[lbo-talk] East European guilt? (was something rude about Daniel Goldhagen)

[James Heartfield]

"Unsure here. Are you saying that the anti-Semitic attitudes of Eastern Europeans 
can be
excused because they did not carry them as far as extermination camps? That they
can be excused, even though damaging, as long as extermination camps were *not* in
the picture?

Or maybe your wording is just a little off - easy enough in email exchanges."

You should say "the anti-Semitic attitudes of *some* Eastern Europeans".

I thought andie was saying that East Europeans were more enthusiastic perpetrators of the holocaust than Germans, when he wrote:


>Never mind the fact that most enthusiastic Jew-killers were Poles, 
>Ukrainians, Romanians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians -- not 
>Germans. 

which seems a bit over the top to me. After all, it was the German state's occupation of Eastern Europe that was the condition for the holocaust. Myself, I would blame the German state, not the German people.

No doubt there were lots of lowlife prejudices amongst East Europeans (almost as bad perhaps as those amongst Britons or Americans), but they were for the most part victims in the Second World War, not perpetrators. Poles were slave labourers in Germany, considered racial inferiors. TA Morris lists 5.3 million Polish civilian casualties, European History, 1848-1945. I am not interested in blaming or excusing their attitudes, but I would take a moment to honour their courage and sacrifice.