Talk:An Eye for an Eye (Sack book)

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Here is the unabridged text of the article:

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This book by John Sacks reads like a supermarket tabloid.

After having been told that there was a massacre at the Lamsdorf camp, conducted by revenge-minded Jews, the reader finds that he has been set up:

...in the notes, eighty pages away, at the end of an unnumbered paragraph that consists of a half-page list of meaningless names of witnesses with archival notations, ... the unusually diligent reader will discover the identity of the commander at Lamsdorf: he was a Polish Catholic. And it is only in the middle of the previous paragraph of the endnotes that Sack himself admits that "I don't know if any guards at Lamsdorf were Jews." [1]

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Anyone care to rewrite this acceptably? - user:Montrealais

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On his retirement to a tiny Vancouver thrice-weekly, _North_Shore_News_, with a circulation of 60,000, [Doug Collins] dismissed the movie _Schindler's_List_ as "Swindler's List" and suggested that while the Holocaust indeed did happen, the "six million" dead was wildly exaggerated. The wildly outrageous Political Correctness NDP government of 1993 amended the B.C. Human Rights Act to begin disciplining journalists for publishing anything "likely to expose a person or a group or class of persons to hatred or contempt." The Canadian Jewish Congress complained about Collins and the tribunal dismissed the complaint. A Victoria businessman then furthered the issue, and the tribunal in February ordered Collins to pay the chap $2,000 and apologize. Collins has appealed to the B.C. Supreme Court.

http://www.freedomsite.org/cafe/updates/fotheringham_on_collins.html

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If the New Republic review is to be trusted, this book is yet another in a long series of anti-Semitic slanders. Is there any reason to have an article, let alone one that airs the lies? Vicki Rosenzweig

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It's a published book that has been in the news, so of course there should be an article on it, just as there should be an article on Mein Kampf or the more popular white supremacist books. It's damn poor scholarship and sensationalist and possibly anti-semitic, but I don't think this article is too favorable at all to the author's contentions. If you think it needs to be pointed out more clearly that good scholars generally dismiss the work, then do so. --LDC

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IIRC, John Sack is Jewish. If people are going to accuse him of anti-Semitism, that fact surely needs to be mentioned.... -- SJK

If you can verify that, go ahead. (I wouldn't edit based on my own "if I can recall correctly", I assume you won't either.) Vicki Rosenzweig

Straight from the horse's mouth: "Goldhagen hinted that I, a Jew, was an anti-Semite" see http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/s/sack.john/press/sack-reply-goldhagen.19970313 Also, interestingly, a web search found that he spoke at an Institute for Historical Review (Holocaust-denier group) conference, and wrote a review of it for New York Esquire which the IHR described as "semi-complimentary". Also, although I don't believe he is antisemitic, he seems to be someone that antisemites (including some very extreme ones) like to quote from. --- SJK

I think the camps in question were set up by the red army, but they may be different ones. I hope this isn't based on the "communism is a jewish plot" type of conspiracy. Secretlondon 16:50, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

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These are quite interesting conversations. I wonder how many of you have read the book. These camps were set up by the red army, but many (though not all) of the people running them were Jews. John Sack believes the Russians wanted revenge and that they thought the Jewish survivors could be trusted to treat them badly, as they probably hated the Germans just as much as the Russians did. This sounds logical to me, if I would want a prisoner to be treated badly I would probably want his prison wardens to be someone who believes he has been done wrong by the person. Without a doubt many Jews, especially Polish ones despised all Germans at the end of the war. Just like many Russians did (and French, Scandinavians, Dutch, etc.) Of course not all of the wardens were bad all of the time, but some of them were bad some of the time. Some of these people had been in the German camps and treated the Germans like other Germans had treated them. I believe Sack is trying to get it in the open that there are German survivors of these camps, just as there are Jewish Holocaust survivors. Why should we disregard part of history? Denying what happened in these camps in Poland at the end of the war and in the months after the war, is just as wrong as denying the Holocaust. If we want to learn from history we have to try to be as objective as possible when dealing with facts. It is debateable whether Sack's writing style is the best style for being objective. He is a journalist and writes like one, and this is sentimentalist writing. But whether it is bad scholarship is a different matter. I haven't found any criticism on the book saying anything in it is a lie or fictitious. It seems to me to be a fine, well researched work of journalism, and I don't think the author claims it to be anything else.

I believe this is an important book. If not for its subject, then for it's criticism which must stand as a monument to the growing "political correctness" of the late 20th and early(?) 21st centuries. A good example of that in these discussions is the censorship Vicki Rosenzweig calls for above. --Steinst 21:02, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Poland is pursuing its charges against Morel. "A request for his extradition by Poland in 1998 was rejected by Israel on the grounds that the statute of limitations on the charges had run out. Prosecutors claim to have built up a stronger case, based on fresh testimony from survivors in Poland and Germany, and have upgraded the charges to crimes against humanity, on which there is no time limit."[2] Kwantus 21:46, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

Found this comment on the article--looks like it should be here instead:

My parents are Germans from the East. In the US, the tragedy that happened to innocent individuals of German ethnicity is little known. John smote a powerful blow for truth. I bought many copies of "An Eye" and distributed them among friends. May his soul rest in the peace well earned by the just.

Posted by Thomas on April 8, 2004 05:58 PM

Lola Potok

She has a biographical article at de:Lola Potok. The subtitle does not appear on the titlepages of all editions.--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 19:35, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Weasel words & Expressions of doubt

To Tom Harrison. I am starting to get the impression that you are following me around wikipedia and in the process perhaps demonstrating your own 'slant'. Anyway to the point here: WP:ALLEGED and WP:WEASEL. The following is an explanation of why I have reverted your undo. Please do me the courtesy of not edit-warring and instead responding here first if you disagree.

The book's position is not "arguing" as if that is in some doubt. The book is instead stating certain details as if of fact. Do you agree? Whether that is correct and these details are accurate would be a different discussion. We are only concerned with providing 2ndary sources with accuracy and neutrality. Using the word "arguing" casts doubt on the books details and therefore represents in this context a weasel word. Therefore replacing "...arguing that some Jews" with "...detailing how some Jews" is in line with wiki policy regarding neutrality of tone.

Similarly "...claiming the criticism was demonstrably untrue" is designed to give the impression there is doubt about his claim. Whereas writing "Sack responded that the criticism was demonstrably untrue" I think is a more neutral way of saying the same thing and is also more factual.

Finally the citations needed tags were added in 2009 AND sources for both tags are in the first cited reference. Therefore they were unneeded. Thus I deleted them. You appear to be undoing my edits without any familiarity with the article or its contents but are just undoing whatever contributions are from me. I therefore ask you to consider that you are perhaps hounding me by deleting my edits without initiating a discussion. Please show some good faith. I'm a reasonable chap. Just talk to me. --Mystichumwipe (talk) 10:40, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

You are presenting as fact disputed claims. As such, "claimed" or "alleged", is more appropriate. Also, you are synthesizing the two statements of "Jews in Eastern Europe took revenge on their former captors" and "Sack estimates that 60,000 to 80,000 people died in these camps", which insidiously suggests that Jews were responsible for these deaths. No source links the two and I have removed this original research.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 11:32, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

But I am doing nothing of the kind. This is taken from a secondary source. I didn't create this article. It already existed. You appear to be giving undue weight to a minority view of the book according to the cited secondary source. A minority CRITICAL view. So that would both a WP:NPOV and WP:OR infringement. We don't allow WP:ALLEGED or weasel words in a subject like the Holocaust. E.g. Words like "alleged" and "claimed" for six million deaths would NEVER be tolerated even though they are also disputed by historians. Why then do you allow it for the same period and same history, when the atrocities were being perpetrated the other way against Germans by Jews? The synthesizing you mention appears to me to be in your own interpretation and perhaps explains why you are trying to spin the article and now even have it removed. Can you see how that looks like censorship and perhaps betrays a bias. Why have you got involved here if your motive was never to improve the article nor expand the database of Wikipedia but to remove it? Otherwise, if you want to fix this article in line with wiki policy why not do some research and improve it yourself?--Mystichumwipe (talk) 14:56, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me that neither of you is up to much good. Stop your pov-pushing, both of you. Zero^talk 10:52, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Tags

The single reference to Sack's own website is not an RS and cannot be used to make any claims without attribution. It would be constructive if more refs were added.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 15:13, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Doug Collins

Umm, why are his views worthy of inclusion? Maybe Irving also has something to say on this matter?Ankh.Morpork 14:23, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

The 75% and 1.7% stuff

(I wonder if I am the only editor of this article who actually read the book. Probably. But anyway:)

• What Sack wrote (1st edition, p40): "about three out of four of the officers—two hundred rowdy boys—in the Office of State Security in Kattowitz were Jews"
• What Goldhagen claimed Sack wrote: "his claim that 75 percent of those in the Office of State Security in Silesia were Jews"
• What Kevles claimed Sack wrote: "Sack...distorts the numbers of Jews employed by the Polish Office of State Security; he suggests that 75% of the factotums were Jews"

Note how Sack's specification "officers" disappeared altogether and even became "factotums", and how his geographical limitation "Kattowitz" got expanded to "Silesia" (which is not so severe, for technical reasons) and then to all of Poland. So the "refutations" that Goldhagen provided, and Kevles copied in distorted form, are refutations of strawmen. Sack in fact never made the claim being refuted. None of this is OR since I am merely reporting what Sack says in the notes for his 4th edition (though I tracked down a 1st edition to make sure he is telling the truth), so all of it could go into the article. In fact since Sack's book is a reliable source for its contents, it would be fine to note exactly what claim Sack made, plus the fact that the sources he names were three high-ranking officers of the Office of State Security in Kattowitz including the Secretary, all of them Jews, and that, according to him, recently discovered documents support him. But what is the use of repeating a false charge by a reviewer with no relevant qualifications only to immediately tear it down? The only effect would be to discredit the reviewer. We don't need it. Goldhagen's claim should be present along with Sack's reply, because Goldhagen had relevant qualifications and his review was notable. That would be an adequate treatment of the subject. Zero^talk 10:45, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

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