What happened from 1650-1795?

and dude everybody doesnt do what germany did. that in itself is vulgar.

You should really stop using that word...

Russians did, and worse...

And I'd say Hitler could happen to anybody, in the circumstances. Fascism was quite popular all over Europe, antisemitism ripe. Just recently, in France, documents were released about the keen French administration wilfully helping to herd Jews for the Nazi. Most Germans were unaware of the scale and methods as well, to the very end...

yup everybody really just hates jews. and germany really just did us all a big favor. goodbye. you two have fun.

I know your Englishman and Frenchman. They are known as Marx and Engels.

Marx's and Englels's attitudes towards Russia:

In 1848 Engels described Russia as a "partiarchal-feudal barbarism, and Germany as a "civilized" nation at an early stage of bourgeois prominance. Both countries according to Engels were dominated by a "partrialchal-feudal absolutism. At the close of 1848 Marx viewed the "West" as representing "civilisation" and the "East" (mainly Russia) as representing "barbarism". It was probably Engels who, in an article in the New York Daily Tribune first called Russia "semi-Asiatic". In 1855 Engels referred to Moscow's Russian-Mongol barbarism.

Marx's attitudes towards Poland:

The national claims of Poles were not only understood by Karl Marx but he himself also supported the Polish cause in 1848 and 1863. One of his unfinished works titled, Polen, Preussen Und Russland begins: "The rebuilding of Poland means the desctruction of Russia, the removal of Russian candidature to the domination over the world."

During the Janurary uprising, Karl Marx, one of the greaterst sympathizers of the Polish cause,
was helping to organize a German Legion that would be sent to Poland under the Republican flag, but due to lack of financial support the project fail.

Marx/Engels had been so anti-russian? I wonder if the Soviets knew that...

Hmmm....thanks for the info....I never heard about that in german commie school either!

bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/greatest_philosopher_vote_result.shtml

The BBC's greatest philosopher vote.

Now that's a Pole bashing! MOOOODS!!!

:)

@jasinski

I would recommend you to read one of Adam Zamoyskis books called "Poland - A History"

No nation's history has been so distorted as that of Poland. In 1797 Russia, Prussia and Austria divided the country up among themselves, rewriting history to give the impression that Poland had never been a fully sovereign state, only a backwater that needed civilising. In fact the country they had wiped off the map had been one of the largest and most richly varied in Europe, embracing a wide variety of cultural and religious traditions, accommodated within one of the boldest constitutional experiments ever attempted. Its destruction created an imbalance and initiated a series of struggles that culminated in the two world wars and the Cold War.

adamzamoyski.com/books.htm

All the ******** we read today from the "international" history books about Poland being so poor and neglected and finally partitioned is something that the 3 Barbaric countries decided after they partitioned Poland. In a secret article they decided to destroy everything polish so that Poland would never be able to exist anymore. Prussia melted down the polish Crown jewels. The russians grabbed everything they could get ahold of and shipped it out to Russia. And the Austrians used Wawel as an barrack etc etc.

The reasons for this development though were partly the internal weaknesses of Poland-Lithuania, and the bad fortune of Prussia, Russia and Austria agreeing with each other. There were plenty of occasions when all three of these powers were very hesitant to act, Prussia was primarily concerned of the increasing influence of Russia on Poland, ever since Peter the Great Poland became increasingly dependent on the Russians. All of this started when the Saxon Wettin dynasty became dependent on the Russians for their claim to the Polish throne.

what? Vichy? Old news.

But I really was wondering why we Poles get to be the antisemites of the world, while other countries were administative and open Jew-opressors. If you make up a map with places in Europe where Jews and witches were hurt - and compare it to Kielce and rest of Poland, we come out pure as newborn babies.

My theory is that it is that way because of the many Jews that have lived in pre-war Poland.

There are more polish righteous among the nations in Yad Vashem than from any other country and also more stories of polish anti-semitism told between Jews...just because there had been so many of them in Poland.

I'm not sure why the other fact that so many Poles are honored in Yad Vashem is not so much known...maybe people just are that way!


Not old...there are new documents coming up...throwing an even darker light on Vichy and Petain:

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1317509/Vichy-leader-Philippe-Petain-did-seek-save-Jews-France.html


Another convenient after war myth is going to bust...

nytimes.com/2010/10/06/world/europe/06paris.html

That's sweet of you, BB.

Now how do I please you? I know. I'll tell you a nice story about the 40s:

One of my boyfriend's Grandpas was 9 years old when the Wehrmacht came and camped out in their village near Kłobuck. They were stationed in the wooden houses and had a field kitched by the Sołtys's barn. The German soldier who was stationed with Grandpa would give the boy rides on his horse and would share his soldier food with him. Which was very much appreciated as the supplies were low.

Not much more was remembered by the kid from the war, so there you go. Positive.

Still nice, thank you! :)

poland was one of the first european countries to let in the jews. poland never acted like a bunch of crazed zealouts that started killing people left and right like the germans did after the bubonic plague and world war II. and there were never any witch hunts in poland. while the west plugged away. how do you belittle that? just a bunch of dumb pollocks that dont know any better? what do you biggots have to say?

One of History's little ironies is the fact that, on the same day in 1388 as two dozen Jews were burned in Switzerland on entirely trumped up charges of infecting wells with plague, the Polish King granted Jews equality before the law. (The situation was still pretty bad, though; and it was not until the 16th century that Zygmunt I and his successors granted, on top of protection, various kinds of cultural and administrative autonomy).

It's just a pity that so much of modern Polish patriotism has its intellectual and spiritual roots in a time when Poland was in extremis - the very real triumphs of previous centuries (whatever you think about the Jewish question) should be the model for Polish self-definition. Hopefully the most recent version of this - ie, the Kaczyński-fuelled frajeryzm we've been seeing lately - will burn out and a generation with the balls to interpret history just a little differently will emerge.

One of a history ironic is a fact that tolerance or not, nice and fair or not a state have to strong, cynical, and armed to the teeth - otherwise risk to be erased from existence with no reaction.

So, its not on foremost mind to be tolerant or whatever you mean by that, and secondly you are wrong, Poles are proud of being tolerant country in the past and in the present alike.

What Kaczynski has to do with anything - is lost on me!

Oh come on, it's not that difficult to see. That 'Christ among nations' crap still burns strong in many sections of the populace (JK being its most conspicuous case) and you know it. It's just that you're not one of them. Good for you and the others like you.

If you read my post again you'll see I say that tolerance isn't necessarily an end in itself; it does, however, tend to be a side-product of nations, empires if you like, that are not inward looking and hung up on their own sense of injustice or being hard done by. (Tolerance and encouragement of Protestantism is another plus I'd add to the Poland of the 16th century - it fed the development of ideas in the region, and gave you Rej - or was it Kochanowski?).

well, I think JK actions are being prompted by political and social facts not by theory or an abstract idea !
Do you really believe that people in Poland have nothing better to do than support some obscure theoretical quests ?


I think that you are being a put off by the religious display and entourage of demonstrators, I think that you simply don't understand Poles, religion present there is like a passport presented to the nation - we are not some punks but patriots !Its all there is !

Its not an unruly mob, it a demonstration in Poland - take it easy:)

Like that - would make a great tattoo!!

I'm not really that swayed by the Cross demos, to be honest. But having lived here on and off since 1993 I don't think I'm that far off in saying (supported, to a large extent, by your post) that the prevalent model of patriotism in Poland is the 19th century one. It was born of a time when, in realpolitik terms, the restitution of the nation was an abstract (rather than obscure and theoretical, to use your words) quest - and, thanks to late-Enlightenment/proto-Romantics like Vico and Herder, the Romantic period was the first time this kind of thing was actively examined.

Which, as I say, obscures the fact that the jewel in Poland's historical crown was surely the Empire and its concomitant intellectual, administrative, military and architectural advances. Enough of the "Litwo! Ojczyzno Moja" funeral laments already.

Well, that the way it is !

But need not - and arguably should not - be. Not to challenge the premise is mindless conformism.

Faktem jest, że w katolicyzmie obywatel musi być bardziej wierny Kościołowi niż państwu, niepotrzebna jest mu też otwartość umysłu, gotowość do podjęcia debaty, tolerancja czy etos pracy, bo ten ma wartość przede wszystkim w protestantyzmie (Magdalena Środa, "Straszne zgorszenie", Wprost nr. 41 2010, strona 58).

OK. So that's the way it is; is that the way you want it?

Well, maybe not but its only way the people are familiar with ....to change would take a time...and question arise change for what ....a better quality or like Magdalena Środa and her ilk would like to replace crosses with rainbow banners and the church influence with their own.

Not really, no.
Even in 19th Century, there were more political streams in Poland than one - why the so-called West chooses only one, Dmowski's, for their view of Poland, is a mystery to me. Perhaps people have a hard time holding more than one contradicting things in memory at the same time, but that's how politics is.

Look at the US, you've got the Biblical Christians contrasted with gay movement, contrasted with Libertaians, with West Point families, with Mid West working people etc. They all have a different view of what life should be. I could easily say that 'it's a shame that in the US hate still runs rampant, becuase the KKK is as active as always' (I've even seen them on Jerry Springer).

In your assessment of Poland, you probably see only the national flag waving, but it's due to the racial and violent issues the West has suffered not so long ago. People were killed for having sex the wrong way, for Chist's sake! So all you see around you is what you are tuned in to see. If you look at them again, PiS, PO, SLD, AWS, SD, Solidarnosc, PLS, all that lot proves to be unformely red, socialist and demo-beaureaucratic.

Thanks Ksysia, good points.

Think I want to defend my self a bit here though. I'm pretty sure I didn't use this example to characterise the whole Polish political scene


but apols if I gave that impression.

Still, I don't think I'm that far off with respect to that section of the population that is self consciously, even theatrically, patriotic (ie the ones that trumpet how bloody patriotic they are, as opposed to the ones who genuinely are but don't feel quite the same need to crow about it). A minority? Perhaps - but a not insignificant and not inconspicuous one, which you'd have to say is punching above its weight these days.

Yes, of course they are here - I just don't think that they are dangerous. If I remember well, we have a voting attendance of about 40-60%, depending on what's being voted on. Silent minority is too busy working to be involved.

So - be well, and be at peace. We won't harm you.

Hey, chill out Sister! If the England team was as defensive as this, we'd actually start winning some games!

Maybe I should have said - by me, they're all right. Bored shitless, looking for some release for all that pent-up frustration, yes - maybe the terraces are the place for that. But here on the street it's all good-natured, a bit of eyeballing but always jokingly, a few words exchanged here and there. They take the coal up to Granny and Gramps on the fourth floor, too. Live and let live. We get on.

Anyway - we're wondering off-piste here. Back to the 17th and 18th centuries. What about that schlachta, eh?

pfff.... what now. :(
guilty as charged.
at least there's a legend, so one point for us.

all the mess was started with the death of the last Piast. Instead of having a queen from the Polish house, we had one from the Anjou house - one generation later. No big deal, but what has happened had given a lot of power to the ministers. Court being 'szlachta' anyway, the fault is all 'szlachta's' in general.

it wasn't a bad time. those were the days of several wars at once (medals, fiefdoms...), hero-worship (Sobieski), our type of decadence (as remains in the place names Mała Wólka i Wielka Wola). It was all very colourful.

the placenames are connected to this story. There were two panowie, one was proud, the other was quiet. They dared one another to games, the last one of which was to ride a sleigh in summer. The proud pan spread salt on all the fields, and sleighed. The quiet one spread salt on his yard, and sleighed there. Next year nothing could grow in Wielka Wola, and the peasants went to the dwór, which is called rabacja (opposite of pogrom, because it doesn't come from the upside, it comes from the bottom).