September 12: Poland’s Victory over Islamofascism
by Bill Levinson
Everyone knows what happened five years ago today, and the surviving members of Al Qaida are probably celebrating their enormous success. It’s easy to remember that September 12 follows September 11, just as the vengeance of Western Civilization’s overwhelming military and technological power always follows attacks by barbaric medieval savages. On 12 September 1683, the steel fist of the most fearsome mounted military instrument ever to ride the earth smashed the Islamofascist menace to Central Europe for all time. This posting is dedicated to the other Eagle of Liberty, whose defense of freedom and civilization rarely get the recognition they deserve.
12 September 1683: Battle of Vienna
Then the Husaria broke into a wild gallop and the heavy mass of men and horses cascaded over the Turkish ranks, bowling over the first, slicing through the second… The Grand Vizir leapt on to a horse and made his own escape moments before the winged riders thundered up to the tent and the banner was struck” (Adam Zamoyski, The Polish Way, p. 3).
VIVAT JOANNES VICTOR. King Jan Sobieski 1, Evildoers 0
Some additional interesting facts:
(1) The Polish Commonwealth had freedom of religion long before the United States existed. Poland therefore attracted not only Jews but other religious dissidents and minorities such as Calvinists. Orthodox Christians, Protestants, and even peaceful Muslims were welcome in what may well have been the first European nation with genuine religious freedom. Russian anti-Semitism (when a good part of Poland was under Russian rule and the Tsars were trying to destroy the Polish national identity as well) forced many Jews to leave but there were still more than three million as of 1939.
(2) Two Poles, Thaddeus Kosciuszko and Casimir Pulaski, played central roles in our War of Independence.
(3) The Polish White Eagle stands explicitly for the same ideals of freedom and liberty that are sacred to the United States.
According to legend, a Polish duke named Lech was hunting when he came across an eagle’s nest. He wanted to take the eggs (or fledglings) and he climbed up to get them. The mother eagle, however, threatened him with her beak and talons. Lech drew his dagger and fought the white eagle, but he soon felt admiration of the bird’s defense of her children’s liberty and shame for his attack upon it.
Duke Lech gave up his assault on the eagle’s nest and turned to see the land of Poland stretching out below him. He asked himself if he would defend that land as the eagle had defended her nest, and that is how the white eagle became the emblem of Poland. “The White Eagle has always been on the banners of Poland and when, as has occured many times in history, Poland has been attacked, her sons have defended her no less bravely than the eagle who long ago shed her blood in the defence of freedom.” (http://www.ststanislas.org/poland/whiteeagle.html, link no longer active)
(4) “For Our Freedom and Yours.” Inscription on the Winged Hussar Memorial in Doylestown PA. It may have originated during the 19th century when Poles were attempting to regain their independence from Russia, Prussia, and Austria.
Glorifying Poland?
A thousand years ago the Polish nobles invited Jews being evicted from Western Europe to settle in Poland to use them to exploit the Polish peasants. Over the centuries, the Jewish population in Poland became the largest in the world.
The Polish people in turn have always despised Jews, and with the passage of time, as the Poles became more “Polish” and more “Catholic” their Jew-hatred became even worse.
The next to the last stage occurred beween the World Wars. The Poles became independent, and declared the Jews who had been living there for hundreds of years were unwelcome foreigners who could never be assimilated. They made life a living hell for the Jews there.
The final stage came when the Christian German Nazis marched in and murdered all the Jews while the Poles looked on. The Jewish population of Poland went from three million to three thousand. That’s a genocide of 99.999% The number of “righteous Polish gentiles” who tried to save Jews can be counted on your fingers. And when a few Holocaust survivors tried to reclaim their homes in Poland, the Poles murdered them.
How can any Jew glorify Poland? That constitutes a form of Holocasut denial. There’s even an argument that the Jews would have been better off if the Turks had defeated the Poles, and not the other way around.
Comment by Samuel Fistel
— September 11, 2006 @ 6:33 am
Samuel,
Anti-Semitism was not a problem in Poland until the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. At that point, the Russian Tsars– Nicholas I probably being the worst– deployed a policy of official anti-Semitism. Jews were uprooted and forced to move to the “pale of settlement;” that is, they were not allowed to live in parts of what was formerly Poland. It was Tsarist Russia that was also responsible for the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
Polish Gentiles also were oppressed by Russia, which wanted to destroy the Polish national identity. There is even a theory that many of the “Polack jokes” originated in Russia, or maybe Prussia (another of the partitioning countries) for the purpose of depicting Poles as too stupid to govern their own country.
The Poles did not invite the Nazis into their country to kill the Jews (as the Vichy French effectively did, while also helping the Nazis to kill French Resistance fighters and Free French). Under Nazi doctrine, all Slavs were “Untermenschen” to be cleared aside for the creation of “living space.” The Nazis gassed as many Polish Gentiles as they did Jews, simply for being Slavs.
Some Poles blame Jews (Jewish Communists) for their country’s treatment by the Soviets. Some even blame “Zhids” for the Katyn massacre, which was actually perpetrated by the Soviets (who then blamed it on the Germans). The local Jewish community newspaper said that interviewers found an old Pole in a park who blamed the Jews for everything. On the other hand, the interviewer also found several Polish students who wanted to learn more about Jews.
It is true that Jews were blamed for oppressing peasants (primarily Ukranian) but they were essentially financial intermediaries for the nobles. An angry peasant might be more likely to blame “the Jews” than the noble for whom the Jew was working because the noble had a sword and a private army. It was Ukranians, not Poles, who attempted to commit a genocide of Jews (along with Polish Catholics) in 1648.
Jews, as well as Protestants and Calvinists, lost a few civil rights after the war with Sweden in 1655, but they were not actively oppressed. The reason was that Calvinists (primarily the Hetman of Lithuania) collaborated with the Protestant Swedes so the dominant Catholic population began to distrust other religions. This was when, as you point out, the Poles became more conscious of their Catholic identity. Nonetheless, a Jew who converted to Catholicism was automatically made a member of the gentry and given the vote.
The bottom line is, however, that people do not move TO countries that hate and persecute them. Poland and, to a lesser degree Germany, had huge Jewish populations because there was less persecution there than elsewhere. Sweden got its steel industry, as I recall, because some Hugeonauts with skills in that area fled from France during a persecution.
In any event, there are doubtlessly some Polish anti-Semites, and they are welcome to go straight to Hell for all I care. On the other hand, it is counterproductive and in fact bigoted to broad-brush all Poles as anti-Semites. Doing so is in fact a good way to create anti-Semites where none existed before. We, after all, do not like it when someone points to bad conduct of a few people who happen to be Jewish and then says that “the Jews” behave that way. If, for example, someone says that Jonathan Pollard spied on my country, I would agree with him. The instant he says, “Those disloyal Jews spy on America,” I tend to forget what Pollard did and regard the speaker as my enemy. I am sure Poles react the same way when someone says, “Those Poles are anti-Semitic.”
Comment by Bill Levinson
— September 11, 2006 @ 10:52 am
9-11, five years later…
It’s now the fifth year since September 11, 2001, when the al Qaeda murdered almost 3000 people in the World Trade Center. This is my entry for the memorial service….
Trackback by Tel-Chai Nation
— September 12, 2006 @ 1:32 am