"The Soviets sending Polish Jews to Siberia in the late 1930s was good, actually, because if they had still been in Poland when the Germans conquered it they probably would have been murdered in the Holocaust" Log off, man. Just ... log off. That's enough internet for you today - ThreadSky

akivamcohen.bsky.social • 14 days ago

"The Soviets sending Polish Jews to Siberia in the late 1930s was good, actually, because if they had still been in Poland when the Germans conquered it they probably would have been murdered in the Holocaust"

Log off, man. Just ... log off. That's enough internet for you today

Reposted from Tequila Sunset

300,000 Polish Jews survived via Soviet relocation to Siberia is my point.

Comments

fyodor.bsky.social•14 days ago

An amazing thread. As the other guy notes even the soviet propaganda machine was never so brazen to claim some of this stuff. Just pure fanfic.

misterbrixster.bsky.social•14 days ago

... those who escaped and were caught and shipped out by the Russians to Siberia were bemoaning their fate until they understood that their friends had all been sent to their deaths.

zachrosewriter.bsky.social•14 days ago

No I think a lot of them were still pretty unhappy with their treatment

misterbrixster.bsky.social•14 days ago

Akiva, he's right on this one. While brutal in Siberia, many (and likely most) actually survived until Stalin's death when they were freed, so yes, that was a blessing in disguise. There's a very poignant story about yeshiva students who were raided by the nazis...

abhorrentabby.bsky.social•14 days ago

You do not have to "hand it" to forced relocation and ethnic cleansing. Them not getting taken by the Nazis was incidental

wqsaves.bsky.social•14 days ago

I don't think that really supports the contention that the soviets invading Poland and forcibly relocating the Jews was good tbh

misterbrixster.bsky.social•14 days ago

Totally agree. I was only speaking from the perspective of Jews who were forced to choose their poison, and how that choice ultimately played out. It wasn't that Stalin was some saint because he had his own extermination plans for the Jews. It's just that he died before he could implement them.

quincunctial.bsky.social•14 days ago

I would simply not help Hitler invade Poland and would insist that Jews not be murdered or kidnapped. But that’s me, I’m just built different.

wqsaves.bsky.social•14 days ago

I guess I'll grant that from the perspective of the guy who's going to be either murdered or kidnapped I'd take the kidnapping, but uh, I'm not writing either option a card afterwards, y'know?

akivamcohen.bsky.social•14 days ago

Big difference between "gam zu l'tovah" and "actually, it was good that the Soviets took half of Poland as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact"

misterbrixster.bsky.social•14 days ago

Rabbi Galinsky in his Parsha Sefer tells of such a story. He and other Bochurim escaped from windows when the Nazis came pounding at the Yeshiva door, only to be captured and exiled by the Russians. Until liberated when Stalin died they bemoaned their fate thinking the others fared better.

zachrosewriter.bsky.social•14 days ago

My brother, you do not get points for horrible, inhumane treatment of innocent people just because someone else would've treated them worse. I'm sure it was a strange feeling for the victims, but the Soviets weren't driven by humanitarian concern

misterbrixster.bsky.social•14 days ago

Of course not, and had Staling lived longer the Jews would have been exterminated there too. My only point was the historical reality told by people there that when they were sent to Siberia they anguished over getting the worse deal than those who went with the Nazis until they heard what happened.

zachrosewriter.bsky.social•14 days ago

this is not the proper forum for that discussion when people are attempting to spin these horrible human rights abuses as benevolent salvation

misterbrixster.bsky.social•14 days ago

Indeed :-)

matthewbest.bsky.social•14 days ago

I already replied, but honestly, no.

This is like saying the surviving Jews shipped to Majdanek or Auschwitz were lucky because their eventual liberation saved them from the typhus epidemic that killed Anne and Margot Frank along with 17,000 other Jews at Bergen-Belsen.

It's just insane, really.

matthewbest.bsky.social•14 days ago

The Polish Jews were shipped to Siberia because Stalin invaded Poland with Hitler.

Hitler was able to invade Poland because Stalin paid three years of credit with Nazi Germany and trade to the grain and drop.

The NKVD and Gestapo collaborated in Poland.

Just.. no

joshdobbin.bsky.social•14 days ago

As a jew, it's kinda funny that the first response I have to this insane Panglossian bullshit is "jesus fucking christ!"

hannahstohelit.bsky.social•14 days ago

Omg
My grandfather survived by being deported to Siberia but I’m sure that ten year old kid in 1939 wanted NEITHER to die in a ghetto/camp or survive by working on the railroad in a gulag
(He was six inches shorter than his next tallest brother due to malnutrition in puberty)

thedevilhistory.bsky.social•14 days ago

The mind of a Tankie is no mind at all.

hipcrimevocab.net•14 days ago

That's a bigger joke than the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.

jkfecke.bsky.social•14 days ago

The Soviets were great! They put it in the historical Jewish homeland on the banks of the Jordan River! Wait, I'm being told it is on the Amur River. Anyhow, to this very day, the JAO has upwards of 800 Jewish people, which is over 50% of 1% of the population.

tft.io•14 days ago

Of all the takes I’ve seen, that is certainly one of them.

ejacobslaw.com•14 days ago

Murdering, but from the left.

nora-hakase.bsky.social•14 days ago

I thought they were called tankies because of the armored war vehicles but maybe it's because their brains are in sealed metal containers in a basement somewhere?

mlbiam.dev•14 days ago

And....blocked

matthewbest.bsky.social•14 days ago

Oh. Oh no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo%E2%80%93NKVD_conferences

hamantaschendog.bsky.social•14 days ago

This guy is out here with a giant foam finger reading “#1 Moral Luck Fan”

jurgenhissen.bsky.social•14 days ago

"Stalin knows best"? Wow.

joelhs.bsky.social•14 days ago

I mean I don't think we should thank them, and they certainly didn't do it out of any humanitarian motive, but isn't it an accident of history that the forcible Soviet relocations of Jews probably did end up saving more lives than they cost? More of a bitter irony than worthy of thanks, though.

pymundgenealogy.com•14 days ago

In my experience that's the attitude of families who survived through Siberia - and that's quite a few people I know, including relatives. Not "thanks" but "well it turns out that Stalin *was* less focused on killing us"

pymundgenealogy.com•14 days ago

For those with the option in 1939-1941, the choice was not at all intuitive.

joelhs.bsky.social•14 days ago

Right - at the time, it would have seemed like the choice between the devil you know and the devil you don't. But in retrospect, while both devils, one of them did prove to be a whole lot more concerned with killing the largest number of Jews than the other.

isaacgantwerkmayer.bsky.social•14 days ago

"Stalin: technically not quite as murderously antisemitic as Hitler was"

elliotald3rson.bsky.social•13 days ago

A gulag may be marginally better than the death camps, but only in the sense that Kamala Harris sending the bombs might be marginally better for Palestinians in Gaza than DJT.

One might have a marginally less likelihood of dying directly rather than indirectly.

Though credit is not deserved.

grungehamster.bsky.social•14 days ago

"My favorite part of Fiddler on the Roof was the happy ending where the tsar forces the Jews out of the Pale of Settlement where they might have been in danger of the Holocaust 30 years later otherwise."

pymundgenealogy.com•14 days ago

I mean pogroms chasing Jews to America also saved their lives but do they want thank-you cards?

dalassa.bsky.social•14 days ago

Yes they do

jewish.bsky.social•14 days ago

Logically just a few steps adjacent to “what if we do it again…”

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