News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@gumishu
If they're bitter, they haven't awaken. Bitterness and anger kills from within.
One may be Christian or not, but the idea of forgiveness brings peace to one's soul. And you don't have to be Christian to understand it. :)

I know it may sound like Christian gibberish but it's true.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Dirk diggler
I'm talking about Polish-German reconcilliation. In 1965 Polish bishops, Karol Wojtyła among them, wrote a letter to German bishops forgiving and asking for forgiveness. It didn't mention money. It was purely about reconcilliation and cooperation. So it wasn't Tusk or PO who first had an idea that Poland and Germany could reconcile. As a matter of fact, it was Polish communists, Gomułka among them, who criticised the Church for the attempts at reconcilliation.

As for JPII I wonder how he would feel seeing his nation so divided, bitter and angry.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Dirk diggler
I'd would have been called JPII generation.
I wonder what's left from that generation and what he'd say if he could see Poland now.
The letter he supported wasn't about money. And it was the communists who criticised it.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Dirk diggler
Isn't this thread about Polish-German reconciliation rather than the EU or homosexuality?

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Dirk diggler
The point is that he advocated Polish-German reconciliation. Just twenty years after the war, affected by the war himself.

Genealogy / Komorowski clan-name Korczak [16]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komorowski_(Korczak)_family

You can check some information here. They seem to be quite a notable family.
Eighteen century Polish can't be that different from modern day Polish, especially for a native speaker.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

As far as I know Tusk is of Kashubian ancestry, not German.
As for Polish-German reconciliation, it's been over 50 years since the letter of Polish bishops to German bishops concerning reconciliation. Wojtyła was a great supporter of the idea. Was he Polish enough?

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Ironside
It makes perfect sense to me ;) tc

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

Still just an opinion IMHO ;)
Deal with the fact not everyone agrees with you. @Ironside
@Dirk diggler
I hope it was just a misfortunate phrase. You seem to be ok.

Life / Boring Life after work in Poland (Bydgoszcz) [29]

@Vin07
Bydgoszcz is not a small town. I'm sure there's sonething going on there. What did you do after work in your country,?

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Ironside
Calling someone not a real Pole is wrong <----- that's my opinion. I'm free to express it. You're free to disagree.
Is that clear enough?

Real Estate / Accommodation at University of Economics and Innovation in Lublin [8]

@PrinceDidier
I'm far from Lublin. It's your third year there. How about asking your fellow students?

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

That's an opinion, not a fact. And I said calling someone not a real Pole is wrong. I never said people are forbidden to express such opinions.I do believe in freedom of speech and I believe you have a right to disagree with me or the other way round.

I'm against theft and corruption in the parliament no matter what party a given politician is from or how old he/she is - the reality is that more and more MPs are too young to have been in the PZPR.

There are some slimey types who would change their political views depending on what party's in the government and we both know it.

Real Estate / Accommodation at University of Economics and Innovation in Lublin [8]

@PrinceDidier
You would have to ask them not us. The key word might be 'media'. The price in euros probably includes the media plus the cleaning service and so on.

Real Estate / Accommodation at University of Economics and Innovation in Lublin [8]

@PrinceDidier
I have seen the proces are different for students from different universities. It's a private university so their students need to pay to attend it. That's probably the reason they have a discount at the dorm.

Real Estate / Accommodation at University of Economics and Innovation in Lublin [8]

@PrinceDidier
Because they want to favour their own students who already pay fees to them and not other universities?

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Ironside
Can you elaborate? Why is that contradictory?
How about being against all sort of theft and corruption in the parliament, not only 'post-commie', whatever that means?

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Dirk diggler
Just one thing - we are a democratic society and that's why calling someone who doesn't support the ruling party 'not a real Pole' is wrong. We need pluralism in the politics. We experienced one party rule during the communist times and that didn't work. People may despise others' political beliefs but a democratic society needs a choice. Every government should have opposition, IMHO.

As for multiculturalism, we're far from Western Europe but ...
I live in a rather small town but even here there are more and more foreigners. Groups of Ukrainians shopping for groceries is a normal thing to see now. There are more and more Indians (?) that you see in the street. The Chinese running the so-called chinskie sklepy and so on.

And as a matter of fact, Poland was pretty multicultural before WW2 - Jews, Germans, Russians and Ukrainians were probably the biggest minorities. And then things got ugly with the outbreak of the war. That heterogenity was taken from us as well.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@TheOther
No wonder our discussion is so crude.
I'm sorry if I seemed to straightforward but it seems the world doesn't know the Polish history. And behind all of it there are some personal histories, often full of personal tragedies.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

I'm just a rude and crude Pole who tells what she thinks when someone has no enough information about Poland. And it seems so as you ignore the Polish history and populations of the lands in question.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

Telling someone to fo is civil?
If you read my posts carefully, you would know I think any sort of financial repariations is silly.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

Yet claiming they were German is fine?
Despite their Polish populations?
Resettling Germans after the war wasn't all nice and kind. That's true. Neither was German treatment of ethnic Poles during the partitions or WW2.

What about the Lebensraum policy? The first expulsion of Poles took place in the 1880s. But the large scale expulsions of Poles affecting about two million people occured during the war. Didn't know about it? Yet you know about poor Germans resettled by Poles and Soviets.

How about German organisations that want repariations from Poland? Are you equally critical? Some of their members were Nazi officers.
And if you claim territories in Europe changed hands countless times, deal with the fact these lands are Polish now.
And it's people line The Other who talks about Poland being given 'German' lands and that 'favourite' poster of mine who keeps writing about Poles murdering Jews that make me feel that instead of money, Poland should get a chance to let the world know what Poles went through during the war.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@TheOther
No, I don't see what you're saying. These lands were Polish before the partitions.
Bloody Poles killed Germans and Jews, huh?

Love / Are Polish people very family oriented? [17]

@Candyloop78
I'm afraid you were more committed than he was. And it has nothing to do with his nationality.
All the best.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@mafketis
The budget and the influential. That's for sure. @Dirk diggler
I'd rather the world finally learned what Poland actually went through. Nowadays ethnic Poles'experience during the war is simply forgotten. In fact, there are people who blame the entire nation for inhumane actions during the war.

Genealogy / Krysiewicz, Sobieski, and Grohocki - Polish family history [3]

Krysiewicz may be derived from Krzysztof/Christopher or from 'krysa' - a scar usually from a sabre. The -wicz ending is typical for Eastern Poland. Krysiewicz is listed as a name found in 18th century Bielsk Podlaski (Jan Krysiewicz, a carpenter to be precise) in a paper by Michal Mordan available online. The author states most of the surnames were typically derived from first names.

Nowadays -wicz surnames can be found all over the country due to migration. In the past there were a lot of Poles in what is now Lithuania (if you have any such information).

Dominic is right about Sobieski and Grochocki.I would also add that Sobieski might be derived from Sobieslaw - a Polonised version of Sebastian. Grochocki may be derived from places like Grochow, Grochowo, Grochowce.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Ironside
The thing is that if any money is paid it's going to be absorbed by the budget. Just like trzeci filar. The victims won't get paid. It's more about the government looking for money, I'm afraid. And I'm not saying that to upset or annoy you - that's how I see it.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Ironside
Who is supposed to be paid? I don't think I deserve any money. I didn't suffer. My dad who was born in the camp? More likely. He has some health problems which might have been caused by malnutrition as a baby. But I don't see him crying over it. Then he lived his childhood in poor communist Poland - not properly fed due to poor living conditions. Does Poland think of him? He's got some money paid to his pension - less than 100 zł gross, I think. 50 zł more likely.

The reality is that my grandparents' generation had terrible stories to tell - about their lives in Germany, the USSR or occupied Poland. I remember seeing people with numbers tatooed on their forearms in my childhood. They suffered. I didn't. And those who are still alive - very few left - often live in poverty.

It's a shame those who suffered weren't apologised to when they were still alive. It's a shame there are still so many anonymous Polish graves scattered in Germany, Russia or Kazachstan. It's a shame that former Nazi soldiers were able to live better lives after the war than millions of Poles and some even want repariations from Poland.

But we need to move on and make sure no similar sick ideology like nazizm or stalinism never happens again.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Ziemowit
As I said before my grandma also met some good Germans. My paternal grandparents were a childless couple who were sent to work on a farm near Munich. My grandma got pregnant and hid her pregnancy until the sixth month. They couldn't stay there with a baby and would have been reported so they escaped. They got caught and separated. So my grandma refused to eat. The officials there were kind people though who felt for my desperate pregnant grandma and they let them reunite. Her brother wasn't so lucky. He was shot dead when he was trying to reunite with his family...

She also mentioned some German women who would secretly give her food for the baby even though any Polish-German relations were forbidden. It was clear they were Polish because they had to wear these P-patches.

As for Polish-German love affairs, I think your father-in-law was lucky. Grandma told me a similar story and the Pole was taken by the authorities. The girl disappeared soon afterwards ...

And in the camp, shortly before the American troops arrived, a group of Poles were executed for a silly reason.

News / Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]

@Ironside
I think they're also in denial as far as their own citizens' suffering is concerned.