e: "historyk" Gross i jego "argumenty"
From:
McIntyre <mcintyre@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> (ntl Cablemodem News Service)
Date:
Tuesday 15 Jan 2008 15:13:31
Groups:
soc.culture.polish
Indeed, some people are still forgetting that:
"Poland had the highest pro****tion of
deaths during World War II (17 per cent of the population). Next to the
U.S.S.R., the U.S.A. and Great Britain, Poland contributed the greatest
number of troops in the war against Hitler. The Polish underground
produced
the highest number of attacks against the Nazis of any occupied country
and
suffered the greatest retaliations. There was no Quisling or Petainist
government in Poland. Collaboration with the Nazis was rare and punished
by
the underground by death. Poland has the largest number of "righteous
Gentiles" recorded at Yad Vashem. It should take more than post-modern
sermonizing to justify the further victimization of this long-suffering
nation."
http://catholicinsight.com/online/reviews/books/article_750.shtml
James R. Thompson teaches at Rice University, Houston, TX. This essay is
reprinted from The Chesterton Review, Special Polish Issue, Spring/Summer
2007, with permission. Subtitles have been added by Catholic Insight.
For subscription information for The Chesterton Review, e-mail:
chestertoninstitute@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
or telephone (973) 275-2431.
Jdr
.....................................................................................
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/josephd.ross/index.html
"Adam R. Tomaszewski" <artomaszewski@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:8w2jj.7778$pA7.1533@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Reviews - Books
>
> Book Review: Fear - Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz
> By James R. Thompson
> Issue: October 2007
>
>
>
> Jan Tomasz Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz
> New York, NY, Random House, 2006
> ISBN: 978-0691128788, Hardcover, pp. 336, $25.95 (US)
>
> Professor Gross begins his argument with the following declaration
> concerning his methodology: "The nature of prejudice is to make
> unwarranted
> totalizing claims, whereas understanding advances through elucidation of
> careful distinctions. These are directly opposed mental exercises. And
if
> one tries to argue prejudice away by the usual procedure of testing
> hypotheses (that is, by pointing to alternative explanations or false
> deductions or limitations in the empirical evidence), one enters a kind
of
> discourse where the prejudice's basic premise is already accepted."
>
> While the first sentence begins with a platitude, the subsequent ones
> remove
> us from the universally accepted scholarly method of testing hypotheses
by
> means known since the emergence of Aristotelian logic. What is wrong,
one
> might ask, with testing the null hypothesis that there is a great deal
of
> anti-Semitism in Poland? Historians and lawyers have traditionally been
> comfortable with bringing forward facts to confirm or deny such a
> hypothesis.
>
> In contrast, Gross declares that the above hypothesis is unacceptably
> formulated and then accepts no argument that it could be false. This "in
> your face" method of imposing one's foregone conclusions on the reader
> leaves no way of rebutting false assumptions by ushering evidence to the
> contrary. The use of this method in historical research allows one to
> reshape history by stating preposterous things later published by
presses
> with the correct zip codes to congeal into the acceptable version of
> history.
8<<<<<<<<<<<<<< snip
>
> This raises another question. According to Teresa Bochwic
(Rzeczpospolita,
> August 3, 2002), two out of three of the current residents of Poland
have
> either suffered the loss of their homes as a result of World War II and
> the
> events following or are descendants of those who have. The organs of
state
> security, led by such persons as Jakub Berman, and the Soviet NKVD, were
> directly responsible for the deaths of over one million Polish
Catholics.
> Where should the Catholic victims go for redress of grievances? Poles
ask
> simply to be left alone, to be freed from quasi-legal attacks by those
who
> would keep them oppressed forever. Poland had the highest pro****tion of
> deaths during World War II (17 per cent of the population). Next to the
> U.S.S.R., the U.S.A. and Great Britain, Poland contributed the greatest
> number of troops in the war against Hitler. The Polish underground
> produced
> the highest number of attacks against the Nazis of any occupied country
> and
> suffered the greatest retaliations. There was no Quisling or Petainist
> government in Poland. Collaboration with the Nazis was rare and punished
> by
> the underground by death. Poland has the largest number of "righteous
> Gentiles" recorded at Yad Vashem. It should take more than post-modern
> sermonizing to justify the further victimization of this long-suffering
> nation.
> http://catholicinsight.com/online/reviews/books/article_750.shtml
> James R. Thompson teaches at Rice University, Houston, TX. This essay is
> reprinted from The Chesterton Review, Special Polish Issue,
Spring/Summer
> 2007, with permission. Subtitles have been added by Catholic Insight.
For
> subscription information for The Chesterton Review, e-mail:
> chestertoninstitute@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
or telephone (973) 275-2431.
>
> © Copyright 1997-2006 Catholic Insight
> Updated: Sep 21st, 2007 - 19:39:32
>
>
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