Am Poland Chai!!! - New PM is part-Jewish

[Hamlet]

(JTA) — A politician with Jewish roots who said that both of his aunts were rescued by non-Jews during the Holocaust was appointed the country’s prime minister amid a Cabinet reshuffle.

Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, a former bank chairman in the Santander Group, was tapped Thursday to take charge of the Polish government as it gears up for parliamentary elections in 2019, the ruling Law and Justice party announced. He succeeds Beata Maria Szydło, also of the right-wing party, who has served in the post since 2015.

Morawiecki, 49, who was not even a member of Law and Justice two years ago, joined the government as minister for economic development in 2015 before adding the post of finance minister last year.

His Jewish roots were known in Poland. Morawiecki spoke about it in some detail earlier this year at a ceremony at the Warsaw Zoo honoring a former zoo director and his wife, Jan and Antonina Żabiński, who saved hundreds of Jews there, and other rescuers.

“Always at such ceremonies I begin reflecting on my family’s own story,” Morawiecki said. “My aunt Irena was a Jew, she survived the war and as a child of 10. Until she was 16, she stayed with a Polish family who rescued her” with help from a few dozen other non-Jewish Poles who risked their lives to hide her, he said.

Another aunt, named Roma, now lives in Israel, he said. She survived the Holocaust because she escaped eastward, Morawiecki said, presumably to Russian-held territories, while the rest of her family died.

Morawiecki later said at least one of the aunts was a blood relation, according to Jonny Daniels, founder of From the Depths, the commemoration group that organized the zoo ceremony. Roma’s relative were murdered by “Nazis or communists,” Daniels said.

Unlike the Nazis, communist fighters during the 1940s did not search systematically for Jews to kill them.

In Eastern and Central Europe, where many people have bitter memories of Russian domination, nationalist politician often make equations between Nazism and communism.

Morawiecki said that none of the people who helped Irena had been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations – a title that Israel bestows on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Poland in reality had “10 times” the number of Righteous recognized, which Morawiecki said was 7,000 but in reality is 6,706.

[Bobby Martnen]

So is he fully Ashkenazi or only part?

And is he a practicing Catholic or Jew?

[Hamlet]

So is he fully Ashkenazi or only part?

And is he a practicing Catholic or Jew?

Part (I would guess half), Catholic.

[Mingle]

So is he fully Ashkenazi or only part?

Partly.

And is he a practicing Catholic or Jew?

Catholic, he's quite religious actually.

[Hamlet]

Still funny tho

[Peterski]

Our First Lady is also part Jewish. But the President is not.

[Hamlet]

Our First Lady is also part Jewish. But the President is not.

Do people worry about it at all? Or not really

[Peterski]

Do people worry about it at all? Or not really

Not really. And some Western media even called President Duda "Anti-Semitic", if I recall correctly.

His wife is 1/4 Jewish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agata_Kornhauser-Duda

[Peterski]

Unlike the Nazis, communist fighters during the 1940s did not search systematically for Jews to kill them. In Eastern and Central Europe, where many people have bitter memories of Russian domination, nationalist politician often make equations between Nazism and communism.

Because Commies systematically killed people based on class, not based on race. But other than that they were similar:



Of course a Jewish site is defending communist fighters because a lot of them were Jewish (many Jews were Commies).

[Hamlet]

Because Commies systematically killed people based on class, not based on race. But other than that they were similar:



Of course a Jewish site is defending communist fighters because a lot of them were Jewish (many Jews were Commies).

Agreed about the Jews part - and also agreed that National Socialism and Marxism-Leninism are very similar...

From von Mises:

"The Bolshevists set the precedent. The success of the Lenin clique encouraged the Mussolini gang and the Hitler troops. Both Italian Fascism and German Nazism adopted the political methods of Soviet Russia. The only difference between Nazism and Bolshevism is that the Nazis got a much bigger minority in the elections preceding their coup d'état than the Bolsheviks got in the Russian elections in the fall of 1917.

The Nazis have not only imitated the Bolshevist tactics of seizing power. They have copied much more. They have imported from Russia the one-party system and the privileged role of this party and its members in public life; the paramount position of the secret police; the organization of affiliated parties abroad which are employed in fighting their domestic governments and in sabotage and espionage, assisted by public funds and the protection of the diplomatic and consular service; the administrative execution and imprisonment of political adversaries; concentration camps; the punishment inflicted on the families of exiles; the methods of propaganda. They have borrowed from the Marxians even such absurdities as the mode of address, party comrade (Parteigenosse), derived from the Marxian comrade (Genosse), and the use of a military terminology for all items of civil and economic life. The question is not in which respects both systems are alike but in which they differ."