s a taboo, a thing almost noone wants to confront, to talk about openly. But I’ve talked, I’ve seen the sadness and guilt even in eyes on people born long after the pogrom. I’ve seen how fear of speaking out stops them, how catolic upbringing influences them to stay silent.

We have our problems as poles. We have to face them. To break free of our prejudices, but will not be easy.

My point is, that it’s hurtful to say that Polish people in general are antisemitic, racist or evil. People like that are everywhere, and saying that about a whole nation is equal to saing it about those that speak against injustice, that try to build better future.

There is a change going on, people start to speak against injustice and cruelty. We spoke against priests that were doing bad things to children and catolic church covering up their crimes a few years back, and that was a BIG step towards speaking up about our problems. We have a long road before us, but we try.

There are some things that are just so complicated, hard to explain or to even comprehend, that you can’t just go in the internet and say whatever making a quick judgement. More so if don’t know anything of the subject, didn’t even studied it.

The Kielce pogrom happened, it was evil, read more about it if you want to understand it more (if have a strong stomach), but please don’t say that all Polish people are antisemitic, it is hurtfull to make a general, prejudiced judgement like that.

@prismatic-bell

@ten-reasons-why-not

@itsdetachable

I stopped reading after “it wasn’t the fault of the people who did it.”

I’m sorry an expression of Jewish grief and anger didn’t make sure to absolve your precious Polish people of any wrongdoing because individuals had no autonomy to decide if they’d commit murder or turn their neighbors in to the Nazis or ransack their stuff.

I guess Hitler and Stalin were there holding their hands “stop hitting yourself”-style the whole time.

Come on, Prismatic. I don’t think doubleprev centering the trauma experienced by the bystanders in a thread about the actual victims is appropriate, and nobody in this thread actually said all Poles are antisemitic or treated Poles as a homogenous mass like crayon is claiming, but the words they typed were “my point isn’t that it wasn’t the fault of the people that did it or bystanders that didn’t react.” The rest of the post is kind of undercutting that point, and regardless it wasn’t the time or place for them to say any of that, but you didn’t have to do an “I think Coolsville sucks.”

Fair enough, I misread.

I still don’t think they have much worthwhile to say given how they reacted here, though.

Yeah, like… in some contexts maybe it’s worthwhile, but nobody was actually assigning collective guilt to poles, just saying that it needs to be acknowledged more, and “well the agitators had to try several towns before one fell for the blood libel and started a pogrom” isn’t worth much if the other towns, and Poland as a whole, refuse to acknowledge this shit because of their “Catholic upbringing” or whatever, or do shit like giving holocaust survivors their fucking homes back / paying reparations if that’s no longer possible because they failed to do it in the 40s/50s.

Meanwhile @athingofvikings’ family has been unable to retrieve their property because the government says they can’t guarantee the family’s safety if they try.

@fidgetycrayon so tell me, is it Nazis and Soviet agitators in the 2020s refusing restitution to Holocaust survivors and their families? Because I would LOVE to know.

@prismatic-bell

It is not them. Our goverment is full of shit and fighting for power on emotions of people (as many other goverments do). There was and is a lot of inner fighting in Poland about it.

We have the similar problem with getting back things stolen by Nazis or reparations for damages (when war was finished our whole country was in ruins, not mentioning the creme de la creme of our nation killed in Katyń by soviets). The solution from after the war was made for us, by "mighty and powerful" of those times.

But you have to have in mind the situation after the war, almost whole country in ruins, there was a massive housing crisis, PRL goverment took over not only Jewish property but also of Polish citizens, decisions on a higher level were made in years after (till late 80') in Moscow. Most of the Holocaust survivors that had a direct bond with those places died already one by one, with a passage of time, a lot of documents are lost. There is a fear of false claims. And now its not easy to prove definitive ownership of the property.

I think that people that lived their whole life in those buildings are also just scared to be thrown out of their homes with nowhere to go. That fear of losing livelyhood is alive.

Many lives would be ruined in the process. There is no easy solution for that.

Definitely not for me to decide.

An unidentified woman uses the end of a ribbon to dry her eyes as she mourns her husband, one of at least 41 people killed in the Kielce Pogrom, an outbreak of violence against the Jewish community centre’ gathering of refugees in the city of Kielce. It was Poland’s bloodiest postwar Pogrom. Associated Press Photo from New York - 1946.

For those who don’t understand the significance of the picture or date, this particular pogrom, the Kielce pogrom, was one of the most despicable in human history. After the Holocaust, survivors were trying to make their way home, or whatever was left of home, to meet up with their loved ones and see who else had survived. (For example, my cousin came home from Auschwitz to discover that his father was still alive but his mother and siblings were murdered.)

Out of the fear that the Jews would claim their stolen property, Jewish refugees were attacked and murdered. This is AFTER the Holocaust, after the death camps, after the Nazis had been overthrown. For those who like to pretend that antisemitism ended after the Holocaust, remember that over 40 Holocaust refugees, who had survived 6 years of ghettos, death camps, marches through snow, starvation and disease, were viciously murdered by non-Nazis. By civilians. By regular people. That these people looked at refugees looking for their family and said, “We didn’t finish the job.”

Does it sicken you? Because it should.

As an American Pole I feel this is an important piece of history that should not be forgotten. There are many anti-semitic Poles who will wax on about how so many Poles lost their lives to save Jews and etc but so few will talk about the horrors the Jewish refugees experienced upon returning to places they had called home. I grew up listening to relatives who had smuggled food into the Krakow ghetto as children, relatives who went on to hide a family of young Jews in their home and help them escape to America, and by whose goodwill they were able to emigrate to America years later, be ragingly anti-semitic at every turn. It’s disgusting. 

It’s so easy to not tell the whole story. How ones that wanted to help victims were stopped by sovietised militia, how it all started as a PROVOCATION (as almost always: telling people that a kid was kidnapped into a cellar. There was a boy missing but he was safe elsewhere and lived in guilt to older years) ORGANISED BY A SOVIET PROVOCATEURS (they wanted so bad to make it in a few places before Kielce to scare Jewish people away from Poland) AND AN ANTISEMITIC POLITICAL ORGANISATION (active even before the war, they were nasty). And then the files about it puffed out of existence when finally Poland stopped being a puppet state. As someone who studied this horrific tragedy, it pisses me off when someone just dumbs it down into: “Greedy poles killed jews” “Polish people are anti-semitic” like we all are a homogenic stupid mass that hates Jewish people!

History is not black and white! It’s not right to simplify such complicated subjects!

@ten-reasons-why-not

@itsdetachable

Congratulations, you’re the Pole we’re talking about.

Congratulations, you don’t know me.

I’m also pissed off when I see this shitty attitude of “we were going to be next.” or the “it wasn’t our fault.” But my point isn’t that it wasn’t the fault of the people that did it or bystanders that didn’t react. It’s so easy to judge from behind your screen, in safety of your home, knowing what happened from some website, not having a gun pointed at you, not having to decide on a spot under pressure. My point is that you can’t make a judgement based of just internet post, not knowing the whole story or at least not have read some sources.

I’ve seen an old man break and cry at the cruelty that he knew happened, that he fully understood only after the fact. At the cruelty that he didn’t do much about, because how a teenager can stop an angry, deranged mob of adult men frustrated to the core about the war that just finished. He knew that the’re up to no good, that something bad is going to happen and was scared, and was deeply traumatised for his whole life at the pure evil of humankind he witnessed. For so many years he stayed silent about it, for so many years he couldn’t confront this.

It was so traumatic for this towns’ people that even now, after all those years it’s a taboo, a thing almost noone wants to confront, to talk about openly. But I’ve talked, I’ve seen the sadness and guilt even in eyes on people born long after the pogrom. I’ve seen how fear of speaking out stops them, how catolic upbringing influences them to stay silent.

We have our problems as poles. We have to face them. To break free of our prejudices, but will not be easy.

My point is, that it’s hurtful to say that Polish people in general are antisemitic, racist or evil. People like that are everywhere, and saying that about a whole nation is equal to saing it about those that speak against injustice, that try to build better future.

There is a change going on, people start to speak against injustice and cruelty. We spoke against priests that were doing bad things to children and catolic church covering up their crimes a few years back, and that was a BIG step towards speaking up about our problems. We have a long road before us, but we try.

There are some things that are just so complicated, hard to explain or to even comprehend, that you can’t just go in the internet and say whatever making a quick judgement. More so if don’t know anything of the subject, didn’t even studied it.

The Kielce pogrom happened, it was evil, read more about it if you want to understand it more (if have a strong stomach), but please don’t say that all Polish people are antisemitic, it is hurtfull to make a general, prejudiced judgement like that.

@prismatic-bell

@ten-reasons-why-not

@itsdetachable

I stopped reading after “it wasn’t the fault of the people who did it.”

I’m sorry an expression of Jewish grief and anger didn’t make sure to absolve your precious Polish people of any wrongdoing because individuals had no autonomy to decide if they’d commit murder or turn their neighbors in to the Nazis or ransack their stuff.

I guess Hitler and Stalin were there holding their hands “stop hitting yourself”-style the whole time.

2. Not only Jewish people grief. That was my Polish grief, as well of many that didn't voice it, at the fact of horrific crime of pogrom ever happening.

3. Please, try to read it properly this time and don't put words into my mouth.