Polish historical myths - to break or not to break them?

Wetting a bed and having nightmares aren`t contradictory?

Not if you look at Doda and that other thing.

Be advised, my passport's green
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast the Queen
(Seamus Heaney)

then you still have amnesia given the kindnesss my country has always shown yours.. Potato famine?? The hordes of stinking uneducated immigrants we accepted from Ireland.

POS hypocrite you are. Typical European. And the Irish are hardly without sin, slick. Never have been. Irish benefitted for centuries on the blood of the English empire, via jobs,investments, whatever..

I'd like to bash your idiotic scull in personally.

And maybe from Poland too?

I'm only singing about communist genocides when I get the chance. Some say that's another myth.

You are going to have to educate me here, what are you talking about?

It is like saying slaves benefited from slavery.

The strange thing about your and Barney's argument here is that at the time, you were Europeans.
Americans/Europeans one and the same in this context.

Myths are for understanding. They're for breaking if there's something to be gained from breaking them. Otherwise trying to understand the is more useful.

No they're not.. they haven't been one in the same for hundreds of years. Ask you Mick countrymen, he's always blathering on about Americans killing indians. It's a little ironic for any European wagging his finger at anyone commiting genocide. It's comical in the extreme.


Don't need them limey.. Unlike you, I don't live off the gov'ment. Now run along like a good Brit with some young boy to the bushes. Jonni grab those ankles mate, hahaha. British fa.ggot!

I think this one is a modern day myth Irish welcome on Polish building sites ?.
It just makes no logical sense, why would Polish people put up a sign, in English, in Poland?
Irish people have not come here to look for jobs on a building site.

This myth has been added to, like a game of Chinese whispers.
I was told by a taxi man in Ireland that 2000 Poles walked off site in Poland because an Irish man walked on. Apart from having an over inflated opinion about himself, it is just pure lies, that just wouldn't happen.

But where I find the interest is how willing people are to believe it. I even thought it could have been true myself but this shows more about how we feel than what actually happened.

Ireland was a poor country (it certainly did not benefit from the British Empire) and it became rich over night.
Money became the only conversation people had any more, greed unseen before to this extent, had come in full swing.
Polish people were working hard and some Irish people were making a lot of money from it.

This myth has the sentiment that a Pole went to Ireland worked his butt off, got stroked by the developer and told an Irish person to get off site because he was treated badly.

Irish people automatically sympathise with this mythical Polish person, it kinda does relate to the British Empire.

hey Americans are innocent as spring grass! lay off you European bastards

You all should educate yourself and read New York Morning Star's article by John O'Sullivan in 1845. You would understand that American's are new and good as opposite to old and tyrannical old world.

That's not true.
Modern day Caucasian Americans are descendents of Europeans. I am sure you know this.
And we are talking about the killing of native Americans, which Europeans/Americans did do.


Ah, I see now, you are just a dick, ah well.

I thought Americans generally say that about Polish?

Its all there for you to read, you can read?

LOL... holy sh.t.. get some duck tape underwear boys. You're going to need it on this forum.

duct tape (could not help it, it's a personal pet peeve)

duckbrand.com

Crap. One less thing to b!tch about.

SeanBM as others have inclined they don't know the FACTS they know the myth only!
All of American except for the immigrants were born in America! Just ask any guy in America where he was born! xD lol

What the hell are you jabbering about?

We probably all lie to our selves about what has happened and not just as a country but as individuals but we are not talking about that, are we?

We want to look at the great things our countries have done and say "Yes, I am a part of that!" and ignore the negatives, cover them in myth or hide them, it only takes your little finger to block out the sun.


Well lets bring it home a bit, Norwegians tried to wipe out the indigenous Sami culture.

Ireland has it's share of wrong doings also but we won't talk about those ;)

My point is not to offend, my point is that perhaps many people need these myths to feel good about themselves because most countries at some point through their historys are guilty of some wrong doings and we do not want to see ourselves as guilty.

For example did the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth simply expand and form this huge empire.
Were the territories that became part of this Empire willing or were they taken by force?
I have only heard and seen how great it was, surely armies were sent out to kick ass?
I am not talking about Lithuanian and Polish agreement but the other lands they conquered.

In my opinion the Poles like to believe in myths and Marchen,it is part of their psyche,so better leave them like that.

Yes.


Not only Poles. Also Germans, Russians, Americans, British, French etc etc etc .




Reconciliation is a good word to describe Czech and Polish political relations today. Yes, Poles participated in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Polish communist leader Gomułka urged the harsh solutions with Prague Spring because he feared that free Czechoslovakia would fall prey to Germany, thus flanking Poland from the south, like in 1939 (German attack on Poland from 3 directions - north, west and south).

So, Poles became invaders and occupants. Like in Napoleonic times on San Domingo, they went without enthusiasm, but did their duty as it was expected of them.

Polish troops in Czechoslovakia. Poles "heroically defended" a few big towns against Czech patriots: Hradec Kralove, Pardubice, Olomunec, Trutnow.







Polish troops return to Poland after their mission.

Each Pole is a good soldier



The occupation was not too peaceful. Polish soldiers actively suppressed the Czech opposition, by tracking down illegal radio stations or printing houses. They also removed the anti-invasion graffiti on walls. They put pressure on local patriotic authorities which were reluctant to cooperate with true communists who started taking control thanks to the invasion.

Polish soldiers sometimes behaved like real occupants. When they went to local pubs and received unfriendly comments from Czechs, they could get really nasty and it often happened that they ordered a Czech man to drink beer from his shoes..... :(:(:(

The greatest tragedy happened when on 7 September, 1968, a drunk Polish soldier opened fire into the crowd of civilians, killing 2 and wounding 5 people on the spot, also trying to rape a wounded woman. The killer was sentenced to death, later changed to life, and finally left prison after 15 years.

Polish society`s opposition against the invasion was feeble. One must remember, though, that 3 months before the Polish authorities had cracked on restive students and intellectuals demanding greater freedom.

Nevertheless, during and after the invasion of Czechoslovakia the Polish secret police noticed many anti-government leaflets and graffiti on walls. Also a few intellectuals and writers sent a letter of protest to authorities. Some party members resigned from their membership.

The most spectacular act of protest against the invasion was the self-burning of Ryszard Siwiec.



Film showing Siwiec tragedy:
youtube.com/watch?v=JZZlrPQHDH0
All Polish democratic governments since 1990 apologised officially to our Slavic brothers for what we did to them. Even General Jaruzelski, then a Defence Minister, sent an apology to the Czech.

radio.cz/en/article/69856


news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4171966.stm

Better late than never.

Now, I know that Poles tend to justify the Polish participation by usual: we were suppressed by communists, it wasn`t Polish decision etc etc.

But did it really make any difference to Czechs who saw Polish troops in their cities and towns? Or the Czech family whose members were massacred by a mad Polish soldier?

Czechs just knew that Poles occupied them and that`s what counted.

That is why I support the official apologies issued by Polish governments to southern neighbours. It wasn`t only evil communists, unfortunately, who organised the invasion against the popular will and without consent of the nation. The historical sources prove that most Poles were glad the invasion took place, they considered it lesser evil. For them it was better to have suppressed Czechoslovakia than German Czechoslovakia. Let`s remember that by 1968 West Germany hadn`t settled its former lands issue with Poland.

The sources in Polish:
mowiawieki.pl/artykul.html?id_artykul=993
histmag.org/?id=1992

Already August 23, President Svoboda interrupted the unified opinion leadership team and suggested a way out of the impasse, agreeing to go to Moscow for talks. There he was greeted with full honors. In the delegations were also gen. Dzúr, Gustav Husak deputy (one of the leaders of the Communist Party of Slovakia) and Bil'ak together with representatives of their group. Svoboda activists demanded the release of the internees and their inclusion in the talks. Soviet Comrades agreed to this and a crew of Dubèek led from August 24 in Moscow serious talks. It turned out that both President Svoboda and Gustav Husak sided with Brezhnev. The first of them wanted to head off the risk of armed conflict and avoid bloodshed. The second, moderate until this time, has taken his game for the Communist Party leadership.

With communism gone, which way would Czechoslovakia go? Sooner or later, it would become German ally. :):) Poles really didn`t want to have such a neighbour in the south.

Then why not discuss the issue, rather than launching on in there? I don't think the Czechs were overly pleased with those tactics.

Communists didn`t accept discussion.

Na ja....but you wrote yourself that the majority of Poles were quite pleased with the invasion because of their fears of Germany.

That's not quite brotherly, freedom lovingly etc. at all.....

Communists likely didn't accept rebellion either.

Poles still had German occupation in memory, and the year was 1968, 23 years after WW2 ended. Till today some buildings in Warsaw bear scars from the war and the Rising,

so what do you expect from people who lived in 1968??? Brotherly feelings? After 6 million victims of German folly? :):):):)

Very interesting
Are you saying that people hide behind myths?