During WW2, why was Poland considered anti-Semitic? Was it their Catholicism?

According to this documentary, the Nazis destroyed Warsaw expressly because Poland refused to surrender to Germany after they were invaded by Germany. But over the years, I've heard many Jews and historians refer to how anti-Semitic Poland was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEerqYY8N4U



• They were anti-semitic, but also anti-nazi. In other words-they wanted to break free from Nazi Germany mainly for their own sakes and not only because their jewish population was being wiped out. If there weren't for so many Poles who also got killed or were taken to the extermination camps, I highly doubt they would stir up such a rebellion.

  meme

• Has it been 45 minutes since we had our last post about Jews? Did they get lonely because no one was talking about them so they could get mad because people are talking about them? I thought this was a gay group?

• [quote]Has it been 45 minutes since we had our last post about Jews? Did they get lonely because no one was talking about them so they could get mad because people are talking about them? Are you serious? "Innocent" Jewish-related posts are usually started by freeper trolls who are looking to stir up shit.

• It's a well known secret that the Germans would not have had half the "success" at rounding up Poland's Jews had it not been for the "cooperation" of non-Jewish Poles. Perhaps in a way the Germans merely provided the opportunity and many other Europeans joined in, German or not. By the same token I am willing to allow, to a point, that many average Germans and other Europeans were only vaguely aware of what was going on, or if they heard they were in denial or chose to ignore it or disbelieve it. All that said though and as horrifying as all of it was, I think we need to think of this as history and truly allow ourselves, Germany and Europe as a whole as well as the US to move on from something that happened 70 odd years ago. There are plenty of Holocaust memorials and museums around the world to act as reminders should that be necessary.

  Anonymous

• It was not their Catholicism so much as their hatred of Jews.

• Poland as it existed then had only been created in 1918 out of Russian, German and Austrian territory that HAD been Poland over a century earlier. Their sense of nationhood was precarious and they were very suspicious of all non-polish ethnicities in their boundaries, and particularly of the Jews, who, it was felt, were everywhere but had never been particularly loyal to the Polish cause. It can of course be argued that the Jews were never particularly welcome to be part of the Polish nation, but the Jews, who were used to adapting to different nations, had no trouble being Austrian, German or Russian, and even prospered under foreign rule. Add to that simple old fashioned antisemitism and you have a lot of resentment.