Wall Street Journal
‘It’s Like the Second World War.’ Covid-19 Is Tearing Into the Parts of Europe That Lack Doctors
Europe’s crisis is moving into poorer states that have exported doctors for decades. Now the bill from that exodus is coming due.
By Drew Hinshaw and Natalia Ojewska
November 27, 2020
MIĘDZYCHÓD, Poland—So many new doctors left Poland for better-paying jobs in Europe’s west that when Łukasz Rotnicki decided to stay behind he often found himself working 36-hour shifts, sleeping on the brown pullout sofa of a small-town hospital with too few staff.
That was before Covid-19.
On a recent Monday, the 36-year-old surgeon was on his 74th consecutive hour of treating coronavirus patients, broken by only a few short naps.
At the same hospital, a local nurse had recently been hospitalized, feverish and short of breath. Yet the staffing crunch was so dire that she kept working in the very Covid-19 ward where she was meant to recover, feeding the sick and turning them onto their stomachs before returning to her own bed in the same room.
Europe’s Covid-19 crisis is moving eastward, from the wealthiest and best-prepared countries on the continent into the poorer states that have exported doctors for decades. Now, as Covid-19 cases soar, the bill from that long exodus is coming due.
With 238 physicians per 100,000 people, Poland has the lowest such ratio in the European Union, nearly half the level of Germany, whose relative success in handling the virus owes much to its foreign staff. The average age of Polish nurses is 53, just seven years short of retirement.
Largely spared during the spring surge, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Romania braced for autumn by stocking up on ventilators. But they lack people to operate the equipment. As cases pile up, shifts that often spanned two full days before the pandemic are now stretching the limits of human endurance.
“It’s hard times, I think, it’s like the Second World War,” said Dr. Rotnicki, who arrived on a recent Friday morning at the Independent State Healthcare Hospital in Międzychód in western Poland and didn’t clock out until the following Monday. Hours later, three of his patients died. “I had to go home because I thought, I will maybe kill somebody,” he said.
The shortages, which have prompted strict stay-at-home orders through Christmas in Poland, are the consequence of a borderless Europe that has seen prosperous countries—particularly in Western Europe—soak up talent from regions that offer lower pay.
As a result, Italian and British hospitals are coping with Covid-19 with help from Polish, Romanian and Hungarian staff.
Back home, doctors and nurses who stayed behind are working dayslong shifts.
Katarzyn Koch-Brzozowska, head nurse at the Międzychód hospital, said that her nurses threaten daily to quit, but she has successfully fought to keep them. “I call them a million times a day, and I bake them cookies with every day off,” she said.
In Hungary, physiotherapists can earn five times their $600-a-month entry salary pulling shorter shifts in Germany, and in Estonia doctors can quintuple their pay by crossing over to Finland. In western Poland, headhunters drive in from Germany, blanketing windshields with pamphlets that promise five times more pay, two years of free language classes and housing.
As incomes have risen in the region, nursing has become a less attractive profession. Schools that were once selective are now struggling to recruit enough students. In Slovakia, a third of all graduates immediately leave the country, said Jana Bendova, a board member of the Slovak Society of General Practice.
The staff who remain in the region tend to be older and were educated under communism, when schools taught less English, or have returned after years abroad
At western Poland’s Healthcare Center in Bolesławiec, three-fourths of nurses have fallen ill. Nearly half of nurses have contracted the virus at the nearby Drezdenko hospital, where one recent morning, a visibly sick receptionist greeting guests complained of a fever. Nationwide, about a 10th of Polish nurses were quarantined as suspected Covid-19 cases last month.
Officially, the Drezdenko hospital has 126 beds, but only enough staff to handle about 80 patients, a number they have already breached. Shortly before the pandemic, the hospital had managed to convince two daughters of its own nurses, both medical-school graduates, to join the staff. But within a few weeks, both left for the U.K.
Authorities have drafted troops, nuns and lifeguards to help. At Polish hospitals, soldiers take temperatures of visitors and input data into computers.
At one hospital in eastern Poland, staff recruited nine lifeguards from neighboring Ukraine. But they were unable to do anything more than basic CPR; most of them soon tested positive for Covid-19.
Hospitals have sent maternity-ward doctors, pediatricians and even physiotherapists into Covid-19 wards where many patients die. In Dr. Rotnicki’s hospital one recent morning, a pediatric nurse, used to caring for young children, sobbed during her break after a patient had died alone, the staff stretched too thin to sit with him.
“They’re not used to working with death,” said a nearby nurse, getting ready to don head-to-toe protective equipment.
For years, regional governments have tried to entice medical-school graduates to stay behind, sometimes with pay increases. Many doctors survived on cash given to them by patients. Just before the pandemic struck, those pay hikes had begun to help, and emigration started to slow.
But problems remain. To staff public hospitals, Hungary’s government is pressuring doctors to give up private practice and their right to choose which hospital they serve, a move widely opposed by doctors. A survey from June by the Hungarian Medical Chamber found six out of 10 medical-school graduates intend to leave Hungary.
“We’d rather be cashiers at Aldi or Tesco,” said one doctor, who is barred from government rules from speaking out. “We’d earn more and at least have our weekends free.”
When Dr. Rotnicki graduated in 2010, a stream of classmates crossed the border to take work in Germany, in hospitals where he estimates as much as half the staff is Polish.
In October, the regional government called to negotiate how many beds the hospital would be able to take at once, settling on 40. Within weeks of the arrival of the first patient, 15 medical staff were out sick.
Dr. Rotnicki began working marathon hours. On a recent day, ambulances had brought 10 seriously ill patients by the afternoon. Two needed intubation and another, a diabetic, was already unconscious. Many required oxygen and had to be carefully rolled onto their stomachs repeatedly to assist their breathing.
Meanwhile, 100 miles south, construction workers were racing to finish a new 65-bed hospital exclusively for Covid-19 patients overflowing regional hospitals. In about a month, the builders expected to finish an infectious-disease clinic on a muddy lot, complete with oxygen lines and CCTV cameras in every room.
The problem, medical staff said, is who will work there.
“If I have one new nurse,” said Ms. Koch-Brzozowska, the nursing director, “it means another hospital has one nurse less.”
Appeared in the November 28, 2020, print edition as 'Eastern Europe in Dire Need of Doctors.'
Showing posts with label Poland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poland. Show all posts
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Saturday, October 10, 2020
75 years ago
AP News
Polish divers find wreck of German WWII ship in Baltic Sea
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
October 1, 2020
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A team of Polish divers say they have found almost intact the wreckage of German World War II steamer Karlsruhe, which was bombed by Soviet planes and sunk in the Baltic Sea in April 1945, with the loss of hundreds of civilian and military lives.
The 10-member Baltictech team say the wreckage rests 88 meters (290 feet) under the sea dozens of kilometers (miles) north of Poland’s coastal resort of Ustka.
In the wreckage, they say they have found military vehicles, china and sealed chests in the ship’s hold, all in good condition.
“It looks like, after months of searching, we have finally found the wreckage of the Karlsruhe steamer,” the Baltictech group said on Facebook, posting an underwater photo of an apparently well-preserved military vehicle.
The divers said they accessed Allied, German and Soviet documents detailing the fate of the steamer and spent more than a year looking for it, believing it was among the “most interesting, yet uncovered, stories from the Baltic Sea bed.”
The documents, which were shown to The Associated Press, say the Karlsruhe was built in 1905 at the Seebeck yard in Bremerhaven. Toward the end of World War II, it was included in the Hannibal Operation that evacuated Germans and Nazi troops from the East Prussia’s Koenigsberg area as the Soviet Red Army advanced and was taking control of it.
On April 11, 1945, the steamer left the port of Pillau — which is now the Russian port of Baltiysk — with 150 troops of the Hermann Goering regiment, 25 railway workers and 888 civilians, including children, and hundreds of tons of cargo.
The next day, in the port of Hel, it was included in a convoy going to the German port of Swinemunde, which is now Swinoujscie in Poland.
On the morning of April 13, 1945, the ship was spotted by Soviet planes, bombed and sank within about three minutes. Some 113 of its passengers were rescued by the convoy, among the 1,083 on board, according to Nazi Navy documents, a German cable intercepted by the British and survivor accounts stored in German archives.
Polish divers find wreck of German WWII ship in Baltic Sea
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
October 1, 2020
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A team of Polish divers say they have found almost intact the wreckage of German World War II steamer Karlsruhe, which was bombed by Soviet planes and sunk in the Baltic Sea in April 1945, with the loss of hundreds of civilian and military lives.
The 10-member Baltictech team say the wreckage rests 88 meters (290 feet) under the sea dozens of kilometers (miles) north of Poland’s coastal resort of Ustka.
In the wreckage, they say they have found military vehicles, china and sealed chests in the ship’s hold, all in good condition.
“It looks like, after months of searching, we have finally found the wreckage of the Karlsruhe steamer,” the Baltictech group said on Facebook, posting an underwater photo of an apparently well-preserved military vehicle.
The divers said they accessed Allied, German and Soviet documents detailing the fate of the steamer and spent more than a year looking for it, believing it was among the “most interesting, yet uncovered, stories from the Baltic Sea bed.”
The documents, which were shown to The Associated Press, say the Karlsruhe was built in 1905 at the Seebeck yard in Bremerhaven. Toward the end of World War II, it was included in the Hannibal Operation that evacuated Germans and Nazi troops from the East Prussia’s Koenigsberg area as the Soviet Red Army advanced and was taking control of it.
On April 11, 1945, the steamer left the port of Pillau — which is now the Russian port of Baltiysk — with 150 troops of the Hermann Goering regiment, 25 railway workers and 888 civilians, including children, and hundreds of tons of cargo.
The next day, in the port of Hel, it was included in a convoy going to the German port of Swinemunde, which is now Swinoujscie in Poland.
On the morning of April 13, 1945, the ship was spotted by Soviet planes, bombed and sank within about three minutes. Some 113 of its passengers were rescued by the convoy, among the 1,083 on board, according to Nazi Navy documents, a German cable intercepted by the British and survivor accounts stored in German archives.
Monday, August 12, 2019
This is a very interesting Wall Street Journal article about Poland during World War Two.
 |
| Members of the Polish resistance fight the Nazis in Warsaw, 1944. |
The neglected history of the Warsaw uprising helps explain the country’s nationalist politics today.
By Sean McMeekin
July 31, 2019
Warsaw
Thursday marks the 75th anniversary of the heroic yet doomed Warsaw Uprising against German occupation forces in Poland. Every Aug. 1 at 5 p.m., Poles mark the bitter occasion with a moment of silence for the fallen. Alarm sirens wail in a would-be call to arms that captures the defiant spirit of this proud, pugnacious nation.
Warsaw’s stupendous Uprising Museum, one of the city’s few tourist attractions, illustrates the painful side of this defiance. For the battle of 1944 left behind almost nothing of old Warsaw for visitors to admire. The martyrs of the Polish Home Army lost not only their lives but also the city they loved. The fate of Warsaw—reduced to rubble by the vengeful cruelty of one dictator, Hitler, in unspoken connivance with his enemy doppelgänger, Stalin—epitomizes the catastrophe of World War II better than any other single event.
Why, then, is this shattering episode in European history almost forgotten in the West? Perhaps because the battle for Warsaw does not have a happy ending. Germany’s eventual defeat did not mark the liberation of Poles but the beginning of another brutal occupation by the Communists. This unsettles the narrative of World War II as a “good war” and looms large over Polish and European politics to this day.
If the war that broke out in September 1939 was about anything, it was about Poland. Germany’s blitzkrieg against its eastern neighbor was the casus belli for Britain and France. Yet Germany wasn’t the only country to attack Poland that month. Only after Soviet troops invaded Poland on Sept. 17 did the Polish government give up the ghost and flee to Romania. The Allies did virtually nothing to check Stalin’s aggression. He invaded five more countries over the next year while somehow remaining “neutral” in the war—a credit to Allied hypocrisy.
Hitler’s invasion of the U.S.S.R. in June 1941 then wrought a public-relations miracle, turning Stalin from totalitarian butcher and swallower of small nations into plucky “Uncle Joe,” worthy of full Allied support. The Roosevelt administration showered the Red Army with Lend-Lease largess, from Spam, Studebakers and warplanes to steel and aluminum.
So desperate were Churchill and Roosevelt to keep Stalin happy they endorsed his lies about the Katyn Forest massacre of 1940, in which Soviet secret policemen carried out the premeditated mass execution of 21,892 Polish war prisoners. Roosevelt even apologized to Stalin when the exiled Polish government in London demanded a Red Cross investigation of the crime after Germans discovered a mass grave in February 1943.
Paying no price for the Katyn Massacre, Stalin saw no need to change course in Warsaw. Despite broadcasting messages in late July 1944 encouraging Warsaw residents to rise up against the German occupiers, Soviet forces did not stir to help them. Though the Red Army was positioned right across the Vistula River outside Warsaw and could have intervened, Stalin was happy to let the Germans slaughter the Polish Home Army. He saw the Polish forces as a rival to postwar Communist rule. The Germans killed as many as 16,000 insurgents alongside nearly 200,000 civilians and put Warsaw to the torch, saving Stalin the trouble.
During the uprising, Polish, American, British and Commonwealth pilots ferried aid packets—ammunition, medicine, food, cigarettes—to the Warsaw insurgents, but Stalin did not allow them to land on Soviet air bases until mid-September. Some were even fired on by Russian antiaircraft guns. Hundreds of Allied pilots were killed. They are heroes in Poland today.
As for the few Polish warriors who survived the battle of Warsaw—its downgrade to an “uprising” came later, to excuse Soviet inaction and soothe Western consciences—they were rounded up by the Soviets, deported to labor camps or shot. Sixteen Polish resistance leaders, invited to Moscow for “talks” in March 1945, were put on trial for the absurd charge of collaborating with the Nazis, despite ineffectual protests from Washington and London.
Americans and Britons have forgotten this sordid story. Poles have not. Without knowing this history, Westerners will never understand how Poles, like other Eastern Europeans who endured 45 years of Soviet occupation, view the world today. For Poland, World War II did not end in 1945 with a parade and a Paris kiss, but in the ruins of Warsaw ruled over by hostile conquerors who had stood by as the city burned. Poles can perhaps be forgiven for failing to share today’s Western predilections—born of decades of peace and prosperity taken for granted—for postcolonial guilt and ennui, or the fashionable denigration of the nation-state.
The rise of Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice Party in the wake of the 2015 migrant crisis should not surprise anyone who knows 20th-century history. The Polish people know in their bones the horrors that can follow the collapse of a nation’s borders and sovereignty, and they are reminded every Aug. 1. They are in no hurry to risk such a nightmare again.
—Mr. McMeekin is a professor of European history at Bard College. His book on World War II, due out in 2020, is tentatively titled “Stalin’s War.”
Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Appeared in the August 1, 2019, print edition.
Saturday, June 15, 2019
The moron Pope who wears an expensive dress is part of the coverup of child abuse and he knows it. The asshole Pope should be put in prison. If it was up to me the Pope would be hung from a rope.
Never once in this article is there anything about calling the police. The only way to reform the Catholic Church is to completely destroy the Catholic Church.
In the comments some asshole Catholics wrote about other organizations who have child abuse problems, therefore it's OK if priests molest little boys. I never met a Catholic who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole.
Wall Street Journal - Sex-Abuse Accusations Grow Against Catholic Clergy in Poland
More people allege childhood incidents after YouTube video causes outcry, raising prospect of a public reckoning like Ireland’s.
By Drew Hinshaw
June 12, 2019
WARSAW—The Catholic Church in Poland has seen an uptick in accusations from people claiming to have been sexually abused by clergy as children, after a YouTube video sparked public anger at an institution that is at the political and social heart of this culturally conservative country.
The increase appears to have been prompted by the two-hour-long YouTube documentary about sexual-abuse allegations against Polish clergy, entitled “Tell No One,” which has been viewed more than 22 million times. Victims’ advocates say the film has shifted the mood in a country that, they argue, has been slow to address allegations of clerical sex abuse.
Since then, at least 21 people have stepped forward with new allegations, according to local church officials contacted at 24 of Poland’s 41 dioceses. Officials at the remaining dioceses didn’t return calls or emails, or declined to discuss the subject.
A local victim’s support group, Don’t be Afraid, said it had received over 100 emails detailing such accusations since “Tell No One” went online, though the group hasn’t yet determined how many of them were previously unknown.
On Wednesday, a statue of a priest—accused in the documentary of sex abuse—had been removed from the grounds of a basilica in central Poland.
“What we can certainly say is that we are dealing here with an increased number of people reporting cases of sexual abuse,” said Przemysław Śliwiński, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Warsaw, which declined to put a number on the new cases. Another church spokesman said each diocese responsible for one of the clergy named in the film has appointed a delegate to review the film and see if there should be a formal investigation.
The public outcry has raised the possibility that Poland could follow the path of Ireland, where revelations of widespread sexual and physical abuse by priests and church employees has shaken society over the past two decades.
It also speaks to the power of nontraditional media, say advocates for abuse victims, who have for years pressed accusations through courts or mainstream news outlets with limited resonance.
In a 1997 newspaper interview, Karol Chum, a 45-year-old software engineer, first accused Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz, a much-loved figure who helped lead Poland’s anti-Communist movement, of having abused him as a child. The accusation drew no response from civil or church authorities at the time.
But when Mr. Chum repeated it on Facebook last month, it drew thousands of likes and shares and widespread media coverage. The Archdiocese of Wroclaw, in western Poland, said it launched an investigation within 24 hours of the post.
“Although it is difficult to consider a meme as a way to report a crime, we decided to treat it as a filed complaint,” an archdiocese spokesman said, referring to the Facebook posting.
Church representatives declined to make Cardinal Gulbinowicz, now in his 90s, available for interview or comment, citing his ill health and advanced age. The Polish episcopate declined to comment on the accusation.
The surge in cases will be a test of the resolve of the Vatican and the church’s Polish hierarchy to tackle sex-abuse allegations, which were the subject of a major Vatican summit in February. Under new rules that took effect June 1, Catholic clergy must expedite investigations of bishops accused of child sex abuse or covering up such crimes by their priests. The “Tell No One” documentary includes several victims who allege that the priests who abused them enjoyed protection from local bishops.
Archbishop Charles Scicluna, a senior official at the Vatican body that hears sex abuse cases, will speak with Polish bishops and other church officials about clerical abuse later this week during a visit to the country.
Church leaders in Poland have declined to follow the “zero tolerance” policy that was adopted in the U.S. in the 2000s, under which any priest found to have sexually abused a person under the age of 18 is permanently removed from the ministry. Church leaders in only a handful of countries have emulated the U.S.’s zero-tolerance policies.
As of February, at least nine priests convicted in court of child sex-abuse crimes continued to celebrate Mass publicly as priests in Poland.
The Polish episcopate said in an emailed response to questions that its bishops apologize to everyone affected by such abuse. “The Bishops warned against transferring the guilt of particular clerics to all priests,” the episcopate wrote.
Church leaders have taken some steps to counter abuse—for example, increasing the age of consent from 15 to 18 under church law. Later this month, Polish bishops are set to meet to discuss whether and how to tighten rules on how sex-abuse allegations are handled.
In a poll last month by Kantar, an international opinion-research firm, 60% of Polish respondents said the entire church was responsible for the sex-abuse scandals, not just individuals. In another survey this month, by Institute Pollster, 86% of Polish respondents considered pedophilia a real problem in the church. In that poll, only a third said they trusted the institution, and 57% said the YouTube documentary had negatively affected their opinion.
Previous polls seeking Poland’s general opinion of the church were considerably more positive toward it.
“So far, the dynamic was, we had scandals, news reports, and then slowly but surely this was fading away,” said Elżbieta Korolczuk, a Polish sociologist and prominent commentator on sexual-abuse issues. “Whereas today it seems we have this kind of synergy.…This kind of anger, disillusionment with the church as a structure is seeping in.”
The issue is posing a political riddle for Poland’s conservative, ruling Law and Justice party, which blends cultural conservatism and defense of the church with nationalism and cautious skepticism toward the European Union. Following the outcry, the government has stiffened penalties for child sexual abuse.
“We are strongly against this narrative that sexual crimes committed by men in frocks are somehow different, or worse than those committed by other pedophiles,” said Marcin Horala, a Law and Justice lawmaker. “We want to prosecute all pedophiles.”
—Natalia Ojewska in Warsaw and Francis X. Rocca in Rome contributed to this article.
In the comments some asshole Catholics wrote about other organizations who have child abuse problems, therefore it's OK if priests molest little boys. I never met a Catholic who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole.
Wall Street Journal - Sex-Abuse Accusations Grow Against Catholic Clergy in Poland
More people allege childhood incidents after YouTube video causes outcry, raising prospect of a public reckoning like Ireland’s.
By Drew Hinshaw
June 12, 2019
WARSAW—The Catholic Church in Poland has seen an uptick in accusations from people claiming to have been sexually abused by clergy as children, after a YouTube video sparked public anger at an institution that is at the political and social heart of this culturally conservative country.
The increase appears to have been prompted by the two-hour-long YouTube documentary about sexual-abuse allegations against Polish clergy, entitled “Tell No One,” which has been viewed more than 22 million times. Victims’ advocates say the film has shifted the mood in a country that, they argue, has been slow to address allegations of clerical sex abuse.
Since then, at least 21 people have stepped forward with new allegations, according to local church officials contacted at 24 of Poland’s 41 dioceses. Officials at the remaining dioceses didn’t return calls or emails, or declined to discuss the subject.
A local victim’s support group, Don’t be Afraid, said it had received over 100 emails detailing such accusations since “Tell No One” went online, though the group hasn’t yet determined how many of them were previously unknown.
On Wednesday, a statue of a priest—accused in the documentary of sex abuse—had been removed from the grounds of a basilica in central Poland.
“What we can certainly say is that we are dealing here with an increased number of people reporting cases of sexual abuse,” said Przemysław Śliwiński, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Warsaw, which declined to put a number on the new cases. Another church spokesman said each diocese responsible for one of the clergy named in the film has appointed a delegate to review the film and see if there should be a formal investigation.
The public outcry has raised the possibility that Poland could follow the path of Ireland, where revelations of widespread sexual and physical abuse by priests and church employees has shaken society over the past two decades.
It also speaks to the power of nontraditional media, say advocates for abuse victims, who have for years pressed accusations through courts or mainstream news outlets with limited resonance.
In a 1997 newspaper interview, Karol Chum, a 45-year-old software engineer, first accused Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz, a much-loved figure who helped lead Poland’s anti-Communist movement, of having abused him as a child. The accusation drew no response from civil or church authorities at the time.
But when Mr. Chum repeated it on Facebook last month, it drew thousands of likes and shares and widespread media coverage. The Archdiocese of Wroclaw, in western Poland, said it launched an investigation within 24 hours of the post.
“Although it is difficult to consider a meme as a way to report a crime, we decided to treat it as a filed complaint,” an archdiocese spokesman said, referring to the Facebook posting.
Church representatives declined to make Cardinal Gulbinowicz, now in his 90s, available for interview or comment, citing his ill health and advanced age. The Polish episcopate declined to comment on the accusation.
The surge in cases will be a test of the resolve of the Vatican and the church’s Polish hierarchy to tackle sex-abuse allegations, which were the subject of a major Vatican summit in February. Under new rules that took effect June 1, Catholic clergy must expedite investigations of bishops accused of child sex abuse or covering up such crimes by their priests. The “Tell No One” documentary includes several victims who allege that the priests who abused them enjoyed protection from local bishops.
Archbishop Charles Scicluna, a senior official at the Vatican body that hears sex abuse cases, will speak with Polish bishops and other church officials about clerical abuse later this week during a visit to the country.
Church leaders in Poland have declined to follow the “zero tolerance” policy that was adopted in the U.S. in the 2000s, under which any priest found to have sexually abused a person under the age of 18 is permanently removed from the ministry. Church leaders in only a handful of countries have emulated the U.S.’s zero-tolerance policies.
As of February, at least nine priests convicted in court of child sex-abuse crimes continued to celebrate Mass publicly as priests in Poland.
The Polish episcopate said in an emailed response to questions that its bishops apologize to everyone affected by such abuse. “The Bishops warned against transferring the guilt of particular clerics to all priests,” the episcopate wrote.
Church leaders have taken some steps to counter abuse—for example, increasing the age of consent from 15 to 18 under church law. Later this month, Polish bishops are set to meet to discuss whether and how to tighten rules on how sex-abuse allegations are handled.
In a poll last month by Kantar, an international opinion-research firm, 60% of Polish respondents said the entire church was responsible for the sex-abuse scandals, not just individuals. In another survey this month, by Institute Pollster, 86% of Polish respondents considered pedophilia a real problem in the church. In that poll, only a third said they trusted the institution, and 57% said the YouTube documentary had negatively affected their opinion.
Previous polls seeking Poland’s general opinion of the church were considerably more positive toward it.
“So far, the dynamic was, we had scandals, news reports, and then slowly but surely this was fading away,” said Elżbieta Korolczuk, a Polish sociologist and prominent commentator on sexual-abuse issues. “Whereas today it seems we have this kind of synergy.…This kind of anger, disillusionment with the church as a structure is seeping in.”
The issue is posing a political riddle for Poland’s conservative, ruling Law and Justice party, which blends cultural conservatism and defense of the church with nationalism and cautious skepticism toward the European Union. Following the outcry, the government has stiffened penalties for child sexual abuse.
“We are strongly against this narrative that sexual crimes committed by men in frocks are somehow different, or worse than those committed by other pedophiles,” said Marcin Horala, a Law and Justice lawmaker. “We want to prosecute all pedophiles.”
—Natalia Ojewska in Warsaw and Francis X. Rocca in Rome contributed to this article.
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Escape from Sobibor
I read the book and I recommend it.
Amazon: Escape from Sobibor
Amazon book review:
One of the best books I have read in a longtime about the Holocaust
March 12, 2016
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I had seen the movie "Escape from Sobibor" many years ago on TV, so I was familiar with the story, along with my other research into WWII. I hate to coin an overused phrase, but the book was much better. It is absolutely unforgettable and moving. The book is written in a style as if you were reading a fictional novel. I liked his way of storytelling. You almost forget that these were true events. The author describes the prisoners' lives before the camp, how they came to arrive at the camp, what happened to them there, planning the escape, the events leading up to the escape, the aftermath of the escape, and then interviews of the survivors today. It was very thoroughly researched and respectfully handled. You find out that the author is not a Jew, but wanted to tell the story of these survivors. Although I had read other Holocaust stories, it still didn't fail to shock me how human beings can be so horribly evil towards their fellow human beings. I also couldn't imagine surviving through such a nightmare myself, yet all of these people did. The unspeakable things that happened to them in Sobibor didn't stop once they escaped. That hit me hard. They had to survive by hiding in people's homes or barns until the war ended, treated worse than animals by their own countrymen. They were betrayed, beaten, starved, robbed, manipulated, and even killed. They lived in terror every moment that they would be discovered. The survivors had an opportunity to testify against their captors in court after the war. Even with so many witnesses, no one believed their story was true. Even our Allies during the war did not believe the intelligence reports that the Nazis were exterminating the Jews. So they did nothing to help them. That included even the Pope. Many years later when the author finds the survivors in order to interview them for the book, at first, most of them did not want to talk about their experience, especially to a Gentile. Many testified that they still were imprisoned in Sobibor in their minds, and there was no escape from it. It is heartbreaking to read their stories, but we must not forget them. Today, there is a memorial at the camp present day that you can visit.
New York Times - Semyon Rozenfeld, Last Known Survivor of Death Camp Escape, Dies at 96
Semyon Rozenfeld, left, and Alexander Pechersky, who led the uprising at the Sobibor concentration camp in Poland. They were among fewer than 60 escapees to survive the war.
Semyon Rozenfeld, left, and Alexander Pechersky, who led the uprising at the Sobibor concentration camp in Poland. They were among fewer than 60 escapees to survive the war. The photo, undated, was taken after the war.
By Palko Karasz
June 5, 2019
Semyon Rozenfeld first escaped death in the gas chambers by inventing a trade for himself when he arrived at Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in occupied Poland, in the fall of 1943. Questioned by a German officer, he said he was a glazier and was taken aside for work detail.
About a month later he was among about 600 prisoners who staged a historic uprising against their captors and tried to escape. Only about 300 made it to the fences, and most of the rest were recaptured in the surrounding countryside. But some managed to make it to freedom, Mr. Rozenfeld among them.
He died at 96 on Monday at a hospital in Rehovot, Israel, near Tel Aviv, and was believed to be the last known survivor of Sobibor. The Jewish Agency for Israel confirmed his death.
He was cited as the last survivor after the death of Selma Wynberg Engel last December in East Haven, Conn., also at 96. She had been one of the first to tell the world of the camp’s existence.
Mr. Rozenfeld was born in 1922 in Ukraine, the son of a tailor. He was drafted by the Red Army before falling prisoner to the Germans and was held first in Minsk, in today’s Belarus, and later in Sobibor.
The camp in Sobibor began operating in the spring of 1942 as part of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to exterminate Polish Jews. Only a small minority of detainees were allowed to work, mostly in operating the camp, including the disposal of bodies. Most people were killed in gas chambers shortly after their arrival. At least 167,000 people and possibly as many as 350,000 were murdered there.
Mr. Rozenfeld was part of a group of prisoners who planned an escape in October 1943. They were to kill as many guards as they could with knives and axes before storming the main gate. They vowed to tell the world what had happened at Sobibor.
In testimony to the Ghetto Fighters’ House museum, Mr. Rozenfeld said Alexander Pechersky, who led the escape, had asked him if he felt capable of killing someone with an ax. “I’m not capable of killing a human being,” Mr. Rozenfeld recalled saying. “But a Nazi — yes.”
On Oct. 14, the revolt was set in motion. Hundreds of prisoners didn’t make it out of the camp, but 300 or so did, under fire, and then only to face minefields.
Mr. Rozenfeld climbed a nine-foot fence and kept running despite a bullet wound to his leg. “I was not afraid,” he said, “because I didn’t have time to think about fear. I only thought about life.”
Those who escaped and made it through the minefields went into hiding in the surrounding forest, and some sought help from local residents. Many prisoners were captured by Nazi guards and Polish collaborators. The camp was closed soon after the revolt. Fewer than 60 escapees survived the war.
The last of the guards to be tried for killing Jews at Sobibor was John Demjanjuk, a former autoworker in Ohio. In 2011, in a German court, he was found guilty of taking part in the murder of 28,000 people and sentenced to five years in prison. He died in a nursing home in 2012 while appealing the conviction.
As the Red Army arrived in the city of Chelm, where Mr. Rozenfeld had taken refuge, Mr. Rozenfeld again joined their ranks and fought to liberate Berlin. He returned to Ukraine, married and lived there until moving to Israel in 1990.
He was most recently living in a nursing home in Yad Binyamin, south of Tel Aviv. He is survived by two sons, Michael and Roman; four grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Amazon: Escape from Sobibor
Amazon book review:
One of the best books I have read in a longtime about the Holocaust
March 12, 2016
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I had seen the movie "Escape from Sobibor" many years ago on TV, so I was familiar with the story, along with my other research into WWII. I hate to coin an overused phrase, but the book was much better. It is absolutely unforgettable and moving. The book is written in a style as if you were reading a fictional novel. I liked his way of storytelling. You almost forget that these were true events. The author describes the prisoners' lives before the camp, how they came to arrive at the camp, what happened to them there, planning the escape, the events leading up to the escape, the aftermath of the escape, and then interviews of the survivors today. It was very thoroughly researched and respectfully handled. You find out that the author is not a Jew, but wanted to tell the story of these survivors. Although I had read other Holocaust stories, it still didn't fail to shock me how human beings can be so horribly evil towards their fellow human beings. I also couldn't imagine surviving through such a nightmare myself, yet all of these people did. The unspeakable things that happened to them in Sobibor didn't stop once they escaped. That hit me hard. They had to survive by hiding in people's homes or barns until the war ended, treated worse than animals by their own countrymen. They were betrayed, beaten, starved, robbed, manipulated, and even killed. They lived in terror every moment that they would be discovered. The survivors had an opportunity to testify against their captors in court after the war. Even with so many witnesses, no one believed their story was true. Even our Allies during the war did not believe the intelligence reports that the Nazis were exterminating the Jews. So they did nothing to help them. That included even the Pope. Many years later when the author finds the survivors in order to interview them for the book, at first, most of them did not want to talk about their experience, especially to a Gentile. Many testified that they still were imprisoned in Sobibor in their minds, and there was no escape from it. It is heartbreaking to read their stories, but we must not forget them. Today, there is a memorial at the camp present day that you can visit.
New York Times - Semyon Rozenfeld, Last Known Survivor of Death Camp Escape, Dies at 96
Semyon Rozenfeld, left, and Alexander Pechersky, who led the uprising at the Sobibor concentration camp in Poland. They were among fewer than 60 escapees to survive the war.
Semyon Rozenfeld, left, and Alexander Pechersky, who led the uprising at the Sobibor concentration camp in Poland. They were among fewer than 60 escapees to survive the war. The photo, undated, was taken after the war.
By Palko Karasz
June 5, 2019
Semyon Rozenfeld first escaped death in the gas chambers by inventing a trade for himself when he arrived at Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in occupied Poland, in the fall of 1943. Questioned by a German officer, he said he was a glazier and was taken aside for work detail.
About a month later he was among about 600 prisoners who staged a historic uprising against their captors and tried to escape. Only about 300 made it to the fences, and most of the rest were recaptured in the surrounding countryside. But some managed to make it to freedom, Mr. Rozenfeld among them.
He died at 96 on Monday at a hospital in Rehovot, Israel, near Tel Aviv, and was believed to be the last known survivor of Sobibor. The Jewish Agency for Israel confirmed his death.
He was cited as the last survivor after the death of Selma Wynberg Engel last December in East Haven, Conn., also at 96. She had been one of the first to tell the world of the camp’s existence.
Mr. Rozenfeld was born in 1922 in Ukraine, the son of a tailor. He was drafted by the Red Army before falling prisoner to the Germans and was held first in Minsk, in today’s Belarus, and later in Sobibor.
The camp in Sobibor began operating in the spring of 1942 as part of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to exterminate Polish Jews. Only a small minority of detainees were allowed to work, mostly in operating the camp, including the disposal of bodies. Most people were killed in gas chambers shortly after their arrival. At least 167,000 people and possibly as many as 350,000 were murdered there.
Mr. Rozenfeld was part of a group of prisoners who planned an escape in October 1943. They were to kill as many guards as they could with knives and axes before storming the main gate. They vowed to tell the world what had happened at Sobibor.
In testimony to the Ghetto Fighters’ House museum, Mr. Rozenfeld said Alexander Pechersky, who led the escape, had asked him if he felt capable of killing someone with an ax. “I’m not capable of killing a human being,” Mr. Rozenfeld recalled saying. “But a Nazi — yes.”
On Oct. 14, the revolt was set in motion. Hundreds of prisoners didn’t make it out of the camp, but 300 or so did, under fire, and then only to face minefields.
Mr. Rozenfeld climbed a nine-foot fence and kept running despite a bullet wound to his leg. “I was not afraid,” he said, “because I didn’t have time to think about fear. I only thought about life.”
Those who escaped and made it through the minefields went into hiding in the surrounding forest, and some sought help from local residents. Many prisoners were captured by Nazi guards and Polish collaborators. The camp was closed soon after the revolt. Fewer than 60 escapees survived the war.
The last of the guards to be tried for killing Jews at Sobibor was John Demjanjuk, a former autoworker in Ohio. In 2011, in a German court, he was found guilty of taking part in the murder of 28,000 people and sentenced to five years in prison. He died in a nursing home in 2012 while appealing the conviction.
As the Red Army arrived in the city of Chelm, where Mr. Rozenfeld had taken refuge, Mr. Rozenfeld again joined their ranks and fought to liberate Berlin. He returned to Ukraine, married and lived there until moving to Israel in 1990.
He was most recently living in a nursing home in Yad Binyamin, south of Tel Aviv. He is survived by two sons, Michael and Roman; four grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Sunday, May 19, 2019
Sunday, January 6, 2019
I googled "wikipedia Catholic Church sexual child abuse". I got an extremely long wikipedia article. Every country in the world that's infested with Catholic scum has an out of control child abuse problem.
Catholics who continue to feed the child abusers belong in prison for being part of the problem. Catholics are scum.
Here's part of it. I suggest click the link to see countless dozens of more pages about the abuse.
Wikipedia - Catholic Church sexual abuse cases
Cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders in the 20th and 21st centuries, increasing especially after the Second Vatican Council, have been widespread and have led to many allegations, investigations, trials and convictions, as well as revelations about decades of attempts by the Church to cover up reported incidents.[1] The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14.[2][3][4][5] Criminal cases do not for the most part cover sexual harassment in the workplace against persons who had renounced sexual activity and therefore pre-declined sexual advances. This category includes all priests and seminarians and all religious brothers and sisters. The accusations began to receive isolated, sporadic publicity from the late 1980s. Many of these involved cases in which a figure was accused of decades of abuse; such allegations were frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.[6][7]
By the 1990s, the cases began to receive significant media and public attention in some countries, especially in Canada, the United States, Australia and, through a series of television documentaries such as Suffer The Children (UTV, 1994), Ireland.[8] In 2002, a critical investigation by The Boston Globe led to widespread media coverage of the issue in the United States. Over the last decade, widespread abuse has been exposed in Europe,[9][10] Australia, Chile, and the United States.
From 2001 to 2010, the Holy See, the central governing body of the Catholic Church, considered sex abuse allegations involving about 3,000 priests dating back fifty years,[11] reflecting worldwide patterns of long-term abuse as well as the Church hierarchy's pattern of regularly covering up reports of abuse.[note 1]Diocesan officials and academics knowledgeable about the Roman Catholic Church say that sexual abuse by clergy is generally not discussed, and thus is difficult to measure.[12][13] Members of the Church's hierarchy have argued that media coverage was excessive and disproportionate, and that such abuse also takes place in other religions and institutions, a stance that dismayed critics who saw it as a device to avoid resolving the abuse problem within the Church.[14]
In a 2001 apology, John Paul II called sexual abuse within the Church "a profound contradiction of the teaching and witness of Jesus Christ".[15] Benedict XVI apologised, met with victims, and spoke of his "shame" at the evil of abuse, calling for perpetrators to be brought to justice, and denouncing mishandling by church authorities.[16][17] In 2018, Pope Francis began by accusing victims of fabricating allegations,[18] but by April was apologizing for his "tragic error"[19] and by August was expressing "shame and sorrow" for the tragic history,[20] without, however, introducing concrete measures either to prosecute abusers or to help victims.[21]
Here's part of it. I suggest click the link to see countless dozens of more pages about the abuse.
Wikipedia - Catholic Church sexual abuse cases
Cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders in the 20th and 21st centuries, increasing especially after the Second Vatican Council, have been widespread and have led to many allegations, investigations, trials and convictions, as well as revelations about decades of attempts by the Church to cover up reported incidents.[1] The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14.[2][3][4][5] Criminal cases do not for the most part cover sexual harassment in the workplace against persons who had renounced sexual activity and therefore pre-declined sexual advances. This category includes all priests and seminarians and all religious brothers and sisters. The accusations began to receive isolated, sporadic publicity from the late 1980s. Many of these involved cases in which a figure was accused of decades of abuse; such allegations were frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.[6][7]
By the 1990s, the cases began to receive significant media and public attention in some countries, especially in Canada, the United States, Australia and, through a series of television documentaries such as Suffer The Children (UTV, 1994), Ireland.[8] In 2002, a critical investigation by The Boston Globe led to widespread media coverage of the issue in the United States. Over the last decade, widespread abuse has been exposed in Europe,[9][10] Australia, Chile, and the United States.
From 2001 to 2010, the Holy See, the central governing body of the Catholic Church, considered sex abuse allegations involving about 3,000 priests dating back fifty years,[11] reflecting worldwide patterns of long-term abuse as well as the Church hierarchy's pattern of regularly covering up reports of abuse.[note 1]Diocesan officials and academics knowledgeable about the Roman Catholic Church say that sexual abuse by clergy is generally not discussed, and thus is difficult to measure.[12][13] Members of the Church's hierarchy have argued that media coverage was excessive and disproportionate, and that such abuse also takes place in other religions and institutions, a stance that dismayed critics who saw it as a device to avoid resolving the abuse problem within the Church.[14]
In a 2001 apology, John Paul II called sexual abuse within the Church "a profound contradiction of the teaching and witness of Jesus Christ".[15] Benedict XVI apologised, met with victims, and spoke of his "shame" at the evil of abuse, calling for perpetrators to be brought to justice, and denouncing mishandling by church authorities.[16][17] In 2018, Pope Francis began by accusing victims of fabricating allegations,[18] but by April was apologizing for his "tragic error"[19] and by August was expressing "shame and sorrow" for the tragic history,[20] without, however, introducing concrete measures either to prosecute abusers or to help victims.[21]
Monday, December 31, 2018
Auld Lang Syne - Czestochowa Pipes & Drums z Królewską Orkiestrą Symfoniczną
Burns' original Scots verse
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?
CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’lltak' a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stoup!
and surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak' a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’lltak' a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stoup!
and surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak' a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
CHORUS
We twa hae run about the braes,
and pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin' auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes,
and pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin' auld lang syne.
CHORUS
We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin' auld lang syne.
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin' auld lang syne.
CHORUS
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie's a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak' a right gude-willie waught,
for auld lang syne.
and gie's a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak' a right gude-willie waught,
for auld lang syne.
CHORUS
English translation
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old lang syne?
and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old lang syne?
CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
And surely you’ll buy your pint cup!
and surely I’ll buy mine!
And we'll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
and surely I’ll buy mine!
And we'll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
CHORUS
We two have run about the slopes,
and picked the daisies fine;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
since auld lang syne.
and picked the daisies fine;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
since auld lang syne.
CHORUS
We two have paddled in the stream,
from morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.
from morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.
CHORUS
And there’s a hand my trusty friend!
And give me a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.
And give me a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.
CHORUS
Saturday, September 8, 2018
Auschwitz
I just played two chess games. Both of my opponents live in Poland which is unusual because there's 195 countries in the world.
My first opponent lives in Kraków, Poland which is a beautiful city.
My 2nd opponent lives in Oświęcim, Poland which is also a beautiful city, but there is something unusual and terrible about Oświęcim because it's the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
"Historians estimate that between 1940 and 1945, the Nazis sent at least 1.3 million people to Auschwitz. About 1.1 million of these people died or were killed at Auschwitz."
Virtually all these people were murdered because they were Jews. This town is famous for the worst genocide in human history.
My first opponent lives in Kraków, Poland which is a beautiful city.
My 2nd opponent lives in Oświęcim, Poland which is also a beautiful city, but there is something unusual and terrible about Oświęcim because it's the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
"Historians estimate that between 1940 and 1945, the Nazis sent at least 1.3 million people to Auschwitz. About 1.1 million of these people died or were killed at Auschwitz."
Virtually all these people were murdered because they were Jews. This town is famous for the worst genocide in human history.
Saturday, June 23, 2018
I found a well done explanation of what Jews in Europe had to endure during World War Two.
I have read 8 books about the Holocaust. Christianity is what made these atrocities possible. Long before the 20th century Christians were murdering Jews. During World War Two, Poland, a very religious Catholic country, had no problem with Jews being exterminated.
Here it is, written by Jay Winik:
Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were rounded up and packed into cattle cars, with little air or light, no food and virtually no water, for a harrowing two- to three-day trip to Auschwitz. They rode in terror and anticipation, having no idea what was in store for them at the destination. Exhausted and scared, they frequently had to stand for the entire trip. Mothers clutched sons; daughters held on to fathers; children gripped both parents’ hands; grandparents and the infirm struggled to stay alive. Many didn’t survive the journey.
When the trains arrived at Auschwitz, it was a scene of chaos, confusion and horror. After days trapped in darkened cattle cars, squinting into bright floodlights lining the tracks was almost unbearable. So was the stench, like nothing the captives had ever smelled before. They didn’t know it at the time, but it was the odor of burning human flesh and hair.
Outside, they heard all kinds of noises: German shepherds and Doberman pinschers barking loudly, and commands in German most of them couldn’t understand. When they stumbled out of the cattle cars, disoriented and anxious, timidly asking questions, the German shouted back, “Raus, raus, raus!” (“Out, out, out!”). In the distance, the prisoners saw a skyline of chimneys, with bright orange plumes of flame shooting into the clouds. They didn’t know that most of them would be ash within hours.
The SS separated the healthy males, slating them for work details while everyone else was taken to the gas chambers.
Invariably, mothers wanted to stay with their children. The SS would say, “good, good, stay with child.” Under a rain of baton blows, women, children and old men were marched into “changing rooms” and told to undress. The Germans told the prisoners that they were going to be “disinfected.” Then they tightly wedged some 2,000 people at a time into the chambers, where they saw what looked like shower heads.
The massive airtight doors were locked with an iron bolt. It was dark. Zyklon B was released, and the screaming began. The prisoners huddled together, screamed together, gasped for air together. While children violently hugged their parents, hundreds of people tried to push their way to the door, trampling children in the process. In the dark, skulls were crushed and hundreds of people were battered beyond recognition. The bloodcurdling screams turned into a death rattle, then a gasp. Within 20 minutes, the job was done.
The bodies lay in heaps, every one of them dead—as many people as were cut down in Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg; two-thirds of the 9/11 death toll. The bodies were then burned, the ashes used as filler for German roads and walking paths. Within hours, the Nazis would repeat the process, extinguishing another 2,000 human lives.
As for the prisoners who were selected to work in the camps, the Germans stripped them of their identities, referring to them instead by numbers tattooed on their forearms. Prisoners were forced to stand half-naked, doused with buckets of ice-cold water, or lashed 50 times with a whip. They were awakened at 4 a.m., forced to do backbreaking work for 12 hours with virtually no rest or food. They slept almost naked, with no blankets in temperatures often below freezing in the winter. Most died within weeks of arriving at the camp.
Between the gas chamber and the work detail, more than a million people were murdered this way at Auschwitz.
Mr. Winik, formerly the inaugural historian-in-residence at the Council on Foreign Relations, is author of “1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History.”
Here it is, written by Jay Winik:
Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were rounded up and packed into cattle cars, with little air or light, no food and virtually no water, for a harrowing two- to three-day trip to Auschwitz. They rode in terror and anticipation, having no idea what was in store for them at the destination. Exhausted and scared, they frequently had to stand for the entire trip. Mothers clutched sons; daughters held on to fathers; children gripped both parents’ hands; grandparents and the infirm struggled to stay alive. Many didn’t survive the journey.
When the trains arrived at Auschwitz, it was a scene of chaos, confusion and horror. After days trapped in darkened cattle cars, squinting into bright floodlights lining the tracks was almost unbearable. So was the stench, like nothing the captives had ever smelled before. They didn’t know it at the time, but it was the odor of burning human flesh and hair.
Outside, they heard all kinds of noises: German shepherds and Doberman pinschers barking loudly, and commands in German most of them couldn’t understand. When they stumbled out of the cattle cars, disoriented and anxious, timidly asking questions, the German shouted back, “Raus, raus, raus!” (“Out, out, out!”). In the distance, the prisoners saw a skyline of chimneys, with bright orange plumes of flame shooting into the clouds. They didn’t know that most of them would be ash within hours.
The SS separated the healthy males, slating them for work details while everyone else was taken to the gas chambers.
Invariably, mothers wanted to stay with their children. The SS would say, “good, good, stay with child.” Under a rain of baton blows, women, children and old men were marched into “changing rooms” and told to undress. The Germans told the prisoners that they were going to be “disinfected.” Then they tightly wedged some 2,000 people at a time into the chambers, where they saw what looked like shower heads.
The massive airtight doors were locked with an iron bolt. It was dark. Zyklon B was released, and the screaming began. The prisoners huddled together, screamed together, gasped for air together. While children violently hugged their parents, hundreds of people tried to push their way to the door, trampling children in the process. In the dark, skulls were crushed and hundreds of people were battered beyond recognition. The bloodcurdling screams turned into a death rattle, then a gasp. Within 20 minutes, the job was done.
The bodies lay in heaps, every one of them dead—as many people as were cut down in Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg; two-thirds of the 9/11 death toll. The bodies were then burned, the ashes used as filler for German roads and walking paths. Within hours, the Nazis would repeat the process, extinguishing another 2,000 human lives.
As for the prisoners who were selected to work in the camps, the Germans stripped them of their identities, referring to them instead by numbers tattooed on their forearms. Prisoners were forced to stand half-naked, doused with buckets of ice-cold water, or lashed 50 times with a whip. They were awakened at 4 a.m., forced to do backbreaking work for 12 hours with virtually no rest or food. They slept almost naked, with no blankets in temperatures often below freezing in the winter. Most died within weeks of arriving at the camp.
Between the gas chamber and the work detail, more than a million people were murdered this way at Auschwitz.
Mr. Winik, formerly the inaugural historian-in-residence at the Council on Foreign Relations, is author of “1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History.”
 |
| Railroad tracks lead into Auschwitz-Birkenau, a Nazi death camp in Poland. |
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Wall Street Journal article about Ireland: Vote Suggests a Weakened Church.
What I wrote for the Christian and Catholic assholes who subscribe to the Wall Street Journal:
The pope wears a funny hat and an expensive dress. He has been part of the out-of-control child abuse problem. The pope can take his fake moral values and shove it.
Ireland to Pope: Drop dead.
Virtually all of Europe to Pope: Shove it retard.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Not that anyone cares but I'm 1/2 Irish and 1/2 Luxembourg. My Irish ancestors were pioneers who chose land for their farm in Minnesota in the 1850's. My father was raised on the same farm.
My mother was raised on a farm in South Dakota. Her parents were born in Luxembourg.
I exist because these two farmers met each other at a dance in Minneapolis.
I also exist because during World War Two my father joined the Navy to avoid getting drafted. He got a job repairing warplanes in Bermuda. An important job but it didn't require getting killed.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Vote Suggests a Weakened Church. Some see Irish voters’ move to legalize abortion as pressuring Poland to loosen its laws.
By Drew Hinshaw and Francis X. Rocca May 28, 2018 101 COMMENTS
WARSAW, Poland—Ireland’s vote on Friday to legalize abortion echoed through another Roman Catholic-majority country in Europe, but one where the procedure is broadly illegal and the subject of a continuing battle.
“Ireland could be a pattern for Poland,” said Rozalia Kielmans-Ratynska, a legal analyst at the antiabortion Ordo Iuris Institute. “We think that now there will be pressure on Poland also to go the same direction.”
The Irish referendum—in which 66% of voters chose to allow parliament to legalize abortion—underscored the decadeslong decline of the Catholic church as a political force in that nation.
It also accentuated a mirror image in Poland, the last major nation in Europe whose Catholic Church still dominates politics, society, and culture. The only outstanding question on abortion in Poland is whether its Catholic and conservative government will succeed in tightening already strict laws regulating the procedure. Polish law prohibits abortion except in cases where the pregnancy results from a crime—such as rape or incest—threatens the health of the mother, or where the fetus suffers severe and irreversible impairment.
Bishops have pressed the ruling Law and Justice Party to introduce a law that would remove the allowance for fetuses with severe health problems such as Down syndrome, an exemption that accounts for roughly 96% of Poland’s legal and reported abortions. The party has introduced such proposals several times, but has sent them back for parliamentary review, after facing widespread protests by Poles who favor abortion rights.
“The debate is frozen,” said Liliana Religa, communications coordinator for The Federation for Women and Family Planning, an abortion-rights advocacy group in Warsaw. “The Ireland referendum was a great relief and source of happiness for us. We hope that Poland will follow the same path.”
The divergent paths of Ireland and Poland show the bifurcating direction of the Catholic church in Europe, as its clergy on the continent seek to ride turbulent tides of secularism, nationalism, and the shifting focus of the Church itself.
Under Pope Francis, the Vatican has recentered some of its emphasis on the faster growing populations of the developing world, in Latin America, Asia, or Africa. Although his two immediate predecessors, the Polish Pope John Paul II and German Pope Benedict XVI, called for a secularizing Europe to recover its Christian roots, the Argentine Pope Francis has largely focused on flocks outside Catholicism’s historic heartland.
The pope has also encouraged his clergy to play down culture-war issues of sexual and medical ethics in favor of calls for social and economic justice. He made no public statement in the run-up the Irish referendum.
Countries like Ireland and Poland are left to choose their own paths as they seek to fill pews in countries where populations are stagnating and young people are emigrating to wealthier, but more secular states like the U.K.
In Ireland, church sex-abuse scandals and secular liberalism have chipped away at both the Catholic church and the nationalism it once held arms with. In the run up to Friday’s referendum, clergy conceded that their criticism of the vote was unlikely to change its outcome—and might further inflame opinion against it.
“Ireland is now conforming to a western liberal democracy, especially on issues like abortion, same sex, civil partnership, marriage and divorce,” Archbishop Eamon Martin, president of the Irish Catholic bishops conference, told Irish public radio on Sunday. “This didn’t come out of the blue and it is not something new for us,” he added.
In Poland, however, nationalism is on the upswing. Polish voters sense that Europe is headed down a separate, more secular path, and the ruling Law and Justice party campaigns on this, portraying itself as a defender of threatened moral values.
That has reinforced the political position of the church. The popular state-owned news broadcaster, Telewizja Polska, unambiguously backs the culturally conservative views of local bishops. Its recent coverage of the Irish referendum referred to “the once Catholic Ireland.”
Local clergy and the local government have both rebuffed Pope Francis’s call to accept Muslim refugees. Crucifixes hang in many government offices, often next to the flag of the EU, an organization most Poles wish to stay a member of.
Poland was once among the easiest places in Europe to get access to an abortion. Under Communism, ferries brought pregnant women from Sweden and Denmark for the procedure, which was free of charge. “It was quite simple,” said Ewa Dąbrowska-Szulc, an abortion-rights activist in Poland. “You could go to the doctor or to the gynecologist in a state-owned hospital, and you didn’t pay anything.”
That changed at the end of the Cold War, when the Catholic church emerged as a widely-trusted voice endowed with moral authority. A 1993 law turned Poland into one of the most antiabortion nations in Europe. The number of legal and reported abortions plummeted to about 1,000 last year. Tens of thousands continue to cross the border, to nearby clinics in Germany and Slovakia with Polish staff on hand to manage the exodus, or take pills ordered from the internet.
A poll last week found 56% of Poles would like to keep the current abortion law as it is, 9% wished to tighten it and 29% wanted to loosen it, the Polish opinion polling organization IBRiS found. In January, liberal and centrist parties introduced a proposal to allow abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy.
Thirty-nine liberal and centrist members of parliament helped to vote it down.
—Natalia Ojewska in Warsaw contributed this article.
Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com and Francis X. Rocca at francis.rocca@wsj.com
The pope wears a funny hat and an expensive dress. He has been part of the out-of-control child abuse problem. The pope can take his fake moral values and shove it.
Ireland to Pope: Drop dead.
Virtually all of Europe to Pope: Shove it retard.
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Not that anyone cares but I'm 1/2 Irish and 1/2 Luxembourg. My Irish ancestors were pioneers who chose land for their farm in Minnesota in the 1850's. My father was raised on the same farm.
My mother was raised on a farm in South Dakota. Her parents were born in Luxembourg.
I exist because these two farmers met each other at a dance in Minneapolis.
I also exist because during World War Two my father joined the Navy to avoid getting drafted. He got a job repairing warplanes in Bermuda. An important job but it didn't require getting killed.
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Vote Suggests a Weakened Church. Some see Irish voters’ move to legalize abortion as pressuring Poland to loosen its laws.
By Drew Hinshaw and Francis X. Rocca May 28, 2018 101 COMMENTS
WARSAW, Poland—Ireland’s vote on Friday to legalize abortion echoed through another Roman Catholic-majority country in Europe, but one where the procedure is broadly illegal and the subject of a continuing battle.
“Ireland could be a pattern for Poland,” said Rozalia Kielmans-Ratynska, a legal analyst at the antiabortion Ordo Iuris Institute. “We think that now there will be pressure on Poland also to go the same direction.”
The Irish referendum—in which 66% of voters chose to allow parliament to legalize abortion—underscored the decadeslong decline of the Catholic church as a political force in that nation.
It also accentuated a mirror image in Poland, the last major nation in Europe whose Catholic Church still dominates politics, society, and culture. The only outstanding question on abortion in Poland is whether its Catholic and conservative government will succeed in tightening already strict laws regulating the procedure. Polish law prohibits abortion except in cases where the pregnancy results from a crime—such as rape or incest—threatens the health of the mother, or where the fetus suffers severe and irreversible impairment.
Bishops have pressed the ruling Law and Justice Party to introduce a law that would remove the allowance for fetuses with severe health problems such as Down syndrome, an exemption that accounts for roughly 96% of Poland’s legal and reported abortions. The party has introduced such proposals several times, but has sent them back for parliamentary review, after facing widespread protests by Poles who favor abortion rights.
“The debate is frozen,” said Liliana Religa, communications coordinator for The Federation for Women and Family Planning, an abortion-rights advocacy group in Warsaw. “The Ireland referendum was a great relief and source of happiness for us. We hope that Poland will follow the same path.”
The divergent paths of Ireland and Poland show the bifurcating direction of the Catholic church in Europe, as its clergy on the continent seek to ride turbulent tides of secularism, nationalism, and the shifting focus of the Church itself.
Under Pope Francis, the Vatican has recentered some of its emphasis on the faster growing populations of the developing world, in Latin America, Asia, or Africa. Although his two immediate predecessors, the Polish Pope John Paul II and German Pope Benedict XVI, called for a secularizing Europe to recover its Christian roots, the Argentine Pope Francis has largely focused on flocks outside Catholicism’s historic heartland.
The pope has also encouraged his clergy to play down culture-war issues of sexual and medical ethics in favor of calls for social and economic justice. He made no public statement in the run-up the Irish referendum.
Countries like Ireland and Poland are left to choose their own paths as they seek to fill pews in countries where populations are stagnating and young people are emigrating to wealthier, but more secular states like the U.K.
In Ireland, church sex-abuse scandals and secular liberalism have chipped away at both the Catholic church and the nationalism it once held arms with. In the run up to Friday’s referendum, clergy conceded that their criticism of the vote was unlikely to change its outcome—and might further inflame opinion against it.
“Ireland is now conforming to a western liberal democracy, especially on issues like abortion, same sex, civil partnership, marriage and divorce,” Archbishop Eamon Martin, president of the Irish Catholic bishops conference, told Irish public radio on Sunday. “This didn’t come out of the blue and it is not something new for us,” he added.
In Poland, however, nationalism is on the upswing. Polish voters sense that Europe is headed down a separate, more secular path, and the ruling Law and Justice party campaigns on this, portraying itself as a defender of threatened moral values.
That has reinforced the political position of the church. The popular state-owned news broadcaster, Telewizja Polska, unambiguously backs the culturally conservative views of local bishops. Its recent coverage of the Irish referendum referred to “the once Catholic Ireland.”
Local clergy and the local government have both rebuffed Pope Francis’s call to accept Muslim refugees. Crucifixes hang in many government offices, often next to the flag of the EU, an organization most Poles wish to stay a member of.
Poland was once among the easiest places in Europe to get access to an abortion. Under Communism, ferries brought pregnant women from Sweden and Denmark for the procedure, which was free of charge. “It was quite simple,” said Ewa Dąbrowska-Szulc, an abortion-rights activist in Poland. “You could go to the doctor or to the gynecologist in a state-owned hospital, and you didn’t pay anything.”
That changed at the end of the Cold War, when the Catholic church emerged as a widely-trusted voice endowed with moral authority. A 1993 law turned Poland into one of the most antiabortion nations in Europe. The number of legal and reported abortions plummeted to about 1,000 last year. Tens of thousands continue to cross the border, to nearby clinics in Germany and Slovakia with Polish staff on hand to manage the exodus, or take pills ordered from the internet.
A poll last week found 56% of Poles would like to keep the current abortion law as it is, 9% wished to tighten it and 29% wanted to loosen it, the Polish opinion polling organization IBRiS found. In January, liberal and centrist parties introduced a proposal to allow abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy.
Thirty-nine liberal and centrist members of parliament helped to vote it down.
—Natalia Ojewska in Warsaw contributed this article.
Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com and Francis X. Rocca at francis.rocca@wsj.com
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