euro|topics - Czeslaw Bielecki

04/12/2008

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Bielecki, Czeslaw

2 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.

Dziennik - Poland | 08/08/2008

The Beijing Games are a scandal

On the day the Olympic Games begin in Beijing the daily Dziennik publishes an open letter written by 19 Polish intellectuals harshly condemning the International Olympic Committee (IOC). "Awarding the Olympic Games to China was a disgrace for which the functionaries of the Olympic Committee are responsible. Their claim that they do not want to interfere in politics is cynical and hypocritical. Respecting human rights is a universal norm of civilisation that only communists and fascists fail to observe. We do not condemn the athletes who participate in the Olympics - they did not choose the location. ... But we are expressing our displeasure with all those politicians who, by their very presence in Beijing - regardless of their verbal statements - are supporting a dictatorial state. Above all we want to show our solidarity with all those who are being deprived of their freedom and fundamental rights in China. We are convinced that any dictatorship - even that of a powerful state - must be condemned."

Rzeczpospolita - Poland | 14/08/2006

Czeslaw Bielecki on anti-Semitism in Poland

Former dissident and later parliament member Czeslaw Bielecki writes - from his standpoint as a Jew in Poland - about anti-Semitism and the complicated Polish-Jewish past. "How is anti-Semitism expressed in Poland? Not so much through the kind of brutal excesses typical of France and Germany, but by a general denial that there is such a thing in Poland… Poles, who have suffered so much at the hands of Russians and Germans, don't want to see that there is no symmetry between the Holocaust and even their worst experiences of persecution under the Stalinists or Nazis. The numbers involved and the dimensions were different, and the motivation for total annihilation was less Darwinistic or racist in nature…The annihilation of the Jews was conclusive. This asymmetry cannot be reversed now. We will never know for example how Jews would have reacted if the Poles, French or Dutch had been subjected to this kind of persecution."

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