Pole who burned himself to protest the 1968 Soviet invasion

now when i see burning and screaming man i will know that hes overreacting

I think my comment covered that..Im aware that this happens, but the OP was talking about Europe..not the "rest of the world"

I have to argue a point about the "civlised world" one has rights in the civilsed world and therefore a person doesnt need to set fire to ones self in the "civilised world" to gain rights that one has in the "civilised world", so your failure to agree with my point confuses me - can you explain? Id love to know where you are coming from.

I think you're probably right. At least partly because it seems that the death of Thích Quảng Đức changed something after all.

But there are events, images, pictures that stay in people's minds for years and become a symbol.

Thats true...but their actions sparked massive protests , and in Poland the government asked for Soviet support if they got out of hand..

The Russians told them they had to sort it out on their own , Russia no longer had the resources for trying to keep a lid on the fight for freedom in Poland , and the Polish government was forced to talk to the freedom movement...

The rest is history..as they say...

Something that bothers me is that the youtube clip when he set himself on fire is mute. Does anyone know what he said in his speech just after they managed to put out the fire?

'Thank God for that' apparently. The rest was a no comment :)

The seeds that this man planted had broad repercussions. That's why he's a hero.

I was answering your question, Amathyst.


It depends what you mean by "civlised world". Maybe read some and then we'll come back to this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization


? o_O

I come from:



:)

I have been in a racing car that was on fire , TWICE..! I was lucky in that i was not injured very much , and was able to get my ass out of it pretty fast...

But believe me...if i had been trapped in there...i would have been screaming..even if it didn,t hurt...!

About half of my body was covered with burnwounds. It's a long story of how that came to be, and I don't want to tell that, but I had to run through tens of metres of fire.

Believe you me, when you have huge burnwounds, you WILL be screaming. Burnwounds are the most painful wounds one can have. There is no escaping by turning on another side, it's on your skin, ergo all around you. They give you morphine to ease the pain. And that doesn't work if both of your legs, your face, head, hands and parts of your arms have 2nd degree burnwounds. They stopped giving it to me because otherwise I would get addicted. In the hospital they told me that the 3rd, the 7th and the 11th day were the worst.

And it's true. On the third day, liquid starts to pour into the affected areas; you have to drink a lot, else you will dry up literally and you'll die. My legs after three days were more than twice as big as they were before, so was my head, my hands. It was black, pieces of skin were hanging off and my legs were one big skinless mass. Before it happend I weighed 83 kg, 4 days later I weighed 135 kg. And every day they have to change the bandages. They pour luke-warm water over the bandages, so they won't stick too much to the wounds. But they still stick. And if you experienced nurses pulling off metres of bandages that stick to huge skinless mass with all the nerve-endings wide open, you won't complain anymore if you fall on your face. Speaking of face: on the 5th day I insisted they bring me a mirror to see how I looked. They were reluctant, but I insisted. And when I looked in the mirror I knew why they were so hesitant: I saw a big black ball with two smaller balls bulging out of that and they were half open. They were my eyse.

The seventh day they start to peel off the the skin off the wounds. They have to, else the skin won't revitalise. I nearly fainted. They plunged a needle in my croch, right at the point where the leg starts, in that corner beside your balls, to tap sth in my blood. The needle was 7 inches long. On the eleventh day the remainder of the skin starts to rot and it has to rot away to make way for the new skin. After that it takes months and a skin transplant to get the skin going again. You will have to learn to walk all over again as the new skin is too tight and not flexible yet.

They told me that 52 per cent of my body was burned. Had it been 72 per cent, I would have died. It's also the reason why I don't have hair anymore.

You really think that when you see sb in flames and screaming, he's exaggerating? I know from experience that he isn't.

>^..^<

M-G (tiens)

Semantics..one can say Saudi is civilized because they have indoor plumbing in the majority of housing, but they still stone women to death and are looking in to sever a man spine in an "eye for an eye" ciminal case...do you consider that "civilized"...civilisation is an evolving thing...its not something that can be quantified...

So again with all due respect, Im going to disregard your link because all it did was to explain what "civilization" is...You omitted to mention that it evolves and omitted to say that some countries are still developing.

Therefore what was considered normal practise in the past, cannot be considered the same nowadays. Parts of the world will evolve at their own rate. Just because we have one way of thinking, we cannot expect everywhere else to believe the same. If you believed everything the daily rat printed the UK would be a **** hole with everyone killing each other...


Is that what u think it is? Cos I dont think with the amount of chavs (neds), disregard for the elderly, high taxes, and the fact that if someone is murdered it wont even make the news is hardly what we should call civilisation.

@MareGaea
Was really interesting to read your post :)

How many months/years did it take untill your skin was fully recovered?

To be burnt badly , but have the nerve endings still intact must be horrific , the people i know that were burnt said that the months following their burns were the worst moments of their lives , and had they been offered an injection to end their lives they would have taken it...

The worst burns i have ever had were both my knees when a gearbox in an ice race car blew up and the oil caught fire , it was pretty minor compared to what you went through , but not at all nice...

I am glad you survived my friend..you were lucky...

I dont think he was talking about the pain after, more to do with the affect your body takes while in that process. Of course everyone would run through that fire and most likely would remember nothing much about it. The treatment as you described is a very painful process, but one that you have to go through to regain your life back.

But we live in the 21 century Dave and the vast majority of the world have set the bar..so Im sorry to say those that do not meet the levels set by the majority are falling short..


Tax has nothing do with it, Im talking about the basic human rights that are not observed in certain countries.I have no idea what you are talking about.

By who's standards? People could easily point out that a certain british city has more fatal conditions than in these third world countries. More fatalies via murder than any other city in Europe. We shouldnt judge people by our own means, at the end of the day most places dont have it so lucky.


Read above.

Yes , its the days , weeks and months after being burnt when you suffer...

I have been on the race tracks most of my life , and was not much scared of dying or getting hurt but fire used to scare the hell out of me , and most of the other competitors i knew...

To purposely set yourself on fire is something i just can,t imagine....

It happened in February and by early August the last piece of skin on the top of my hand closed, so about half a year. I spent a little over 2 months in the hostpital.

Edit: but I was lucky that I've always been very healthy. It helps speed up the growth of the skin. It really does.


Thank you my friend. And perhaps luckily of all is that my face didn't get deformed but stayed somehow intact. Yeah, you can see it if you look real close, but on first sight you will only see it on my hands and on my legs - the top of my upper leg still have the mesh of the skin transplant on them. I mean, you can still see the mesh IN the skin. No hair will grow there ever again. Afterwards, when the pain (and don't forget the ITCH! Just as bad as the pain, perhaps worse, because you're not allowed to scratch, for you will scratch the new skin open again) has gone, the hard part is the ppl looking at you when you still have bandages on your head and the fact that you have to go to a physio therapist to make your fingers and legs move again. The skin is so thick and inflexible, that you simply cannot use your fingers or legs at all.

Edit: I've seen what can happen to your face when burned. I was lying in a special clinic for burnwounds. A guy was lying there who was a chemical worker. He had combined to materials that produced a suden big flame, right into his face. 1500 degrees. There was no form in his face left. Everything was just melted away.


If I didn't, I would have been burned alive. The whole house was on fire. After it all was over, I was just glad I survived.

You know, everbody has burned a finger on a sigarette or a flame, right? Pretty painful and you have to hold your finger for 15 mins under cold water (it really is true: if you burn yourself, the best thing to do is go either under a cold shower if it's a big part that's burned; this can really save you! If it's your finger, you have to keep it in running cold water until the burn has gone. It really is no fairytale). It hurts pretty much when you burn your finger. Now imagine that pain times 30 or 40 and you get how it feels when half of your body has been burned.

Only when their name happens to be Charles Gordon.


Can admin remove uncouth racists like Paulina from the forum?

Still burning yourself... I'm amazed that the guy is still standing and talking after this, i'd be writhing in pain and squealing like a bloody piglet.

The way you used words "civilised world/society" is a popular expression not a scientific one, in my opinion. And pretty arrogant too...


Amathyst, the Arab civilisation and culture was thriving when in Europe we had Dark Ages with people being killed for their beliefs, women burned on stakes as "witches" and so on.

In the US even in the second half of the 20th century they still had racial segregation. Do you consider that "civilised"? Was the US "civilised" at that time?

Would you say corrida is civilised?


Indeed, that was my intention :)


Developing doesn't mean uncivilised :) There's a civilisation already. Just some areas of it are not as developed as in some other countries.

And, according to what you wrote before, such countries like UK, USA, Greece, Spain, France, Sweden, Japan, Germany, Italy, Australia were all uncivilised because people burned themselves there in protest:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-immolations


:D Sweetie, it was sarcasm in response to what Amathyst wrote :)))

Paulina (going for weekend to the almost civilised countryside :D)

Oh weh...sorry to hear that..I'm glad you made it...
*hugs M-G*

*gives M-G a honory helmet*

Oh come on Maregea is a historian if its a history discussion, a chef if its a cooking forum and when its a self-immolation thread he's been burned, this guy is to attention wh0res what Darth Vader was to aspiring Sith.


Had to research it, he bought the farm four days later.

Ack...he wouldn't lie about such a thing!
Nobody would!

I guess you can cover up most bits of your body if you are burned , but you can,t really hide your face if its terribly scarred...

My brother in laws father had his face burned in the aircraft fire , and you could not fail to see the damage that was done...

As a member of the guinea pig club he was one of the people who were experimented on to find a way to treat people with bad burns , it was a completly new problem to deal with , as before this time medical knowledge was not good enough for people with burns to even survive....

Its thanks to such people that plastic surgery is now very advanced...

Apropos...has someone seen the movie "Surrogates" with Bruce Willis?
People can use good looking robos for all things..they are directing them from their couch at home (more or less). For work, for fun, for sex....not leaving their homes anymore at all...and if you are bored with your looks you can just order a new one...no plastic surgery needed....

Okay...off to random with me....;)

You want to see my scars, you little twat? In fact, I don't hope anybody gets burned as it's a terrible thing to undergo, but for you I gladly make an exception. You deserve to experience it, if only for this remark. Maybe you'll learn for a change. Not everybody's a fake like you, you know. Besides, you seem to have a bit of trouble when ppl are smarter than you, have you? Well, in that case you'll have trouble all the time :))

Can't stand it when ppl have more interests than just one - although I have to say you pretend to know about everything - hm.


True, and even with the most advances plastic surgery it's ruined for the rest of your life.


Of course not. It happened over 20 years ago, but I still remember it to this very day. But keep in mind that Sokidonkey is a troll as there are too many, unfortunately on this forum.

>^..^<

M-G (tiens)

Don,t worry about it MG..there will always be people who can,t believe that anyone can be something out of the ordainary...It seems to be common in Poland..

Not that many of my friends in Poland know i was a racing driver , but one guy who found out i was went around telling everybody i was not , and never had been...

Kinda strange , as he found out due to seeing a story about me in a magazine at my house...

I can only guess he was jealous..???

Oh, I don't, it's just Sokrates after all. Guess he has indeed trouble believing that ppl CAN do more than just ONE thing or CAN have more interests than just ONE. And besides, being burned is not a hobby of mine, it's just sth that has happened to me and is completely loose of the other things I do.

Indeed it seems that Poles have many traits which are apparently so opposite of many traits in the West. Yet we are on the same continent, which also happens to be one of the smallest continents. Iron Curtain is no excuse as the Czechs were behind that as well, yet they are so totally different in their habits and ways than the Poles. It must be sth else. Sth typical Polish.