Poland's Holocaust law and the ghosts from the past

The news has been spread everywhere in Europe and not only: Poland’s Senate approved a highly controversial bill on Thursday that bans any Holocaust accusations against Poles as well as descriptions of Nazi death camps as Polish (source The Washington Post). If President Duda will approve it, the law will become effective with a penalty for the transgressors up to three years in jail.

It is a little bit difficult to understand why this law was issued.

During the II WW, six millions of poles died (the half were Jewish). Poland is the first country for number of Righteous Among the Nations (an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis): 6706. 

It is also true that some Poles helped Nazis during the occupation and the war like in the case of the Jedwabne pogrom, where 340 Polish Jews were killed by a group of Polish inhabitants of the town with the complicity of the Nazis.

US and Israel stated that this law is against the freedom of speech and also against the responsibilities of Poles during the II World War.

What I see is that it looks hard for all the countries take their own responsibility on the shame on the Holocaust and on the caused that originated the war. 

In a very interesting book - Origins Of The Second World War - the author, A.J.P. Taylor, in the Sixties was claiming how not only Germany was the cause of the war, but many other events under the responsibility of all the European Countries, UK and France of course, but also Poland and Czechoslovakia for instance.

Auschwitz was a Nazi camp and even if it is within the Polish border, it was created by the Germans during their occupation. But this doesn't mean deny the responsibility of everybody in what happened. 

An interesting article by Jonathan Freedland published on The Gardian explains well the Polish problem:

It’s not hard to see why this has happened. Polish nationalists want Poles to have been the untainted victims of Nazism: it’s hard to admit that too many were willing assistants to genocide. Like almost every nation occupied by the Nazis, and unlike Germany itself, Poland has not yet made a clear-eyed reckoning with its past. It has not fully wrestled with the fact that a Jewish community that once made up 10% of its population, and which was the largest in Europe, has gone, murdered en masse in just over three years. “Poland is not at peace with its Jewish ghosts,” says [Konstanty] Gebert. “These are phantom limbs. You amputate the limb and it still hurts.”

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Visiting Auschwitz

Today 27th January is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the media, as usual, commemorate the genocide that resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jewish people, 200,000 Roma people, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

I think that the rhetoric that is usually adopted in commemorating this day, obscures partially what really happened in that period. It is really difficult to understand, at least till you have the opportunity to visit Auschwitz.

I live in Poland since over six years but just the last summer I have decided and planned to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp that is located in Oświęcim, 50km from Krakow.

Visiting Auschwitz should be definitely something everyone must do at least once in our own life. Because seeing all the shoes that where gathered by the people who arrived and died there, the grey hair and the amount of cups and glasses really make you realize the dimension of what happened.

When you arrive in the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) main entrance, the guide says that an estimated 1.3 million people were sent to the camp, of whom at least 1.1 million died. And you start to think about those people in line after hours of traveling in a train and just waiting to die.

It is impossible to imagine living in the camp during the winter (where the temperature is constantly under zero), with no food, no warming clothes, nothing.

It is so hard to imagine that life, so impossible to realize how some people could survive, that words are simply not enough. You need to go there and see.

We assume that it will never happen again, but we forget easily. And it is happening now with Rohingya in Myanmar, it happened with Tutsi in Ruanda and with Bosniak in the Former Jugoslavia.

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How much do the promises of the Italian politicians cost?

This is an important year for Italy: in few weeks the Political Elections will take place. And the electoral campaign already started, with a bunch of unrealistic promises from the opponents.  

Renzi, former Prime Minister, is proposing - for instance - the abolition of the tax to the national public broadcasting company Rai. This would cost 1.8 billion Eur per year. The new left led by the current President of the Senate Grasso, is proposing instead the abolition of the University taxes, at the cost of almost 2 billion euros per year. Of course, those will be the first elections in which the generation born in 2000 will go to vote.

On the right side, we have seen the back on the political stage of the eternal outsider Silvio Berlusconi, who is proposing the abolition of almost all the taxes: for cars, for donations, for inheritance plus a new fiscal system of flat tax (40 billions). He and his alley - Lega Nord - are also proposing the abolition of the last pension reform, that will cost the impressive amount of 80 billions euro/year since 2025.

The Moviment 5 Stelle, that has good chances to win the elections, is proposing the creation of a "citizen income" that would cost 15 billions per year.

Politicians are doing to many promises that are unrealistic but they are not explain us how we can develop resources, work, wealth in a country that is in permanent decline since three decades. 

Political leadership is looking at the people who have interests to defend (pensions, salaries, properties,...) and they are not providing a vision of how we will handle our future. 

Italian electoral campaign is funny and desolately sad at the same time.

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If you are interested in the cost of the electoral promises, you can take a look at this article published by La Repubblica (sorry, in Italian).

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Once upon a time there was the Czechoslovakia

At the beginning of January fell the anniversary of the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. It happened 25 years ago, when after a political agreement between Prague and Bratislava, there was the creation of Czech Republic and Slovakia (united in the same entity since 1918).

It is strange to think about the "Velvet Divorce" now, also remembering that in a poll of September 1992, just the 37% of Slovaks and 36% of Czechs wanted the separation.

The story after the dissolution is clear: at the beginning Prague developed faster, but once Slovakia entered in the Eu, Bratislava became much more competitive, also adopting Euro.

It is interesting to notice that:

"While raw nationalism fueled the conflict in Yugoslavia, economics and inept leadership were the prime causes of Czechoslovakia’s schism—a dynamic that presages the struggle for independence in contemporary Catalonia, a region of Spain."  (From The Economist: The impact of Czechoslovakia’s split)

The parallel with what is going on in Barcelona is obvious. With not real and strong reasons, elites divided a big country. In Czechoslovakia there were no troubles, in Jugoslavia thousands of people died. But what is the point to be independent, if than you want be part of European Union anyway?

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Persepolis - what is going on in Iran

Iran is the second largest Country in the Middle East. It also has large reserves of fossil fuels – which include the world's largest natural gas supply and the fourth-largest proven oil reserves.

Iran is a major political and religious player in the area and it is normal that when a huge wave of protests affects the whole country like it happened in the last days, all the international attention is focused on understanding what is going on.

The famous picture of the girl who is protesting without dressing her hijab

The problem is that it is really difficult to understand this country full of contradictions and overall, with a huge control on the media from the State.

What I understood is that the protests have been pushed by the conservatives against the President Rohuani, but it has been quickly developed in a much wider protest against the corruption and the economic stagnation of the country.

What is interesting in those demonstrations is that they were not led by any political party but built up via social media. The protests involved also small cities, where people are not claiming for more freedom, but for more work and against the increase of the prices.

Even if it seems the central Government has been able to repress the demonstrations, it doesn't mean that the problems at the oring of it will disappear. We will see in the next months if those tensions will bring some important changes in Iran.

For further reference  I would suggest this article from Il Post (in Italian) and another from BBC very interesting as well.

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Something is rotten in the state of...Europe

Few days ago, I was reading an online Newspaper and I was quite surprised that in the same day two articles about Europe were published. The first was talking about how EU is strong now, after such a difficult year. The other one was showing the exactly opposite thesis.

The truth is the nobody really knows how EU is now and how it will be in the short-term.

Catalonia, immigration, Brexit are just some of the topics that demonstrate how far we are from a real Union of States.

But going deeper, there are much bigger problems that Europe will have to face next year.

The continue dispute between Poland and Eu could begin a lacerating struggle among the States. 

Austria new young Prime minister is expression of a xenophobic party and is leading a coalition with the ultra-right. This could also bring to further division in Europe, especially on the topic of immigration.

A big question mark is representing the coming elections in Italy, that could bring an Euro-skeptical Party (the Movimento 5 Stelle) at the lead of the Government.

Last but not least, the most important European leader, Angela Merkel, has lost power after the recent German elections.

I doubt the next year will be a moment of important decisions for European Union. 

But let's be positive ;)

Happy new year! 

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The 3 guys who made the "Catalonia Affair" a giant mistake

2017 has seen one of the worst and unreasonable political crisis in Europe since over 20 years: the Catalonia claim of independence.

We have seen the tension before and during the referendum, we have seen the dispute between Rajoy and Puigdemont, the declaration of Independence, the suspension of Catalonia autonomy and the new elections, that showed just yesterday how people are divided. What a mess!

This crisis has been managed badly from all the parties, especially from 3 persons, that have showed a very low political leadership and lack of vision.

First of the list Mariano Rajoy. If you are at the head of the Government of such a big and important Country like Spain, you cannot act like Independentists do not exist. If Catalonia government is issuing a will of independence that brings to a referendum, you really cannot ignore them. Furthermore, what happened during the referendum with the police has convinced many people to vote for going out from Spain. Instead of going for dialogue, Rajoy decided to increase the tension adopting a very short-sighet perspective.

The second responsible of this chaos is Carles Puigdemont. How can you lead a strategic region like Catalonia and arrive to a referendum for an independence that nobody (European Union first) would never accept? Politics is first of all being realistic, and he hasn't be at all.

Third in the list, the King Felipe VI. Just after the referendum, he had the chance to bring stability back in Spain and to represent also the Catalans that peacefully went to vote for the independence. He could be the warrant of the Constitution and of the rights of all of his citizens. He decided for the opposite way attacking Catalonia Independentist, not following - for instance - the King of another country strongly divided like Belgium.

3 weak leaders, huge mistakes and one certainty after the referendum: "Catalonia Affair" is far to end.

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