Language / Text message - what does " K. C. " and "8" mean? [15]

Presumably "Kocham Ciebie!" would be a bit too formal:-)

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

No one wants to be imprisoned by their past, yet the nature of certain crimes unfortunately is such that eternal imprisonment may be the only "punishment" for both the former perpetrators as well as, regrettably, their offspring (if any), short of physical incarceration or capital punishment.

Eichmann's son Manfred was a child at the time, obviously NOT a perpetrator, yet the latter bears the social responsibility for ensuring that the misdeeds of his father are never repeated and that the cruel lesson from that history never come to pass again:-)

Poland never quite went through the sort of "Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung" during the post-War era as did Germany, particularly the former West Germany! Like Austria, Poland was able for years to almost fob off guilt onto her equally culpable neighbors.

To this day, as we can see from reactions right here on PF, Poland still has a ways to go in internalizing her past anti-Semitism. From the vulgar invective, lashing out at others who call them on their past, this hasn't yet happened...and isn't likely to for quite some time!

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

Both you and Johnny clearly are unrepenitent ignoramuses who understand neither history nor the principles of cause and effect:-)

The past is ALWAYS present, to EVERYBODY except the ignorant and uninformed!! If you were severely mistreated you wouldn't recover or rebound any too soon, and if you claim the opposite, then you're either a liar or a PR flim-flam artists, 'cuz this idea that everyone is where they are by choice and that the past in behind us is nothing more than advertising bamboozle, nothing more, nothing less.

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

In fact, Johnny, the word "Copt" is Ancient Greek for "Egyptian", therefore "Coptic Christian" is like saying "He's an Egyptian Christian."

The plain and simple truth for the zillionth and first time is that racism is NEVER relative, and yet, racism does not exist in a vacuum. If black people had not been brought to America as slaves, but instead had come here out of their own FREE will and decided to settle in the New World, you and I wouldn't be having this discussion, as there wouldn't have been any such issue.

However, to let ourselves as Whites off the hook by rationalizing white police officers mistreatment of blacks as merely acting in self defence, refuses to take into account the fact that for over one-hundred-and-fifty years, black people WERE severely discriminated against, lynched and mistreated shamefully.

Problem remains that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. But blacks avenging black deaths on white officers is not the case of one fine morning African-Americans waking up and saying, "Yo, y'all! Let's kill whitey!" The origin of such is sinfully that after the Civil War, all too often, the white man saw any reason to cry out "My brothers, less git the nigguh!!

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
:-)

It was in the end Church teaching which demonized Jews, in Poland, as elsewhere throughout much of Christian Europe!

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

Pity too more Americans don't recognize the difference between Coptics and Muslims (who came to Egypt AFTER the former).
lol

@Wulky, I can tell. Stay off that junk, will ya? It's affectin' your brain!

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

Off topic?? Racism and Poland ARE the topic, pal! If you see nothing wrong with rationalizing plunder and murder in the name of a G_d who supposedly represents love, you have a couple of screws loose aka you're crazy!

You been sniffin' the "funny stuff" or just trying to get my goat like always?
:-)

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

What the Teutonic aka "Livonian" Knights and their sort were spreading was fear, violence, and cruelty:-) All done in the name of Christianity. So many of us blindly accept evil without questioning whether or not a better way were possible.

Something wrong here?

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

Guess the Crusades, the Spanish Conquests of Latin America and the Inquisition were all done by "civilized" white people, eh?

Seems you fail to grasp the meaning of the word, my friend!

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

The basic content of what you state has a sad element of truth, the overall packaging of said content leaves much to be desired:-)

If only to be "fair", would not the Muslims, Asians and other "non-white Christians" react with similar bile if the proverbial tables were turned and White Christians invaded their lands and culture without being willing to adapt both linguistically as well as culturally? Or maybe you feel their feelings are unjustified or unimportant, since "we" are doing them a favor by proselytizing OUR beliefsLOL

Therefore, your premise is based upon a double standard!

Life / Immigration from Scotland to Poland [6]

Then you both seem in pretty good shape!

Best of luck:-)

Life / Immigration from Scotland to Poland [6]

Does either of you speak Polish?

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

Hatred is not nature, but nurture.

Let that be your thought for the day!

Ditto, dolno:-)

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

There's a children's song, once popular, featured in an old Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, "You've got to be taught to hate and fear, you've got to be taught from year to year, you've got to be carefully taught........"

@dolno,
Suspicion of strangers is to be sure a rife feeding ground for racist hostility! Indeed, unsolicited truckloads of unwanted, alien-seeming outsiders, descending en masse onto a small, homogeneous territory can well test the metal of even the most "tolerant" folk, no argument there.

However, it is precisely during such times, that what makes us human (Christian, Muslim, or Jew) is most relished:-) A lesson for us all!!

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

NO ONE is "born" a racist, any more than we're born to be gluttons, ascetics, murderers, or saints:-) This has been disproven, even C. Lombrosos' "criminal type" has long since been called into question.

You're just letting yourself off the hook, Ironside. Why not fess up to it, and admit to yourself that it's a failing, rather than justify racism etc. through rationalizing?

:-)

Please focus on the topic only

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

Ironside, if you value the humanity with which G_d bestowed you, you'd realize as a Christian that racism, while understandable, is surely NEVER forgivable!! Unless you're merely a four-legged animal who just happens to walk upright, you also cannot and should not justify jungle law, as man has supposedly advanced beyond giving in to his basest instincts:-) If such is not the case, of what value is such a person? Only G_d can forgive you, not I.

If you honestly believe what you posted, then I'm afraid Darwin was wrong; we're STILL apesLOL

Genealogy / How many Jews lived in Poland and did they ever convert to catholicism, if so when? [62]

Atch is completely correct, amen!

"Judaism" is a religion, "JewishNESS" is an overall feeling (sometimes referred to apolitically incorrectly as "Yiddishkeit") and "Hebraic" means related to the Hebrew people and/ or language:-)

"SEMITIC" means related to the Semitic people(s) and/or languages.....not necessarily the Jews, as Arabs are technically also "Semites", though not Hebrews, nor ********, nor Hamites, however ethnically related to the Bedouins, Tuaregs, Berbers of Northern Africa.

Think about covers everything to end the misconception of what "Jewish" means, once and for all, don't you agree?

Please back on topic, everyone

Genealogy / How many Jews lived in Poland and did they ever convert to catholicism, if so when? [62]

Much in your comments seems both far-fetched as well as reliant on half-baked and semi-scholarship never really taken seriously in academic circles.
Doubtless there is a thin layer of historical precedent, yet scarcely enough to warrant worthwhile comment.-)

First of all, the so-called Proto-Slav was allegedly Rurik and while there certainly was considerable cross-pollination of races and tribes throughout the continent of Europe during the "Voelkerwanderungen", the Germanic people descended from around the area of what is today known as Gotland in Sweden (known historically as "Geatland" and possibly of the Goths themselves).

Be wary of questionable theories!

Genealogy / How many Jews lived in Poland and did they ever convert to catholicism, if so when? [62]

Apropos your interesting comments, a number of German scholars have suggested that the German people ALSO never really accepted Christianity along with its concepts of equality before God on Judgement Day and Love Thy Neighbor as well as "God is the Measure of All Things", but remained essentially pre-Christian heathens who continued to bow down to their warrior gods (hence the power of Richard Wagner's operas which apprarently unleashed something primordial in the 'German soul'' or 'anima Teutonica'), later swallowing Hitler's ravings hook, line, and sinker:-)

Don't laugh, instead, read up on the writings of a certain Prof. Helmut Plessner, whose writings on this subject I'm sure have been translated.

The Germanic and Slavic share in common a disdain for what was imposed upon them in an attempt to bring them in line with Judeo-Christian tradition!

Perhaps "nominal Christians" is an appropriate term when speaking about the conversion of the Slavs and other European tribes to Christianity.

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

The point is that to be sure, it ISN'T, but it SHOULD BE!!! That's the ideal, not always the actual, purpose of religious training, Bible study and public service advertisements. Propaganda? Sure, you bet it is.

However, acceptance has got to start somewhere, hasn't it!

I remember as a kid there were many fine and beautiful such public service commercials on television, Try to find one nowadays. It's almost as hard as trying to find a decent movie:-)

Racism doesn't start ex nihilo, it's often the reaction of the frustrated, that is to say, of a people at their WEAKEST and worst!!

Genealogy / How many Jews lived in Poland and did they ever convert to catholicism, if so when? [62]

You confuse "Jew" (Żyd) with "JewISH" aka the Jewish "religion" (religia żydowska), Ironside!

If you anything about history, which heretofore seems doubtful, you'd know that the early Christians, a number later canonized, were in fact nothing more than Hebrews by birth:-)

Christ wasn't a Christian, any more than, say, Mussolini was a Faschist; the FOLLOWERS of the latter two were respectively Christians, i.e. "those who followed Christ" or "faschisti", that is, those who followed Mussolini.

It's a question of terms and often in a second-language, they can be confusing.

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

Explain how this is brainwashing, nothanks, I dare you!!

Looks more like a scene from a public service announcement or a consciousness-raising film, that's all.

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

Amen! Now let's just move on.

Genealogy / How many Jews lived in Poland and did they ever convert to catholicism, if so when? [62]

Obviously ALL of Europe was pagan or heathen until converted to Christianity!! The early "Christians" were Jews, as were those who followed Jesus in the very beginning:-)

This notion that Christians and Jews are from different planets, so to speak, is not only pernicious, but plain historically FALSE!!!
:-)

Genealogy / How many Jews lived in Poland and did they ever convert to catholicism, if so when? [62]

What "smears"?? The Catholic faith revolves around the belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of G_d, the Saviour of humanity and the belief in spiritual salvation.

I'm hardly smearing your faith by pointing out certain historical facts of which you seem to have been blissfully unaware, am I?
Fact is, Catholicism is an outgrowth of the Jewish faith.

Though Jewish, my wife and I were recently invited by a Lutheran friend of ours to attend a service with him and his wife not far from where we used to live in Queens. During the sermon, the pastor kept nudging the congregation with the "fact" that Christians and Jews share identical roots, though "separated at birth" so to speak:-)

While he clearly made certain congregants uncomfortable, during fellowship after the service, others (NOT I, by the way) roundly applauded his forthrightness and historical veracity, bringing to light the close bond between our two faiths, far too many would rather forget!

Now, is this the rhetoric of someone who "HATES" Catholicism??

Genealogy / How many Jews lived in Poland and did they ever convert to catholicism, if so when? [62]

Getting a wee bit picky and touchy, aren't we?

It's your choice to embrace either Creationism aka the Bible version of Creation, or, Evolution as propagated by Mr Darwin:-) I'm simply explaining where Christianity cam from, and it derived from Judaism, any half-way competent pastor or priest with an IQ greater than a Chrysanthimum can tell ya that much:-)

Sure you ain't pullin' my leg here just a little??
lol

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

Sadly, political correctness has become a luxury which mostly only the developed nations can afford to practice:-)

Poland, like Germany, France, Italy etc. still have a long ways to go in this respect. While I'm not suggesting that they are anything BUT developed, perhaps even more developed in terms of everyday technology available to the average citizen, the US is one of the few industrialized power to actually implement diversity at the grassroots level!

Genealogy / How many Jews lived in Poland and did they ever convert to catholicism, if so when? [62]

@Johnny,

You're hardly the one to talk about "rude", sir:-) Ever re-read some of your posts??!

In fact, I was merely stating a personal oberservation with regard to Catholic dogma and the Church's century-long stoking of anti-Jewish hostility:-)
Sorry if y'all out there find the truth offensive, but on occasion it does taste like a mouthful of worms.

Oh yes, Judeo-Christianity is NOT an "oxymoronic" term. Where did Christianity hail from in the first place, dude?

Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

Hear, hear! That's givin' it back to him:-)

Genealogy / How many Jews lived in Poland and did they ever convert to catholicism, if so when? [62]

Hmmmm, how "true" is YOUR Catholicism then? It sounds all rather hateful to my way of thinking:-) A true Christian is a spiritual being, like Saint Francis, Augustine, or the late Pope John Paul, who openly embraced the difference between Christians and Jews, while ever so lovingly reached out to both groups, while acknowledging the validity of both:-)

Are you therefore a true Catholic or a Sunday hypocrite? Only you and G_d know the answer.

News / An article: NATO is the American occupation of Poland and Europe, by Mateusz Piskorski [233]

Guess all know whom you're voting for, Crow:-) Unless you accept your own checkered Serbian history, fly away until you're willing to discuss matters seriously for a change and stop pointing your finger at the Poles!

Subhumanity covers a broad swath, so let's not give first prize to Poles, shall we? The Germans, Russians, Spaniards, the Viking ancestors of the modern "sanguine" Danes and Norwegians, even we Americans might feel left out.

LOL