So called "inconvenient parts" of Polish history - what do you think?

Some people on PF and in real life keep insisting that Poland and Poles did not deal with so called inconvenient parts of Polish history.

I wonder what they have in mind. Do they think about general knowledge about history in Poland? Which means simplified into almost postcard-like snaps of bits and pieces from the Polish History shown on TV or in newspapers.

Maybe that have in mind group of professional historians or people deeply interested in Polish history?
Which I don't know.
For example:


I know nothing about Poles in SS. Given example of an individual recognized by the Interned sources (both German and Polish)as an Belorussian.
Attempt to recruit from Highlanders drew few volunteers but came to nothing.
Polish concentrations camps are either fallacy in understanding or bias and a bad intend. Poland only political prison could be hardly called concentration camp let alone concentrations camps, regardless nomenclature its existence is no secrets to any-one, Poles are learning about it in school.

Post-war treatment of Germans is a hardly a secret,only problem is in numbers, because many Germans fled in panic as RED ARMY entered German territory.Nowadays those are put on Poles shoulders which is nonsense.

Treatment of minorities in Poland before WWII wasn't that bad, question of opinion, and no secret either, if somebody wanted could learn about it.

As for construct State-sponsored anti-semitism don't know what author had in mind, but if my guess is correct I should point out that USA had the same laws for much longer than Poland.

The genesis of the Final Solution [i][/i] no clue
Shall I go on?[
By all means go!

I would think that part of history in need of study are the times of communism in Poland ie Soviet occupation.
Also in dire need study and publication are countless heroic deeds during German occupation of Poland done by Resistance from the Home Army and National Forces.

By all means lets the discussion begins!

No nation of people has done so much good & so little bad as Poles.

Our Intellectual achievements in Greater Polonia are on par with many of the most advanced Nations in Europe.

We saved Europe fought against Communism.

There is small things that Poles may have done.

But, Compare what Poles have done to Western Nations in Colonialization? Or Germany & Russia? Or Vikings , Romans ect?

Poland is in a league of it's own with Nations like Scotland & Greece. The few Nations in Europe that have accomplished alot of great things to advance & help humanity & did little bad things.

Iron, I think you are way too sensitive. If you look at the big picture when it comes to Polish history, there is nothing to be ashamed of. But of course, there is never an ideal picture. So there are little scratches that some people like to focus on and exploit until everybody get nauseous.

Were there Polish SS? Not that I heard much of it, and even it there was, the number is really negligible. There are traitors in every nation. Same with szabrownicy. Polish society is not 100% hones today, so why do have some naive hopes it was 100% honest during WWII. But on the other hand, did the majority of the nation support the Nazi regime? Is there a shady spot in Polish history like for example "Blood for goods" that involves 1,000,000 Jews?

Are Poles antisemitic? I'm sure some are. Is/was the majority antisemitic? If so, why on earth Poland had the highest percentage of Jewish Population before WWII in the whole Europe. Is Poland more antisemitic than any other country in the world? I doubt.

So let's look at the big picture. The picture is good. But let's not expect it to be perfect.

I have never heard of this either....bit of a stretch that one TBH.


mind,the flip side is you getter utter laughable bollox like;


or the following old chestnut;


yeah mate,its a bit hard to be a colonial power when you are the b!tch of prussia,russia and the Austro Hungarian Empire.......


yup,alrighty then...


you are right, lots of little bad things......how about the scots mercineries that fought for the french kings who rode with the heads of women and kids hanging from their saddles?.....

bless mate,patriotisms fine,but,when it comes from an American in New York its the same sorta patriotism as irish Americans, ie 1 part fact to 50 parts BS....

I don't live in NYC. I live in New York State in the Suburbs. My family & friends are here. Right now I am not quite ready to give that up.

I would consider going back to Poland. in the past 10 years the U.S has become alot worse & Poland alot better.

It is getting to the point where I think Poland is on par with the U.S.

The U.S has more Economic potential still. But, With the down sides of much higher divorce, crime, lack of culture, extreme materialistic culture.

It really seems a child today in Poland is probably better off than kids growing up in many parts of the U.S

I am not going to even reply to your other comments. It is like a wild ape wrote them LOL

Sensitive not really, I'm a bit tied of the repetitive Harry's stuff, let get to the bottom of that.


I know, and I did ask Harry - so what if there was 100 or 1000 traitors ?No answer mind you! :)
We should be taking about traitors during the commie times, not about not that kosher Poles during WWII>all death anyway.


Even if overtly that maybe the truth it is one of those nuts hard to crack, ie to prove!
I do appreciate your love of country you don't really know but a little less enthusiasm, ie, chill dude !
Most important you are off-topic - see above the topic subject ? One more outburst of your puppyish enthusiasm and I will report you to mods and you will end in the bin - understood ?>

We got to the bottom of that many times, but this forum is like a Merry-Go-Around.



And that's how it starts.

You could tell me this bs if I wouldn't live in Poland long enough to know the difference.
Divorce rate - who cares. Crime rate - not in the country (my windows are always open, even when I go shopping).
Lack of culture - hm, different culture is just that, different. Maybe it's just your environment that makes you feel that way.
Extreme materialistic culture - when have you visited Poland last time? When I was there 2003-2007 I had a feeling like there's almost no difference when it comes to materialistic thinking.

Divorce is a problem. The dirvorce & single parent rate is so much higher in the U.S than in Poland. Kids growing up in divorced households are much more likely to have issues.

The U.S has become less happy since the 1950's despite more wealth & technology.

That is because the U.S has gained more Divorce, Crime, Violence ect since the 1950's

It isn't so much about inconvenient history per se (every country has it), I'd say, but more about the attitude of some people here on PF. Every time there is even the slightest criticism of Poland, you can bet that someone will either respond with a personal insult or answer with a "but". Using some of your examples:

Ethnic cleansing of the German population ... BUT the Russians were responsible, and the Germans fled anyway. Pomerania and Silesia were annexed ... BUT we Poles weren't asked, and since the Piasts (or whatever they were called) owned the lands 10,000 years ago we call them regained territories anyway. There were labor camps in Poland after the war which came very close to what is considered a concentration camp ... BUT they were run by the communists and Jews, and these guys weren't Polish anyway even if they were born in Poland. You know what I mean? There is always an excuse - never ever do certain people on PF admit that their own country might have some skeletons in its historical closet, too.

All this ends up in the Google index for everybody out there to find and read. I believe that PF - as one of the larger web sites dedicated to Poland - sometimes does more damage to the reputation of the country than a thousand Kaczyński brothers would be able to.

Jeezus. Have some consideration, man! Some of us will take that image to our graves!!!

Dear God! No!

I've just had a horrible thought. If they made two of them - did the factory make more? Will they keep coming out in droves muttering 'spieprzaj dziadu'?

You didn't hear this from me, but Porton Down knows a lot more about this than they're letting on.

I blame the Russians.

Maybe you should just stfu?

I'm tired of your trolling on this forum.

Why don't you just stfu or actually contribute something to this forum? All you do is trying to make Poland look bad and call all "American-Poles" non Poles or like you usually say "Dumb Pollacks" just so you can feel good about your miserable life.

Not really a Slavic thing, more a thing of Eastern European nations. Many of these nations didn't exist for along time since they were part of Austria, Prussia or Poland; and later, when these nations were reestablished, they became satellite states of the Soviet Union. All this time nationalism was needed for self-assertion. In Western Europe however this kind of 19th century nationalism was countered with the establishment of the European Union after WW2, and these close contacts with other nations helped to push back nationalism. That's why Western Europeans often feel somewhat alienated when talking to Eastern Europeans, since they can't relate to this rhetoric anymore.

Well you see the problem is, the reaction you are having now to the non-stop Polish-Bashing by vicious anti-Polish Bigots like Delphiadomine is the reaction that anti-Polish bigots like him wants.

He wants people of Polish ancestry in Poland and outside of Poland to feel bad about their Polish heritage. This mostly started when some Poles and Polish Americans started to question the Russian Smolensk plane crash investigation which made Delphiadomine go crazy. He has spent literally HUNDREDS of hours on that topic fighting tooth and nail to defend Russia on that topic. NO person of NON-Russian ancestry would ever do that. Ever since then, his Polish-Bashing spiked up dramatically where he then went to other topics putting a microscope on every conceivable form of imagined Polish wrong doing and even lying about Poles, just to "get back at" those Poles who questioned his RuSSians in the Smolensk crash.

His non-stop spamming of this forum of every imaginable dreamed up horrible thing you could think about Polish people is part of his Russian hate campaign against Polish people. And yes he IS of Russian ancestry. That's why he goes insane when Poles dare to criticize his Russia. Don't be fooled by his token criticisms of Russia to throw you off.


Whenever somebody says that a certain group has a "national trait of...." to generalize about a group of people, its the person making that accusation who has the trait of a bigot. In your case you are a Russian racist Bigot who is obsessed that there are some Poles who questioned Russia during the Smolensk investigation and disagree with Russia. But even before that you were whining about how Poles shouldn't think badly of Russia today because of what Soviet Russia did to Poland. Why bring this up when nobody was talking about it? Who cares what Poles think or don't think about Russia? Except of course if you're of RuSSian ancestry??

As for your trait, you have the trait of being a RuSSian Nazi Anti-Polish Bigot.

And there we have a perfect example of an inconvenient part of Polish history: there were indeed Poles in the SS, thousands of them (if we make the assumption that one in fifty of the Poles who were captured by the Western allies while fighting for Germany were SS (very much an under-estimation of the percentage of German forces which were SS in 1944/5), there must have been at least two thousand). But instead of this history being examined, it is swept away and denied.


The man in question was born in Poland to a Polish mother (Polish in terms of ethnicity and citizenship) and an unknown father (thought by most to be Jewish), he self-identified as Polish both before and after the war. But to Polish sources he is Belorussian. What was I saying about denial?


A few hundred actually, but that fact is also inconvenient, let's sweep it away.


The term "concentration camp" was used by contemporary media to describe the camps in question. But it is easier to simply deny that fact.


Clearly you were not paying attention: you say "Poland only political prison" and then "its ... is ... it", so to you there is apparently only one camp. The fact is that there were several. But it is easier to deny again.


And many stayed, some of whom were then put into Polish concentration camps but of course that is just another inconvenient part of Polish history, let's deny it.


Sure, all you did was ban their language, close their schools, close their churches, close their libraries, close their reading rooms, ban their organisations and send anybody who objected too loudly to a concentration camp. None of that is bad!


Really? Could you be so kind as to point out the US law which said that Jews could only sit on certain benches in universities? Or to the US medical association or bar association banning Jews from joining?


Yes please do give us more examples of how some Poles think that the inconvenient parts of Polish history should be dealt with.

One of the most notorious camps was run by a Jewish "survivor".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_Morel

Here is the IPN report about this concentration camp and Morel:
ipn.gov.pl/portal.php?serwis=en&dzial=2&id=71&search=10599

So much about denying it by the Poles.
I also recommend reading Israeli reply to Polish request to extradite that scum Morel. They give Poles lessons about denial.


You can assume all you want but without solid evidence, that is just spreading hateful antipolish libel.

Don't you find it interesting that Poland went after one camp commander so hard but allowed another camp commander to live out the rest of his life in peace? Czesław Gęborski was every bit as bad as Morel but Poland just let him go. I wonder why.


So your view is that none of the 100,000+ Poles who were captured by the western allies while fighting for Poland were SS? That's highly likely, isn't it?

Like I said, provide sources. Internet, boooks, anything. I will even go to the library if you point me to a reliable source that states that. Until then it is just

From the Wiki page you linked I see that he spend 22 months in prison, was charged numerous times and his last trial was stopped by his death. The same would probably happen with Morel if he was extradited - due to inefficiency of Polish courts.


Where did you get that 100 000 number from? While many Poles were forcibly conscripted into Wehrmacht (because they weren't considered Poles by the German administration!), the Germans didn't forcibly conscript Poles into SS, and they didn't create Polish SS legions like they did in other countries. That's very logical, considering their overall policy towards Poles.

Here is a link to a newspaper in the UK claiming, allied troop members of the SS.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259632/Hitlers-British-SS-Chilling-pictures-traitors-joined-Fuhrers-evil-unit--Union-Flag-sleeve.html

Harry posted this article yesterday. There is nothing about Polish SS. But like I said yesterday, the following quote explains everything: "British and Commonwealth soldiers who decided to fight for the Nazis rather than spend the war in honourable captivity as PoWs." Screw honorable if your stomach is grumbling.



"The Random House Dictionary defines the term "concentration camp" as: "a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc.""

The prisons were run for Polish by Polish, therefore they don't fall into the concentration camp category. I recommend the movie "Przesluchanie". (on youtube) I hope you can understand Polish. It will shed some light on the period of Polish history.

Gęborski was a Jew so I also ask the same, Why did they? Surname perhaps that does not sound Jewish?


Simple Harry, unlike the Brits who had their (BFC) and others of course there was no such thing as Polish Free Corps but there were some Jewish SS units. :) if it makes you feel better.

I already have, repeatedly, in other threads. But it seems that nothing will move you from your position that no Pole ever did anything remotely unpleasant.


Before being cleared.


With the number being 'two', as in 'he was charged two times'.


Why do you tell such pointless lies? The article says "the trial for the 1945 incident in £ambinowice was resumed by the local court in Opole. However, it had to be postponed - and finally terminated in 2005 - due to the poor health of both Gęborski and the witnesses. Gęborski died June 14, 2006."!


British government figures of the number of Poles taken prisoner by British forces or taken prisoner by other allied forces and transferred to the care of British forces.


Please do not lie: Polish people were not eligible to even join the Wehrmacht, only those who had sign up on the Deutsche Volksliste could join the Wehrmacht. No signature, no Wehrmacht.


By your 'logic' Dachau was not a concentration camp. Wow, you really must badly want to be able to say that the Polish concentration camps were not concentration camps!


Interesting that you don't use his full name. Would that be because you also know that Czesław is not a Jewish name and don't want people to notice that? He was a Polish Catholic.

I don't follow you around making sure I've read all your posts and most people probably don't do that either. So kindly provide your sources. It's not about being over sensitive about Poland. I've read enough that Poles did not join the SS (for obvious reasons), unlike for example Ukrainians (for obvious reasons). I'm not going to change my mind only because someone repeats some (unsupported) statements endlessly.

Never mind. Whatever. Call the commie prisons whatever. I'm fine with that.

Interesting, Michael de Nostredame not very Jewish sounding name either but none the less.

WOW seriously dude you just linked the details from a nazi forum, idiot.

Did you bother reading anything on that site at all? Not even the bit at the top of the page "Axis History Forum
This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the Axis nations"?

Or did you read it and notice the bit where properly sourced witness statements show your racist friend to be a liar and so want to try to attack the credibility of the source? I wonder.


Use the search engine, that is what is there for.


The evidence (as in evidence heard in courts and accepted by such courts) shows that they did. Here is a photo of one of them.