"I was more afraid of fellow Poles than Nazi German Officers", says Bartoszewski

in Poland those who rule give highest decorations to those who they like - and true merits don't matter that much sir Harry - it is called partisan politics in its extreme - well actually i should mention that one side in this whole partisanship excels more than others and hmm it is not PiS - I am no specialist on Mr Bartoszewski but I actually haven't heard of any of his spectacular achievements in service to our country - I don't think surviving the war counts as such - so I end up pretty much wondering why he received 'Order Orła Białego'

ok - I have read more about him now - and well perhaps he deserves his decorations (but I am not that sure) - but I still remember him calling one third of Polish society (me including) cattle - and his hateful and disparaging comments on Kaczynskis -

Well deserved comments, no doubt.

Don't forget, the Kaczynskis only got what was coming to them after years of hateful nonsense from them.

ok let's state it this way - you are objective and I am prejudiced

but look -- why don't we look at it this way - I am objective and you are prejudiced

we can't be both objective don't you think

I tremble to think that we can both be prejudiced

ok stop it gives me headache

well if I can be a Kaczyński nutter why can't you be an anti-Kaczyński nutter - please explain

and ad nauseam

I prefer to have a headache to be nauseous if you ask

and by the way I am not a Kaczyński nutter - so who are you then delphi

That's a horrible thing to say about a death of a president who wasn't corrupted and did everything for the good of his country. Have some respect for the dead.

he didn't mean what you are accusing him of

The german officers ordered the Poles to loot and shared the spoils with one another (it was a good arrangement for both the krauts and the poles). The Poles needed to loot because they were desperate for food and other supplies, all of which were in sort supply during the war. Sad, but it happened all over europe.

I think you misunderstand. They got what was coming in terms of abuse from many people after doing exactly that to their political opponents - indeed, the almost widespread mockery of the twins after the 2007 election was brought on by their own paranoid witchhunts during the 2005-2007 government period.

The fact that people are still ridiculing Jaroslaw today is a direct result of what he was doing after winning the 2005 elections - and it will continue until he retires from politics.


Me? Pretty much politically unaffiliated. None of the parties particularly appeal - I'm a centre-left voter by nature, and none of them tick that box. Perhaps I would be closest to the liberal elements within PO, but - again - maybe not.

At the same time, I'm convinced that once PiS get rid of the hardliners, they'll become incredibly electable.

stop using Gazeta Wyborcza as an arguement - it leads you nowhere - you sure you shouldn't read anything appart from GW???

But I was quoting thenews.pl which hates GW :(

delphi - learn Polish eventually if you wan't to discuss Polish politics or even media

I did not drag him down, I didn't wanted to comment much on him, only provoked by Harry, who were using his decorations as a weapon in discussion.

I also think that heroes are dead, and people who are alive should earn respect by everyday conduct, not because they have been lucky to stay alive.

His behaviour and words doesn't mark him as a great distinguished person,far from it.Why should I restrain from expressing my opinion about him just because he is over eighty,well maybe he has a dementia,but then it would be a different kettle of fish .

Whatever he means a lot for Poland, I think with all due respect than I'm a better judge of that.


Well, maybe not this time. You know what they say - once burnt twice shy - or something like that :)

Getting there. Thenews.pl is still the best way to get a snapshot of what's going on though, even if the actual stories are terribly written and dreadfully biased at times.

A snapshot can't help you fully learn the situation.

Once again, learn the bloody language and then join these conversations.

to your knowlegde delphi the famous picture does not depict Polish looters in Treblinka as Gazeta Wyborcza and similar media would like us to believe - to your knowledge Germans in Auschwitz extracted golden teeth from the gassed people they even went further to look for valuables poeple could have hidden in their... (well it was actually the job of Sonderkomando who were prisoners themselves) - I would be pretty much surprised if it had been different story in Treblinka - so you end up with what to loot - this is just a simple reasoning which is wide appart from the real story behind the picture - btw you surely know Mr Gross - he made a spectacular point of this picture - and you perhaps believe that inhabitants of Jedwabne spontanously burned their Jewish neighbours - you should read more Gross then - one should always be sure whom he should believe

A snapshot is more than adequate when it comes to dull stories such as "dead crododile baffles police". I really don't need to learn about the full situation.

I mean, if you have time to read stories about dead crocodiles, you're welcome - but I'm too busy.

Gumishu - the picture doesn't depict Polish looters at Treblinka? So...what does it depict?

Guess !
Let see whatever you are intelligent enough !

Well, educate me. If it doesn't depict Poles digging up Treblinka, what *does* it depict?

(not that Poles digging up Treblinka is a bad thing - desperate times, desperate people)

night, night :)

ok - so for the picture - it most probably does not depict looters but a group of local people organized to clean the terrain of human remains laying on surface (most probably after the Soviets left the area - about it later) - Gazeta Wyborcza journalists attributed completely mistaken description to the picture and perhaps they made a couple of things up in the article - but I read the article and it seems there was grave looting there in various intensity in different times - while I take most of things in GW with caution there is some sense of genuity to this article - the article is quite long but I will take some points from it - first of all not all of the valuables taken from the Jewish people destined to gass chambers were collected by Jewish kommandos and secured by the guards and SS - you will find the reasons in the article and to me it makes sense - 'gold digging' began after the closure of the Vernichtungs Lager, performed by the locals - many valuable things were just at a depth of a shovel - but the most intensive time was when the Soviets came - they set up guards and they dug in explosives and blew up mass graves and collected valuables (GW claims that they involved the local population in the process) - after they left some smaller scale 'searching' and'excavations' held place by various people not only from vicinity but also from as far as Warsaw - some 'explorers' with metal finders and even geo-radars were presumably spotted around Treblinka as late as the 90's

you talk a lot, the point is the picture depict


and that stress credibility of J.Gross as a historian - as I said a fiction writer, eh?

Yes, of course: all the illegal digging done at the Aktion Reinhard camps in Poland was actually done by people who were not Polish. And all the Poles who say that Poles dug in the graves, they're liars. Nice neat explanation you have there, pity the whole world can see it is a lie.


During excavations of Belzec in 1998, trenches dug were damaged overnight by people digging for "Jewish gold".

Not necessary, but the picture was used by Gross to mislead people, no historian would do that. The question is what else he lied about?

Fiction writer he is, eh! (Yoda):))))

Prove it.

Oh, and by the way, you have read the book which you are condemning, haven't you?

eh? I'm not gonna waste my time to present evidence on the PF, only to be discarded by some twit with the flip of the key !

The stories that you try to comment on are more complicated than dead crocodiles. Without knowledge of the Polish language you are hopeless in these kinds of discussions.

And what do you base your arrogant, unfounded assumption that I don't have any knowledge of the Polish language?

Try again, Callan-boy!

I think he has the right to feel this way, whether it's true or not - he was alive back then.
And I think Marta Kaczyńska has no right to accuse him of lying because a) she's faaar to young and b) he's done much more for the country that she and her criminal husband will ever do

What in that picture specifically shows you they were digging around Treblinka?

See germans are good people , its native poles who robbed their own people. Germans just got a bad name.

Well, it is not true. Not in war at least (e.g. The Geneva Conventions).