Have the British become the worst enemy of the Polish?

I can't help but to notice that every place on the internet I have been, has had British as the most anti-Polish people, Including on this forum.

With the most anti-Polish hate crimes, and anti-Polish propaganda coming out of Britain today in the world by far.

It seems that Polish - British relations are not really good.

That includes what Britain did after WW2.

Where British sold out Poland to the Soviets in Potsdam, and Yalta conference.

Where British went against Polish marching in victory parades.

Where British basically stole Polish gold, to pay for the Polish armies mantenance.

Where Britain kept the death record of Wladyslaw Sikorski from the Polish people.

Why does Poland need enemies, when it has such lousy friends as Britain?

Please supply a link to back up your claims.

I don't think you are serious but here goes. A lot of countries screwed other countries and got screwed during and after the war. America called the shots at the end of WW2 really from the Western point of view. Britain then relied on handouts from the US post WW2. Most of your events relate to a period of over 50 years' ago. Britain recently took the largest exodus of Poles who by and large have assimilated and been accepted. There are isolated incidents of prejudice but also there are around 500,000 extra Poles than pre-2004 in the UK. If it's really that bad we'd see a massive return to Poland but we are not seeing this. My grandparents generation in the UK really respects the Poles contribution during the war and this affects their view of Poles now.

Handouts? Hardly. The UK paid the last instalment (45.5m GBP) of huge loans on 31 Dec 2006.

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4757181.stm

As for the OP, he has nothing but trolling to offer, and to answer him in detail is a waste of time. His comments are beneath contempt.

As far as I know, the UK was one of the few countries to pay it back in full.

Interesting how the op's comments are all about stuff 70 years ago, but I suspect he has little no connection with or insight about today's Poland. Anyway:


The US was calling the shots by then. Blame them instead.


Nonsense. As mentioned frequently on this forum whenever anyone trots that old myth out, the Polish Army was invited.


More nonsense. The Polish NBP gold reserves spent most of the war in Canada and were returned to Warsaw in the 1940s. A link to the actual documents relating to that is elsewhere on this forum.


His death was well publicised and correctly recorded at the time and his body was exhumed after the PRL fell on the request of his family and is now in Poland.

JanIIISobieski just comes across as a pub bore. I suspect there is little joy in his life, from the tone of his posts.

No, but I can understand how somebody who spends their entire life in an American basement would know nothing about Poles, Poland, Brits or Britain.


The view from an American basement might suggest that, but here in Poland it's easy to see the exact reverse. I'm sure you'd see it yourself if you were to ever come to Poland; most probably you'd manage to bring Brits and Poles even closer together when they join as one to laugh at you.


a) Britain most certainly did not sell out Poland at Yalta; Britain actually secured a commitment for free and fair elections in an independent Poland. It is not Britain's fault that Poles didn't bother to have those elections. #

b) If Britain had sold Poland, there would have been a price to be paid: what was that price. We know the price that Poland sold her Ukrainian allies to the USSR for, so tell us how much Britain got for supposedly selling Poland.


Yet again you are lying. Britain invited both western and eastern command Poles to take part in the London victory parade; neither group bothered to show up. And Britain took no stance at all on Poles taking part in the Moscow victory parade, which Poles did bother to take part in.


No, but he'll probably become one when he's old enough to go to pubs. Although with an attitude like his, one does fear that him going to pubs will lead to regular kickings being administered in car-parks when he mistakes real life for online and so speaks in the same way in real life as he does online.

There is an anti-Polish hate crime in Britain every 14 hours, with 585 targeted by hate crimes.

theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/11/polish-people-rise-in-attacks-blame-recession-politicians-media

In other countries anti-Polish hate crimes like these are almost unheard of.

That's probably due to the reporting of such things being taken so seriously in the UK. 585 out of 1,000,000 seems quite small and compares well with, say, Germany or even Poland.

585 anti-Polish hate crimes a year.

Even Muslims are getting attacked disproportionately less, even though there are about 1,000 hate crimes against Muslims a year, there are about 4 times more Muslims in the U.K than there are Polish.

So it seems that a Polish person in the U,K, is about twice as likely to be attacked than a Muslim.

Probably because Muslims for various reasons tend to live in the same areas and are more city based rather than small towns. Also they are less likely to be immigrants - traditionally a vulnerable group. It would be interesting to see the stats if Poland used the same reporting systems as the UK. And yes, 585 incidents (I wonder why you assume they're all 'attacks') is proportionately very small given the sudden influx of a million people. Here in Warsaw there would be riots.

Have you spent much time in the UK or PL.

Given that there are an estimated 1.1 million Poles living in the UK, that means the chances of them being a victim of racist crime in a year is about one in two thousand. I'll have to dig out the EU statistics about racist crime in Poland, from memory the chances of a foreigner in Poland being the victim of racist crime is quite a bit higher than that.


I'd bet that he's never left the USA and only takes holidays with his parents.


An interesting claim, but one which is shown to be completely wrong:


gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/266358/hate-crime-2013.pdf (page 23).

More interestingly:


(same source and page)
That means that the 585 anti-Polish hate crimes accounted for 1.6% of all hate crimes. But the 1.1 million Poles in the UK account for 1.7% of the 62.2 million population of the UK. For the general 63.2 million population of the UK, there are 35,885 race hate crimes, meaning that one in every 1,761 people in the UK will be a victim of a race hate crime; but for the 1.1 million Poles in the UK there are only 585 anti-Polish hate crimes, meaning that one in every 1,880 Poles will be the victim of an anti-Polish hate crime. So the reality is that Poles are less likely to be victims of hate crimes in the UK than the average UK resident, which shows that Poles are better off than the average British resident when it comes to race hate crime.

Isn't it interesting what one can find with a little research?

Poles became a poster boy for immigrants.
Interesting article:
telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10822956/EU-elections-2014-Is-immigration-good-for-Britain.html

Yes. Despite what some of the sillier posters on here suggest, Poles in the UK are liked and respected.

Which is reflected by the fact that they are less likely to be victims of race hate crimes than the average UK resident is.

I thought that there were more like 500,000 - 850,000 Polish in the U.K?

i would say yes.

I'd say moreso the sell-out manifested in real terms at Teheran. I've detailed my position there elsewhere on the forum if you are interested, but briefly, HMG sold Poland out to the Soviets by acquiescing to Stalin's designs on Polish territory. Otherwise, HMG also breached Article 5 of the Treaty of Mutual Assistance by virtue of failing to tell Poland of the fact that they had done so, and, more pertinently, by failing to tell Poland of Stalin's designs.

I think Molotov illustrated the perfidy best when he expressed to a stunned Mikolajczyk during discussion on Polish territories that no, Poland couldn't have Lwow and Vilno back because "all had been settled at Teheran".


Sad, isn't it.

To be fair though, certain very small elements of the Free Polish air force were invited, as well as a couple of senior officers (I think Bor was one). All eleventh hour invites mind you (something like the night before the parade), occasioned by virtue of the "Communist Polish" forces scoffing at their invitation.

Snubbed, HMG must have realised that with the absence of their new Communist friends attending, their erstwhile Free Polish friends would be slightly better than nothing. As befits such contemptible "invitations", they were politely rejected.


It wasn't "stolen" so much as held on "Trust" by HMG, who invoiced the Free Poles and deducted the Polish gold reserves held on trust in settlement of the bill.

Kind of like a situation whereby you're my friend and your house catches fire but I'm too busy to help you. But, when my house catches fire, you and your family (you're lodging with me now (but not your family) and I hold your stuff on your behalf) rush to help me put out the blaze, and, in gratitude, I take some of your stuff that I hold in payment for the hose you used and the extra water you consumed in putting out the fire to my house. Good, isn't it?


Again, in fairness, this all happened a long time ago, and should not be the sole benchmark to which modern-day Poland gauges its relationships with foreign countries. It's not "the Brits" who did this, but rather their Government at the time. I'm sure that if the average Pom had known about the absolutely atrocious way in which HMG treated the Poles, they would have been up in arms. Indeed, this sort of spirit of honour and fair play resonated with some MP's, who actually resigned in protest over the way Poland was treated.

The truth is that nobody knows for sure how many Poles are in the UK. The British government says according to its census in 2011 there were 579,000 Polish-born people living in the UK, the Federation of Poles in Great Britain say the Polish population in the UK could be as high as two million, both have their reasons for such low and high estimates. Personally I go with the figure from a source which has no axe to grind and a vested interest in getting the number spot on: Tesco. They estimate that the number of Poles in the UK for them to sell to is 1.1 million.


Good old Danny boy, still trotting out that tired old lie. Such a pity that reality is the complete opposite of what you want it to be. Never mind, eh.


And out comes another of Danny's favourite lies. The reality is that one in five of the surviving Polish pilots who flew in the Battle of Britain were invited to take part and invited well ahead. Furthermore, they were not invited due to the Warsaw Poles rejecting their invitation, because the Warsaw Poles did not reject their invitation until after the event (they had promised to send representatives but then simply didn't bother).


From where did the vast majority of the equipment used by the western command Poles come? The USA. And who expected to be paid for that equipment? The USA. Britain was still paying off that debt in 2006. If you wish to complain, complain to the people who wrote the bill.

what a stupid argument ..the Tesco one hahaha i have lots of Slovak, Czech and Lithuanian friends who buy Polish products. sometimes i saw more Lithuanians than Poles in Polish shops

It's not an argument, it's a statement of fact. If you know better than they do who shops at Tesco, I'm sure that they would love to hear from you.


Could you perhaps explain why Tesco UK have a Polish-language website and not a Lithuanian-language website?

Perhaps it's because Tesco was set up by a British-born Pole? Not that your ilk would consider him to be a Pole, what with him being Jewish....

you could notice my English is not fluent.

what do you mean with this Jewish? i didn't even say anything about Jews? maybe you have some phobia?

why Polish language? perhaps because the products are Polish. all East Europeans do shopping in Polish shops or buy Polish products because cuisine is similar in this region. i also know Romanians, Latvians, Russians, Ukrainians , Czechs and Slovaksand even Hungarians who buy Polish food because they can't buy their native food in so many places. but in your Tesco statistics all those people are counted as POLISH.

No, it's just that I've dealt with your ilk before (and most probably with you before your previous username was banned).


ROFL! So they have an Indian language webpage for their Indian products do they? And a French language one for their French products?


Really? Prove it.

The simple fact remains that the people who do not have an axe to grind either way with regard to the number of Poles in the UK and so can be relied upon to neither over- nor under-estimate the number of Poles in the UK, and who actually have a clear vested financial in accurately estimating the number of Poles in the UK, include Tesco. The problem that you have is that their estimate also shows that Poles are less likely to be victims of race hate crime in the UK than the average resident of the UK, and that destroys your theory that Brits hate Poles and treat them badly :D

Tesco is not able to estimate the number of Poles in the UK. it's a shop.

i have no problem with Jews. but apparently you have some obsession.

no, probably many British people don't hate us (they are just indifferent)but its enough to read disgusting anti polish comments in eg. Daily Mail ,youtube to see that A LOT of British people hate us or seeing your friends on facebook (who normally pretend to be sooo polite to you) liking anti Polish websides. you must be blind not to notice all this hatred towards Polish people in internet. including this forum.

i personally was fed up with constantly answering stupid questions, like: why do send benefits for your children in Poland?. even though all those people 1)perfectly knew that i have no children 2) i never told them i used any benefits (i obviously didnt) whats more funny most of the people who asked such questions were English ladies living on benefits.i went to that country because i was fascinated with the culture, music, cities and wanted to learn some english. i was working , studying and travelling and i didn't save even 1 quid during my stay but i still had to explain everywhere why i am taking either their job or their benefits. i was working mainly with Aussies who were majority in my last job but none of them has ever been asked such questions. i just got fed up with this country and i left. all the Poles who are unhappy in the UK should follow me.unfortunately a lot of them don't do it because money is too important for them.

and again i'm not surprised British people are tired with immigrants. i just think its unfair to put all the blame on Poles. they make Polish people appear like none of them is working but most are living on benefits although they know very well vast majority of Polish immigrants work hard doing jobs Brits don't want to do, Poles rent their houses = extra money etc. if Polish people are so bad for British economy why don't they finally get rid of Poles?

Try the comments at onet.pp etc. just the same except more so.


It's much the same here in Poland, except I suppose I'm used to it now and don't get offended any more. There are feckwits everywhere.

The problem is that some Poles are unable to admit to any non-Pole than any Pole is anything other than perfect.

looks like Polish and British people have a lot in common then, Harry.

No. Those Brits will put the failing Brit into a sub-group of British people, for example "Well he's a Scouser/etc, so what can one expect?" Those Poles will claim that the failing Pole is a Jew/Communist/Belarussian/Silesian/highlander/gay/black/whatever and thus not actually Polish.

Yes and never forget that there are only two things in life. There's Yorkshire and there's wrong.

ppp. I can't believe that there are many British people who really hate Poles. There are certainly some who see Poles as an easy target when they complain about immigration because an awful lot of Poles have gone to the UK. Having said that, the general impression I get from my British friends and family is that Poles are alright. As you know, there are extremists, like UKIP, who whip up ill feeling between people for their own purposes, and the white working class are at the moment looking for someone to blame for their post-Thatcher disenfranchisement. Poles are a convenient and large target, but if you ignore the Daily Fail and the other rags, the picture isn't so terrible. I'm sure you met one or two nice people when you were there, no?

As for Poles finding it hard to make a living there. Well, the Brits are also having a hard time. I know lots of Poles who have gone to the UK to work. Some of them work in shops and factories and work hard to live a half-decent life, but let's not forget the accountants, dentists and other professionals who have also gone and who have a very good life there.

You and other Poles have every right to complain about things in the UK when you live, work and pay taxes there. How about those of us who live here in Poland? Can't we have a moan now and again. I'm asking you and not 18-year-old Canadians, rabid Americans or fantacists from Serbia.

I'm fairly sure that he has met a lot of people who were a long way short of friendly towards him; however, that's not because he's Polish, it's just because he's him.