Pol-Shorpy Photo Thread

Magic of the Tatra Mountains: 2019



The highest mountains in the Carpathians, the Tatra Mountains, form a natural border between Poland and Slovakia. Giewont, the Polish "national mountain", is featured prominently in myths and folklore. Regardless of the time of the year Tatry attract millions of tourists (about 4 million visitors annualy).

Two Polish winters of the century:
First photo from 1929 - a WW1 tank used as a snow plough.
Second - 1979 - communist Poland - cleared railway track.

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Where are the women?

Oh, yeah...

Simple but brilliant: 1926



In the photo we can see president Ignacy Mościcki sitting in a CWS T-1, a car with a complicated name but a very simple construction. CWS (Centralne Warsztaty Samochodowe) T-1 was a fully Polish design, brilliant in its simplicity - you could disassemble and assemble the car with one wrench because all the bolts were the same size - M10 (the only exception were the sparkplugs - size M18). Also, the entire transmission system and the engine's timing gear were built with a set of identical gearwheels! There were 800 CWS T-1s made before licence for a cheaper construction (Fiat 508) was bought from Italy and the production switched to the Italian model.

Simple is usually brilliant, if only because it is simple.

@Extraterrestrial

A simple brain, is rarely brilliant. However, a brilliant brain, is often simple.

This is why I like Crow.

A family photo: 1906



Zlata Boms and Lea Prywes (pregnant), daughters of Chaim Rottenberg from Skryhiczyn. Warsaw, 1906. "Mama had seven sisters. Auntie Data left with three of her children to Palestine. She had to leave her oldest, mentally ill son in a hospital in Warsaw. He was her most beloved child. In 1939, she returned to him. Both died at the beginning of the war".

One of millions of family stories of Polish Jews. So many of them perished, many left for their "Promised Land" in Middle East. For centuries Polish history was inextricably intertwined with Jewish history, and it shall never be forgotten.

Historians remember, people forgot.

Everywhere, darling! You don`t see them coz as a misogynist you vowed to ignore them at all cost. HA!!!

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I don't understand these jokes about women not wanting to clean snow or fight wars.

It's normal for a human being to change their mind.

Yesterday, she "wanted it all", today she maybe does not "want it all".

Do you think we should take away their right to vote, and make them second class slaves again?

Their "feminism" movement, yielded some concrete results. Good for them.

Mostly created by frustrated incels from their solitary basements. Or by frustrated macho chauvinists equally troubled with complexes like incels.

I was once a man trapped in a woman's body but then my mother gave birth,
Have been a man ever since.

But you have never truly overcome that trauma. Ha!

That is very rich coming from a mentally challenged stooge.

Le sex faible?: 1920



Polish women not only took care of the patrioric upbringing of their children but they also manufactured homemade bombs, transported weapons and fought on the battlefields. In the photo we see members of Ochotnicza Legia Kobiet (Voluntary Woman Legion), founded in Lwów in 1918 by the members of "weak sex" who wanted to fight for Poland with arms in their hands.

You must surely be joking, Mr Szczytko!: 2019



Photons, elementary particles without mass and moving at the speed of light, can be in certain ingenuous ways "stopped" and made to act like completely different particles - electrons (which have mass and interact with magnetic field). It was demonstrated by a team of physicists led by professor Jacek Szczytko (University of Warsaw).

But professor Szczytko doesn't lock himself in his academic ivory tower but very often descends from it to popularise physics among highschool students. Below we see him talking about quantum mechanics to the students of Highschool No. 1 in Łowicz.

No szczyt?!

I'm not quite sure what you're asking, Anti.

A play on words. A crude way of expressing amazement is to cry out the poetic inquisitively exclamatory phrase: No sh!t?! Here I'm playing on the physicist 's last name to crudely express amazement.

All right. It was a bit too sophisticated for me ;)

They don't call me Mr. Sophistication for nothing😁

At first glance, my sophisticated eye thought the photo was about a guy who has a red claw growing from his finger.

Sophisticated and perceptive. I hope your wife realises what gem she has at home!

The post directly above shall be copied and blown up to a size that even a blind man could read it and posted all over our suburban-ish shack. 😄

Jaruzelski's Gambit: 1981



In December 1981 "friendly" armies of Soviet Union, East Germany and Czechoslovakia stood at Polish borders ready to intervene and quench the Solidarity movement by drowning it in blood.

General Jaruzelski, before proclaiming the martial law, took out Polish army units out of their barracks to the training grounds all over Poland. They were supposed to practice and "get ready for certain actions". What actions? General Dachowski says plainly: "they went out of their barracks with all the artillery and rockets, so they certainly weren't preparing for restoring order inside cities".

Polish Army deployed in battle readiness in their training grounds was a deterrent to the "friendly" intervention. It made it harder. It made it potentially disastrous. Wojsko Polskie was preparing for the defense of their Fatherland.

Polish Army, about 500,000 strong with millions of reservists, was a force to be reckoned with. It was Jaruzelski's force de frappe. It was a game of sorts: Russians showed Jaruzelski their divisions and their strength, he showed them that he also has soldiers. That they might win but it certainly won't be easy. Eventually, the Soviets decided against the military intervention.

About all this, and more, you can read in the new book - Jaruzelski's Gambit...



... a well research and documented publication, much needed these days as there are still idiots claiming that the general (who died in 2014 and is no longer able to defend himself from cowards and their spiteful accusations) asked Soviets to intervene.

As far as I know, there were no plans for the Soviets to intervene in Poland. It was just an excuse. I think it was historically proven but seems to me some are making money on perpetuating old commie myths about great Soviet stateman Jaruzelski.

The Soviet Union had just failed in Afghanistan they were in no shape and had no taste for another intervention. Even though there were plenty of Red Army troops stationed in Poland.

In fact that dude acted unlawfully even with the former PRL laws, and it resulted in many deaths and political murders. So spare me glorifying nonsense about your great hero.

They still had enough strength, and our dear "allies" especially East Germans were more than eager to take part in the invasion.


60 thousand, compared to Polish half-a-million plus reservists. Also, the Russian troops in the barracks were "kindly asked" by nearby Polish units' commanders to stay there (and they did!). I know it from old army officers, who remember also very well what was happening in the Baltic Sea and along the borders in 1980-81.


Of course there were. Read the book, Iron. As I said, it's well researched and documented.

I never said they couldn't, they just didn't want to and told J to do it himself and he like a good dog obeyed.

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What Polish, Polish were led and commanded by commies too if anything Polish troops would provide assistance, not an obstacle.
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Sorry, plans might have been there as any serious state has contingency plans for every situation but there was no intention of doing it,

Well, Iron, there are well documented books and eye-witness testimonies to support what the General himself said and wrote about when he was still alive.

But hey, I suppose some people will just believe what they want to believe. Oh, well...

Lame excuses of those who meekly followed orders.
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Yeah, sure he was known for speaking nothing but the truth. lol!
Torq, that is just another myth-feeding book, noting more and nothing less. Logic and facts support me as well as the knowledge of human nature and understanding of what the Soviet Union and PRL were.

You forget I remember that sh't!

I spoke with few people who said they saw army preparation on the German border